Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
no doubt that in time it would rise to noonday splen
dor. The pillar of fire that led and lighted the way for
the saint; the beatific vision that always stood before
his enraptured gaze; the world-embracing panorama
that kept growing larger and larger
Christian colonies were planted one after
as the little
another in
Asia Minor, in Greece, in Rome, had no existence
for the philosopher. He has, it is true, a belief in an
overruling Providence, but it lacks clearness, because
weakened by a polytheistic creed, or at least by the
remnants of such a creed. To it he still tenaciously
clings, though it may be half unconsciously. He too
had a belief in an existence after death ;
but it was
not of the sort that made him feel that all
the tribu
lations of this world which were but for a moment
were not to be compared with the glory that should
follow.
If we would personify Christianity and Philosophy
as they met each other at the close of the first century
of our era, we may designate the one as the young
man, who, though poor in this world s goods, is strong
in hope, in faith, in himself and in his cause. His
superb physique, his capital digestion, make him
ready for any enterprise, any sacrifice that shall
promise success. Any field in which he may display
his splendid energies is welcome to him, for he lives
not in the past, but in the future. The other is the
old man who has, in the main, lived a useful and
who has performed some noble deeds,
honorable life,
and whose chief anxiety is to give the rising genera-
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