section of the community. In the early years of the Christian era, Philo, while not ignoring the hypothesis of dependence, took a loftier view of the relation between the Greek philosophy and Mosaism, and by means of the allegorical method of exegesis read speculative forms and conceptions into the Pentateuch. A like syncretistic tendency was exhibited in Gnosticism, which found in Alexandria its most brilliant representatives. This intellectual and religious ferment was at once a danger and a stimulus to the exponent of the Christain faith. Such syncretism led to indifference to, or toleration of, all manifestations of the religious spirit; but Christianity by its very constitution could not but be intolerant of any form of polytheism. It furnished an interested audience; for if in Alexandria there was no great eagerness in the attainment of truth, there was keen interest in discussions about it. Into this soil in which so many diverse seeds had been sown the Gospel of Christ had been cast; it had a fierce struggle for mere existence, a still fiercer struggle before it if it were to gain the mastery. It was compelled to face new problems, to define its attitude to various forces and movements with which elsewhere it had not been brought into such immediate contact. Was it to stand aside as if these forces were of no interest to it, to leave its adherents in an intellectual atmosphere without intellectual armoury? Was it to strive to bring all that was best in them into relation to itself, or to act as if they were absolutely out of relation to it? To show the method that was adopted in the solution of such problems by the first great Alexandrian thinker whose works have come down to us, in what spirit he confronted Greek philosophy and culture, what conceptions of God, of Christ, of the Christian ideal, of Scripture, he presented to his students and fellowdisciples, is the purpose of the present course of Lectures.

From an early date, according to Eusebius, there had

The

existed at Alexandria a school of sacred learning.1 assumption of some of the older writers on the subject that it stood in a close relation to the Museum has no validity. That its teachers must in some measure have felt the academic influence, that the teaching would have reference direct and indirect to the intellectual needs and characteristics necessarily arising from its environment, may be assumed; but of any official or actual relationship between it and the Museum there is no trace. Of the origin of this Christian School nothing definite is known. A gnostic origin has been assigned to it. This would no doubt account for the jealousy which it created in some quarters; but on other grounds it is improbable. Eusebius speaks of it in varying terms. Sometimes he speaks of it as a school of catechesis, sometimes as a school of sacred learning. From this it may be inferred that it was a school of catechesis that had developed into a school of sacred learning. It derived its origin from the necessity of giving special instruction to catechumens in the elements of the Christian faith; but it was compelled from its surroundings to extend the sphere of its operations and give instruction in all branches of learning. Whether from the first it was dependent on the local bishop is doubtful. That it was so by the time of Origen we see from a statement of Eusebius; that it may have been so at an earlier date may be conjectured from the fact that both Pantænus and Clement were presbyters of the Church. Like the Missionary Colleges in India in our own time, it was probably attended by non-Christian students as well as by Christians. But we must dismiss any idea of a separate

1 Ἐξ ἀρχαίου ἔθους διδασκαλείου τῶν ἱερῶν λόγων παρ' αὐτοῖς συνεστῶτος (Eus., H. E., v. 10).

"Loofs, 'Leitfaden . . . Dogmengeschichte,' p. 106.

3 . . τοῦ τῆς κατηχήσεως . διδασκαλείου (vi. 3). διατριβῆς (ib.) . . τῆς τῶν πιστῶν . . . διατριβῆς (ν. 10). 4 H. E., vi. 3.

building as such an analogy would suggest. The language of Eusebius with regard to Origen rather suggests that he taught in his own house.1 The picture presented by Gregory Thaumaturgus of the school under the guidance of Origen may be regarded as exhibiting the general lines on which it was working from the third quarter of the second century. Christianity was set forth as the crown of all learning, and all liberal arts were represented as its handmaids. The scholars were carefully trained in the art of detecting sophisms and fallacies. They were encouraged to read everything that had been written by poets and philosophers of old, with the exception of the works of atheists. They were trained in natural science, especially in astronomy and geometry, in ethics, and in the discussion of philosophical problems; but in all these not for their own sakes, but as a means to an end, as aids to the interpretation and defence of the Scriptures. In this lay the essential difference between it and the Stoic and Platonic schools of the Imperial era, though otherwise it ran on parallel lines. In this respect, too, it had analogies with the Missionary Colleges of to-day.

