“This place is now dead dust. He was its life.”
“This place is now dead dust. He was its life.”
“This place is now dead dust. He was its life.”
What would it profit that my “fiery part” should return to fire? It might as well go astray into water, or earth, or into extinction, as far as I cared. To be still loved would have been to be still in some kind of home. But who would love my four elements? I should be “not I,” but only four severed portions of what had once been “I,” fragments incapable even of mourning, wandering among “dead dust,” no better than “dead dust” themselves! How infinitely should I have preferred that Epictetus—if he could not honestly accept the confident hope of Socrates concerning a life after death,—should have said simply this, “As to what Zeus does with our souls after death, others think they know much. I know nothing, except that He does what is best.”
Reviewing passages in which Epictetus had mentioned the “soul,” I was more perplexed than ever. For in those he distinctly recognised the “soul” as “better than the flesh,” or “better than the body,” and as using the body as its instrument. When, therefore, he spoke of God as saying to man, “Come!” he ought to have supposed God to be addressingthe whole man, soul as well as body, or perhaps the soul alone, (using the body, or the flesh, as its instrument). But if God said to the human soul “Come!” how could He go on to say “Such part as was fire in you” and so on, just as though we knew, without proof, that thesoulwas composed of nothing but fire, earth, air andwater? We knew no such thing. On the contrary, Epictetus continually assumed that we have within ourselves “mind” and “logos.” He also said that “The being of God” is “mind, knowledge, right logos.” Now he could hardly suppose that “mind” and “logos” were composed of fire, earth, air, and water. For my part, I did not feel that I knew anything certain about the distinctions between “mind,” “soul,” “logos” and “I.” But those who made distinctions appeared to me under an obligation to say what they meant by them.
It appeared to me that our Master had been inconsistent. As a rule, he dealt with each of us as having a soul that was our real self, and a body that was the tool of the soul. “Tyrants,” he would say, “can hurt yourbodybut they cannot hurtyou.” Might not a pupil of his go on consistently to say, “Death can kill yourbodybut it cannot killyou”? This, at all events, was what Socrates meant, when he said, “As for me, Meletus could not hurt me.… He might kill, or banish, or degrade,” for he certainly meant “kill” thebody, not “kill” thesoul.
Subsequently, when I came to read the Christian gospels, I found two of them making this distinction in the words, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body.” One of them added, “but cannot kill the soul,” the other added “but cannot do anything more.” Then I understood more clearly why Epictetus said nothing about what became of the soul after death. For these two Christian writers spoke of a possibility that the soul might be “destroyed in hell” or “cast into hell.” Now this was just what Epictetus did not himself believe, and wished to make others disbelieve. He preferred to give up the belief of Socrates that the good “go to the islands of the blessed” after death, rather than believe also that the bad go to a place of the accursed. Hence he dropped all thought of the essential part, or parts, of man, namely, the soul, mind, and logos, as soon as he came to speak of man’s death.
The consequence was that Epictetus confused us by an ambiguous use of “you.” As long as we were alive he said to us, “Youmust regard your body as a mere tool,” where by “you” he meant the incorporeal part of man. As soon as wewere on the point of death, he said to us, “Do not be alarmed.Youare going into the four elements,” where by “you” he apparently meant our corporeal part. I felt sure then (as I do now) that he did not intend to confuse us. He seemed to me to have been confused by his own intense desire to persuade himself that men must do good without hope of any reward at all except the consciousness of doing good in this present life. I had not at that time read the Christian gospels; but several passages in Paul’s epistles occurred to me as contrary to this doctrine of Epictetus, and I thought that our Master might have been biassed in part by Paul (as Scaurus had suggested)—only not, in this instance, imitating Paul, but contradicting him. So I took up the epistle to the Romans intending to read what Paul said there about Christ’s death and resurrection.
I took up the epistle to the Romans, but I did not read it long. Another subject stepped in to claim immediate attention in the first words on which I lighted. They were these, “Isaiah cries aloud on behalf of Israel,Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant [alone] shall be saved,” and then, “Even as Isaiah has foretold,If the Lord of Sabaoth had not left seed to us, we should have become as Sodom and should have been made like unto Gomorrah.” Previously when I had read these words I could neither understand them nor see the way to understand them, not knowing the meaning of “Sodom” and “Gomorrah,” nor even “Isaiah.” But now, knowing that Isaiah was one of the principal Hebrew prophets, I began to see that many obscure passages of Paul might become clearer to me if I first studied this prophet. This view was confirmed when I found Paul, later on, quoting him again, “But Isaiah is very bold and says,I was found by them that sought me not, I became manifest to them that consulted me not; but with reference to Israel he says,All the day long, I stretched out my hands to a people disobedient and gainsaying.” The name also occurred toward the close of the epistle thus, “Isaiah says,There shall be the root of Jesse, and he that is raised up to rule over the nations; on him shall the nations set their hope.” These last words reminded me of the doctrine of Epictetus about Diogenes “to whom are entrusted the peoples of the earth and countless cares in their behalf.”
But I did not know what “root of Jesse” meant. The name, “Jesse,” I faintly remembered reading in the poems of David; but where it was I could not recall. Hence the phrase was obscure. I determined to put off the further study of Paul for the present, and to glance through the book of Isaiah in the hope of meeting this and other passages quoted above. Accordingly I unrolled the prophecy and began to read it from the beginning.
At first, the language was clear—though the Greek was as bad as in the poems of David. The “children” of God, said the prophet (meaning the ancient Jews or Hebrews, whom he often spoke of as “Israel”) had rebelled against their Father and were being punished with fire and sword by hostile nations executing God’s vengeance on their impiety. Then came the sentence I quoted above, from Paul, about the “remnant.” After this, the prophet introduced “the Lord”—that is the God of the Jews—as saying that He cared no longer for their incense or their offerings because they came from hands stained with blood. This was somewhat like the saying of Horace about Phidyle mentioned above. But what followed was not like anything in Horace: “Wash you, make you clean; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” If they would act thus, then, said God, “though your sins be red as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” As though the nation were molten metal in a crucible, and He Himself were refining them with fire, the Lord said to the whole people of Israel, “I will purge away thy dross … afterwards thou shalt be called the city of righteousness.”
I had begun to hope that I should be able to understand this author as easily as Euripides and much more easily than Æschylus. But now came obscurities. First I read of a golden age. People were to “beat their swords into ploughshares,” and not to “learn war any more.” Then I found a mention of general destruction as by a universal earthquake. Then came, without any chronological or other order apparent to me, the following pictures, or predictions:—a land without a ruler governed by children and women; a picture of luxurious ladiesof rank, a list of their dresses, ornaments, jewels and cosmetics; a “branch of the Lord, beautiful and glorious”; a purifying with a “spirit of burning”; “a song of my beloved touching his vineyard”—all confused together (so it seemed to me at the time) like the prophecies of the Sibyl.
