"First as to yourself. You must be absolutely resigned to the will of

God. You must conquer every passion, abrogate every desire. Your life

must be transparently open to the view of God and man. Other men conceal

their actions with houses, and doors, and darkness, and guards; your

house, your door, your darkness, must be a sense of holy shame. You must

conceal nothing; you must have nothing to conceal. You must be known as

the spy and messenger of God among mankind.

"You must teach men that happiness is not there, where in their

blindness and misery they seek it. It is not in strength, for Myro and

Ofellius were not happy: not in wealth, for Croesus was not happy: not

in power, for the Consuls are not happy: not in all these together, for

Nero, and Sardanapalus, and Agamemnon sighed, and wept, and tore their

hair, and were the slaves of circumstances and the dupes of semblances.

It lies in yourselves: in true freedom, in the absence or conquest of

every ignoble fear; in perfect self-government; in a power of

contentment and peace, and the 'even flow of life' amid poverty, exile,

disease, and the very valley of the shadow of death. Can you face this

Olympic contest? Are your thews and sinews strong enough? Can you face

the fact that those who are defeated are also disgraced and whipped?

"Only by God's aid can you attain to this. Only by His aid can you be

beaten like an ass, and yet love those who beat you, preserving an

unshaken unanimity in the midst of circumstances which to other men

would cause trouble, and grief, and disappointment, and despair.

"The Cynic must learn to do without friends, for where can he find a

friend worthy of him, or a king worthy of sharing his moral sceptre? The

friend of the truly noble must be as truly noble as himself, and such a

friend the genuine Cynic cannot hope to find. Nor must he marry;

marriage is right and honourable in other men, but its entanglements,

its expenses, its distractions, would render impossible a life devoted

to the service of heaven.

"Nor will he mingle in the affairs of any commonwealth: his commonwealth

is not Athens or Corinth, but mankind.

"In person he should be strong, and robust, and hale, and in spite of

his indigence always clean and attractive. Tact and intelligence, and a

power of swift repartee, are necessary to him. His conscience must be

clear as the sun. He must sleep purely, and wake still more purely. To

abuse and insult he must be as insensible as a stone, and he must place

all fears and desires beneath his feet. To be a Cynic is to be this:

before you attempt it deliberate well, and see whether by the help of

God you are capable of achieving it."

I have given a sketch of the doctrines of this lofty chapter, but fully

to enjoy its morality and eloquence the reader should study it entire,

and observe its generous impatience, its noble ardour, its vivid

interrogations, "in which," says M. Martha, "one feels as it were a

frenzy of virtue and of piety, and in which the plenitude of a great

heart tumultuously precipitates a torrent of holy thoughts."

Epictetus was not a Christian. He has only once alluded to the

Christians in his works, and there it is under the opprobrious title of

"Galileans," who practised a kind of insensibility in painful

circumstances and an indifference to worldly interests which Epictetus

unjustly sets down to "mere habit." Unhappily it was not granted to

these heathen philosophers in any true sense to know what Christianity

was. They ignorantly thought that it was an attempt to imitate the

results of philosophy, without having passed through the necessary

discipline. They viewed it with suspicion, they treated it with

injustice. And yet in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, they

would have found an ideal which would have surpassed their loftiest

conceptions. Nor was it only an impossible _ideal_; it was an ideal

rendered attainable by the impressive sanction of the highest authority,

and one which supported men to bear the difficulties of life with

fortitude, with peacefulness, and even with an inward joy; it ennobled

their faculties without overstraining them; it enabled them to

disregard the burden of present trials, not by vainly attempting to deny

their bitterness or ignore their weight, but in the high certainty that

they are the brief and necessary prelude to "a far more exceeding and

eternal weight of glory."

MARCUS AURELIUS.

CHAPTER I.

THE EDUCATION OF AN EMPEROR.

The life of the noblest of Pagan Emperors may well follow that of the

noblest of Pagan slaves. Their glory shines the purer and brighter from

the midst of a corrupt and deplorable society. Epictetus showed that a

Phrygian slave could live a life of the loftiest exaltation; Aurelius

proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility.

The one--a foreigner, feeble, deformed, ignorant, born in squalor, bred

in degradation, the despised chattel of a despicable freedman,

surrounded by every depressing, ignoble, and pitiable circumstance of

life--showed how one who seemed born to be a wretch could win noble

happiness and immortal memory; the other--a Roman, a patrician, strong,

of heavenly beauty, of noble ancestors, almost born to the purple, the

favourite of Emperors, the greatest conquerer, the greatest philosopher,

the greatest ruler of his time-proved for ever that it is possible to be

virtuous, and tender, and holy, and contented in the midst of sadness,

even on an irresponsible and imperial throne. Strange that, of the two,

the Emperor is even sweeter, more simple, more admirable, more humbly

and touchingly resigned, than the slave. In him, Stoicism loses all its

haughty self-assertion, all its impracticable paradox, for a manly

melancholy which at once troubles and charms the heart. "It seems," says

M. Martha, "that in him the philosophy of heathendom grows less proud,

draws nearer and nearer to a Christianity which it ignored or which it

despised, and is ready to fling itself into the arms of the 'Unknown

God.' In the sad _Meditations_ of Aurelius we find a pure serenity,

sweetness, and docility to the commands of God, which before him were

unknown, and which Christian grace has alone surpassed. If he has not

yet attained to charity in all that fulness of meaning which

Christianity has given to the word he has already gained its unction,

and one cannot read his book, unique in the history of Pagan philosophy,

without thinking of the sadness of Pascal and the gentleness of Fénélon.

We must pause before this soul, so lofty and so pure, to contemplate

ancient virtue in its softest brilliancy, to see the moral delicacy to

which profane doctrines have attained--how they laid down their pride,

and how penetrating a grace they have found in their new simplicity. To

make the example yet more striking, Providence, which, according to the

Stoics, does nothing by chance, determined that the example of these

simple virtues should bloom in the midst of all human grandeur--that

charity should be taught by the successor of blood stained Caesars, and

humbleness of heart by an Emperor."

Aurelius has always exercised a powerful fascination over the minds of

eminent men "If you set aside, for a moment, the contemplation of the

Christian verities," says the eloquent and thoughtful Montesquieu,

"search throughout all nature, and you will not find a grander object

than the Antonines.... One feels a secret pleasure in speaking of this

Emperor; one cannot read his life without a softening feeling of

emotion. He produces such an effect upon our minds that we think better

of ourselves, because he inspires us with a better opinion of mankind."

"It is more delightful," says the great historian Niebuhr, "to speak of

Marcus Aurelius than of any man in history; for if there is any sublime

human virtue it is his. He was certainly the noblest character of his

time, and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness,

mildness, and humility, with such conscientiousness and severity towards

himself. We possess innumerable busts of him, for every Roman of his

time was anxious to possess his portrait, and if there is anywhere an

expression of virtue it is in the heavenly features of Marcus Aurelius."

Marcus Aurelius was born on April 26, A.D. 121. His more correct

designation would be Marcus Antoninus, but since he bore several

different names at different periods of his life, and since at that age

nothing was more common than a change of designation, it is hardly worth

while to alter the name by which he is most popularly recognised. His

father, Annius Verus, who died in his Praetorship, drew his blood from a

line of illustrious men who claimed descent from Numa, the second King

of Rome. His mother, Domitia Calvilla, was also a lady of consular and

kingly race. The character of both seems to have been worthy of their

high dignity. Of his father he can have known little, since Annius died

when Aurelius was a mere infant; but in his _Meditations_ he has left us

a grateful memorial of both his parents. He says that from his

grandfather he learned (or, might have learned) good morals and the

government of his temper; from the reputation and remembrance of his

father, modesty and manliness; from his mother, piety, and beneficence,

and _abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts_;

and, further, simplicity of life far removed from the habits of

the rich.

The childhood and boyhood of Aurelius fell during the reign of Hadrian.

The times were better than those which we have contemplated in the

reigns of the Caesars. After the suicide of Nero and the brief reigns of

Galba and Otho, the Roman world had breathed more freely for a time

under the rough good humour of Vespasian and the philosophic virtue of

Titus. The reign of Domitian, indeed, who succeeded his brother Titus,

was scarcely less terrible and infamous than that of Caius or of Nero;

but that prince, shortly before his murder, had dreamt that a golden

neck had grown out of his own, and interpreted the dream to indicate

that a better race of princes should follow him. The dream was

fulfilled. Whatever may have been their other faults, Nerva, Trajan,

Hadrian, were wise and kind-hearted rulers; Antoninus Pius and Marcus

Aurelius were among the very gentlest and noblest sovereigns whom the

world has ever seen.

Hadrian, though an able, indefatigable, and, on the whole, beneficial

Emperor, was a man whose character was stained with serious faults. It

is, however, greatly to his honour that he recognized in Aurelius, at

the early age of six years, the germs of those extraordinary virtues

which afterwards blessed the empire and elevated the sentiments of

mankind. "Hadrian's bad and sinful habits left him," says Niebuhr, "when

he gazed on the sweetness of that innocent child. Playing on the boy's

paternal name of _Verus_, he called him _Verissimus_, 'the most true.'"

It is interesting to find that this trait of character was so early

developed in one who thought that all men "should speak as they think,

with an accent of heroic verity."

Toward the end of his long reign, worn out with disease and weariness,

Hadrian, being childless, had adopted as his son L. Ceionius Commodus, a

man who had few recommendations but his personal beauty. Upon his death,

which took place a year afterwards, Hadrian, assembling the senators

round his sick bed, adopted and presented to them as their future

Emperor Arrius Antoninus, better known by the surname of Pius, which he

won by his gratitude to the memory of his predecessor. Had Aurelius been

older--he was then but seventeen--it is known that Hadrian would have

chosen _him_, and not Antoninus, for his heir. The latter, indeed, who

was then fifty-two years old, was only selected on the express condition

that he should in turn adopt both Marcus Aurelius and the son of the

deceased Ceionius. Thus, at the age of seventeen, Aurelius, who, even

from his infancy, had been loaded with conspicuous distinctions, saw

himself the acknowledged heir to the empire of the world.

We are happily able, mainly from his own writings, to give some sketch

of the influences and the education which had formed him for this

exalted station.

He was brought up in the house of his grandfather, a man who had been

three times consul. He makes it a matter of congratulation, and

thankfulness to the gods, that he had not been sent to any public

school, where he would have run the risk of being tainted by that

frightful corruption into which, for many years, the Roman youth had

fallen. He expresses a sense of obligation to his great-grandfather for

having supplied him with good teachers at home, and for the conviction

that on such things a man should spend liberally. There was nothing

jealous, barren, or illiberal, in the training he received. He was fond

of boxing, wrestling, running; he was an admirable player at ball, and

he was fond of the perilous excitement of hunting the wild boar. Thus,

his healthy sports, his serious studies, his moral instruction, his

public dignities and duties, all contributed to form his character in a

beautiful and manly mould. There are, however, three respects in which

his education seems especially worthy of notice;--I mean the

_diligence_, the _gratitude_, and the _hardiness_ in which he was

encouraged by others, and which he practised with all the ardour of

generous conviction.

1. In the best sense of the word, Aurelius was _diligent_. He alludes

more than once in his _Meditations_ to the inestimable value of time,

and to his ardent desire to gain more leisure for intellectual pursuits.

He flung himself with his usual undeviating stedfastness of purpose into

every branch of study, and though he deliberately abandoned rhetoric, he

toiled hard at philosophy, at the discipline of arms, at the

administration of business, and at the difficult study of Roman

jurisprudence. One of the acquisitions for which he expresses gratitude

to his tutor Rusticus, is that of reading carefully, and not being

satisfied with the superficial understanding of a book. In fact, so

strenuous was his labour, and so great his abstemiousness, that his

health suffered by the combination of the two.

