' And when the
initiated find, or rather receive, the true philosophy, they have it
from the Truth itself; that is from Him who is true."
While, then, these two schools had so many grounds in common, where was
their point of divergence? We shall find it, I believe, fairly
expressed in the dying words of Plotinus, the great father of
Neoplatonism. "I am striving to bring the God which is in us into
harmony with the God which is in the universe." Whether or not Plotinus
actually so spoke, that was what his disciples not only said that he
spoke, but what they would have wished him to speak. That one sentence
expresses the whole object of their philosophy.
But to that Pantaenus, Origen, Clement, and Augustine would have
answered: "And we, on the other hand, assert that the God which is in
the universe, is the same as the God which is in you, and is striving to
bring you into harmony with Himself." There is the experimentum crucis.
There is the vast gulf between the Christian and the Heathen schools,
which when any man had overleaped, the whole problem of the universe was
from that moment inverted. With Plotinus and his school man is seeking
for God: with Clement and his, God is seeking for man.
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