Seneca, Plutarch, and the Apostle Paul were in a sense contemporaries. All three did what they could to make the world better in their time and after them. All three were preachers of righteousness, each in his way. All three wrote much that has engaged the attention of the world, and stimulated its thought. But how great the contrast between the projects of these men, especially the two last! Plutarch was wholly lacking in Paul’s devotion to an idea. He would have scouted the suggestion that a man should give up friends, social position, country, kindred, everything, to go forth to preach a new doctrine. How widely apart, how almost diametrically opposite the methods of two men who are in a sense seeking the same end! The thoughts of the philosopher, his intellectual vision, was turned toward the setting sun. At most he could only hope, as we now see, to prolong the dim twilight that still hovered over the earth. The world had well-nigh lost faith in the power of human reason to regenerate mankind. The spiritual eyes of the Christian were on the rising sun. Though he saw that it was as yet shining but dimly, he had no doubt that in time it would rise to noonday splendor. 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 as the little Christian colonies were planted one after 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 tribulations 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 honorable life, who has performed some noble deeds, and whose chief anxiety is to give the rising generation the benefit of the wisdom that has come to him in a life of study and observation. But, as is usually the case with the aged, his advice has become commonplace and the rising generation passes him by almost unheeded. Few have now any confidence in his teachings, while many of his former disciples have deserted him. It is his sad fate, to see himself jostled at first and finally thrust aside by the passing stream of humanity.