Id. vii. 31: "The gods 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 nobly 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 God and prophets. God "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 Godhead 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 God." Their revelation was the law of nature, which was confirmed, strengthened, and extended, but not suspended, by the written law of God.[50]
[49] Rom. i. 2.
[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 unobjectionable one, so long as it is remembered that natural religion is itself a revelation. No antithesis 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." God 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 God's revelations of truth to man, merely because they have not descended through a single channel. On the contrary, we ought to hail with gratitude, 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 glass 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 God 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.
[51] Consol. ad Polyb. 27; Ad Helv. 17; Ad Marc. 24, seqq.
[52] Ep. 32; De Benef. iii. 2.
[53] De Irâ, iii. 29, 32.