THE DEMOCRACY OF FAITH.
It was indeed a singular thing to hear, the usual conversation of those
young people about religious questions upon which the greatest minds of
subsequent ages have spent their force without exhausting them; but it
should be remembered that everything like exact science was then in its
infancy: all that was actually known of medicine, chemistry, geology,
geometry, geography, botany, and even of mathematics, could be very
quickly learned; and around this narrow limit of ascertained truth
spread a boundless wilderness of vagrant speculation, in which the
seeker after learning might wander a whole lifetime without ever being
able to add one single valuable fact to the stock of knowledge; so that
religion, whether Christianity or paganism, was universally regarded as
the one thing that might most profitably be learned and known; and
education, even from infancy, consisted in acquiring the knowledge of
it: and this education was among the heathen chiefly objective, handling
the visible, tangible symbols of a superstition which possessed only the
most meager elements of subjective truth and power, except, perhaps, for
the higher priests who had been initiated into mysteries unknown to the
common people; while among the Christians the process was almost
reversed. Christianity had no objective life, except in the person of
Jesus Christ; and the subjective power which it possessed upon both
intellect and consciousness had no assignable limits, inasmuch as it
seemed to make the martyrs almost insensible to physical pain, and yet
could produce a moral sensitiveness so acute that to be conscious of
willful deception might work the death of the body, as in the case of
Ananias and Sapphira when they lied to Peter about the consecration of
their property to holy uses. This education among the Egyptians,
especially among females of the higher classes, was chiefly oral, but
among the Christians the young were taught both orally and by the
written text.
One of the strangest and yet most logical results of the Christian
teachings and practice (and one which has been, for very sufficient
reasons, ignored by the theologians) was to develop a radical and
uncompromising spirit of democracy throughout the Christian communities
or churches. The early Christians uniformly held that they, as
Christians, belonged to a kingdom which was in, but not of, the world--a
kingdom for which no earthly potentate had right or power to legislate;
and this living faith loosened the bond of allegiance and dissolved the
sense of obligation as to all human authority, and was the negation of
the lawfulness of temporal government over the subjects of the kingdom
for which they recognized no king but Christ. While, for the sake of
peace, they were willing to render unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar's, by paying taxes to that government under which they lived, and
by even yielding ready obedience to all laws and customs which did not
come in conflict with the higher law of the kingdom, the rights of
conscience, they universally regarded these laws as extraneous to their
own organization, foreign statutes, imposed upon them from without; and,
being solicitous to render unto God the things which are God's, they
steadily abstained from any participation in the affairs of government,
and quietly assumed the right to judge for themselves whether any law,
regulation, or custom, prescribed by the sovereign power, or other human
authority, was or was not such as they might conscientiously obey. And,
while they would no more have thought of holding office under pagan
rulers or of participating in their legislation and government than they
would have thought of accepting the priesthood of a heathen temple and
participating in its idolatrous worship, they obeyed all laws alike,
except such as conflicted with conscience, and these they refused to
obey in the very face of persecutions, torture, and death. But this
fearless assertion of the rights of conscience necessarily involved the
right to sit in judgment upon all human laws and the powers that
ordained them, and to determine for themselves whether the law was
lawful. That helpless spirit of blind obedience to the decrees of
despotic governments which characterized the pagan peoples was,
therefore, impossible to the Christians. In the very teeth of
universally established law and custom, they steadily refused to bear
arms, to own slaves, to seek any legal redress in civil courts, to
follow the law of their domicile in regard to the ownership of property
or the succession to estates of the deceased, just as they refused to
sacrifice to the gods, or to call any man master. Under the same lofty
conception of the rights of conscience, in lands where women were bought
and sold like cattle, they refused to practice polygamy; and in lands
where female chastity was unknown and plural wives and concubines were
esteemed to be the insignia of honor and influence, they clave fast to
that monogamic marriage which Jesus had elevated into a holy sacrament;
and while throughout the world women were regarded as slaves, as
domestic chattels, or, at the very best, as an inferior race and a
necessary evil, so that the birth of a female child was looked upon as a
household calamity, the Christian faith that the Holy Ghost conceived
Christ before he was born of a virgin and manifested in the flesh,
glorified and exalted the dignity of womanhood and maternity, and
created the idea of personal responsibility, rights, and duties for both
sexes alike. The logical tendency of Christianity was, therefore, to
originate the idea of personal liberty for all men, unknown to the world
before; to repudiate the heathen doctrine of the divine character and
right of kings; to sit in judgment upon their laws, and to intelligently
obey, or refuse to obey, them; in a word, to cultivate and exercise, as
a matter of religious faith, that spirit of personal independence, both
of action and of thought, which we in later times denominate democracy,
the concrete form of which was the election of deacons, presbyters, and
bishops by the people unto whom they ministered.
