"When," he says (x. 8), "thou hast a.s.sumed the names of a man who is good, modest, rational, magnanimous, cling to those names; and if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them.... _For to continue to_ _be such as thou hast hitherto been_, and to be torn in pieces, and defiled in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, and one over-fond of his life, and _like those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who, though covered with wounds and gore, still entreat to be kept till the following day, though they will be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites_. Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these few names: and if thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou were removed to the Islands of the Blest." Alas! to Aurelius, in this life, the Islands of the Blest were very far away. Heathen philosophy was exalted and eloquent, but all its votaries were sad; to "the peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.seth all understanding," it was not given them to attain.
We see Marcus "wise, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless," says Mr. Arnold, "yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond--_tendentemque manue ripae ulterioris amore_"
I will quote in conclusion but three short precepts:--
"Be cheerful, and seek not external help, nor the tranquillity which others give. _A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others_." (iv. 5.)
"_Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it_" (iv. 49.)
This comparison has been used many a time since the days of Marcus Aurelius. The reader will at once recall Goldsmith"s famous lines:--
"As some tall cliff that rears its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
"Short is the little that remains to thee of life. _Live as on a mountain_. For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here, if he lives everywhere in the world as in a civil community. Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live as men do." (x. 15.)
Such were some of the thoughts which Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary after days of battle with the Quadi, and the Marcomanni, and the Sarmatae. Isolated from others no less by moral grandeur than by the supremacy of his sovereign rank, he sought the society of his own n.o.ble soul. I sometimes imagine that I see him seated on the borders of some gloomy Pannonian forest or Hungarian marsh; through the darkness the watchfires of the enemy gleam in the distance; but both among them, and in the camp around him, every sound is hushed, except the tread of the sentinel outside the imperial tent; and in that tent long after midnight sits the patient Emperor by the light of his solitary lamp, and ever and anon, amid his lonely musings, he pauses to write down the pure and holy thoughts which shall better enable him, even in a Roman palace, even on barbarian battlefields, daily to tolerate the meanness and the malignity of the men around him; daily to amend his own shortcomings, and, as the sun of earthly life begins to set, daily to draw nearer and nearer to the Eternal Light. And when I thus think of him, I know not whether the whole of heathen antiquity, out of its gallery of stately and royal figures, can furnish a n.o.bler, or purer, or more lovable picture than that of this crowned philosopher and laurelled hero, who was yet one of the humblest and one of the most enlightened of all ancient "Seekers after G.o.d."
CONCLUSION.
A sceptical writer has observed, with something like a sneer, that the n.o.blest utterances of Gospel morality may be paralleled from the writings of heathen philosophers. The sneer is pointless, and Christian moralists have spontaneously drawn attention to the fact. In this volume, so far from trying to conceal that it is so, I have taken pleasure in placing side by side the words of Apostles and of Philosophers. The divine origin of Christianity does not rest on its morality alone. By the aid of the light which was within them, by deciphering the law written on their own consciences, however much its letters may have been obliterated or dimmed, Plato, and Cicero, and Seneca, and Epictetus, and Aurelius were enabled to grasp and to enunciate a mult.i.tude of great and memorable truths; yet they themselves would have been the first to admit the wavering uncertainty of their hopes and speculations, and the absolute necessity of a further illumination. So strong did that necessity appear to some of the wisest among them, that Socrates ventures in express words to prophesy the future advent of some heaven-sent Guide.[70] Those who imagine that _without_ a written revelation it would have been possible to learn all that is necessary for man"s well-being, are speaking in direct contradiction of the greatest heathen teachers, in contradiction even of those very teachers to whose writing they point as the proof of their a.s.sertion. Augustine was expressing a very deep conviction when he said that in Plato and in Cicero he met with many utterances which were beautiful and wise, but among them all he never found, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you."
Glorious as was the wisdom of ancient thought, its knowledge respecting the indwelling of the Spirit, the resurrection of the body, and the forgiveness of sins, was but fragmentary and vague. Bishop Butler has justly remarked that "The great doctrines of a future state, the dangers of a course of wickedness, and the efficacy of repentance are not only _confirmed_ in the Gospel, but are taught, especially the last is, with a degree of light to which that of nature is darkness."
[Footnote 70: Xen. Mem. 1, iv. 14; Plato, Alcib. ii.]
