Dull submission is left far behind, and a
mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between
cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one
whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of
stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness
of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between
passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the
aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by which an individual
may grow from one state into the other, many as are the
intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet
when you place the typical extremes beside each other for
comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological
universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other
a "critical point" has been overcome.
If we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more
than a difference of doctrine; rather is it a difference of
emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on
the eternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frosty
chill about his words which you rarely find in a Jewish, and
never in a Christian piece of religious writing.
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