The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

PRESENT-DAY VALUE OF STOICISM 253
p. 222). And if so with Epictetus, so too with Aurelius :
not even the best Christian need despise the high
1
ethical teaching of the which fair-minded
Meditations^
thinkers like John Stuart Mill (see his posthumous
essay on the Utility of Religion] have deemed worthy
of being brought into comparison with the Sermon on
the Mount, all the more so that the author s life was
conscientiously moulded on his own precepts. As well
despise the Bookof Proverbs, or the Epistle of St. James,
or the exhortations of St. Paul, as the Meditations.
Nor can the philosophical writings of Seneca be
other than helpful to high-toned people, eager about
right living.
The problems of life are too complex and man s
interest in them too intense to permit of our neglect
ing, much less despising, any serious effort, in what
soever age and from whatsoever quarter, to cope with
them ;
and the issues are too momentous and too farreaching,
to justify illiberality in any form. Wisdom
is not the monopoly of any century, or of any person,
or of any people, but "is
justified
of all her children."
Moreover, to theists, the notion of a progressive revela
tion (place and time being essential moments)
is so
necessary to the adequate conception of the Divinity,
that it forbids our restricting the divine revelation to
a single age or section of mankind to a single school
or country. Christian theism is even more emphatic.
For if Christ is the "
Light of the world," it would be
a very feeble rendering of that supreme truth to main
tain that the Light did not shine in the far past, as in
the near present, nor there, but only here, and that He