Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMANU&KGIabsurd. They had disciples, but no one oftured to set up himself as the germ of a polity, tnT)they did conceive a polity, as the medium of teachinga doctrine. Not one of them thought of associatingtruth with his own person, or imagined that union ofthe truth with the life of a single man transfused intoa body of men, which is the idea of the Church. Theonly faint resemblance of this is the fact, if it be one,that the Stoics framed their doctrine of the Wise Manft 1 1 character of S I tdeed.th tions after Christ had comh Neopyth dealised h pthe p phic life first in the person of Pyan ,h th; Apollonius. With the pictCh th f< Gospels before them, and hn ^ f t of the Church gt of th del undheir eyes, they bethought tl t aheath Christ, and t > attrib h gble. and t in m nature as they con-d t o dead m O these had livedseven hundred years before, leaving behind him agreat name but scarcely any authentic documents asto the details of his life and teaching-; O the other hadbeen contemporaneous with the Author of Christianity,but his life had passed almost unnoticed by any oneof his own time, and without any effect on the world.Thus, after the lapse of a hundred years, the legendof Apollonius, like that of Pythagoras, lent itself toevery embellishment of fiction. Far otherwise in thecase of Him whom they feebly attempted to copy." Follow Me " was as creative as " Let there be lisrht." OUttered by the side of the Lake of Galilee, those wordsaggregated Apostles to Him who spoke them : utteredby those Apostles afterwards, they built up the Church.VOL. m. cLIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE