CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
39
it with the Founder of the new religion. "In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God." Philo might have written this. St. John had added to it two statements distinctly Christian, namely, "The Word was God" and "The Word was made flesh." And now Clement, taking over the completed conception, raised upon it a storied fabric such as the Alexandrians loved, and ensured that the deity should be at the same time accessible and inaccessible, merciful and just, human and divine. The fabric would have bewildered the fishermen of Galilee, and it had in it a flaw which became evident in the fourth century and produced the Arian schism. But it impressed the passing age; Clement, working in and through Alexandria, did more than even St. Paul to recommend Christianity to the Gentiles.
He was probably born in Greece about a.d. 150 and initiated into Mysteries there. Then he was converted and became head of the theological college in Alexandria, where he remained until his exile in 202. But little is known of his life and nothing of his character, though one may assume it was conciliatory: Christianity was not yet official, and thus in no position to fulminate. Of his treatises the "Exhortation to the Greeks" acknowledges several merits in pagan thought, while "The Rich Man's Salvation" handles with delicacy a problem on which business men are naturally sensitive, and arrives at the comforting conclusion that Christ did not mean what He said. One recognizes the wary resident. And when he attacks Paganism he seldom denounces: he mocks, knowing this to be the better way. For the age