The morality of Paganism was, on its own confession, _insufficient_. It was tentative, where Christianity is authoritative: it was dim and partial, where Christianity is bright and complete; it was inadequate to rouse the sluggish carelessness of mankind, where Christianity came in with an imperial and awakening power; it gives only a _rule_, where Christianity supplies a _principle_. And even where its teachings were absolutely coincident with those of Scripture, it failed to ratify them with a sufficient sanction; it failed to announce them with the same powerful and contagious ardour; it failed to furnish an absolutely faultless and vivid example of their practice; it failed to inspire them with an irresistible motive; it failed to support them with a powerful comfort under the difficulties which were sure to be encountered in the aim after a consistent and holy life.
The attempts of the Christian Fathers to show that the truths of ancient philosophy were borrowed from Scripture are due in some cases to ignorance and in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial dealing. That Gideon (Jerubbaal) is identical with the priest Hierombalos who supplied information to Sanchoniathon, the Berytian; that Thales pieced together a philosophy from fragments of Jewish truth learned in Phoenicia; that Pythagoras and Democritus availed themselves of Hebraic traditions, collected during their travels; that Plato is a mere "Atticising Moses;" that Aristotle picked up his ethical system from a Jew whom he met in Asia; that Seneca corresponded with St. Paul: are a.s.sertions every bit as unhistorical and false as that Homer was thinking of Genesis when he described the shield of Achilles, or (as Clemens of Alexandria gravely informs us) that Miltiades won the battle of Marathon by copying the strategy of the battle of Beth-Horon! To say that Pagan morality "kindled its faded taper at the Gospel light, whether furtively or unconsciously taken," and that it "dissembled the obligation, and made a boast of the splendour as though it were originally her own, or were sufficient in her hands for the moral illumination of the world;" is to make an a.s.sertion wholly untenable.[71] Seneca, Epictetus, Aurelius, are among the truest and loftiest of Pagan moralists, yet Seneca ignored the Christians, Epictetus despised, and Aurelius persecuted them. All three, so far as they knew anything about the Christians at all, had unhappily been taught to look upon them as the most detestable sect of what they had long regarded as the most degraded and the most detestable of religions.
[Footnote 71: See for various statements in this pa.s.sage, Josephus, _c.
Apion_. ii. Section 36; Cic. _De Fin_. v. 25; Clem. Alex. _Strom_, 1, xxii. 150, xxv. v. 14; Euseb.; _Prof. Evang_. x. 4, ix. 5, &c.; Lactant.
_Inst. Div_. iv. 2, &c.]
There is something very touching in this fact; but, if there be something very touching, there is also something very encouraging. G.o.d was their G.o.d as well as ours--their Creator, their Preserver, who left not Himself without witness among them; who, as they blindly felt after Him, suffered their groping hands to grasp the hem of His robe; who sent them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with joy and gladness. And His Spirit was with them, dwelling in them, though unseen and unknown, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their hearts, sending gleams of illuminating light through the gross darkness which encompa.s.sed them, comforting their uncertainties, making intercession for them with groaning which cannot be uttered. And more than all, _our_ Saviour was _their_ Saviour, too; He, whom they regarded as a crucified malefactor was their true invisible King; through His righteousness their poor merits were accepted; their inward sicknesses were healed; He whose worship they denounced as an "execrable superst.i.tion" stood supplicating for them at the right hand of the Majesty on high, helping them (though they knew Him not) to crush all that was evil within them, and pleading for them when they persecuted even the most beloved of His saints, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
Yes, they too were all His offspring. Even if they had not been, should we grudge that some of the children"s meat should be given unto dogs?
Shall we deny to these "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" their oracular significance? Shall we be jealous of the ethical loftiness of a Plato or an Aurelius? Shall we be loth to admit that some power of the Spirit of Christ, even mid the dark wanderings of Seneca"s life, kept him still conscious of a n.o.bler and a better way, or that some sweetness of a divine hope inspired the depressions of Epictetus in his slavery?
Shall our eye be evil because G.o.d in His goodness granted the heathen also to know such truths as enabled them "to overcome the allurements of the visible and the terrors of the invisible world?" Yes, if we have of the Christian Church so mean a conception that we look upon it as a mere human society, "set up in the world to defend a certain religion against a certain other religion." But if on the other hand we believe "that it was _a society established by G.o.d as a witness for the true condition of all human beings_, we shall rejoice to acknowledge its members to be what they believed themselves to be,--confessors and martyrs for a truth which they could not fully embrace or comprehend, but which, through their lives and deaths, through the right and wrong acts, the true and false words, of those who understand them least, was to manifest and prove itself. Those who hold this conviction dare not conceal, or misrepresent, or undervalue, any one of those weighty and memorable sentences which are to be found in the _Meditation_ of Marcus Aurelius.