According to a statement of Philip of Side, the first head of the Catechetical School was Athenagoras. But in view of the notorious inaccuracy of the writer, and especially of his reversal of the relation of Pantænus and Clement, no weight can be attached to the tradition. The first teacher whose name is definitely known to us, who prescribed the range of its work, and from whom it received the impetus that made it famous and influential in the history of the Church, was Pantænus. Probably not later than the year 180 he became the head of the school. Of the ecclesiastical traditions concerning him the one statement that may be admitted without controversy is that, before his con

1 H. E., vi. 3.

* Paneg. in Orig., vi.-xiv.

Cf. 'Rheinische Museum für Philologie,' vol. Ivi. p. 56.

version, he had belonged to the school of the Stoics.1 By his teaching he attracted many scholars, and among others Clement. According to Jerome, Pantænus wrote commentaries on many books of Scripture. The accuracy of the assertion is disputed; in any case, with the exception of one or two passages or allusions, which may have been derived from oral tradition, they have perished; but his teaching, his methods, his principles, in all likelihood even many of the details of his system, survive in the works of his disciple.

Titus Flavius Clemens was born in all probability in Athens, and of heathen parentage, about the middle of the second century. He was endowed by nature with a deeply religious temperament and a burning thirst for knowledge. His religious yearnings he seems to have sought to satisfy by initiation into the mysteries; he evinced his love of learning by the passionate pursuit of all branches of science and philosophy. The same religious earnestness that had created in his spirit dissatisfaction with heathenism drove him to seek for fuller knowledge and deeper insight into the mysteries of the Christian religion. In many lands-in Greece, Italy, Syria, Palestine -and under many teachers, he studied zealously, but found no lasting satisfaction for his spirit till he came to Egypt. Of the "truly blessed and memorable men" whom he was 1 Eus., H. E., v. 10. 2 De Vir. Ill., c. 36.

3 Cf. Ec. Pr., 27 : οὐκ ἔγραφον δὲ οἱ πρεσβύτεροι.

4 Epiph. Hær., xxxii. 6. Κλήμης τε ὅν φασί τινες ̓Αλεξανδρέα, ἕτεροι δὲ 'Aonvalov. Greece was the starting-point of his search for truth (Str., i. 1 1). In Prot., ii. 20, referring to the prevalence of the legend concerning Demeter, he says: ὅπου γε 'Αθηναίοις καὶ τῇ ἄλλῃ Ἑλλάδι, αἰδοῦμαι καὶ λέγειν. sitiveness on the point suggests that he was a Greek and an Athenian. sensitive as to the details.

His sen

He is not

"This is an inference from the knowledge which he displays of the details of the mysteries. Cf. Eus., Præp. Evang., ii. 2, p. 61. It is not regarded as cogent by Bratke. Die Stellung des Cl. Al. zum antiken Mysterienwesen ' Cf. St. u. Kr., 1894.

(St. u. Kr., 1887, p. 656).

privileged to hear, and of their "convincing and living words," he writes as follows: "Of these, one was in Greece, an Ionian. Others were in Magna Græcia, one from ColeSyria, the other from Egypt. There were others in the East, one of whom was of the Assyrians, and the other in Palestine, a Hebrew by origin. When I fell in with the last of my teachers (he was the first in power), having hunted him out as he lay concealed in Egypt, I came to rest. He was in truth a Sicilian bee who culled the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, and begot in the souls of his hearers an unsullied store of knowledge. These men, preserving the true tradition of the blessed teaching directly from Peter, James, John, and Paul, the holy apostles, the son receiving it from the father (but few are like their fathers), came with God's blessing also to us to deposit these ancestral and apostolic seeds." That these were Christian teachers is manifest; they were six in number. Who the others were is disputed or unknown: some have. identified the Ionian with Athenagoras, the Assyrian with Tatian; but that the last was Pantænus there can be no doubt. The words of Clement show his eagerness in the search for a solution of the problems that had created unrest and his complete satisfaction with the solution. He became a presbyter of the Church,2 and for a period of more than twenty years he wrought and taught in Alexandria, first as coadjutor of Pantænus, and afterwards as his successor. In the year 202 the persecution of Severus broke out, and in accordance with his own teaching on martyrdom, as professedly based on the injunction of Christ, he left Alexandria that he might serve the Church of Christ elsewhere. Of his subsequent career little is known. We catch a final glimpse of his activity in the year 211, in a 1 Str., i. 11. 2 Pæd., i. 6 37.

3 Matt. x. 23. Cf. Str., iv. 4 14-17; Stäh., vol. iii. p. 226, fr. 56.