As far as I could see, most of these prophecies dealt with the internal corruption of the nation. The “vineyard” of the Lord was the people of Israel. When He visited the vineyard, looking for fruit, said the prophet, “He looked for judgment but behold oppression.” After this, came a vision of the Lord’s glory, and then predictions of external calamities, and invasions of foreign nations. But yet there was a promise of the birth of a Deliverer, a Prince of Peace, to sit “upon the throne of David.” Following this, at some interval, were the words for which I was searching, about “the root of Jesse.” And now I could understand them, for they were preceded by this prediction, “There shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit.” Just before that, there had been a description of an invading army, coming as the instrument of the Lord’s wrath and “lopping the boughs with terror” and hewing down “the high ones of stature.”
Then all was clear to me. I perceived the connexion between the “child” that was to sit on “the throne of David,” and the “shoot out of the stock of Jesse.” The two together brought back to my mind that passage which I could not before recall from the Psalms, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” The words of Isaiah were like those of Sophocles where he is speaking of the destruction of the royal house of Laius. Sophocles calls the surviving child the “root,” and laments because the axe of Fate was destroying it just when a branch was on the point of “shooting up” from the “stock” so as to produce fruit. So now, but in an opposite mood of hope and joy, Isaiah said that the royal house of David the son of Jesse would not be exterminated, though many of its scions would be cut off. A “branch” would “shoot up” and the succession to the kingdom would be maintained.
In the same way, I perceived, the great Julius, or theEmperor Augustus, being descended from Iulus, the son of Æneas, might be called “the shoot out of the stock of Anchises,” transported from Asia to Europe so as to “shoot up” into a new kingdom more glorious than the old. This, too, explained the word “remnant” used by Paul. As the Trojan followers of Æneas were a “remnant,” so too must be the Jewish followers of this “child,” a remnant left from defeat, disaster, and captivity, after a great “lopping of the boughs with terror.” Virgil sang about the empire of the house of Iulus not as a prophet, but as a poet, prophesying, so to speak, after the event. Isaiah appeared merely to predict empire as a prophet, and a false prophet, prophesying what had not been, and never would be, an “event.” The tree of the empire of Rome was erect for all the world to look on. The tree of the kingdom of Jesse appeared to me as extinct as the house of Laius. So I thought then.
Yet I knew that Paul looked at the matter differently and regarded these prophecies as having been, or as about to be, fulfilled. And when I looked more closely into the sayings of Isaiah about the future kingdom, I saw that many of them were capable of two meanings. Sometimes the prophet appeared to be contemplating a kingdom established in the ordinary way by force of arms—a conquest achieved, or at all events preceded, by fire, sword, and desolation. But, for the most part, it seemed to be an empire of peace to be brought about by some kind of persuasion, or feeling. A sudden conviction was to take hold of all the nations of the earth, so that they were to exclaim, with one consent, as at the sound of a trumpet, “Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” meaning the Temple in Jerusalem.
In this kingdom, however brought about, the Lord was to be King, and there was to be a “covenant” between Him and all the citizens or subjects, a covenant of righteousness. The subjects were to obey the King and the King would give them a righteous spirit. In some respects the covenant of obedience was to resemble that philosophic oath which Epictetus had enjoined on us, namely, to consult our own interests, to be true to ourselves (meaning, to the spirit of righteousness within us).But the prophet regarded righteousness as loyalty, or truth, not to ourselves, but to our King.
That seemed to me one great difference between the Greeks and the Hebrews in their notions of worship. The Greeks, when they lifted their thoughts above themselves, looked, in the first place, each man to his several city, and in the next place, to the Gods. They did not think in the first place of the Gods. For the Gods were many, while the City was one. But the ancient Jews, the men of Israel, or at least their prophets, looked to their Lord God as their King—the Father, or sometimes the Husband, of Israel. Although they were many tribes, they had but one God, the Lord God, who had delivered them from the land of Egypt. This Lord God was a God of justice and truth, hating oppression, a defender of the widow and the fatherless. To be loyal to Him was righteousness.
And herein—as I soon began to perceive—was the great difference between the view of righteousness or justice taken by Isaiah and that taken by our Roman lawyers, or any lawyers bound to a written law. The lawyer’s righteousness was legality; the prophet’s was loyalty. Epictetus and Isaiah agreed together in aiming at loyalty, not legality. Both disliked obedience paid to mere rules and commandments of men. But the former for the most part inculcated loyalty that seemed like loyalty to oneself; the latter, loyalty to God. This precept of Isaiah agreed with the fundamental law prescribed in the code of Moses that the men of Israel were to “love” the Lord their God.
After searching carefully to see what the prophet said concerning the immortality of the soul (about which Moses seemed to be silent) I could find little of a definite kind. In one passage I read “The dead shall arise and they that are in the tombs shall be roused up.” But the preceding lines said “The dead shall assuredly not see life”; so that it was not clear whether the words meant that one nation should be destroyed for ever and another nation should be raised up from destruction to life. The prophet appeared to be thinking of the nation collectively, more often than of separate citizens. The metaphor of the Vine of Israel seemed to be almost alwaysin his thoughts. And his hope seemed to be, not concerning separate branches, that every branch should remain; but that, in spite of being cruelly pruned and cut down almost to the ground, the tree, as a whole, would yet grow up and bear fruit. I noticed also that a certain king called Hezekiah, when praying to be delivered from a disease likely to prove fatal, spoke as though there were no life after death.
But there was one passage, of very mysterious import, which seemed to point to a different conclusion. It spoke about a “servant of God,” of mean aspect but destined to be a great Deliverer—such as Epictetus had described—“bearing upon him the cares” of multitudes. He was to grow up “as a root in the thirsty ground,” which suggested that he was to be “the root of Jesse” above mentioned. But he was not to be like Æneas, “the root” of Anchises. For Æneas divided the spoils in Italy as the prize of his sword. But this Deliverer—so the prophet declared—was “despised and reckoned as naught.” He was “delivered over” to the enemies of his nation as a ransom to save his fellow-countrymen, and it was by their wickedness that “he was led to death.” Yet in the end, said the prophet, “He will inherit many men, and will divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was delivered over to death, and he was reckoned among criminals, and he carried the sins of many and he was delivered over on account of their crimes.”
