ying to compose the work which is supposed to contain the
correspondence of Seneca and St. Paul. The undoubted spuriousness of
that work is now universally admitted, and indeed the forgery is too
clumsy to be even worth reading. But it is worth while inquiring whether
in the circumstances of the time there is even a bare possibility that
Seneca should ever have been among the readers or the auditors of Paul.

And the answer is, There is absolutely no such probability. A vivid
imagination is naturally attracted by the points of contrast and
resemblance offered by two such characters, and we shall see that there
is a singular likeness between many of their sentiments and expressions.
But this was a period in which, as M. Villemain observes, "from one
extremity of the social world to the other truths met each other without
recognition." Stoicism, noble as were many of its precepts, lofty as was
the morality it professed, deeply as it was imbued in many respects with
a semi-Christian piety, looked upon Christianity with profound contempt.
The Christians disliked the Stoics, the Stoics despised and persecuted
the Christians. "The world knows nothing of its greatest men." Seneca
would have stood aghast at the very notion of his receiving the lessons,
still more of his adopting the religion, of a poor, accused, and
wandering Jew. The haughty, wealthy, eloquent, prosperous, powerful
philosopher would have smiled at the notion that any future ages would
suspect him of having borrowed any of his polished and epigrammatic
lessons of philosophic morals or religion from one whom, if he heard of
him, he would have regarded as a poor wretch, half fanatic and half
barbarian.

We learn from St. Paul himself that the early converts of Christianity
were men in the very depths of poverty,[46] and that its preachers were
regarded as fools, and weak, and were despised, and naked, and
buffeted--persecuted and homeless labourers--a spectacle to the world,
and to angels, and to men, "made as the filth of the earth and the
off-scouring of all things." We know that their preaching was to the
Greeks "foolishness," and that, when they spoke of Jesus and the
resurrection, their hearers mocked[47] and jeered. And these indications
are more than confirmed by many contemporary passages of ancient
writers. We have already seen the violent expressions of hatred which
the ardent and high-toned soul of Tacitus thought applicable to the
Christians; and suc