eat system really failed--the "philosophic pride" which was
the besetting sin of all disciples in the school, from Cato to Seneca:

"Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

* * * * *

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate,--to God give none;
Rather accuse Him under usual names,
Fortune, or Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things".[1]

[Footnote 1: Paradise Regained.]

Yet, in spite of this, such men were as the salt of the earth in a corrupt
age; and as we find, throughout the more modern pages of history, great
preachers denouncing wickedness in high places,--Bourdaloue and Massillon
pouring their eloquence into the heedless ears of Louis XIV, and his
courtiers--Sherlock and Tillotson declaiming from the pulpit in such
stirring accents that "even the indolent Charles roused himself to listen,
and the fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer"[1]--so, too, do we find
these "monks of heathendom", as the Stoics have been not unfairly called,
protesting in their day against that selfish profligacy which was fast
sapping all morality in the Roman empire. No doubt (as Mr. Lecky takes
care to tell us), their high principles were not always consistent with
their practice (alas! whose are?); Cato may have ill-used his slaves,
Sallust may have been rapacious, and Seneca wanting in personal courage.
Yet it was surely something to have set up a noble ideal, though they
might not attain to it themselves, and in "that hideous carnival of vice"
to have kept themselves, so far as they might, unspotted from the world.
Certain it is that no other ancient sect ever came so near the light of
revelation. Passages from Seneca, from Epictetus, from Marcus Aurelius,
sound even now like fragments of the inspired writings. The Unknown God,
whom they ignorantly worshipped as the Soul or Reason of the World,
is--in spite of Milton's strictures--the beginning and the end of their
philosophy. Let us listen for a moment to their language. "Prayer should
be only for the good". "Men should act according to the spirit, and not
according to the letter of their faith". "Wouldest thou propitiate the
gods? Be good: he has worshipped them sufficiently who has imitated
them". It was from a Stoic poet, Aratus, that St. Paul quoted the great
truth which was the rational argument against idolatry--"For we are also
His offspring, and