Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/100

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APOLLONIUS OF TYANA.
95

to the critics, we say that these men could have had no other motive than the one they avowed openly—viz., the moral and religious reform of their contemporaries. And as regards the manner in which they did their work, they would certainly never have thought of excusing themselves on the grounds which were afterwards reduced to the formula that "the end justifies the means," for the means which they employed did not seem to them to need any justification whatever. In our own sensitiveness on this point, in the severity of our judgments when a literary fraud is exposed, in our want of confidence in the general testimony of history, we may trace one of the results of our Christian training. It is one of the fruits of that passionate love of truth, and consequently of reality, which Christianity has communicated to the mind of man. Beyond the pale of the Christian world it is nowhere found in the same degree. To it may be attributed much of our intolerance, but be it remembered that on it our science is founded. That "spirit of truth" which is the result of fearless inquiry, and