of things, multitudes can. You are not a fair specimen of our kind, but
only of a comparatively small class. Generally--so I have found it--the
mind is seeking about for something better than what any human system
has as yet proposed, and is confident of nothing more than of this, that
men may be put in possession of truths, that shall carry them on as far
beyond what their natural instincts now can do, as these instincts carry
them on beyond any point to which the brutes ever arrive. This,
certainly, was my own conviction, before I met with Christianity. Now,
Marcus and Lucilia, what is this Christianity, but a revelation from
Heaven, whose aim is to give to you, and to all, such conceptions of
God, and futurity, as I have just spoken of?'--I then, finding that I
had obtained a hearing, went into an account of the religion of Christ,
as I had received it from the books themselves, and which to you I need
not repeat. They listened with considerable patience--though I was
careful not to use many words--but without any expression of
countenance, or manner, that indicated any very favorable change in
their opinions or feelings. As I ended, Marcus said,
'I shall always think better of this religion, Lucius, that you have
adopted it, though I cannot say that your adopting it, will raise my
judgment of you. I do not at present see upon what grounds it stands so
firm, or divine, that a citizen is defensible in abandoning for it, an
ostensible reception of, and faith in, the existing forms of the State.
However, I incline to allow freedom in these matters to scholars and
speculative minds. Let them work out and enjoy their own fancies--they
are a restless, discontented, ambitious herd, and should, for the sake
of their genius, be humored in the particular pursuits where they have
placed their happiness. But, when they leave their proper vocation, and
turn propagators and reformers, and aim at the subversion of things now
firmly established and prosperous, then--although I myself should never
meddle in such matters--it is scarcely a question whether the power of
the State should interpose, and lay upon them the necessary restraints.
Upon the whole, Lucius Piso, I think, that I, and Lucilia, had better
turn preachers, and exhort you to return to the faith, or no-faith,
which you have abandoned. Leave such things to take care of themselves.
What have you gained but making yourself an object of popular aversion
or distrust? You have abandoned the community of the polite, the
refined, the sober, where by nature you belong, and have associated
yourself with a vulgar crew, of--forgive my freedom, I speak the common
judgment, that you may know what it is--of ignorant fanatics or crafty
knaves, who care for you no further, than as by your great name, they
may stand a little higher in the world. I protest, before Jupiter, that
to save others like you from such loss, I feel tempted to hunt over the
statute books for some law, now obsolete and forgotten, but not legally
dead, that may be brought to bear upon this mischief, and give it
another Decian blight, which, if it do not kill, may yet check, and
obstruct its growth.'
I replied, 'that from him I could apprehend, he well knew, no such deed
of folly or guilt--however likely it was that others might, do it, and
glory in their shame; that his nature would save him from such a deed,
though his principles might not.' I told him, moreover, 'that I did not
despair of his looking upon Christianity with a favorable judgment in
good time. He had been willing to hear; and there was that secret charm
in the truths and doctrines of Christ's religion, and especially in his
character, that, however rudely set forth, the mind could scarcely
resist it; against its will, it would, oftentimes, find itself subdued
and changed. The seeds I have now dropt upon your hearts, I trust, will
some day spring up, and bear such fruit as you yourselves will rejoice
in.'
'So,' said Marcus, 'may the wheat spilled into the Tiber, or sown among
rocks, or eaten by the birds.'
'And that may be, though not to-day or to-morrow,' I replied. 'The seed
of things essential to man's life, as of wheat, is not easily killed. It
may be buried for years and years, yet, turned up at length, to the sun,
and its life sprouts upward in leaf, and stem, and fruit. Borne down by
the waters of the Tiber, and apparently lost, it may be cast up upon the
shores of Egypt, or Britain, and fulfil its destiny. The seed of truth
is longer-lived still--by reason that what it bears is more essential
than wheat, or other grain, to man's best life.'
'Well, well,' said Marcus, 'let us charge our goblets with the bottom of
this Falernian, and forgetting whether there be such an entity as truth
or not, drink to the health of the princess Julia.'
