when you place the typical extremes beside each other for
comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological
universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other
a "critical point" has been overcome.

If we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more
than a difference of doctrine; rather is it a difference of
emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on
the eternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frosty
chill about his words which you rarely find in a Jewish, and
never in a Christian piece of religious writing. The universe is
"accepted" by all these writers; but how devoid of passion or
exultation the spirit of the Roman Emperor is! Compare his fine
sentence: "If gods care not for me or my children, here is a
reason for it," with Job's cry: "Though he slay me, yet will I
trust in him!" and you immediately see the difference I mean.
The anima mundi, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny
the Stoic consents, is there to be respected and submitted to,
but the Christian God is there to be loved; and the difference of
emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and
the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual
conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much
the same.

"It is a man's duty," says Marcus Aurelius, "to comfort himself
and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but to
find refreshment solely in these thoughts--first that nothing
will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the
universe; and secondly that I need do nothing contrary to the God
and deity within me; for there is no man who can compel me to