the deep religious reflections of Plutarch,^75 the sometimes almost Pauline moral precepts of Seneca.^76
To many of the greatest church fathers, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and in some
measure even to Augustine, Greek philosophy was a bridge to the Christian faith, a scientific
schoolmaster leading them to Christ. Nay, the whole ancient Greek church rose on the foundation
of the Greek language and nationality, and is inexplicable without them.
Here lies the real reason why the classical literature is to this day made the basis of liberal
education throughout the Christian world. Youth are introduced to the elementary forms of science
and art, to models of clear, tasteful style, and to self-made humanity at the summit of intellectual
and artistic culture, and thus they are at the same time trained to the scientific apprehension of the
Christian religion, which appeared when the development of Greek and Roman civilization had
reached its culmination and began already to decay. The Greek and Latin languages, as the Sanskrit
and Hebrew, died in their youth and were embalmed and preserved from decay in the immortal
works of the classics. They still furnish the best scientific terms for every branch of learning and
art and every new invention. The primitive records of Christianity have been protected against the
uncertainties of interpretation incident upon the constant changes of a living language.
But aside from the permanent value of the Grecian literature, the glory of its native land
had, at the birth of Christ, already irrecoverably departed. Civil liberty and independence had been
destroyed by internal discord and corruption. Philosophy had run down into skepticism and refined
materialism. Art had been degraded to the service of levity and sensuality. Infidelity or superstition
had supplanted sound religious sentiment. Dishonesty and licentiousness reigned among high and
low.
This hopeless state of things could not but impress the more earnest and noble souls with
the emptiness of all science and art, and the utter insufficiency of this natural culture to meet the
deeper wants of the heart. It must fill them with longings for a new religion.
The Romans were the practical and political nation of antiquity. Their calling was to carry
out the idea of the state and of civil law, and to unite the nations of the world in a colossal empire,
stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from the Libyan desert to the banks of the Rhine.
This empire embraced the most fertile and civilized countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and
about one hundred millions of human beings, perhaps one-third of the whole race at the time of the
introduction of Christianity.^77 To this outward extent corresponds its historical significance. The
history of every ancient nation ends, says Niebuhr, as the history of every modern nation begins,
in that of Rome. Its history has therefore a universal interest; it is a vast storehouse of the legacies
of antiquity. If the Greeks had, of all nations, the deepest mind, and in literature even gave laws to
their conquerors, the Romans had the strongest character, and were born to rule the world without.
This difference of course reached even into the moral and religious life of the two nations. Was the
Greek, mythology the work of artistic fantasy and a religion of poesy, so was the Roman the work(^75) As in his excellent trestise: De sera numinis vindicta. It is strange that this philosopher, whose moral sentiments come
nearest to Christianity, never alludes to it. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius do mention it, but only once.
(^76) On the relation of Paul and Seneca comp. an elaborate dissertation of Bishop Lightfoot in his Commentary on the Philippians,
pp. 268-331 (3d ed. 1873).
(^77) Charles Marivale, in his History of the Romans under the Empire (Lond. 1856), Vol. iv. p. 450 and 451, estimates the
population of the Roman empire in the age of Augustus at 85 millions, namely, 40 millions for Europe, 28 millions for Asia,
and 17 millions for Africa, but he does not include Palestine. Greswell and others raise the estimate of the whole population to
120 millions.
A.D. 1-100.