2. His opening remarks show that he remembered all his teachers--even

the most insignificant--with sincere _gratitude_. He regarded each one

of them as a man from whom something could be learnt, and from whom he

actually _did_ learn that something. Hence the honourable respect--a

respect as honourable to himself as to them--which he paid to Fronto, to

Rusticus, to Julius Proculus, and others whom his noble and

conscientious gratitude raised to the highest dignities of the State. He

even thanks the gods that "he made haste to place those who brought him

up in the station of honour which they seemed to desire, without putting

them off with mere _hopes_ of his doing it some time after, because they

were then still young." He was far the superior of these men, not only

socially but even morally and intellectually; yet from the height of his

exalted rank and character he delighted to associate with them on the

most friendly terms, and to treat them, even till his death, with

affection and honour, to place their likenesses among his household

gods, and visit their sepulchres with wreaths and victims.

3. His _hardiness_ and self-denial were perhaps still more remarkable. I

wish that those boys of our day, who think it undignified to travel

second-class, who dress in the extreme of fashion, wear roses in their

buttonholes, and spend upon ices and strawberries what would maintain a

poor man for a year, would learn how _infinitely more noble_ was the

abstinence of this young Roman, who though born in the midst of

splendour and luxury, learnt from the first to loathe the petty vice of

gluttony, and to despise the unmanliness of self-indulgence. Very early

in life he joined the glorious fellowship of those who esteem it not

only a duty but a pleasure

"To scorn delights, and live laborious days,"

and had learnt "endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work

with his own hands." In his eleventh year he became acquainted with

Diognetus, who first introduced him to the Stoic philosophy, and in his

twelfth year he assumed the Stoic dress. This philosophy taught him "to

prefer a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to

the Grecian discipline." It is said that "the skin" was a concession to

the entreaties of his mother, and that the young philosopher himself

would have chosen to sleep on the bare boards or on the ground. Yet he

acted thus without self-assertion and without ostentation. His friends

found him always cheerful; and his calm features,--in which a dignity

and thoughtfulness of spirit contrasted with the bloom and beauty of a

pure and honourable boyhood,--were never overshadowed with ill-temper or

with gloom.

The guardians of Marcus Aurelius had gathered around him all the most

distinguished literary teachers of the age. Never had a prince a greater

number of eminent instructors; never were any teachers made happy by a

more grateful, a more humble, a more blameless, a more truly royal and

glorious pupil. Long years after his education had ceased, during his

campaign among the Quadi, he wrote a sketch of what he owed to them.

This sketch forms the first book of his _Meditations_, and is

characterised throughout by the most unaffected simplicity and modesty.

The _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius were in fact his private diary,

they are a noble soliloquy with his own heart, an honest examination of

his own conscience; there is not the slightest trace of their having

been intended for any eye but his own. In them he was acting on the

principle of St. Augustine: "Go up into the tribunal of thy conscience,

and set thyself before thyself." He was ever bearing about--

"A silent court of justice in himself,

Himself the judge and jury, and himself

The prisoner at the bar."

And writing amid all the cares and distractions of a war which he

detested, he averted his eyes from the manifold wearinesses which daily

vexed his soul, and calmly sat down to meditate on all the great

qualities which he had observed, and all the good lessons that he might

have learnt from those who had instructed his boyhood, and surrounded

his manly years.

And what had he learnt?--learnt heartily to admire, and (_we_ may say)

learnt to practise also? A sketch of his first book will show us. What

he had gained from his immediate parents we have seen already, and we

will make a brief abstract of his other obligations.

From "his governor"--to which of his teachers this name applies we are

not sure--he had learnt to avoid factions at the races, to work hard,

and to avoid listening to slander; from Diognetus, to despise frivolous

superstitions, and to practise self-denial; from Apollonius, undeviating

steadiness of purpose, endurance of misfortune, and the reception of

favours without being humbled by them; from Sextus of Chaeronea (a

grandson of the celebrated Plutarch), tolerance of the ignorant, gravity

without affectation, and benevolence of heart; from Alexander, delicacy

in correcting others; from Severus, "a disposition to do good, and to

give to others readily, and to cherish good hope, and, to believe that I

am beloved of my friends;" from Maximus, "sweetness and dignity, and to

do what was set before me without complaining;" from Alexander the

Platonic, "_not frequently to say to any one, nor to write in a letter,

that I have no leisure_; nor continually to excuse the neglect of

ordinary duties by alleging urgent occupations."

To one or two others his obligations were still more characteristic and

important. From Rusticus, for instance, an excellent and able man, whose

advice for years he was accustomed to respect, he had learnt to despise

sophistry and display, to write with simplicity, to be easily pacified,

to be accurate, and--an inestimable benefit this, and one which tinged

the colour of his whole life--to become acquainted with the _Discourses_

of Epictetus. And from his adoptive father, the great Antoninus Pius, he

had derived advantages still more considerable. In him he saw the

example of a sovereign and statesman firm, self-controlled, modest,

faithful, and even tempered; a man who despised flattery and hated

meanness; who honoured the wise and distinguished the meritorious; who

was indifferent to contemptable trifles, and indefatigable in earnest

business; one, in short, "who had a perfect and invincible soul," who,

like Socrates, "was able both to abstain from and to enjoy those things

which many are too weak to abstain from and cannot enjoy without

excess." [67] Piety, serenity, sweetness, disregard of empty fame,

calmness, simplicity, patience, are virtues which he attributes to him

in another full-length portrait (vi. 30) which he concludes with the

words, "Imitate all this, that thou mayest have as good a conscience

when thy last hour comes as he had."

[Footnote 67: My quotations from Marcus Aurelius will be made (by

permission) from the forcible and admirably accurate translation of Mr.

Long. In thanking Mr. Long, I may be allowed to add that the English

reader will find in his version the best means of becoming acquainted

with the purest-and noblest book of antiquity.]

He concludes these reminiscenses of thankfulness with a summary of what

he owed to the gods. And for what does he thanks the gods? for being

wealthy, and noble, and an emperor? Nay, for no vulgar or dubious

blessings such as these, but for the guidance which trained him in

philosophy, and for the grace which kept him from sin. And here it is

that his genuine modesty comes out. As the excellent divine used to say

when he saw a criminal led past for execution, "There, but for the grace

of God, goes John Bradford," so, after thanking the gods for the

goodness of all his family and relatives, Aurelius says, "Further, I owe

it to the gods that I was not hurried into any offence against any of

them, _though I had a disposition which, if opportunity had offered_,

might have led me to do something of this kind; but through their favour

there never was such a concurrence of circumstances as put me to the

trial. Further, that I was subjected to a ruler and father who took away

all pride from me, and taught me that it was possible to live in a

palace without guards, or embroidered dresses, or torches, and statues,

and such-like show, but to live very near to the fashion of a private

person, without being either mean in thought or remiss in action; that

after having fallen into amatory passions I was cured; that though it

was my mother's fate to die young, she spent the last years of her life

with me; that whenever I wished to help any man, I was never told that I

had not the means of doing it;--that I had abundance of good masters for

my children: for all these thing require the help of the gods

and fortune."

The whole of the Emperor's _Meditations_ deserve the profound study of

this age. The self-denial which they display is a rebuke to our

ever-growing luxury; their generosity contrasts favourably with the

increasing bitterness of our cynicism; their contented acquiescence in

God's will rebukes our incessant restlessness; above all, their constant

elevation shames that multitude of little vices, and little meannesses,

which lie like a scurf over the conventionality of modern life. But this

earlier chapter has also a special value for the young. It offers a

picture which it would indeed be better for them and for us if they

could be induced to study. If even under

"That fierce light that beats upon the throne,"

the life of Marcus Aurelius shows no moral stain, it is still more

remarkable that the free and beautiful boyhood of this Roman prince had

early learnt to recognise only the excellences of his teachers, their

patience and firmness, their benevolence and sweetness, their integrity

and virtue. Amid the frightful universality of moral corruption he

preserved a stainless conscience and a most pure soul; he thanked God in

language which breathes the most crystalline delicacy of sentiment and

language, that he had preserved uninjured the flower of his early life,

and that under the calm influences of his home in the country, and the

studies of philosophy, he had learnt to value chastity as the sacred

girdle of youth, to be retained and honoured to his latest years.

"Surely," says Mr. Carlyle, "a day is coming when it will be known again

what virtue is in purity and continence of life; how divine is the blush

of young human cheeks; how high, beneficent, sternly inexorable is the

duty laid on every creature in regard to these particulars. Well, if

such a day never come, then I perceive much else will never come.

Magnanimity and depth of insight will never come; heroic purity of

heart and of eye; noble pious valour to amend us and the age of bronze

and lacquers, how can they ever come? The scandalous bronze-lacquer age

of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotencies, and mendacities will have

to run its course till the pit swallow it."

CHAPTER II.

THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS.

On the death of Hadrian in A. D. 138, Antoninus Pius succeeded to the

throne, and, in accordance with the late Emperor's conditions, adopted

Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Commodus. Marcus had been betrothed at the

age of fifteen to the sister of Lucius Commodus, but the new Emperor

broke off the engagement, and betrothed him instead to his daughter

Faustina. The marriage, however, was not celebrated till seven years

afterwards, A.D. 146.

The long reign of Antoninus Pius is one of those happy periods that have

no history. An almost unbroken peace reigned at home and abroad. Taxes

were lightened, calamities relieved, informers discouraged; confiscation

were rare, plots and executions were almost unknown. Throughout the

whole extent of his vast domain the people loved and valued their

Emperor, and the Emperor's one aim was to further, the happiness of his

people. He, too, like Aurelius, had learnt that what was good for the

bee was good for the hive. He strove to live as the civil administrator,

of an unaggressive and united republic; he disliked war, did not value

the military title of Imperator, and never deigned to accept a triumph.

With this wise and eminent prince, who was as amiable in his private

relations as he was admirable in the discharge of his public duties,

Marcus Aurelius spent the next twenty-three years of his life. So close

and intimate was their union, so completely did they regard each other

as father and son, that during all that period Aurelius never slept more

than twice away from the house of Antoninus. There was not a shade of

jealousy between them; each was the friend and adviser of the other,

and, so far from regarding his destined heir with suspicion, the Emperor

gave him the designation "Caesar," and heaped upon him all the honours

of the Roman Commonwealth. It was in vain that the whisper of malignant

tongues attempted to shake this mutual confidence. Antoninus once saw

the mother of Aurelius in earnest prayer before the statue of Apollo.

"What do you think she is praying for so intently?" asked a wretched

mischief-maker of the name of Valerius Omulus: "it is that you may die,

and her son reign." This wicked suggestion might have driven a prince of

meaner character into violence and disgust, but Antoninus passed it over

with the silence of contempt.

It was the main delight of Antoninus to enjoy the quiet of his country

villa. Unlike Hadrian, who traversed immense regions of his vast

dominion, Antoninus lived entirely either at Rome, or in his beautiful

villa at Lorium, a little seacoast village about twelve miles from the

capital. In this villa he had been born, and here he died, surrounded by

the reminiscences of his childhood. In this his real home it was his

special pleasure to lay aside the pomp and burden of his imperial rank.

"He did not," says Marcus, "take the bath at unseasonable hours; he was

not fond of building houses, nor curious about what he eat, nor about

the texture and colour of his clothes, nor about the beauty of his

slaves." Even the dress he wore was the work of the provincial artist

in his little native place. So far from checking the philosophic tastes

of his adopted son he fostered them, and sent for Apollonius of Chalcis

to be his teacher in the doctrines of Stoicism. In one of his notes to

Fronto, Marcus draws the picture of their simple country occupations and

amusements. Hunting, fishing, boxing, wrestling, occupied the leisure of

the two princes, and they shared the rustic festivities of the vintage.

"I have dined," he writes, "on a little bread.... We perspired a great

deal, shouted a great deal, and left some gleanings of the vintage

hanging on the trellis work.... When I got home I studied a little, but

not to much advantage I had a long talk with my mother, who was lying on

her couch." Who knows how much Aurelius and how much the world may have

gained from such conversation as this with a mother from whom he had

learnt to hate even the thought of evil? Nor will any one despise the

simplicity of heart which made him mingle with the peasants as an

amateur vintager, unless he is so tasteless and so morose as to think

with scorn of Scipio and Laelius as they gathered shells on the

seashore, or of Henry IV. as he played at horses with his little boys on

all-fours. The capability of unbending thus, the genuine cheerfulness

which enters at due times into simple amusements, has been found not

rarely in the highest and purest minds.

