The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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252 THE STOIC CREED
This is my work ;
this I do, nor will I
relinquish this
post, so long- as am I permitted, and you
I exhort to
join in the same song" (Diss. i. 16).
Ill
In all these respects, then, Stoicism may
be con
fidently affirmed to have perennial value ; and, in
particular, its ethico-religious interpretation
of the
universe, not only stands as a notable landmark in
the history of philosophy, but possesses the illumi
nating and inspiriting power of a great truth, to
which modern philosophy
is
again reverting, and
which, one would fain believe, will continue to exert
an influence so long as sane thought and right reason
retain their hold on mankind. And, coming down to
practice, when we look at such treatises as the Dis
sertations and the Encheiridion of Epictetus and the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, as aids to practical
ethics, we see that these can never die : the wisdom
that is enshrined in them is for all ages. If, in the
words of Farrar, Manual "the [of Epictetus] was to
antiquity what the Imitatio of Thomas a Kempis was
to later times, and what Woodhead s Whole Duty of
Man, or Wilberforce s Practical View of Christianity,
have been to large sections of modern Englishmen ;
so also it is the case that "no
systematic treatise of
morals so simply beautiful was ever composed [as the
Encheiridion], and to this day the best Christian may
study it, not with interest only, but with real advantage.
It is like the voice of the Sibyl, which, uttering things
simple, and unperfumed, and unadorned, by God s grace
reacheth through innumerable years (Seekers af God,
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