A PAGAN HERMIT, OLD AND GRAY.
At the age of sixteen, the lad Arius was very thoroughly informed in
knowledge of the kingdom of heaven as that knowledge had been taught in
the Church from the very days of Jesus and the twelve. In those days
the only written authorities relied upon by Christians were the four
gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The letters of Paul, especially
those written against Judaism, the epistles of Peter, of John, of Jude,
of Hermas, Irenaeus, Polycarp, and others, were held in high esteem as
the deliberate utterances of wise and pious men; but even the humblest
Christian never hesitated to quote the gospels and the Acts against any
of them with whose opinions he was dissatisfied. The wilderness of
creeds and dogmas which in later times grew up out of these epistles was
entirely unknown to primitive Christianity; yet the perusal of them was
advantageous to the young man in many ways. The journeys of Paul
aroused in his active mind a keen desire to know more of the world, and
of the religion, manners, and customs of other nations; and the
knowledge that Ammonius had acquired of different lands and peoples,
both by his sea-faring observations and by such reading and conversation
as circumstances had rendered possible to him, seemed to have been
absorbed by his son in the long years of constant and affectionate
intercourse between them; and this was no small stock of information,
for the Mediterranean was then in every sense the "middle" sea, the
highway of the world; and it was impossible for a shrewd, intelligent
ship-owner and sailor like Ammonius to navigate its waters for years
without being brought into personal contact with men out of every nation
under heaven.
In the same way the lad had almost unconsciously acquired an intimate
knowledge of the fauna and flora of Cyrenaica, and in fact of Northern
Libya, and could name almost every plant, animal, bird, and insect in
the vicinity of Baucalis; so that even at this early age he had laid the
foundations of future acquisitions in every department of knowledge that
was in any way accessible unto him, and had acquired a sturdy habit of
independent thought and examination about everything that came within
the range of his observation.
On Sabbath evenings (the word Sunday was then unknown to the Christian
world) he loved to wander along the sea-shore, or through the wooded
mountains that everywhere around Baucalis rose up from the water's edge
and rolled away like gigantic and immovable billows high and higher
southwardly toward the great Barcan plateau.
On one bright afternoon he had wandered farther westward than ever
before, going far beyond the limits of the land appurtenant to the farm.
He was weary with climbing over the endless hills, and reclined to rest
upon a projecting rock beneath an ample shade of forest-trees, and gazed
away over the calm and brilliant expanse of the peaceful Mediterranean.
But not long had he rested there when his quick ear caught the sound of
slow and measured footfalls as some unseen person paced slowly back and
forth upon a diminutive plateau that stretched still farther westwardly
along the mountain-side. The intervening foliage hid the person from
sight, and, the lad's curiosity being aroused by the presence of a
stranger in a spot so secluded, he quietly went forward, and a few steps
brought him to the place where this little stretch of level ground had
been carefully denuded of trees and seemed to be cultivated as a garden.
Then he saw a tall, gray-haired, venerable-looking man, with downcast
eyes, and slow, deliberate step, coming in his direction along a narrow
walk that led directly through the cultivated land. Almost at the same
instant the aged man perceived him also, but quietly pursued his way,
and, when he had come near, Arius respectfully bowed and saluted him.
The ancient returned his salutation, and added words which the boy did
not understand, but the lad said, in the Greek tongue, then in common
use throughout Cyrenaica: "I think thou speakest the language of Egypt,
which I do not comprehend. If thou wilt speak in Latin or in Greek, I
can understand thy wishes or thine orders."
The old man gazed at him in astonishment, but answered in the Greek
tongue: "Surely thou art an Egyptian!--and in the course of a long life
I have never met with a son of Egypt that could not speak his
mother-tongue if he could speak at all!"
"Yea, sir," answered Arius, "I am altogether a son of Egypt, although
born on an adjacent farm, but my parents would never use that language,
and, while they carefully instructed me in Greek and in Latin and in
Hebrew, and in the Aramean tongue of the Israelites now in use, they
would never permit me to learn an Egyptian word."
"Strange enough!" said the ancient. "Dost thou know any reason why thy
parents thus forbade thee to acquire the primitive and wonderful old
speech of the land of Kem?"
"Yea, sir," answered Arius. "I have heard my father say that in his
childhood he was placed in a temple and dedicated to Ammon, and that
when he grew older he liked neither the temple nor the god, and fled
away to follow another course of life; and I think that he believed the
language of the Nile region to possess some peculiar power over every
son of Egypt, and that to preserve me from that influence, whatever it
may be, he desired of me that I would never seek to learn that
speech--at least not for many years to come."