For many years no incident of importance broke the even tenor of

Aurelius's life. He lived peaceful, happy, prosperous, and beloved,

watching without envy the increasing years of his adopted father. But in

the year 161, when Marcus was now forty years old, Antoninus Pius, who

had reached the age of seventy-five, caught a fever at Lorium. Feeling

that his end was near, he summoned his friends and the chief men of

Rome to his bedside, and there (without saying a word about his other

adopted son, who is generally known by the name of Lucius Verus)

solemnly recommended Marcus to them as his successor; and then, giving

to the captain of the guard the watchword of "Equanimity," as though his

earthly task was over he ordered to be transferred to the bedroom of

Marcus the little golden statue of Fortune, which was kept in the

private chamber of the Emperors as an omen of public prosperity.

The very first public act of the new Emperor was one of splendid

generosity, namely, the admission of his adoptive brother Lucius Verus

into the fullest participation of imperial honours, the Tribunitian and

proconsular powers, and the titles Caesar and Augustus. The admission of

Lucius Verus to a share of the empire was due to the innate modesty of

Marcus. As he was a devoted student, and cared less for manly exercises,

in which Verus excelled, he thought that his adoptive brother would be a

better and more useful general than himself, and that he could best

serve the State by retaining the civil administration, and entrusting to

his brother the management of war. Verus, however, as soon as he got

away from the immediate influence and ennobling society of Marcus, broke

loose from all decency, and showed himself to be a weak and worthless

personage, as unfit for war as he was for all the nobler duties of

peace, and capable of nothing but enormous gluttony and disgraceful

self-indulence. Two things only can be said in his favour; the one,

that, though depraved, he was wholly free from cruelty; and the other,

that he had the good sense to submit himself entirely to his brother,

and to treat him with the gratitude and deference which were his due.

Marcus had a large family by Faustina, and in the first year of his

reign his wife bore twins, of whom the one who survived became the

wicked and detested Emperor Commodus. As though the birth of such a

child were in itself an omen of ruin, a storm of calamity began at once

to burst over the long tranquil State. An inundation of the Tiber flung

down houses and streets over a great part of Rome, swept away multitudes

of cattle, spoiled the harvests, devastated the fields, and caused a

distress which ended in wide-spread famine. Men's minds were terrified

by earthquakes, by the burning of cities, and by plagues or noxious

insects. To these miseries, which the Emperors did their best to

alleviate, was added the horrors of wars and rumours of wars. The

Partians, under their king Vologeses, defeated and all but destroyed a

Roman army, and devastated with impunity the Roman province of Syria.

The wild tribes of the Catti burst over Germany with fire and sword; and

the news from Britain was full of insurrection and tumult. Such were the

elements of trouble and discord which overshadowed the reign of Marcus

Aurelius from its very beginning down to its weary close.

As the Partian war was the most important of the three, Verus was sent

to quell it, and but for the ability of his generals--the greatest of

whom was Avidius Cassius--would have ruined irretrievably the fortunes

of the Empire. These generals, however, vindicated the majesty of the

Roman name, and Verus returned in triumph, bringing back with him from

the East the seeds of a terrible pestilence which devastated the whole

Empire and by which, on the outbreak of fresh wars, Verus himself was

carried off at Aquileia.

Worthless as he was, Marcus, who in his lifetime had so often pardoned

and concealed his faults, paid him the highest honours of sepulcre, and

interred his ashes in the mausoleum of Hadrian. There were not wanting

some who charged him with the guilt of fratricide, asserting that the

death of Verus had been hastened by his means!

I have only one reason for alluding to atrocious and contemptible

calumnies like these, and that is because--since no doubt such whispers

reached his ears--they help to account for that deep unutterable

melancholy which breathes through the little golden book of the

Emperor's _Meditations_. We find, for instance, among them this isolated

fragment:--

"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial,

childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent,

tyrannical."

We know not of whom he was thinking--perhaps of Nero, perhaps of

Caligula, but undoubtedly also of men whom he had seen and known, and

whose very existence darkened his soul. The same sad spirit breathes

also through the following passages:--

"Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name,

or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. And the things which are

much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and trifling, and _little

dogs biting one another, and little children quarrelling, laughing, and

then straightway weeping. But fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and

truth are fled_

"'Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.'"

(v. 33.)

"It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having

had a taste of lying, and hypocrisy, and luxury, and pride. However to

_breathe out one's life when a man has had enough of those things_ is

the next best voyage, as the saying is." (ix. 2.)

"_Enough of this wretched life, and murmuring, and apish trifles._ Why

art thou thus disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles

thee?... Towards the gods, then, now become at last more simple and

better." (ix. 37.) The thought is like that which dominates through the

Penitential Psalms of David,--that we may take refuge from men, their

malignity and their meanness, and find rest for our souls in God. From

men David has _no_ hope; mockery, treachery, injustice, are all that he

expects from them,--the bitterness of his enemies, the far-off

indifference of his friends. Nor does this greatly trouble him, so long

as he does not wholly lose the light of _God's_ countenance. "I had no

place to flee unto, and no man cared for my soul. I cried unto thee, O

Lord, and said, _Thou_ art my hope, and my portion in the land of the

living." "Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy

Spirit from me."

But whatever may have been his impulse at times to give up in despair

all attempt to improve the "little breed" of men around him, Marcus had

schooled his gentle spirit to live continually in far other feelings.

Were men contemptible? It was all the more reason why he should himself

be noble. Were men petty, and malignant, and passionate and unjust? In

that proportion were they all the more marked out for pity and

tenderness, and in that proportion was he bound to the utmost of his

ability to show himself great, and forgiving, and calm, and true. Thus

Marcus turns his very bitterest experience to gold, and from the

vilenesses of others, which depressed his lonely life, so far from

suffering himself to be embittered as well as saddened, he only draws

fresh lessons of humanity and love.

He says, for instance, "Begin the morning by saying to thyself, _I shall

meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious,

unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance

of what is good and evil_. But I who have seen the nature of the good

that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of

him that does wrong that is akin to me,... and that it partakes of the

same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them,

for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my

kinsman, nor hate him. _For we are made for co-operation,_ like feet,

like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To

act against one another then is contrary to nature; and _it_ is acting

against one another to be vexed and turn away." (ii. 1.) Another of his

rules, and an eminently wise one, was to fix his thoughts as much as

possible on the virtues of others, rather than on their vices. "When

thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the _virtues_ of those who

live with thee--the activity of one, the modesty of another, the

liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a fourth." What a

rebuke to the contemptuous cynicism which we are daily tempted to

display! "An infinite being comes before us," says Robertson, "with a

whole eternity wrapt up in his mind and soul, and we _proceed to

classify him, put a label upon him, as we would upon a jar, saying, This

is rice, that is jelly, and this pomatum_; and then we think we have

saved ourselves the necessity of taking off the cover, How differently

our Lord treated the people who came to Him!... consequently, at His

touch each one gave out his peculiar spark of light."

Here, again, is a singularly pithy, comprehensive, and beautiful piece

of advice:--

"Men exist for the sake of one another. _Teach them or bear with them_"

(viii. 59.)

And again: "The best way of revenging thyself is not to become like the

wrong doer."

And again, "If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps

he has not done wrong." (ix. 38.)

Most remarkable, however, are the nine rules which he drew up for

himself, as subjects for reflection when any one had offended

him, viz.--

1. That men were made for each other: even the inferior for the sake of

the superior, and these for the sake of one another.

2. The invincible influences that act upon men, and mould their opinions

and their acts.

3. That sin is mainly error and ignorance,--an involuntary slavery.

4. That we are ourselves feeble, and by no means immaculate; and that

often our very abstinence from faults is due more to cowardice and a

care for our reputation than to any freedom from the disposition to

commit them.

5. That our judgments are apt to be very rash and premature. "And in

short a man must learn a great deal to enable him to pass a correct

judgment on another man's acts."

6. When thou art much vexed or grieved, consider that man's life is only

a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.

7. That no wrongful act of another can bring shame on us, and that it

is not men's acts which disturb us, but our own opinions of them.

8. That our own anger hurts us more than the acts themselves.

9. That _benevolence is invincible, if it be not an affected smile,_ nor

acting a part. "For what will the most violent man do to thee if thou

continuest benevolent to him? gently and calmly correcting him,

admonishing him when he is trying to do thee harm, saying, '_Not so, my

child: we are constituted by nature for something else: I shall

certainly not be injured, but thou art injuring thyself, my child_' And

show him with gentle tact and by general principles that this is so, and

that even bees do not do as he does, nor any gregarious animal. And this

you must do simply, unreproachfully, affectionately; without rancour,

and if possible when you and he are alone." (xi. 18.)

"_Not so, my child_; thou art injuring thyself, my child." Can all

antiquity show anything tenderer than this, or anything more close to

the spirit of Christian teaching than these nine rules? They were worthy

of the men who, unlike the Stoics in general, considered gentleness to

be a virtue, and a proof at once of philosophy and of true manhood. They

are written with that effusion of sadness and benevolence to which it is

difficult to find a parallel. They show how completely Marcus had

triumphed over all petty malignity, and how earnestly he strove to

fulfil his own precept of always keeping the thoughts so sweet and

clear, that "if any one should suddenly ask, 'What hast thou now in thy

thoughts?' with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 'This

or That,'" In short, to give them their highest praise, they would have

delighted the great Christian Apostle who wrote,--

"Warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the

weak, be patient towards all men. See that none render evil for evil

unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves,

and to all men." (1 Thess. iv. 14. 15.)

"Count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." (2. Thess.

iv. 15.)

"Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a

quarrel against any." (Col. iii. 13.)

Nay, are they not even in full accordance with the mind and spirit of

Him who said,--

"If thy brother trespass against thee, _go and tell him his fault

between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee thou hast gained thy

brother_."

In the life of Marcus Aurelius, as in so many lives, we are able to

trace the great law of compensation. His exalted station, during the

later years of his life, threw him among many who were false and

Pharisaical and base; but his youth had been spent under happier

conditions, and this saved him from falling into the sadness of those

whom neither man nor woman please. In his earlier years it had been his

lot to see the fairer side of humanity, and the recollection of those

pure and happy days was like a healing tree thrown into the bitter and

turbid waters of his reign.

CHAPTER III.

THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS _(continued)._

Marcus was now the undisputed lord of the Roman world. He was seated on

the dizziest and most splendid eminence which it was possible for human

grandeur to obtain.

But this imperial elevation kindled no glow of pride or

self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened nature. He regarded himself

as being in fact the servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the

bull in the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront every peril

in his own person, to be foremost in all the hardships of war and the

most deeply immersed in all the toils of peace. The registry of the

citizens, the suppression of litigation, the elevation of public morals,

the restraining of consanguineous marriages, the care of minors, the

retrenchment of public expenses, the limitation of gladitorial games and

shows, the care of roads, the restoration of senatorial privileges, the

appointment of none but worthy magistrates--even the regulation of

street traffic--these and numberless other duties so completely absorbed

his attention that, in spite of indifferent health, they often kept him

at severe labour from early morning till long after midnight. His

position indeed often necessitated his presence at games and shows, but

on these occasions he occupied himself either in reading, or being read

to, or in writing notes. He was one of those who held that nothing

should be done hastily, and that few crimes were worse than the waste of

time. It is to such views and such habits that we owe the compositions

of his works. His _Meditations_ were written amid the painful

self-denial and distracting anxieties of his wars with the Quadi and the

Marcomanni, and he was the author of other works which unhappily have

perished. Perhaps of all the lost treasures of antiquity there are few

which we should feel a greater wish to recover than the lost

autobiography of this wisest of Emperors and holiest of Pagan men.

As for the external trappings of his rank,--those gorgeous adjuncts and

pompous circumstances which excite the wonder and envy of mankind,--no

man could have shown himself more indifferent to them. He recognized

indeed the necessity of maintaining the dignity of his high position.

