THE LAST WORDS OF SCAURUS
Had I read to the end of Scaurus’s letter I should not have been so
startled by this sudden outburst. As it was, I had but a faint perception
of the cause. I did not give weight enough to the indications—slight
to others but they ought to have been clear to me—that the old man
was writing under a great mental strain. Striving to be fair to the
evangelists, he desired also to do justice to himself, half repenting
that he had rejected the Saviour, half vindicating the rejection on
the ground that truth constrained it. The whole tone of his letter—the
handwriting itself, if I had only noted it more closely—should have made
me perceive that he was passing rapidly through many transient phases,
and that this outburst of passionate indignation—not with Christ but
with what he supposed to be Mark’s Christ—was but one of them. I did not
notice these things. I was too much wrapped up in my own thoughts, and in
imaginations of what I could have said, and how I could have pleaded with
him for Christ.
It was now late, and I could read no more. I retired to rest—but not at
first to peaceful rest. Thoughts and dreams, fancies and phantoms, passed
indistinguishably before me: Scaurus and Clemens opposing one another,
Hermas mediating, while Epictetus looked on; Troy, Rome, Jerusalem, and
the City of Truth and Justice coming down from heaven; sunset and sunrise
ushered by Hesper and Phosphor—with snatches of familiar utterances about
“perceiving,” “believing,” and “deceiving,” and mocking repetitions of
“logos,” “logos”—a confused, shifting, and multitudinous medley that
resolved itself at last into one vast and dizzying whirlpool, in which
all existence seemed endlessly revolving round a central abyss, when
suddenly I heard “In the beginning was the Logos.” Then the whirlpool was
drawn up to the sky as though it had been a painted curtain; and we were
standing below, Scaurus and I, and Clemens, and Epictetus, and Hermas—all
of us gazing upwards to an unspeakable glory ascending and descending
between heaven and earth. Then I fell into a peaceful sleep.
Next morning I continued reading the letter. “About the marvels or
miracles in this gospel,” said Scaurus, “it is worth noting that
the author mentions only seven, that is to say, seven before the
resurrection. This, I believe, is the number assigned to Elijah, whereas
Elisha has fourteen—having ‘a double portion’ of Elijah’s spirit. This
selection of seven is one among many indications that the work uses
Jewish symbolism. I have shewn above that the Jewish genealogies are
sometimes adapted in that way, as with Matthew’s ‘fourteen generations.’
A more important fact is that this writer calls the miracles ‘signs’—not
‘mighty works,’ which is the term in the three gospels. This is very
interesting and I like him for it. He hates the words ‘strong,’ and
‘mighty,’ and ‘mighty work.’ For the matter of that, so does Epictetus.
Both would agree that it is only slaves that obey ‘the stronger.’
“He also dislikes arithmetical ‘greatness’ and discussions about ‘who
is the greatest?’ He prefers to lay stress on unity. Christians, he
thinks, are ‘one with the Son,’ or they are ‘in’ the Son, or the Son
is ‘in’ them. They are also to be ‘one,’ as the Father and the Son are
‘one.’ When men are regarded in this way, arithmetical standards of
greatness—based on one’s income, or on the amount of one’s alms, or the
amount of one’s prayers, or one’s sufferings, or one’s converts—become
ridiculous. He is quite right.
“He makes no mention of ‘repentance.’ That, I think, is because he
prefers such expressions as ‘coming to God’ or ‘coming to the light,’
rather than mere ‘change of mind.’ He never uses the noun ‘faith’ or
‘belief.’ Probably he found it in use as a technical term among some
foolish Christians—speaking of ‘faith that moves mountains’—who forgot to
ask ‘faith in _what_?’ For the same reason, no doubt, he preferred the
word ‘signs’ to ‘mighty works,’ because the former—at all events while it
was a novel term—might make men ask ‘signs of _what_?’ The phrase ‘mighty
work’ makes us ask nothing. Nor does a ‘mighty’ work prove anything,
except that the doer is ‘mighty’—perhaps a giant, perhaps a magician,
perhaps a God. Who is to decide? Epictetus says that Ceres and Pluto are
proved to be Gods because they produce ‘bread.’ So this John represents
Christ as producing bread and wine and healing disease and raising the
dead; and these are ‘signs’ that he is a Giver of divine gifts and a
Healer, like Apollo.
