THE PAGAN À KEMPIS
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius have often been compared with the
_Imitation of Christ_. The comparison is interesting; and the analysis
which it involves of one of the noblest and purest of pagan ascetics
on the one hand, and of the great exponent of Christian asceticism
on the other, cannot but strengthen belief in the divine origin of
Christianity. Unfortunately, we cannot attempt anything like a complete
analysis of the two books; and we must be content to call attention to
a few points of resemblance and difference in the two ascetics; and
estimate their respective values as salves to wounded souls.
The appraisers of “disinterested” and “undogmatic” morality have
professed to find in the pagan book a surer guide to life. They find it
more human, less scholastic, freer and fresher. Renan has voiced this
view with his usual brilliance and fickle impressionism.
It is true of course that the _Imitation of Christ_ is built on
Christian dogma and steeped in Christian mysticism. But this is not
matter of discredit to the _Imitation_ but of glory to Christianity.
It is because the martyrs were strengthened by Christian dogmas and
ideals that they alone surpassed Aurelius in that age. There is far
less of rigid adherence to the letter of formulæ and infinitely more of
spirit, of unction, of personal devotion in the _Imitation_. If dogma
did not hinder but rather inspired a book which gives such freedom
to the spirit, it is time to revise some of the current cant about
the sterility of theology, its fettering of the spirit, and the witty
definition of dogmatism as “puppyism grown big.”
Those who have embraced Christianity and walked its peaceful paths
can have no doubt as to the superiority of the _Imitation_ in all
that is beautiful, good and true. But even positivists, professing
completely to reject the supernatural, find in à Kempis a unique charm.
George Eliot, the best of them, has told us in inspired words what the
_Imitation_ was to her:--
“I suppose that is the reason why the small, old-fashioned book, for
which you need only pay sixpence at a bookstall, works miracles to this
day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons
and treatises newly issued leave all things as they were before. It
was written down by a hand that waited for the heart’s prompting; it
is the chronicle of a solitary hidden anguish, struggle, trust and
triumph--not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who
are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains at
all times a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the
voice of a brother, who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced--in
the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much
chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from
ours--but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same
passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same
weariness.”
This is the opinion of one who has deprived the _Imitation_ of its
supernatural element. And even from the purely natural point of view,
what more beautiful than the teachings of à Kempis on the true conduct
of life? But this is not its characteristic charm, and one suspects
that it is not the purely natural element in à Kempis that fascinates
the positivist humanitarians; it is the supernatural element; and the
attraction is but the strong cry of their spiritual nature revolting
against the materialism to which their “positive” tenets lead; just
as that same need for a religion led the best of them, even at the
cost of inconsistency, to establish with much ritual and fantastic
aberrations the cult of Humanity.
But there is no need to settle the question between the two books
by authority. Were it necessary to do so, one need but recall the
multitudes of all classes and creeds, from St. Francis Xavier and
St. Ignatius to Leibnitz and Bossuet and thence to Wesley, George
Eliot, Gladstone, and Gordon, for whom the _Imitation_ has been a
shining light and a guide upon their path second only to the Sacred
Books themselves. To join that number one has but to take and read.
The points of similarity between the two books consist in many maxims
common to both, such as “that we ought not to regard the opinion of
men”; “that we ought to keep the passions in restraint”; “that we ought
to despise pleasures and endure hardship with patience”; “that we are
not to be too much attached to life and to earthly things”; “that we
ought to bear with the faults of others and return good for evil.” This
similarity is, however, to a great extent merely verbal. The same words
do not express the same spiritual attitude in the two writers. It is
merely the resemblance which prevails between all the great ascetical
writers, from Seneca and Epictetus to St. Francis, St. Ignatius and
Bunyan, and thence to modern writers such as William James. They all
study by introspection the same human soul with the same natural
faculties and tendencies, strength and weakness, in all its varying
moods of joy and sadness, perplexity and peace. Whereas the differences
are measured only by the distance between the natural and the
supernatural and show themselves in the whole spirit and atmosphere,
tone and motive, of the two books.
I have already hinted in passing at the sympathy there is between à
Kempis and Marcus Aurelius in their contempt of sophistry and vain
learning. But this similarity of view does but bring out all the more
strikingly the difference in motive and the manifest superiority of
the Christian. Aurelius was glad that he had not made more proficiency
in the rhetorical and sophistical training of the day; and for the
praiseworthy motive that thus he might have more leisure to attend to
the main work of life--his own perfection. But how cold is his analysis
beside the glowing words of à Kempis. The pagan seeks leisure for an
introspection too often morbid; the Christian wishes for silence of the
schools that God Himself may speak within him, and in the ecstasy of
this holy discipleship cries out:--
“Happy is he whom Truth teacheth by itself, not by figures and words
that pass, but as it is in itself.... It is a great folly for us to
neglect things profitable and necessary and willingly to busy ourselves
about those which are curious and hurtful.... He to whom the Eternal
Word speaketh is set at liberty from a multitude of opinions.... O
Truth, my God, make me one with Thee in everlasting love. I am wearied
with often reading and hearing many things; in Thee is all that I will
or desire. Let all teachers hold their peace; let all creatures be
silent in Thy sight; speak Thou alone to me.”
In passing, we may compare this prayer and the whole mystic rapture
and personal heart-cries of the _Imitation_ with Aurelius’ idea of
a perfect prayer: “A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, O dear
Zeus, down on the ploughed fields of the Athenians and on the plains.
