And such truths come to us with a singular force and freshness;
with a strange beauty as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated
manhood; with a new power of conviction from their originality of form,
which, because it is less familiar to us, is well calculated to arrest
our attention after it has been paralysed by familiar repetitions. We
cannot afford to lose these heathen testimonies to Christian truth; or
to hush the glorious utterances of Muse and Sibyl which have justly
outlived "the drums and tramplings of a hundred triumphs." We may make
them infinitely profitable to us. If St. Paul quotes Aratus, and
Menander, and Epimenides,[76] and perhaps more than one lyrical melody
besides, with earnest appreciation,--if the inspired Apostle could both
learn himself and teach others out of the utterances of a Cretan
philosopher and an Attic comedian, we may be sure that many of Seneca's
apophthegams would have filled him with pleasure, and that he would have
been able to read Epictetus and Aurelius with the same noble admiration
which made him see with thankful emotion that memorable altar TO THE
UNKNOWN GOD.
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