The Christian Remembrancer; Or, the Churchman's Biblical, Ecclesiastical & Literary Miscellany (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 103 Art. IV.?1. The Fathers of Greek Philosophy. By K. D. Hampden, D.D., Bishop of Hereford. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. 2. Ancient Philosophy: A Treatise of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy anterior to the Christian Era. By the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, M. A. Fourth Edition. London: Griffin, Bohn, and Co. 1861. Bishop Hampden's ' Fathers of Greek Philosophy' is hardly so well known as it deserves. As an introduction to the study of Aristotle and Plato it is, to say the least, one of the best. Clear and close in thought, though obscure sometimes in language, the author is well fitted to initiate into the mysteries of ancient philosophy those?and none other are worthy?who are willing to give their attention in earnest; while his judicial impartiality and calmness amid the controversies which have vexed generation after generation, enable him to speak with authority, when, as he does on occasion indeed, but not often, he applies the ancient philosophy to questions of our own day. In the excellences as well as in the deficiencies of his book Bishop Hampden resembles his illustrious predecessor on the episcopal bench to whom we owe the 'Analogy.' In both writers, especially in Bishop Butler, the absence of embellishment and the redundance of a too prosaic phraseology render the ideas of the writer far less effective than they would have been in a warmer, terser style. But there are passages in ' The Fathers of Ancient Philosophy ' which stand out in brilliant contrast to the too sober colouring of other portions; passages which, by their compressed energy and by their measured stateliness of diction, seem as if they might be pages of Bishop Thirlwall's ' History of Greece.' The following extract is a just and eloquent estimate of Paganism at Athens or Rome: ? ...