Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

76 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMditions; have remained a Stoic in his principles andpractice, while he appropriated what pleased him, andso far as it would agree with these principles, out ofthe Apostle's love of man ? However this may be, itis certain that the doctrine of human brotherhood inits practical application to all men, even to the slave,was not set forth at Rome and by Roman writers untilHe who had become man's brother had stretched outHis hands to embrace all nations on the gibbet ofCalvary. And it is no less certain that all which ismost attractive in Seneca's writings as to kindliness,forbearance, and brotherly affection, while it appears inhis teaching as a mere work of fancy, a mere decorationof rhetoric, h;id been practised in the city wherehe wrote, and under his eyes, as part of a coherentdoctrine, by a number of men at the cost of their life.For the difference of the guise in which the doctrineappeared on the one side and the other must be notedas a material part of the fact. One of the richest ofthe Romans, in the midst of a sumptuous retirement,out of a palace sparkling with luxury, writes letters toa friend upon the equality of men, the right of slavesto compassion, the duty of brotherly kindness. Alreadywhile he wrote, all that he suggested and much morehad been done. . A spiritual bond had connected togethersome of the noblest Romans and the meanestof slaves in the common hope of an eternal life, wasleading them to run counter to the general tendenciesof the age in which they lived, to face danger and distressand death in the direst form. How far removedwas the talk of the Stoic, which incurred no dangerami cost no sacrifice, from the life of the Christian,which might end in the Mamertine prison, or the fierytorment of the Vatican gardens ! ,