Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 121God, though these two latter needs lay hidden in thefrequentation of oracles and mysteries. On the contrarythe outcome of the three centuries and a halfwhich intervene between the death of Aristotleandthe publication of the Christian Faith was that philosophicthought had thrown itself into three channels.Each of them terminated in negation of these primarytruths to which even the polytheistic worship scornedby the philosopher bore witness. For the Stoicism,which we have seen described in the pages of Seneca,admitted indeed one only power as ruling the universe.It was a force impervious to prayer and sacrifice, aninterminable series of cause and effect, in which thelaws of necessity belonging to matter were applied - tomind, nay, the very distinction of mind and matterwas done away with. In it providence was the courseof the world, and God was nature, and man a particleof nature. If the nobler and firmer minds amongthe Romans were attracted to this philosophy by itstheory of duty, and of man's dignity as possessingreason, a much larger number, it is believed, werecontented with the Epicurean view of things, that is,with the conclusion that there were no gods who concernedthemselves with the course of human actions,no providence in short, no judge, rewarder or punisherof man. They were famous, it is said, for thecultivation of friendship with each other. They werecomposed chiefly of the wealthy class, and the kernelof their philosophy consisted in making the most ofthe goods of life, and the least of its evils. In factwe should probably do them no wrong if we said thatthe only thing they worshipped was the civilisation ofthe day. The other tendency which existed in thethinking world at this time was that of the Sceptics.