Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

74 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMIn the principles nevertheless which lie at thebasis of his teaching he is undeniably Stoic. Suchare his conception of God, of the human mind orsoul, of reason. The participation of the divineby the human, on which the whole of the prevailingdoctrine is grounded, is entirely naturaland pagan, Stoic in an eminent degree. If weadd that he is a praiser of suicide, and a disbelieverof personal existence after death, we must admit thatSeneca is far enough from holding Christian principleson the most important problems of human life andduty. And yet, this being so, his expressions are oftensurprisingly Christian. Fifty passages at least in hiswritings have been quoted so remarkably similar topassages of Scripture, especially in the New Testament,as to suggest that he had seen what we are so familiarwith. Now let us add to the above an unquestionablefact. During the last twenty-three years of Seneca'slife, a Christian community had been formed in Home,and to that community one person, at least, of thehighest nobility, Pomponia Grsecina, the wife ofPlautius, is known to have belonged. Many moreKoman nobles are, with good reason, believed to havebeen converted. Seneca lived long enough to witnessthe immolation of that vast multitude by Nero'scruelty, which furnished to Roman eyes the first instanceof men dying for a faith. We have preservedfor us, in his own words, a description of the goodman which would at least vividly express the sufferingsundergone by the Christians in the gardens of Nero.1" This," says he, " is the man of worth, who, when he1 Passages relating to sufferings strangely akin to those inflicted onthe Christian martyrs are Epist. xiv. p. 29, Ixxviii. p. 199, Ixxxv.p. 231.