HOW MEN LIVED IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
Soon the ripple of excitement caused by the arrival of the young Arius
at the Baucalis farm passed away, and the life of the dwellers there
resumed its wonted quiet. Ammonius, generally bareheaded and naked from
the waist up and from the knees down, as the custom of the country was,
his olive skin glistening with healthful perspiration, pursued the
various labors of the farm, and his wife attended to the fruits and
vegetables nigh the house; and old Thopt prepared their food, and did
the washing which their simple style of living rendered necessary; and
both women devoted the hours not otherwise employed to the manufacture
of woolen, cotton, and linen goods for domestic uses. Neither Jewish,
Greek, nor Roman women generally adopted the luxurious manners and
elegance of dress and ornament common to noble or opulent Egyptians; and
those Egyptians who dwelt in the agricultural portions of Cyrenaica,
especially those who were Christians, followed the simpler manners of
the same classes among their neighbors. At the Baucalis farm everything
about the house was scrupulously clean and neat, manifestly designed for
comfort and convenience, nothing for ostentation. In the business of the
place, out-doors and in-doors, there was never seen any of that driving
spirit which indicates a thirst for accumulation, but all duties were
prosecuted as if reasonable diligence were esteemed to be both a duty
and a pleasure. At the end of a year's labor Ammonius would have felt
no concern at all if he had found that he had not gained a single coin
beyond the sum requisite to pay taxes, but he would have experienced a
humiliating sense of shame and unworthiness if the occupant of so fine a
farm had failed to have enough and to spare for every call of charity,
for every reasonable claim upon his hospitality, or for liberal
contribution to every work in which the Church was interested. Corn,
wheat, and barley, variously prepared for table use, a large variety of
fruits both preserved and fresh, and many kinds of vegetables, formed
their chief food. Fish of choice kinds, and in great abundance, was in
common use, and domestic fowls were raised by all. The consumption of
flesh was not an everyday thing with these simple and healthful people.
Twice, or, at most, thrice a week neighbors would club together and kill
and part among themselves a kid or sheep. Beef was little used among
them, and was raised for market chiefly. Swine's flesh they never used,
and they wondered at the Roman appetite for coarse, strong meat dishes.
The light, pleasant wine made everywhere along the coast was in general
use among them all. The every-day dress of both sexes was cotton cloth,
a short kilt reaching from the shoulder to the knee, and over this, when
not actively at work, a loose gown covering the person from neck to
ankle, and confined at the waist with a girdle or sash of bright-colored
cloth. They had garments of finest wool and linen for extraordinary
occasions.
In this region the Christian communities were not formally organized
upon the communistic basis of the primitive Church, because all of them
were in a nearly equally prosperous condition, and there were none among
them who were "poor" in the sense of requiring assistance. The few that
were in any way incapacitated for earning a livelihood were related by
ties of blood to one or more families, able and always willing to afford
them every needful comfort and assistance. But no Christian family was
ever known to refuse anything for which a needy person asked, in money,
clothing, food, or whatever they possessed; and in this respect it made
little difference what might be the religion or nationality of the
applicant. To refuse to give to one that asked would have seemed to any
of these Christians to be a wicked, almost sacrilegious, violation of
the very words of Jesus: "_Give to him that asketh, and from him that
would borrow of thee, turn not thou away._" They regarded all property
of Christians as in the ownership of the Church, and themselves only as
stewards intrusted with the management of this or that portion thereof.
Hence every call of presbyter or bishop for assistance to less fortunate
communities, and every individual application for aid, was gladly and
promptly responded to; and they regarded it as part of their profession
of faith to find some healthful occupation for every one that was able
and willing to do anything for the common good. In the cities of
Cyrenaica were many Christians engaged in multiform avocations, but even
there the Christian communities were so temperate and diligent that few
among them wanted anything; and the union of the faithful furnished such
a perfect safeguard against the ills of life that they were not only
able to care for those of their own number who might be overtaken by any
calamity, but were always able and willing to afford assistance to
foreign communities less fortunately situated, when requested so to do.
