THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN . 3
CLEMENS ALEXANDEINUS. DIED ABOUT A.D. 217.
THIS Clement, whose other names were Titus Flavius, and who was called Alexandrinus from his connection with Alexandria, was one of the first Christian hymn-writers of whom we have any record. He was horn about the middle of the second century. He is said to have been an Athenian, and at first a stoic, but he afterwards joined the eclectic school. The bent of his mind as well as the necessities of his moral nature made Clement emphatically a seeker. Teachers of different countries and schools, Grecian, Assyrian, Egyptian, and Jewish taught him, but could not satisfy him.
As a "merchant-man seeking goodly pearls," he at length came to Alexandria, where, under the teaching of Pantasnus, a Christian teacher, he found in Jesus the " one pearl of great price. Subsequently Pantrenus went, as Eusebius informs us in his fifth book, as a missionary to India, and Clement suc ceeded his master in his catechetical office, and trained among his disciples Origen and Alexander, afterwards bishop of Jeru salem. Clement was also appointed presbyter of the church at Alexandria, about the year 190. Alban Butler, in his "Lives of the Saints," says, "that Clement died before the end of the reign of Caracalla, who was put to death A.D. 217."
In Clement s works we perceive the philosophizing tendency of his mind, his familiarity with the various systems of those times, his extensive range of knowledge, and sometimes his devoutness and spirituality. His writings were much com mended by Eusebius and Jerome. Some are lost, including his " Commentaries on various parts of the Scriptures." Those which are extant are his " Exhortation to the Greeks," an appeal to them to turn from their false gods ; " Psodagogus," a treatise on Christian education; and " Stromata," i.e., "Patchwork," the name being chosen because of the multifarious contents of the
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