SILANUS BECOMES A CHRISTIAN
It was very late, but I was unwilling to say farewell. During the last
two or three hours, Clemens had in some strange way so associated himself
with my thoughts of Scaurus that I now began to feel as though, in
parting from my new friend, I should be parting from the old one—whose
living self I should perhaps not see again in Tusculum and whose likeness
I was leaving in Nicopolis. But Clemens would not resume his seat.
Quoting Scaurus’s words with a kindly smile, “It takes a great deal,” he
said, “to make you ‘tired of books’.” “Perhaps my old friend would not
have been tired,” I replied, “if he had had you as his interpreter. I
wish he could have been present with us to-night.” “I shall always think
of him as a friend,” said Clemens, “for your sake, for his own sake, and
for truth’s sake.”
Then he asked me at what hour I was to set sail, to-morrow, “or rather,”
said he, “to-day, for it is long past midnight.” “About noon,” I replied.
“Long before noon,” said he, “I must be at some distance from Nicopolis
on a visit to some sick folk. But I expect to be returning, by way of
the wood where we first conversed together, just in time to catch sight
of your vessel before it disappears round the cape. So you must think of
me then as wishing you over again from a distance the good things that I
now wish you face to face.” “When we last parted,” said I, as we clasped
hands at the open door, “you wished me peace. Wish it me again.” “May
peace,” he said, “be multiplied to you!” Then, drawing me gently towards
himself, after standing for a moment as though unable to speak, “that
peace,” he said, “which passes understanding!”
When I returned to my lodging I found a messenger awaiting me with a note
from Marullus. Scaurus was still living, though unconscious. The doctors
thought it possible, though not probable, that he might recover for a
short time. “I fear,” said Marullus, “that, by the time you receive these
lines, my dear patron will be no more. If you wish to come, in the slight
hope of seeing him, you will do well to come at once.” I was prepared for
this, so that it made no difference in my arrangements. These were nearly
completed except for writing letters of farewell to friends in Nicopolis.
The sun was well above the horizon before I began the letter that I had
reserved for the last—my farewell to Epictetus. To several acquaintances
I had been scribbling away, fluently enough. Nor had I been at a loss
for what to say to the one or two more intimate friends to whose
kindness I was indebted. But, all the time, there had been in my mind
an undercurrent of anxious questioning as to what I should say to the
man to whom I owed most. Should I explain? Should I confess? Should I
distinguish between what I had received from him for which I was his
debtor, and what I had not been able to receive so that I could not call
myself indebted? To what end? Whatever might happen in the future, I
could never cease to be grateful to him for having raised me to a higher
sense of a life above the level of the Beast, and for stimulating me to
follow and revere the Man. What though a new ideal of the Man had been
presented to me? Did that make me less Epictetus’s debtor? Nay, did it
not possibly increase my debt, because, but for him, I might not have
taken—if ever I should be proved to have taken—the path that led towards
a higher and nobler goal?
I wrote, tore up, re-wrote, corrected, re-corrected, and again re-wrote.
There was a want of directness in all my attempts, and they all ended
in tearing up. At last I said, “I will try to write as my Master
himself would have written.” That made my letter of the briefest. After
explaining my sudden departure, and thanking him for his teaching, “I
am your debtor,” I wrote, “and always shall be.” I was on the point of
adding, “If ever I possess myself, I shall owe myself to you.” But the
words struck me as familiar. Then I remembered something like them in the
Epistle to Philemon: “I say not unto thee how that thou owest to me even
thine own self.” Could I say with strict Epictetian truth that I owed to
Epictetus as much as Philemon owed to Paul? I re-wrote it thus: “If ever
I possess myself I shall in large measure owe myself to you.” That had
the disadvantage of being a little longer, but the advantage of being
quite true. Sealing the letter that I might not be tempted to alter it
again, I threw myself down for two or three hours of rest.
A little before noon my servant roused me. All was ready, and we went
down at once to the quay. Besides the usual bustle—sailors, fishermen,
merchants, passengers mostly in a hurry—there was some dispute (I know
not what, but I think it was among the fishermen). This added to the
confusion. Not many blows were interchanged, but there was no lack of
threats, imprecations, scurrilous jests, and obscene abuse. As I was
making my way through the crowd, some one touched me on the shoulder.