This was altogether beyond my comprehension at the time. But I saw that I should have to return to this prophecy hereafter; for I recognised its last words as having been quoted by Paul in writing to the Romans. I found afterwards that the passage in Paul spoke about “believing in Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who wasdelivered over for the sake of our transgressions, and was raised up for the sake of our being made righteous.” For the present, however, the passage in Isaiah about the “servant” of God seemed to me important, for this reason mainly, because it indicated a belief in a life after death. And so did another difficult passage—if Paul had interpreted it rightly. My copy of the prophecy said, “Death by its strength hath swallowed up”; but the margin said“Death is swallowed up in victory,” and these latter words, too, I recognised as being quoted by Paul; and this, or some similar, sense appeared to be required by the context.
It was growing late and I was obliged to break off. But I resolved to return to the book next morning before lecture. So far as I had read, it appeared to me that the prophet did not formally recognise the immortality of the soul in general. But in the case of the Suffering Servant he did seem to recognise it. Having the Servant in my mind, I unrolled the book of Isaiah to other passages using the same word, such as, “for myservantDavid’s sake,” “But thou, Israel, art myservant,” “Myservantwhom I have chosen.” At last I came to “the seed of Abraham myfriend.” In all these passages, God was supposed to be speaking. Then it occurred to me, “Did the prophet make an exception for the Suffering Servant only? Did he not also believe that Abraham’s soul was immortal?” It seemed to me impossible that if the God of the Jews were asked, “Where is Abraham thy friend?” He would reply—or that the prophet would regard Him as replying—“Resolved into the four elements.” On the whole, I was led to the conclusion that Isaiah implied, though he did not express, some kind of doctrine of human immortality dependent on the relation between man and God.
Even when I was in the act of rolling up the book of Isaiah, very late at night, it occurred to me that the question “Is there a life after death?” might be connected with another, “Is there to be hereafter a reign of righteousness?” I tried to give my mind rest by thinking of other things; but this second question came back to me again and again both before and after I retired to rest. Epictetus spoke about “the sceptre and throne of Diogenes”: but I knew he would not assert that the philosopher’s “sceptre” implied any present kingdom except over his own mind and the minds of a small band of Cynics—small in comparison with Stoics and Epicureans, and nothing at all in comparison with the non-philosophic myriads. As for a kingdom of righteousness after death in another world, I was now certain that Epictetus did not expect it; and I began to doubt whether he expected such a kingdom at any time in this world. If to believe in Providence means to believe in a God who foresees and prepares that which is best—I could not understand where Epictetus could find a basis for such a belief.
With the Jews, it was otherwise. They, I could see, had received a special training, which made them, more than any other nation known to me, begin by expecting a reign of righteousness on earth. Beginning thus, and being largely disappointed, they might be led on to expect a reign of righteousness in heaven. Their history was like a collection of stories for children, teeming with what a child might callsurprises, but a prophet judgments—evil, uppermost, suddenly cast down; humble patient goodness, chastened by pains and trials, lifted up to lordship over its past oppressors. Examples occurred to me before I slept, and many more during the night, in my waking moments. I had not noticed them so clearly when reading the Law consecutively. Now, grouped together, they came almost as a new revelation—if not of history, at all events of legend, and of a nation’s thoughts, and of the training through which the Jew Paul must have passed in his childhood and youth.
First, there was Abraham—Abraham the homeless, going out from unbelievers to worship the one God, and receiving a promise that he should be the father of blessing, for multitudes in all the nations of the earth; Abraham the childless, rewarded with the child of promise; Abraham the kind and yielding, who gave way to his kinsman Lot, so that the older patriarch was content with the inferior pastures while the younger chose the fertile lands of Sodom and Gomorrah; Abraham the father of the one child that embodied the truth of the one God, offering up that child on the altar, and receiving him back as if from Hades; Abraham the landless, without a foot of ground in the land promised to him, buying with money a cave to bury his family. “Surely,” I said, “the story of Abraham, in itself, is a compendium of national history not indeed for Rome, but for a nation of peace (if only the nation could live up to it!) most fit for training a child to become a citizen in the City of Righteousness!”
If the life of Abraham was full of surprises or paradoxes, so too were the lives of the other patriarchs and leaders of the nation. Isaac, “laughter,” laid himself down to die in appearance, but to “laugh” at death in reality. Esau was the “elder,” yet he was to “serve the younger.” Jacob was promised lordship over his brother in the future, but he bowed down before him in the present. The same patriarch, a poor man, with nothing but his “staff,” became rich and prosperous. Yet, because he had deceived his father, he in turn was deceived by his children and sorely tried by their contentions. Through Samuel, the little child, God rebuked Eli the high priest; andthe little one became the prophet and judge of Israel. David, the despised and youngest of many brethren, became the greatest of Israel’s kings.
Such was the history of the great men of the ancient Jews—tried, but triumphing over trial. On the other hand, the history of the mass of the common people, from the time when they were a family of twelve sons, shewed them as going astray, lying, quarrelling and rebelling. For this they were punished by plagues and enemies; then, delivered by judges or prophets; but only, as it seemed, again to fall away, and to be delivered again; so that the reader of the histories, apart from the prophecies, might well suppose that these ebbs and flows were to go on for ever; that Israel was to be always imperfect, always liable to rebellion; and that the promise to Abraham was never to be fulfilled. More especially might a reader of the histories anticipate this when he saw the great empires of the east, Assyria and Babylon, leading the tribes away into captivity and destroying Jerusalem and the Temple.
Such were my thoughts by night concerning the Law and the Histories of Israel. Resuming the study of the prophecy early next morning, I perceived that in the sins and backslidings of the people there was yet another and far deeper illustration of what might be called “the law of paradoxes.” Not only came prosperity out of adversity but also righteousness out of sin, and out of punishment promise. Some of Isaiah’s most comforting prophecies arose from the invasion of Israel by Assyria. In this connexion there came a promise about a “child” that was to be “born,” of whom it was said “the government shall be upon his shoulder.” These things reminded me of passages in the poems, where the poet—musing on the chastisements and deliverances that followed the sins of Israel—exclaims “His mercy endureth for ever,” or “I remember the days of old, I meditate on all thy doings.” In the history of Greece and Rome I could find comparatively few stories of such “doings.” How indeed could I reasonably expect them? Romans and Greeks worship many Gods, but only one Father of Gods and men. Athens might claim Athene, and other cities might have their special patrons among the Gods. But howcould it be supposed that the Father of Gods and men would make any one nation His peculiar care? Virgil says that Venus was on the side of the future Rome, and that Jupiter favoured Venus; but Juno intervenes for Carthage. Then Jupiter has to compromise between Juno and Venus, or to conciliate Juno by laying the blame on fate! “How different,” I exclaimed, “all this is from the Hebrew egotism that represents the one God as continually saying to Israel ‘Thee have I chosen’!”