'That comes nearer our hearts,' said Lucilia, 'than anything that has
been spoken for the last hour. When you return, Lucius, Laco must follow
you with a mule-load of some of my homely products'---- She was about to
add more, when we were all alike startled and alarmed by cries,
seemingly of deep distress, and rapidly approaching. We sprang from our
seats, when the door of the room was violently flung open, and a slave
rushed in, crying out,
'Oh, sir! Gallus--Gallus'--
'What is it? What is it?'--cried Marcus and Lucilia. 'Speak quick--has
he fallen--'
'Yes, alas! the pond--the fish-pond--run--fly--'
Distractedly we hurried to the spot already surrounded by a crowd of
slaves. 'Who had been with him? Where had he fallen? How did it happen?'
were questions hastily asked, but which no one could answer. It was a
miserable scene of agony, confusion, and despair--Marcus ordering his
slaves to dive into the pond, then uttering curses upon them, and
commanding those to whom Gallus was usually entrusted, to the rack. No
one could swim, no one could dive. It was long since I had made use of
an art which I once possessed, but instantly I cast off my upper
garments, and, needing no other direction to the true spot than the
barking of the little dog, and his jumping in and out of the
water--first learning that the water was deep, and of an even bottom, I
threw myself in, and, in a moment, guided by the white dress of the
little fellow, I grasped him, and drew him to the surface.
Life was apparently, and probably, to my mind, extinct; but expressing a
hope that means might yet be resorted to that should restore him, I bore
him in my arms to the house. But it was all in vain. Gallus was dead.
* * * * *
I shall not inflict a new sadness upon you, Fausta, by describing the
grief of my friends, or any of the incidents of the days and weeks I now
passed with them. They were heavy, and melancholy indeed; for the
sorrows, of both Lucilia and Marcus, were excessive and inconsolable. I
could do nothing for them, nor say anything to them in the hope to
comfort them; yet, while they were thus incapacitated for all action, I
could serve them essentially by placing myself at the head of their
affairs, and relieving them of common cares and duties, that must
otherwise have been neglected, or have proved irksome and oppressive.
The ashes of Gallus, committed to a small marble urn, have been
deposited in a tomb in the centre of Lucilia's flower garden, which will
soon be embowered by flowers and shrubs, which her hand will delight to
train around it.
On the eve of the day when I was to leave them and return to Rome, we
sat together in a portico which overlooks the Tiber. Marcus and Lucilia
were sad, but, at length, in some sort, calm. The first violence of
sorrow had spent itself, and reflection was beginning to succeed.
'I suppose,' said Marcus, 'your rigid faith greatly condemns all this
show of suffering, which you have witnessed, Piso, in us, as, if not
criminal, at least weak and childish?'
'Not so, by any means,' I rejoined. 'The religion of the Christians, is
what one may term a natural religion; it does violence to not one of the
good affections and propensities. Coming, as we maintain, from the
Creator of our bodies and our minds, it does them no injury, it wars not
with any of their natural elements, but most strictly harmonizes with
them. It aims to direct, to modify, to heal, to moderate--but never to
alter or annihilate. Love of our offspring, is not more according to our
nature, than grief for the loss of them. Grief, therefore, is
innocent--even as praiseworthy, as love. What trace of human
wisdom--much less of divine--would there be in the arrangement, that
should first bind us by chains of affection as strong as adamant to a
child, or a parent, or a friend, and then treat the sorrow as criminal
that wept, with whatever violence, as it saw the links broken and
scattered, never again to be joined together?'
'That certainly is a proof that some just ideas are to be found in your
opinions,' replied my friend. 'By nothing was I ever more irreconcilably
offended in the stoical philosophy, than by its harsh violence towards
nature under suffering. To be treated by your philosophy with rudeness
and contempt, because you yield to emotions which are as natural, and,
therefore, in my judgment, as innocent as any, is, as if one were struck
with violence by a friend or a parent, to whom you fled for protection
or comfort. The doctrines of all the others failed in the same way. Even
the Epicureans hold it a weakness, and even a wrong, to grieve, seeing
the injury that is thereby done to happiness. Grief must be suppressed,
and banished, because it is accompanied by pain. That too, seemed to me
a false sentiment; because, although grief is indeed in some sort
painful, yet it is not wholly so, but is attended by a kind of pleasure.