It was my Epicurean friend, Apronius Rufus, whom I had last seen in the
little village of Lycus, scattering nuts and figs to make the schoolboys
scramble. I had caught sight of him, a minute or two before, lounging
in a corner and looking on at the quarrelsome crowd; but being in no
mood for his jests I had turned aside in the vain hope that he would
not see me. As soon as he overtook me, he began in his usual fashion,
“What brings you here at this hour, most serious Cynic? A truant humour,
I fear. For it is lecture time, or at all events not much past: and
Epictetus gives long lessons. Yet no. You are no truant. Truants don’t
look so serious. You have come here as a philosopher, to see life as
it is, and to set up as a heretic. You come from books to things; from
ideals to facts. Good! Now begin to learn! Look at these bipeds! Look,
and listen! Up above, in your schoolroom, they were ‘sons of God,’ were
they not! Look, then, at that son of God hitting his brother son of God
in the eye! Listen to those two daughters of God and their harmonious
antiphon!”
I was vexed, but let him talk on, as being the best means of getting
myself free from him without explanation; and he, following close behind
me, kept pouring his jests into my ear, till, I suppose, he got a clearer
view of my face. For he suddenly checked himself, saying, “But, my dear
Silanus, pardon me if something is really wrong. You would not, I am
sure, let my idle talk pain you. Your servant is here with baggage.
I fear some bad news is taking you from Nicopolis.” Then I briefly
explained.
He had some slight acquaintance with Scaurus and was instantly and
sincerely apologetic. “I was a fool,” said he, “not to have noticed that
something was amiss. Really I am grieved. And Scaurus, too! That fine
old soldier! Often have I heard my father speak of his splendid service
in Moesia. Well, Silanus, there are humanities as well as philosophies.
Believe me, I feel with you. Farewell! Forgive me as sincerely as I
condemn myself.” He pressed my hand, and I his. He was a good fellow at
heart and died in Syria, a soldier’s death—such as Scaurus would have
approved and no Cynic could have censured.
In a few minutes, we were outside the port, seeing from a distance
(without hearing) the bustle on the quay. It was not an unpleasing
scene—now. A few minutes more, and the whole of the city stood out as a
bright picture in a framework of fields. Presently Nicopolis was receding
and lessening. Hills rose up behind. The frame was becoming the picture
and Nicopolis a small part in it. I paced the deck, this way and that,
turning in my mind all that had befallen me since I had gazed on these
same scenes in reversed order, arriving from Italy. How few days ago
in time! How many ages ago in thought and experience! “What strange
things,” I exclaimed, “what marvellous things have happened to me! Am
I not a changed man?” Then a sense of unreality began to creep over
me. “Am I not, after all, the same Silanus, recovering from a dream?
Have these ‘strange things’ been real things? Have they not been mere
pictures—pictures of the mind, phantasms, dreams, from which I, the old
Silanus, am now awaking to find myself just what I was in old days when I
was wasting my time in Rome?”
I looked back on Nicopolis and it was now little more than a hamlet, and
the quay was a dot. But it still loomed large on my mind. I had spoken
of “phantasms” and “dreams.” But I could not think of the human scene in
the harbour as a “dream.” Only too life-like were those bipeds—noisy,
scurrilous, vile, obscene! How unworthy of the bright and glorious
sunlight in which all things were bathed at that moment of full noon—all
things in heaven and earth! How glorious was everything except man! Yes,
everything except man! Rufus spoke in jest, but did he not speak the
truth? What were those “sons of God” on the quay? Surely, surely, they
were “sons of clay,” mere puppets to play with and break! To this day I
cannot tell why just at this moment so strong a temptation should have so
suddenly seized me. But seize me it did. I write it as it happened, that
others may take heart if the same thing should happen to them. It was
God’s way of dealing with me, suffering me to be almost cast down by evil
that He might lift me up for good.
