less; and he declared that the ground on which tinct, partial, fragmentary, and borrowed harmony Plato affirmed the absolute and necessary immor- it might exhibit with some of the Christian tality of the human soul was untenable, inasmuch doctrines.

In opposition to the claims of philoso

Though this claim was rejected by Justin and many other Christian writers, it continued long to be one of the favorite arguments of the most subtle enemies of Christianity, and those enemies were to some extent themselves followers of the Platonic philosophy, or, if not, they used it adroitly for their own ends.

as it is clearly possible that what had a beginning phy, he contends for the divine origination of might have an end, though it may continue to Christianity, grounding his main arguments, not exist forever, if such be the will of him who on the agreement of Christianity with philosophy, gave it being. As one who felt that a pleasing but on the grandeur of its doctrines, its power illusion was dispelled, that the ground he had over as many as believed it, and the long array imagined to be solid had melted like a cloud of prophecies which preceded it, and of miracles. beneath his steps, Justin bitterly inquired, "If by which it was accompanied and commended to the truth is not in these doctrines, where shall the belief of men. If Christianity had been in one find a teacher? whence can the truth be the Phædo, Justin would probably have found it learned?" The venerable man to whom he spoke, there, as well as Mr. Emerson, and he would also then hinted that the truth which he had vainly have found the power of Christianity in the phisought in the philosophies of Greece was treas-losophy of Plato. But no competent writer, that ured up in writings far older than these specula- we are aware of, has ever adduced this proof of tions, by holy men who had given proof that they the assertion, that Christianity is in the Phædo. were inspired by the Eternal Wisdom. Having uttered these words, he went on his way, and Justin was again alone. Deeply he pondered the words he had heard. He sought with eagerness the ancient writings, and meditated earnestly on their sublime predictions. He remembered, too, that at the very time when he was imbibing the doctrines of Plato, he had been strongly impressed with the superiority to the fear of death, and of all other dreaded evils, which he had witnessed among the calumniated Christians. He now sought their society; he embraced their doctrines; and, like other disappointed philosophers of his time, he joined himself to their community. Without abandoning his profession, or his costume, as a philosopher, or undertaking any office in the church,* he followed the bent of his mind as an ardent lover of knowledge, and the convictions of his judgment as a believer in Christianity, visiting the principal Christian communities in Italy, Asia Minor, and Egypt. He lived for a considerable time at Rome, ever ready to lead other inquirers into the way of truth, and boldly defending that truth against Jews, Pagans, and heretics, before emperors, and in the face of all the world. At length the constancy in suffering for the truth, which he had so ingenuously admired and so nobly vindicated in others, was gloriously illustrated by his own example. The simple narrative of his martyrdom is so free from the strange and exaggerated circumstances which so often disfigure the martyrologies of the church, that we cannot doubt its truth.

We have a fancy for Mr. Emerson's notions of representative men. We do him the courtesy of presuming that he is no stranger to CELSUS, and to the class of men, not in his own age merely, but in this age, whom we think that writer represents. We will, with like courtesy, suppose him to know, what is familiar to every writer entitled to give forth oracles on these questions, that nearly the entire substance of the lost work of Celsus has been preserved in Origen's reply to it. We mean neither a compliment nor a sarcasm in supposing that, while casting about for constituencies and representatives, when meditating these lectures, the writer would scarcely have helped observing that, as in ancient times, so in his own time, there have been thinkers whose resemblance to Celsus is at least as striking as any of the ingenious resemblances on which his lectures are based. We will present a little sketch of the sort of men of whom we are thinking, and whom we treat without any intentional disrespect in saying that they could not, in our humble opinion, be more fittingly, or with greater honor, represented than by Celsus. The men we mean, then, are more or less imbued with the philosophy of Plato, and they think, or affect to think, that, as it anticipated Christianity, the earlier ought to supersede the later. They are not remarkably deficient in wit. Their intellect is sharp, rather piercing. They skim over a large surface, not being deep in their investigations, and too philosophical to be much in earnest about the truth-or, indeed, about anything else, except calling attention to themselves and their effusions. They are somewhat disgusted with the homeliness and absence of culture in the common people of the very unphilosophical generation

