I mention this because I have myself heard the young Irenæus maintain that Christ was actually about fifty years of age. And he not only quoted John in support of this assertion but declared that it was also the opinion of the elders conversant with John. When I heard him, I remembered what Scaurus had said. I have never had any doubt that Scaurus was right. At the same time it seems to me that a Jewish allusion of this kind was extremely liable to be misunderstood, and that the writer of this gospel would not perhaps have set it down if he had not received it from the originator, John the son of Zebedee. This, however, is only my conjecture. The error of Irenæus is a fact. And I could mention another of the brethren, who wrote a commentary on John, and actually altered “fifty” to “forty”—I suppose, to make sense! Both these errors arose from not understanding John’s allusion.
Then Scaurus passed to the structure of the work which, he said, under appearance of great simplicity, and of an iteration that might sometimes seem almost garrulous or senile, conformed to certain Jewish rules of twofold and threefold attestation. He shewed how the book—describing a new creation of the world—begins and ends with six days. He also shewed how the author takes pleasure in refrains of words, and cycles or repetitions of events. For example, he describes Christ as being baptized at the beginning in one Bethany and anointed at the end in another Bethany. “I could give you,” he said, “other instances of this sort of thing. The book is a poem, not a history.”
About this I was not yet able to judge; but I felt that by “poem” he did not mean “mere fiction.” For he had already admitted that the book contained historical as well as spiritual truth. And knowing his deep love of goodness, I was not altogether surprised at what came next: “O my dear Quintus, while reading this extraordinary book I have been more than once tempted to say, ‘Along with a great deal that I do not want, this man almost gives me what I do want—what I have been long desiring.’ I have told you how, years ago, I cravedfor a city of truth and justice. Well, I knew the Jews were a narrow, bigoted, and uncharitable race. No Jewish philosopher or prophet was likely to be my guide to such a city. But Isaiah was an exception. And somehow I fancied that this Jesus might be a developed Isaiah, and that his new city would have over its gates, ‘Entrance free. Not even Roman patricians excluded.’ But what did I find in some of the earliest gospels? In effect, this, ‘None but the lost sheep of the House of Israel admitted here!’
“Now comes this latest of all the evangelists and says, ‘We have changed all that. The old inscription is taken down. See the new inscription, ROOM FOR ALL! We welcome the universe. Read me, and see what I say aboutother sheep, and aboutone flock, one shepherd.’ To all which I reply, ‘Alas, my unknown but well-intentioned friend, I see, too clearly, that your friendliness exceeds your judgment. You honestly think that your gospel is so good that it must be true. You are not, I feel sure, decoying me—not consciously at least. You are the decoy bird. You have been decoyed yourself to decoy others. But Scaurus is too old a bird to be caught in such a manifest net. Whence this new doctrine? Why was it not in the earliest gospels?’ I think John would find it hard to answer that question! If I had come to Jesus the Nazarene and said to him, ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ I doubt not that he would have replied to me, ‘Marcus Æmilius Scaurus, you doubtless think yourself a great person, as much superior to the low born Pontius Pilate as Pilate thinks himself superior to me. Understand, then, that I have no message for you. You know what name I gave to the Syrophœnician woman. I give the same to you’.”
This passage was written in very large irregular characters, especially towards the close, quite unlike my old friend’s usual hand. Then followed these words, in his own neat regular writing—as though he had been interrupted and resumed his pen in a cooler mood—“Let me try to be honest. I may have said rather more than I meant. I meant this fifteen years ago. Perhaps I mean it still. But after reading this new gospel, I feel somewhat less certain. Still, I fear that the truth may be as I have said.”
Had I read to the end of Scaurus’s letter I should not have been so startled by this sudden outburst. As it was, I had but a faint perception of the cause. I did not give weight enough to the indications—slight to others but they ought to have been clear to me—that the old man was writing under a great mental strain. Striving to be fair to the evangelists, he desired also to do justice to himself, half repenting that he had rejected the Saviour, half vindicating the rejection on the ground that truth constrained it. The whole tone of his letter—the handwriting itself, if I had only noted it more closely—should have made me perceive that he was passing rapidly through many transient phases, and that this outburst of passionate indignation—not with Christ but with what he supposed to be Mark’s Christ—was but one of them. I did not notice these things. I was too much wrapped up in my own thoughts, and in imaginations of what I could have said, and how I could have pleaded with him for Christ.
It was now late, and I could read no more. I retired to rest—but not at first to peaceful rest. Thoughts and dreams, fancies and phantoms, passed indistinguishably before me: Scaurus and Clemens opposing one another, Hermas mediating, while Epictetus looked on; Troy, Rome, Jerusalem, and the City of Truth and Justice coming down from heaven; sunset and sunrise ushered by Hesper and Phosphor—with snatches of familiar utterances about “perceiving,” “believing,” and “deceiving,” and mocking repetitions of “logos,” “logos”—aconfused, shifting, and multitudinous medley that resolved itself at last into one vast and dizzying whirlpool, in which all existence seemed endlessly revolving round a central abyss, when suddenly I heard “In the beginning was the Logos.” Then the whirlpool was drawn up to the sky as though it had been a painted curtain; and we were standing below, Scaurus and I, and Clemens, and Epictetus, and Hermas—all of us gazing upwards to an unspeakable glory ascending and descending between heaven and earth. Then I fell into a peaceful sleep.
