Nevertheless, we as strongly affirm,
that he who contrasts (whatever the occasional sublimity of expression)
the faltering and often sceptical tone of Plato on religious subjects,
with the uniformity and decision of the Evangelical system,--his dark
notions in relation to God (candidly confessed) with the glorious
recognition of Him in the Gospel as 'our Father,'--his utterly absurd
application of his general principles of morals, in his most Utopian of
all Republics, with the broad, plain social ethics of Christianity,--the
tone of mournful familiarity (whatever his personal immunity) in
which he too often speaks of the saddest pollutions that ever degraded
humanity, with the spotless purity of the Christian rule of life,--the
hesitating, speculative tone of the Master of the Academy with the
decision and majesty of Him who 'spake with authority, and not as
the Scribes,' whether Greek or Jewish.--the metaphysical and abstract
character of Plato's reasonings with the severely practical character of
Christ's,--the feebleness of the motives supplied by the abstractions
of the one, and the intensity of those supplied by the other,--the
adaptation of the one to the intelligent only, and the adaptation of
the other to universal humanity,--the very manner of Plato, his
gorgeous style, with the still more impressive simplicity of the Great
Teacher,--must surely see in the contrast every indication, to say
nothing of the utter gratuitousness (historically) of the contrary
hypothesis, that the sublime ethics of the Gospel, whether we regard
substance, or manner, or, tone, or style, are no plagiarism from Plato.
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