Yet I had hardly uttered the word “egotism” before I felt inclined to qualify it, adding, “But it is not ‘egotism’ from Paul’s point of view.” For indeed Paul seemed to think that God chose Abraham, not for Abraham’s own sake—or at all events not merely for Abraham’s own sake—but for the sake of “all the nations of the earth,” to bring light and truth to them. Epictetus spoke of Diogenes as “bearing on himself the orb of the world’s vast cares.” Somewhat similarly—when I took up the Law of the Jews to revise the thoughts that had come to me in the night—I found the Law describing the life of Abraham the friend of God. For I did not find Abraham blessed or happy—as the world would use the terms “blessing” and “happiness.”
Abraham begins as a homeless wanderer, going forth from his kindred at the bidding of the one true God; and a homeless wanderer he remains to the end. He is a father of kings but no king himself, not even a landowner! He has to buy with money land enough to bury his dead! His life is one of intercession as well as concession. Abraham intercedes for the dwellers in Sodom and Gomorrah, feeling it a painful thing that even a few righteous should suffer with the many. Once indeed Abraham becomes a soldier. But it is not for himself. It is for his kinsman and for the rescue of captives. Abraham makes himself a servant, waiting at table upon his guests. Abraham offers to God the life of his only son. If Paul was right, and if the children of Abraham mean the men that do such things as these in such a spirit as this, and if “the seed of Abraham” is the man that incarnates this spirit, then, I thought, there was perhaps no egotism when the prophet ofIsrael represented God as saying to the descendant of Abraham, “Thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend.” For it may mean “I have not chosen the rich, I have not chosen the great and strong. I have chosen the good and kind and truthful and courageous; him only have I chosen.” And soon afterwards God says, “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction,” that is to say, “I have not chosen thee to make thee selfishly happy and prosperous, but to make thee my servant, like Abraham, for the service of all the world.”
The same truth appeared to apply to Moses, who, next to Abraham, might be called the greatest of the “servants of the Lord.” Even from the cradle he was in peril of death. He delivered his countrymen, as it were, against their will. The burden of their rebellions pressed on him through his life, and caused him to be cut off from the land of promise in the moment of his death. He saw it from afar off but was not allowed to enter it. He was prohibited because of his sin; and his sin fell upon him because his people sinned. “The Lord was wroth with me,” said Moses, “for your sakes.” That was the greatest burden of all. With the lives of Abraham and Moses before me, it seemed that the greatest servants were also the greatest sufferers.
Having this fresh light, I turned again to the description of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. Did the prophet mean some particular prince of the house of David who was actually “chosen in the furnace of affliction” in order to deliver Israel? Or did he mean Israel itself, scattered through the world and afflicted in order that it might deliver the world? Plato modelled his Republic in the form of a man: had Isaiah any such double meaning? Did he predict a second David delivering sinful Israel, and also a purified Israel delivering a sinful world? Was he carried, so to speak, by the past into the future? That is to say, had he in mind some prince actually tortured and imprisoned, and as good as dead, for the sake of the people, and did the prophet regard this prince as destined to be raised up from the darkness of the prison house and to reign on earth? Or else was the prince, though actuallykilled, destined to be raised up and to reign after death in his own person, or to reign in the person of his descendants?
About all these questions I felt that it was not for me to judge. I did not know enough about the history of the people and the language of their poets and prophets. But there remained with me this general truth, as being not only at the bottom of this prophecy, but also pervading the history of Israel, namely, that in order to make a great nation, great men must die for its sake. And I began to conceive a possibility that the greatest of all men, some real “son of Abraham”—I mean some spiritual son of Abraham, not necessarily a Jew—might arise in the history of the world, who might be willing to die not for one nation alone but for all the nations of the empire. But how? And against what enemies? As soon as I asked myself these questions, the conception faded away. I thought of Nero enthroned in Rome, and of the Beast enthroned in the heart of man. Against either of these foes I did not understand how the death of any “son of Abraham,” or “servant of God,” could avail. How could such a Servant “divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was delivered over to death”? This was beyond me.
For the rest, Isaiah appeared to me to carry on throughout the book of his prophecies that thread of unexpectedness about which I spoke above—I mean, that what prophets (foreseeing them) call judgments, men of the world (not foreseeing) call surprises. Yes, and even prophets and righteous men—not foreseeing enough—often lift up their hands in amazement, exclaiming, “This hath God wrought!” or “The stone that the builders rejected hath become the headstone of the corner!” But there was a dark as well as a bright side in these surprises. The disappointments were often most strange. For example, Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord “high and lifted up.” But with what result? The prophet himself was straightway cast down with the thought of being “unclean.” Even afterwards, when his lips had been cleansed with the coal from off the altar so that he might deliver God’s message, the message was, “Hear ye, indeed, but understand not!”—because his warning was to be rejected. And so it was throughout, paradox onparadox! Israel was “chosen” in one sentence, “backsliding” in the next. The “despised and rejected” servant was to be “lifted up.” The transgressions of the world were to be taken away by a deliverer, who was to be “reckoned among transgressors.” Sometimes, as if despairing of the noble and learned among his own people, the prophet seemed to appeal to the poor and simple, according to the words of David, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength!” Sometimes he even seemed to turn away from Israel itself—at all events from the majority of the nation—to the remnant, and to the pious among other nations, as though they, yes, even foreigners, might receive the fulfilment of the promise made to the seed of Abraham!
Amid all these (to me) perplexing paradoxes, one thing was clear—constituting a great difference between Isaiah and Epictetus. The former saw God in history. The latter did not. Epictetus said (as I have shewn in a previous chapter) that, up to the time of death, man can always find peace by following the “logos” within himself during life; after death he ceases to exist. “Bearing these things in mind,” said he, “and seeing the sun and moon and stars, and enjoying the earth and sea, man is not deserted any more than unhelped.” These words now returned to my mind, and I perceived the force of what they didnotsay. They said that God was to be seen in the sun and moon and stars; but they didnotsay that He was to be seen where Isaiah saw Him, in the nations of the earth controlled by the Supreme. It is true that Isaiah, too—like Epictetus—bade his readers look up to the stars as witnesses to God. But Isaiah seemed to me to reckon men superior to stars.
