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external christian church; and that consequently it is only here and there, where vital Christianity has inflamed individual communities, and chiefly at the first entrance of Christianity into the world, that we behold what the Spirit of Christ is truly capable of accomplishing in this respect.

The LOVE which united together the members of the first christian congregations, especially at a time when moral corruption, perfidy, and misanthropy had reached their highest point in the Roman empire, put all the heathen in astonishment. In Minutius Felix,286 the heathen Caecilius says of the first Christians: "This harmony of spirit among the Christians, must be wholly reprobated and destroyed. They recognize each other by secret signs and marks, and mutually love each other before they become acquainted. Here and there, a sort of voluptuous religious feeling is intermingled among them, and they call themselves reciprocally brethren and sisters." The heathen were often heard to cry out with astonishment respecting the disciples of Christ: "See how they love one another ”287 Yea, such brotherly love must indeed have been incomprehensible to the heathen; for where selfishness still reigns, love is not unfeigned; and selfishness must reign where Christ has not yet become our life. Now as every Christian no longer seeks his own, but that which is his Lord's, so it is only among regenerated Christians that true love is possible. And just the default of this true, unfeigned love, was a defect in the civil and political life of the heathen in general. On the contrary, the blessed influence of the christian spirit of love, was also evinced in many public regulations. It showed itself in the abolition of the games of the gladiators. This abolition was occasioned by Christianity; since these games must themselves have continued to nourish in the minds of the combatants, as well as of the spectators, a spirit of savage cruelty. Even heathen of the better sort, had already taken offence on this point. Thus Lucian relates of the cynic Demonax,288 that when the Athenians at a certain time were about to give a great exhibition of combatants, he came forward, saying: "Do not do this, until you have first thrown down your altar of compassion." How much more must the Christians have felt the inhumanity of these amusements!

286 Minutii Octavius, c. 9. § 2.

287 Tert. Apol. c. 39.

288 Luciani Demonax, c. 57.

That spirit of christian love manifested itself also in the administration of justice; into which Christianity afterwards, in proportion as it pervaded the various states, introduced a milder and more humane spirit; removing, for example, the punishment of crucifixion, of the rack, of casting to wild beasts, etc. It was manifested too in the manner of life among the various classes of men, who all assumed a milder character; and, finally, in the establishment of charitable institutions, e. g. poor-houses, infirmaries, free houses of entertainment for indigent foreigners, and many institutions of this kind, which had been almost wholly unknown to heathenism; so that the first establishment of infirmaries was the occasion of general wonder among the heathen.289

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We close this contemplation on the influence of heathenism, with the spirited words of Athanasius, in which he depicts the wide dominion and transforming energy of the gospel :290 Who among men could penetrate even to the Scythians, the Ethiopians, the Persians, the Armenians, the Goths, or to those beyond the ocean, or beyond Hyrcania; or who would address himself to the Egyptians and the Chaldeans,-to the latter, who practise magic, and are wholly ruled by superstition; to the former, who live in wild and desert countries, and preach to both with courage and wisdom against the worship of idols? Who could have been adequate to this, but the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? HE, who not only caused his gospel to be preached there by his disciples, but also imparted to those nations the full conviction of the heart; so that they thenceforth no longer offered sacrifices to the gods of their countries, and gave up also the rudeness of their manners. In former times, when the Greeks and Barbarians served the heathen gods, they were perpetually at war with each other, and were cruel towards their own kindred by blood; yea, no one could travel by land or sea, unless armed sword in hand, against improvident and mutual contests. Indeed their whole life was rather a service under arms; their staff was the sword, the support of all their hopes. And although they all this time continued to serve the gods, yet this was not competent to change their disposition. But scarcely had they turned to the doctrine of Christ, when rudeness and murder disappeared; after that the heart within 289 Hieronymi Ep. 26.

290 Athan. Opp. T. I. p. 105.

had, in a wonderful manner, been broken and subdued. What mere man could ever have been able to accomplish so much! to march forth to the contest against the united legions of idolatry, the combined hosts of demons, the whole world of magic, and all the wisdom of Greece; and at a single onset, overthrow them all!"

PART V.

HINTS ON THE STUDY OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE.

Having thus considered heathenism in its moral aspect, it will not be unsuitable for us to inquire, with what expectations and with what views the study of the ancients is now to be prosecuted.

