ornate style. The analysis of the historic systems is lacking in historical objectivity and their classification cumbersome and defective. Some historical examination is found in the pages of James Mackintosh's "Dissertation upon the Progress of Ethical Knowledge" (edited by Whewell, 3d. ed., Edinburgh, 1862), but on the whole it is not now serviceable.

V. The field is so vast that it is impossible to attempt even a fairly complete bibliography of the primary and secondary sources. The range covers the fields of philosophy, dogmatics, and general history. Indeed, some of the most useful ethical literature carries no real indication of its character in the assigned purpose of the book. For the early canonical period we have only the canon itself, and for the early church we must depend upon literature given up in the main to polemic or dogmatic exposition. Even the Old Catholic or Bishop's church was so insistent upon doctrine as the basis of life, that formal ethics has but a secondary place. The ethics of the militant church, educating the north of Europe and intrenching itself in the places of political power, is to be found mingled with canon law and with ecclesiastical institutionalism. Even when the scholastic period is reached it is still the dogmatic and cosmological interest that dominates, and the ethics of an Anselm or Dun Scotus must be reconstructed by the historian from materials gathered for dogmatic exposition. It is therefore impossible in such a history to do more than gather from the literature such typical forms as may illustrate the steady progress of the Christian conception of God in Christ Jesus and the region of thought about conduct. After the critiques of Kant we find ethics no longer possible as an authoritative system. From his day on, philosophical ethics and the ethics of organized Christianity cannot be separated, and the content of ethics is based both within and without organized Christianity upon experience. Hence, as we shall see, our history really terminates with the new Protestantism made necessary by the critical philosophy, and the last chapter of our book is therefore only a summary of the situation thus produced.

CHAPTER I

THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY

Note of Introduction.-I. The Grecian (Classic) Contribution-II. The Hellenistic Preparation-III. The Roman Preparation-IV. The Old Testament Preparation: Propheticism; The Early and Later Priestly Development; The Deuteronomic Synthesis; The Contribution of Hellenized Judaism.

NOTE OF INTRODUCTION

That the ethics of Christianity represent a synthesis into which elements entered from the most various quarters can no longer be seriously denied. A certain type of Judaism had succeeded in keeping itself relatively untouched by the changes going on in thought all about it. So that the early New Testament literature, although written in Greek, is yet thoroughly Jewish in thought and fundamental feeling. At the same time even within the period of the New Testament writings-say 45 to 125-the whole world was profoundly affected by elements that appear in the pages of the later writings of the canon, and we cannot understand the canonical writings without some understanding of the ranges of thought amid which they had their origin. In the beginning the Christian church had its following from among the most extreme types of Jewish thought and feeling, namely, the zealots of Galilee and the middle class thinking of Jerusalem. It was Paul who introduced it to the larger world of aristocratic Judaism and the cultivated circles of Hellenism. In this Hellenism Christianity found too much that was congenial to pass it by. We must then rapidly review the various elements that affected Christianity, and deal with them as they affected her. These elements were classic Greek speculation, the Hellenized world of thought, the Roman Empire, and more particularly the Old Testament in its various phases.

ΙΟ

I. THE GRECIAN (CLASSIC) CONTRIBUTION

Strictly speaking, it was Hellenism rather than the classic Greek philosophy (Democritus, Plato, Aristotle) that supplied the intellectual forms for the use of early Christianity. The unorganized character of the Jewish intellectual and artistic life made it inevitable that the early church should seek elsewhere than in the Old Testament for the means of systematic expression of her life and purpose. Judaism itself felt the lack and turned in the same way to Greece for help. Josephus and Philo show how inevitably the thoughtful turned to the classic models.

The books of the Old Testament could supply content and inspiration for the apologetic preaching of the early church, but for dialectic and rhetorical method, for training in systematic and logical thinking, the early defenders of the faith had to look to the Greek and Roman schools.

It is impossible at this point to do more than very briefly point to some of the main elements of that classic thought which at once gave form to the ethical thinking of the early church.

Plato rather than Aristotle has been chiefly influential in most periods of the church's life. Even when, as in the Middle Ages,