In short, all and far more than modern "poor-laws," Masonic,
Odd-Fellows', and other eleemosynary associations, marine, life, and
fire companies, have been enabled to do toward the amelioration of the
condition of the unfortunate, was far more perfectly accomplished by
these Christian communities, that recognized as a matter of faith the
principle of all human charity which extends beyond mere alms-giving,
_that the average prosperity of the community should extend to each
individual thereof when overtaken by any misfortune_--a redeeming
principle which Jesus and his apostles taught in its most perfect and
effective form as the "communion of saints," the partnership or
fellowship of the holy ([Greek: _koinonia ton hagion_]); community of
property and rights among all who believe; a principle which good men
have been vainly seeking to restore in some form ever since the
subversion of Christianity, in the fourth century, by the agency of
numberless nugatory statutes and associations; a divine truth which in
its Christless forms of "communism," "socialism," and "Nihilism," now
threatens the very existence of law and order throughout Christendom; a
system perhaps impossible to any government which recognizes the
legality of private-property rights, and is therefore committed to
Mammon-worship.
But these Christians had learned a higher truth than any known to human
laws: they were the owners of nothing; they were only stewards of their
Lord's goods; the wealth which they accumulated and held for the common
good was to them "true riches"; the wealth which any individual held for
himself and his own private aggrandizement was the "mammon of
unrighteousness." Hence no Christian could be in want while the
community was prosperous; no community could suffer while any other
communities accessible to them by land or sea had anything to spare; and
the faith of Christ made the general prosperity of all Christians insure
the individual prosperity of each one; so that there were no "rich" and
no "poor" among them.
Plato's dreams of a perfect community ("Republic") admitted human
slavery--Jesus Christ taught the freedom, equality, and fraternity of
all men: Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" abolished marriage, and proposed to
hold women in common--Jesus Christ elevated marriage into a sacrament;
denied man's right to "hold" woman at all; proclaimed freedom and
equality _for her_ also, repudiating the universal idea that she was a
chattel, and teaching that she is a soul endowed with the same rights,
duties, and responsibilities as are inherent in the soul of man. Modern
reformers propose to "divide" out all property, and limit individual
acquisitions thereof; but Jesus proposed to divide out nothing, and to
limit nothing; but, that all things should be accumulated, owned, and
used in common, as every one hath need, just as air, and sunlight, and
the boundless sea are common. The word "catholic" ([Greek: _kata
holos_]) was unknown to Jesus and the New Testament; the word "common"
([Greek: _koiyos_]) was the key to all of his teachings, social,
spiritual, and political.
The only relation which these Christians sustained to the "government"
of Cyrenaica, or to that of Rome, was to pay the taxes demanded of them;
and they had no concern as to who might be emperor or proconsul, except
so far as these rulers might be disposed to persecute the Christians, or
otherwise. They paid taxes, to avoid giving offense, even as Jesus
himself had paid tribute, although born under Roman rule, and not a
"stranger," and not liable to pay tribute; but they never acknowledged
the Roman authority in any other way. It would have been an
ineffaceable stigma on the character of a Christian to summon another
Christian before a civil magistrate for any cause; they would not "go to
law before the heathen." If any differences arose between any, they
left it to some of the brethren to consider the matter and adjust it;
and they considered themselves bound to abide by the settlement reached,
by bonds of faith and love stronger than human statutes can be made. If
any became careless of right and duty, or actively wicked, his nearest
friends remonstrated with him, and, if he refused to abandon his sinful
course, the presbyters reproved him; and, if this proved ineffectual in
working out the needed reformation, they brought the offender before the
Church, and either succeeded in drawing him back into the right way, or,
if he proved incorrigible, they simply refused henceforth to fellowship
with him, and held him as a publican and a sinner. They never had
recourse to any temporal penalties to enforce the law of Christian
brotherhood; knowing that no one who refused to be controlled without
the use of force was a Christian, they publicly disowned him, and that
was the end of it. For they had been taught from the beginning that the
essential difference between the kingdom of heaven and every other
kingdom established upon earth consisted in the fact that human
governments recognize private property-rights in estates, rank, offices,
prerogatives, and seek to enforce these legal, fictitious rights by
temporal penalties, contrary to reason and justice; while Jesus
denounced all such private rights as Mammon-worship, and all statutes
enacted to enforce them as lies of the Scribes and Pharisees; and never
fixed, and never authorized his apostles to fix, any temporal penalties
whatever. They understood perfectly well that the necessary and
inevitable result of all law-and-order systems is to produce a ruling
class at the top of every political fabric to whom all of its benefits
inure, an oppressed or enslaved people at the bottom upon whose weary
shoulders rest all of the burdens and the waste of life, and between
these extremes ecclesiasticisms and an army (always on the side of the
ruling classes and against the multitudes) seeking to adjust their
mutual legal rights and duties by the agency of bayonets and prayer--a
system of laws creating fictitious rights, creating legal offenses by
the disregard of these pretended rights, and denouncing legal penalties.