But this habit of independent thought did not tend as in later times in
the direction of ecclesiastical schisms; because, if any one embraced a
doctrinal error, either it was maintained by him as an individual
opinion; or if a mistaken zeal led him to proclaim it publicly, and seek
thereby to bind the consciences of other Christians, the matter soon
came to the knowledge of the churches, and, when the Church assembled to
consider the alleged error, the Holy Paraclete directed the counsels of
the assembled bishops and presbyters, so that their deliverances were
infallibly correct, and were universally accepted as final. So that,
during the first three centuries, no heresy could survive the
condemnation of a Christian council, and no learning, zeal, and genius
could give to heresy such vitality and power as to seriously threaten
the peace of the Church. Even Peter could not force the observance of
the rite of circumcision upon the free Christian communities; and the
heresies of Menander, Cerinthus, Nicolaus, Valentinius, Marcion,
Tatianus, Blastus, Montanus, Artimon, and others, perished almost as
soon as they had been condemned.
It was perfectly natural, therefore, that while both Arius and Theckla
were almost children in many respects, they should both be far advanced
in religious learning, each of them in harmony with one of the separate
systems under which they had been reared; and that they should be, in
many attitudes of thought and feeling, a pleasing enigma to each other.
The girl, although brimful of bright and pleasing fancies, had all her
life been accustomed to accept as truth whatever was taught to her as
such, and the very basis of her training had been implicit and
unquestioning obedience to authority without reason, so that she had
never, perhaps, attempted to exercise an independent thought, judgment,
or inquiry about any question of religious, political, or social life,
her existence having been passed in strict and unconscious conformity to
rigid Egyptian customs, into the molds and forms of which she had been
fashioned from her infancy. The illness of her mother, which left her
to the freedom of thought, expression, and action, characteristic of
every Christian household, was a new and intoxicating experience to the
girl; and, whatever else it might be possible for her to become, it was
manifestly impossible that she could ever again resiliate into the moral
and social mummyism of ordinary Egyptian female life. The bondage of
Egypt was broken.
But the boy, fixed and immovable in his faith in the few salient and
all-important doctrines covered by the Apostles' Creed, as that creed
was taught during the first three centuries, as to everything else, had
been freed by his training from the shackles of authority, and so
unconsciously enjoyed and exercised "the liberty of the gospel" in which
he had been reared by questioning, investigating, trying every
phenomenon--social, religious, and political--that came within the range
of his observation and experience.
Am-nem-hat imagined that in these two youthful but well-instructed young
people he beheld the living incarnation of the opposing civilizations
under which they had been reared; and it was a pathetic and beautiful
thing to see with what eager intentness he noted almost every inflection
of their voices, every expression of their countenances, almost every
peculiar turn and change of their thoughts, while he encouraged them to
talk, hardly caring what might be the subject of their conversation.
At the beginning of their little feast the ancient said: "Arius, if ye
Christians have any custom of thank-offering, prayer, or libations,
before ye partake of food, I would desire to have thee perform or repeat
it now."
Then answered Arius: "We make no libation or offering, nor are we
restricted to any set formula for returning thanks to God; but generally
we repeat the [Greek: _Pater hemon_]."
"Wilt thou do so now?"
Then the boy said, "Yea, gladly"; and, while they watched him narrowly,
he solemnly said: "Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy
name: thy kingdom come: thy will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us
daily our daily bread; and forgive us our debts as we forgive debtors:
and let us not be led into trial, but deliver us from trouble: for thine
is the kingdom, and the power, and the truth, forever."
Then said Am-nem-hat, "Theckla, what form of worship hast thou been
taught to observe before partaking of thy daily food?"
And the girl said: "On solemn occasions, our fathers make libations; but
it is not according to Egyptian customs, or religion, for a female to
meddle with any sacred rite, beyond her own private devotions, as thou,
O priest, must assuredly know."
"Dost thou know the reason, Theckla, that woman is thus excluded, not
only from participation in the sacred rites, but from every place that
is inconsistent with the idea that she must of necessity be either a
slave or a domestic pet, having right to existence only as the appanage
of a man upon whom she is dependent as slave, wife, or daughter?"
"Nay," she answered; "but I have been so taught, and, therefore, it must
be right and proper."
"I will tell thee, Theckla, for it is verily a thing which every female
ought to know. The reason of it is that the original idea of God was
that of a dual being, equally divine and glorious in both aspects of his
double nature. But nearly all nations, as they sank deeper and deeper
into idolatry, degraded the feminine conception of this dualism, and
some of them utterly lost it. In Egypt they have held Hes to be consort
of Hesiri, and, although inferior to him, yet entitled to great honor.
Hence the Egyptian women have never been shut up, kept in seclusion and
ignorance, and esteemed only as slaves or as chattels, as is universally
the case among nations that have entirely fallen away from the divine
truth. But I tell thee, Theckla, that the religion of the Christians
alone maintains the absolute equality of the Godhead, by maintaining the
Holy Ghost, the Mother of Nature, to be consubstantial with the Father,
and hence it alone elevates woman to her true position, and endows her
with responsibility, respect and honor, rights and duties; so that,
although all men on earth should reject and curse the Christ, every
woman, who is true to herself and to her sex, should cleave unto him in
spite of pain and even death itself. Do thou remember these things,
Theckla; and, when thou shalt see with what respect, honor, and love the
Christian husband treateth his wife and daughters, remember thou that
the vast difference between them and other men, in that regard, ariseth
not out of any difference in the nature or disposition of the
individuals, but out of the difference in their religion only; for that
faith regardeth women as persons, not as things. Forget not these
truths, Theckla! for, whether it be true or false, Christianity alone
hath ever done justice to womanhood, wifehood, maternity; and the woman
who does not love and follow Jesus betrayeth herself and her sex."