“In the case of one miracle, omitted by Luke, John intervenes and gives
the sign a different aspect—I mean the one in which Mark and Matthew
represent Christ as walking over the water to the disciples in a storm
and as coming into their boat. John represents Christ as standing on the
edge of the sea and as drawing the disciples safely to himself as soon as
they cry out to him. I have no doubt that the story is an allegory. But
John seems to me to give it in the nobler, and perhaps the earlier, form.
“There were probably multitudes of exorcisms performed by Jesus, as I
have said to you before. But John does not mention a single instance.
Perhaps he thought that more than enough had been said about these things
by the earlier evangelists. On the other hand, he describes the healing
of a man born blind, and the raising of a man named Lazarus from the
dead, after he had lain in the tomb three days.
“The nearest approach to this is a story in Luke about raising from the
coffin a young man, the son of a widow. I was long ago inclined to think
Luke’s story allegorical, and a curious book, which recently came into
my hands, confirms this view. It is assigned to Ezra, but was really
written, at least in its present form, about five and twenty years ago.
I think it mixes Jewish and Christian thought. Ezra sees a vision of
a woman sorrowing for her only child. She has had no son till after
‘thirty years’ of wedlock. The son grew up and was to be married. When
he ‘entered into his wedding chamber, he fell down and died.’ Presently
it is explained, ‘The woman is Sion.’ For ‘thirty years’ there was ‘no
offering.’ After ‘thirty years,’ Solomon ‘builded the city and offered
offerings.’ Then Jerusalem was destroyed. But Ezra sees a new city
builded, ‘a large place.’ It is a strange mixture. David, says the
scripture, was a ‘son of thirty years’ when he began to reign, and he
may be supposed to have died about the time when the Temple began to be
built. On the other hand Christ also was a ‘son of thirty years’ when he
began to preach the gospel, and Christ might be said to have died at the
time when he entered the Temple to purify it (that is, as Jews might say,
‘entered the wedding chamber’).
“I don’t profess to explain all this Ezra-allegory. The only point
worth noting is that it describes events that befell _the City_ and
_the Temple_ of the Jews as though they befell _persons_—a ‘woman’ and
a deceased ‘son.’ Luke omits the charge brought against Christ that
he threatened to destroy ‘_the temple_’ and build another. But there
can be no doubt that there was some basis of fact for the charge. John
gives that basis, by saying that Christ had in view a ‘_body_,’ meaning
himself. This indicates that Luke was misled through not understanding
Jewish metaphor. So here Luke may have been misled again. He found a
tradition describing the ‘raising up’ of the ‘widow’s son,’ and he took
it literally.” The explanation thus suggested by Scaurus seemed to me
probable. It explained why Luke omitted “the raising up of the temple.”
It also explained why Mark and Matthew omitted “the raising up of the
widow’s son.”
Scaurus proceeded to the account of the raising of Lazarus. “This
narrative,” he said, “is extremely beautiful and may perhaps have had
some basis of historical fact. Luke speaks of a Lazarus, who dies, and
is carried after death into Abraham’s bosom. Some Christians might take
this Lazarus for a historical character. But I do not think any confusion
arising from that story can have had very much to do with the story in
John. The latter seems to me to have been thrown into allegorical form,
so that Lazarus may represent humanity, first, corrupt, mere ‘_flesh
and blood_’; secondly, raised up by ‘_the help of God_.’ ‘My God helps’
is the meaning of Eliezer or Lazarus. Philo sees in the name these two
associations. Also a Christian writer named Barnabas has some curious
traditions that may bear on this name; and so have the Jews. Possibly
John may mean—over and above the man Lazarus—the human race, raised up to
life by the Messiah at the intercession of two sisters, representing the
Jewish and the Gentile Churches of the Christians. Similarly I am told
that Christians describe the two sisters Leah and Rachel as representing
the Synagogue and the Church.
