David certainly did so. David had “considered” all the glories of the visible heaven. Yet he counted them inferior to “man,” who was “made but little lower than God,” and inferior to the “son of man,” who had received “dominion” over God’s works. In the same spirit, Isaiah, as it seemed to me, spoke of the Maker of the heavenly bodies as being adorable, not because He had made them multitudinous and bright, but because He led them like a flock—as though even a star might wander but for the kindness of the divine Shepherd. Moreover God seemed to him to be controlling the mighty powers of the heaven for the service of man, “_Behold, the Lord, the Lord, He cometh with strength, and His arm with lordship. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. As a shepherd shall He shepherd His sheep, and with His arm He shall gather the lambs, and encourage those that are with young. Who measured out the water with His hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with His fingers? Who established the mountains by measure and the valleys with a scale? Who hath known the mind of the Lord and who hath become His fellow counsellor so as to instruct Him?_” Thus, according to the prophet, there was to be a great advent in which God was to “come” with “reward.” He predicted a future “shepherding” of the “sheep” and “gathering” of the “lambs,” corresponding to the past “measuring” of the “heaven.” According to the philosopher there was to be no such future. All things were to go round and round. Instead of “sheep” or “lambs,” bubbles in an eddy seemed a more appropriate metaphor to describe the results of human life in accordance with the general tendency of Epictetian doctrine. CHAPTER XIII EPICTETUS ON PROVIDENCE It was now almost the third hour and I was on the point of rolling up the volume, when a fellow-student suddenly entered to borrow some writing materials. Thrusting the book in my garment I supplied him with what he needed, and we hastened together to the lecture-room. We conversed, about trivial subjects, but my mind was not in them. It was with Isaiah. I could not help marvelling that a native of so small and weak a country should take so wide and imperial a view of the movements of the nations. In a Roman, I could have understood it better; or in a Greek of the days of Alexander. But that a Jew—whose people was as it were the shuttlecock between the great empires surrounding it—that a Jewish prophet should think such thoughts filled me with astonishment. Then I wondered what Epictetus would say on the administration of the world if he ever dealt with it fully. “He,” I said, “was a Phrygian and a slave. Is it possible that he, too, like Isaiah, could speak in this imperial fashion?” Arriving somewhat late, we found the room almost filled; but my seat was vacant, and I was glad to find Glaucus next to me, in the place vacated by Arrian’s departure.