How plain it is, that I should suffer greatly more, were I forcibly
restrained by a foreign power, or my own, from shedding these tears, and
uttering these sighs for Gallus, than I do now while I am free to
indulge my natural feelings. In truth, it is the only pleasure that
grief brings with it--the freedom of indulging it.'
'He,' I said, as Marcus paused, giving way afresh to his sorrow, 'who
embraces the Christian doctrine, is never blamed, condemned, or
ridiculed by it for the indulgence of the emotions, to which, the loss
of those whom we love, gives birth. But then, at the same time, he will
probably grieve and suffer much less under such circumstances than
you--not, however, because he is forcibly restrained, but because of the
influence upon his mind and his heart, of truths and opinions, which, as
a Christian, he entertains, and which, without any will or act of his
own, work within him and strengthen and console him. The Christian
believing, so firmly as he does, for example, in a God, not only on
grounds of reason but of express revelation, and that this God is a
parent, exercising a providence over his creatures, regardless of none,
loving as a parent all, who has created mankind, not for his own
amusement or honor, but that life and happiness might be diffused: they
who believe thus, must feel very differently under adversity, from those
who, like yourself, believe nothing of it at all, and from those who,
like the disciples of the Porch and the Academy, believe but an
inconsiderable part of it. Suppose, Marcus and Lucilia, your whole
population of slaves were, instead of strangers and slaves, your
children, toward whom you experienced the same sentiments of deep
affection that you did toward Gallus, how would you not consult for
their happiness; and how plain it is, that whatever laws you might set
over them, they would be laws of love, the end of which, however they
might not always recognize it, would be their happiness--happiness
through their virtue. This may represent, with sufficient exactness, the
light in which Christians regard the Divinity, and the laws of life
under which they find themselves. Admitting, therefore, their faith to
be well founded, and how manifest is it that they will necessarily
suffer less under adversity than you; and not because any violence is
done to their nature, but because of the benignant influences of such
truths.'
'What you say,' observed Lucilia, 'affects the mind very agreeably; and
gives a pleasing idea, both of the wisdom and mercy of the Christian
faith. It seems at any rate to be suited to such creatures as we are.
What a pity that it is so difficult to discern truth.'
'It is difficult,' I replied; 'the best things are always so: but it is
not impossible; what is necessary to our happiness, is never so. A mind
of common powers, well disposed, seeking with a real desire to find,
will rarely retire from the search wholly unsuccessful. The great
essentials to our daily well-being, and the right conduct of life, the
Creator has supplied through our instincts. Your natural religion, of
which you have spoken, you find sufficient for most of the occurrences
which arise, both of doing and bearing. But there are other emergencies
for which it is as evidently insufficient. Now, as the Creator has
supplied so perfectly in all breasts the natural religion, which is so
essential, it is fair to say and believe, that He would not make
additional truths, almost equally essential to our happiness, either of
impossible attainment, or encompassed by difficulties which could not,
with a little diligence and perseverance, be overcome.'
'It would seem so, certainly,' said Marcus; 'but it is so long since I
have bestowed any thought upon philosophical inquiries, that to me the
labor would be very great, and the difficulties extreme--for, at
present, there is scarcely so much as a mere shred or particle of faith,
to which as a nucleus other truths may attach themselves. In truth, I
never look even to possess any clear faith in a God--it seems to be a
subject wholly beyond the scope and grasp of my mind. I cannot entertain
the idea of self-existence. I can conceive of God neither as one, nor as
divided into parts. Is he infinite and everywhere, himself constituting
his universe?--then he is scarcely a God; or, is he a being dwelling
apart from his works, and watching their obedience to their imposed
laws? In neither of these conceptions can I rest.'
