Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

96 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMdition of our birth has attached us. This may beAthens, or Carthage, or any other city, belonging notto all, but to certain men. Some men at the sametime labour for both these commonwealths, the greaterand the smaller, some for the smaller only, some forthe greater only. Still we can be servants to thisgreater commonwealth in retirement, and perhapsbetter there, as in the inquiry, what is virtue, one ormany ? What does a man engaged in these contemplationsdo for God ? He prevents works so greatbeing without a witness."1 Marcus Aurelius especiallyhas set forth this view in striking language." My nature is rational and social, and my city andcountry, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but sofar as I am a man, it is the world. The things thenwhich are useful to these cities are alone useful tome." And again, " If our intellectual part is common,the reason also, in respect of which we are rationalbeings, is common. If this is so, common also is thereason which commands us what to do and what notto do. If this is so, there is a common law also: ifthis is so, we are fellow-citizens: if this is so, we aremembers of some political community: if this is so,the world is in a manner a State. For of what otherpolitical community will any one say that the wholehuman race are members ? " And so he calls man acitizen of the highest city, of which all other cities arelike families, and such a world is a body, of which eachman is not a portion only, but a member.2In like manner, f then, * as for the individual the innerlife is the Stoic's kingdom, so further he exalts thewhole race of man, as possessing reason in common1 Seneca, Epist. Ixvii- M. Aurelius, vi. 44 ; member, /xAos.