"And thy father was wise," cried the ancient; "for, if ever the powers
of darkness gave any gift to man, it surely was the strange language of
the dwellers by the Nile. Centuries before there were any such peoples
as Greeks and Romans, centuries before the Israelites became a nation,
so long ago that the universe seems growing old since then, and the
earth itself hath nodded out of the line on which the mighty pyramid was
built up to point to the polar star, even then, boy, the language of
Egypt was a perfect instrument of thought, adapted with superhuman
cunning to the purposes of idolatry, with rhythms and intonations in the
utterance of it, that prick the sensuality of human nature like a goad,
and deaden conscience with some mysterious, witch-like power which the
intelligence can no more resist than the charmed bird can escape the
python's fascination, and no more explain than it can explain why the
iron touched by the magic stone pointeth for evermore unto the north.
It is the natural language of sensualism and idolatry, and ought to be
blotted out of human speech. I tell thee, lad, thy father was wise to
forbid thee from seeking to acquire that fearful tongue!"
"But thou art thyself an Egyptian," said Arius, "and I suppose thou hast
long used the wonderful language which thou dost condemn."
"Yea," answered the ancient, "but the speech I use is the hieratic form,
invented by the priests for the very purpose of keeping their souls free
from the polluting power of the popular forms of speech, to which a pure
thought or expression is well-nigh impossible. But didst thou come
hither to seek me out," asked the ancient, "or was thy coming
accidental? What is thy name? Of what religion art thou? Why hast
thou come to me?"
The old man spoke hurriedly and apparently with much anxiety, and the
boy could not conjecture the cause of his manifest excitement, but after
a moment's reflection upon the bitter and strange denunciation of man's
ancient speech, and the subsequent things spoken by his companion, he
replied in singularly musical and persuasive tones, the mesmeric light
burning in his eyes, the bold, peculiar head erect and slightly bending
forward toward him whom he addressed: "My name, sir, is Arius; my coming
hither is purely accidental, as I supposed this mountain-side to be
entirely uninhabited; my religion is that of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ!"
"Thou art a Christian," said the ancient, in tones of great
astonishment; "so young too, but clear, bold, and settled in the new
faith, as thy voice and manner undoubtedly proclaim. I am much pleased
with thee, boy. Come thou with me, where I dwell alone, for I desire to
speak with thee more fully. Wilt thou not come, Arius!"
"Willingly, sir, if the distance be not too great," replied the lad.
"It is very nigh," said the ancient; and then he turned and followed the
path west for, perhaps, fifty yards, and then the path led southwardly
for about the same distance, and stopped at an abrupt and densely wooded
elevation in the side of the mountain. Arius saw that a rough but
substantial stone wall formed the outside of a room that was for the
most part composed of a cavity under the rock; and having passed through
a door, on each side of which was a long, narrow window admitting light
into the apartment, the ancient said: "Here is my dwelling, Arius; come
thou within."
The room was nearly twenty feet square: the floor was smoothly covered
with dry, white sand, procured perhaps by pulverizing sand-rocks taken
from the mountain; there was a wooden table in the middle of the
apartment, above which a huge oil-lamp was suspended, and a smaller
table upon one side, upon which rested a complete service of beautifully
fashioned earthen plates, cups, pitchers, dishes, and similar articles.
There were several large and comfortable chairs made of huge reeds
curiously interwoven, and a couch constructed of the same material, and
covered deep but smoothly with lamb-skins, dressed with the wool on.
Everything about the place indicated a rather coarse but genuine
comfort, even to the presence of several beautiful goats that came with
their kids to the door and gazed in at the old man with confidence and
affection, as if he were a familiar and trustworthy friend.
"Be thou seated, my son," said the ancient, "and, if thou wilt eat, I
have here goat's milk, bread, and dried fish and fruits in abundance."
"I am not an hungered," answered the lad, "but partake of the bread and
milk to honor thy hospitality," which he did, and found both excellent.
"Thy very palatable bread," he said, "is the same with that made at my
home by Thopt, and is, she saith, the same that priests at Memphis
always preferred to eat."
"Even so," replied the ancient, "and at Memphis for many years, indeed,
I did eat thereof, and learned there the manner of the preparation of
it."
And, when the lad had finished his slight repast, the old man said:
"Thou art a Christian, boy; in what, then, dost thou believe? Tell me
briefly, what dost thou believe?"
Then the lad stood up as he had been accustomed to do at home: the fine
but peculiar head involuntarily erected itself upon his long and shapely
neck, and drooped a little forward, a strange, scintillant light gleamed
in his sweet, dark eyes; his elevated and extended right hand waved
gently from side to side like the _baton_ of a music-master, and his
musical, penetrating voice rang out clearly and incisively as he said:
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his
only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born
of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried;
the third day he rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and
sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence he shall
come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, in
the holy common Church, in the forgiveness of sin, in the resurrection
of the dead, and in the life everlasting. Amen!"
"So thou believest!" said the ancient. "But why dost thou say
'only-begotten' son? Are not all men the sons of God, even as the Greek
poet saith, 'For we also are his offspring?'"
