Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

480 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDnames, which carry any weight, as the fifty yearspreceding Claudius.65 "We have seen above thatthese philosophers aimed at forming a societyhich should carry out their principles ; that thas their original O and their only J idea of teaching Othat with a view to make it permanent they createda chair of teaching, a living authority whowas to continue on their doctrine. But the chairof Plato alone presented66 five Academies with dissentientdoctrines ; and a Platonic or Stoic city noone had seen. Thus viewing their united actionupon the polytheistic idolatry we may say thatwhile they could discredit its fables in reflectingminds, while they could even raise an altar in theirthoughts " to the unknown God," they left societyin possession of the temples and observant of aworship which they pronounced to be immoral,monstrous, and ridiculous. They had destroyedin many the ancestral belief; they had awakenedperhaps in some a sense of one great Power rulingthe universe ; but having taken up the religiousground and professed to " satisfy man's desire forappiness, they luul been utterly powerless to con-65 See Dollinger, pp. 341 and 572-584; so Champagny, les Cesars,iii. 294.66 Uebervveg gives them thus: to the first Academy belong Plato'ssuccessor Speusippus, who taught 347-339 B.C.; Xenocrates, 339-314;mthe third: in the fourth, Philo of Larissa, about 80 B.C., returned to thedogmatic direction; and Antiochus of Ascalon, Cicero's friend, foundedmm