of unfortunates of every age and country who composed a Roman familia.  And it is at least equally probable that the word “praetorium” simply means the barrack of that detachment of Roman soldiers from which Paul’s gaolers were taken in turn.  In such labours St. Paul in all probability spent two years (61-63), during which occurred the divorce of Octavia, the marriage with Poppaea, the death of Burrus, the disgrace of Seneca, and the many subsequent infamies of Nero.

[Footnote 43:  Phil. i. 12.]

[Footnote 44:  [Greek:  en olo to praitorio].]

[Footnote 45:  Phil. iv. 22.]

It is out of such materials that some early Christian forger thought it edifying to compose the work which is supposed to contain the correspondence of Seneca and St. Paul.  The undoubted spuriousness of that work is now universally admitted, and indeed the forgery is too clumsy to be even worth reading.  But it is worth while inquiring whether in the circumstances of the time there is even a bare possibility that Seneca should ever have been among the readers or the auditors of Paul.

And the answer is, There is absolutely no such probability.  A vivid imagination is naturally attracted by the points of contrast and resemblance offered by two such characters, and we shall see that there is a singular likeness between many of their sentiments and expressions.  But this was a period in which, as M. Villemain observes, “from one extremity of the social world to the other truths met each other without recognition.”  Stoicism, noble as were many of its precepts, lofty as was the morality it professed, deeply as it was imbued in many respects with a semi-Christian piety, looked upon Christianity with profound contempt.  The Christians disliked the Stoics, the Stoics despised and persecuted the Christians.  “The world knows nothing of its greatest men.”  Seneca would have stood aghast at the very notion of his receiving the lessons, still more of his adopting the religion, of a poor, accused, and wandering Jew.  The haughty, wealthy, eloquent, prosperous, powerful philosopher would have smiled at the notion that any future ages would suspect him of having borrowed any of his polished and epigrammatic lessons of philosophic morals or religion from one whom, if he heard of him, he would have regarded as a poor wretch, half fanatic and half barbarian.

We learn from St. Paul himself that the early converts of Christianity were men in the very depths of poverty,[46] and that its preachers were regarded as fools, and weak, and were despised, and naked, and buffeted—­persecuted and homeless labourers—­a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men, “made as the filth of the earth and the off-scouring of all things.”  We know that their preaching was to the Greeks “foolishness,” and that, when they spoke of Jesus and the resurrection, their hearers mocked[47] and jeered.  And these indications are more than confirmed by many contemporary