The consequence was that Epictetus confused us by an ambiguous use of “_you_.” As long as we were alive he said to us, “_You_ must regard your body as a mere tool,” where by “you” he meant the incorporeal part of man. As soon as we were on the point of death, he said to us, “Do not be alarmed. _You_ are going into the four elements,” where by “you” he apparently meant our corporeal part. I felt sure then (as I do now) that he did not intend to confuse us. He seemed to me to have been confused by his own intense desire to persuade himself that men must do good without hope of any reward at all except the consciousness of doing good in this present life. I had not at that time read the Christian gospels; but several passages in Paul’s epistles occurred to me as contrary to this doctrine of Epictetus, and I thought that our Master might have been biassed in part by Paul (as Scaurus had suggested)—only not, in this instance, imitating Paul, but contradicting him. So I took up the epistle to the Romans intending to read what Paul said there about Christ’s death and resurrection. CHAPTER XI ISAIAH ON DEATH I took up the epistle to the Romans, but I did not read it long. Another subject stepped in to claim immediate attention in the first words on which I lighted. They were these, “Isaiah cries aloud on behalf of Israel, _Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant [alone] shall be saved_,” and then, “Even as Isaiah has foretold, _If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left seed to us, we should have become as Sodom and should have been made like unto Gomorrah_.” Previously when I had read these words I could neither understand them nor see the way to understand them, not knowing the meaning of “Sodom” and “Gomorrah,” nor even “Isaiah.” But now, knowing that Isaiah was one of the principal Hebrew prophets, I began to see that many obscure passages of Paul might become clearer to me if I first studied this prophet. This view was confirmed when I found Paul, later on, quoting him again, “But Isaiah is very bold and says, _I was found by them that sought me not, I became manifest to them that consulted me not_; but with reference to Israel he says, _All the day long, I stretched out my hands to a people disobedient and gainsaying_.” The name also occurred toward the close of the epistle thus, “Isaiah says, _There shall be the root of Jesse, and he that is raised up to rule over the nations; on him shall the nations set their hope_.” These last words reminded me of the doctrine of Epictetus about Diogenes “to whom are entrusted the peoples of the earth and countless cares in their behalf.”