Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

456 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDhim inward contentment, the latter because themind, which used as its organ the Greek language,yed large and independent empires, emlvarious races of men. Then, if ever, it might havebeen expected that heathenism would make a greatspring,40 would cast aside what was local and accidentalin the various customs, races, and beliefsbrought under the fusing influence of one spirit,and idealise out of them a religion bearing thestamp and showing the force of that human reasonof which Greece was the great representative. Butthe three centuries which witnessed the birth, thevigorous growth, and^the incessant contests of theschools of Zeno and Epicurus, together with thescepticism which from Plato's chair passed judgmenton them both, produced no such result, butrather terminated in that balancing of oppositesystems, and the selection of fragments from each,which we have seen in Cicero.The second great event which we have tonote is that when the Greek mind had thus beenfor three hundred years in possession of societythroughout the East, the Roman empire came tobind in unity of government not only all thoseraces which the successors of Alexander had ruled,but the wide regions of the West as well, and theiryet uncivilised inhabitants. Here, again, the Greekmind was not dethroned, but married, as it were,to Roman power. Philosophy made a sort of40 Dollinger, p. 313.