"Every moment," he says, "think steadily as a Roman and a man _to do

what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity_, and affection,

and freedom, and justice" (ii. 5); and again, "Let the Deity which is in

thee be the guardian of a living being, _manly and of ripe age, and

engaged in matters political, and a Roman, and a ruler_, who has taken

his post like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life"

(iii. 5). But he did _not_ think it necessary to accept the fulsome

honours and degrading adulations which were so dear to many of his

predecessors. He refused the pompous blasphemy of temples and altars,

saying that for every true ruler the world was a temple, and all good

men were priests. He declined as much as possible all golden statues and

triumphal designations. All inevitable luxuries and splendour, such as

his public duties rendered indispensable, he regarded as a mere hollow

show. Marcus Aurelius felt as deeply as our own Shakespeare seems to

have felt the unsubstantiality, the fleeting evanescence of all earthly

things: he would have delighted in the sentiment that,

"_We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded by a sleep_."

"When we have meat before us," he says, "and such eatables, we receive

the impression that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the

dead body of a bird, or of a pig; _and, again, that this Falerian is

only a little grape-juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed

with the blood of a shellfish_: such then are these impressions, and

they reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what

kind of things they are. Just in the same way.... where there are things

which appear most worthy of our approbation, _we ought to lay them bare,

and look at their worthlessness_, and strip them of all the words by

which they are exalted." (vi. 13.)

"What is worth being valued? To be received with clapping of hands? No.

Neither must we value the clapping of tongues, for the praise which

comes from the many is a clapping of tongues." (vi. 16.)

"Asia, Europe, are corners of the universe; all the sea is a drop in the

universe; Athos a little clod of the universe; all the present time is a

point in eternity. All things are _little, changeable, perishable"_

(vi. 36.)

And to Marcus too, no less than to Shakespeare, it seemed that--

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;"

for he writes these remarkable words:--

"_The idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep, herds,

exercises with spears, a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread in

fishponds, labourings of ants, and burden-carrying runnings about of

frightened little mice, puppets pulled by strings_--this is what life

resembles. It is thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good

humour, and not a proud air; to understand however that _every man is

worth just so much as the things are worth about which he

busies himself_."

In fact, the Court was to Marcus a burden; he tells us himself that

Philosophy was his mother, Empire only his stepmother; it was only his

repose in the one that rendered even tolerable to him the burdens of the

other. Emperor as he was, he thanked the gods for having enabled him to

enter into the souls of a Thrasea, an Helvidius, a Cato, a Brutus. Above

all, he seems to have had a horror of ever becoming like some of his

predecessors; he writes:--

"Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar;[68] take care thou art

not dyed with this dye. Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious,

free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods,

kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Reverence the gods and

help men. Short is life. There _is only one fruit of this terrene life;

a pious disposition and social acts_." (iv. 19,)

[Footnote 68: Marcus here invents what M. Martha justly calls "an

admirable barbarism" to express his disgust towards such men--[Greek:

ora mae apukaidaoosaes]--"take care not to be _Caesarised_."]

It is the same conclusion as that which sorrow forced from another

weary and less admirable king: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole

matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole

duty of man."

But it is time for us to continue the meagre record of the life of

Marcus, so far as the bare and gossiping compilations of Dion

Cassius,[69] and Capitolinus, and the scattered allusions of other

writers can enable us to do so.

[Footnote 69: As epitomised by Xiphilinus.]

It must have been with a heavy heart that he set out once more for

Germany to face the dangerous rising of the Quadi and Marcomanni. To

obtain soldiers sufficient to fill up the vacancies in his army which

had been decimated by the plague, he was forced to enrol slaves; and to

obtain money he had to sell the ornaments of the palace, and even some

of the Empress's jewels. Immediately before he started his heart was

wrung by the death of his little boy, the twin-brother of Commodus,

whose beautiful features are still preserved for us on coins. Early in

the war, as he was trying the depth of a ford, he was assailed by the

enemy with a sudden storm of missiles, and was only saved from imminent

death by being sheltered beneath the shields of his soldiers. One battle

was fought on the ice of the wintry Danube. But by far the most

celebrated event of the war took place in a great victory over the Quadi

which he won in A.D. 174, and which was attributed by the Christians to

what is known as the "Miracle of the Thundering Legion."

Divested of all extraneous additions, the fact which occurred,--as

established by the evidence of medals, and by one of the bass-relievi on

the "Column of Antonine,"--appears to have been as follows. Marcus

Aurelius and his army had been entangled in a mountain defile, into

which they had too hastily pursued a sham retreat of the barbarian

archers. In this defile, unable either to fight or to fly, pent in by

the enemy, burned up with the scorching heat and tormented by thirst,

they lost all hope, burst into wailing and groans, and yielded to a

despair from which not even the strenuous efforts of Marcus could arouse

them. At the most critical moment of their danger and misery the clouds

began to gather, and heavy shows of rain descended, which the soldiers

caught in their shields and helmets to quench their own thirst and that

of their horses. While they were thus engaged the enemy attacked them;

but the rain was mingled with hail, and fell with blinding fury in the

faces of the barbarians. The storm was also accompanied with thunder and

lightning, which seems to have damaged the enemy, and filled them with

terror, while no casualty occured in the Roman ranks. The Romans

accordingly regarded this as a Divine interposition, and achieved a most

decisive victory, which proved to be the practical conclusion of a

hazardous and important war.

The Christians regarded the event not as _providential but as

miraculous_, and attributed it to the prayers of their brethren in a

legion which, from this circumstance, received the name of the

"Thundering Legion." It is however now known that one of the legions,

distinguished by a flash of lightning which was represented on their

shields, had been known by this name since the time of Augustus; and the

Pagans themselves attributed the assistance which they had received

sometimes to a prayer of the pious Emperor and sometimes to the

incantations of an Egyptian sorcerer named Arnuphis.

One of the Fathers, the passionate and eloquent Tertullian, attributes

to this deliverance an interposition of the Emperor in favour of the

Christians, and appeals to a letter of his to the Senate in which he

acknowledged how effectual had been the aid he had received from

Christian prayers, and forbade any one hereafter to molest the followers

of the new religion, lest they should use against him the weapon of

supplication which had been so powerful in his favour. This letter is

preserved at the end of the _Apology_ of Justin Martyr, and it adds

that, not only are no Christians to be injured or persecuted, but that

any one who informed against them is to be burned alive! We see at once

that this letter is one of those impudent and transparent forgeries in

which the literature of the first five centuries unhappily abounds. What

was the real relation of Marcus to the Christians we shall consider

hereafter.

To the gentle heart of Marcus, all war, even when accompanied with

victories, was eminently distasteful; and in such painful and ungenial

occupations no small part of his life was passed. What he thought of war

and of its successes is graphically set forth in the following remark:--

"A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and another when he has

caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a

net, and another when he has taken wild boars or bears, _and another

when he has taken Sarmatians._ Are not these robbers, when thou

examinest their principles?" He here condemns his own involuntary

actions; but it was his unhappy destiny not to have trodden out the

embers of this war before he was burdened with another far more painful

and formidable.

This was the revolt of Avidius Cassius, a general of the old blunt Roman

type, whom, in spite of some ominous warnings, Marcus both loved and

trusted. The ingratitude displayed by such a man caused Marcus the

deepest anguish; but he was saved from all dangerous consequences by the

wide-spread affection which he had inspired by his virtuous reign.

The very soldiers of the rebellious general fell away from him; and,

after he had been a nominal Emperor for only three months and six days,

he was assassinated by some of his own officers. His head was sent to

Marcus, who received it with sorrow, and did not hold out to the

murderers the slightest encouragement. The joy of success was swallowed

up in regret that his enemy had not lived to allow him the luxury of a

genuine forgiveness. He begged the Senate to pardon all the family of

Cassius, and to suffer this single life to be the only one forfeited in

consequence of civil war. The Fathers received these proofs of clemency

with the rapture which they deserved, and the Senate-house resounded

with acclamations and blessings.

Never had a formidable conspiracy been more quietly and effectually

crushed. Marcus travelled through the provinces which had favoured the

cause of Avidius Cassius, and treated them all with the most complete

and indulgent forbearance. When he arrived in Syria, the correspondence

of Cassius was brought to him, and, with a glorious magnanimity of which

history affords but few examples, he consigned it all to the

flames unread.

During this journey of pacification, he lost his wife Faustina, who died

suddenly in one of the valleys of Mount Taurus. History, or the

collection of anecdotes which at this period often passes as history,

has assigned to Faustina a character of the darkest infamy, and it has

even been made a charge against Aurelius that he overlooked or condoned

her offences. As far as Faustina is concerned, we have not much to say,

although there is strong reason to believe that many of the stories told

of her are scandalously exaggerated, if not absolutely false. Certain it

is, that most of the imputations upon her memory rest on the malignant

anecdotes recorded by Dion, who dearly loved every piece of scandal

which degraded human nature. The _specific_ charge brought against her

of having tempted Cassius from his allegiance is wholly unsupported,

even if it be not absolutely incompatible with what we find in her own

existent letters; and, finally, Marcus himself not only loved her

tenderly, as the kind mother of his eleven children, but in his

_Meditations_ actually thanks the gods for having granted him "such a

wife, so obedient so affectionate, and so simple." No doubt Faustina was

unworthy of her husband; but surely it is the glory and not the shame of

a noble nature to be averse from jealousy and suspicion, and to trust to

others more deeply than they deserve.

So blameless was the conduct of Marcus Aurelius that neither the

malignity of contemporaries nor the sprit of posthumous scandal has

succeeded in discovering any flaw in the extreme integrity of his life

and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of its victims. The

hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory

of great men rages, though less openly, in the minds of many. They

delight to degrade human life into that dull and barren plain "in which

every molehill is a mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree." Great

men are as small in their eyes as they are said to be in the eyes of

their valets; and there are multitudes who, if they find

"Some stain or blemish in a name of note,

Not grieving that their greatest are so small,

Innate themselves with some insane delight,

And judge all nature from her feet of clay,

Without the will to lift their eyes, and see

Her godlike head crown'd with spiritual fire,

And touching other worlds."

This I suppose is the reason why, failing to drag down Marcus Aurelius

from his moral elevation, some have attempted to assail his reputation

because of the supposed vileness of Faustina and the actual depravity of

Commodus. Of Faustina I have spoken already. Respecting Commodus, I

think it sufficient to ask with Solomon: "Who knoweth whether his son

shall be a wise man or a fool?" Commodus was but nineteen when his

father died; for the first three years of his reign he ruled respectably

and acceptably. Marcus Aurelius had left no effort untried to have him

trained aright by the first teachers and the wisest men whom the age

produced; and Herodian distinctly tells us that he had lived virtuously

up to the time of his father's death. Setting aside natural affection

altogether, and even assuming (as I should conjecture from one or two

passages of his _Meditations_) that Marcus had misgivings about his son,

would it have been easy, would it have been even possible, to set aside

on general grounds a son who had attained to years of maturity? However

this may be, if there are any who think it worth while to censure Marcus

because, after all, Commodus turned out to be but "a warped slip of

wilderness," their censure is hardly sufficiently discriminating to

deserve the trouble of refutation.

"But Marcus Aurelius cruelly persecuted the Christians." Let us briefly

consider this charge. That persecutions took place in his reign is an

undeniable fact, and is sufficiently evidenced by the Apologies of

Justin Martyr, of Melito Bishop of Sardis, of Athenagoras, and of

Apollinarius, as well as by the Letter of the Church of Smyrna

describing the martyrdom of Polycarp, and that of the Churches of Lyons

and Vienne to their brethren in Asia Minor. It is fair, however, to

mention that there is some documentary evidence on the other side;

Lactantius clearly asserts that under the reigns of those excellent

princes who succeeded Domitian the Church suffered no violence from her

enemies, and "spread her hands towards the East and the West:"

Tertullian, writing but twenty years after the death of Marcus,

distinctly says (and Eusebius quotes the assertion), that there were

letters of the Emperor, in which he not only attributed his delivery

among the Quadi to the prayers of Christian soldiers in the "Thundering

Legion," but ordered any who informed against the Christians to be most

severely punished; and at the end of the works of Justin Martyr is found

a letter of similar purport, which is asserted to have been addressed by

Marcus to the Senate of Rome. We may set aside these peremptory

testimonies, we may believe that Tertullian and Eusebius were mistaken,

and that the documents to which they referred were spurious; but this

should make us also less certain about the prominent participation of

the Emperor in these persecutions. My own belief is (and it is a belief

which could be supported by many critical arguments), that his share in

causing them was almost infinitesimal. If those who love his memory

reject the evidence of Fathers in his favour, they may be at least

permitted to withhold assent from some of the assertions in virtue of

which he is condemned.

