Page images
PDF
EPUB

viz. to live agreeably to the principles of truth and duty, which he and they had mutually acknowledged-his answer to the question how he should be buried: as you please; only do not grieve when you bury this body as if you were burying Socrates-his kind and courteous farewell to the man who was the unwilling agent of his execution-the calmness and cheerfulness with which he drank the cup of hemlockhis fortitude and composure, while his friends were weeping and sobbing around him-and his symbolic utterance, as his last words, of the sentiment: "Thanks to the God of health and life; I am almost well." "Such," says Plato, with a simplicity which crowns the whole narrative, "such was the death of our friend-a man, as it appears to me, the best of all our acquaintance, and besides this, the wisest and the most just."

The Phædo is the last of Plato's dialogues that have particular reference to the condemnation and death of Socrates. Over the composition of all these, though in different degrees, the spirit of that departed sage seems to have presided, like a good genius, restraining the wayward fancy of the author, and inspiring him with words of truth and soberness. In the subsequent dialogues, were we to pursue them further, we should find frequent occasion to regret the loss of that happy influence. We should meet with less of the practical, the useful, the Socratic-more of the fanciful, the ideal, the Platonic.

But none of Plato's writings can be read without pleasure and profit. As to matter, he is eminently fruitful in valuable suggestions, as well as in high and generous impulses. No one can read him in his wildest vagaries or his emptiest negations, without being quickened in intellectual action, elevated in moral feeling, set to thinking for himself, which is far better than to be furnished with the thoughts of others. In manner, he is "facile princeps;" in his department of composition, he combines simplicity with affluence, delicacy with exu

1 See Bib. Repos. 2d series, vol. xii. p. 49.

berance, reason with imagination, thought with feeling, philosophical acumen with rhetorical and poetical refinement, to a degree of perfection rarely if ever attained by any other writer. Plato is among writers, what the elm is among shade-trees. Xenophon may be more terse and methodical, like the smooth, clean, symmetrical maple. Demosthenes may be more masculine and vigorous, like the gnarled oak, which defies the northern blast. But there is in Plato, as there is in the elm of the Connecticut valley, a graceful majesty, a pleasing exuberance, a natural and simple yet profuse and magnificent drapery, which defies all the imitations of art. We know no substitute for the works of Plato, whether as a textbook in our higher seminaries; or as a reading-book for the learned professions. In neither of these ways do they now hold the place, which they deserve in public estimation. The utilitarian spirit of our age and country is adverse to their currency among us. And untoward circumstances have recently conspired with this spirit, to exclude them almost from our systems of liberal education. The Græca Majora contained the whole of the Crito and a portion of the Phædo. When that compilation went into disuse, there were no convenient editions of any of Plato's works for the student or the professional man. This desideratum is, however, beginning to be supplied. Single dialogues are being edited by our best scholars, in forms suited to the wants and the resources of American students. It is hoped that the day is not distant, when no graduate will go forth from any of our colleges without the quickening, elevating, and refining influence of that eminently spiritual, and therefore to us peculiarly needful discipline, which may be found in reading one or more of the Platonic Dialogues. And why may we not urge, and successfully urge, professional men to resort to this same wholesome discipline-a discipline which so spiritualized, enlarged, and refined the views of Good and Johnson in medicine, of Burke and Mackintosh in the law, and of Leighton, Taylor, and Hall in theology? There is a constant tendency in professional life to the merely technical and practical character— THIRD SERIES, VOL. I. NO. III.

30

to that which is narrow, partial, and illiberal. The man is too often merged in the profession-the all-conscious and immortal man, in the unconscious and short-lived profession. What properly aspiring man can consent to be forever over his pestle and mortar, or dealing out medicines, or setting broken bones, or prescribing for bodily diseases! Who would not flee occasionally from the investigation of contracts, bonds and mortgages in the office, the examination of witnesses, the rummaging of law-precedents, and the pleading of sixpenny suits in the court, to some more congenial and ethereal element! Who, even in pleading the cause of injured innocence and suffering virtue, does not feel his "ear pained," and his "soul sick with every day's report of wrong and outrage," and sigh for retirement to some world of intellectual quiet, and ideal perfection? And they,

"To whom seraphic words are given,

And power on earth to plead the cause of heaven,"

are in danger of becoming too exclusive in their self-culture, too partial and formal in their public ministrations, and losing those comprehensive views, and that refinement of taste, which should ever adorn, above all others, the clerical office.

