Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 345attempting, the men such as Areus among Court chaplains,such as Cornutus, Musonius, and Taurus amongeminent Romans, such as Epictetus among the Greeks.These men took human conduct for their field of labour,but they detached it from belief on the one side, andfrom worship on the other. As to belief, the philosopherwas, in spite of himself, member of a societywhich had inherited large portions of an ancient orderof things based upon the government of the world bythe godhead. From this, however, he had emancipatedhimself as far as he conld. His philosophy, as a workof simple human reason, was in opposition to religion,tradition, and usage, and to all the rites which belongedto this triple source. As to worship, he had noneof his own. Not once, in any instance from Socratesto Plotinus, did the philosopher proclaim and openlypractise the worship of one God, and of one alone.That same effort of reason which had alienated himfrom the corruption of the popular religion, shouldhave led him to such a proclamation and to the correspondingpractice. But he built his system ofhuman conduct on the dignity of that reason as article of the divine essence, and as the essentialpart of man, not on submission to that Lord andRuler, whom, as Cicero said, the dissensions of thephilosophers compelled men not to know. As to thehomage of the heart to God, all these philosophwere an unworshipping race. Their accommodtion to the worship of the gods from JupiterzEsculapius was equally universal with their omisto proclaim and adore " the Lord " of human natand of human beings.3. Another characteristic of philosophy is of greatportance, both to show its nature and temper and