'It is not strange,' I replied; 'nor that, refusing to believe in the
fact of a God until you should be able to comprehend him perfectly, you
should to this hour be without faith. If I had waited before believing,
until I understood, I should at this moment be as faithless as you, or
as I was before I received Christianity. Do I comprehend the Deity? Can
I describe the mode of his being? Can I tell you in what manner he
sprang into existence? And whether he is necessarily everywhere in his
works, and as it were constituting them? Or whether he has power to
contract himself, and dwell apart from them, their omniscient observer,
and omnipotent Lord? I know nothing of all this; the religion which I
receive, teaches nothing of all this. Christianity does not demonstrate
the being of a God, it simply proclaims it; hardly so much as that
indeed. It supposes it, as what was already well known and generally
believed. I cannot doubt that it is left thus standing by itself,
untaught and unexplained, only because the subject is intrinsically
incomprehensible by us. It is a great fact or truth, which all can
receive, but which none can explain or prove. If it is not believed,
either instinctively, or through the recognition of it, and declaration
of it, in some revelation, it cannot be believed at all. It needs the
mind of God to comprehend God. The mind of man is no more competent to
reach and grasp the theme through reason, than his hands are to mould a
sun. All the reasonings, imaginations, guesses, of self-styled
philosophers, are here like the prattlings of children. They make you
smile, but they do not instruct.'
'I fear,' said Marcus, 'I shall then never believe, for I can believe
nothing of which I cannot form a conception.'
'Surely,' I answered, 'our faith is not bounded by our conceptions, or
our knowledge, in other things. We build the loftiest palaces and
temples upon foundations of stone, though we can form no conception
whatever of the nature of a stone. So I think we may found a true and
sufficient religion on our belief in the fact of a God, although we can
form no conception whatever of his nature and the mode of his
existence.'
But I should fatigue you, Fausta, were I to give you more of our
conversation. It ran on equally pleasant, I believe, to all of us, to a
quite late hour; in which time, almost all that is peculiar to the faith
of the Christians came under our review. It was more than midnight when
we rose from our seats to retire to our chambers. But before we did
that, a common feeling directed our steps to the tomb of Gallus, which
was but a few paces from where we had been sitting. There these
childless parents again gave way to their grief and was I stone, that I
should not weep with them?
When this act of duty and piety had been performed, we sought our
pillows. As for me, I could not sleep for thinking of my friends and
their now desolate house. For even to me, who was to that child almost a
stranger, and had been so little used to his presence, this place is no
longer the same: all its brightness, life, and spirit of gladness, are
gone. Everything seems changed. From every place and scene something
seems to have been subtracted to which they were indebted for whatever
it was that made them attractive. If this is so to me, what must it be
to Marcus and Lucilia? It is not difficult to see that a sorrow has
settled upon their hearts, which no length of time can heal. I suppose
if all their estates had been swept away from them in a night, and all
their friends, they would not have been so overwhelmed as by this
calamity--in such a wonderful manner were they each woven into the
child, and all into each other, as one being. They seem no longer to me
like the same persons. Not that they are not often calm, and in a manner
possessed of themselves; but that even then, when they are most
themselves, there has a dulness, a dreamy absence of mind, a fixed
sadness, come over them that wholly changes them. Though they sit and
converse with you, their true thoughts seem far away. They are kind and
courteous as ever, to the common eye, but I can see that all the relish
of life and of intercourse is now to them gone. All is flat and insipid.
The friend is coldly saluted; the meal left untasted, or partaken in
silence and soon abandoned; the affairs of the household left to others,
to any who will take charge of them. They tell me that this will always
be so; that however they may seem to others, they must ever experience a
sense of loss; not any less than they would if a limb had been shorn
away. A part of themselves, and of the life of every day and hour, is
taken from them.
How strange is all this, even in the light of Christian faith! How
inexplicable, we are ready to say, by any reason of ours, the providence
of God in taking away the human being in the first blossoming; before
the fruit has even shown itself, much less ripened! Yet is not
immortality, the hope, the assurance of immortality, a sufficient
solution? To me it is. This will not indeed cure our sorrows--they
spring from somewhat wholly independent of futurity, of either the hope,
or despair of it,--but it vindicates the ways of the Omnipotent, and
justifies them to our reason and our affections. Will Marcus and Lucilia
ever rejoice in the consolations which flow from this hope? Alas! I fear
not. They seem in a manner to be incapable of belief.
In the morning I shall start for Rome. As soon as there, you shall hear
from me again. Farewell.
