Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

WHY PHILOSOPHY FAILED. 89
elements, and then again about conscious existence after
death; sometimes, though feebly, about sin, and sometimes
about the force that is working through all, saint and sinner
alike, the great harmony of life; here about tender pity for
the poor, the maimed, the wretched, there about all calamities
being things indifferent, which a man should steel himself to
reckon no calamities at all
;
on one occasion about gladness
in
all the gifts of Providence, and on another about stern and
persistent defiance of Fate. And the uncertainty lay
in the
organ ; it was inherent in the philosopher
s method ;
in the
nature of things there was no possibility
that if it had been
left to work with the stage all to itself, it could have spoken
a clear word of certainty
Philosophy was entirely powerless
to men about the unseen verities.
to combine, confederate,
and command men. There was no Power above them all
which commanded the assent of their understandings, and
which spoke with authority alike about truth and about life.
They were scattered stars in the sky, with no visible order
and no particular
function in relation to the great mass of
mankind.
The doctrine of Christ came like the sun, and then
everyone felt that he lived in an orderly and divinely governed
world. The philosophers devoted themselves with honest inten
tion to minister to human want and pain, and to be at hand
with a seasonable word on all the great occasions of life.
But
all depended on the individual thinkers ;
there was no authority
above them to commit this ministry as a charge to them, and
to raise up in each generation
a kindred band. There was
nothing in Philosophy which could create a new organ of
ministry,
and sustain it as it worked in the world in an
ever-widening circle, in concert with the ever-widening per
ception of human need. The philosophers rose and taught
and passed away, each, as it were, at his own will. In the
Church men found an institution which could be depended
upon for the supply of that service for which the world was