Marcus in his _Meditations_ alludes to the Christians once only, and

then it is to make a passing complaint of the indifference to death,

which appeared to him, as it appeared to Epictetus, to arise, not from

any noble principles, but from mere obstinacy and perversity. That he

shared the profound dislike with which Christians were regarded is very

probable. That he was a cold-blooded and virulent persecutor is utterly

unlike his whole character, essentially at variance with his habitual

clemency, alien to the spirit which made him interfere in every possible

instance to mitigate the severity of legal punishments, and may in short

be regarded as an assertion which is altogether false. Who will believe

that a man who during his reign built and dedicated but one single

temple, and that a Temple to Beneficence; that a man who so far from

showing any jealousy respecting foreign religions allowed honour to be

paid to them all; that a man whose writings breathe on every page the

inmost spirit of philanthropy and tenderness, went out of his way to

join in a persecution of the most innocent, the most courageous, and the

most inoffensive of his subjects?

The true state of the case seems to have been this. The deep calamities

in which, during the whole reign of Marcus the Empire was involved,

caused wide-spread distress, and roused into peculiar fury the feelings

of the provincials against men whose atheism (for such they considered

it to be) had kindled the anger of the gods. This fury often broke out

into paroxisms of popular excitement, which none but the firmest-minded

governers were able to moderate or to repress. Marcus, when appealed to,

simply let the existing law take its usual course. That law was as old

as the time of Trajan. The young Pliny, Governor of Bithynia, had

written to ask Trajan how he was to deal with the Christians, whose

blamelessness of life he fully admitted, but whose doctrines, he said,

had emptied the temples of the gods, and exasperated their worshippers.

Trajan in reply had ordered that the Christians should not be _sought_

for, but that, if they were brought before the governor, and proved to

be contumacious in refusing to adjure their religion, they were then to

be put to death. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius had continued the same

policy, and Marcus Aurilius saw no reason to alter it. But this law,

which in quiet times might become a mere dead letter, might at more

troubled periods be converted into a dangerous engine of persecution, as

it was in the case of the venerable Polycarp, and in the unfortunate

Churches of Lyons and Vienne. The Pagans believed that the reason why

their gods were smiling in secret,--

"Looking over wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery

sands,--

"Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying

hands,--"

was the unbelief and impiety of these hated Galileans, causes of offence

which could only be expiated by the death of the guilty. "Their

enemies," says Tertullian, "call aloud for the blood of the innocent,

alleging this vain pretext for their hatred, that they believe the

Christians to be the cause of every public misfortune. If the Tiber has

overflowed its banks, or the Nile has not overflowed, if heaven has

refused its rain, if famine or the plague has spread its ravages, the

cry is immediate, 'The Christians to the lions.'" In the first three

centuries the cry of "No Christianity" became at times as brutal, as

violent, and as unreasoning as the cry of "No Popery" has often been in

modern days. It was infinitely less disgraceful to Marcus to lend his

ear to the one than it has been to some eminent modern statesmen to be

carried away by the insensate fury of the other.

To what extent is Marcus Aurelius to be condemned for the martyrdoms

which took place in his reign? Not, I think, heavily or

indiscriminately, or with vehement sweeping censure. Common justice

surely demands that we should not confuse the present with the past, or

pass judgment on the conduct of the Emperor as though he were living in

the nineteenth century, or as though he had been acting in full

cognisance of the Gospels and the stones of the Saints. Wise and good

men before him had, in their haughty ignorance, spoken of Christianity

with execration and contempt. The philosophers who surrounded his throne

treated it with jealousy and aversion. The body of the nation firmly

believed the current rumours which charged its votaries with horrible

midnight assemblies, rendered infamous by Thyestian banquets and the

atrocities of nameless superstitions. These foul calumnies--these

hideous charges of cannibalism and incest,--were supported by the

reiterated perjury of slaves under torture, which in that age, as well

as long afterwards, was preposterously regarded as a sure criterion

of truth.

Christianity in that day was confounded with a multitude of debased and

foreign superstitions; and the Emperor in his judicial capacity, if he

ever encountered Christians at all, was far more likely to encounter

those who were unworthy of the name, than to become acquainted with the

meek, unworldly, retiring virtues of the calmest, the holiest, and the

best. When we have given their due weight to considerations such as

these we shall be ready to pardon Marcus Aurelius for having, in this

matter, acted ignorantly, and to admit that in persecuting Christianity

he may most honestly have thought that he was doing God service. The

very sincerity of his belief, the conscientiousness of his rule, the

intensity of his philanthrophy, the grandeur of his own philosophical

tenets, all conspired to make him a worse enemy of the Church than a

brutal Commodus or a disgusting Heliogabalus. And yet that there was not

in him the least _propensity_ to persecute; that these persecutions were

for the most part spontaneous and accidental; that they were in no

measure due to his direct instigation, or in special accordance with his

desire, is clear from the fact that the martyrdoms took place in Gaul

and Asia Minor, _not in Rome_. There must have been hundreds of

Christians in Rome, and under the very eye of the Emperor; nay, there

were even multitudes of Christians in his own army; yet we never hear of

his having molested any of them. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in addressing

the Emperor, expresses a doubt as to whether he was really aware of the

manner in which his Christian subjects were treated. Justin Martyr, in

his _Apology_, addresses him in terms of perfect confidence and deep

respect. In short he was in this matter "blameless, but unfortunate." It

is painful to think that the venerable Polycarp, and the thoughtful

Justin may have forfeited their lives for their principles, not only in

the reign of so good a man, but even by virtue of his authority; but we

must be very uncharitable or very unimaginative if we cannot readily

believe that, though they had received the crown of martyrdom from his

hands, the redeemed spirits of those great martyrs would have been the

first to welcome this holiest of the heathen into the presence of a

Saviour whose Church he persecuted, but to whose indwelling Spirit his

virtues were due? whom ignorantly and unconsciously he worshipped, and

whom had he ever heard of Him and known Him, he would have loved in his

heart and glorified by the consistency of his noble and stainless life.

The persecution of the Churches in Lyons and Vienne happened in A.D.

177. Shortly after this period fresh wars recalled the Emperor to the

North. It is said that, in despair of ever seeing him again, the chief

men of Rome entreated him to address them his farewell admonitions, and

that for three days he discoursed to them on philosophical questions.

When he arrived at the seat of war, victory again crowned his arms. But

Marcus was now getting old, and he was worn out with the toils, trials,

and travels of his long and weary life. He sunk under mental anxieties

and bodily fatigues, and after a brief illness died in Pannonia, either

at Vienna or Sirmium, on March 17, A.D. 180, in the fifty-ninth year of

his age and the twentieth of his reign.

Death to him was no calamity. He was sadly aware that "there is no man

so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who

are pleased with what is going to happen. Suppose that he was a good and

wise man, will there not be at last some one to say of him, 'Let us at

last breathe freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster. It is true

that he was harsh to none of us, but I perceive that he tacitly condemns

us.'... Thou wilt consider this when thou art dying, and wilt depart

more contentedly by reflecting thus: 'I am going away _from a life in

which even my associates, on behalf of whom I have striven, and cared,

and prayed so much, themselves wish me to depart_, hoping perchance to

get some little advantage by it.' Why then should a man cling to a

longer stay here? _Do not, however, for this reason go away less kindly

disposed to them, but preserving thy own character, and continuing

friendly, and benevolent, and kind_" And dreading death far less than he

dreaded any departure from the laws of virtue, he exclaims, "Come

quickly, O Death, for fear that at last I should forget myself." This

utterance has been well compared to the language which Bossuet put into

the mouth of a Christian soul:--"O Death; thou dost not trouble my

designs, thou accomplishest them. Haste, then, O favourable Death!...

_Nunc Dimittis_."

A nobler, a gentler, a purer, a sweeter soul,--a soul less elated by

prosperity, or more constant in adversity--a soul more fitted by virtue,

and chastity, and self-denial to enter into the eternal peace, never

passed into the presence of its Heavenly Father. We are not surprised

that all, whose means permitted it, possessed themselves of his statues,

and that they were to be seen for years afterwards among the household

gods of heathen families, who felt themselves more hopeful and more

happy from the glorious sense of possibility which was inspired by the

memory of one who, in the midst of difficulties, and breathing an

atmosphere heavy with corruption, yet showed himself so wise, so great,

so good a man.

O framed for nobler times and calmer hearts!

O studious thinker, eloquent for truth!

Philosopher, despising wealth and death,

But patient, childlike, full of life and love!

CHAPTER IV.

THE "MEDITATIONS" OF MARCUS AURELIUS.

Emperor as he was, Marcus Aurelius found himself in a hollow and

troublous world; but he did not give himself up to idle regret or

querulous lamentations. If these sorrows and perturbations came from the

gods, he kissed the hand that smote him; "he delivered up his broken

sword to Fate the conqueror with a humble and a manly heart." In any

case he had _duties_ to do, and he set himself to perform them with a

quiet heroism--zealously, conscientiously, even cheerfully.

The principles of the Emperor are not reducible to the hard and definite

lines of a philosophic system. But the great laws which guided his

actions and moulded his views of life were few and simple, and in his

book of _Meditations_, which is merely his private diary written to

relieve his mind amid all the trials of war and government, he recurs to

them again and again. "Plays, war, astonishment, torpor, slavery," he

says to himself, "will wipe out those holy principles of thine;" and

this is why he committed those principles to writing. Some of these I

have already adduced, and others I proceed to quote, availing myself, as

before, of the beautiful and scholar-like translation of Mr.

George Long.

All pain, and misfortune, and ugliness seemed to the Emperor to be most

wisely regarded under a threefold aspect, namely, if considered in

reference to the gods, as being due to laws beyond their control; if

considered with reference to the nature of things, as being subservient

and necessary; and if considered with reference to ourselves, as being

dependent on the amount of indifference and fortitude with which we

endure them.

The following passages will elucidate these points of view:--

"The intelligence of the Universe is social. Accordingly it has made the

inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the

superior to one another." (v. 30.)

"Things do not touch the soul, for they are eternal, and remain

immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is

within.... _The Universe is Transformation; life is opinion_" (iv. 3.)

"To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs

water causes fear; and to little children the ball is a fine thing. Why

then am I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power

than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in him who is bitten by a

mad dog?" (vi. 52.)

"How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is

troublesome and unsuitable, and immediately to be at tranquillity."

(v. 2.)

The passages in which Marcus speaks of evil as a _relative_ thing,--as

being good in the making,--the unripe and bitter bud of that which shall

be hereafter a beautiful flower,--although not expressed with perfect

clearness, yet indicate his belief that our view of evil things rises in

great measure from our inability to perceive the great whole of which

they are but subservient parts.

"All things," he says, "come from that universal ruling power, either

directly or by way of consequence. _And accordingly the lion's gaping

jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn,

as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful_. Do not therefore

imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost

venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all."

In another curious passage he says that all things which are natural and

congruent with the causes which produce them have a certain beauty and

attractiveness of their own; for instance, the splittings and

corrugations on the surface of bread when it has been baked. "And again,

figs when they are quite ripe gape open; and in the ripe olives the very

circumstances of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty

to the fruit. And _the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's

eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars_, and

many other things--though they are far from being beautiful, if a man

should examine them severally--still, because they are consequent upon

the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they

please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper

insight about the things found in the universe there is hardly _one of

those which follow by way of consequence_ which will not seem to him to

be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." (iv. 2.)

