1. The Stoic idea. — Contentment, reaching even to the point of self-denial, was a distinctive feature in the Stoic system of ethics, which prevailed so widely among the educated classes of the Roman Empire in the first Christian centuries. There were many points both of resemblance and of difference between its teaching and the teaching of Christi- anity on thissubject. Seneca.one of Nero's ministers, a Stoic of Stoics, was a contemporary of St. Paul ; and they have so much in common that some writers think that one borrowed from the other, or that both were indebted to a common source. Lightfoot discusses the point in his essay ' St. Paul and Seneca' {Philippians*, 1878, p. 270 ff.), and comes to a negative conclusion. Still more famous Stoics are Epictetus, a Greek slave of Rome, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the saint of ancient paganism.* • The sentences of Seneca are stimulat- mg to the intellect ; the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the character ; the sentences of M.
* We have ample means of knowinpr these writers in various essa.vs and translations : the essays of Matthew Arnold, F. W. H. Myers, F. W. Farrar ; translations by George Long, G. H. Ken- dall, A. Stewart, Elizabeth Carter, and G. Stanhope.
Aurelius find their way to the soul' (Arnold). Myers remarks that in these three Avriters the system grows more practical. • We hear less of its logic, its cosmogony, its portrait of the ideal Sage. It insists on what may be termed the catholic verities of all philosophers, on the sole im- portance of virtue, the spiritual oneness of the uni- verse, the brotherhood of men.' The weakness of Stoicism and of Stoic ethics was that its I'eligion was a minus quantity, just as the strength of Chris- tianity is in the religious spirit of its ethics. With- out arguing that ethics is impossible without re- ligion, we may say that it is immeasurably richer and nobler with religion. The Stoic writers indeed often speak of God ; but whether they mean more by the name than the order of Nature or universal law and reason is open to debate. They have no explicit doctrine of God. To imitate or obey God and to follow Nature seem to be the same thing. Lightfoot speaks of the system both as ' material pantheism' and ' pantheistic materialism.' W. L. Davidson in his Stoic Creed (1907) holds that the creed makes Fate superior to God ; in other words. Fate is the supreme law of the universe. With these abatements the great Stoics plead for virtue most impressively. Their picture of the good man battling with the forces of evil is very noble. Scarcely anything has been said by later moralists respecting virtue and righteousness generally, and contentment in particular, which is not in substance anticipated by the Stoics. Joseph Butler's power- ful arguments for virtue from its natural effects and tendencies, from man's self-interest in the highest sense, from the instincts of human nature rightly understood, are quite in the Stoic, and indeed in the Christian, vein. The Stoic idea of contentment with life as it comes or is fixed for us by unchange- able law is often pushed to the extreme of apathy, insensibility, impassiveness (dTrdOeia). This is not to endure pain, but to deaden the sense of pain. Here Stoicism betrays its Eastern origin, and joins hands with Hindu and Buddhist asceticism.
Christian moralists have rightly appealed to Stoic teaching as a preparation for Christian ethics. Two notable English writers on contentment are Sander- son in two sermons, and Barrow in five sermons, on Ph 4", the former sententious and pointed, the latter manly and copious in thought and expression. Both are greatly strengthened by abundant quota- tion from the three great Stoics, as well as from Horace, Cicero, Chrysostom, and others. Still, their main source of material and proof is Scripture. In this mode of treatment they are examples of the Anglican and Puritan literature of their age. While Scripture is the supreme court of appeal, the abun- dant references to ancient writers show the har- mony of Christian thought with general belief, and seem to imply some kind of Divine revelation or guidance in the pre-Christian world.
2. St. Paul's teaching. — In two passages St. Paul expressly teaches the lesson of contentment, both by word and by his own example : ' I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound ; in everything and in all things I have learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want' (Ph 4'"-); ' Godliness with contentment is great gain' (I Ti 6^ and context). In the second passage St. Paul, in opposition to those who turn godliness into material gain, emphasizes the true gain of godlj' contentment in guarding against the moral dangers of avarice (vv."- '"). His Stoic contempo- raries would have joined in his counsels : ' For we brought nothing into the world, for neither can we carry anything out ; but having food and cover- ing we shall be therewith content' — food and cover- ing, a modest sufficienc3\ ' The love of money is
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a root of all kinds of evil ' — of lying, dishonesty, overreaching, oppression. In the first passage he is guarding himself against the suspicion of a mer- cenary spirit. He has never sought for himself the contributions which he has received from the churches, thus making gain of godliness. ' I have learned' (^fiaOov): contentment, like all other virtues, is not a growth of nature, but a plant of grace's planting and nurture. Seneca said ' Nature does not give virtue ; to become good is an art.' Contentment is a lesson learnt in the school of ex- perience at the feet of a Divine teacher. St. Paul has learned to reduce his desires to his means, ' in whatever state I am (iv oh el/ii), be it high or low, rich or poor, base or honourable, easy or painful, prosperous or troublous ; all that God sends is wel- come.' 'To be content' — a'jrdpKtjs, 'sufficient in oneself,' 'independent'; avrapKeia, 'sufficiency in oneself,' 1 Ti 6« ; see Lk S^\ 2 Co 12'-', He 13^. ' I have learned the secret ' — a striking phrase repre- senting a single word in the text, fj.etiv-qiJ.aL {/Mviw), ' I have been initiated,' a reference to the ancient religious mysteries. ' I have learned the secret of contentment in all circumstances' — is there not here a playful turn in comparing the art of sub- mission to all that happens to us with instruction in esoteric mysteries?* Of course the self-suffi- ciency or independence spoken of is not original or absolute, but derived and conditioned. ' I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me ' (Ph 413) — «True contentedness of mind is a point of high and hply learning, whereunto no man can at- tain unless it be taught him from above' (Sander- son). 'I have learned' — learning is gradual, ad- vancing from the alphabet to perfect knowledge. Moral progress is not by leaps and bounds, but step by step, invisible to subject and spectator as the growth of tree and flower. It is ' forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before,' from the great to the greater, from the high to tlie higher.