Here, then, is that very teacher who has been justly regarded as the father of the philosophic aspect which, in course of time, was given to Christianity. He found, or thought he found, in Christianity that truth which he had not found in the Phædo. In his exhortation to the Greeks (which is, by-the-bye, argumentative rather than hortatory) he aims at the total destruction of the claims of the Grecian philosophy in general, and of the Platonic philosophy in particular, as a guide to the truth respecting God, whatever indis-on which it is their misfortune to have fallen, It is true that Tillemont and other ecclesiastical writers speak of Justin as an ordained presbyter, but it is

a surmise, not an ascertained fact.

especially when these plain people, in their blunt ignorance, prefer to receive on authority the truths which their more enlightened neighbors

We should mightily enjoy the sight of their portraits from a painter whose outlines are so clear and whose coloring is so bright. If it should so happen that the gentleman knows more of them than his books declare, and that he is conscious of some personal claims as their "representative man," it is not for us to control the right of suffrage, or to damp his generous ambition; yet, since the freest constituents have a liking for brisk competition among candidates for their votes, we hope we may, without offence, remind them that something is due to the name of a philosopher so thorough as we respectfully assure them Celsus was; while we may hint, with becoming delicacy, that it might not be quite palatable to their brethren in Europe (to say nothing of those in Asia and in Africa, who long ago were absorbed into the Absolute) to have this choice determined by the infant-giants on that western continent, whose prodigious originality it is possible the oriental graybeards would take it into their heads to dispute or doubt, or, what perhaps is worse, gravely smile at, as one of the sublimities that are toppling over the edge of the ridiculous.

Leaving these worthies to settle their business in this matter according to their taste, we proceed to offer some considerations which induce us to think that Justin, and Jerome, and Augustine, had a good deal to say for themselves, though all they said may not bear handling with the wiry grasp of the Critical Philosophy, when they treated this old notion, that " Christianity is in the Phædo,” as something more, and something worse than a mistake.

profess to have attained by intuition, by reasoning, I crossed his path in Berlin, in Paris, or in London? or by studying Plato. They are expert in discovering the mistakes, the disagreements, and the laughable doings or sayings, of these rude believers; and they can scarcely refrain from sighing over their miserable bondage to the unlucky eyes and ears which are the vulgar gates of knowledge, while they themselves are soaring above these low regions, and gazing and listening, inwardly, among the more dazzling sights and the more ghostly sounds which reveal to their intuitions the Absolute, the Real, and the True. Their aristocratic morality is shocked, almost beyond endurance, at the low, plebeian doctrine that bids the ignorant, the foolish, the men who know that they are not virtuous, and feel that they are not happy, believe the truths which will render them intelligent, wise, virtuous, and happy, by the divine power which is in them and connected with them. They loathe from their very heart the impertinence of the teaching which asserts the worth of individual man, and the odious cant of humility, and penitence, and mediation, and imputed merit. They profess no sympathy with the enthusiasm of the brain-sick fanatics to whom "The Name, which is ploughed into the heart of nations," has become the symbol of whatever is venerable, adorable, lovely, commanding, and inspiring; raising to celestial dignity the coarsest work men have to do on earth, and showing, through the mystery of death, the forthcoming of a glorious or a terrible hereafter. They see much to admire in Plato, in Dante, in Montaigne, in Shakspeare, in Voltaire, in Napoleon, in all philosophers, in all poets, all sceptics, all wits, all artists, all “great men ;” but nothing, just nothing, in men whose commendation is that they honestly believe in Christianity, and, whether imbued or not with the elegant attractions of philosophic or æsthetic culture, are earnestly embodying the things which they believe to be divine, in such lives as Plato must have felt it an honor for his dramatic pencil to portray, and in such deaths as all good men might have wept tears of unutterable joy to see. They are lovers of the " oscuro," loving it all the better because it is unbroken with no more of the "chiaro" than is necessary to show how grandly dark it is. Their God is-nature, and their nature is God. They are themselves the universe. They can stoop to the vernacular, though it be with a groan which betrays the reluctance and the painfulness The Phædo, as our readers are likely to know, of the effort. They are even strong in terse, is one of those charming dialogues in which the pointed, piquant phrase, when the stupid Chris- great intellect of Plato exhibits the great intellect tians, who have not learned their Christianity of Socrates, in its final grappling with the sublimest from Plato, are to be treated to a sight of their truth to which philosophy had then aspired—the own ludicrousness, by a little pleasant caricature. immortality of man. A nobler occupation can They have some learning, some brilliancy of scarcely be conceived. A few select friends of fancy, some sort of sense of human dignity, some Socrates spend the last day with him in his prison, eloquence, some poetry-gracefully shaded with and Phædo relates to Echecrates the conversation swaggering ignorance, heavy masses of dulness, which four of them, two in particular, held with most obtrusive egotism, tiresome slowness of their revered teacher, Phædo himself being present, speech, heaps of balderdash, webs of fustian, and but Plato absent, apparently from sickness. On plus quam sufficit of FUDGE! Has our worthy the previous day the annual embassy had returned lecturer never coped with men of this description from Delos, and the interval between the sentence in Boston or New York? and have they never and the death of Socrates was ended, and on that

