God and the ‘Word.’

20. A similar difficulty confronts us when we ask whether the deity of the Stoics is to be considered as personal. All the terms commonly used in association with a personal deity are adopted by the Stoics: their god is Lord and Father. But then they use with equal freedom terms commonly associated with materialism: for the Supreme Being is to them body or stuff, a primitive fire which converts itself by natural laws into every form of being. For this reason the Stoics are commonly called materialists, and yet the main body of their teaching is contrary to that usually associated with materialism[52]. Further, beside the personal and the material conceptions of the Deity, they adopted and developed a conception which exercised an extraordinary influence over other systems, when they attributed the exercise of all the powers of deity to the divine Word, which from one point of view is the deity himself, and from another is something which emanates from him and is in some way distinct. Thus the term ‘God,’ which to children and child-like religions appears so simple, is in the Stoic system extraordinarily complex; and its full content cannot be grasped without a willingness to revise the meaning of many conceptions which seem firmly established, such as those of personality, material, and quality. If we are to suppose that the Stoic conception of the Word arose ultimately from similar conceptions in Hebraism or Persism, by which the voice of a personal God attained to a quasi-independent personality, we must allow that the Stoics made use of this term with a boldness and consistency which from the time of their appearance brought it into the forefront of religious and metaphysical controversy. Through the Stoics the doctrine of the Word passed into the systems of Judaism and Christianity, to perform in each the like service by reconciling doctrines apparently contradictory. Of all the systems we may perhaps say that Stoicism makes the fewest new assertions or negations, but introduces the most numerous interpretations.

Influence of Stoicism.

21. We have comparatively little means of judging of the influence of Stoicism in the world of Asia Minor, but incidentally we may infer that it was very considerable. In Athens the moral earnestness of its teachers found little response in public feeling, whilst it laid the exponents of its tenets open to many a sharp thrust from keen critics whose constructive powers were after all inferior. In Rome itself Stoicism took root rapidly. The brilliant circle that gathered round Scipio Africanus the younger was imbued with its ideals; Cato, the leading republican of the first century B.C., was a living representative of its principles; and Cicero and Brutus, with many others less known to fame, were greatly influenced by it. In the first century of the principate Stoicism imparted a halo of heroism to a political and social opposition which otherwise would evoke little sympathy[53]; in the second century A.D. its influence was thrown on the side of the government; the civilized world was ruled under its flag, and its principles were embodied in successive codes of law which are not yet extinct. Its direct supremacy was not long-lived; for at the very time when a Stoic philosopher sits in the seat of the Caesars its followers seem to be losing their hold on its most important doctrines. It came into sharp conflict with Christianity on matters of outward observance; but in the cores of the two systems there was much likeness[54], and from Stoic homes were drawn the most intelligent advocates of the newer faith.

Judaism.

22. By Judaism we mean here the way of thinking which was prevalent in the Jewish world from the date of the return from Babylon to that of the destruction of Jerusalem. Judaism was of course by no means restricted to the soil of Palestine; it was carried by the diffusion of the Jewish race to all the coasts of the Mediterranean; besides its national centre at Jerusalem, it included a great centre of learning at Alexandria, and its branches, as we have seen[55], extended to the south of Egypt. The chief external impulse which affected it was the spread of Persism. The two systems agreed in their belief in a God of heaven, and in their dislike to idol-worship; and it can be no matter of wonder if one party at least among the Jews readily accepted the more strictly Persian doctrines of the ministry of angels, the struggle between good and evil, the immortality of the soul, and the reward after death, as well as such observances as the washing of hands[56]. Strong Persian influence has been traced in the book of Daniel[57], and as Jewish speculation developed at Alexandria, it took up the use of the Greek language, and so came into touch with the influences that were moulding thought throughout Asia Minor[58]. The most interesting and elevated production of Alexandrine Judaism is the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, probably composed in the first century B.C.[59]

‘The Wisdom of Solomon.’

23. The author of this book, whilst himself a firm adherent of monotheism, shews a not altogether intolerant appreciation of those systems in which either the heavenly bodies or the elements seem to occupy the most important place:—

1.

For verily all men by nature were but vain who had no perception of God,