“For my part, having spoken to many physicians, and having investigated
some instances of revivification, I have come to the conclusion that
Jesus possessed a remarkable power of healing the sick and even perhaps
of restoring life to those from whom (to all appearance) life had
recently departed. Nay, I am dreamer enough to go beyond anything that
physicians would allow, and to suppose that Christ may have had a certain
power of what I called above _teliatreia_, ‘healing at a distance,’
producing a corresponding _telepatheia_, or ‘being healed at a distance.’
But there is against this particular narrative the objection—not to be
overcome except by very strong evidence indeed—that the other evangelists
say nothing about this stupendous miracle. Having in view Christ’s
precept to the disciples, ‘Raise the dead,’ I see how easily honest
Christians might be led to take metaphor for fact. It is much more easy
to explain how the narratives of the widow’s son and of Lazarus may have
arisen from misunderstanding in the two latest gospels, than to explain
how, though true, they were omitted in the two earliest.”
Upon this, I read the story of the raising of Lazarus two or three
times over. It appeared to me certain that the writer of the gospel
must have taken the story as literally true. But I saw how easy it was
to mistake metaphor for literal meaning in stories of this kind. I was
also impressed by what Scaurus said concerning the precept, “Raise the
dead,” which is recorded by Matthew. No other writer mentions this; and I
had assumed, at the time of which I am now speaking, that it was meant
spiritually, and that Luke omitted it because he thought that it might be
misunderstood as having a literal meaning. And here I may say, writing
forty-five years afterwards, that I have lately spoken to several of the
brethren about this precept. Some leave it out of their text of Matthew.
Some refuse to say anything about it. But I have not as yet found a
single brother ready to admit that Jesus must have used it, or even
probably used it, metaphorically.
All this I did not know at the time when I was reading Scaurus’s letter;
but I recognised the force of his arguments and was constrained to
sympathize with his disappointment when he proceeded as follows: “O, my
dearest Quintus, what earthen vessels, what mere potsherds, these gospel
writers are, even the best of them, in comparison with the man whom they
fail to set before us! Yes, even this John, whom I regard as by far the
greatest of them all, even he is a failure—but in his case, perhaps, from
want of knowledge, not from want of insight. As for the others, why do
they not trust to the greatness of their subject, the man Jesus Christ?
Why can they not believe that the Logos might become incarnate as a man,
that is to say, a real man—what Jesus himself calls ‘son of man’? Why do
they lay so much stress on mere ‘mighty works,’ some of which, even if
they could be proved to have happened, would give us little insight into
the real greatness of their Master, whom they wish us to worship?
“For my part, I take such stories as those of the destruction of the
swine and the withering of the fig-tree, to be allegories misinterpreted
as facts. But even if I were shown to be wrong, they would not prove to
me that I was right in worshipping the doer of such wonders. If I can
judge myself aright, I, Marcus Æmilius Scaurus, am quite prone enough
already to worship the God of the Thunderbolts and the God of War. These
Jews might have taught me better. They have, to some extent—especially
this fourth writer. But how much more from the first might have been
effected if, from the first, they had recognised the truth taught in the
legend of Elijah—that the Lord is ‘not in the earthquake’ but ‘in the
still small voice’!”
At this point, Scaurus’s handwriting became irregular and sometimes not
easy to read. “I have been interrupted again,” he said. “This time, it
was Flaccus. Now I take up my pen positively for the last time, wondering
why I take it up, and why I ramble on in this maundering fashion. I think
it is because I feel as though you and I were dreaming together, and I am
loth to leave off. There is no one else in the world with whom I can thus
dream in partnership. This shall really be my last dreaming.
“Do not be vexed with me, Quintus, for charging Flaccus _not_ to send you
a copy of this little book. He told me that for some time past you had
been interested in these subjects, and that, if he could find another
copy, he intended to forward it to you. The rascal added something about
‘mere literary interest.’ I suspect him of Christian tendencies. Your
recent letters have reassured me. But I cannot help feeling that there
have been moments with you, as with me, when the ‘interest’ was more than
‘merely literary.’ I had half thought of sending you my copy. But I shall
not. The subject is too fascinating—like chess; and, like chess, it leads
to nothing. I was glad to hear—in your last letter, I think—that you were
now giving your mind to practical affairs. If you decide on the army at
once, there is likely to be work soon in Illyria.
