Yesterday Mr. Gladstone delivered before the University of Edinburgh an
address on " The Place of Ancient Greece in the Providential Order of the World." The idea of the address is that " among the auxiliaries required to complete the training process for our race" some were needed, " I will not say to act as a correc- tive to Christianity, but as a corrective to the narrow views and the excesses which might follow on certain modes of conceiving and of applying it." Mr. Gladstone referred especially to the value of Greece for physical beauty and physical training of all kinds, and its counteraction to the Church asceticism,—but he scarcely touched on the preparation which Plato's philosophy furnished for the reception of the doctrine of the Logos and its Incarnation. Philo might possibly have taught what he did had Plato never existed,—but no one who believes that the rapid spread of Chris- tianity among the Greeks was mainly due to the Gospel of St. John, can fail to see that the preparation for Christ by the Greek philosophy was no less necessary than the anticipations of Him by the Jewish prophets.
