Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

I 10 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbefore man as personal acts of God, and likewise asthe price of the sonship bestowed on him. Christianmorality, having a divine model for its rule, is itself animitation of these acts: Christian life is based uponthem. The sonship itself is the working of God inthe human will, and the human action, and the twocomprehend the reason deified by the Stoic. Butdeath, which ends all to the Stoic, puts the Christianin possession of the infinite good, which consists in thepersonal enjoyment of a personal god.Reviewing Stoicism in its course from the beginningof the reign of Claudius to the end of that ofMarcus Aurelius, we may note that at the first periodit is that system of philosophic thought which hasmost possession of cultured Latin society. In thecourse of these one hundred and forty years it losesthis ascendency. Another movement of the Greekmind, which we shall next have to trace, and whichstarts from about the beginning of this time, is preferredto it.If we try to measure its results in this period, theywill seem to be that it produced three such men asMusonius, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius; and fewand far between such senators as Thrasea and Rusti-cus. Lucan was its poet. Whatever of dignity andopposition to tyranny existed in the Senate of Nero,whatever in Persius and Juvenal we find concerning amoral end of life, the value of man, and his dearnessthe gods, with the emptiness of human things, isdrawn from this source. The elder and youngePliny, and Tacitus, belong more or less to this schoolBut we can only trace its effect on individuals. Themost notable intellectual work which Neostoicism canshow are the sayings of Epictetus, collected aud handed