Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 5 Imen ruled by reason as the common inheritance ofall, the standard of their progress and the bond oftheir union, which Cicero had so grandly imaged out,clothing his Stoic teachers in the stately toga of theRoman tongue, found little favour in the eyes of thoseto whom the dominion of the world was only preciousfor the abundance of peace and the refinements ofscientific vice. Such was the temper which rose toits utmost height in the twenty-seven years duringwhich Claudius and Nero ruled, when the utter corruptionof human society filled the few who thoughtwith blank despair.1 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^IYet precisely this people andtheir rulers were chosen by the Divine Providence tobe the scene of that work of Peter within the wallsof Rome, which has shown itself to us as alike withouta parallel in the ages before it, and without, as itseemed, any aptitude for accepting it in the populationwhere it was carried on.For the work of Peter was pre-eminently a work offaith in the unseen, a disregard of the temporal for thesake of the eternal. But if we take the line of writersfrom Cicero to Tacitus, which includes all the greatnames of Latin literature, this is precisely that whichis wanting to them. From the first to the last theyspeak as men without faith in the popular religionwhich they had inherited; and likewise without anyfirm mental grasp of a power superior to man rulingthe world with wisdom and justice; and equally withoutany clear assurance of a personal subsistence of-theindividual man after death. Their uncertainty aboutGod and Providence draws with it an equal uncertaintyabout their own destiny. They were citizens of anempire holding the fairest regions of the earth, formed1 Dollinger, Heid. und Jud. p. 576.LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE