Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS. 55
of the teaching of the great masters, which we have noted
so conspicuously in Epictetus. Philosophy was aiming at
a moral regeneration of society ;
it saw dimly enough that
that was the one thing needful. Its society was a very
limited clique in the great world ;
and its salvation was at
root but a pedant s dream. And yet it occupied a very
definite and important place in the great scheme of human
development. It awakened a keen desire which it could
not satisfy, and like the friars of St. Francis at a later age,
it created a thirst for a living gospel. It was not at heart
antagonistic to Christianity;
it cleared and laid bare the field
for the sower of the living germs of the truth. Clemens
Alexandrinus says that God had three covenants with men,
the covenant of the Law, the covenant of Philosophy, and
the covenant of the Gospel. And there is
deep
truth in
this ;
inasmuch as God s ordinance for the heathen world that
it should seek the Lord, if haply they might
feel after
him and find him, was as essential though
not so visible
a step in His education of the world, as the giving of the
Law. The Law in one way, Philosophy in another, laid
bare the great want of humanity, a power
from heaven to
heal, to quicken, and to save. What the Law could not
do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God accomplished
by the Gospel. And so with equal truth we may say that
what the wisdom of the wise could not do, in that it was
weak through its inability to lay hold on the will in man,
the Gospel accomplished, and redeemed them who were
under Philosophy, sighing for the redemption, as well as
them who were under the Law/ watching and waiting for
the salvation of Israel. Philosophy led the world up to
the point where it could lead it no longer, and with mute
voice invoked the help of a higher hand.
Aulus Gellius paints a very striking portrait of Taurus, a
philosopher at Athens in the 2nd century,
about the time