Note (return) — Chapter XIII
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The God of the Stoics is not, however, a mere principle of life vitalizing nature, but an intelligent principle directing nature; and, above all, a moral principle, governing the human race. "God is a living being, immortal, rational, perfect, and intellectual in his happiness, unsusceptible of any kind of evil; having a foreknowledge of the world, and of all that is in the world." 837 He is also the gracious Providence which cares for the individual as well as for the whole; and he is the author of that natural law which commands the good and prohibits the bad. "He made men to this end that they might be happy; as becomes his fatherly care of us, he placed our good and evil in those things which are in our own power." 838 The Providence and Fatherhood of God are strikingly presented in the "Hymn of Cleanthes" to Jupiter--