_If they did, they would be underrating a portion of that very truth which the preachers of the Gospel were appointed to set forth_; they would be adopting the error of the philosophical Emperor without his excuse for it. Nor dare they pretend that the Christian teaching had unconsciously imparted to him a portion of its own light while he seemed to exclude it. They will believe that it was G.o.d"s good pleasure that a certain truth should be seized and apprehended by this age, and they will see indications of what that truth was in the efforts of Plutarch to understand the "Daemon" which guided Socrates, in the courageous language of Ignatius, in the bewildering dreams of the Gnostics, in the eagerness of Justin Martyr to prove Christianity a philosophy ... in the apprehension of Christian principles by Marcus Aurelius, and in his hatred of the Christians. From every side they will derive evidence, _that a doctrine and society which were meant for mankind cannot depend upon, the partial views and apprehensions of men, must go on justifying, reconciling, confuting, those views and apprehensions by the demonstration of facts_" [72]
[Footnote 72: Maurice, _Philos. of the First Six Centuries_, p. 37. We venture specially to recommend this weighty and beautiful pa.s.sage to the reader"s serious attention.]
But perhaps some reader will say, What advantage, then, can we gain by studying in Pagan writers truths which are expressed more n.o.bly, more clearly, and infinitely more effectually in our own sacred books? Before answering the question, let me mention the traditional anecdote[73] of the Caliph Omar. When he conquered Alexandria, he was shown its magnificent library, in which were collected untold treasures of literature, gathered together by the zeal, the labour, and the liberality of a dynasty of kings. "What is the good of all those books?"
he said. "They are either in accordance with the Koran, or contrary to it. If the former they are superfluous; if the latter they are pernicious. In either case let them be burnt." Burnt they were, as legend tells; but all the world has condemned the Caliph"s reasoning as a piece of stupid Philistinism and barbarous bigotry. Perhaps the question as to the _use_ of reading Pagan ethics is equally unphilosophical; at any rate, we can spare but very few words to its consideration. The answer obviously is, that G.o.d has spoken to men, [Greek: polymeros kai polytropos], "at sundry times and in divers manners," [74] with a richly variegated wisdom.[75] Sometimes He has taught truth by the voice of Hebrew prophets, sometimes by the voice of Pagan philosophers. And _all_ His voices demand our listening ear. If it was given to the Jew to speak with diviner insight and intenser power, it is given to the Gentile also to speak at times with a large and lofty utterance, and we may learn truth from men of alien lips and another tongue. They, too, had the dream, the vision, the dark saying upon the harp, the "daughter of a voice," the mystic flashes upon the graven gems. And such truths come to us with a singular force and freshness; with a strange beauty as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated manhood; with a new power of conviction from their originality of form, which, because it is less familiar to us, is well calculated to arrest our attention after it has been paralysed by familiar repet.i.tions. We cannot afford to lose these heathen testimonies to Christian truth; or to hush the glorious utterances of Muse and Sibyl which have justly outlived "the drums and tramplings of a hundred triumphs." We may make them infinitely profitable to us. If St. Paul quotes Aratus, and Menander, and Epimenides,[76] and perhaps more than one lyrical melody besides, with earnest appreciation,--if the inspired Apostle could both learn himself and teach others out of the utterances of a Cretan philosopher and an Attic comedian, we may be sure that many of Seneca"s apophthegams would have filled him with pleasure, and that he would have been able to read Epictetus and Aurelius with the same n.o.ble admiration which made him see with thankful emotion that memorable altar TO THE UNKNOWN G.o.d.
[Footnote 73: Now known to be unhistorical.]
[Footnote 74: Heb. i. 1.]
[Footnote 75: [Greek: polypoikilos dophia].]
[Footnote 76: See Acts xvii. 28; 1 Cor.; t.i.t. i. 12.]
Let us then make a brief and final sketch of the three great Stoics whose lives we have been contemplating, with a view to summing up their specialties, their deficiencies, and the peculiar relations to, or divergences from, Christian truth, which their writings present to us.
"Seneca saepe noster," "Seneca, often our own," is the expression of Tertullian, and he uses it as an excuse for frequent references to his works. Yet if, of the three, he be most like Christianity in particular pa.s.sages, he diverges most widely from it in his general spirit.
