Both books teach that peace must come through strife--strife without and strife within. The Stoic like the Christian teaches that life is a warfare; that safety lies in continual vigilance; in restraint over our lower nature; in retirement and self-examination; in regarding all the things of time as of no account in themselves. “Look within,” says Aurelius, “within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig”; “the mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself”; “retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just and so secures tranquillity”; “the mind which is free from passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge and for the future be inexpugnable.” À Kempis also bids us “seek a proper time to retire into thyself” but this retirement is not into solitude; it is to the most sublime communion: “Shut the door upon thyself and call to thee Jesus thy beloved. Stay with Him in thy cell, for thou shalt not find so great peace anywhere else”; for “whosoever aims at arriving at internal and spiritual things must with Jesus go aside from the crowd”; “in silence and quiet the devout soul goes forward and learns the secrets of the Scriptures”; “for God, with His holy angels, will draw nigh to Him who withdraws himself from his acquaintances and friends.” The ideal of à Kempis is by subjection of the passions to reach the interior freedom which begets all the Christian virtues until these in turn are concentrated into one strong glow of love by which the lover is united to his Beloved, heart to heart, and soul to soul. It is this love which makes his short sentences quiver and glow and pierce, especially in the beautiful chapter on the effects of Divine love, where he prays that he may cast off the human and put on God:-- “Free me from evil passions and heal my mind of all disorderly affections, that being healed and well purified in my interior I may become fit to love, courageous to suffer, and constant to persevere. Love is an excellent thing, a great good indeed, which alone maketh light all that is burthensome and beareth with even mind all that is unequal.... The love of Jesus is noble and it spurreth us on to do great things and exciteth us to desire always that which is most perfect.... Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing broader, nothing more pleasant, nothing more generous, nothing fuller, or better in heaven or earth; for love is from God and cannot rise but in God, above all things created.” It is scarcely necessary to say that the Stoic had no such ideal as this; for it is essentially a Christian ideal.