ntempt.]

[Footnote 48: Tac. _Hist_. i. 13: ib. v. 5: JUV. xiv. 85: Pers. v. 190,
&c.]

The reader will now judge whether there is the slightest probability
that Seneca had any intercourse with St. Paul, or was likely to have
stooped from his superfluity of wealth, and pride of power, to take
lessons from obscure and despised slaves in the purlieus inhabited by
the crowded households of Caesar or Narcissus.

CHAPTER XV.

SENECA'S RESEMBLANCES TO SCRIPTURE.

And yet in a very high sense of the word Seneca may be called, as he is
called in the title of this book, a Seeker after God; and the
resemblances to the sacred writings which may be found in the pages of
his works are numerous and striking. A few of these will probably
interest our readers, and will put them in a better position for
understanding how large a measure of truth and enlightenment had
rewarded the honest search of the ancient philosophers. We will place a
few such passages side by side with the texts of Scripture which they
resemble or recall.

1. _God's Indwelling Presence_.

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?" asks St. Paul (1 Cor. iii. 16).

"_God is near you, is with you, is within you_," writes Seneca to his
friend Lucilius, in the 41st of those _Letters_ which abound in his most
valuable moral reflections; "_a sacred Spirit dwells within us, the
observer and guardian of all our evil and our good ... there is no good
man without God_."

And again (_Ep._ 73): "_Do you wonder that man goes to the gods? God
comes to men: nay, what is yet nearer; He comes into men. No good mind
is holy without God_."

2. _The Eye of God_.

"All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have
to do." (Heb. iv. 13.)

"Pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in
secret shall reward thee openly." (Matt. vi. 6.)

Seneca (_On Providence_, 1): "_It is no advantage that conscience is
shut within us; we lie open to God_."

_Letter_ 83: "_What advantage is it that anything is hidden from man?
Nothing is closed to God: He is present to our minds, and enters into
our central thoughts_."

_Letter_ 83: "_We must live as if we were living in sight of all men; we
must think as though some one could and can gaze into our
inmost breast_."

3. _God is a Spirit_.

St. Paul, "We ought not to think that the God-head is like unto gold, or
silver, or stone, graven by ar