Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 77, No less the influence which the Stoic teaching andthe Christian respectively exercised upon the world wasin proportion " to this difference between the teachers.The noble whose millions were lent on usury while hepreached forbearance, and extolled the mind of thesage immovable amid poverty and suffering, was readby the rich and leisurely, but did not convert them ;the Christians who acted and suffered propagated theirdoctrine and formed an universal people upon its preceptsthrough the course of eighteen centuries.Stoicism in its further course pursued the like directionwith that given to it by Seneca : the features onlyin which he differed from his school's original characterbecame still more marked. We have a most distin-guished representative of it in Musonius Kufus, aRoman knight, younger by about twenty-five yearsthan Seneca, the friend of Thrasea, Rubellius Plautus,Soranus. He has the great advantage over Senecathat his life was in harmony throughout with histeaching. More decidedly yet than Seneca he restrictsphilosophy to its moral purpose. Men in the morapoint of view are to be dealt with as patients whd for their cure a constant medicinal treatmentPhilosophy alone can supply this. It is the only roadto virtue, and therefore every one, the female sex included,must have to do with it. On the other hand,virtue is the sole object and matter of philosophy,which is nothing else but the consistent study of alife in accordance with duty. Philosopher and uprightman are equivalent terms. Virtue is much morematter of practice than of learning, since vicious habits1 I have drawn the following notice of Musonius from the accountof Zeller, iv, 651-660, which is carefully'put together from the fragmentspreserved of him.i