orth's translation.

How much more active and positive the impulse of the Christian writer
to accept his place in the universe is! Marcus Aurelius agrees TO the
scheme--the German theologian agrees WITH it. He literally ABOUNDS in
agreement, he runs out to embrace the divine decrees.

Occasionally, it is true, the stoic rises to something like a Christian
warmth of sentiment, as in the often quoted passage of Marcus
Aurelius:--

"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 thou not say,
Dear City of Zeus?"[16]

[16] Book IV., 523

But compare even as devout a passage as this with a genuine Christian
outpouring, and it seems a little cold. Turn, for instance, to the
Imitation of Christ:--

"Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be according as thou
wilt. Give what thou wilt, so much as thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do
with me as thou knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honour.
Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all
things.... When could it be evil when thou wert near? I had rather be
poor for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose rather to be a
pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven.
Where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there
death and hell."[17]

[17] Benham's translation: Book III., chaps. xv., lix. Compare Mary
Moody Emerson: "Let me be a blot on this fair world, the obscurest the
loneliest sufferer, with one proviso--that I know it is His agency. I
will love Him though He shed frost and darkness on every way of mine."
R. W. Emerson: Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 188.

It is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an
organ, to ask after its most peculiar and characteristic sort of
performance, and to seek its office in that one of its functions which
no other organ can possibly exert. Surely the same maxim holds good in
our present quest. The essence of religious experiences, the thing by
which we finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in
them which we can meet nowhere else. And such a quality will be of
course most prominent and easy to notice in