This congruity to nature--the following of nature, and obedience to all

her laws--is the key-formula to the doctrines of the Roman Stoics.

"Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and

terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither

worse, then, nor better is a thing made by being praised.... _Is such a

thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is not praised? or

gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub_?"

(iv. 20.)

"Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe.

Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee.

Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature! from thee

are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. _The

poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of

God_?" (iv. 23.)

"Willingly give thyself up to fate, allowing her to spin thy thread into

whatever thing she pleases." (iv. 34.)

And here, in a very small matter--getting out of bed in a morning--is

one practical application of the formula:--

"In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let these thoughts be

present--'I am rising to the work of a human being. _Why, then, am I

dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist, and for

which I was brought into the world_? Or have I been made for this, to

lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm?' 'But this is more

pleasant.' _Dost thou exist, then, to take thy pleasure, and not for

action or exertion_? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little

birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to put in order

their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the

work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is

according to thy nature?" (v. 1.) ["Go to the ant, thou sluggard;

consider her ways, and be wise!"]

The same principle, that Nature has assigned to us our proper

place--that a task has been given us to perform, and that our only care

should be to perform it aright, for the blessing of the great Whole of

which we are but insignificant parts--dominates through the admirable

precepts which the Emperor lays down for the regulation of our conduct

towards others. Some men, he says, do benefits to others only because

they expect a return; some men even, if they do not demand any return,

are not _forgetful_ that they have rendered a benefit; but others do not

even know what they have done, but _are like a vine which has produced

grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has produced its proper

fruit_. So we ought to do good to others as simple and as naturally as a

horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after

season, without thinking of the grapes which it has borne. And in

another passage, "What more dost thou want when thou hast done a service

to another? Art thou not content to have done an act conformable to thy

nature, and must thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye

demanded a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking?"

"Judge every word and deed which is according to nature to be fit for

thee, and be not diverted by the blame which follows...but if a thing is

good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee." (v. 3.)

Sometimes, indeed, Marcus Aurelius wavers. The evils of life overpower

him. "Such as bathing appears to thee," he says, "_oil, sweat, dirt,

filthy water, all things disgusting--so is every part of life and

everything_" (viii. 24); and again:--"Of human life the time is a point,

and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the

composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a

whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment."

But more often he retains his perfect tranquillity, and says, "Either

thou livest here, and hast already accustomed thyself to it, or thou

art going away, and this was thine own will; or thou art dying, and hast

discharged thy duty. _But besides these things there is nothing. Be of

good cheer, then_." (x. 22.) "Take me, and cast me where thou wilt, for

then I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can

feel and act conformably to its proper constitution." (viii. 45.)

There is something delightful in the fact that even in the Stoic

philosophy there was some comfort to keep men from despair. To a holy

and scrupulous conscience like that of Marcus, there would have been an

inestimable preciousness in the Christian doctrine of the "forgiveness

of the sins." Of that divine mercy--of that sin-uncreating power--the

ancient world knew nothing; but in Marcus we find some dim and faint

adumbration of the doctrine, expressed in a manner which might at least

breathe calm into the spirit of the philosopher, though it could never

reach the hearts of the suffering multitude. For "suppose," he says,

"that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,--for thou wast

made by nature a part, but now hast cut thyself off--_yet here is the

beautiful provision that it is in thy power again to unite thyself_. God

has allowed this to no other part--after it has been separated and cut

asunder, to come together again. _But consider the goodness with which

He has privileged man; for He has put it in his power, when he has been

separated, to return and to be reunited, and to resume his place_" And

elsewhere he says, "If you cannot maintain a true and magnanimous

character, go courageously into some corner where you _can_ maintain

them; or if even there you fail, depart at once from life, not with

passion, but with modest and simple freedom--which will be to have done

at least _one_ laudable act." Sad that even to Marcus Aurelius death

should have seemed the only refuge from the despair of ultimate failure

in the struggle to be wise and good!

Marcus valued temperance and self-denial as being the best means of

keeping his heart strong and pure; but we are glad to learn he did _not_

value the rigours of asceticism. Life brought with it enough, and more

than enough, of antagonism to brace his nerves; enough, and more than

enough, of the rough wind of adversity in his face to make it

unnecessary to add more by his own actions. "It is not fit," he says,

"that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given

pain even to another." (viii. 42.)

It was a commonplace of ancient philosophy that the life of the wise man

should be a contemplation of, and a preparation for, death. It certainly

was so with Marcus Aurelius. The thoughts of the nothingness of man, and

of that great sea of oblivion which shall hereafter swallow up all that

he is and does, are ever present to his mind; they are thoughts to which

he recurs more constantly than any other, and from which he always draws

the same moral lesson.

"Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very

moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.... Death certainly,

and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things

happen equally to good men and bad, being things which make us neither

better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." (ii. 11.)

Elsewhere he says that Hippocrates cured diseases and died; and the

Chaldaeans foretold the future and died; and Alexander, and Pompey, and

Caesar killed thousands, and then died; and lice destroyed Democritus,

and other lice killed Socrates; and Augustus, and his wife, and

daughter, and all his descendants, and all his ancestors, are dead; and

Vespasian and all his Court, and all who in his day feasted, and

married, and were sick and chaffered, and fought, and flattered, and

plotted, and grumbled, and wished other people to die, and pined to

become kings or consuls, are dead; and all the idle people who are doing

the same things now are doomed to die; and all human things are smoke,

and nothing at all; and it is not for us, but for the gods, to settle

whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. "_There are many

grains of frankincense on the same altar; one falls before, another

falls after; but it makes no difference._" And the moral of all these

thoughts is, "Death hangs over thee while thou livest: while it is in

thy power be good." (iv. 17.) "Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the

voyage, thou hast come to shore; get out. If, indeed, to another life

there is no want of gods, not even there. But if to a state without

sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures." (iii. 3.)

Nor was Marcus at all comforted under present annoyances by the thought

of posthumous fame. "How ephemeral and worthless human things are," he

says, "and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy

or ashes." "Many who are now praising thee, will very soon blame thee,

and neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor

anything else." What has become of all great and famous men, and all

they desired, and all they loved? They are "smoke, and ash, and a tale,

or not even a tale." After all their rages and envyings, men are

stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten all,

and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, again, after such

thoughts, the same moral is always introduced again:--"Pass then through

the little space of time conformably to nature, and end the journey in

content, _just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature

who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew_" "One thing

only troubles me, lest I should do something which the constitution of

man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it

does not allow now."

To quote the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius is to me a fascinating task. But

I have already let him speak so largely for himself that by this time

the reader will have some conception of his leading motives. It only

remains to adduce a few more of the weighty and golden sentences in

which he lays down his rule of life.

"To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream,

and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour; and life is a

warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What,

then, is that which is able to enrich a man? One thing, and only

one--philosophy. But this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within

a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures,

_doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with

hypocrisy_... _accepting all that happens and all that is

allotted_ ... _and finally waiting for death with a cheerful

mind_" (ii. 17.)

"If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth,

temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, than thine own soul's

satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to

right reason, and In the condition that is assigned to thee without thy

own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it

with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best.

But ... if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than

this, give place to nothing else.... Simply and freely choose the

better, and hold to it." (iii. 6.)

"Body, soul, intelligence: to the body belong sensations, to the soul

appetites, to the intelligence principles." To be impressed by the

senses is peculiar to animals; to be pulled by the strings of desire

belongs to effeminate men, and to men like Phalaris or Nero; to be

guided only by intelligence belongs to atheists and traitors, and "men

who do their impure deeds when they have shut the doors.... There

remains that which is peculiar to the good man, _to be pleased and

content with what happens, and with the thread which is spun for him;

and not to defile the divinity which is planted in his breast_, nor

disturb it by a crowd of images; but to preserve it tranquil, following

it obediently as a god, neither saying anything contrary to truth, nor

doing anything contrary to justice. (iii. 16.)

"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores,

and mountains, and thou too art wont to desire such things very much.

But this is altogether a mark of the commonest sort of men, for it is in

thy power whenever thou shalt chose to retire into thyself. For _nowhere

either with more quiet or with more freedom does a man retire than into

his own soul_, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by

looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity,--which is

nothing else than the good ordering of the mind." (iv. 3.)

"Unhappy am I, because this has happened to me? Not so, but happy am I

_though_ this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain;

neither crushed by the present, nor fearing the future." (iv. 19.)

It is just possible that in some of these passages some readers may

detect a trace of painful self-consciousness, and _imagine_ that they

detect a little grain of self-complacence. Something of

self-consciousness is perhaps inevitable in the diary and examination

of his own conscience by one who sat on such a lonely height; but

self-complacency there is none. Nay, there is sometimes even a cruel

sternness in the way in which the Emperor speaks of his own self. He

certainly dealt not with himself in the manner of a dissembler with God.

"When," he says (x. 8), "thou hast assumed the names of a man who is

good, modest, rational, magnanimous, cling to those names; and if thou

shouldst lose them, quickly return to them.... _For to continue to_ _be

such as thou hast hitherto been_, and to be torn in pieces, and defiled

in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, and one over-fond

of his life, and _like those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts,

who, though covered with wounds and gore, still entreat to be kept till

the following day, though they will be exposed in the same state to the

same claws and bites_. Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these

few names: and if thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou were

removed to the Islands of the Blest." Alas! to Aurelius, in this life,

the Islands of the Blest were very far away. Heathen philosophy was

exalted and eloquent, but all its votaries were sad; to "the peace of

God, which passeth all understanding," it was not given them to attain.

We see Marcus "wise, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless," says

Mr. Arnold, "yet with all this agitated, stretching out his arms for

something beyond--_tendentemque manue ripae ulterioris amore_"

I will quote in conclusion but three short precepts:--

"Be cheerful, and seek not external help, nor the tranquillity which

others give. _A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by

others_." (iv. 5.)

"_Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but

it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it_" (iv. 49.)

This comparison has been used many a time since the days of Marcus

Aurelius. The reader will at once recall Goldsmith's famous lines:--

"As some tall cliff that rears its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

"Short is the little that remains to thee of life. _Live as on a

mountain_. For it makes no difference whether a man lives there or here,

if he lives everywhere in the world as in a civil community. Let men

see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live. If they

cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live as

men do." (x. 15.)

Such were some of the thoughts which Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary

after days of battle with the Quadi, and the Marcomanni, and the

Sarmatae. Isolated from others no less by moral grandeur than by the

supremacy of his sovereign rank, he sought the society of his own noble

soul. I sometimes imagine that I see him seated on the borders of some

gloomy Pannonian forest or Hungarian marsh; through the darkness the

watchfires of the enemy gleam in the distance; but both among them, and

in the camp around him, every sound is hushed, except the tread of the

sentinel outside the imperial tent; and in that tent long after midnight

sits the patient Emperor by the light of his solitary lamp, and ever and

anon, amid his lonely musings, he pauses to write down the pure and holy

thoughts which shall better enable him, even in a Roman palace, even on

barbarian battlefields, daily to tolerate the meanness and the

malignity of the men around him; daily to amend his own shortcomings,

and, as the sun of earthly life begins to set, daily to draw nearer and

nearer to the Eternal Light. And when I thus think of him, I know not

whether the whole of heathen antiquity, out of its gallery of stately

and royal figures, can furnish a nobler, or purer, or more lovable

picture than that of this crowned philosopher and laurelled hero, who

was yet one of the humblest and one of the most enlightened of all

ancient "Seekers after God."

CONCLUSION.