“Things also look cloudy, not black yet but cloudy, in Syria. In spite
of the thrashing they got from the late Emperor, these Jews have not yet
learned their lesson. They are as stubborn and obstinate as Hannibal made
us out to be:—
_‘Gens quae cremato fortis ab Ilio_
_Jactata Tuscis aequoribus sacra_
_Natosque maturosque patres_
_Pertulit Ausonias ad urbes,_
_Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus_
_Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido_
_Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso_
_Ducit opes animumque ferro.’_
“How every word of this would suit the Jews! I mean in their past
history. According to my news (from a friend of Rufus the new Governor)
it may suit their future, too; and we may have to take Jerusalem again.
Then—to quote Isaiah and Horace in one—there will be another ‘lopping
of the boughs’ in the future. But I mean their past. I wonder whether
you understand what I am dreaming of. Probably not, and it is not worth
explaining. Nor indeed am I well enough to explain clearly and briefly.
I have been going in too much for books of late, and feel at this moment
(to quote an old friend) ‘dead from the waist down.’ However—as I am not
going to write about these Jews again—I will scribble my last thoughts to
the end.
“How strange it would have been, then, my dearest Quintus, if these
Jews—I mean the Jewish Jews not the Christian Jews—how strange, I say,
it would have been, looked at as a poem, if these fellows had fulfilled
Hannibal’s prophecy. They went some way towards it. Though their Ilium
has been twice burned they are still alive, numerous, and active. Their
‘ilex’ has had ‘pruning’ enough, heaven knows, from the Roman axe of
late, and from the Assyrian and Babylonian axes in days gone by. But they
want pruning still. Witness a score of eastern cities, where they have
lately been massacring myriads of Greeks—not, I own, without having seen
myriads of their countrymen massacred first.
“Their disadvantage has been that they have never made a new start
as Æneas did, so as to turn old Troy into new Rome. Æneas could take
his gods with him. The Jews could not. The only place where they have
done anything of the kind is Alexandria. There they have an imitation
temple—not a rival temple of course, but an imitation—and there they
are at their best. But elsewhere the stubborn creatures—from Gaul to
Euphrates—recognise no home or sacred ground except in a little corner of
Syria. Providence has done its best to detach them from this servitude by
using Titus to destroy their temple a second time, and by leaving their
sacred utensils no existence except upon Titus’s arch. But still they
are servants of the _genius loci_, so to speak. As they cannot serve the
temple, they serve the ground on which it stands and the traditions that
have collected round it.
“The Christian Jews have immense advantages. They are like the Trojan
Romans. The Christians have left their Troy (that is to say, carnal
Jerusalem) in order to dwell in Rome (that is to say, heavenly Jerusalem)
the city of truth, the city of justice, the city of freedom and universal
brotherhood. Their sacred fire is the Holy Spirit. Their sacred vessels
are human beings. Every great city in Asia contains their ‘holy things.’
To celebrate their feast on the body and blood of their Saviour, a table
of pine wood, a platter, and a mug, supply them with all they need!
A little bread, and wine mingled with water, have taken the place of
Solomon’s hecatombs! Surely this is the very perfection of religious
simplicity—an ambassador in a plain Roman toga amid the courtiers of a
Ptolemy!
“Again, when we Romans call on Jupiter, offering our costliest white
oxen, who supposes that Jupiter descends? But when these Christians meet,
without a denarius in their pockets, three in a room, they tell you that
Christ is with them. What is more, many of them believe it! What is most,
some of them act as though they believed it! I have called their city
a city of dreams, and I repeat it. But, mark you, a city of dreams has
one great advantage over a city of bricks or stone. You can smash the
latter. But neither Nero, nor Trajan, has been able to smash the former;
and I begin to doubt whether it could be smashed by Hadrian, if he tried.
At the present rate, I should not be surprised if, in the next hundred
years, the empire from the Euphrates to Britain were dotted with colonies
of Christ.
“‘Let arms of war give place to the gown of peace!’ So sang the lawyer
of Arpinum when he tried his hand at poetry. He was better advised, in
his lawyer’s gown, when he confessed ‘Laws are silent among arms.’ But
there is a third power more powerful than either laws or arms. You won’t
believe me when I tell you its name. It is ‘dreams.’ Yes, ‘Among dreams,’
says Scaurus—and he knows, having been himself a dreamer, in his day,
besides being a bit of a soldier and a good deal of a looker on—‘Among
dreams, arms are vain.’ I don’t say they are ‘_silent_.’ That is their
contemptible feature—they are _not_ ‘silent.’ But they are impotent.
