Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

376 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDthose that believed."2Let us trace the encounterof heathen wisdom-that is, Philosophy-withChristian wisdom, that is, the truth of a God incarnateand crucified, with all its consequences,as upborne by the Christian Church and plantedamongmen.Now the system of polytheistic worship whichwas then in possession of the Grseco-Roman worldhad been subjected for many ages to all the analyticpower of human reason as exercised by themost gifted of races which have hitherto embodiedtheir genius in a corresponding civilisation. Thephilosophy of Greece is in fact such an analysis,and the rise of this philosophy is carried backby the ablest inquirers to the time of Thales andPythagoras in the sixth century before Christ.In the beautiful climate of Ionia and SouthernItaly there arose at this time men who attemptedby the efforts of their own reason to form a physicaland a moral theory of the world which surroundedthem. Philosophy is not merely thought,but methodical thinking, thinking consciously directedupon the knowledge of things in their * con-nection with each other. Nor is it content merelywith the collecting of observations andithe know-ledge so derived, but proceeds to gather the individualinstances into a whole, to draw to a centrewhat was scattered, and to form a view of theworld resting upon clear conceptions and at unity2 1 Cor. i. 21.