flected upon it, the question seemed to him so deep and comprehensive, that he was filled with admiration for Alypius, and wrote a panegyric upon him.

Jamblichus lived in the reign of Constantine, when Grecian philosophy had yielded the palm to Christianity; of course, he could make no open attacks on what he regarded as "the impostures of barbarians."

His system differed in some details from that of his predecessors. His theory of emanations was more complicated, and he mixed the study of magic with philosophy more than Porphyry had done. He says: "It is difficult to know how to please God, unless he himself reveals it to us, or we have recourse to theurgy."

His disciples thought he possessed supernatural power. A story had spread abroad that, while engaged in prayer, he had been raised fifteen feet above the earth. When one of them asked if this were true, he smiled, and gave an evasive answer. Some of them expressed a strong desire to witness a decisive proof of his miraculous power. He replied that he could not make an occasion for such manifestations. Afterward, all his school accompanied him to the baths of Gadara, in Syria. He asked the inhabitants the names of two very pure springs of water. They told him they were called Eros, and Anteros: deities whom the Greeks always represented in a juvenile form. He had scarcely touched the water with his hand, and murmured a few words, when there rose up from it two children, of celestial beauty, and clasped their arms round his neck, as if he had been their father. This miracle shut the mouths of the most incredulous; thenceforth, none of his disciples presumed to doubt his communion with the gods. Eunapius, his biographer, an accomplished and conscientious writer, says: "They recount many other marvellous things concerning him; but they are so fantastic and incredible, that I fear to repeat them; for the gods forbid to mingle fables and false stories with true and conscientious history. I should even scruple to report these examples, if they had not come from those who were eye

witnesses. However, neither Edesius or his friends have dared to put them in their works."

For the practice of Theurgy, the philosophers prepared themselves by fasting, watching, praying, and intense religious contemplation. By this process, they sometimes arrived at a state of exaltation thus described by Jamblichus: "The senses were in a sleeping state. The theurgist had no command of his faculties, no consciousness of what he said or did. He was insensible to fire, or any bodily injury. Carried by a divine impulse, he went through impassable places, through fire and water, without knowing where he was. A divine illumination took full possession of the man, absorbed all his faculties, motions, and senses; making him speak what he did not understand, or rather seem to speak it; for he was in fact merely the minister, or instrument, of the god who possessed him."

Jamblichus was a devout believer in the efficacy of prayer. He says: "Frequent prayer nourishes our superior part, renders the receptacle of the soul more capacious for the gods, discloses divine things to men, accustoms them to the splendours of the World of Intelligences, and gradually perfects our union with the pure Spirits, till it leads us back to the Supreme God. It purges away every thing noxious to the soul, divesting the ethereal and luminous spirit of whatever tends to corruption. It perfects hope, augments faith, increases divine love, and kindles whatever is celestial in the soul."

Jamblichus wrote a good deal, but his works are nearly all destroyed, or lost. He is supposed to have died before three hundred and thirty-three.

Plotinus, whose eloquent enthusiasm was so tempered with moderation, had given a great impulse to the Alexandrian School; but none of his successors attained to the height of his genius. There was a gradual decline after his departure; but noble examples abounded; and, during the whole existence of the school, many of its followers manifested an admirable earnestness to conform their conduct to their principles. Simplicius, the very last cham

pion of the expiring religion of Greece, retained all the best characteristics of his class. He was a devout believer in a constant living relation between man and the gods; but rejected altogether the idea that Divine Beings could be propitiated by sacrifices or offerings. He says: "When we sin, God does not turn from us. He is not angry. He does not leave us, and consequently does not return to us when we repent. All this is human, and quite foreign from the Divine. We separate ourselves from God, by departing from that course which is in harmony with nature; and by restoring our original nature, we return back to fellowship with God; and the act of our own return we ascribe to God, as if he returned back to us." The following prayer, preserved in his writings, is very expressive of the Platonic spirit: "I pray thee, O Lord, Father and Guide of the reason within us, that we may remember our nobility, whereof thou hast deemed us worthy. Help us, of our own free will, to be purified from the body, and disturbing passions; to be superior and rule over them; to use them merely as instruments, and in a becoming manner. Help us also to the accurate correction of the reason within us, and to unite it with the realities that exist in the light of thy truth. And I pray the Preserver to remove entirely all film from our spiritual eyes, that we may rightly know both God and man."