Next morning I continued reading the letter. “About the marvels or miracles in this gospel,” said Scaurus, “it is worth noting that the author mentions only seven, that is to say, seven before the resurrection. This, I believe, is the number assigned to Elijah, whereas Elisha has fourteen—having ‘a double portion’ of Elijah’s spirit. This selection of seven is one among many indications that the work uses Jewish symbolism. I have shewn above that the Jewish genealogies are sometimes adapted in that way, as with Matthew’s ‘fourteen generations.’ A more important fact is that this writer calls the miracles ‘signs’—not ‘mighty works,’ which is the term in the three gospels. This is very interesting and I like him for it. He hates the words ‘strong,’ and ‘mighty,’ and ‘mighty work.’ For the matter of that, so does Epictetus. Both would agree that it is only slaves that obey ‘the stronger.’
“He also dislikes arithmetical ‘greatness’ and discussions about ‘who is the greatest?’ He prefers to lay stress on unity. Christians, he thinks, are ‘one with the Son,’ or they are ‘in’ the Son, or the Son is ‘in’ them. They are also to be ‘one,’ as the Father and the Son are ‘one.’ When men are regarded in this way, arithmetical standards of greatness—based on one’s income, or on the amount of one’s alms, or the amount of one’s prayers, or one’s sufferings, or one’s converts—become ridiculous. He is quite right.
“He makes no mention of ‘repentance.’ That, I think, is because he prefers such expressions as ‘coming to God’ or ‘coming to the light,’ rather than mere ‘change of mind.’ He never uses the noun ‘faith’ or ‘belief.’ Probably he found itin use as a technical term among some foolish Christians—speaking of ‘faith that moves mountains’—who forgot to ask ‘faith inwhat?’ For the same reason, no doubt, he preferred the word ‘signs’ to ‘mighty works,’ because the former—at all events while it was a novel term—might make men ask ‘signs ofwhat?’ The phrase ‘mighty work’ makes us ask nothing. Nor does a ‘mighty’ work prove anything, except that the doer is ‘mighty’—perhaps a giant, perhaps a magician, perhaps a God. Who is to decide? Epictetus says that Ceres and Pluto are proved to be Gods because they produce ‘bread.’ So this John represents Christ as producing bread and wine and healing disease and raising the dead; and these are ‘signs’ that he is a Giver of divine gifts and a Healer, like Apollo.
“In the case of one miracle, omitted by Luke, John intervenes and gives the sign a different aspect—I mean the one in which Mark and Matthew represent Christ as walking over the water to the disciples in a storm and as coming into their boat. John represents Christ as standing on the edge of the sea and as drawing the disciples safely to himself as soon as they cry out to him. I have no doubt that the story is an allegory. But John seems to me to give it in the nobler, and perhaps the earlier, form.
“There were probably multitudes of exorcisms performed by Jesus, as I have said to you before. But John does not mention a single instance. Perhaps he thought that more than enough had been said about these things by the earlier evangelists. On the other hand, he describes the healing of a man born blind, and the raising of a man named Lazarus from the dead, after he had lain in the tomb three days.
“The nearest approach to this is a story in Luke about raising from the coffin a young man, the son of a widow. I was long ago inclined to think Luke’s story allegorical, and a curious book, which recently came into my hands, confirms this view. It is assigned to Ezra, but was really written, at least in its present form, about five and twenty years ago. I think it mixes Jewish and Christian thought. Ezra sees a vision of a woman sorrowing for her only child. She has had no son till after ‘thirty years’ of wedlock. The son grew upand was to be married. When he ‘entered into his wedding chamber, he fell down and died.’ Presently it is explained, ‘The woman is Sion.’ For ‘thirty years’ there was ‘no offering.’ After ‘thirty years,’ Solomon ‘builded the city and offered offerings.’ Then Jerusalem was destroyed. But Ezra sees a new city builded, ‘a large place.’ It is a strange mixture. David, says the scripture, was a ‘son of thirty years’ when he began to reign, and he may be supposed to have died about the time when the Temple began to be built. On the other hand Christ also was a ‘son of thirty years’ when he began to preach the gospel, and Christ might be said to have died at the time when he entered the Temple to purify it (that is, as Jews might say, ‘entered the wedding chamber’).
“I don’t profess to explain all this Ezra-allegory. The only point worth noting is that it describes events that befellthe Cityandthe Templeof the Jews as though they befellpersons—a ‘woman’ and a deceased ‘son.’ Luke omits the charge brought against Christ that he threatened to destroy ‘the temple’ and build another. But there can be no doubt that there was some basis of fact for the charge. John gives that basis, by saying that Christ had in view a ‘body,’ meaning himself. This indicates that Luke was misled through not understanding Jewish metaphor. So here Luke may have been misled again. He found a tradition describing the ‘raising up’ of the ‘widow’s son,’ and he took it literally.” The explanation thus suggested by Scaurus seemed to me probable. It explained why Luke omitted “the raising up of the temple.” It also explained why Mark and Matthew omitted “the raising up of the widow’s son.”
