This highly religious tendency and perception which we recognize in Pythagoras, for instance, or in Plato--this anticipation by science of the ideas of Christianity, of principles which, with this exception, belong to the Christian era of the world’s history, could not have been without God. We must, in short, recognize therein a higher providence. We may accordingly justly regard Grecian philosophy, in its better spirit and elements, as forming on its part a preparation for the Gospel, and a scientific introduction to Christianity, of a special and peculiar kind. Now, among those whose observations, and sciences, and endeavors were throughout directed Godward, the Pythagoreans stand highest and foremost. We have already alluded to the fact, that in physical science they were acquainted with the best and the most important of all that our history of discoveries, within the last three centuries, is so proud of. Here and there, perhaps, their knowledge even outran our own, and in all probability they were not without some insight into those mysteries of creation, about which our philosophy of nature has within the last half century excited so much wonder and admiration. It is also probable, we observed, that by their theory of numbers we are not to understand the ordinary formulæ of mathematics, nor the usual arbitrary play with them in which science so often indulges, but rather the development of the intrinsic and divine law of nature and of life according to its everlasting structure and immutable foundations, or according to the vicissitudes of its critical times and seasons. But here it may be asked--whence had they all this? how, without the telescope, and with, at best, a very defective system of mathematics, and an imperfect art of calculation, did they attain to a knowledge of the true astronomical system of the universe? To start the hypothesis, that they learned and borrowed it all from the Egyptians, would only be to remove the question a step farther back, and not really to answer it. But even if we were to admit the fact, such an assumption would only, as regards the essential question with respect to the Pythagoreans and the origin of their science, increase their merits and their glory. For in the same way as we observed on an earlier occasion, with reference to Moses and the Hebrews, it must have been by the exercise of a rare wisdom, that while they selected all that was best and most valuable in Egyptian science, they rejected so much that was pernicious, and laid aside so much that was likely to lead them astray, and even the impious magical superstitions that were to be found there.