A sceptical writer has observed, with something like a sneer, that the

noblest utterances of Gospel morality may be paralleled from the

writings of heathen philosophers. The sneer is pointless, and Christian

moralists have spontaneously drawn attention to the fact. In this

volume, so far from trying to conceal that it is so, I have taken

pleasure in placing side by side the words of Apostles and of

Philosophers. The divine origin of Christianity does not rest on its

morality alone. By the aid of the light which was within them, by

deciphering the law written on their own consciences, however much its

letters may have been obliterated or dimmed, Plato, and Cicero, and

Seneca, and Epictetus, and Aurelius were enabled to grasp and to

enunciate a multitude of great and memorable truths; yet they themselves

would have been the first to admit the wavering uncertainty of their

hopes and speculations, and the absolute necessity of a further

illumination. So strong did that necessity appear to some of the wisest

among them, that Socrates ventures in express words to prophesy the

future advent of some heaven-sent Guide.[70] Those who imagine that

_without_ a written revelation it would have been possible to learn all

that is necessary for man's well-being, are speaking in direct

contradiction of the greatest heathen teachers, in contradiction even of

those very teachers to whose writing they point as the proof of their

assertion. Augustine was expressing a very deep conviction when he said

that in Plato and in Cicero he met with many utterances which were

beautiful and wise, but among them all he never found, "Come unto me,

all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you."

Glorious as was the wisdom of ancient thought, its knowledge respecting

the indwelling of the Spirit, the resurrection of the body, and the

forgiveness of sins, was but fragmentary and vague. Bishop Butler has

justly remarked that "The great doctrines of a future state, the dangers

of a course of wickedness, and the efficacy of repentance are not only

_confirmed_ in the Gospel, but are taught, especially the last is, with

a degree of light to which that of nature is darkness."

[Footnote 70: Xen. Mem. 1, iv. 14; Plato, Alcib. ii.]

The morality of Paganism was, on its own confession, _insufficient_. It

was tentative, where Christianity is authoritative: it was dim and

partial, where Christianity is bright and complete; it was inadequate to

rouse the sluggish carelessness of mankind, where Christianity came in

with an imperial and awakening power; it gives only a _rule_, where

Christianity supplies a _principle_. And even where its teachings were

absolutely coincident with those of Scripture, it failed to ratify them

with a sufficient sanction; it failed to announce them with the same

powerful and contagious ardour; it failed to furnish an absolutely

faultless and vivid example of their practice; it failed to inspire them

with an irresistible motive; it failed to support them with a powerful

comfort under the difficulties which were sure to be encountered in the

aim after a consistent and holy life.

The attempts of the Christian Fathers to show that the truths of ancient

philosophy were borrowed from Scripture are due in some cases to

ignorance and in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial

dealing. That Gideon (Jerubbaal) is identical with the priest

Hierombalos who supplied information to Sanchoniathon, the Berytian;

that Thales pieced together a philosophy from fragments of Jewish truth

learned in Phoenicia; that Pythagoras and Democritus availed themselves

of Hebraic traditions, collected during their travels; that Plato is a

mere "Atticising Moses;" that Aristotle picked up his ethical system

from a Jew whom he met in Asia; that Seneca corresponded with St. Paul:

are assertions every bit as unhistorical and false as that Homer was

thinking of Genesis when he described the shield of Achilles, or (as

Clemens of Alexandria gravely informs us) that Miltiades won the battle

of Marathon by copying the strategy of the battle of Beth-Horon! To say

that Pagan morality "kindled its faded taper at the Gospel light,

whether furtively or unconsciously taken," and that it "dissembled the

obligation, and made a boast of the splendour as though it were

originally her own, or were sufficient in her hands for the moral

illumination of the world;" is to make an assertion wholly

untenable.[71] Seneca, Epictetus, Aurelius, are among the truest and

loftiest of Pagan moralists, yet Seneca ignored the Christians,

Epictetus despised, and Aurelius persecuted them. All three, so far as

they knew anything about the Christians at all, had unhappily been

taught to look upon them as the most detestable sect of what they had

long regarded as the most degraded and the most detestable of religions.

[Footnote 71: See for various statements in this passage, Josephus, _c.

Apion_. ii. Section 36; Cic. _De Fin_. v. 25; Clem. Alex. _Strom_, 1,

xxii. 150, xxv. v. 14; Euseb.; _Prof. Evang_. x. 4, ix. 5, &c.; Lactant.

_Inst. Div_. iv. 2, &c.]

There is something very touching in this fact; but, if there be

something very touching, there is also something very encouraging. God

was their God as well as ours--their Creator, their Preserver, who left

not Himself without witness among them; who, as they blindly felt after

Him, suffered their groping hands to grasp the hem of His robe; who sent

them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with

joy and gladness. And His Spirit was with them, dwelling in them, though

unseen and unknown, purifying and sanctifying the temple of their

hearts, sending gleams of illuminating light through the gross darkness

which encompassed them, comforting their uncertainties, making

intercession for them with groaning which cannot be uttered. And more

than all, _our_ Saviour was _their_ Saviour, too; He, whom they regarded

as a crucified malefactor was their true invisible King; through His

righteousness their poor merits were accepted; their inward sicknesses

were healed; He whose worship they denounced as an "execrable

superstition" stood supplicating for them at the right hand of the

Majesty on high, helping them (though they knew Him not) to crush all

that was evil within them, and pleading for them when they persecuted

even the most beloved of His saints, "Father, forgive them; for they

know not what they do."

Yes, they too were all His offspring. Even if they had not been, should

we grudge that some of the children's meat should be given unto dogs?

Shall we deny to these "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" their

oracular significance? Shall we be jealous of the ethical loftiness of

a Plato or an Aurelius? Shall we be loth to admit that some power of the

Spirit of Christ, even mid the dark wanderings of Seneca's life, kept

him still conscious of a nobler and a better way, or that some sweetness

of a divine hope inspired the depressions of Epictetus in his slavery?

Shall our eye be evil because God in His goodness granted the heathen

also to know such truths as enabled them "to overcome the allurements of

the visible and the terrors of the invisible world?" Yes, if we have of

the Christian Church so mean a conception that we look upon it as a mere

human society, "set up in the world to defend a certain religion against

a certain other religion." But if on the other hand we believe "that it

was _a society established by God as a witness for the true condition of

all human beings_, we shall rejoice to acknowledge its members to be

what they believed themselves to be,--confessors and martyrs for a truth

which they could not fully embrace or comprehend, but which, through

their lives and deaths, through the right and wrong acts, the true and

false words, of those who understand them least, was to manifest and

prove itself. Those who hold this conviction dare not conceal, or

misrepresent, or undervalue, any one of those weighty and memorable

sentences which are to be found in the _Meditation_ of Marcus Aurelius.

_If they did, they would be underrating a portion of that very truth

which the preachers of the Gospel were appointed to set forth_; they

would be adopting the error of the philosophical Emperor without his

excuse for it. Nor dare they pretend that the Christian teaching had

unconsciously imparted to him a portion of its own light while he seemed

to exclude it. They will believe that it was God's good pleasure that a

certain truth should be seized and apprehended by this age, and they

will see indications of what that truth was in the efforts of Plutarch

to understand the 'Daemon' which guided Socrates, in the courageous

language of Ignatius, in the bewildering dreams of the Gnostics, in the

eagerness of Justin Martyr to prove Christianity a philosophy ... in the

apprehension of Christian principles by Marcus Aurelius, and in his

hatred of the Christians. From every side they will derive evidence,

_that a doctrine and society which were meant for mankind cannot depend

upon, the partial views and apprehensions of men, must go on justifying,

reconciling, confuting, those views and apprehensions by the

demonstration of facts_" [72]

[Footnote 72: Maurice, _Philos. of the First Six Centuries_, p. 37. We

venture specially to recommend this weighty and beautiful passage to the

reader's serious attention.]

But perhaps some reader will say, What advantage, then, can we gain by

studying in Pagan writers truths which are expressed more nobly, more

clearly, and infinitely more effectually in our own sacred books? Before

answering the question, let me mention the traditional anecdote[73] of

the Caliph Omar. When he conquered Alexandria, he was shown its

magnificent library, in which were collected untold treasures of

literature, gathered together by the zeal, the labour, and the

liberality of a dynasty of kings. "What is the good of all those books?"

he said. "They are either in accordance with the Koran, or contrary to

it. If the former they are superfluous; if the latter they are

pernicious. In either case let them be burnt." Burnt they were, as

legend tells; but all the world has condemned the Caliph's reasoning as

a piece of stupid Philistinism and barbarous bigotry. Perhaps the

question as to the _use_ of reading Pagan ethics is equally

unphilosophical; at any rate, we can spare but very few words to its

consideration. The answer obviously is, that God has spoken to men,

[Greek: polymeros kai polytropos], "at sundry times and in divers

manners," [74] with a richly variegated wisdom.[75] Sometimes He has

taught truth by the voice of Hebrew prophets, sometimes by the voice of

Pagan philosophers. And _all_ His voices demand our listening ear. If it

was given to the Jew to speak with diviner insight and intenser power,

it is given to the Gentile also to speak at times with a large and lofty

utterance, and we may learn truth from men of alien lips and another

tongue. They, too, had the dream, the vision, the dark saying upon the

harp, the "daughter of a voice," the mystic flashes upon the graven

gems. And such truths come to us with a singular force and freshness;

with a strange beauty as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated

manhood; with a new power of conviction from their originality of form,

which, because it is less familiar to us, is well calculated to arrest

our attention after it has been paralysed by familiar repetitions. We

cannot afford to lose these heathen testimonies to Christian truth; or

to hush the glorious utterances of Muse and Sibyl which have justly

outlived "the drums and tramplings of a hundred triumphs." We may make

them infinitely profitable to us. If St. Paul quotes Aratus, and

Menander, and Epimenides,[76] and perhaps more than one lyrical melody

besides, with earnest appreciation,--if the inspired Apostle could both

learn himself and teach others out of the utterances of a Cretan

philosopher and an Attic comedian, we may be sure that many of Seneca's

apophthegams would have filled him with pleasure, and that he would have

been able to read Epictetus and Aurelius with the same noble admiration

which made him see with thankful emotion that memorable altar TO THE

UNKNOWN GOD.

[Footnote 73: Now known to be unhistorical.]

[Footnote 74: Heb. i. 1.]

[Footnote 75: [Greek: polypoikilos dophia].]

[Footnote 76: See Acts xvii. 28; 1 Cor.; Tit. i. 12.]

Let us then make a brief and final sketch of the three great Stoics

whose lives we have been contemplating, with a view to summing up their

specialties, their deficiencies, and the peculiar relations to, or

divergences from, Christian truth, which their writings present to us.

"Seneca saepe noster," "Seneca, often our own," is the expression of

Tertullian, and he uses it as an excuse for frequent references to his

works. Yet if, of the three, he be most like Christianity in particular

passages, he diverges most widely from it in his general spirit.

He diverges from Christianity in many of his modes of regarding life,

and in many of his most important beliefs. What, for instance, is his

main conception of the Deity? Seneca is generally a Pantheist. No doubt

he speaks of God's love and goodness, but with him God is no personal

living Father, but the soul of the universe--the fiery, primaeval,

eternal principle which transfuses an inert, and no less eternal,

matter, and of which our souls are, as it were, but divine particles or

passing sparks. "God," he says, "is Nature, is Fate, is Fortune, is the

Universe, is the all-pervading Mind. He cannot change the substance of

the universe, He is himself under the power of Destiny, which is

uncontrollable and immutable. It is not God who rolls the thunder, it is

Fate. He does not rejoice in His works, but is identical with them." In

fact, Seneca would have heartily adopted the words of Pope:

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul."

Though there may be a vague sense in which those words may be admitted

and explained by Christians, yet, in the mind of Seneca, they led to

conclusions directly opposed to those of Christianity. With him, for

instance, the wise man is the _equal_ of God; not His adorer, not His

servant, not His suppliant, but His associate, His relation. He differs

from God in time alone. Hence all prayer is needless he says, and the

forms of external worship are superfluous and puerile. It is foolish to

beg for that which you can impart to yourself. "What need is there of

_vows_? Make _yourself_ happy." Nay, in the intolerable arrogance which

marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, the wise man is under certain

aspects placed even higher than God--higher than God Himself--because

God is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise man is superior to

their anguish; and because God is good of necessity, but the wise man

from choice. This wretched and inflated paradox occurs in Seneca's

treatise _On Providence_, and in the same treatise he glorifies suicide,

and expresses a doubt as to the immortality of the soul.