Mars against dreams may make what fuss and bustle he pleases, clash,
clang, thunder, like the brazen wheels of Salmoneus. But his thundering
will effect nothing. Nor will his steel. ‘_Frustra diverberet umbras._’
“When I say ‘dreams,’ do not take me to mean that the personality of a
great prophet is a ‘dream.’ But the notion that an empire can be spun
out of it, or built on it, seems to me a dream. Yet there is something
attractive in it—I mean in the conception of a soul like a vast magnet,
attracting and magnetizing a group of souls, of which each in turn
becomes a new magnet, magnetizing a group of its own, and so on, and so
on, till the whole empire (or family) of souls is bound together by this
magnetic law. Yes, ‘law’ one may call it, not a magical incantation, but
a natural law, the law of the spiritual magnet. It is all very strange.
Yet, given the personality, it is possible.
“For it all comes to this, a personality—nothing more. There is nothing
new in what the Christians call their Testament or Covenant—nothing new
at all, from the Jewish point of view, except that the new Jews have cast
aside a great deal of the Covenant of the old Jews. I sometimes think
the Christian leader was really what Socrates calls himself, a ‘cosmian’
or ‘cosmopolite,’ going back, behind the law of Moses, to a beginning
of things before unclean food was Levitically forbidden and before free
divorce was Levitically sanctioned. His two fundamental rules are the
same, both for Jews and for Christians, ‘Love God,’ ‘Love man.’
“The difference is, that to the Christians (so they assert) Christ has
introduced a new kind of love, a new power of love. He has not only
breathed it into his disciples but also given them (they say) the power
of breathing it into others. The question is, Have they this power? I am
obliged to admit—from what I hear—that a good many of them appear to me
to have it. This is the real miracle. This, if true, is sunlight. All the
so-called miracles of their books, even if true, are the merest, palest
moonlight compared with this.
“This dreamer seems to me to have planned an imperial peace throughout
his cosmopolis, to be brought about, not by threats based on the power
of inflicting death, not by edicts on stone backed by punishments with
steel, but by means of a spirit that is to creep into our hearts,
dethrone our intellects, drag us in triumph behind his chariot wheels,
making us fanatically happy when we are in love with him—and with all
the weak, the foolish, the suffering, and the oppressed—and making us
unreasonably unhappy, foolishly sad and sick at heart, when we resist a
blind affection for others and when we consult our own interests and our
own pleasures, following the path of prudent wisdom.
“In one respect, this work of John’s has proved me a false prophet. I
prophesied that East and West could not unite in one religion. They
_have_ united—on paper, and in theory—in this little book. But I also
said that, if they did unite, their offspring would be a portent. To that
I adhere. If John’s form of the Christian superstition were to overspread
the world, do you seriously suppose that it would remain in his form?
No, it is impossible but that the spiritual will be despiritualised.
The superstition of pure spirit will probably become a superstition of
unmixed matter. The life will be narrowed to the Body and the Blood.
The Body and the Blood will be narrowed down still further to the Bread
and the Wine. Then their hyperbolical self-sacrifice will give way to
hyperbolical malignity. How these Christians will, in due time, hate one
another! How they will wall in, and imprison, the Spirit that bloweth
whither it listeth! How they will war against one another for their
Prince of Peace! How they will philosophize and hair-split about the
Father and the Son, tearing one another in pieces for the unity of the
one God! And yet, and yet, even if all my prophecies of the worst come to
pass, might not a Christian philosopher of those far-off days say that
the ‘worst is often the corruption of the best,’ and that his Prophet
had discovered a ‘best,’ buried for a time beneath all this rubbish
and litter, but destined to emerge and grow into the tree of a great
spiritual empire? It may be so. I do not deny that there may be such a
‘best.’ But it is not for me.
“I give it up. The problem of the Sphinx is too hard for my brains.