We abide by the negative of this saying. We protest, in the name of knowledge, against this attempt to resuscitate an exploded folly of the past. Nor are we content with this. We do not take refuge in the fair resort of the logician, by declining to prove a negative, albeit no proof has been offered in these lectures in the affirmative. We think it is a good thing and an easy thing to prove that this old-world sneer against Christianity is as worthless in the English as it was in the Greek-as hollow, as blind, as false, in the nineteenth century as it was in the second. Let us look into the Phædo it is worth looking into. Let us see what Christianity is; there is something in IT; it courts, it deserves, our independent scrutiny.

morning they were admitted to his presence some- [Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher who declared him

Now, of this Christianity there is not in the Phædo a whisper, a glimpse, a particle. Neither wholly nor in part is Christianity in this beautiful and precious composition. We have repeatedly examined every word, sentence after sentence, each argument, each illustration, as they come up in succession. There is in the Phædo much philosophy, some that is very good, and much more that is erroneous, vague, and purely fanciful; but assuredly there is not one word of Christianity. Mr. Emerson says, Christianity is in it." We challenge him or any other man to PROVE it.

what earlier than before. By a simple train of self to be the Son of God, in a sense which the observations, naturally suggested by the situation Jewish rulers construed into blasphemy, for which of Socrates, they are led to the main theme. He alleged blasphemy he was condemned to die. The gives his reasons for thinking that a man ought truth of his declaration is manifest in the unique not to lay violent hands on himself; and he then completeness of his character, in his profoundly proceeds to vindicate, before these friends, his hope spiritual and benevolent instructions, in the majesty that something better than this life awaited him and large humanity of his miracles, in the testimo after death. As he had given himself to the med-nies which he received from heaven, and last of itations of philosophy, he had, in reality, devoted all, and preeminently, in his resurrection from the himself to death, because he had freed his soul, as dead. The truths which he taught, and commanded much as in him lay, from communion with the body, his disciples to teach, are, mainly, the spirituality by retiring from the disturbance of the senses to its of religion-the new birth by the Holy Ghostown pure reasonings, thus gradually approaching the redemption secured by his death and resurrec that purification which would be perfected by his tion to those who trust in him—and the compleseparation from the body. On these grounds he tion of that redemption by a bodily resurrection, repined not at the approach of death; on the con- of which his own was at once the type and the trary, he regarded it as the consummation of his pledge. These are the truths which constitute efforts as a philosopher. To these views of the Christianity. soul's existence after death, Cebes objects that the soul, as well as the body, perishes in death. Socrates replies, by applying the received philosophical doctrine of the generation of contraries, arguing that, as in other contraries, life is produced from death. He argues, further, from the received doctrine of the soul's preëxistence, that knowledge, especially knowledge of abstract truths, which are not learned by the senses, is reminiscence. The next argument is based on the nature of the soul, which belongs to the invisible, and resembles the divine, and is, therefore, incapable of dissolution, but, in proportion as it has been purified by philosophy, is prepared for going into an essence like itself, beyond the reach of evil. Simmias, one of his youthful friends, suggests that the same argument would apply to the harmony produced by a material lyre, and that as the harmony perishes with the lyre, so may the soul perish with the body. This suggestion Socrates meets by appealing to our consciousness of a power to govern the body, which is not a result of its formation, as harmony is the result of the formation of the lyre. The natural and necessary immortality of the soul is then defended by a long and subtle disquisition on the independent existence of abstract qualities, of which qualities other things partake, and are denominated from them the beautiful partaking of beauty; the good, of goodness; the great, of magnitude; and so with all the rest. As no quality can receive its opposite, the soul, which has the quality of life, the opposite of death, cannot die-it is immortal. This is the argument of the Phædo, which we have compressed into as few words as possible.