If we were here to speak of the benefits it is calculated to bestow in every other view, except in that of morals, we should necessarily have to adduce a great many advantages. The ancients are, in fact, not only the fathers of all our knowledge, with the exception of religion; but they are also, in many departments still our skilful teachers. Besides, there runs through the whole of antiquity a lively, intelligent, practical spirit, which connects itself in the most simple manner with nature; so that Johannes von Müller very aptly and justly remarks: "If the experience of antiquity is to be applied in our own times, the grand secret, the great art, is, to give to every thing its right name. The ancients spoke not a metaphysical language arising out of abstract ideas; and for this reason they are so full of energy; because their figures fall upon, and form the soul. We strive to become acquainted with nature; the ancients felt and painted it." How beneficial the study of the ancients must be in the respects now mentioned, is obvious.

Among theologians, such men as Calvin, Bucer, and Melanchthon show how important are the advantages for the treatment of religious subjects, which are to be derived from a classical edu

cation.

But here the inquiry meets us, Whether this study can also * Werke, B. XV. p. 453, 454.

be useful to the Christain, in a moral view? This question presents itself with so much the more importance, in proportion as the erroneous opinion has more and more prevailed in schools of learning, that it is classical education which must form the character and disposition of the youth. This view, every Christian who has become acquainted, from his own observation and experience, with the difference between the heathen and the christian elements of character, must decidedly oppose. The spirit of heathenism is different from that of Christianity, not only in degree, but also in its very essence; so that even what is good in heathenism, must first become imbued with the christian spirit, if it is to be regarded as good in the christian sense. The heavenly temper, and the longing after a holy and eternal life, are wanting in the poet of antiquity; the affectionate hand of a paternal God, and the penetrating glance into the sinful shallowness of our hearts, are not found in the historian; faith, love, humility, and hope, exist not in the philosophy of the ancients; and poetry, and history, and philosophy, all fail to penetrate the depths of the inner man.

It is true, the heathen have accomplished many splendid achievements. Augustin says, they had often hazarded far more for their earthly country, than the Christians for their heavenly inheritance.* But still those deeds were not good, merely because they were great and splendid. We must here inquire for the root, from which the branches spring. With the heathen, it is, in most cases, a proud self exaltation; such as was enstamped as the great principle of life by the Stoic school. Or, if it be not selfishness which impels the heathen to splendid deeds, yet it is often, probably, the strength of some inborn emotion-it may be patriotism, or conjugal affection, or other like impulses of the human heart, which the man follows, without having acquired them by effort, and without being himself conscious why he follows them. It is, at least, not the spirit of love and humility,— a spirit which springs from the subdual of that ever active and obtrusive selfishness.

Let us take a view even of the greatest of the heathen, Socrates. His soul was certainly in some alliance with the holy God; he certainly felt, in his daemon or guardian spirit, the inexplicable nearness of his Father in heaven; but he was destitute of a view of the divine nature in the humble form of a ser

* De Civit. Dei, V. 18.

vant, the Redeemer with the crown of thorns; he had no ideal conception of that true holiness, which manifests itself in the most humble love and the most affectionate humility. Hence, also, he was unable to become fully acquainted with his own heart, though he so greatly desired it. Hence too he was destitute of any deep humiliation and grief on account of his sinful wretchedness; of that true humility, which no longer allows itself in a biting, sarcastic tone of instruction; and destitute likewise of any filial, devoted love. These perfections can be shared only by the Christian, who beholds the Redeemer as a wanderer upon earth in the form of a servant; and who receives in his own soul the sanctifying power of that Redeemer, by intercourse with him.

On these grounds, it can neither be permitted in general to transplant the spirit of heathenism into the youth of christian seminaries; nor can the attempt even be sanctioned, to engraft some of the better branches of the wild olive-tree upon the good; unless, indeed-which, however, can rarely be supposed in the case of tender youth,-the new man has already become so strong, that, whatever of good he may borrow from heathenism, before he suffers it to pass over into his own soul and life, he first commits it to the purifying power of that Spirit which must pervade all native and acquired good, if it is to be acceptable to God. In those schools, indeed, where, instead of the love of Christ, ambition and a miserable vanity are continually called into action as a stimulus to diligence and effort, it will indeed be difficult to do without the influence of the heathenish spirit on the minds of the youth. Indeed, it would be hard for teachers of this class to point out, wherein their method of unfolding and forming the human mind, differs from that of the Stoics and the gardens of Academus.

But if now Christianity is not allowed to pervade and sanctify the sacerdotal employment of education, (for so it deserves to be called,) it would seem in fact only to stand as an idle statue in the pathway of the Christian's life. We must, therefore, in serious earnest, repeat, that the spirit of classic antiquity may aid in forming what it will in the human mind,-only not the HEART. For this, there is but one former and teacher, and that is Christ and his Spirit. On this account, every teacher in a school of learning, who would discharge the duties of his office as a Christian, is under the sacred obligation of pointing his pupils again and again to the fact, that the Spirit, which no man

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