David certainly did so. David had “considered” all the glories of the visible heaven. Yet he counted them inferior to “man,” who was “made but little lower than God,” and inferior to the “son of man,” who had received “dominion” over God’s works. In the same spirit, Isaiah, as it seemed to me, spoke of the Maker of the heavenly bodies as being adorable, not because He had made them multitudinous and bright, but because He led them like a flock—as though even a star might wanderbut for the kindness of the divine Shepherd. Moreover God seemed to him to be controlling the mighty powers of the heaven for the service of man, “Behold, the Lord, the Lord, He cometh with strength, and His arm with lordship. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. As a shepherd shall He shepherd His sheep, and with His arm He shall gather the lambs, and encourage those that are with young. Who measured out the water with His hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with His fingers? Who established the mountains by measure and the valleys with a scale? Who hath known the mind of the Lord and who hath become His fellow counsellor so as to instruct Him?”
Thus, according to the prophet, there was to be a great advent in which God was to “come” with “reward.” He predicted a future “shepherding” of the “sheep” and “gathering” of the “lambs,” corresponding to the past “measuring” of the “heaven.” According to the philosopher there was to be no such future. All things were to go round and round. Instead of “sheep” or “lambs,” bubbles in an eddy seemed a more appropriate metaphor to describe the results of human life in accordance with the general tendency of Epictetian doctrine.
It was now almost the third hour and I was on the point of rolling up the volume, when a fellow-student suddenly entered to borrow some writing materials. Thrusting the book in my garment I supplied him with what he needed, and we hastened together to the lecture-room.
We conversed, about trivial subjects, but my mind was not in them. It was with Isaiah. I could not help marvelling that a native of so small and weak a country should take so wide and imperial a view of the movements of the nations. In a Roman, I could have understood it better; or in a Greek of the days of Alexander. But that a Jew—whose people was as it were the shuttlecock between the great empires surrounding it—that a Jewish prophet should think such thoughts filled me with astonishment. Then I wondered what Epictetus would say on the administration of the world if he ever dealt with it fully. “He,” I said, “was a Phrygian and a slave. Is it possible that he, too, like Isaiah, could speak in this imperial fashion?” Arriving somewhat late, we found the room almost filled; but my seat was vacant, and I was glad to find Glaucus next to me, in the place vacated by Arrian’s departure.
Epictetus was just beginning his first sentence. I will give it as Glaucus took it down, exactly: “Be not surprised if other animals, all except ourselves, have ready at hand the things needful for their bodily wants provided for them, not only food and drink but also bedding, and no need of sandals or blankets or clothes—while we have need of all these additional things.” He proceeded to say that the beasts were our servants, andthat it would be extremely inconvenient for us if we had “to clothe, shoe, and feed sheep and asses! As if,” said he, “a colonel had to shoe and clothe his regiment before they could do the service required of them! And yet men complain, instead of being thankful!” Any single created thing, he said, would suffice to demonstrate Providence to a grateful mind. Then he instanced the production of milk from grass and of cheese from milk. Thence he passed from the “works” of Nature to “by-works,” such as the beard, distinguishing man from woman. This (I think) was one of his customary digressions against the fashion of smooth-skinned effeminacy: “How much more beautiful than the comb of cocks! How much more noble than the mane of lions! Therefore it was our duty to preserve God’s appointed tokens of manhood: it was our duty not to give them up, not to confuse (so far as lay in us) the classes, male and female, distinguished by Him.”
“Are these,” he continued, “the only works of Providence in our behalf? What praise can be proportionate to our benefits? Had we understanding, we should be ever hymning the graces He has bestowed on us. Whether digging, or ploughing, or eating, ought we not to sing the appropriate hymn to God, saying ‘Great is God, because He hath given us tools wherewith to till the ground,’ ‘Great is God, who hath given us hands, and the power of swallowing, and a stomach, and a faculty of growing in stature painlessly and insensibly, and of breathing even when we sleep’? Hymns and praises such as these we ought to sing on each occasion. But the greatest and most divine hymn of all should be sung in thanks for that power”—he meant the Logos—“which intelligently recognises all these blessings, and which duly and methodically employs them. Butyouare silent. What then? Since you, like the common herd, are blind to God’s glory, it was but fit that there should be some one herald, though it be but one, to fill the place left empty by your default, and to chant the hymn that goes up to God in behalf of all. What else am I fit to do, a halting old man like me, except to sing the praises of God?”
And so he drew toward the conclusion of the first part ofhis lecture. Were he a nightingale or a swan, he said, he would do as a nightingale or a swan—that is to say, utter mere sounds, songs without words, songs void of reasonable thoughts, without Logos—“But as it is, I am endowed with Logos. Accordingly I must sing hymns to God. This is my special work. This I do. Never will I abandon this post of duty, as long as it is given to me. And I invite and urge you also to the same task of song.” From this he proceeded to speak of “the things of the Logos,” or “the logical things,” as being “necessary”; and he spoke of the Logos as that which “articulates”—by which he meant, distinguishes the joints and connexions of all other things—and also as being that which accomplishes all other things. He appeared to mean that this Logos was reason; and he assumed that it is “impossible that anything should be better than reason.” But he refused to enter into the question, If the Logos within us goes wrong, what shall set it right? His language at this point was very obscure. The impression left upon me was that Logos, with him, meant two different things and that he did not distinguish them. When he sang hymns to God in accord with the Logos, I thought he must intend to include something more than reason; but when he passed on to say that “the things of the Logos” (or “the logical things”) are necessary, he seemed to mean “reason” alone.
Later on, he returned to his first subject: “When you are in the act of blaming Providence for anything, reflect, and you will recognise that it has happened in accordance with Logos.” Then, taking the case of some man supposed to have been defrauded of a large sum of money, he placed in his mouth the objection that, if the fraud is “in accordance with Logos,” it would seem that injustice is “in accordance with Logos.” For, said the objector, “the unjust man has the advantage.” “In what respect?” asked Epictetus. “In money,” says the objector. To which Epictetus replied, “True, for he is better than you are for this purpose”—he meant, for making money—“because he flatters, he casts away shame, he is always unweariedly working for money. But consider. Does he get the better of you in respect of faithfulness and honour?” Then herebuked us, would-be philosophers, for being angry with God for bestowing on us His best gifts, namely virtues, and for allowing bad men to take away from us what was not good in itself, namely, our worldly possessions.
This view of Providence and of wealth seemed to differ from the one assumed in Isaiah and often stated by Moses and David. For they had taught me that righteousness, and truth, and obedience to parents, and neighbourly kindness, tend to “length of days” and to peace and prosperity on the earth—for the righteous man himself as well as for the community; and they also distinguished honest wealth, acquired by labour, from dishonest wealth acquired by greediness and injustice. But Epictetus here made no such distinction.