The writings of the New Platonists are generally obscure and confused. The idea of a three-fold existence in one is. always preserved; but sometimes they say that the Logos, created the world, and sometimes they seem to say the same concerning the Soul of the World, proceeding from the Logos. In the time of Porphyry and Jamblichus, it was much discussed which of the two was the Creator. They held the usual ideas concerning the three-fold nature of man. Of the spiritual body, between the soul and the material form, Proclus says: "In the world above, there is no need of the divided organs, which we have in our mortal life. The uniform, lucid, resplendent vehicle is sufficient; this having all the senses united in every part of it,"

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Some of them denied that human souls ever entered into brutes. They understood Plato to mean that imperfect souls would enter human bodies resembling beasts in the character of their passions; not that they would literally become animals. They said God would always preserve the human soul from such degradation.

They respected marriage, and considered it necessary; but they regarded everything that tied them to the world, or induced any thought concerning the body, as an obstruction in the pursuit of philosophy. Therefore, when they consecrated themselves to meditation on divine things, they lived unmarried; so that the term philosopher and ascetic came to be synonomous.

In addition to inward purification of the soul by knowledge of God, and a life in harmony with his laws, they also believed in outward means of cleansing, taught by the gods, whereby men could obtain a sanctifying power from the Supreme, to preserve both body and soul. Their meaning with regard to these external ceremonies is veiled; but there is little doubt that they referred, in part, to the ablutions preparatory to being initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. They never based their theories on any written revelation; believing that divine truth could be perceived by human reason in exalted states of perception.

In common with others of their age, they believed that enchanters, by aid of Evil Spirits, could command the forces of nature, and had power over men who had not raised their souls above external things; but that their spells were powerless over those who were in close communion with the Deity. They did not deny the miracles of Christ and his followers; because miracles were easily and universally admitted by all classes; but in comparison with them, they brought forward the wonders wrought by Pythagoras and Apollonius, whose power was received from the gods. Some, who distrusted all such phenomena, ascribed the miracles of both Apollonius and Christ to magical arts, ingenious tricks, and the blind faith of the multitude. Others acknowledged Jesus as one of the great

teachers sent to instruct mankind, and only objected to his being regarded as God.

The universal tendency to invest great teachers of mankind with supernatural glory was manifested by the Platonists, and doubtless increased by their competition with the claims of Christianity. Jamblichus declares that Pythagoras was the son of Jupiter, by an earthly mother; that a Delphian priest predicted his birth and character; that his early gravity, temperance, and wisdom, were so astonishing as to command reverence even from gray hairs, and lead many to assert that he was the son of a God. It was also said that Plato was the son of Apollo, who endowed him with a portion of his own celestial intelligence. Spurious maxims of Pythagoras and Zoroaster, and Golden Verses of Orpheus, were in circulation, with a view to increase their reputation for wisdom and piety.

The philosophers, in general, disliked the Gnostics, not only because they were a modification of Christianity, but because it appeared to them that they perverted and degraded the Platonic ideas, departed from the dignity of Grecian culture, and ran into fanatical extremes. Against both them and other Christians, they brought the charge of representing each human being of too much consequence in the plan of the universe. It was particularly at variance with their ideas, that the ignorant and the sinful should be taught a process by which they could be at once introduced from this life into the presence of God and Angels. They constituted the religious respectabilities of their day. They were advocates of the established and the venerable; to whom Christianity, taught as it was by the common people, seemed a mean fanaticism, "a barbarous boldness," "dangerous to the Roman state." Their doctrines were elevated, and their standard of morality was high; but their teaching was intellectual and philosophic, adapted only to educated minds. Nevertheless, their agency was an important one in the great change that was going on in the world. They continued the noble work which Socrates and Plato had begun centuries before. They kindled aspirations they were un