The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

"
254 THE STOIC CREED
who "made of one blood all nations of men," left all
nations of men, save a very few, and all individuals,
save a miserable minority, to sit in utter darkness and
to generate only falsehood and error. The thought
is utterly derogatory to our idea of God, and more
especially as that is presented to us in Christ, which
will not allow our shutting ourselves out from inter
course and sympathy with the great intellectual past
and from the noble souls that illuminated former times
and alien lands, and put posterity under an undying
obligation. We cut ourselves off from history, and
we cut ourselves off from the fulness of the Christian
conception alike, if we do not appreciate the high
teaching of the Stoics, which, as a matter of fact, led
up to and served in measure to mould the ethics of the
New Testament, and if we cannot include in "the
communion of saints
and noble thinkers
those pure
(pagans, as we grimly call them) who strove so hard
for the cause of righteousness on the earth, enriching
humanity, and made the advent of the later civilization
possible. Here, as strongly as anywhere, comes home
to us the sentiment that "truth is catholic, and nature