whose are?); Cato may have ill-used his slaves, Sallust may have been rapacious, and Seneca wanting in personal courage.  Yet it was surely something to have set up a noble ideal, though they might not attain to it themselves, and in “that hideous carnival of vice” to have kept themselves, so far as they might, unspotted from the world.  Certain it is that no other ancient sect ever came so near the light of revelation.  Passages from Seneca, from Epictetus, from Marcus Aurelius, sound even now like fragments of the inspired writings.  The Unknown God, whom they ignorantly worshipped as the Soul or Reason of the World, is—­in spite of Milton’s strictures—­the beginning and the end of their philosophy.  Let us listen for a moment to their language.  “Prayer should be only for the good”.  “Men should act according to the spirit, and not according to the letter of their faith”.  “Wouldest thou propitiate the gods?  Be good:  he has worshipped them sufficiently who has imitated them”.  It was from a Stoic poet, Aratus, that St. Paul quoted the great truth which was the rational argument against idolatry—­“For we are also His offspring, and” (so the original passage concludes) “we alone possess a voice, which is the image of reason”.  It is in another poet of the same school that we find what are perhaps the noblest lines in all Latin poetry.  Persius concludes his Satire on the common hypocrisy of those prayers and offerings to the gods which were but a service of the lips and hands, in words of which an English rendering may give the sense but not the beauty:  “Nay, then, let us offer to the gods that which the debauched sons of great Messala can never bring on their broad chargers,—­a soul wherein the laws of God and man are blended,—­a heart pure to its inmost depths,—­a breast ingrained with a noble sense of honour.  Let me but bring these with me to the altar, and I care not though my offering be a handful of corn”.  With these grand words, fit precursors of a purer creed to come, we may take our leave of the Stoics, remarking how thoroughly, even in their majestic egotism, they represented the moral force of the nation among whom they flourished; a nation, says a modern preacher, “whose legendary and historic heroes could thrust their hand into the flame, and see it consumed without a nerve shrinking; or come from captivity on parole, advise their countrymen against a peace, and then go back to torture and certain death; or devote themselves by solemn self-sacrifice like the Decii.  The world must bow before such men; for, unconsciously, here was a form of the spirit of the Cross-self-surrender, unconquerable fidelity to duty, sacrifice for others".[2]

[Footnote 1:  Macaulay.]

[Footnote 2:  F.W.  Robertson, Sermons, i. 218.]

Portions of three treatises by Cicero upon Political Philosophy have come down to us:  1.  I De Republica’; a dialogue on Government, founded chiefly on the ‘Republic’ of Plato:  2.  ‘De Legibus’; a discussion on Law in the abstract, and on national systems of legislation 3.  ‘De Jure Civili’; of which last only a few fragments exist.  His historical works have all perished.