Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 12.djvu/277

] "blessed truly are they," according to the scripture, "who hunger and thirst after truth: for they shall be filled" with everlasting food. In the most wonderful harmony with these words, Euripides, the philosopher of the drama, is found in the following words,—making allusion, I know not how, at once to the Father and the Son:

For a whole burnt-offering and rare sacrifice for us is Christ. And that unwittingly he mentions the Saviour, he will make plain, as he adds:

Then he says expressly:

It is not then without reason that in the mysteries that obtain among the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place; as also the laver among the Barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature and things.

We shall understand the mode of purification by confession, and that of contemplation by analysis, advancing by analysis to the first notion, beginning with the properties underlying it; abstracting from the body its physical properties, taking away the dimension of depth, then that of breadth, and then that of length. For the point which remains is a unit, so to speak, having position; from which if we abstract position, there is the conception of unity.