DIONYSIUS, BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA. 27 to those who desire to drink the water of life. Elsewhere he speaks of "the word of truth and of wisdom, burning and shining brighter than the sun, penetrating and shining into the depths of the heart and soul." Thus Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria in the third century, a man distinguished for pious zeal and philosophic knowledge, was brought to Christianity by the examination of various systems. The examination and trial of all things was, as he says, the way of faith for him. In the system of many Christian theosophists in the east (Gnostics), which had been formed from a combination of Christian ideas with existing oriental modes of thought, evident traces may be found that these eminent men had examined with an anxiety stretching beyond the bounds of humanity the mysterious fragments of religious systems that belonged to a venerable antiquity, until they were attracted by the surpassing splendour of the revelation of God in the gospel. And although they penetrated into Christianity only on that one side, according to which their whole intellectual life had been regulated, although they did not possess the self-denial to sacrifice or subordinate their former views and mental tendencies to the all-transforming creation which Christianity necessarily produces where it fully operates, yet we here see in a remarkable manner the mighty influence of Christianity on opposite tendencies of human nature; both on that giant (so to speak) mental tendency, striving upwards and despising as too narrow the common conceptions of human nature, wishing to penetrate far beyond into the depths of the hidden God, and on the other hand on that tendency cleaving to the earth, drawing down the heavenly to earth, and mingling it with the earthly; on both these opposite modes of speculation it was able to exert an overpowering and attractive force. CHAPTER II. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MAN. CHRISTIANITY in its operations connected itself with the existing consciousness of God, which it awoke from a dormant state, and released from its fetters, while it converted the dim apprehension of the existence of a hidden God into the clear and living consciousness of a God revealed in Christ. The idea of an originator and source of all existence, “in whom we live and move and have our being, whose offspring we are, and who is not far from any one of us;"-this idea is deeply founded in the intellectual and moral nature of man; but as long as it remains nothing more than an obscure sentiment in the back-ground of human consciousness, and does not pervade the whole life as a vital principle, and mould the whole life in conformity to it, it is absolutely barren, and by contact with the world which rules the consciousness of men, it is perpetually kept under, and degenerates into an idolatry of Nature. It was of no use that reflective men possessed the abstract knowledge of the highest Unity; this could not, as the ancient philosophers and lawgivers clearly perceived, be brought down to the popular mind, and infused into it as a practical principle of action. It was not by a traditionary abstract knowledge of God, but only by the life of every individual being brought into personal relation, not to a hidden deity dimly apprehended, but to a God made known in his living revelation, and immediately laying hold of human nature; only by such means could heathenism be completely vanquished. In the various and peculiar modes by which the converted heathens expressed the relation of that knowledge of God which filled and penetrated their whole souls to their former habits of thinking, we may again recognise the diversity of those tendencies and ways out of which they were brought to Christianity. 66 To a question commonly put to Christians by heathens sunk in sensuality, Who then is the God whom ye honour in secret without any visible cultus, without images, or temples, THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH. 29 29 or altars ?” Theophilus of Antioch replied: “ It is that Being whose breath animates all things; if he were to withdraw his breath, all would sink to nothing. Thou canst not speak without testifying of him; of him the breath of thy life testifies, and yet thou knowest him not. This ignorance is owing to the blindness of thy soul, the hardness of thy heart.