naturaliter Christiana’; and they could only explain the lofty teachings of Seneca by the belief that he was a secret convert of the apostle Paul[66]. Parallelism between Stoic and Christian phraseology is indeed so frequently traced that it may be well to emphasize the need of caution. It is not by single phrases, often reflecting only the general temper of the times, that we can judge the relation of the two systems; it is necessary also to take into account the general framework and the fundamental principles of each. [Sidenote: Druidism.] =26.= Of the systems named by Aristotle far the least known to us is Druidism. It appeared to Caesar and other Romans to be the national religion of the Gauls and Britons, exactly as Magism appeared to the Greeks to be the national religion of the Persians. But other evidence indicates that Druidism was a reformed religion or philosophy, not unlike Persism in its principles. The training of Druidical students was long and arduous; it claimed to introduce them to a knowledge of heavenly deities denied to the rest of the world, and to reveal to them the immortality of the soul. Our best authority is the Latin poet Lucan:— ‘To you alone it has been granted to know the gods and the powers of heaven; or (it may be) to you alone to know them wrongly. You dwell in deep forests and far-away groves: according to your teaching the shades do not make their way to the still regions of Erebus or the grey realm of Dis below; the same spirit guides a new body in another world; if you know well what you say, then death is but an interlude in life. If not, at least the peoples, on whom the northern star gazes directly, are happy in their illusion; for the greatest of terrors, the fear of death, is nothing to them. Hence it comes that their warriors’ hearts are ready to meet the sword, and their souls have a welcome for death, and they scorn to be thrifty with life, in which they can claim a second share[67].’ Druidism, like Stoicism, seems to have prepared its adherents for a specially ready acceptance of Christianity. [Sidenote: The goal not reached yet.]