The Jewish poems recognised it as being, at all events on the surface, a strange thing that a righteous man should be subjected to exceptional, crushing, and continuous calamities by the visitations of God. Epictetus appeared to teach us that God had ordained some men to be restless, pushing, shameless, and greedy, that they may take away the wealth acquired honestly by the good and honest and just. God had made these rascals “better” than the virtuous—in rascality! Then he called on us to admire or accept this ordinance or law: “Why fret, then, fellow? You have the better gift. Remember, therefore, all of you always, and have it by heart and on the lips,This is a Law of Nature that the better should have—in the province in which he is better—the advantage of the inferior. Then none of you will fret any more.”
In his general theory, Epictetus was careful to separate himself from those who maintain that the Gods do not interfere with the affairs of men, or never interfere except on great and public occasions, and he approved of the words of Ulysses to the Allseeing, quoted by Socrates, “Thou seest my every motion.” If man, he said, can embrace the world in his thought, and if the air and sun can include all things in their influence, why cannot God? But this seemed to lead to the conclusion that the influence of God is being perpetually and ubiquitously exerted on men in order to produce knaves, slaves, tyrants, and fools: for such our Master appeared to deem the majority of mankind.
In practice, Epictetus avoided such a blasphemy against God, by drawing no inference as to Providence from any of the laws or institutions of men, for he appeared to regard human institutions as radically bad. At all events he allowed his pupils—as I have shewn above—to say that the rulers of the world are “thieves and robbers” and that the courts of justice are “courts of injustice.” His belief in Providence was—I seemed to see clearly—based on nothing but the consciousness of the Logos within himself. The Logos in the vast majority of mankind appeared to him to have done them no good: so he could not argue from that.
When someone mentioned the fate of the Emperor Galba as disproving a belief in Providence, Epictetus implied a scornful disavowal of any intention to base belief on any such historical event. Nor did he ever refer to God as controlling the movements of nations. In answer therefore to my silent question, “Does our Master see God in the history of individuals or nations?” his teaching seemed to reply “No, I see it in nothing except Socrates, Diogenes, and a few other philosophers, and also in myself. Beyond this little group of souls, though I feel myself able to infer God in everything, I cannot really infer Him in anything mental or spiritual. Hence I am driven to such physical instances as butter, cheese, stomachs, and beards!”
On leaving the lecture-room I chatted with Glaucus and tried hard to be cheerful. But how I missed Arrian! I felt inclined to turn Epicurean. The “careless” gods of Epicurus seemed at least less unloveable than the Providence of Epictetus. Too much depressed for any kind of study, I did not return to my lodging but walked out into the country by unfrequented paths, resting after mid-day in a little village inn. Coming out, toward the close of the afternoon, I found an acquaintance of mine, Apronius Rufus, standing in the porch and amusing himself by throwing figs and nuts to a crowd of boys just emerging from the doors of a neighbouring school. From scrambling and scuffling the boys had come to fighting—all but two or three, who held aloof with an air of sulky superiority; and one, I think, saw the schoolmaster in the distance. My acquaintance was attending the Epicurean classes in Nicopolis. We Cynics calledthe followers of Epicurus “swine,” and I could not resist the temptation of saying, “Rufus, you are making converts. When they grow up, these little pigs will do you credit.” He laughed good-humouredly: “Not all of them, Silanus! A few, as you see yonder, remain of your persuasion, true Cynics, that is to say, puppies or prigs. But we do pretty well. Nature is for us, though you and the schoolmaster are allied against us. By the way, I think I see your ally coming round the corner. I will be off. Two against Hercules are one too many. Farewell!” “Farewell!” said I, “Your wit is as much stronger than mine as your philosophy is weaker.”
“Butisit weaker?” thought I, as he strode back to Nicopolis, and I in the opposite direction. Was not Apronius right in saying that Nature was on his side? Does not Providence, like Circe, throw down figs and nuts for us human creatures to make us swine? Is she not always saying to us, “Push, and be greedy! Then you will get what you want”? And did not Epictetus acquiesce in this, in effect, saying to the two or three non-pushers, “Be content. The others, the masses of men, are ‘better’ than you are for pushing and for kicking and for fighting like greedy swine”? But who made them “better”? Was it not Nature? And how could I feel sure that this same Nature or Providence that made “grass” (as Epictetus said) to produce “milk and butter and cheese,” did not make man to produce scrambling and scuffling and fighting—a spectacle for some amused God, who watches from the windows of heaven, like Apronius Rufus from the inn-door on earth?
After a long circuit, returning to Nicopolis, I sat down to rest in a copse when the sun was drawing towards the west. Tired out by my walk, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the sun had set and the evening star was shining. As I sat in silence gazing upon it, better thoughts were brought to me. “Five minutes,” I said, “with Hesper teach more about Providence than an hour with Epictetus.” Then it occurred to me, “But, were I Priam, and were this the evening before Troy was taken, would not Hesper shine as brightly before me? What does Hesper prove?” Presently, the lesser stars began to appear,growing each moment in number. Then I remembered how Moses represents the Lord God appearing to Abraham (when he was as yet childless) and saying to him, “Look up to the heaven and number the stars, if thou art able to number them all. So shall thy seed be.” And what had come of it all? A nation that was no nation, a race of captives, known to us in Rome chiefly as hating pork and strangers no less than they loved their sabbaths. Then I thought, “Had Hesper any more favour for Abraham than for Priam? Perhaps the stars promised peace and prosperity to both and broke their promise! What Troy is, that Jerusalem is. Nay, worse. Troy has produced a New Troy. Where is the New Jerusalem? And where is the great nation promised to Abraham? A flock (or flocks) of exiles, fanatics, and slaves!”
Just then came into my mind the memory of some words about the stars in Isaiah. I had taken the book with me to lecture. So I unrolled it till I came to them: “Lift up your eyes on high and see. Who hath appointed all these? He that leadeth forth His host in a numbered array. He will call them all by name. Because of thy great glory, and in the might of thy strength, not one escapeth from thine eye.” Then the prophet declared that, even as the stars of heaven are made visible in the darkness, so the seed of Abraham was not hidden by any darkness from God’s eye: “Say not, O Jacob (ah, why didst thou dare to say it, O Israel?) ‘My way is hidden from God, and my God hath taken away judgment and hath departed from me.’ Hast thou not even now found out the truth? Hast thou not clearly heard it? The God eternal, the God that framed and fashioned the earth, even to its furthest corners, He will not faint for hunger, nor is there any fathoming of His wisdom. To them that hunger He giveth strength—but sorrow to them that have no grief. For hunger shall fall on the youths, and weariness on the young men, and the chosen warriors shall utterly lose strength; but they that wait patiently for God shall renew their strength; they shall put forth wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk erect and shall not faint for hunger.”