He diverges from Christianity in many of his modes of regarding life, and in many of his most important beliefs. What, for instance, is his main conception of the Deity? Seneca is generally a Pantheist. No doubt he speaks of G.o.d"s love and goodness, but with him G.o.d is no personal living Father, but the soul of the universe--the fiery, primaeval, eternal principle which transfuses an inert, and no less eternal, matter, and of which our souls are, as it were, but divine particles or pa.s.sing sparks. "G.o.d," he says, "is Nature, is Fate, is Fortune, is the Universe, is the all-pervading Mind. He cannot change the substance of the universe, He is himself under the power of Destiny, which is uncontrollable and immutable. It is not G.o.d who rolls the thunder, it is Fate. He does not rejoice in His works, but is identical with them." In fact, Seneca would have heartily adopted the words of Pope:
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and G.o.d the soul."
Though there may be a vague sense in which those words may be admitted and explained by Christians, yet, in the mind of Seneca, they led to conclusions directly opposed to those of Christianity. With him, for instance, the wise man is the _equal_ of G.o.d; not His adorer, not His servant, not His suppliant, but His a.s.sociate, His relation. He differs from G.o.d in time alone. Hence all prayer is needless he says, and the forms of external worship are superfluous and puerile. It is foolish to beg for that which you can impart to yourself. "What need is there of _vows_? Make _yourself_ happy." Nay, in the intolerable arrogance which marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, the wise man is under certain aspects placed even higher than G.o.d--higher than G.o.d Himself--because G.o.d is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise man is superior to their anguish; and because G.o.d is good of necessity, but the wise man from choice. This wretched and inflated paradox occurs in Seneca"s treatise _On Providence_, and in the same treatise he glorifies suicide, and expresses a doubt as to the immortality of the soul.
Again, the two principles on which Seneca relied as the basis of all his moral system are: first, the principle that we ought to follow Nature; and, secondly, the supposed perfectibility of the ideal man.
1. Now, of course, if we explain this precept of "following Nature" as Juvenal has explained it, and say that the voice of Nature is always coincident with the voice of philosophy--if we prove that our real nature is none other than the dictate of our highest and most n.o.bly trained reason, and if we can establish the fact that every deed of cruelty, of shame, of l.u.s.t, or of selfishness, is essentially _contrary_ to our nature--then we may say with Bishop Butler, that the precept to "follow Nature" is "a manner of speaking not loose and undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly just and true." But how complete must be the system, how long the preliminary training, which alone can enable us to find any practical value, any appreciable aid to a virtuous life, in a dogma such as this! And, in the hands of Seneca, it becomes a very empty formula. He entirely lacked the keen insight and dialectic subtlety of such a writer as Bishop Butler; and, in his explanation of this Stoical shibboleth, any real meaning which it may possess is evaporated into a gorgeous mist of confused declamation and splendid commonplace.
2. Nor is he much more fortunate with his ideal man. This pompous abstraction presents us with a conception at once ambitious and sterile.
The Stoic wise man is a sort of moral Phoenix, impossible and repulsive.
He is intrepid in dangers, free from all pa.s.sion, happy in adversity, calm in the storm; he alone knows how to live, because he alone knows how to die; he is the master of the world, because he is master of himself, and the equal of G.o.d; he looks down upon everything with sublime imperturbability, despising the sadnesses of humanity and smiling with irritating loftiness at all our hopes and all our fears.
But, in another sketch of this faultless and unpleasant monster, Seneca presents us, not the proud athlete who challenges the universe and is invulnerable to all the stings and arrows of pa.s.sion or of fate, but a hero in the serenity of absolute triumph, more tender, indeed, but still without desires, without pa.s.sions, without needs, who can fell no pity, because pity is a weakness which disturbs his sapient calm! Well might the eloquent Bossuet exclaim, as he read of these chimerical perfections, "It is to take a tone too lofty for feeble and mortal men.
But, O maxims truly pompous! O affected insensibility! O false and imaginary wisdom! which fancies itself strong because it is hard, and generous because it is puffed up! How are these principles opposed to the modest simplicity of the Saviour of souls, who, in our Gospel contemplating His faithful ones in affliction, confesses that they will be saddened by it! _Ye shall weep and lament_." Shall Christians be jealous of such wisdom as Stoicism did really attain, when they compare this dry and bloodless ideal with Him who wept over Jerusalem and mourned by the grave of Lazarus, who had a mother and a friend, who disdained none, who pitied all, who humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross, whose divine excellence we cannot indeed attain because He is G.o.d, but whose example we can imitate because He was very man?[77]
[Footnote 77: See Martha, _Les Moralistes_, p. 50; Aubertin, _Seneque et St. Paul_ p. 250.]