Feeling the evil coming, I tried at first to strengthen myself with the
sayings of my Master, Epictetus, “See then that thou do nothing as a
beast. Else thou hast lost the Man. Thou hast not fulfilled the promise
of the Man,” and again, “Man is a being that has nothing more sovereign
than his will. He has all other things in subjection to this.” Then I
thought of Man as the Psalmist describes him, saying to God, “Thou hast
put all things under his feet … yea, and the beasts of the field,” and
how the Christians regarded this as meaning that Man was to triumph over
sin.
But, against these hopeful thoughts, there rose up, first, the
confessions of Epictetus that he had never succeeded in producing a Man
of this kind, nor anything approaching to it; and then the words of the
other Psalm, “Man being in honour hath no understanding, but is like
unto the beasts that perish.” I longed to believe the good Voices, but
truth seemed to compel me to believe the bad Voices. Worst and strongest
of all, there rose up recollections of my own evil deeds, words, and
thoughts, from childhood upwards, and they strengthened the Voices of
evil. I could not at that moment recall the brighter and better side of
my own life. I could not remind myself how different a man in a crowd
may be for a moment from the same man in his home and at his work during
his daily life. It seemed to me that I ought to be on my guard against
hoping contrary to facts. Was not Glaucus right in taunting me with
“self-deceiving,” which I called “believing”? Was it not the plain and
manifest fact that the Beast was Lord over the Man?
Again and again this question put itself before me, as though from the
mouth of the Beast, saying, “Am I not your Lord? Can you honestly deny
it?” And at that instant I could not deny it. Never had I felt so weak,
so forsaken—abandoned by all the hopes that had been lately gathering
round me, more hopeless than if I had never entertained them.
But just when I seemed to be touching the bottom of the lowest depth, I
received a sense of the nearness of help. If I could not trust in the
Good, at least I could rebel against the Evil. What though the Beast
be Lord of mankind? “At least,” I exclaimed, “there are those who will
not be his slaves—Epictetus, Scaurus, my father, others known to me,
multitudes unknown. Rather than submit to the Beast, it is better to
be on the conquered side—along with the good, and worthy and noble. It
is better, yes much better, to be on the side of the Man crushed down,
trampled on, destroyed!” Then a great longing fell on me that the Man
thus crushed down and destroyed by the Beast might prove to be not
destroyed in the end, for such a Man, if only He existed, seemed the only
fit object of worship for mankind. Yes, victorious or defeated, He alone
was to be worshipped. “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none
upon earth that I desire in comparison with thee, O thou FORSAKEN SON OF
GOD!”
As I uttered these words I remembered where I had first uttered them—on
the hills yonder, while I was thinking of Glaucus’s troubles just before
I met my new friend Clemens. That made me think of him and of his promise
to wait on the hill, and look on my vessel as it vanished, and “wish
me well.” I glanced back over the stern just in time to see our little
coppice disappearing. “Clemens,” I said, “is there. Clemens is praying
for me.” With that, there came back to me all he had said about the power
of the FORSAKEN to help those who felt “forsaken”; and about the “cross,”
as the real throne whereon the Son of man reigns as the real king and
subjects all things to Himself. In that moment I understood how both the
Psalms were true: “Man being in honour—_as the world counts honour_—is
like unto the beasts that perish.” But “man being in honour—_as God
counts honour_—is uplifted on the throne of suffering and reigns over
those for whom He suffers and whom He redeems.” A sudden conviction fell
upon me that here at last I had the light that makes all things clear,
and I cried from the deepest depth of my being, “Whom have I in heaven
but thee, O thou forsaken one that art NOT FORSAKEN? And there is none
upon earth that I desire in comparison with thee. Make no long tarrying,
O my Helper and my Redeemer!”
All this, which takes time to describe, passed in the twinkling of an
eye, and then something befell me that I cannot exactly describe. Only
I know that it was no act of reason. Nor was it vision. It was more
like feeling. The arm of the Lord seemed to lift me up and carry me to
something that I felt to be the Cross. Then the thought of the Cross sent
down upon me the thought of an overwhelming flood of the mighty love and
pity of God, the Father of the fatherless and Servant of the meanest of
His servants, descending on my soul from the side of the Saviour and
bathing me in His purifying blood, creating me anew in the eternal Son.
