Seekers after God Part 8

Seneca: "_Those whom you regard as happy, if you saw them, not in their externals, but in their hidden aspect, are wretched, sordid, base; like their own walls adorned outwardly. It is no solid and genuine felicity; it is a plaster, and that a thin one; and so, as long as they can stand and be seen at their pleasure, they shine and impose on us: when anything has fallen which disturbs and uncovers them, it is evident how much deep and real foulness an extraneous splendour has concealed_."

6. _Teaching compared to Seed_.

"But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit; some an hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold." (Matt xiii. 8.)

Seneca (Letter 38): "_Words must be sown like seed; which, although it be small, when it hath found a suitable ground, unfolds its strength, and from very small size is expanded into the largest increase. Reason does the same.... The things spoken are few; but if the mind have received them well, they gain strength and grow_."

7. _All Men are Sinners_.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." (1 John i. 8.)

Seneca (_On Anger_, i. 14, ii. 27): "_If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade ourselves of this:--that there is not one of us without fault.... No man is found who can acquit himself; and he who calls himself innocent does so with reference to a witness, and not to his conscience_."

8. _Avarice_.

"The love of money is the root of all evil." (1 Tim. vi. 10.)

Seneca (_On Tranquillity of Soul_, 8): "_Riches ... the greatest source of human trouble_."

"Be content with such things as ye have." (Heb. xiii. 5.)

"Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content." (1 Tim. vi. 8.)

Seneca (_Letter_ 114): "_We shall be wise if we desire but little; if each man takes count of himself, and at the same time measures his own body, he will know how little it can contain, and for how short a time_."

_Letter_ 110: "_We have polenta, we have water; let us challenge Jupiter himself to a comparison of bliss!_"

"G.o.dliness with contentment is great gain." (1 Tim. vi. 6.)

Seneca (_Letter_ 110): "_Why are you struck with wonder and astonishment? It is all display! Those things are shown, not possessed_.... _Turn thyself rather to the true riches, learn to be content with little_."

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of G.o.d." (Matt. xix. 24.)

Seneca (_Letter_ 20): "_He is a high-souled man who sees riches spread around him, and hears rather than feels that they are his. It is much not to be corrupted by fellowship with riches: great is he who in the midst of wealth is poor, but safer he who has no wealth at all_."

9. _The Duty of Kindness_.

"Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love." (Rom. xii.

10.)

Seneca (_On Anger_, i. 5): "_Man is born for mutual a.s.sistance_."

"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Lev. xiv. 18.)

_Letter_ 48: "_You must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself_."

_On Anger_, iii. 43: "_While we are among men let us cultivate kindness; let us not be to any man a cause either of peril or of fear_."

10. _Our common Membership_.

"Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." (1 Cor. xii.

27.)

"We being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." (Rom. xii. 5.)

Seneca (_Letter_ 95): "_Do we teach that he should stretch his hand to the shipwrecked, show his path to the wanderer, divide his bread with the hungry_?... _when I could briefly deliver to him the formula of human duty: all this that you see, in which things divine and human are included, is one: we are members of one great body_."

11. _Secrecy in doing Good_.

"Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." (Matt. vi. 3.)

Seneca (_On Benefits_, ii. 11): "_Let him who hath conferred a favour hold his tongue_.... _In conferring a favour nothing should be more avoided than pride_."

12. _G.o.d's impartial Goodness_.

"He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matt. v. 45.)

Seneca (_On Benefits_, i. 1): "_How many are unworthy of the light! and yet the day dawns_."

Id. vii. 31: "_The G.o.ds begin to confer benefits on those who recognize them not, they continue them to those who are thankless for them....

They distribute their blessings in impartial tenor through the nations and peoples;... they sprinkle the earth with timely showers, they stir the seas with wind, they mark out the seasons by the revolution of the constellations, they temper the winter and summer by the intervention of a gentler air_."

It would be a needless task to continue these parallels, because by reading any treatise of Seneca a student might add to them by scores; and they prove incontestably that, as far as moral illumination was concerned, Seneca "was not far from the kingdom of heaven." They have been collected by several writers; and all of these here adduced, together with many others, may be found in the pages of Fleury, Troplong, Aubertin, and others. Some authors, like M. Fleury, have endeavoured to show that they can only be accounted for by the supposition that Seneca had some acquaintance with the sacred writings.

M. Aubertin, on the other hand, has conclusively demonstrated that this could not have been the case. Many words and expressions detached from their context have been forced into a resemblance with the words of Scripture, when the context wholly militates against its spirit; many belong to that great common stock of moral truths which had been elaborated by the conscientious labours of ancient philosophers; and there is hardly one of the thoughts so eloquently enunciated which may not be found even more n.o.bly and more distinctly expressed in the writings of Plato and of Cicero. In a subsequent chapter we shall show that, in spite of them all, the divergences of Seneca from the spirit of Christianity are at least as remarkable as the closest of his resemblances; but it will be more convenient to do this when we have also examined the doctrines of those two other great representatives of spiritual enlightenment in Pagan souls, Epictetus the slave and Marcus Aurelius the emperor.