The one grand aim of the life and philosophy of Seneca was _Ease_. It is the topic which constantly recurs in his books _On a Happy Life, On Tranquility of Mind, On Anger_, and _On the Ease_ and _On the Firmness of the Sage_. It is the pitiless apathy, the stern repression, of every form of emotion, which was constantly glorified as the aim of philosophy. It made Stilpo exclaim, when he had lost wife, property, and children, that he had lost nothing, because he carried in his own person everything which he possessed. It led Seneca into all that is most unnatural, all that is most fantastic, and all that is least sincere in his writings; it was the bitter source of disgrace and failure in his life. It comes out worst of all in his book _On Anger_. Aristotle had said that "Anger was a good servant but a bad master;" Plato had recognized the immense value and importance of the irascible element in the moral const.i.tution. Even Christian writers, in spite of Bishop Butler, have often lost sight of this truth, and have forgotten that to a n.o.ble nature "the hate of hate" and the "scorn of scorn" are as indispensable as "the love of love." But Seneca almost gets angry himself at the very notion of the wise man being angry and indignant even against moral evil. No, he must not get angry, because it would disturb his sublime calm; and, if he allowed himself to be angry at wrong-doing, he would have to be angry all day long. This practical Epicureanism, this idle acquiescence in the supposed incurability of evil, poisoned all Seneca"s career. "He had tutored himself," says Professor Maurice, "to endure personal injuries without indulging an anger; he had tutored himself to look upon all moral evil without anger.
If the doctrine is sound and the discipline desirable, we must be content to take the whole result of them. If we will not do that, we must resolve to hate oppression and wrong, _even at the cost of philosophical composure"_ But repose is not to be our aim:--
"We have no right to bliss, No t.i.tle from the G.o.ds to welfare and repose."
It is one of the truths which seems to me most needed in the modern religious world, that the type of a Christian"s virtue must be very miserable, and ordinary, and ineffectual, if he does not feel his whole soul burn within him with an almost implacable moral indignation at the sight of cruelty and injustice, of Pharisaic faithlessness and social crimes.
I have thus freely criticised the radical defects of Stoicism, so far as Seneca is its legitimate exponent; but I cannot consent to leave him with the language of depreciation, and therefore here I will once more endorse what an anonymous writer has said of him: "An unconscious Christianity covers all his sentiments. If the fair fame of the man is sullied, the aspiration to a higher life cannot be denied to the philosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted Stoicism sometimes sounds through the n.o.bler music, it still leaves the truer melody vibrating on the ear."
2. If Seneca sought for EASE, the grand aim of Epictetus was FREEDOM, of Marcus Aurelius was SELF-GOVERNMENT. This difference of aim characterises their entire philosophy, though all three of them are filled with precepts which arise from the Stoical contempt of opinion, of fortune, and of death. "Epictetus, the slave, with imperturbable calm, voluntarily strikes off the desire for all those blessings of which fortune had already deprived him. Seneca, who lived in the Court, fenced himself beforehand against misfortune with the spirit of a man of the world and the emphasis of a master of eloquence. Marcus Aurelius, at the zenith of human power--having nothing to dread except his pa.s.sions, and finding nothing above him except immutable necessity,--surveys his own soul and meditates especially on the eternal march of things. The one is the resigned slave, who neither desires nor fears; the other, the great lord, who has everything to lose; the third, finally, the emperor, who is dependent only on himself and upon G.o.d."
Of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we shall have very little to say by way of summary, for they show no inconsistencies and very few of the imperfections which characterise Seneca"s ideal of the Stoic philosophy.
The "moral peddling," the pedagogic display, the puerile ostentation, the ant.i.thetic brilliancy, which we have had to point out in Seneca, are wanting in them. The picture of the _inner_ life, indeed, of Seneca, his efforts after self-discipline, his untiring asceticism, his enthusiasm for all that he esteems holy and of good report-this picture, marred as it is by rhetoric and vain self-conceit, yet "stands out in n.o.ble contrast to the swinishness of the Campanian villas, and is, in its complex entirety, very sad and affecting." And yet we must admit, in the words of the same writer, that when we go from Seneca to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, "it is going from the florid to the severe, from varied feeling to the impersonal simplicity of the teacher, often from idle rhetoric to devout earnestness." As far as it goes, the morality of these two great Stoics is entirely n.o.ble and entirely beautiful. If there be even in Epictetus some pa.s.sing and occasional touch of Stoic arrogance and Stoic apathy; if there be in Marcus Aurelius a depth and intensity of sadness which shows how comparatively powerless for comfort was a philosophy which glorified suicide, which knew but little of immortality, and which lost in vague Pantheism the unspeakable blessing of realizing a personal relation to a personal G.o.d and Father--there is yet in both of them enough and more than enough to show that in all ages and in all countries they who have sought for G.o.d have found Him, that they have attained to high principles of thought and to high standards of action--that they have been enabled, even in the thick darkness, resolutely to place their feet at least on the lowest rounds of that ladder of sunbeams which winds up through the darkness to the great Father of Lights.