* * * * *
While Piso was absent from Rome on this visit to his friend, it was my
fortune to be several times in the city upon necessary affairs of the
illustrious Queen, when I was both at the palace of Aurelian and that of
Piso. It was at one of these later visits, that it became apparent to
me, that the Emperor seriously meditated the imposing of restrictions of
some kind upon the Christians; yet no such purpose was generally
apprehended by that sect itself, nor by the people at large. The dark
and disastrous occurrences on the day of the dedication, were variously
interpreted by the people; some believing them to point at the
Christians, some at the meditated expedition of the Emperor, some at
Aurelian himself. The popular mind was, however, greatly inflamed
against the Christians, and every art was resorted to by the priests of
the temples, and those who were as bigoted and savage as themselves
among the people, to fan to a devouring flame the little fire that
began to be kindled. The voice from the temple, however some might with
Fronto himself doubt whether it were not from Heaven, was for the most
part ascribed to the Christians, although they could give no explanation
of the manner in which it had been produced. But, as in the case of
Aurelian himself, this was forgotten in the horror occasioned by the
more dreadful language of the omens, which, in such black and
threatening array, no one remembered ever to have been witnessed before.
None thought or talked of anything else. It was the universal theme.
This may be seen in a conversation which I had with a rustic, whom I
overtook as I rode toward Rome, seated on his mule, burdened on either
side and behind with the multifarious produce of his farm. The fellow,
as I drew near to him, seeming of a less churlish disposition than most
of those whom one meets upon the road, who will scarcely return a
friendly salute, I feared not to accost him. After giving him the
customary good wishes, I remarked upon the excellence of the vegetables
which he had in his panniers.
'Yes,' he said, 'these lettuces are good, but not what they would have
been but for the winds we have had from the mountains. It has sadly
nipped them. I hear the Queen pines away just as my plants do. I live at
Norentum. I know you, sir, though you cannot know me. You pass by my
door on your way to the city. My children often call me from my work to
look up, for there goes the secretary of the good Queen on his great
horse. There's no such horse as that on the road. Ha, ha, my baskets
reach but to your knee! Well, there are differences in animals and in
men too. So the gods will it. One rides upon a horse with golden bits,
another upon a mule with none at all. Still I say, let the gods be
praised.'
'The gods themselves could hardly help such differences,' I said, 'if
they made one man of more natural strength, or more natural
understanding than another. In that case one would get more than
another. And surely you would not have men all run in one mould--all
five feet high, all weighing so much, all with one face, and one form,
one heart, and one head! The world were then dull enough.'
'You say true,' he replied; 'that is very good. If we were all alike,
there would be no such thing as being rich or poor--no such thing as
getting or losing. I fear it would be dull enough, as you say. But I did
not mean to complain, sir. I believe I am contented with my lot. So long
as I can have my little farm, with my garden and barns, my cattle and my
poultry, a kind neighbor or so, and my priest and temple, I care for
nothing more.'
'You have a temple then at Norentum?'
'Yes, to Jupiter Pluvius. And a better priest has not Rome itself. It is
his brother, some officer of the Emperor's, I take these vegetables to.
I hope to hear more this morning of what I heard something when I was
last at market. And I think I shall, for, as I learn, the city is a good
deal stirred since the dedication the other day.' 'I believe it is,' I
answered. 'But of what do you look to hear, if I may ask? Is there news
from the East?'
'O no, I think not of the East or the South. It was of something to be
done about these Christians. Our temple, you must know, is half forsaken
and more, of late. I believe that half the people of Norentum, if the
truth were known, have turned Christians or Jews. Unless we wake up a
little, our worship cannot be supported, and our religion will be gone.
And glad am I to hear, through our priest, that even the Emperor is
alarmed, and believes something must be done. You know, than he, there
is not a more devout man in Rome. So it is said. And one thing that
makes me think so, is this. The brother of our priest, where I am going
with these vegetables--here is poultry too, look! you never saw fatter,
I warrant you--told him that he knew it for certain, that the Emperor
meant to make short work with even his own niece--you know who I
mean--Aurelia, who has long been suspected to be a Christian. And that's
right. If he punishes any, he ought not to spare his own.'
'That I suppose would be right. But why should he punish any? You need
not be alarmed or offended; I am no Christian.'