"Surely thou, also, art a Christian!" said the young girl.
"Nay," answered Am-nem-hat; "I say not that to thee! For I can not
understand what it is to be a Christian. But, having carefully studied
this religion as I have done all others known among mankind, I do
solemnly assure thee that it is the only one on earth that is fair and
just to chaste and intelligent women. For it teacheth that the equal,
consubstantial Holy Spirit conceived a Saviour that was virgin-born; and
it so serveth to redeem all womanhood from centuries of contempt and
degradation; for no man who hath an intelligent faith in Christianity
can ever regard woman as the mere instrument of his pleasure, or as the
mere slave of his will, but as a friend, helpmate, and companion, worthy
of love, honor, and respect; so that, whether it be true or false, every
woman should cleave thereto, because it is for her, at least, temporal
salvation. For Christianity differeth as radically from all other
religions in regard to the esteem in which it holdeth women as it does
in regard to slavery and to the poor. And while the rich and the great
may hate this system because it would deprive them of the social and
political precedence which every other religion maintaineth for them,
the slaves, the poor, and the women should never forget that Jesus
Christ is the truest friend they ever had on earth."
Then said Arius, "Father Am-nem-hat, why art not thou a Christian,
having views of our religion that are so wise and just?"
And the old man answered: "That thing, my son, I can not tell thee, nor
can I comprehend it for myself. I can not understand what is the
precise attitude of mine own spirit toward Christianity. Canst thou
instruct me?"
"Nay, verily," said Arius. "In my heart I yearn for the power to say
something that might open thine eyes unto the light; but my small
knowledge and experience serve not to enable me to understand how it is
possible that one so aged and so wise, so well instructed in our Lord's
own teachings, can fail to be a Christian. But my father was an
idolater in his youth, and he is learned in our religion. If thou wilt
go home with us, thou shalt be received with honor and affection, and
he, perhaps, can give thee aid. Wilt thou not go?"
"I thank thee much," said Am-nem-hat. "But the way is long, and the
mountain steep, for one so old as I. And besides, it seemeth to me that,
if human knowledge and patient thought could extort any final truth out
of the mute lips of Nature, even I could have made her speak!"
"But," said the boy, "the tree of knowledge is not that of life. Even
the most ignorant and depraved find peace in believing, and I have met
with none so wise as thou. If thou wilt come to us, I will bring hither
on to-morrow a she-ass, gentle and sure of foot, which my mother is
accustomed to ride, and will walk beside thee to our home, if only thou
wilt come."
"Yea," cried Theckla, "thou must surely come! For I will tell my mother
that I have met the high-priest of Ombos, and she will long much to see
thee."
Then Am-nem-hat, as if overpowered by their persuasions, replied: "Ye
are both so kind to an old and lonely man that I can not resist your
entreaties, and will even do as ye desire; for ye know not what pleasure
the old may derive from the polite and hearty attentions of the young."
Then the two young people bade the old man a kind farewell, and, with
the light heart of youth and health, took their way homeward down the
mountain. And when they had come to the edge of the pasture-land they
met with some of the cattle, and among them was the young bull-calf
whose peculiar markings had so excited the wonder and superstition of
Theckla; and Arius cried out laughingly: "Lo, Theckla! there is thy god,
and thou shalt ride home upon the back of the beast."
And he cut a long withe and fastened it upon the horns of the bull, and
led up the gentle beast, and, seizing the young girl in his arms, he
lifted her astride of the fat, round calf, and led him along. And, when
Arius mocked and ridiculed the young Apis, the girl joined in his
merriment, and he was glad to see that she was fast losing all
superstitious reverence for the brute, and for all the other pagan
deities; for her growing contempt for Apis necessarily struck at her
reverence for the whole system, of which a bull with a black hide, a
triangular white spot on his forehead, a spread-eagle in the hairs of
his back, a crescent white spot upon his side, and a knob like a
scarabaeus under his tongue, was so important a part.
When they had reached that part of the pasture which was nearest to the
house, Theckla sprang from the animal's back, and, with some lingering
doubt of his divinity still troubling her mind, she said: "Arius, I
really wonder whether the Apis hath a knob under his tongue in the shape
of a scarabaeus? Wilt thou not look into his mouth?"
"I know not that," said the boy; "but, if he hath not a rather
odd-looking spot under his tongue, he is the only bull-calf I ever saw
that hath it not; and I suppose it would be easy to irritate and inflame
this spot until it would look like a natural knob about as large as a
good, lively beetle."
"I had never thought it might be possible for the priests to so deceive
any one," said Theckla.
"Perhaps they did not do so," answered the boy; "but they may have been
deceived by the cunning of those who had such beasts and desired to sell
them."
Theckla sighed, but her reverence for Apis and for all of his mysteries
was utterly gone forever.