Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

98 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMthe whole inner man, his living in accordance withnature or reason, was analogous to the Christian doingall his works in charity, so the one rational nature ofmankind, uniting the whole race in one with itself,and with " the divine," was analogous to the ChristianCity of God. In it Our Lord, the Second Head ofhe race, unites as companions with Himself andbrethren all who preserve the divine gift of grace,which He has merited for them and bestowed on them6. It was part of the Stoic conception of the universalreason governing the world to lay the greateststress upon the evidences of design which every partof nature supplies. They studied physics with aview to final causes. A chain of cause and effectnever broken in any single instance through allthe multitudinous processes of mind and matter theycalled Providence. That this Providence acted everwith perfect intelligence was part of their conception.The proofs of design and purpose which they saw allaround them in the visible course of nature, in thechanges of the seasons, in the orderly arrangement ofthe heavenly bodies, in the structure of animals, infact, in everything without and within them, theyconsidered an irrefragable assurance of this Providence.The Stoic argument on this head may be seen exhibitedwith a skill and a detail which a Christianmoralist might admire in Cicero's treatise of thenature of the gods. This doctrine was part of theSocratic legacy, and came to them besides throughPlato and Aristotle. But as set forth bv them itbore their own special impress upon it. The evolutionof cause and effect, revealing to them the boundlessintellect of the universe, was also a necessaryprocess. It admitted of no single break; it could be