66

Having entered on this argument, we cannot satisfy our sense of duty without proceeding one step further. Ingenuous readers will inquire, How has it come to pass that men in the old time declared that Christianity was derived from Plato, and that, in our own time, a writer so richly endowed as Mr. Emerson undoubtedly is, should have stamped this ancient boast with the impress of his genius and the sanction of his name? The truth, as it appears to us, stands thus:-Men content themselves with looking at but a single exemplification of a large principle, a slight section of a vast cone, instead of enlarging their field of observation, and concentrating their attention, not on parts exclusively, but on the whole. What, then, is that larger truth, in relation to the matter in hand, which has been viewed in isolated particulars? According to our reading it is this: The spiritual instincts of humanity have in all ages expressed, with more or less articulation, the consciousness of an ill defined aptitude for something not yet attained, and of a want which remains unsatisfied after the fullest Now, let us look into Christianity. Christianity enjoyments of material good and the widest specuis the sum total of the doctrines taught by Jesus lations of the active intellect. This aptitude is Christ and respecting Jesus Christ, both by himself recognized, rather than taught, in Christianity; and by the disciples whom he commissioned to in- and that which can satisfy the universal longing of struct the world. One of the most obvious of these awakened, speculating, and disappointed human. doctrines is, the substantial identity of Christianity nature, is revealed and embodied in the enuncia with Judaism, and the subordination of Judaism tions of Jesus and his commissioned servants. to Christianity as the full development of the truth we have studied these enunciations, we discover which had been partially unfolded in the sacred that the things revealed are revealed to beings writings and institutions of the Hebrew nation. It endowed with certain faculties, found in a given lies on the surface of the Christian documents that condition, and in various ways prepared, by a wise

As

and far-seeing superintendence, to appreciate and newest rhetoric. If there be any difference beto embrace the truth revealed. A mind accustomed tween the older and the newer forms, we are to large generalizations, as well as to exact analysis, bound in honesty to say-" The old is better"— sees, in the entire case of human nature, of the more racy, more robust, more fascinating, better world's history, and of Christianity as a revelation adapted to the spirit of the times, and clothed in from God, the harmony and consistency of a com- language with which no well educated person will plete whole. To beings without the nature of admit that the new is worthy, for a moment, to be which we are conscious, and to a world without compared. A third reason is suggested by the the tradition, the poetry, the philosophy, the super- perpetual occurrence of pithy sentences throughout stition, and the precursory intimations of revealing these lectures, all bearing in the same direction, wisdom, which we know to have existed, Christi- and indicating a state of opinion in relation to anity would have been an inexplicable riddle. It Christianity. It would require a volume to eluciwould have had no fitness. It could not have date the untenableness of this state of opinion in awakened any interest. It would have had no each of the several connections in which the lecpower. But by being what it is, in the circum- turer has expressed it; but we trust enough has stances in which it comes to us, it brings with it been said to convince any patient thinker, that the marks of a wisdom which is infinite, the attest- in the matter of Plato and Christianity, Mr. Emations of a truth which invites and satisfies exami-erson is utterly at fault. Just as much at fault is nation, and the investiture of an authority which he, in point of fact, in saying that "Moses, Menu, demands and vindicates obedience. Instead, how- Jesus, work directly in this problem-the problem ever, of taking this comprehensive survey of the of essence." It would be easy to show that it is case as it stands, there are minds whose delight it not true of either Moses or Menu, and as untrue is to fasten on some peculiar aspect of it, in igno- as possible of Him whose name it is this writer's rance, forgetfulness, or perverse oversight of others, habit to use in a manner which the decencies of turning that which is, in fact, a proof of the divine literature forbid, if there were not considerations character of Christianity, into an imaginary argu- of a higher order which proscribe it. ment against it. The Vedas of India, the Zenda-Vesta, the ethics of Confucius, the oracles of heathen gods, the secrets of initiations, the myths of poets, the reasonings of philosophers, and the maxims of rabbins, have been ostentatiously ransacked, as anticipating, and therefore superseding, Christianity. The genuine use of these ancient witnesses of the truth is obvious enough: they prove that the human mind is that which Christianity presupposes that it is; and they prove, further, that the universal mind of man had never alighted, either by intuition, by reasoning, or by imagination, neither in songs, ecstasies, nor dreams, on those cardinal truths which practically solve the mystery of his being. These broken utterances of the past are, nevertheless, capable of another use; and by a little ingenuity, some invention, and much intellectual audacity, they can be arrayed against the Holy Oracles. For ourselves, we pity the weakness of the man who thinks there is even the slightest argumentative value in such strategy.ing: As for him who does not so think, yet speaks as though he did, we leave it to the sense and honesty of every reader to apply in that case the proper epithet.