I could not believe all this. But neither could I disbelieve it. One voice said to me, “The poet is casting on the God ofthe stars the mantle that he has borrowed from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” But another voice kept saying to me, “Wait patiently for God: He shall renew thy strength.” In the afternoon, when I had thrown myself down to rest, I had thought that I would give up the search after truth, get rid of all my books, leave Nicopolis, and go at once into the army. Now I was more hopeful. But I could not give any logical reason for my hope. Isaiah had not convinced me. Far from it! The promise to Abraham seemed still to me to have resulted in failure. I had broken off my study of Paul, almost at its commencement, in order to study Isaiah. And Isaiah, without Paul, presented many difficulties that might perplex wiser minds than mine. “Grant,” said I, “that David the son of Jesse was a great poet. Grant that Isaiah was a great prophet. Yet what were their poems and prophecies except so many pillars of vapour, or, if of substance, then substantial failures; pillars with the capital gone and the shaft broken, no longer sustaining anything? Their temple is burned a second time, never to be rebuilt; the rod of Jesse, cut off from the very root, with no life left in it, ‘despised indeed and rejected’ but with no compensation of being ‘exalted’ or of ‘dividing the spoils of the strong’!”
All these things I said over and over again to myself. But still another voice, deeper than my own, seemed to be repeating “Wait patiently on God and He will renew thy strength! Wait patiently! Wait!” Up to the moment of retiring to rest that night my mind was in a state of oscillation. On the one hand, Scaurus might be right, and my best course might be to give up the study of philosophy, and to prepare myself for a military career. On the other hand, there appeared nothing in these poems or prophecies of Isaiah that would make a man less fit to be a soldier. My last thought was, “I should like to see how the modern Jew, Paul, takes up the teaching of the ancient Jew, Isaiah. I have but glanced at his quotations as yet.” So I decided to examine this point on the following day.
Hitherto my study of Christian or Jewish literature had never followed my intentions. I had intended to read Paul continuously. But first Isaiah, then David, then Moses, and then Isaiah again, had intervened. I was going forward all the while, but by a winding course, like a stream among hills and rocks. Now again I have to describe how—although I sat down with a determination to digress no more but to read through the epistles from the beginning to the end—I was led off to another investigation.
The first phrase in the volume did not long occupy me. True, I had greatly disliked it when I first glanced at it, a few days ago—“Paul aslaveof Jesus Christ.” “Slave” was always used by Epictetus in a bad sense, and I had then thought it savoured of servility. But now I knew that the translation of Isaiah often used it to denote a devoted servant of God; and it seemed to me that Paul had perhaps no other word that could so well express how he felt bound to service by Christ’s “constraining love.”
Nor did the next words now cause me much difficulty:—“Calledto be anapostle,set apartto preach thegood tidingsof God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy scriptures.” Scaurus had told me how Epictetus had borrowed from the Christians this notion of being “called” to bear testimony to God. Whether he was right or wrong, he had prepared me to find “called” in such a passage as this. It was connected here with an “apostle,” that is, someone “sent” by God. This, too, seemed natural. Though Epictetus didnot use the noun, he often used the verb to describe his ideal Cynic—and especially Diogenes—as being “sent” to proclaim the divine law. “Set apart” I understood to mean “set apart” by special endowments of body and mind such as Epictetus frequently attributed to Socrates and Diogenes.
As to the “good tidings,” I knew that Epictetus would have considered it to be a message from God to this effect, “Children, I have placed your true happiness in your own control. Take it from yourselves, each of you, from that which is within you.” But what was Paul’s “good tidings”? Isaiah had described God’s messengers as “proclaiming good tidings,” namely, that God was coming to the aid of men: “As a shepherd will He shepherd His flock and with His arm will He gather the lambs.” Epictetus, as I have shewn above, scoffed at this metaphor of “shepherd.” But I could not help liking it. Homer used it about kings, Isaiah about God. I thought Paul meant, in part, that God would manifest Himself as the righteous King.
But I knew that Paul must also mean more, and that he would not have claimed the attention of the Romans for a mere repetition of an ancient written prophecy. Any child able to read could have repeated that. Paul must have more good news—either about the Shepherd, or about the time, or about the certainty of His coming. At this point, it occurred to me, “Why wait for the gospels that Flaccus is to send me? Why not search through the epistles to find out what Paul’s gospel is?” But I checked myself, saying, “No more digressions.” The next words were these: “Concerning His Son, who came into being from the seed of David according to the flesh; who was defined Son of God, in power, according to the spirit of holiness, from the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” These words I have translated literally and obscurely so as to indicate to the reader how exceedingly obscure they seemed to me. “I must pass on,” I said, “I can make nothing of this. What follows may make things clearer.”
I began to read on, but soon desisted. The words that followed took no hold of my mind. I tried, and tried again, but was irresistibly dragged back to “resurrection of the dead,” and “power,” and “spirit of holiness,” and “defined”—especiallyto “resurrection.” What kind of “resurrection”? During my childhood I had heard my father tell a story or legend how, just before the battle of Philippi, the spirit of the great Julius appeared to Brutus, saying “Thou shalt see me at Philippi.” There Brutus slew himself. And Scaurus had remarked that a similar fate had overtaken others of the conspirators; so that some might declare that Julius had power to rise from the grave and turn the swords of his assassins against themselves. That, if true, was an instance of the power of a man, or a man-god, rising from the dead in a spirit of vengeance. But Paul spoke of “resurrection of the dead,” and “power,” in connexion with a “spirit of holiness.” Paul (I knew that already from the epistles) had been an enemy of Christ, as Brutus had been of Cæsar. Comparing the two conquests, I asked whether more “power” might not be claimed for Christ’s “spirit of holiness” than for Cæsar’s spirit of vengeance. For Paul, instead of being killed by Christ, had been made a willing and profitable “slave.” Brutus had been forced to turn his sword against himself; Paul had been constrained by love to turn his new sword, “the sword of the spirit,” against the enemies of his new Master.
What light did this passage throw on the causes of Paul’s conversion? I read it over again. Christ, he said, “came into being,” or was born, “of the seed of David according to the flesh.” Well, that might be one cause. A Jew would be more likely to accept as king a descendant of the house of David. And besides, Jews might think that such a birth fulfilled the prophecy above mentioned about “the root of Jesse.” But there might be many born “of the seed of David according to the flesh.” That which “defined” Christ to be “the Son of God” was “the resurrection of the dead”; and the “defining” was “in power” and “according to the spirit of holiness.” By these last words, Paul seemed to separate Christ’s resurrection from any such apparition as that of Julius, or other ghosts and phantasms; which may appear to this man or to that, and then vanish, either caused by evil magic, and doing an evil and magical work, or doing no work at all; whereas the rising again of Christ was caused by a holy power and resulted in a work of abiding power and “holiness.”
