thee, indifferent to all things.
Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me act what part thou wilt, either of
a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.'"[845] "Show
those qualities," says Marcus Aurelius, "which God hath put in thy
power--sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure,
contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence,
frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling,
magnanimity."[846]

[Footnote 843: Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii.
ch. liii.]

[Footnote 844: Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. xliv.]

[Footnote 845: Arrian, "Diss. Epict.," bk. ii. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 846: "I read to-day part of the 'Meditations of Marcus
Antonius' [Aurelius]. What a strange emperor! And what a strange
heathen! Giving thanks to God for all the good things he enjoyed! In
particular for his good inspirations, and for twice revealing to him, in
dreams, things wherby he was cured of (otherwise) incurable distempers.
I make no doubt but this is one of the 'many' who shall come from the
east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' while
the 'children of the kingdom'--nominal Christians--are 'shut
out.'"--Wesley's "Journal," vol. i, p. 353.]

Amid the fearful moral degeneracy of imperial Rome, Stoicism became the
refuge of all noble spirits. But, in spite of its severity, and its
apparent triumph over the feelings, it brought no real freedom and
peace. "Stoical morality, strictly speaking, is, at bottom, only a
slavish morality, excellent in Epictetus; admirable still, but useless
to the world, in Marcus Aurelius." Pride takes the place of real
disinterestedness. It stands alone in haughty grandeur and solitary
isolation, tainted with an incurable egoism. Disheartened by its
metaphysical impotence, which robs God of all personality, and man of
all hope of immortality; defeated in its struggle to obtain purity of
soul, it sinks into despair, and often terminates, as in the case of its
two first leaders, Zeno and Cleanthes, and the two Romans, Cato and
Seneca, in self-murder. "Thus philosophy is only an apprenticeship of
death, and not of life; it tends to death by its image, _apathy_ and
_ataraxy._"[847]

[Footnote 847: Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 439.]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PROPAEDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

"Philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks
for righteo