osophy among the Christians; and, though
Athenagoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founder
of the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learned
Christian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century. To
have been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learning
among the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no great
praise. Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness over
the world? But we must remember that a new religion cannot be introduced
without some danger that learning and science may get forbidden,
together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in the
same schools; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagans
and Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians,
learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion;
and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have founded
a school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearly
two centuries. Pantaenus has left no writings of his own, and is best
known through his pupil or fellow-student, Clemens. He is said to have
brought with him to Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he met
with on his travels, a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel in the original
Hebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which, if we possessed it, would
settle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all that
now bears that Apostle's name in the Greek translation.

The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish him
from Clemens of Rome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeeded
Pantaenus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time a
voluminous writer. He was in his philosophy a platonist, though
sometimes called of the Eclectic school. He has left an Address to the
Gentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eight
books of Stromata, or _collections_, which he wrote to describe the
perfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model for
his imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects of
Gnostics "falsely so called." By his advice, and by the imitation of
Christ, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, to
knowledge; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant and
then a son; he is to become at last a god walking in the flesh.

Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chi