And yet the very existence of such men is in itself a significant comment upon the Scriptural decision that "the world by wisdom knew not G.o.d." For how many like them, out of all the records of antiquity, is it possible for us to count? Are there five men in the whole circle of ancient history and ancient literature to whom we could, without a sense of incongruity, accord the t.i.tle of "holy?" When we have mentioned Socrates, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, I hardly know of another.
_Just_ men there were in mult.i.tudes--men capable of high actions; men eminently worthy to be loved; men, I doubt not, who, when the children of the kingdom shall be rejected, shall be gathered from the east and the west with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the kingdom of heaven.
Yes, _just_ men in mult.i.tudes; but how many _righteous_, how many _holy_? Some, doubtless, whom we do not know, whose names were never written, even for a few years, on the records of mankind--men and women in unknown villages and humble homes, "the faithful who were not famous." We do not doubt that there were such--but were they _relatively_ numerous? If those who rose above the level of the mult.i.tude--if those whom some form of excellence, and often of virtue, elevated into the reverence of their fellows--present to us a few examples of stainless life, can we hope that a tolerable ideal of sanct.i.ty was attained by any large proportion of the ordinary myriads?
Seeing that the dangerous lot of the majority was cast amid the weltering sea of popular depravity, can we venture to hope that many of them succeeded in reaching some green island of purity, integrity, and calm? We can hardly think it; and yet, in the dispensation of the Kingdom of Heaven we see such a condition daily realized. Not only do we see many of the eminent, but also countless mult.i.tudes of the lowly and obscure, whose common lives are, as it were, transfigured with a light from heaven. Unhappy, indeed, is he who has not known such men in person, and whose hopes and habits have not caught some touch of radiance reflected from the n.o.bility and virtue of lives like these. The thought has been well expressed by the author of _Ecce h.o.m.o_, and we may well ask with him, "If this be so, has Christ failed, or can Christianity die?"
No, it has not failed; it cannot die; for the saving knowledge which it has imparted is the most inestimable blessing which G.o.d has granted to our race. We have watched philosophy in its loftiest flight, but that flight rose as far above the range of the Pagan populace as Ida or Olympus rises above the plain: and even the topmost crests of Ida and Olympus are immeasurably below the blue vault, the body of heaven in its clearness, to which it has been granted to some Christians to attain. As regards the mult.i.tude, philosophy had no influence over the heart and character; "it was sectarian, not universal; the religion of the few, not of the many. It exercised no creative power over political or social life; it stood in no such relation to the past as the New Testament to the Old. Its best thoughts were but views and aspects of the truth; there was no centre around which they moved, no divine life by which they were impelled; they seemed to vanish and flit in uncertain succession of light." But Christianity, on the other hand, glowed with a steady and unwavering brightness; it not only swayed the hearts of individuals by stirring them to their utmost depths, but it moulded the laws of nations, and regenerated the whole condition of society. It gave to mankind a fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect example in His life, a powerful motive in His love, an all sufficient comfort in the life of immortality made sure and certain to us by His Resurrection and Ascension. But if without this sanction, and example, and motive, and comfort, the pagans could learn to do His will,--if, amid the gross darkness through which glitters the degraded civilization of imperial Rome, an Epictetus and an Aurelius could live blameless lives in a cell and on a throne, and a Seneca could practise simplicity and self-denial in the midst of luxury and pride--how much loftier should be both the zeal and the attainments of us to whom G.o.d has spoken by His Son? What manner of men ought we to be? If Tyre and Sidon and Sodom shall rise in the judgment to bear witness against Chorazin and Bethsaida, may not the pure lives of these great Seekers after G.o.d add a certain emphasis of condemnation to the vice, the pettiness, the mammon-worship of many among us to whom His love, His nature, His attributes have been revealed with a clearness and fullness of knowledge for which kings and philosophers have sought indeed and sought earnestly, but sought in vain?