"Yea!" answered Arius, "all men are his sons by creation, and some of
them by adoption--Jesus alone by generation; he was 'begotten,' not
made."
"True! true!" said the ancient; "so teach the gospels, which I have here
with me. So thou believest! When didst thou learn this faith, thou
whole Egyptian; and dost thou never doubt it?"
"I know not when I learned it," answered Arius; "I was learning it from
my mother when I lay helplessly upon her breast; I was learning it from
my father when he dandled me upon his knees; every day and hour of my
life I have learned it more and more;" and then, involuntarily rising
upon his tiptoes, like a python standing upon its tail, with his head
erect and bending slightly forward, and sparkling eyes agleam, he
exclaimed, "and I was never such an idiot as to doubt it at all."
Then, as if modestly conscious of some impropriety in such demonstrative
utterances in the presence of one so aged and venerable, he sank lower
upon his chair with an ingenuous blush.
"O glorious certitude of youth and hope!" said the ancient, mournfully.
"O bold, triumphant faith, fitting its possessor for happy and jubilant
exertion in the accomplishment of all life's aims and purposes! Thou
wast 'never such an idiot as to doubt it!' But I, that have seen nigh
fourscore years of misery, do doubt it much and painfully. I that have
mastered all the arts, science, and religion of ancient Egypt--a land
that was wrinkled with age centuries before the era of old Moses; I that
know both all that the priests of Kem ever taught the people, and also
the higher and more recondite forms of ignorance in which the priests
themselves believed--I verily know nothing! I can scarcely believe in
anything save universal spiritual darkness, for which no day-spring
cometh, and universal wretchedness, for which there is no cure. O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?"
The bloodless hands were clasped upon the ancient's aching breast, the
noble gray head was bowed with hopeless sorrow, the weary eyes seemed
dim with long and bitter anguish. Arius gazed upon him with
astonishment and sympathy. Then the grand gifts of every born minister
of Christ, the missionary's yearning to instruct, the physician's
longing for the power to heal and to strengthen, moved in the boy's
heart, and once more he sprang to his feet, and with extended hand that
quivered with emotion like the python's tongue, and tearful, scintillant
eyes, and head bent forward from the long, lithe neck, and a strange
thrill in his vibrant musical voice, he cried: "Who shall deliver thee?
Surely Jesus Christ, our Lord! He saveth even unto the uttermost all
that come unto God by him. Believe and live!"
"So! so!" said the ancient, in tones of hopeless weariness. "Believe and
live! Believe and live! 'He that believeth on me shall never die! He
that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live again.' O
new, strange faith, hidden through all the dynasties like the Nile's
undiscoverable source, yet ever hinted at in the few high, arid,
half-intangible truths in which the priests of Ra believed! What if it
be true? What if the spiritual dualism of the first cause, which the
priests gradually elaborated into the splendid pageantry and elegant
mysticism of Hesiri-Hes, and the offspring Horus, has at last become an
actual truth by the incarnation of the spiritual Son of the one God that
is necessarily a spiritual hermaphrodite? Through the long centuries the
priests secretly sneered at the polytheisms which they taught to the
people, and they did believe in one God that was utterly unknown to the
masses of mankind, for whom they had neither name nor symbol; and they
conceived him to be a dual entity, containing in himself the fullness of
double spiritual sexhood; and they stood in awe of some grand revelation
which they supposed would some time be made to mankind when this one,
almighty, hermaphrodite spirit should 'beget' with one side of his
spiritual nature and 'conceive' with the other, and incarnate its son in
flesh, and save man by assuming human nature. This they saw
foreshadowed in Hesiri-Hes; this was the mystery which the priests
perceived in every Apis, the emblem of one 'hidden' like the fountains
of the Nile; for in the hieratic language Hapi, which is 'hidden,'
signifies both the sacred river and the sacred bull; for this they
prepared the mummy that a body might be ready for the returning soul
when 'the hidden' should be revealed; this, the sacred scarabaei dimly
intimated, and this was the secret mystery that lurked beneath the veil
of Hes that 'no mortal hand hath lifted.' Some such glorious revelation
must have flitted past Greek Plato's vision, when he longed for a
clearer statement of the will of God to men, and prophesied the coming
man. This was the grand thought of Moses, the monotheist, when in the
same breath he denounced all forms of polytheism, and yet designated the
one God whom he worshiped by a name which is the plural number of a
Hebrew noun"; and, as if he had forgotten the presence of Arius
altogether, who sat listening to this strange monologue with silent
wonder, the ancient continued the unconscious utterance of his fervid
meditations: "So hath it been throughout the world with every ancientest
form of all original myths; for while Assyria and the Medo-Persians and
other comparatively modern nations, and afterward the Greeks and Romans,
borrowed only the lower, vulgar forms which the Egyptians had fashioned
for popular use, in China Chang and Eng symbolized the original
conception of one dual God that afterward degenerated into
anthropomorphism; and in India Indra and Agni, a primitive conception
that antedates Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, by countless centuries, and is
the burden of the ancientest and uncorrupted Rig-Veda, bears unequivocal
testimony to the same primitive conception; and the Buddhas taught that
they were, perhaps believed themselves to be, earthly manifestations of
the spiritual self-conception of one dual God: for polytheism was never
the original form of any primitive nation's faith, and every people that
began with paganism borrowed from some older nation in which the
original faith had already been degraded. Strange! most strange! Oh, if
it could be proved! If it could only be proved that Jesus of Nazareth
is, in very truth, the incarnation of that which was to be 'begotten'
and 'conceived' of the one dual God, and born of a woman into the world,
how grandly would the fact vindicate the primitive utterances of all
human faith, and translate its vague but splendid dreams into a glorious
reality! It must be true! Surely it must be true! For among
Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, and Jews, this original faith preceded all
idolatries!"
