And Clement of
Alexandria, a great Father of the Church, who was as wise as he was
good, said that God had sent down Philosophy to the Greeks from
heaven, as He sent down the Gospel to the Jews.
For Jesus Christ, remember, is the Light who lights every man who
comes into the world. And no one can think a right thought, or
feel a right feeling, or understand the real truth of anything in
earth and heaven, unless the good Lord Jesus teaches him by His
Spirit, which gives man understanding.
But these Greeks, as St. Paul told them, forgot what God had taught
them, and, though they were God's offspring, worshipped idols of
wood and stone, and fell at last into sin and shame, and then, of
course, into cowardice and slavery, till they perished out of that
beautiful land which God had given them for so many years.
For, like all nations who have left anything behind them, beside
mere mounds of earth, they believed at first in the One True God
who made all heaven and earth. But after a while, like all other
nations, they began to worship other gods, or rather angels and
spirits, who (so they fancied) lived about their land. Zeus, the
Father of gods and men (who was some dim remembrance of the blessed
true God), and Hera his wife, and Phoebus Apollo the Sun-god, and
Pallas Athene who taught men wisdom and useful arts, and Aphrodite
the Queen of Beauty, and Poseidon the Ruler of the Sea, and
Hephaistos the King of the Fire, who taught men to work in metals.
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