In truth we ought not to pray at all or we ought to pray in this
simple and noble fashion.” This simplicity was a great advance on the
hypocrisy and verbiage which often marked Roman prayers and provided
matter for satire to Horace and Juvenal; but, after all, it does not
present us with any very lofty ideal. So, too, when he speaks of the
objects which we ought to pray for: “Why dost thou not ask that the
gods may give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things thou
fearest, or of not desiring any of the things thou desirest, or not
being pained at anything rather than pray that any of these things
should not happen or happen? One man prays thus: How shall I not lose
my little son? Do thou pray thus: How shall I not be afraid to lose
him. In fine, turn thy prayers this way, and see what comes.” All this
does Aurelius credit, but it is far from the outpouring of the soul to
God, which is the essence of the Christian book.
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.
À Kempis soars on the wings of love through the spirit world at home
amongst the angels; while the Stoic trudges drearily along the hard,
bleak road of logic; and once more logic is convicted of futility
as a complete guide to life. Follow reason, said the Stoic: reason
tells you that you can guide your own destinies and mould your own
inner life: rely on yourself, since you can rely on nobody else: be
self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency was the parent of hardness and
at times of an unlovely spiritual pride. Aurelius seems to thank God
that he is not as the rest of men; he is better than the pharisee
only in that he pities the publican and acknowledges that he himself
has that within him which could lead him to lower depths did he cease
to follow the Stoic ascesis; but his pity has frequently something
of spiritual disdain and contempt in it. Yet he is not wholly proud;
there is in him a certain modesty and self-suppression which often in
its expression reminds us of sayings of à Kempis; but he never learnt
to think: “We are all frail; but do thou think no one more frail
than thyself.” “If thou wouldst know and learn anything useful, love
to be unknown and esteemed as nothing; this is the highest and most
profitable lesson, truly to know and despise oneself”; or with St.
Paul “who is weak and I am not weak.” But we should not expect unaided
reason to reach these heights. À Kempis himself tells us that light
comes to the soul only when reason is transcended by faith and love:
“If thou reliest more upon thine own reason or industry than upon the
virtue that subjects to Jesus Christ, thou wilt seldom and hardly be an
enlightened man; for God will have us perfectly subject to Himself, and
to transcend all reason by ardent love.” “Reason transcended by ardent
love”: in this is expressed the whole relation between Christianity
and all systems that rely on reason alone. The soul itself in all its
aspirations is, as Tertullian said, naturally Christian, and it is only
by a Procrustean torture that it can be forced into any other system.
The inadequacy of Aurelius’ teaching is brought out most clearly in the
shallow optimism with which he tries to conjure away all the sufferings
of life. Nothing can be more unreal than his attitude towards evil. We
turn to à Kempis and at once we are struck by the contrast. Suffering
and evil are for à Kempis an intense reality. He does not attempt to
waive them away with the magic formula “Never mind.” No; it is because
they are realities, often terrible realities, that they are the most
precious things in life with the power to transmute the human into
the Divine. He recognises that no ordinary motive can reconcile frail
humanity to the trials of life; that many are ready to follow Jesus to
the breaking of bread but few to the drinking of the chalice of His
passion; that only an ardent personal love and loyalty to Christ can
induce men to take up their cross and follow Him, Who has gone before
bearing His cross. When suffering is borne in this spirit it loses the
unreasonableness which besets all other explanations of it. It becomes
the greatest of blessings; it makes us indeed like unto God.
How ineffectual beside this spirit of suffering for love are the cold
formularies with which, as by magic spells, the Stoic would benumb
human pain. Take for instance the much-quoted passage from the end of
the second book: “Of human life the duration is a point; the substance
is fleeting; the perception is dull; and the fabric of the whole body
subject to rottenness; the soul is an idle whirling and fortune hard to
divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. In short, all that there
is of the body is a stream and all that there is of the soul a dream
and a vapour. Life is a warfare and a sojourning in a strange country,
and after-fame is oblivion. What then is that which can conduct a man?
One thing, and only one, philosophy.” But he himself found, as many
have found, that sorrow is not banished nor the riddle of life solved
by philosophy.
Thus we see the spirit of these two teachers of men. Further comparison
would but illustrate more clearly that the Christian book, because it
is in a sense divine, is intensely human, adequate to fulfil all that
is best in man; while the pagan book, because it is merely human, does
not satisfy the human soul, which always seeks for something better
than itself. The one is centred in God and draws its inspiration from
the inspired books themselves, concentrating all its efforts on the
reproduction of Christ in the Christian. The other, though it bids
us to “love man and follow God,” means something quite different by
this love of man and this following of whatever its author understood
by “God.” For it is essentially centred in man, in self; and has
no inspiration but the gropings of the unaided intellect. Nor can
it propose to us any higher model for our imitation than the blind
subjection to law which prevails in the inanimate and organic universe;
the stones, a fig-tree, or the brutes. It is true that in the spirit of
the Meditations there is something akin to the sayings of à Kempis; but
the Christian time and again feels in the pagan book the sense of void,
the vain strivings after ideals--ideals fully realised and expressed by
the lowly brother of the Common Life. The humblest Christian has as his
birthright truths which were the fruit of years of training and much
struggle in the noble pagan soul; and he has more.
THE END