Then, buried in profoundest meditation, the old man ceased to speak.
But after a time he roused himself, and looking upon the astonished
youth he said: "And thou believest all this! thou hast 'never been such
an idiot as to doubt it!' Happy art thou, boy, if thou shalt preserve
unfalteringly and unquestioningly thy serene and all-reliant faith."
But the lad's sturdy independence of thought asserted itself, and he
answered: "Nay, sir! I have professed faith in none of the things of
which thou speakest. I believe in one God and in Jesus Christ, his
only-begotten Son, and in the Holy Ghost. I believe not in Hesiri-Hes,
nor in Chang and Eng, nor in Indra and Agni, nor in any gods which Moses
denounced as falsest idols. Nor in Jupiter, nor Venus, nor Mars, nor in
any of the gods that came into fashion with the heathen long since Moses
died."
The ancient smiled approvingly, and replied: "Thou art altogether in the
right, my son. Many of the gods in which the nations believe were born
long after the records kept by the Egyptian priests began; but all were
born of the myths which Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian priests wove about
the grand, primitive conception of one dual God. The idolaters of other
lands received in various forms the mythologies which the priests wove
about the most ancient, simple faith, which was primarily the same for
all, only the children of Abraham refused to add anything to the
original conception, clinging obstinately to the primitive monotheistic
idea; and yet Moses designates the one God by his name of _Adonai_, the
plural number of a Hebrew noun; and when the one God speaks of himself
he uses the words 'we,' 'our,' and 'us': _Let us make man in our own
image and likeness_. Thou seest that it would be contrary to reason
that the original utterance of every faith should be the affirmation of
God that was one, and yet more than one, unless the divine being is
spiritually hermaphrodite, having a double spiritual sexhood. Thou
seest that, if this were not so, Moses could not have used the plural
number to designate one God. Thou seest that, if it were not so, the
only act possible to God would have been creation, not generation; and
thy faith in 'the only-begotten Son' must have been false; and the very
ancientest forms of faith would have been demonstrated to be merely
impossible falsehood--impossible, because there can not be a falsehood
which does not originate in and grow out of a truth; for falsehood is a
perversion or misconception of the truth; for falsehood is not that
which hath no existence, but is the wrong statement or conception of
that which doth exist. If it were not so, my son, thy faith in God the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, would be merest polytheism, for three are
not one, nor is one three; but the three may be one divine nature and
family. For the one God was always conceived of by the primary faiths as
a dual being, possessed of both elements of spiritual sexhood perfectly;
and 'begotten' is a proper thing to say of one side of the dual God, and
'conceived' is a proper thing to say of the other; and so thou mayst
believe, without any imputation of polytheism, in Christ, as a being
'begotten,' not created; 'conceived,' not made. Would that I knew that
Jesus of Nazareth is he!"
"This learning is entirely new to me," said the lad. "Perhaps it is
higher than I am yet able to comprehend. I believe in just precisely
what the gospels say, no more, no less; that Jesus is the Christ,
only-begotten Son of God, conceived of the Holy Ghost, before there was
a creation, and born of the Virgin into the world long after God by him
had made all things that are created. But, with thy profound knowledge
of all these mysteries, how is it that thou thyself dost not believe?
Who and what art thou, thou ancient, learned, yet unhappy man, whom may
our Lord soon bless and save?"
"I love thee, boy, but I am old, and now too weary to talk more with
thee. Wilt thou not come unto me again? I desire to live in seclusion
as I have done for years, and beg of thee to speak of me to none; but
come again thyself whenever thou canst."
"I will return upon the seventh day hence," said Arius, "and speak of
thee to none except my father's family, and thou wilt not be annoyed by
them. And so fare-thee-well, sir, and may the peace of God come upon
thee!"
"Amen!" said the ancient, "and farewell!"