He was placed under Titus Flavius Clemens, generally known as S. Clement of Alexandria, whom S. Jerome(29) considered “the most learned of our authors,” and who, Theodoret believed,(30) “surpassed all others in the extent of his learning.” The erudition of Flavius Clement found in Origen a worthy receptacle, and the Christian morality taught in his lectures and practised in his life were truly reflected in the rising glory of the East. Clement, drinking from the crystal fountain of truth that issued from the evangelist Mark, who had made, by the order of the prince of the apostles, Alexandria his apostolic seat, imbibed its saving waters in all their purity. In his _Stromata_, as well as on the authority of Eusebius, we learn that the immediate successors of the apostles, preservers of the true doctrine of S. James, S. John, S. Paul, were still in existence and teaching the Gospel in its entirety. “They have lived down to our times,” says Clement,(31) “and scattered in our hearts the seed of truth which they had received of their predecessors, the apostles.” It was from this beautiful and fertile garden that Origen culled the flowers of Christianity that ornamented his soul, that bloom in his luminous works, that preserve their fragrance and throw around sacred studies an imperishable lustre. While Origen was pursuing his studies under Clement, he did not fail to engraft upon himself the holiness and sanctity of his teacher—the _Pedagogue_ of the master was transformed into the life of the scholar. The holy practices running through the _Pedagogue_, its inculcation of austere morals and inexhaustible charity, became to Origen, through his long and arduous career, hand‐posts pointing to solid grandeur, durable happiness, and supreme good. On leaving this famous catechetical school, he perfected himself under Ammonius Saccas, whose celebrity among pagans for the reconciliation he effected between jarring philosophical systems was only eclipsed by the esteem in which he was held by the infant church, to whose cause he brought the aid of philosophy and the requirements of the times. Among all those who attended the lectures of Ammonius, the most remarkable was young Origen, though he had for rivals no less famous persons than Plotinus, the philosopher and teacher of Porphyry, and the critic Longinus. All eyes were centred on Origen, and his name was in every mouth—his mind a prodigy of letters, his soul a temple of the Holy Ghost. The vast amount of erudition now acquired by Origen, not only by reason of his extraordinary abilities, but also on account of his eminent preceptors, whose sanctity of life imparted to their expositions of religion the irresistible authority of example, attached him with unshaken firmness to the infallible truths which were sealed by his father’s blood. No other belief could satisfy his yearnings, no other creed answer to the wide comprehensions of his conceptions and the loftiness of his aspirations.