THE LITERARY 



®lt®m® air® t#iaf r^a 



OF THE LINNi'EAN ASSOCIATION OF PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE. 



Vol. in. AUGUST, 1847. No. 10. 



THE "WORLD AT THE ADVENT. 



( Concluded from page 202.^ 

 Whatever difference there might be between the religions of these va- 

 rious lands, it was certainly not a variation from good to better or from 

 evil to good, but from bad to worse. To pass from one to another was 

 but to witness successive enormities. The idea of the existence of 

 some Supreme Creator and Governor, which doubtless had been origi- 

 nally carried with them by the sons of Noah, was lost, as far as any 

 approach to correctness is concerned, until about four centuries and 

 a lialf before the Redeemer's birth, when Anaxagoras revived the idea 

 which after him was perpetuated by many of the philosophers. But not 

 only did they not give it a wide diffusion, but regarded it as its greatest 

 value that it was unknown to the people. The dog may breathe the 

 air that Caesar breathes, but the vulgar herd, as they contemptuously 

 called them, must not share the thoughts of the philosophers. They 

 kept up the aristocracy of brain, and so anxious were they to separate phil- 

 osophy from the mass, that they cultivated obscurity as an excellence. 

 By the abstruse and technical terms which they copiously employed, 

 they succeeded not only in keeping the people in the dark, but in bewil- 

 dering each other and puzzling themselves. Of Aristotle, by many con- 

 sidered the greatest and by all one of the greatest, it is said, that an ad- 

 mirer of his confessed that he read him forty times before he began to 

 understand him, and so strongly did he become tinged with the character 

 of his favorite, that it is thought, the volumes in which he communi- 

 cates his discoveries would require as many readings as the Stagyrite 

 himself, (though without any likelihood of receiving them.) 'i'he 

 people therefore were not likely to get much benefit from the superior 

 light of the Philosophers. 



Yet the doctrine of the unity of the God-head remained glimmer- 

 ing. A ray of the truth was seen here and there. It was indeed a lamp 

 shining in a dark place, yet it was not entirely without use in preparing 

 2S 