And thus, at last, after so many delays, refusals, and resistances,
willingly led captive out of the dominion of darkness and fear and sin, I
was carried as a little child into the joy of the family of God.
* * * * *
When I reached Tusculum, Scaurus was in his grave. He had died on the
day when I left Nicopolis, and about noon. I could not discover among
his papers any last instructions, or indications of any wishes connected
with the subject of his last letter. Only I found a paper with “For
Hermas’s tomb” on it. Below was written in large characters IN PEACE. I
asked Marullus whether he understood this. He said that on the morning
of the last day of his active and conscious life the old man had gone
(with Marullus’s aid, for he was very feeble) to see the tomb he had
erected for Hermas in years gone by. After standing for some time silent
he repeated aloud the last words of the inscription, “For memory’s sake.”
“That,” said he, “is not enough.” Then, as they walked home, he said,
“Hermas would have liked IN PEACE. There is room. See that those words
are added.” I saw that they were added. I also placed them on Scaurus’s
own tomb.
For the rest, in the years that followed—forty-five in number—nothing has
befallen me that would greatly interest my readers. I became a soldier.
Many of the brethren condemned me for it. But when the war broke out
in Illyria I felt that, although a Christian, I had no right to cease
to become a Roman, or to spare my blood, if need arose, in defence of
the peace of the Empire. In doing this, I was glad to think that I had
fulfilled Scaurus’s last wish. Clemens also supported me.
From him I received several letters before I went to Illyria. Soon
afterwards, he passed away in Corinth, but not before he had done for
Glaucus the same service that he did for me. His first letter told me
that he had seen my vessel at noontide from the hills above Nicopolis,
and that he had kept his promise of “wishing me well.” He always called
me brother; and no brother could have been more brotherly. But assuredly
he was more than that. Paul sowed the seed of the gospel in my heart, but
it was the spirit of Clemens that helped to quicken and to foster it. He
was my father in the faith.
Yet Scaurus, too, was a helper—helper in deed even when opposing in
word—guiding me indirectly towards the City of Truth. I have read
Apologies for the Christian faith written by worthy men—Justin for
example and others. But they have not helped me towards Christ as Scaurus
did. They have been special pleaders for their religion, and sometimes
great manipulators of words and arguments. But what Scaurus said, even in
dispraise of the gospels, was often so qualified by praise, admiration,
yes, and love, of the character of the Saviour, that it had much more
effect with me than the arguments of Justin afterwards had, when I
came to know them. Moreover Scaurus was such a lover of truth, and so
quick and keen to detect an untruth, that in meeting his attacks upon
the gospels I felt I had met the worst. I doubt not that he has found
peace in one of the “many mansions.” If I may not call him my father
in the faith, yet certainly he was the kindest of stepfathers, helping
me to the living Truth by causing me to love all truth, and indirectly
strengthening my feet in the path towards the Saviour by not suffering me
to walk too soon.
And you, too, good Epictetus, truthloving, keen Epictetus—I will not say
“kind Epictetus,” not at least always kind in word, though always good
at heart even when most bitter in word—always fervid against falsehood,
always zealous with a fiery zeal for that strange cold aspect of a
“Father of all” in which you placed your trust and strove to make us
place ours: what shall I say of you and how thank you for the help you
gave me! How often in Rome and Tusculum, how often on nightwatches in
Illyria, Moesia, and the East, have I seen your face, dear Master, as I
saw it for the last time in Nicopolis, leaving you without bidding you
farewell, spying on you unfairly through the open door, and detecting
you in the act of breaking the rules of your own philosophy by feeling
trouble, real trouble, for a sorely troubled disciple! Epictetus in
trouble, yes, Epictetus in trouble, that is how I shall remember you to
my dying day, as seen in the moment when I trusted your teaching least
and loved you most, when you dropped the veil of your philosophy to shew
me your real human heart—my “tutor” to bring me to Christ.
THE END
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
End of Project Gutenberg's Silanus the Christian, by Edwin A. Abbott