Page 187 A POPULAR PREACHER : MAXIMUS 'I'YRIUS But leave these pictures with their fables, and
pass to a man who did not live in the primeval reign of Cronos,
but in the midst of our iron generation, a man whom Zeus and Apollo
set free. He was not an Athenian or Dorian. Solon did not train
nor Lycurgus bring him up-neither locality nor laws elect the virtues.
He came from Sinope on the Black Sea. Taking counsel of Apollo
he freed himself from all adversity, divested himself of its fetters,
and roamed the world at liberty, like a bird endowed with reason.
He feared no tyrant, knew no compulsion of law. Civic duty did
not engage, nor family impede, nor marriage confine, nor agriculture
detain, nor military service disturb, nor commerce distract him.
He laughed at all such lives and men, as we laugh at little children
when we see them engrossed over a game of knuckle-bones, exchanging
blows and robbing each other. He lived the life of a free and fearless
king. Temples and gymnasia and sacred groves were his palaces.
All earth and her fruits and the streams, her offspring, more profuse
than any Lesbian or Chian vintage, were his abundant, secure, and
undisputed wealth. Like a lion, he was the intimate and darling
of the air. He did not evade God's seasons or make contrivances
against Him by devising artificial heat in winter, or in summer
longing for coolness. So habituated was he to the nature of the
universe that this life made him sound and strong, and he reached
an extreme old age, without needing medicine, cautery, the surgeon's
knife, the prophet's prophecies, the priest's purifications, the
wizard's charm. Greece was at war : each state attacked its neighbour, |
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