Again, the two principles on which Seneca relied as the basis of all his

moral system are: first, the principle that we ought to follow Nature;

and, secondly, the supposed perfectibility of the ideal man.

1. Now, of course, if we explain this precept of "following Nature" as

Juvenal has explained it, and say that the voice of Nature is always

coincident with the voice of philosophy--if we prove that our real

nature is none other than the dictate of our highest and most nobly

trained reason, and if we can establish the fact that every deed of

cruelty, of shame, of lust, or of selfishness, is essentially

_contrary_ to our nature--then we may say with Bishop Butler, that the

precept to "follow Nature" is "a manner of speaking not loose and

undeterminate, but clear and distinct, strictly just and true." But how

complete must be the system, how long the preliminary training, which

alone can enable us to find any practical value, any appreciable aid to

a virtuous life, in a dogma such as this! And, in the hands of Seneca,

it becomes a very empty formula. He entirely lacked the keen insight and

dialectic subtlety of such a writer as Bishop Butler; and, in his

explanation of this Stoical shibboleth, any real meaning which it may

possess is evaporated into a gorgeous mist of confused declamation and

splendid commonplace.

2. Nor is he much more fortunate with his ideal man. This pompous

abstraction presents us with a conception at once ambitious and sterile.

The Stoic wise man is a sort of moral Phoenix, impossible and repulsive.

He is intrepid in dangers, free from all passion, happy in adversity,

calm in the storm; he alone knows how to live, because he alone knows

how to die; he is the master of the world, because he is master of

himself, and the equal of God; he looks down upon everything with

sublime imperturbability, despising the sadnesses of humanity and

smiling with irritating loftiness at all our hopes and all our fears.

But, in another sketch of this faultless and unpleasant monster, Seneca

presents us, not the proud athlete who challenges the universe and is

invulnerable to all the stings and arrows of passion or of fate, but a

hero in the serenity of absolute triumph, more tender, indeed, but still

without desires, without passions, without needs, who can fell no pity,

because pity is a weakness which disturbs his sapient calm! Well might

the eloquent Bossuet exclaim, as he read of these chimerical

perfections, "It is to take a tone too lofty for feeble and mortal men.

But, O maxims truly pompous! O affected insensibility! O false and

imaginary wisdom! which fancies itself strong because it is hard, and

generous because it is puffed up! How are these principles opposed to

the modest simplicity of the Saviour of souls, who, in our Gospel

contemplating His faithful ones in affliction, confesses that they will

be saddened by it! _Ye shall weep and lament_." Shall Christians be

jealous of such wisdom as Stoicism did really attain, when they compare

this dry and bloodless ideal with Him who wept over Jerusalem and

mourned by the grave of Lazarus, who had a mother and a friend, who

disdained none, who pitied all, who humbled Himself to death, even the

death of the cross, whose divine excellence we cannot indeed attain

because He is God, but whose example we can imitate because He was

very man?[77]

[Footnote 77: See Martha, _Les Moralistes_, p. 50; Aubertin, _Sénèque et

St. Paul_ p. 250.]

The one grand aim of the life and philosophy of Seneca was _Ease_. It is

the topic which constantly recurs in his books _On a Happy Life, On

Tranquility of Mind, On Anger_, and _On the Ease_ and _On the Firmness

of the Sage_. It is the pitiless apathy, the stern repression, of every

form of emotion, which was constantly glorified as the aim of

philosophy. It made Stilpo exclaim, when he had lost wife, property, and

children, that he had lost nothing, because he carried in his own person

everything which he possessed. It led Seneca into all that is most

unnatural, all that is most fantastic, and all that is least sincere in

his writings; it was the bitter source of disgrace and failure in his

life. It comes out worst of all in his book _On Anger_. Aristotle had

said that "Anger was a good servant but a bad master;" Plato had

recognized the immense value and importance of the irascible element in

the moral constitution. Even Christian writers, in spite of Bishop

Butler, have often lost sight of this truth, and have forgotten that to

a noble nature "the hate of hate" and the "scorn of scorn" are as

indispensable as "the love of love." But Seneca almost gets angry

himself at the very notion of the wise man being angry and indignant

even against moral evil. No, he must not get angry, because it would

disturb his sublime calm; and, if he allowed himself to be angry at

wrong-doing, he would have to be angry all day long. This practical

Epicureanism, this idle acquiescence in the supposed incurability of

evil, poisoned all Seneca's career. "He had tutored himself," says

Professor Maurice, "to endure personal injuries without indulging an

anger; he had tutored himself to look upon all moral evil without anger.

If the doctrine is sound and the discipline desirable, we must be

content to take the whole result of them. If we will not do that, we

must resolve to hate oppression and wrong, _even at the cost of

philosophical composure"_ But repose is not to be our aim:--

"We have no right to bliss,

No title from the gods to welfare and repose."

It is one of the truths which seems to me most needed in the modern

religious world, that the type of a Christian's virtue must be very

miserable, and ordinary, and ineffectual, if he does not feel his whole

soul burn within him with an almost implacable moral indignation at the

sight of cruelty and injustice, of Pharisaic faithlessness and

social crimes.

I have thus freely criticised the radical defects of Stoicism, so far

as Seneca is its legitimate exponent; but I cannot consent to leave him

with the language of depreciation, and therefore here I will once more

endorse what an anonymous writer has said of him: "An unconscious

Christianity covers all his sentiments. If the fair fame of the man is

sullied, the aspiration to a higher life cannot be denied to the

philosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted Stoicism sometimes

sounds through the nobler music, it still leaves the truer melody

vibrating on the ear."

2. If Seneca sought for EASE, the grand aim of Epictetus was FREEDOM, of

Marcus Aurelius was SELF-GOVERNMENT. This difference of aim

characterises their entire philosophy, though all three of them are

filled with precepts which arise from the Stoical contempt of opinion,

of fortune, and of death. "Epictetus, the slave, with imperturbable

calm, voluntarily strikes off the desire for all those blessings of

which fortune had already deprived him. Seneca, who lived in the Court,

fenced himself beforehand against misfortune with the spirit of a man of

the world and the emphasis of a master of eloquence. Marcus Aurelius, at

the zenith of human power--having nothing to dread except his passions,

and finding nothing above him except immutable necessity,--surveys his

own soul and meditates especially on the eternal march of things. The

one is the resigned slave, who neither desires nor fears; the other, the

great lord, who has everything to lose; the third, finally, the emperor,

who is dependent only on himself and upon God."

Of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we shall have very little to say by way

of summary, for they show no inconsistencies and very few of the

imperfections which characterise Seneca's ideal of the Stoic philosophy.

The "moral peddling," the pedagogic display, the puerile ostentation,

the antithetic brilliancy, which we have had to point out in Seneca, are

wanting in them. The picture of the _inner_ life, indeed, of Seneca, his

efforts after self-discipline, his untiring asceticism, his enthusiasm

for all that he esteems holy and of good report-this picture, marred as

it is by rhetoric and vain self-conceit, yet "stands out in noble

contrast to the swinishness of the Campanian villas, and is, in its

complex entirety, very sad and affecting." And yet we must admit, in the

words of the same writer, that when we go from Seneca to Epictetus and

Marcus Aurelius, "it is going from the florid to the severe, from varied

feeling to the impersonal simplicity of the teacher, often from idle

rhetoric to devout earnestness." As far as it goes, the morality of

these two great Stoics is entirely noble and entirely beautiful. If

there be even in Epictetus some passing and occasional touch of Stoic

arrogance and Stoic apathy; if there be in Marcus Aurelius a depth and

intensity of sadness which shows how comparatively powerless for comfort

was a philosophy which glorified suicide, which knew but little of

immortality, and which lost in vague Pantheism the unspeakable blessing

of realizing a personal relation to a personal God and Father--there is

yet in both of them enough and more than enough to show that in all ages

and in all countries they who have sought for God have found Him, that

they have attained to high principles of thought and to high standards

of action--that they have been enabled, even in the thick darkness,

resolutely to place their feet at least on the lowest rounds of that

ladder of sunbeams which winds up through the darkness to the great

Father of Lights.

And yet the very existence of such men is in itself a significant

comment upon the Scriptural decision that "the world by wisdom knew not

God." For how many like them, out of all the records of antiquity, is it

possible for us to count? Are there five men in the whole circle of

ancient history and ancient literature to whom we could, without a sense

of incongruity, accord the title of "holy?" When we have mentioned

Socrates, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, I hardly know of another.

_Just_ men there were in multitudes--men capable of high actions; men

eminently worthy to be loved; men, I doubt not, who, when the children

of the kingdom shall be rejected, shall be gathered from the east and

the west with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the kingdom of heaven.

Yes, _just_ men in multitudes; but how many _righteous_, how many

_holy_? Some, doubtless, whom we do not know, whose names were never

written, even for a few years, on the records of mankind--men and women

in unknown villages and humble homes, "the faithful who were not

famous." We do not doubt that there were such--but were they

_relatively_ numerous? If those who rose above the level of the

multitude--if those whom some form of excellence, and often of virtue,

elevated into the reverence of their fellows--present to us a few

examples of stainless life, can we hope that a tolerable ideal of

sanctity was attained by any large proportion of the ordinary myriads?

Seeing that the dangerous lot of the majority was cast amid the

weltering sea of popular depravity, can we venture to hope that many of

them succeeded in reaching some green island of purity, integrity, and

calm? We can hardly think it; and yet, in the dispensation of the

Kingdom of Heaven we see such a condition daily realized. Not only do we

see many of the eminent, but also countless multitudes of the lowly and

obscure, whose common lives are, as it were, transfigured with a light

from heaven. Unhappy, indeed, is he who has not known such men in

person, and whose hopes and habits have not caught some touch of

radiance reflected from the nobility and virtue of lives like these. The

thought has been well expressed by the author of _Ecce Homo_, and we may

well ask with him, "If this be so, has Christ failed, or can

Christianity die?"

No, it has not failed; it cannot die; for the saving knowledge which it

has imparted is the most inestimable blessing which God has granted to

our race. We have watched philosophy in its loftiest flight, but that

flight rose as far above the range of the Pagan populace as Ida or

Olympus rises above the plain: and even the topmost crests of Ida and

Olympus are immeasurably below the blue vault, the body of heaven in its

clearness, to which it has been granted to some Christians to attain. As

regards the multitude, philosophy had no influence over the heart and

character; "it was sectarian, not universal; the religion of the few,

not of the many. It exercised no creative power over political or social

life; it stood in no such relation to the past as the New Testament to

the Old. Its best thoughts were but views and aspects of the truth;

there was no centre around which they moved, no divine life by which

they were impelled; they seemed to vanish and flit in uncertain

succession of light." But Christianity, on the other hand, glowed with a

steady and unwavering brightness; it not only swayed the hearts of

individuals by stirring them to their utmost depths, but it moulded the

laws of nations, and regenerated the whole condition of society. It

gave to mankind a fresh sanction in the word of Christ, a perfect

example in His life, a powerful motive in His love, an all sufficient

comfort in the life of immortality made sure and certain to us by His

Resurrection and Ascension. But if without this sanction, and example,

and motive, and comfort, the pagans could learn to do His will,--if,

amid the gross darkness through which glitters the degraded civilization

of imperial Rome, an Epictetus and an Aurelius could live blameless

lives in a cell and on a throne, and a Seneca could practise simplicity

and self-denial in the midst of luxury and pride--how much loftier

should be both the zeal and the attainments of us to whom God has spoken

by His Son? What manner of men ought we to be? If Tyre and Sidon and

Sodom shall rise in the judgment to bear witness against Chorazin and

Bethsaida, may not the pure lives of these great Seekers after God add a

certain emphasis of condemnation to the vice, the pettiness, the

mammon-worship of many among us to whom His love, His nature, His

attributes have been revealed with a clearness and fullness of knowledge

for which kings and philosophers have sought indeed and sought

earnestly, but sought in vain?