Meanwhile, it is a matter for rejoicing that writings such as these give us a clear proof that in all ages the Spirit of the Lord has entered into holy men, and made them sons of G.o.d and prophets. G.o.d "left not Himself without witness" among them. The language of St. Thomas Aquinas, that many a heathen has had an "implicit faith," is but another way of expressing St. Paul's statement that "not having the law they were a law unto themselves, and showed the work of the law written in their hearts." [49] To them the Eternal Power and G.o.dhead were known from the things that do appear, and alike from the voice of conscience and the voice of nature they derived a true, although a partial and inadequate, knowledge. To them "the voice of nature was the voice of G.o.d." Their revelation was the law of nature, which was confirmed, strengthened, and extended, but _not_ suspended, by the written law of G.o.d.[50]

[Footnote 49: Rom. i. 2.]

[Footnote 50: Hooker, _Eccl. Pol_. iii. 8.]

The knowledge thus derived, i.e. the sum-total of religious impressions resulting from the combination of reason and experience, has been called "natural religion;" the term is in itself a convenient and un.o.bjectionable one, so long as it is remembered that natural religion is itself a revelation. No _ant.i.thesis_ is so unfortunate and pernicious as that of natural with revealed religion. It is "a contrast rather of words than of ideas; it is an opposition of abstractions to which no facts really correspond." G.o.d has revealed Himself, not in one but in many ways, not only by inspiring the hearts of a few, but by vouchsafing His guidance to all who seek it. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord," and it is not religion but apostasy to deny the reality of any of G.o.d's revelations of truth to man, merely because they have not descended through a single channel. On the contrary, we ought to hail with grat.i.tude, instead of viewing with suspicion, the enunciation by heathen writers of truths which we might at first sight have been disposed to regard as the special heritage of Christianity. In Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato,--in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius--we see the light of heaven struggling its impeded way through clouds of darkness and ignorance; we thankfully recognize that the souls of men in the Pagan world, surrounded as they were by perplexities and dangers, were yet enabled to reflect, as from the dim surface of silver, some image of what was divine and true; we hail, with the great and eloquent Bossuet, "THE CHRISTIANITY OF NATURE." "The divine image in man," says St. Bernard, "may be burned, but it cannot be burnt out."

And this is the pleasantest side on which to consider the life and the writings of Seneca. It is true that his style partakes of the defects of his age, that the brilliancy of his rhetoric does not always compensate for the defectiveness of his reasoning; that he resembles, not a mirror which clearly reflects the truth, but "a gla.s.s fantastically cut into a thousand spangles;" that side by side with great moral truths we sometimes find his worst errors, contradictions, and paradoxes; that his eloquent utterances about G.o.d often degenerate into a vague Pantheism; and that even on the doctrine of immortality his hold is too slight to save him from waverings and contradictions;[51] yet as a moral teacher he is full of real greatness, and was often far in advance of the general opinion of his age. Few men have written more finely, or with more evident sincerity, about truth and courage, about the essential equality of man,[52] about the duty of kindness and consideration to slaves,[53] about tenderness even in dealing with sinners,[54] about the glory of unselfishness,[55] about the great idea of humanity[56] as something which transcends all the natural and artificial prejudices of country and of caste. Many of his writings are Pagan sermons and moral essays of the best and highest type. The style, as Quintilian says, "abounds in delightful faults," but the strain of sentiment is never otherwise than high and true.

[Footnote 51: Consol. ad Polyb. 27; Ad Helv. 17; Ad Marc. 24, _seqq_.]

[Footnote 52: Ep. 32; De Benef. iii. 2.]

[Footnote 53: De Ira, iii. 29, 32.]

[Footnote 54: Ibid. i. 14; De Vit. beat. 24.]

[Footnote 55: Ep. 55, 9.]

[Footnote 56: Ibid. 28; De Oti Sapientis, 31.]

He is to be regarded rather as a wealthy, eminent, and successful Roman, who devoted most of his leisure to moral philosophy, than as a real philosopher by habit and profession. And in this point of view his very inconsistencies have their charm, as ill.u.s.trating his ardent, impulsive, imaginative temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, impa.s.sible Stoic, but a pa.s.sionate, warm-hearted man, who could break into a flood of unrestrained tears at the death of his friend Annaeus Serenus,[57]

and feel a trembling solicitude for the welfare of his wife and little ones. His was no absolute renunciation, no impossible perfection;[58]