LITERATURE.-Schmidt, L.: "Die Ethik der alten Griechen"; 2 vols.; Berlin, 1882. Zeller, Eduard: "Die Philosophie der Griechen"; 5 vols. (in various editions); Leipsic, 1889-1903.-Windelband, W.: "Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie"; 1 vol., 4th ed., Tübingen, 1907; pp. 20-218; English translation, New York, 1901; pp. 23-262.-Grote, George: "History of Greece"; 10 vols.; London, 1888 (especially vol. VIII).—Weber, A.: "History of Philosophy"; translated by Thilly; New York, Scribner's, 1903; pp. 17-53.-Ueberweg-Heinze: "Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie"; 10th ed.; 4 vols.; Berlin, 1901-1906 (especially full citations of literature).— Ziegler, Theobald: "Die Ethik der Griechen und Römer"; Bonn, 1881 (vol. I of his "Geschichte der Ethik).-Köstlin, Karl: "Die Ethik des klassischen Altertums (1. Die griechische Ethik bis Plato)"; Leipsic, 1887 ("Geschichte der Ethik," vol. I).-Luthardt, C. E.: "Die antike Ethik in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung"; Leipsic, 1887.-Rohde, Erwin: "Psyche, Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen"; 2 vols.; 4th ed.; Tübingen, 1907.— Mahaffy, J. P.: "History of Classical Greek Literature"; 3 vols.; 2d ed.; London, 1883, 1889.-Jowett, B.: "Dialogues of Plato," with notes; 5 vols.; 3d ed.; New York and London, 1892.-Schaubach, E.: "Das Verhältniss der

Aristotle was the avowed master of all minds, the religious character of the Platonic philosophy was indirectly, in mysticism, in devotional books, and in a thousand phrases and terms of thought, even more influential than the Organum. Of course Plato's works were only very uncritically known. Some of his leading doctrines are to this day confounded with conceptions entirely strange to his thinking. He was used to support an intellectual dogmatism that would have been wholly opposed to his artistic longing for intellectual freedom. And yet a dogmatic teaching church found in the Socratic identification of wisdom with goodness and knowledge with salvation, as Plato developed it, a great source of strength and comfort. The church came revealing, and, "If a man know all good and evil, and how they exist, and have existed, and will be brought forth, would he not be complete and wanting in no virtue, whether justice or self-control or holiness? He would possess them all, and he would know those (situations) which were dangerous and which were not, and would guard against them whether they were supernatural or natural." The Platonic thinking lent itself to an appeal to supernatural enlightenment. The "demon" or "spirit" (Saμóviov) of Socrates was itself an expression of highest ethical faith. "You have heard me speak of an

Moral des classischen Alterthums zur christlichen in Theologische Studien und Kritiken"; 1851; vol. XXIV, pp. 59-121.-Neander, A.: “Ueber das Verhältniss der hellenischen Ethik zur christlichen"; pp. 140-214; in his "Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen"; edited by J. L. Jacobi; Berlin, 1851.-Caird, E.: "The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers" (Gifford Lectures, 1900-1901, 1901-1902; 2 vols.; Glasgow, 1904.-Hatch, Edwin: "The Organization of the Early Christian Churches" (Bampton Lectures, 1880); London, 1881; and "The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church"; edited by A. M. Fairbairn; 2d ed.; London, 1891 (Hibbert Lectures, 1888).— Friedländer, L.: “Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine"; 7th ed.; Leipsic, 1901.—Siebeck, Herm.: "Plato's Lehre von der Materie," in his "Untersuchungen"; 2d ed.; Freiburg, 1888.-Harnack, A.: "Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte"; vol. I.; 2d ed.; Introduction; Freiburg, i. B., 1888; English translation.

1 Laches 199 L. The translations here and elsewhere are in the main those of Jowett, with only a few departures for special reasons in favor of a more literal even if more clumsy rendering.

1

oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Melētus ridicules in the accusation. This sign I have had ever since I was a child," says Socrates. "The sign is a voice which comes to me, and always forbids me to do something which I was going to do, but never commands to me do anything." " The development of this conception of an immediate intuitional inhibition by Plato into the doctrine of immediate vision and ethical insight is most interesting, and gives at once room for a religious interpretation of common ethical experience. The cult and the mystery have more in common with Plato than with Aristotle, and the religiously ethical character of the speculative insight becomes more and more prominent in his teaching." So that we may say that the ethics of Christianity has been profoundly and directly influenced by several elements in Plato's philosophy. The Platonic doctrine of the immaterial immortal character of the soul, with its contact on the one side with the Eternal and unchanging Being in the vision of ideas, and on the other with the changing life of action and suffering, is wholly foreign to the ranges of thought out of which Christianity came, but was at once in crude outline accepted, and remains to-day as the basis of nearly all Christian eschatology. Any one has only to try and fit the early Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body, which was the fundamental postulate of the Jewish eschatology, into the Platonic framework to see how distinctly the conception of the soul as it is taught in the Phædrus differed from the Jewish faith. But as between the two notions it is Plato that has triumphed. Although, again, it must be remembered that Plato's doctrine has also received serious modifications. Ethically Plato's doctrine of the soul laid emphasis upon the immediate and individual judgment at death. Communal and national judgment, such as Prophetism and the

1 Apology 31. Cf. also Xenophon Memor. IV, 8 and I, 4, 15, and the Phædrus 246 ff.

2 Cf. Windelband, W.: "Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie," 4th ed., Tübingen, 1907, p. 101; English translation, New York, 1901, p. 123.

'Cf. Phædrus, 250.