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."

2. The Eye of God.

"All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." (Heb. iv. 13.)

"Pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matt. vi. 6.)

Seneca (On Providence, 1): "It is no advantage that conscience is shut within us; we lie open to God."

Letter 83: "What advantage is it that anything is hidden from man? Nothing is closed to God: He is present to our minds, and enters into our central thoughts."

Letter 83: "We must live as if we were living in sight of all men; we must think as though some one could and can gaze into our inmost breast."

3. God is a Spirit.

St. Paul, "We ought not to think that the God-head is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device." (Acts xvii. 29.)

Seneca (Letter 31): "Even from a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven: rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God; thou canst not do this, however, with gold and silver: an image like to God cannot be formed out of such materials as these."

4. Imitating God.

"Be ye therefore followers ([Greek: mimaetai], imitators) of God, as dear children." (Eph. v. 1.)

"He that in these things [righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost] serveth Christ is acceptable to God." (Rom. xiv. 18.)

Seneca (Letter 95): "Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be virtuous. To honour them it is enough to imitate them."

Letter 124: "Let man aim at the good which belongs to him. What is this good? A mind reformed and pure, the imitator of God, raising itself above things human, confining all its desires within itself."

5. Hypocrites like whited Sepulchres.

"Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." (Matt, xxiii. 27.)

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!"

"Godliness 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 God." (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 assistance."

"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. God'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 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.

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

[55] Ep. 55, 9.

[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 illustrating his ardent, impulsive, imaginative temperament. He was no apathetic, self-contained, impassible Stoic, but a passionate, 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] but few men have painted more persuasively, with deeper emotion, or more entire conviction, the pleasures of virtue, the calm of a well-regulated soul, the strong and severe joys of a lofty self-denial. In his youth, he tells us, he was preparing himself for a righteous life, in his old age for a noble death.[59] And let us not forget, that when the hour of crisis came which tested the real calm and bravery of his soul, he was not found wanting. "With no dread," he writes to Lucilius, "I am preparing myself for that day on which, laying aside all artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge respecting myself whether I merely speak or really feel as a brave man should; whether all those words of haughty obstinacy which I have hurled against fortune were mere pretence and pantomime.... Disputations and literary talks, and words collected from the precepts of philosophers, and eloquent discourse, do not prove the true strength of the soul. For the mere speech of even the most cowardly is bold; what you have really achieved will then be manifest when your end is near. I accept the terms, I do not shrink from the decision." [60]

[57] Ep. 63.

[58] Martha, Les Moralistes, p. 61.

[59] Ep. 61.

[60] Ep. 26.

"Accipio conditionem, non reformido judicrum." They were courageous and noble words, and they were justified in the hour of trial. When we remember the sins of Seneca's life, let us recall also the constancy of his death; while we admit the inconsistencies of his systematic philosophy, let us be grateful for the genius, the enthusiasm, the glow of intense conviction, with which he clothes his repeated utterance of truths, which, when based upon a surer basis, were found adequate for the moral regeneration of the world. Nothing is more easy than to sneer at Seneca, or to write clever epigrams on one whose moral attainments fell infinitely short of his own great ideal. But after all he was not more inconsistent than thousands of those who condemn him. With all his faults he yet lived a nobler and a better life, he had loftier aims, he was braver, more self-denying--nay, even more consistent--than the majority of professing Christians. It would be well for us all if those who pour such scorn upon his memory attempted to achieve one tithe of the good which he achieved for humanity and for Rome. His thoughts deserve our imperishable gratitude: let him who is without sin among us be eager to fling stones at his failures and his sins!