Seekers after God

minated by a ray of hope. Seclusion and hardship might even come at first with some charm of novelty to a philosopher who, as w

ore barren, while season after season added to its horrors without revealing a single compensation, Seneca grew more and more disconsolate and depressed. It seemed to be his miserable destiny to rust away, useless, unbefriended, and forgotten. Formed to fascinate society, her

neca vented his anguish in plaintive wailing and bitter verse. In his handful

e exiles, lightl

ried, be thy

ng some mali

rt,--thy name s

shes dar'st to

nted with a

ined weapons on

ure, pitying, g

ge th' invaders

ar the gods pr

ghost repeats

CRED THINGS,--t

ous hands from

haunted him most was that his ab

of men; and so dangerous was their power that Messalina herself was forced to win her ascendency over her husband's mind by making these men her supporters, and cultivating their favour. Such were "the most excellent Felix," the judge of St. Paul, and the slave who became a husband to three queens,--Narcissus, in whose household (which moved the envy of the Emperor) were some of those Christians to whom St. Paul sends greetings from the Christians of Co

om. xv

mperor placed him so high that he was often seen walking between the two consuls. Such was the man to whom, on the occasion of his brother's death, Seneca addressed this treatise of consolation. It has come down to us as a fragment, and it would have been well for Seneca's fame if it had not come down to us at all. T

s illustrious position, all eyes are upon him. He bids him find consolation in the studies in which he has always shown himself so pre-eminent, and lastly he refers him to those shining examples of magnanimous fortitude, for the climax of which, no doubt, the whole piece of interested flattery was composed. For this passage, written in a crescendo style, culminates, as might have been expected, in the sublime spectacle of Claudius Caesar. So far from resenting his exile, he crawls in the dust to kiss Caesar's beneficent feet for saving him from death; so far from asserting his innocence--which, perhaps, was impossible, since to do so might have involved him in a fresh charge of treason--he talks with all the abjectness of guilt. He belauds the clemency of a man, who, he tells us elsewhere, used to kil

on are taken from counter passages of Consol

e purpose of being repeated in those divine and benignant ears. No doubt the superb freedman, who had been allowed so rich a share of the flatteries lavished on his master, would take the opportunity--if not out of good nature,

sion of insincere flattery intended to win the remission of a deplorable banishment. Or, if we condemn Seneca, let us remember that Christians, no less than philosophers, have attained a higher eminence only to exemplify a more disastrous fall. The flatteries of Seneca to Claudius are not more fulsome, and are infinitely less disgraceful, than those which fawning bishops exuded on his counterpart, King James. And