[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."