I should hardly have thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book to the religion of a pagan, had I not, while studying Cicero\'s life, found that I was not dealing with a pagan\'s mind. The mind of the Roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times was at this period, in most instances, nearly a blank as to any ideas of a God. Horace is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. Ovid does so still more constantly. They are both full of allusions to "the gods." They are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the national worship, and that the orders of the Emperor will be best obeyed by believers. "Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas," says Horace, when, in obedience probably to Augustus, he tells his fellow-citizens that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for the repairs of the temples. "Superi, quorum sumus omnia," says Ovid, thinking it well to show in one of his writings, which he sent home from his banishment, that he still entertained the fashionable creed. But they did not believe. It was at that time the fashion to pretend a light belief, in order that those below might live as though they believed, and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children. It was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins. It was not well that the augurs, who were gentlemen of high family, should go for nothing. C?sar himself was the high-priest, and thought much of the position, but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft. A religious belief was not expected from a322 gentleman. Religious ceremonies had gradually sunk so low in the world\'s esteem that the Roman nobility had come to think of their gods as things to swear by, or things to amuse them, or things from which, if times were bad with them, some doubtful assistance might perchance come. In dealing with ordinary pagans of those days religion may be laid altogether on one side. I remember no passage in Livy or Tacitus indicating a religious belief.

But with Cicero my mind is full of such; and they are of a nature to make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later I should have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of Christ\'s teachings. M. Renan has reminded us of Cicero\'s dislike to the Jews. He could not learn from the Jews—though the Jew, indeed, had much that he could teach him. The religion which he required was far from the selfishness of either Jew or Roman. He believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of God, the performance of his duty to his neighbors, in conscience, and in honesty. "Certum esse in c?lo definitum locum, ubi beati ?vo sempiterno fruantur."330 "There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." Can St. Paul have expressed with more clearness his belief as to a heaven? Earlier in his career he expresses in language less definite, but still sufficiently clear, his ideas as to another world: "An vero tam parvi animi videamur esse omnes, qui in republica, atque in his vit? periculis laboribusque versamur, ut, quum, usque ad extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum atque otiosum spiritum duxerimus, vobiscum simul moritura omnia arbitremur?"331 "Are we all of us so poor in spirit as to think that after toiling for our country and ourselves—though we have not had one moment 323of ease here upon earth—when we die all things shall die with us?" And when he did go it should be to that glory for which virtue shall have trained him. "Neque te sermonibus vulgi dederis, nec in pr?mis humanis spem posueris rerum tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus."332 "You shall put your hope neither in man\'s opinion nor in human rewards; but Virtue itself by her own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." He thus tells us his idea of God\'s omnipotence: "Quam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eamdemque esse mentem sapientiamque perfectam; quem Deum appellant."333 "This force they call the soul of the world, and, looking on it as perfect in intelligence and wisdom, they name it their God." And again he says, speaking of God\'s care, "Quis enim potest—quam existimet a deo se curari—non et dies, et noctes divinum numen horrere?"334 "Who is there, when he thinks that a God is taking care of him, shall not live day and night in awe of his divine majesty?" As to man\'s duty to his neighbor, a subject as to which Pagans before and even after the time of Cicero seem to have had but vague ideas, the treatise De Officiis is full of it, as indeed is the whole course of his life. "Omne officium, quod ad conjunctionem hominum et ad societatem tuendam valet, anteponendum est illi officio, quod cognitione et scientia continetur."335 "All duty which tends to protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which science is the simple object." His belief in a conscience is shown in the law he lays down against suicide: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare."336 "That God within us forbids us to depart hence without his permission." As to justice, I need give no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works have been written to uphold.

324This pagan had his ideas of God\'s governance of men, and of man\'s required obedience to his God, so specially implanted in his heart, that he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. To us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often the form of a stern duty. We have had it from our fathers and our mothers; and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent hands, still it has been given. It has been there with all its written laws, a thing to live by—if we choose. Rich and poor, the majority of us know at any rate the Lord\'s Prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found it out, certainly. "Suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus." "Virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to true glory." The words to us seem to be quite commonplace. There is not a curate who might not put them into a sermon. But in Cicero\'s time they were new, and hitherto untaught. There was the old Greek philosopher\'s idea that the τ? καλ?ν—the thing of beauty—was to be found in virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold of it. But there was no God connected with it, no future life, no prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. It was leather and prunella, that, from first to last. The man had to die and go, melancholy, across the Styx. But Cicero was the first to tell his brother Romans of an intelligible heaven. "Certum esse in c?lo definitum locum ubi beati ?vo sempiterno fruantur." "There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." And then how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us—the very 325 pith and marrow and inside meaning of Christ\'s teaching, by adapting which we have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. When we look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in spite of individual greatness and national honor. But Cicero had found it.—"That brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race!"337 It is all contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at length our duty to our neighbors it will be found there on reference to this passage. How different has been the world before that law was given to us and since! Even the existence of that law, though it be not obeyed, has softened the hearts of men.

If, as some think, it be the purport of Christ\'s religion to teach men to live after a godlike fashion rather than to worship God after a peculiar form, then may we be allowed to say that Cicero was almost a Christian, even before the coming of Christ. If, as some think, an eternity of improved existence for all is to be looked for by the disciples of Christ, rather than a heaven of glory for the few and for the many, a hell that never shall be mitigated, then had Cicero anticipated much of Christ\'s doctrine. That he should have approached the mystical portion of our religion it would of course be absurd to suppose. But a belief in that mystical part is not essential for forming the conduct of men. The divine birth, and the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Lord\'s Supper, are not necessary to teach a man to live with his brother men on terms of forbearance and brotherly love. You shall live with a man from year\'s end to year\'s end, and shall not know his creed unless he tell you, or that you see him performing the acts of his worship; but you cannot live with him, and not know whether he live in accordance with Christ\'s teaching. And so it was with Cicero. Read his works through from the beginning to the end, and you shall feel 326that you are living with a man whom you might accompany across the village green to church, should he be kind enough to stay with you over the Sunday. The urbanity, the softness, the humanity, the sweetness are all there. But you shall not find it to be so with C?sar, or............