Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

122 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIf they had no teacher to set forth their principles inSeneca's day, as we have heard him assert, there isevery reason to believe that there were many whoseonly conclusion about the most important problems ofhuman life was that there is no such thing as certitude.Perhaps these cut at the root of worship andall that belongs to it at least as deeply as either Stoicsor Epicureans.From the point of view in which we are nowregarding them these three philosophies are merelybranches growing on one stem. The denying spiritpervades them all. Far from developing, they hadnot discerned the good still existing in that complexsystem of rites and the belief embedded in them, outof which the ritual sprung. Far from purifying religionof its corruptions, they had extinguished itsessence, the sacred fire of piety in the human heart, thehuman person's recognition of the Creator and Fatherof all. They had not merely degenerated from Socratesin his tender acknowledgment of an all-wise overrulingprovidence: they were far behind Homer, who proclaimeda father of gods and men, the judge andre warder of human actions.But at the same time that the cultured classes hadassumed this attitude of coldness, unbelief, or evendirect hostility to the established worship, which thename of Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics conveys, andwhich the still existing literature reflects, it must notbe forgotten that this worship was in full possessionof the mass of society.1 The poor and the rich, thecultured and the uncultured, formed then as now,and much more than now, two worlds. If a portionof the rich and cultured then exhibited only an out-1 This is shown by Friedlaender, Sittcnyeschichtc Roms, vol. iii. ch. 4.