We have dwelt the longer on this topic for numerous reasons, which we have not time just now to specify. One of them, not the least, is the desirableness of showing that it is not larger information, or sounder judgment, than those possessed by writers of a different school, nor even greater freedom of thought, that creates the paradoxes of Mr. Emerson, and similar modern authors. Another reason is, the knowledge we have that the seeming novelties which startle some good people are no novelties at all. They are the oldest objections to Christianity retouched and set off with what are intended to be the graces of the

We will leave Mr. Emerson to his own ruminations on Swedenborg-his "prophetic eye"his "self-equality"-his symbolism-his near approach to the "true problem"-his insane mistake of personal fancies for spiritual worlds and beings

his "science of filth and corruption," in which he is a competitor with Rabelais and Swift-and his absurd dream of his own inspiration ;-but it belongs to our vocation to take some friendly notice of one or two points of this lecture, which appear to us to deserve something more than a passing stricture. It may seem fastidious, yet we cannot help it, to observe the respect which Mr. Emerson shows for the Indian Vishnu and mythical personages of that order, as well as for more substantial names, in contrast to the tone of his allusions to the "Hebraisms," and the "Gothicisms," in which he finds "the vice of Swedenborg's mind." We need no dragoman to explain what Mr. Emerson means by such a passage as the follow

That Hebrew muse, which taught the lore of right and wrong to men, has the same excess of influence for him it has had for the nations. The mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine is ever a more valuable chapter in universal history, and ever the less available element in education. The genius of Swedenborg, largest of all modern souls in this department of thought, wasted itself in the endeavor to reänimate and conceive what had already arrived at its natural term, and in the great secular Providence was retiring from its prominence before western modes of thought and expression. Swedenborg and Behmen both failed, by attaching themselves to the Christian symbol instead of the moral sentiment, which carries innumerable Christianities, humanities, divinities, in its bosom.

This may be taken for fine writing. It may be slightly tinctured with philosophical truth; cer

tainly it is most unvarnished nonsense-to prate | of great ideas; and we humbly ask our matrons of "Christianities," and arrant stupidity to talk and virgins to figure to themselves the kind of of "Christianities being carried in the bosom of young ladies and young gentlemen that will adorn the moral sentiment;" yet turgid, unmeaning, and our nurseries and our hearths, if ever lessons such stupid though it be, it is one of those grandilo- as these should supersede the words of Jesus and quent impertinences of which we are sorry to see the hated catechisms of his disciples. To us be so many in this volume, and which, we fear, will longs a different office. We use the freedom of puff up conceited disbelievers of Christianity with saying, that the Optimism thus grossly added to the arrogant absurdity that they are very clever the other nuisances of the day, is as faulty in its fellows for admiring and repeating it. We are principles as it is in its results; that it will not at no loss to see the drift of the excuse for Swe-stand the test of analysis; that it has no basis in denborg's "theological cramp," when it is said- the laws of intellect; that it belongs to

"I doubt not he was led by the desire to insert the element of the personality of Deity. But nothing is added."

