To the Stoic, on the contrary, the round world is part of a single universe, which holds all its parts in the grasp and guidance of one universal law, determining each particular event. By making that law of the universe his own, the individual man at once worships the all-controlling Providence, and achieves his own freedom. For the law to which he yields is at once the law of the whole universe, and the law of his own nature as a part of the universe. "We are born subjects," exclaims the Stoic, "but to obey God is perfect liberty." "Everything," says Marcus Aurelius, "harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee." A characteristic prayer and meditation and hymn will show us, far better than description, what this Stoic religion meant to those who devoutly held it. Epictetus gives us this prayer of the dying Cynic: "I stretch out my hands to God and say: The means which I have received from thee for seeing thy administration of the world and following it I have not neglected: I have not dishonoured thee by my acts: see how I have used my perceptions: have I ever blamed thee? have I been discontented with anything that happens or wished it to be otherwise? Have I wished to transgress the relations of things? That thou hast given me life, I thank thee for what thou hast given: so long as I have used the things which are thine I am content; take them back and place them wherever thou mayest choose; for thine were all things,--thou gavest them to me. Is it not enough to depart in this state of mind, and what life is better and more becoming than that of a man who is in this state of mind, and what end is more happy?" He also offers us this meditation on the inevitable losses of life, by which he consoles himself with the thought that all he has is a loan from God, which these seeming losses but restore to their rightful owner, who had lent them to us for a while. "Never say about anything, I have lost it; but say, I have restored it. Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not this been also restored? 'But he who has taken it from me is a bad man.' But what is it to you by whose hands the giver demanded it back? So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travellers do with their inn."