Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.383Greeks were without a hierarchy, and without adefinite theology: not indeed without individualpriesthoods, traditionary rites, and an existing worship,as well as certain mysteries which professedto communicate a higher and more recondite doctrinethan that exposed to the vulgar gaze. Butin the absence of any hierarchy holding this priesthoodtogether, and teaching anything like a specificdoctrine about divine and human things, avery large range indeed was given to the mind "acting upon this shadowy religious belief, and re-acted upon by it, to form their philosophy. Th eGreeks did not, any more than antiquity in general ,use the acts of religious service for instruction byreligious discourse.8 In other words, there was nosuch thing as preaching among them. A domaintherefore was open to the philosopher on which hemight stand without directly impeaching the ancestralworship, while he examined its grounds, andperhaps sapped its foundations. He was thereintaking up a position which their priests, the civilfunctionaries of religious rites scarcely any longerretaining a spiritual meaning or a moral cogency,had not occupied.Thus it was that in the midst of a people whoworshipped traditionally a multitude of gods and8 Zeller, i. p. 43. WAlterthums, die gottesdienstlichen Handlungen zur Belehrung durchReligionsvortrage zu beniitzen. Ein Julian mchristlicher Sitte dazu i m rselbst ist uns kein Beispiel hie von iiberliefert"