Now we know of no better antidote to this partial, mechanical, and merely practical tendency, than the reading and study of Plato. Let them turn aside at times from the customary walks of professional life, and seek retirement and recreation with the father of spiritual philosophy. Under his guidance, let them range through wider fields, strown with unearthly flowers, and breathe a free atmosphere, undisturbed by the hum of business, uncontaminated by the breath of pol lution. With him, let them scale the precipitous sides of this deep, dark chasm in which we live, and mount up to those higher abodes of better, happier creatures, who tread on pearls and precious stones, who drink in ether at every breath, and who, in the very region of the stars, hold converse with gods. They will return refreshed and invigorated to their work— better men and therefore more useful in their several callings.

ARTICLE IV.

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE.*

By L. P. Hickok, D. D., Prof. in Auburn Theological Seminary.

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY admits of a strictly scientific investigation, and construction into a purely philosophical system. For many purposes, and especially for thorough, systematic instruction in theology, it is highly important that the religion of the Holy Scriptures be thus subjected to the rigid rule of a true and valid science. When we speak of subjecting the Christian Religion to a science, however, it should by no means be deemed as involving any unholy blending of things sacred and profane together; nor that it admits the presumption of attempting to help the wisdom of God by the foolishness of man. We design by it to express this deep conviction, that the truths of Revelation have a harmonious connection and interdependency with each other, and that it is practicable to bring them all into one intelligent system, possessing complete philosophic unity; even as the single and isolated facts in nature have a reciprocal connection, and may all be bound up in their informing laws, and thereby present to the philosophic mind one combined and comprehensive sphere of being, which in its entireness we call the universe.

In the book of both Nature and Revelation, the facts as given to him who readeth are separate and disjoined; they lie upon the page, as God hath published it, without any order or obvious connection among themselves. And yet, as truly in God's revealed word, is there an intrinsic order and beautyan inner law which combines the whole in systematic unityas in the works of God, which are thrown in such profusion

The substance of the following article was delivered as an address, on the occasion of the author's inauguration to the Professorship of Christian Theology in the Theological Seminary of Auburn, January 8, 1845.

over the heavens above, and upon the earth beneath us. It is the business of the philosopher of nature to find those laws by which all her facts are bound up into a system, and in which they can be expounded as rational and intelligible; nor is there any science of nature until this work is done, and the isolated facts are therein combined, and made to possess both consistency and unity.

And it is no more a rash intrusion within the sacred inclosure of God's secret counsels, nor any more an unauthorized intermeddling with sacred things, to go reverently to work within the field of Divine Revelation, and gather its separate truths, and combine them into system according to their real relations, than it is to go out and explore nature, and put the facts of God's work together in scientific order and unity. Yea, the manifold wisdom of God, in neither department, can ever be appreciated without this; and it is as much in accordance with his will, and certainly as much subservient to the higher interests of man, that there should be a thorough science of the Christian religion, as that there should be a completed science of nature. Both fields are full of God, and each exhibits the most astonishing traces, both of the magnitude and the minuteness of his superintending wisdom, and both should be studied both in their facts and their laws; and more especially the word of Revelation, inasmuch as here are contained those great truths, with which man's deepest interests and dearest hopes stand, by far the most intimately connected. Revelation may, therefore, as properly be subjected in its separate truths, to a science, as the separate facts connected with the structure of the earth or the movements of the heavens. A Philosophy of Nature no more legitimately exists, than there may legitimately exist a Philosophy of the Christian Religion.

Now all science, properly so called, involves both facts as they are given in experience, and the laws or principles by which their being and combination may be intelligently expounded. The facts and the principles are alike essential to the validity of the science. We might observe all the facts

« PreviousContinue »