Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

NEOSTOICISM AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 75sees death near, is not disturbed, as at the sight of anew thing. Whether he has to undergo tortures inevery part of his body, or draw in the flame with hismouth, or stretch out his hands on the gibbet, he askshimself not what he has to suffer, but how well." Theletters to Lucilius, written in the last years of Seneca'slife, when he had withdrawn in great part from theCourt of Nero, and was in disfavour, contain the mostremarkable passages of his humanitarian doctrine.Now the easiest solution of the problem presented tous by this doctrine is that the philosopher, who allhis life long had foraged everywhere for information,and borrowed from every store, and is the largest retailerof the views and opinions of others, had becomeacquainted with some of the teachers of the sect whichhad planted itself at Kome under his eyes. If, asChristian antiquity believed, he met and conversedwith St. Paul, he would find in the author of theEpistle to the Ephesians, and to Philemon, one withwhose doctrine he could in many points sympathise.St. Paul, indeed, taught that men were to be treatedwith fraternal kindness, even if they were slaves, notonly because God had made all nations of one blood,as he declared to the philosophers themselves in themain seat of their doctrine, but because He had redeemedall by the blood of the Son of God. Thisfolly of the Cross may have been too great for " anillustrious senator of the Roman people "* to accept,while he was touched with the beauty of the teachingwhich derived its inspiration from the Cross. Maynot Seneca have been one of the first to do what somany have done after him; may he not have admiredthe morality of the Gospel without accepting its con-1 St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, vi. 10.