Stoics and Saints
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page 5
TS
STOICS AND SAINTS
LECTURES OX THE LATER HEATHEN MORALISTS, AND
ON SOME ASPECTS OF THE LIFE OF THE
MEDIEVAL CHURCH.
BY THE LATE
JAMES BALDWIN BROWN, B.A.,
AUTHOR OF
MINISTER OF BRIXTON INDEPENDENT CHURCH.
THK HIGHER LIFE,
FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ECCLESIASTICAL TRUTH.
ETC., ETC.
The fountain of all human progress, of all human
hope, is the living presence of God in and
with the world.
J. B. B.
GLASGOW
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS,
v
tfwbltshers to tht
1893.
SEEN BY
PRESERVATION
SERVICES
-
page 7
NOTE BY THE EDITOR
THE Lectures contained
in
this
volume
were delivered
at
different times and in various places during the later years of
Mr. Baldwin Brown s life, and if that life had been prolonged
he would himself have prepared them for the press.
They
now published at the earnest desire of many who heard
are
them, with but slight alteration, the characteristic freedom
of a
spoken address being purposely retained.
originally given in
Though not
one course, the Lectures are essentially
related in their leading ideas
and method of treatment, and
are arranged chronologically as a consecutive series.
Certain portions of the
essay on
The Eeligious
are reproduced
fifth
Life,
here by kind
Lecture were included in an
in
Ecclesia
permission
(first series),
of the
and
publishers.
With that exception all that is contained in the book appears
now for the first time.
E.
ST. LAWRENCE-ON-SEA, KENT,
October 1893.
B.
B.
page 9
CONTENTS.
LECTURE 1.
ATER AGE or GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND THE EPICUREAN AND
oic SCHOOLS,
1
LECTURE IT.
TUS AND THE LAST EFFORT OF THE
HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY,
26
LECTURE III.
S
AURELIUS, AND THE APPROXIMATION OF THE HEATHEN TO
E CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS,
-
-
49
LECTURE IV.
REGENERATE SOCIETY ?
IOULD NOT THE STOIC
71
LECTURE V.
LONASTIC SYSTEM,
EURCH,
AND
ITS
RELATION TO THE
-
JJIFE OF
THE
-
93
LECTURE VL
RNARD, THE MONASTIC SAINT,
139
page 10
Vlll
CONTEXTS.
PAGE
LECTURE VII.
ST.
THOMAS OF CANTERBURY
;
THE
SAINT
AS
ECCLESIASTICAL
STATESMAN,
171
LECTURE VIII.
ST.
FRANCIS OF ASSIST, AND THE RISE OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS,
201
LECTURE IX.
ST.
Louis OF FRANCE
;
THE SAINT IN SECULAR LIFE,
-
-
235
-
-
265
LECTURE X.
JOHN WYCLIF, AND TILK DAWN OF THK REFORMATION,
INDEX,
-
-
293
page 13
I.
THE LATER AGE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND THE
EPICUREAN AND STOIC SCHOOLS.
consummate genius
IT needed the insight of a
to
like Socrates
man was really the centre of the
see that
The
world.
Cosmos is on so grand a scale, its spaces are so immense, its
forces are so terrible, that
in
its
beginnings
of
pigmy
universe
was
Philosophy,
that
;
the
secret
the
through
of
infinite
its
the
life.
with
the
sages set
another
them
One thought
moisture,
sought
to
and
discover
persuaded that
variety such unity existed, if man could but
of
unity
principle
;
and
this,
quest of science through
painfully
earlier
Each
the
first
genesis, the secret of its
principle,
elements.
the
thought about
solution of the mystery.
on
the
concerned
The
the
so
is
be
meaning of its
was the fundamental
discover
man s
its
to guess
that
natural
of
is,
should
himself,
fire
under
but
with the mystery of
order, the
selves
It
midst.
including
things,
man seems but a helpless, noteless
pursuing
still.
creation,
the earliest quest of
all
the ages,
which
man,
it
is
Man still has before him in his
path of discovery the vision of
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves
and
in
this
vision,
science and
;
theology, working together not
impious antagonism but in holy concord, will one day
make real.
page 14, segment 1/2
LATER GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
4
It is significant that these early sages
mostly dwelt under
man was
the sceptre of the great Asiatic despotism, where
but
human
a
purposes
where
of
slight
account
intelligent
and
responsible
atom,
of
speculations
on
the
around him would be
outward government
new
a
vast
He
era.
his
of
system
natural
first
and imagination, the
intellect
of
the
for
despot
the
all
higher
and
existence,
Cosmos
the
of
of
exercise
man s
assuming the whole
marks the dawn
Socrates
life.
transferred
the
centre
of
gravity
of
He saw that,
Philosophy absolutely and finally to Man.
as far as this earth was concerned, man was the final end
of the creation
;
man who, while he could search the secret
Cosmos around him and master the key to
its methods, could himself become creator in the intellectual
And Socrates, it must be remembered
and political spheres.
things
of
the
was a citizen of a free political community, as men understood
freedom in those days, when all the hard work of the world
was done by
slaves.
Socrates as
a
thinker
made man
the
centre of his system, but Socrates, as the citizen of Athens,
found man the centre of a very large, free, and noble activity,
and developed
which,
as
to
a pitch of individual culture
of
characteristic
a whole community,
and dignity,
is
still
un
matched in the history of the world.