* God is seen by those who are able to see him as soon as they have the eye of their souls open. All have eyes, but some eyes are darkened, and do not behold the light of the sun, and when the blind do not see, it does not follow that there is no sunshine: the blind must accuse themselves and their own eyes. So also, oh man ! the eyes of the soul are darkened by sin. Man must have a pure soul like a clear mirror. When sin is in man, like rust on a metal mirror, he cannot see God. But if thou art willing, thou canst be cured. Give thyself to the Physician, and he will open the eyes of thy soul and of thy heart. Who is the Physician? God who heals and makes alive by his words." Thus Theophilus points out to the heathen, that man by his estrangement from God, in consequence of his internal corruption, is prevented from understanding that revelation of God which is presented by the whole creation (Rom. i. 18, 20), and therefore he must first seek to be freed from this corruption in order that the image of a holy God may be reflected in a sanctified heart. He very properly refers to his own experience when he passed from heathenism to Christianity, and shows that the true knowledge of God is not to be communicated to men as something abstract, by certain ideas from without, but must proceed in a living manner by a regeneration of the inner life. Men, who before their conversion to Christianity, had * Βλέπεται γὰρ θεὸς τοῖς δυναμένοις αὐτὸν ορᾷν, ἐπὰν ἔχωσι τοὺς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἀνεωγμένους τῆς ψυχῆς. Πάντες μὲν γὰρ ἔχουσι τοὺς ὀφθαλμοῖς, ἀλλὰ ἔνιοι ὑποκεχυμένους, καὶ μὴ βλέποντας τὸ φῶς τοῦ ἡλίου· καὶ οὐ παρὰ τὸ μὴ βλέπειν τοὺς τυφλούς, ἤδη καὶ οὐκ ἔτι τὸ φῶς τοῦ ἡλίου φαίνον· αλλα ἑαυτοὺς αἰτιάσθωσαν οἱ τυφλοὶ, καὶ τοὺς ἑαυτῶν ὀφθαλμοὺς. Οὕτω καὶ σὺ, ὦ ἄνθρωπε, ἔχεις ἀποκεχυμένους τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς ψυχῆς σου ὑπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων καὶ τῶν πράξεῶν σου τῶν πονηρων. Ὥσπερ ἔσοπτρον ἐστίλβωμένον, οὕτω δεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἔχειν καθαρὰν ψυχήν. Επὰν οὖν ἡ ἰὸς ἐν τῷ εσόπτρῳ, οὐ δύναται ὁρᾶσθαι τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῳ ἐσόπτρῳ. Οὕτω καὶ ὅταν ἡ ἁμαρτία εν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, οὐ δύναται ὁ τοιοῦτος ἄνθρωπος θεωρεῖν τὸν θεόν.—Theoph. Antioch. ad Autolycum, 2 examined the various systems of the ancient philosophers, now recollected with pleasure those pure religious ideas which rose above the popular superstition, and proceeded from the religious consciousness as developed by philosophy. From the central point of Christianity they could now recognise what bore an affinity to it in all the scattered traces of truth, and separated them from the falsehood with which they were mixed. As Clement of Alexandria expresses himself, "They bound together the portions of truth separated by human error into one harmonious whole, and thus recognised the truth without danger." Yet certainly there was some truth at the foundation, when Tertullian, a man of practical life rather than a philosopher, was disposed to see in all mental culture (what can be only affirmed of what was not true), a falsifier of the original truth, a corruption of nature; and hence, instead of going to the schools of the philosophers, in which he often found the voice of Nature suppressed, he rather appealed to the involuntary utterance of this voice in the unguarded expressions of spontaneous feeling by simple uneducated men. He wished to show that even the predominance of delusion could not altogether suppress the original consciousness of God. "I summon thee, oh soul!" he says, "not such as when, trained in the schools, exercised in libraries, nourished in the academies and porches of Athens, thou utterest thy crude wisdom. I address thee as simple and rude, unpolished and unlearned, such as they have thee who have only thee; the very and entire thing that thou art in the road, in the highway, in the weaver's factory. I have need of thy inexperience, since in thy experience, however small, no one puts faith. I demand of thee those truths which thou bringest with thyself to man, which thou hast learnt to know either from thyself, or from the author of thy being We hear thee saying openly and with full liberty, not allowed to us, both at home and abroad, Which God grant,' and 'If God will.' By this language thou testifiest the being of a God; thou ascribest all power to him, to whose will thou makest reference; thou deniest also the being of other gods, since thou callest these by their particular names. Also what we say of the nature of God is not hidden from thee; it is thy language, The good God,' God gives what is good.' In fact, thou addest, but man is evil.' 6 6 L VIEWS OF TERTULLIAN AND MARCION. 6 31 Thou indicatest by this contrast, that man is evil, because he While Tertullian justly acknowledged in Christianity the revelation of that God who is never wholly hidden, is never altogether wanting to man, who always lets himself be recognised and perceived, to whom our whole being bears witness, and in whom it rests, who need not be proved to exist since he is proved by the fact that he cannot be denied;—on the other hand the warm heart of Marcion was so captivated by the glory of the revelation of God in Christ, that he exclaimed: The God of holiness and love, whom I find in the gospel, was hitherto wholly strange to the world; neither Nature nor Reason could point to him; the God whom Nature and Reason announced. Is not the most high God revealed in Christ? In the limited weak nature of man there is nothing akin to this Almighty One, the God of holy love; Christianity has first communicated to man a divine life, flowing from this God, by which he is raised above the whole finite creation to 66 |