Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 16but a change of front betokening the approach of anew enemy. Plutarch and Epictetus are not whollylegitimate successors of Cicero. A light has arisenin the East, the reflection of which is seen on theirfaces, though their hearts refused to receive thewarmth of its beams.But th Itered t f those who professed dtaugtr ilosophy is itself a the hangwhich ,k P th f« f the wholed class. During the civil wars, which bh Caesar's passage of the Eubicon, and ended with,h establish f monarchy by th Jt fActium. indiffi religion on had b h Pvailin P h times. So it had dduring the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Thm f th I d turnin^-Doint liehe reign of Nero. Already in that great breakp which followed his death, and which ppedflames h Cap while it d with desttion th 1 fab th nip h widelyit temper found to prevail. M cesare t toward h E E rites u re-ligions are inInstead of indifference toreligion there is a longing for satisfaction in it. Bythe end of the first century after Christ this currenthas set in with force, and it continues to the timeof Constantine. Religiousness in a thousand differentshapes, with a strong leaning to Egyptian and Syriandeiti es, running in its excess into magical rites andtheurgy, takes the place of that apathy which is somarked a feature of the classic times of Romanliterature. Horace, that " spare and infrequent wor-shipper of the gods," who too often verifies his own"confession that he was a porker of the sty of