Man was of slight account individually on the sea boards
Minor, when Thales began his speculations about
Man individually and in his
the world-system around him.
of Asia
political
relations
was
immense account
of
Athens was herself the
free
that
Athens, and
and energetic head of a great
movement which was changing
civilised world.
in
visibly the destinies of the
page 14, segment 2/2
When Socrates was born, the excitement of
splendid struggle for
human liberty, which at Salamis
wrested the sceptre of civilisation from Asia and transferred
Athenian freemen
it to Europe, was still vivid and inspiring.
had done a deed unmatched for daring heroism in the earth s
page 15, segment 1/2
THE ATHENS OF SOCRATES.
5
and it was a deed that, as Socrates grew to manhood,
annals,
was clearly giving a new form to human history.
The century
which followed the crowning victory of Salamis was at Athens,
in point of political activity
and
intellectual
production, the most brilliant upon record.
and imaginative
The world has
never seen a community, each member of which was cultivated
to such a pitch of intellectual acuteness and political judgment
An Athenian in those days,
as that commonalty of Athens.
the
of
days
whose
life
take part
;
Sophocles,
^Eschylus,
Pheidias,
Pericles,
Euripides,
Socrates and Plato
Aristophanes,
a citizen of a city in
;
he was not only expected but as a rule able to
one who was called to sit in judgment on the
most
brilliant
might
well
faculty,
in
leaders,
deem
his
and
thinkers
artists
the
of
energy,
in
his
capacity
for
development, in
manifest destiny, through which he could claim
his
of the physical
forces
world,
that there was something in man, in his
all
the
and which
creation as his ministers,
gave him the
right and the power to examine all external
things in the light of the ideas which were enshrined within.
Socrates,
born and nursed in the midst of the splendid
energy and activity of that Athenian commonwealth, gathered
and expressed the great lesson of its life.
entirely with man.
He busied himself
With the physical theories which occupied
his predecessors he had no concern.
They were mere -guesses
having their main interest in the search after unity which they
revealed.
Man, as a being with a capacity for knowing the
truth, for discriminating the real nature of things
or partial conceptions
false
is
from the
which uncultivated human nature
prone to form of
page 15, segment 2/2
them man, as a being capable of entering
and noble relations with his fellows, and of
;
into very high
by the help of wisdom a very perfect and beautiful
was the theme of his constant investigation on this he
living
life,
;
bent the energies of one of the keenest and most subtle in
tellects
that
man was ever endowed with, and the force of
page 16, segment 1/2
LATER GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
6
a moral nature, a will and a conscience, which are peerless
To make men wise was his life-long
in the heathen world.
destroy the idola, the false ideas
to
endeavour;
of things
which he found them cherishing, and to substitute the true.
The discovery of truth with a view to conduct, so as to make
the individual worth more to himself and to the State, was
the aim of his wonderful dialectic
for
;
man was always con
him as a member of a community,
ceived of and treated by
a being in relation to his fellow beings,
whose
line
of
duty
The condition
was marked out by the public life of his day.
of such a career as that of Socrates, with such an aim, was
the existence of a very noble,
the community which he
wisdom
free,
and large public life in
sought to lead into the ways of
a life full of energy, purpose and hope.
;
His country, teeming as it was with
brilliant
energy and
activity, could not bear his searching uncompromising examin
ation of its ideas, its principles, and its aims.
greater than Socrates,
it
As befell
cast him out and slew him.
forth the story of Athens is a story of decline
need not be thought that the decay of
and decay.
I most dread
judgments are the stern execution
as
a
fact,
from
the
of
days
Socrates
Athenian history was one of rapid degradation
the rise of
Macedon
to
supremacy
in
It
Athens was the judg
ment of God on the martyrdom of her great teacher.
But
a
Thence
;
God s
of
His laws.
the
course
of
then followed
Greece, the victories
of his vast empire among his
final extinction of the liberties of Athens,
and
the
generals,
which lost all political dignity and independence, while
of Alexander,
the
division
remaining the intellectual centre of the world.
page 16, segment 2/2
There are few things in history more humiliating
the
life
of
tossed about
indulging
sages
in
in
as
than
State
during the Macedonian era,
she was from
conqueror to conqueror, and
them all. There are pas
Athens
as a
slavish adulation of
Plutarch s Life of Demetrius Poliorcetes, the most
page 17, segment 1/2
DECLINE OF ATHENIAN LIFE.
7
though the most inconstant and profligate of the
brilliant,
Graeco-Asiatic rulers, that afford graphic illustrations of the
degradation to which Athens had sunk in the days in which
the Epicureans and the Stoics arose.
have even pre
We
served to us a hymn of divine honour addressed to this prince
1
by the Athenians.
By this time the public life of Athens,
had utterly perished.
Men were
cut rudely adrift from that which had been their guide and
There was no State
law, the public opinion of their State.
which had been her
glory,
;
the
hand
brutal
of
war had abolished
all
inde
political
pendence throughout the whole world of which Greece was
the centre
there was no fixity in any political arrange
;
ments
one day Athens belonged to Demetrius, the next to
;
Cassander,
as
just
the
fortune
of
war
decreed,
while
the
citizens, who once wielded a wide and splendid empire, were
the sport of the caprices
The wealth
of
inconstancy
included.
and the
insults
of their despots.
was dissipated by the constant
the political combinations in which it was
too of the city
Its trade decayed, its genial
youth was drawn off,
not for patriotic expeditions but to man the mercenary armies
which
for
many generations filled the Graeco- Oriental world
with confusion and slaughter.
In such a condition of society, amid the clash of arms and
the struggles of contending despots, the
noble quest of the
elder Philosophy for the True, the Beautiful, the Good,
passed
utterly away.
Within a generation of their deaths, the works
of Plato and Aristotle had almost ceased to
occupy the atten
tion of their countrymen, and new Schools, new Sects as
they
were well
called,
with
new questions and new dogmas, were
in possession of