To" Gothic theology" Mr. Emerson opposes what he calls the "old philosophy," according to which "evil is good in the making;" and he calls the notion that pure malignity can exist, "the extreme proposition of unbelief, it is not to be entertained by a rational agent; it is atheism, it is the last profanation." The use he makes of the "old philosophy" is manifest in this pithy

sentence

The Divine effort is never retarded, the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers, and man, though in brothels or jails, or on the gibbet, is on his way to all that is good and true.

"the

abstractionists who spend their days and their nights in dreaming dreams;" that its home is the region of Eastern fable; that its elements and its history are the pledges of its evanescence; that the wish to replace this old idol of the cave in the temple of Truth, is like Julian the Apostate's struggle to revive the ascendency of the detected imposture of Paganism in the Roman Empire; and that we have no more apprehension of its entering into the popular belief of nations than we have of the triumph of Islam or of Buddhism.

As in many other cases, there is a nebular streak of light enshrouded in the gilded mists of this "old philosophy." Evil is, indeed, the reverse side of good-its negation—in the abstract; but, let the good be concrete and its reverse concrete, then evil becomes as positive as good. Though This Optimism is one of the favorite dogmas of good and evil are relative terms-the good the reMr. Emerson. It pervades all his writings. He verse of the bad, and the bad the reverse of the may think slightly of the objections-that such a good-the very use of the terms " good" and dogma annihilates the personality of man, his re- "bad" implies a standard. Now be that standard sponsibility, his relation to the government of the what it may, it is fixed, and not arbitrary; and its living and true God; that it is contrary to the ultimate residence must be in the character of a doctrines taught by the Son of God;-that it is Being who is good, and all opposition or unlikerepugnant to the moral sentiments; that it breathes ness to whom is, therefore, bad. This good Being a withering blight on the domestic affections and is as wise, as powerful, and as just, as he is good; the social well-being of mankind; and that it will and, although it comports with his perfection to be palatable to the irreligious, the unjust, the un- carry on a government in which the existence chaste, and the cruel, while the devout and the and actions of evil beings is not impossible, nor honorable, the pure and the benevolent, must recoil necessitated, the processes of that government are from it as from a lie and a pest; for he has an such, that the worst actions of the worst beings easy way of settling such difficulties; he looks on are sure to issue in the manifestations of his goodthe whole Christian theory of God and man, andness, and thus subserve the manifold ends, all the issues of things, as a Hebrew tradition, grafted culminating in the highest end, for which all on a Gothic fancy, of no more value than the created beings, with their capacities, and spheres, dreams of a raving mystic; and, to the obsolete and opportunities, however they may be perverted prejudices of the churches, he opposes "the more by the abuse of moral freedom, have been brought generous spirit of the Indian Vishnu." "I am into existence. There is no difficulty in perceivthe same to all mankind. There is not one who ing how limited and impatient minds may so is worthy of my love or hatred. They who speculate on this vast and slowly developed govserve me with adoration-I am in them and they ernment, as to fall into grievous errors. in me. If one whose ways are altogether evil, wonderful that the subtle speculators who proserve me alone, he is as respectable as the just duced that which Mr. Emerson selects from many man, he is altogether well employed he soon philosophies, and calls, what it is not, "the old becometh of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal philosophy," should have grappled with the metahappiness." physical notion of evil in the abstract, and, imper Practical citizens in Europe and in America, will fectly apprehending the necessary relation of abperhaps explain to young men the way in which stract evil to abstract good, should have leaped to such oriental speculations are likely to improve the the illogical conclusion that evil in the concrete is integrity of commercial life. Educated men will inseparably connected with good, so that men be have their own convictions as to the kind of think- come good through the evil that is in them, and ers that are likely to flourish in such an atmosphere then ambitiously reduce this false conclusion to a

It is not