Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 8 Iing to the genuine Stoic sense, always referred byEpictetus to the universe as a whole, and to the individualonly so far as it is determined by its connectionwith the whole. If he exhorts to devotion to the willof God, that in his meaning falls in with the requirementthat man should suit himself to the order ofnature.Now to estimate all this language at its right value,we must ever remember what sort of a God it is towhom the Stoic shall so look up. And as to this,for Epictetus as for all his school, God and the worldare one and the same thing. Thus he says : " Allthings obey and serve the universe; earth and seaand sun and stars and plants and animals ; our bodyalso, in its sickness and its health, in its youth andin its age, and in its transition through all othhanges. It is reasonable then not to set that whichis in our power, the judgment, to struggle aloneagainst the universe. For this is strong, and superior,and better minded towards us, ruling us together withthe whole." " For such the nature of the world bothwas and is and shall be, and it is not possible forwhat takes place to be otherwise than as it is. Andin this change and succession not men only share,but all other living things upon earth, nay, and divinethings too." 2 In God and in Providence thus understood,Epictetus is a firm believer. How should henot feel the highest interest in that of which he isa portion and an effluence. Man must be consciousof his own higher nature: from this thought hedraws the sense of his dignity and moral obligation,and independence of all outward things. He resignshimself absolutely to that of which he is a part.1 Zeller, iv. 666, 4. 2 Frag. 136, 134.VOL. III. FIJBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE