Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

454 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDAnd more particularly, to what results will reasoncome as to the power which has formed, or whichrules it: as to its chief inhabitant, his nature, andthe purpose for which he exists, and the end towhich he is ever advancing : as to the duties bywhich he * is bound to this creating, or at leastmaintaining and ruling power : as to those officeswhich he owes to his fellow, the individual to theindividual, the civil community to the community.It was to these points especially that the greatestcharacter in the whole movement-the single o hea-then who knew how to die for his convictionsturned the thoughts of those who followed him.Again, at the very starting-point of Greek philo-sophv ./ a man of most virtuous conduct, gifted likewisewith great powers of attraction, had soughtto realise in a society the philosophic life. Andwe have seen this conception of the mode of propagating1 O O truth to lie at the bottom of Greek teaching,and to have been pursued by Plato, by Aristotle,by Zeno, by Epicurus, to have been theoriginal and even the only form of teaching whichthey recognised. What was the result in this respectalso ? In the four hundred and forty yearsfollowing the death of Socrates had reason produceda consistent doctrine, and a society of whichthat doctrine should be the law and bond, a fittingbodv »/ for its soul to tenant, the immortal race ofthat living word which Plato contemplated? Timethere had been enough, and even a superfluity of