Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

382 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDAnd in their own pure tints arrayed,Scorn ^ earth's green robes which change and fade,And stand in beauty undecayed,Guards of the bold and free."7It seems to me essential to bear in mind throughoutour whole inquiry this standing-point of theGreek mind, because through all the succession ofschools and the fluctuation of doctrines, it remains,so to say, the ground-work on which they areembroidered. It is the very texture of Hellenicthought upon which first Pythagoras, then Plato,Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, Cleanthes, Panaatius,and__even Plotinus_and Porphyrius spin their web.They vary the decoration, but the substance re-mains unaltered. This standing-point rules theconception of virtue, and therefore of the wholemoral world. It reaches also to the final end ofman, and determines it.Moreover as the intellectual power of manseems to have culminated in the Hellenic race, soit would seem that a state of things existed amongthat people which left the human reason practicallymore to its own unaided resources than wefind to have been the case elsewhere.No doubtthe Greek mind had lived and brooded for agesupon the remains of original revelation, nor canany learning now completely unravel the interwoventhreads of tradition and reason so as todistinguish their separate work. However, ittain that in the sixth century before Christ th7 Newman, Verses on various occasions; Heathen Greece, p, 158.