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and growth. How was it possible for the "Being" of the Eleatics to have any contact with
the "Becoming" of Heraclitus? Empedocles (B.C.490-430) assumed the existence of four
radical elements, fire, air, water and earth, and set beside inert matter a twofold moving
force, likened by him to love and hate, or, as we should say to-day, attraction and
repulsion. In this Empedocles seems to have had a glimmering of the truth revealed in
Gen. 1: There, the moving force is said to be "the Spirit of God", and a very definite
process of division follows:--
"God divided the light from the darkness . . . . . Let it divide the waters from the
waters . . . . . Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place"
(Gen. 1: 4-9).
Empedocles also held that the knowing subject, and the known object must be of like
nature. This we shall find is a valuable truth, but we will reserve comment upon it until
this review is concluded. He was also the first psychologist, and declared God to be
"pure spirit without body or members". But he pursued the matter no further. How could
he, or any man? He needed Christ the Mediator.
Empedocles seems to have had some idea of the principle of Gen. 1: 2, for he taught
that at first the four elements existed together, absolutely at one with each other, until
gradually "strife" penetrated, breaking up the unity, and so the world of darkness and
light, life and death, and the many opposites that belong to everyday experience came
into being. The student of Scripture knows that the present world is the battle-ground of
the conflict of the ages, that there is a real enemy at work and that not until strife ceases,
and righteousness reigns, can true unity or peace be possible. This, however, we rejoice
to know, will not be brought about by the working of elementary forces, but by love, the
love of the Father, the love of the Son, and the love of the Spirit, involving Sacrifice and
longsuffering beyond the understanding of the mortal mind.
There is probably not one reader of these lines whose mentality and intellectual
powers surpass, or even reach, the level of these men whose findings we have attempted
to analyse--yet the simplest of us all is wiser than the whole world of philosophers, if it
can truly be said that "we have the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2: 16).