So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and Hebraism are profound and admirable manifestations of man’s life, tendencies, and powers, and that both of them aim at a like final result, we can hardly insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of operation with which they proceed.  It is a divergence so great that it most truly, as the prophet Zechariah says, “has raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece!"+ The difference whether it is by doing or by knowing that we set most store, and the practical consequences which follow from this difference, leave their mark on all the history of our race and of its development.  Language may be abundantly quoted from both Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem that one follows the same current as the other towards the same goal.  They are, truly, borne towards the same goal; but the currents which bear them are infinitely different.  It is true, Solomon will praise [149] knowing:  “Understanding is a well-spring of life unto him that hath it."+ And in the New Testament, again, Christ is a “light,"+ and “truth makes us free."+ It is true, Aristotle will undervalue knowing:  “In what concerns virtue,” says he, “three things are necessary,—­knowledge, deliberate will, and perseverance; but, whereas the two last are all important, the first is a matter of little importance.”  It is true that with the same impatience with which St. James enjoins a man to be not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work,+ Epictetus exhorts us to do what we have demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do; or he taunts us with futility, for being armed at all points to prove that lying is wrong, yet all the time continuing to lie.  It is true, Plato, in words which are almost the words of the New Testament or the Imitation, calls life a learning to die.  But underneath the superficial agreement the fundamental divergence still subsists.  The understanding of Solomon is “the walking in the way of the commandments;” this is “the way of peace,"+ and it is of this that blessedness comes.  In the New Testament, the truth which gives us the peace of God and makes us free, is the love of Christ constraining [150] us to crucify, as he did, and with a like purpose of moral regeneration, the flesh with its affections and lusts, and thus establishing, as we have seen, the law.  To St. Paul it appears possible to “hold the truth in unrighteousness,"+ which is just what Socrates judged impossible.  The moral virtues, on the other hand, are with Aristotle but the porch and access to the intellectual, and with these last is blessedness.  That partaking of the divine life, which both Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have said, fix as their crowning aim, Plato expressly denies to the man of practical virtue merely, of self-conquest with any other motive than that of perfect intellectual vision; he reserves it for the lover of pure knowledge, of seeing things as they really are,—­the philomathes.+