This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV. THE STOIC CREED AND TEMPER IN RELATION TO OTHER ASPECTS OF THOUGHT. The foregoing pages have been occupied almost exclusively with the moral aspect of the Stoic system, in which all its real force and originality was centered. It only remains to gather up in a concluding chapter some remarks on its relations to other departments of social thought and progress. It confronted the Christian Church, as we have seen, as a rival influence, appealing chiefly to the pride and self-control of resolute natures, though turning at last to preach, as Lactantius observes, even to women and to slaves,1 but with no balm for stricken consciences, or gospel of consolation for the weak. The Church, therefore, borrowed nothing from it at the first, except perhaps a technical phrase or two and illustrations, which point either to the commonplaces of the schools or to an attitude of conscious opposition. To the first class may be ascribed the psychological division of man''s nature into body, soul, and spirit, which appears in slightly different forms in Marcus Aurelius and St. Paul; or, again, the quotation from Cleanthes or Aratus in the famous speech delivered on Mars Hill at Athens.1 To the latter belong the possible references in St. Paul''s Epistles to the ideal of the sage and the citizen of the world at large, which Bishop Lightfoot has suggested, and which may be best given in his words. The Stoic sage "alone is free, he alone is happy; he alone is beautiful. He, and he alone, possesses absolute wealth. He is the true king and the true priest. Now, may we not say that this image has suggested many expressions to the Apostle of the Gentiles?'' Even now ye are full,''2 he exclaims in impassioned irony to the Corinthians; ''even now are ye rich,...