tual knowledge have yet
lived holy and noble lives: men there have been in all ages, Christian
no less than Pagan, who with consummate gifts and profound erudition
have disgraced some of the noblest words which ever were uttered by some
of the meanest lives which were ever lived. In the twelfth century was
there any mind that shone more brightly, was there any eloquence which
flowed more mightily, than that of Peter Abelard? Yet Abelard sank
beneath the meanest of his scholastic cotemporaries in the degradation
of his career as much as he towered above the highest of them in the
grandeur of his genius. In the seventeenth century was there any
philosopher more profound, any moralist more elevated, than Francis
Bacon? Yet Bacon could flatter a tyrant, and betray a friend, and
receive a bribe, and be one of the latest of English judges to adopt the
brutal expedient of enforcing confession by the exercise of torture. If
Seneca defended the murder of Agrippina, Bacon blackened the character
of Essex. "What I would I do not; but the thing that I would not, that I
do," might be the motto for many a confession of the sins of genius; and
Seneca need not blush if we compare him with men who were his equals in
intellectual power, but whose "means of grace," whose privileges, whose
knowledge of the truth, were infinitely higher than his own. Let the
noble constancy of his death shed a light over his memory which may
dissipate something of those dark shades which rest on portions of his
history. We think of Abelard, humble, silent, patient, God-fearing,
tended by the kindly-hearted Peter in the peaceful gardens of Clugny; we
think of Bacon, neglected, broken, and despised, dying of the chill
caught in a philosophical experiment and leaving his memory to the
judgment of posterity; let us think of Seneca, quietly yielding to his
destiny without a murmur, cheering the constancy of the mourners round
him during the long agonies of his enforced suicide and dictating some
of the purest utterances of Pagan wisdom almost with his latest breath.
The language of his great contemporary, the Apostle St. Paul, will best
help us to understand his position. He was one of those who was _seeking
the Lord, if haply he might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be
not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have
our being_.

CHAPTER XIV.

SENECA AND ST. PAUL.

In the spring of the year 61, not long after the time when the