But they knew that Jesus died as much for the children of Barabbas as
for the offspring of Herod; and that every statute, custom, or
superstition which attempts to make one of the babies "better" than the
others is a fraud on our common humanity and a violation of the law of
Christ. For the kingdom of heaven was organized upon the basis of
community of rights and property among all who believe, thereby removing
all inducements to commit such crimes as treason, larceny, and fraud,
which exist only by force of the statutes creating and punishing them;
for civilization itself is the parent of all crime except murder or
lust, which might sometimes occur from the mere ebullition of brutal
passion and instinct in low and base natures. Hence those Christians,
who "called nothing they possessed their own," regarding themselves as
only stewards of the Lord's goods, held by them for the common good of
all believers, had no use for the Roman government or any other, and
cared nothing for it except so far as taxes and persecutions, imposed or
omitted, might affect the temporal welfare of individuals and of the
communities of which they were members. They were citizens of a kingdom
in but not of the world, desiring to be at peace with all worldly
kingdoms. They knew that Jesus proclaimed a good news or gospel for the
poor, the very foundation-stone of which is the absolute equality,
liberty, and fraternity of man; and they learned from the same divine
Teacher that kings, lords, nobles, all personal and class distinctions
among men, are the mere creation of legal fiction, sustained by unjust
force, like slavery and piracy, and do not exist in the nature of things
or by the will of God; and that these laws are everywhere only the
utterances of selfishness crystallized into the form of statutes,
customs, or decrees, government over the people being nothing more nor
less than an organized expression of faith in the ancient lie that
private property (in estates, rank, or prerogatives) is the one thing
sacred in human life, and that laws and penalties are necessary to
maintain it; which faith is the idolatry of Mammon, the only paganism
that Jesus denounced by name, and declared to be utterly antagonistic to
the worship of God. They understood, therefore, that in place of
attempting (as all human legislators have ever done) to provide a more
perfect law-and-order system for the protection of private rights, our
Lord designed to abolish all private property, and with it all the
unjust laws and penalties by which the worship of Mammon is maintained.
Hence, in place of teaching to men a better slave-code than the world
had known before, Jesus taught freedom for all men. In place of teaching
a more effective art of war, he proclaimed the gospel of peace, love,
justice. In place of ordaining only more wise and just regulations for
governing the intercourse of men with their female chattels, he elevated
monogamic marriage into a holy sacrament, and applied to man and wife
alike the same divine law of personal rights, duties, and
responsibilities. In place of teaching better laws for the government
of men by other men as erring, sinful, and selfish as themselves, he
taught that all such laws and government are unnecessary to any people
who believe that there is something more sacred, higher, and holier than
private rights, and are willing by faith to renounce all human,
statutory advantages in order to acquire divine truth.
So in beautiful Cyrenaica, while Greek and Roman, Egyptian and Jew,
concerned themselves about politics, and struggled for offices, and
toiled beyond measure for useless gain, the Christian communities
pursued the calm and even tenor of their way, meeting on every Sabbath
for religious services and instruction; closing each week-day's labor
with a pleasant formula of evening prayer; training up their sons and
daughters to despise all the false statutory and customary distinctions
and vanities of worldly life "after which the Gentiles seek"; teaching
them to seek knowledge, especially the knowledge peculiar to their
faith; to love all men, especially the brethren; and to regard this
earthly life as but the threshold of a higher, holier, and more perfect
state of being that lay only a few brief, fleeting years away from every
one of them. And so, while the sun arose and set; while the harvests
were grown and garnered; while the pure and fadeless sea lapsed along
the fertile garden of the Baucalis farm, and new lives came upon the
stage of human action, and older ones were gathered into the rest
appointed for all the living, peace and plenty, charity and love, purity
and truth, blessed the dwellers at the stone cottage by the sea-side.