The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865: A Monthly Eclectic MagazineVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865: A Monthly Eclectic Magazine
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
substantially what must have happened over and over again to those who
thronged the university of Alexandria, wearing the black cloak of the
philosopher.
Justin lived and was martyred some half a century before Clement sat
in the chair of the catechisms. But it is quite plain that, in such a
state of society, there would not be wanting many of his class and
temperament who, in Clement's time, as well as fifty years before,
were in search of the true philosophy. And we must not forget that in
Alexandria there were actually thousands of well-born, intellectual
young men from every part of the Roman empire. To the earnest among
these Clement was, indeed, no ordinary master. In the first place, he
was their equal by birth and education, with all the intellectual
keenness of his native Athens, and all the ripeness and versatility of
one who had "seen many cities of men and their manners." Next, he had
himself been a Gentile, and had gone through all those phases of the
soul that precede and accompany the process of conversion. If any one
knew their difficulties and their sore places, it was he, the
converted philosopher. If any one was capable of satisfying a generous
mind as to which was the true philosophy, it was he who had travelled
the world over in search of it. He could tell the swarthy Syrian that
it was of no use to seek the classic regions of Ionia, for he had
tried them, and the truth was not there; he could assure him it was
waste of time to go to Athens, for the Porch and the Garden were
babbling of vain questions--he had listened in them all. He could calm
the ardor of the young Athenian, his countryman, eager to try the
banks of the Orontes, and to interrogate the sages of Syria; for he
could tell him beforehand what they would say. He could shake his head
when the young Egyptian, fresh from the provincial luxury of Antinoë,
mentioned Magna Graecia as a mysterious land where the secret of
knowledge was perhaps in the hands of the descendants of the Pelasgi.
_He_ had tried Tarentum, he had tried Neapolis; they were worse than
the Serapeion in unnameable licentiousness--less in earnest than the
votaries that crowded the pleasure-barges of the Nile at a festival of
the Moon. He had asked, he had tried, he had tasted. The truth, he
could tell them, was at their doors. It was elsewhere, too. It was in
Neapolis, in Antioch, in Athens, in Rome; but they would not find it
taught in the chairs of the schools, nor discussed by noble
frequenters of the baths and the theatres. He knew it, and he could
tell it to them. And as he added many a tale of his wanderings and
searchings--many an instance of genius falling short, of good-will
laboring in the dark, of earnestness painfully at fault--many of those
who heard him would yield themselves up to the vigorous thinker whose
brow showed both the capacity and the unwearied activity of the soul
within. He was the very man to be made a hero of. Whatever there was
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