Of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius we shall have very little to say by way of summary, for they show no inconsistencies and very few of the imperfections which characterise Seneca’s ideal of the Stoic philosophy.  The “moral peddling,” the pedagogic display, the puerile ostentation, the antithetic brilliancy, which we have had to point out in Seneca, are wanting in them.  The picture of the inner life, indeed, of Seneca, his efforts after self-discipline, his untiring asceticism, his enthusiasm for all that he esteems holy and of good report-this picture, marred as it is by rhetoric and vain self-conceit, yet “stands out in noble contrast to the swinishness of the Campanian villas, and is, in its complex entirety, very sad and affecting.”  And yet we must admit, in the words of the same writer, that when we go from Seneca to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, “it is going from the florid to the severe, from varied feeling to the impersonal simplicity of the teacher, often from idle rhetoric to devout earnestness.”  As far as it goes, the morality of these two great Stoics is entirely noble and entirely beautiful.  If there be even in Epictetus some passing and occasional touch of Stoic arrogance and Stoic apathy; if there be in Marcus Aurelius a depth and intensity of sadness which shows how comparatively powerless for comfort was a philosophy which glorified suicide, which knew but little of immortality, and which lost in vague Pantheism the unspeakable blessing of realizing a personal relation to a personal God and Father—­there is yet in both of them enough and more than enough to show that in all ages and in all countries they who have sought for God have found Him, that they have attained to high principles of thought and to high standards of action—­that they have been enabled, even in the thick darkness, resolutely to place their feet at least on the lowest rounds of that ladder of sunbeams which winds up through the darkness to the great Father of Lights.

And yet the very existence of such men is in itself a significant comment upon the Scriptural decision that “the world by wisdom knew not God.”  For how many like them, out of all the records of antiquity, is it possible for us to count?  Are there five men in the whole circle of ancient history and ancient literature to whom we could, without a sense of incongruity, accord the title of “holy?” When we have mentioned Socrates, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, I hardly know of another. Just men there were in multitudes—­men capable of high actions; men eminently worthy to be loved; men, I doubt not, who, when the children of the kingdom shall be rejected, shall be gathered from the east and the west with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the kingdom of heaven.  Yes, just men in multitudes; but how many righteous, how many holy?  Some, doubtless, whom we do not know, whose names were never written, even for a few years, on the records of mankind—­men