This it was that led me into a new digression. Recalling how the spirit of Cæsar was said to have appeared and spoken to Brutus, I desired to know what words the spirit of Christ said to Paul, and when and how Christ appeared to him. I wished also to inquire about the nature of Paul himself, before and after his conversion; and whether he shewed signs of restlessness, and of ambition to become a leader in a new sect. Perhaps I should have spared myself this searching if I had known that, along with the gospels, Flaccus was sending me Luke’s Acts of the Apostles. But the results of the search were helpful to me. So I will set them down in case they may be helpful to others.
First, then, I found that, before his conversion, Paul had been a Jew of the strictest kind. “Ye have heard,” he said to the Galatians, “how that beyond measure I used to persecute the church of God and laid it waste, and I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” That expression “ye have heard” clearly shewed that it was a matter of notoriety. The writer meant (I thought) not only “ye have heard from me,” but also “from others,” perhaps meaning his enemies, the Judaizers (often mentioned in this epistle), who pointed at him the finger of scorn, saying, “This is the man that changed his mind. This man thought once as we do.” To the Philippians also Paul said that he had every claim to be confident “in the flesh,” being “A Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to the righteousness that is in the law, blameless.” So also he said to one of his assistants, Timothy, that he, Paul, had been “the chief of sinners” because he had persecuted the church.
Elsewhere I found him writing to the Romans that his heart sorrowed for his countrymen and that he could almost have prayed to be “accursed from Christ” for their sake, for they, he said, had the Patriarchs, and to them were made the promises; and he expressed a fervid hope that in the end the nation would receive the promises, though for a time they were shut out. What he said to the Romans convinced me, inan indirect way, almost as strongly as what he said to the Galatians and Philippians, that Paul had been a genuine patriot, observing the traditions, as well as the written law, of the Jews, and persecuting the Christians with all his might because he thought (as we also were wont to think in Rome) that they were a pestilential sect, destructive of law, order, and morality. So much for what Paul was before his conversion.
Next, as to what happened to him at the moment of his conversion. First I turned to the Corinthian letter describing the appearances of Christ after death, to see whether anything had escaped me in the context—any words uttered by Christ to Paul, for example, at the time. But there was nothing except the bald statements, by this time familiar to me, “He is recorded to have been raised on the third day according to the scriptures; and he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; afterwards he appeared to above five hundred brethren, of whom the greater part remain till now, but some are fallen asleep; then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.” All this Paul had previously delivered to the Corinthians—so says the letter—as a “tradition,” and as a part of his “gospel.”
This gave me no help. All that I could infer from it was that Christ probably “appeared” to his enemy Paul in the same way in which he had “appeared” to his friends and followers, and that the “appearing” must have been of a cogent kind, since it convinced an enemy. Nor did I gain much more from the Galatian account, which was as follows: “But when it was the good pleasure of God—who set me apart for this service even from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace—to reveal His Son in me that I might make it my life’s work to preach the good tidings about him among the nations, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither did I go up to Jerusalem to those that had been apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and turned back again to Damascus.”
Here I was in doubt whether “reveal His Sonin me,”meant “revealby my means,” or “revealin my heart,” that is, “unveil in my soul the image of the Son, which up to that time I had smothered with self-will and obstinacy”—as though “the Son” had been all the while in Paul’s heart, but he had been refusing to acknowledge him. This latter interpretation I preferred. But still there was no mention of any words uttered by Christ to Paul at the moment of his conversion. Only, as Paul implies elsewhere that he had not seen Jesus in the flesh, that is, in person, I presumed that there must have been some such utterance as “I am Jesus,” or “I am the crucified”:—else, how would Paul have recognised the appearance?
As to the place of conversion, however, some light was afforded by the words “I turned back to Damascus,” shewing that he had been near Damascus when it happened. And the epistle to the Corinthians said that he had been let down in a basket from Damascus so as to escape the Jews. It appeared that he was persecuting the Christians up to the time of his conversion; that he was doing this in or near Damascus when he was converted; and that the Jews living in that city turned against him after his conversion, so that he had to escape from them.
Hereupon I tried to imagine Paul the persecutor, in his course of “persecuting the church,” suddenly stopped by an apparition of Christ. In respect of his acts, Paul—though he could not possibly have been so cruel—might be compared to Nero, who also persecuted the Christians. But in respect of righteousness and truth and fervour, Paul was like Epictetus. Then I recalled the story recently told me by Scaurus, how he and his father had come suddenly upon the young Epictetus, in the Neronian gardens, staring upon the Christians in their torments, and how Scaurus had remarked upon the ineffaceableness of the impression produced on his own mind and (as he believed) on that of my future Teacher. That I could well understand. But Scaurus and Epictetus were merely passive spectators. Paul was a perpetrator. “How much deeper,” I said, “and all the more deep and terrible in proportion to his sense of justice and truth, must have been the impression on Paul’s mind, when he suddenly woke up to the fact that he hadbeen persecuting the followers of Truth, the disciples of the Suffering Servant of God, predicted by the prophets!”
Then it appeared to me that perhaps the precisewordsuttered by Christ in that moment of Paul’s shock and agony were not of so much importance as thefeelingof shock and agony itself, followed by a great wrenching away of prejudices and misconceptions, and by a sudden influx of a dazzling light on eyes habituated to darkness. Looking again at the Philippian letter, I perceived how much Paul had to give up, how lightly he regarded the sacrifice of all his prospects of prosperity and promotion among his own people: “But whatever things were once gains to me, these I have counted as loss for Christ’s sake. Nay, more, I count all things as loss for the sake of the preeminence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whose sake I suffered the loss of all that I had, and I count it all as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him—not having as my own righteousness that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is from God based on that faith—that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and fellowship with His sufferings, being conformed with His death; if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead! Not that I have already received, or am already perfected. But I pursue the chase, if by any means I may seize as a prize that for which I was also seized as a captive by Christ Jesus!”
These last words made me understand how Paul might have regarded Christ as manifestedinhim rather thantohim. Isaiah saw God uplifted on highoutsidehim. But Paul felt the Son of God enthroned as sovereignwithinhim: I remembered reading in some drama how the wife of a dethroned and submissive sovereign goads him to rebel against his successor, saying—