contained the particular feature which is called the reproach of Calvinism.
The blackest night is never utterly dark. When mankind seem most abandoned there are always a seven thousand somewhere who have not bowed the knee to the fashionable opinions of the hour. Among the great Eoman families a certain number remained republican in feeling and republican in habit. The State religion was as incredible to them as to every one else. They could not persuade themselves that they could discover the will of Heaven in the colour of a calf’s liver or in the appetite of the sacred chickens; but they had. retained the moral instincts of their citizen ancestors. They knew nothing of God or the gods, but they had something in themselves which made sensuality nauseating instead of pleasant to them. They had an austere sense of the meaning of the word ‘duty.’ They could distinguish and reverence the nobler possibilities of their nature. They disdained what was base and effeminate, and, though religion failed them, they constructed out of philosophy a rule which would serve to live by. Stoicism is a not unnatural refuge of thoughtful men in confused and sceptical ages. It adheres rigidly to morality. It offers no easy Epicurean explanation of the origin of man, which resolves him into an organisation of particles, and dismisses him again into nothingness. It recognises only that men who are the slaves of their passions are miserable and impotent, and insists that personal inclinations shall be subordinated to conscience. It prescribes plainness