Perhaps Destiny knows its own mind, and it may be a good mind—not my
mind, but perhaps an infinitely better and wiser. Perhaps this Christian
superstition is intended to found an empire after the Spirit, an empire
of ‘the Son of man,’ like, but unlike, the empires of Egypt, Babylon,
Greece, Rome. Daniel dreamed this for Jewish Jews. It may come true for
Christian Jews. If it should come, what a tyranny it will be—for those,
at least, who are tyrants at heart! The yoke of the Imperium Romanum
will be nothing to the yoke of the Imperium Romanochristianum. We Romans
despotize over bodies: the Roman Christians will despotize over souls.
‘Debellare superbos’ is only one of our arts. ‘Pacis imponere mores’ is
a second. ‘Parcere subjectis’ is a third. These Roman Christians will
know how to crush, but not how to spare. What saints it will create—for
the spiritual! What devils—for the carnal! And which will win in the
end, saint or devil? I incline, with oscillation, to the saint. But I
am sick and tired of inclinations and oscillations; I want to _know_. I
_know_ that the sun shines. I want to _know_—just at this moment I feel
very near knowing, nearer than I ever have been in my whole life—that the
world has been made all of a piece, and is being shaped by the Maker to
one end, and that, the best.
“O, my dear Silanus, I am weary of these books. I must go out into the
fresh air and see the sun. Books, books, books! I agree with Epictetus,
who thinks that Chrysippus wrote some two hundred too many. I agree
with John, too, who says, in effect, that not all the pens and paper in
the world could draw the portrait of his master—or rather his friend,
for ‘friend,’ not ‘servant,’ is the title at the end of the book. That
reminds me, by the way, of a beautiful thought in this gospel—I mean
that the author is ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’! As much as to say,
‘Do you want to know Jesus? Then get a _friend_ of his—some one _whom
Jesus loved_—to introduce you. There is no other way. Not an impartial
biographer—he is of no use—but a _friend_.’ And I think he means to hint,
at the close of his little book, that there always will be, ‘tarrying,’
till Jesus comes again, a ‘disciple whom Jesus loved,’ to represent him
to the world.
“That is most true. That is real insight, the insight of an artist and
a prophet in one. I can forgive John almost all his faults—ambiguities,
artificialities, statements of non-fact as fact, I can condone them all
as orientalisms or Alexandrian Judaisms—for the sake of this one truth,
that we cannot know the greatest of the departed great, save through a
human being that has loved him and has been loved by him. This is the
thought with which John ends and with which I will end. I wish to part
friends with him. Indeed at this moment, for his sake, I could almost
call myself an amateur Christian. But then I pull myself together and
recognise that it only proves what I have said to you a score of times,
and now repeat for the last time, that whereas we Romans are only coarse,
clumsy, brutal Samnites, these Christians are the wiliest, kindest, and
gentlest of retiarii.
“And that makes me think of old Hermas. You remember I told you of our
last interview. It comes back to me while I am finishing this last dream.
I always felt there was more in his face than I could understand. Now,
after reading this gospel, I seem, just at this moment, to understand
his face for the first time, quite well. The old man had in him the
love of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ It had been breathed into his
being. This it was that half fascinated me, shining out of his eyes as
he silently left the room on that afternoon—to me unforgettable—when I
dismissed him. What if I had not dismissed him? What if⸺.”
These words were the last of a column. They were the last that Scaurus
was ever to write. The next column was blank. At first I thought he had
been again interrupted and had forgotten to finish the letter. But then
I recollected with alarm that, quite contrary to custom, the cover had
not been directed in his handwriting. I had thrown it hastily aside on
the previous evening. Now I searched for it and my alarm was speedily
justified. Inside was a short and hurried note from Marullus saying that
my dear old friend had been struck suddenly with paralysis in the act of
writing to me. A messenger (said Marullus) who happened to be at that
moment waiting to carry Scaurus’s letter, would carry at the same time
Marullus’s note. On the following day, whatever might happen, he would
send a second letter by a special messenger.
It was now drawing towards evening. I hastened out to ascertain how soon
a vessel, available for my purpose, would be leaving Nicopolis. Finding
that I could start on the following day at noon, I determined not to wait
for Marullus’s second letter but to make preparations for an immediate
return.