Scaurus proceeded to the account of the raising of Lazarus. “This narrative,” he said, “is extremely beautiful and may perhaps have had some basis of historical fact. Luke speaks of a Lazarus, who dies, and is carried after death into Abraham’s bosom. Some Christians might take this Lazarus for a historical character. But I do not think any confusion arising from that story can have had very much to do with the story in John. The latter seems to me to have been thrown into allegorical form, so that Lazarus may represent humanity, first, corrupt,mere ‘flesh and blood’; secondly, raised up by ‘the help of God.’ ‘My God helps’ is the meaning of Eliezer or Lazarus. Philo sees in the name these two associations. Also a Christian writer named Barnabas has some curious traditions that may bear on this name; and so have the Jews. Possibly John may mean—over and above the man Lazarus—the human race, raised up to life by the Messiah at the intercession of two sisters, representing the Jewish and the Gentile Churches of the Christians. Similarly I am told that Christians describe the two sisters Leah and Rachel as representing the Synagogue and the Church.
“For my part, having spoken to many physicians, and having investigated some instances of revivification, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus possessed a remarkable power of healing the sick and even perhaps of restoring life to those from whom (to all appearance) life had recently departed. Nay, I am dreamer enough to go beyond anything that physicians would allow, and to suppose that Christ may have had a certain power of what I called aboveteliatreia, ‘healing at a distance,’ producing a correspondingtelepatheia, or ‘being healed at a distance.’ But there is against this particular narrative the objection—not to be overcome except by very strong evidence indeed—that the other evangelists say nothing about this stupendous miracle. Having in view Christ’s precept to the disciples, ‘Raise the dead,’ I see how easily honest Christians might be led to take metaphor for fact. It is much more easy to explain how the narratives of the widow’s son and of Lazarus may have arisen from misunderstanding in the two latest gospels, than to explain how, though true, they were omitted in the two earliest.”
Upon this, I read the story of the raising of Lazarus two or three times over. It appeared to me certain that the writer of the gospel must have taken the story as literally true. But I saw how easy it was to mistake metaphor for literal meaning in stories of this kind. I was also impressed by what Scaurus said concerning the precept, “Raise the dead,” which is recorded by Matthew. No other writer mentions this; and I had assumed, at the time of which I am now speaking, thatit was meant spiritually, and that Luke omitted it because he thought that it might be misunderstood as having a literal meaning. And here I may say, writing forty-five years afterwards, that I have lately spoken to several of the brethren about this precept. Some leave it out of their text of Matthew. Some refuse to say anything about it. But I have not as yet found a single brother ready to admit that Jesus must have used it, or even probably used it, metaphorically.
All this I did not know at the time when I was reading Scaurus’s letter; but I recognised the force of his arguments and was constrained to sympathize with his disappointment when he proceeded as follows: “O, my dearest Quintus, what earthen vessels, what mere potsherds, these gospel writers are, even the best of them, in comparison with the man whom they fail to set before us! Yes, even this John, whom I regard as by far the greatest of them all, even he is a failure—but in his case, perhaps, from want of knowledge, not from want of insight. As for the others, why do they not trust to the greatness of their subject, the man Jesus Christ? Why can they not believe that the Logos might become incarnate as a man, that is to say, a real man—what Jesus himself calls ‘son of man’? Why do they lay so much stress on mere ‘mighty works,’ some of which, even if they could be proved to have happened, would give us little insight into the real greatness of their Master, whom they wish us to worship?
“For my part, I take such stories as those of the destruction of the swine and the withering of the fig-tree, to be allegories misinterpreted as facts. But even if I were shown to be wrong, they would not prove to me that I was right in worshipping the doer of such wonders. If I can judge myself aright, I, Marcus Æmilius Scaurus, am quite prone enough already to worship the God of the Thunderbolts and the God of War. These Jews might have taught me better. They have, to some extent—especially this fourth writer. But how much more from the first might have been effected if, from the first, they had recognised the truth taught in the legend of Elijah—that the Lord is ‘not in the earthquake’ but ‘in the still small voice’!”
At this point, Scaurus’s handwriting became irregular and sometimes not easy to read. “I have been interrupted again,” he said. “This time, it was Flaccus. Now I take up my pen positively for the last time, wondering why I take it up, and why I ramble on in this maundering fashion. I think it is because I feel as though you and I were dreaming together, and I am loth to leave off. There is no one else in the world with whom I can thus dream in partnership. This shall really be my last dreaming.
“Do not be vexed with me, Quintus, for charging Flaccusnotto send you a copy of this little book. He told me that for some time past you had been interested in these subjects, and that, if he could find another copy, he intended to forward it to you. The rascal added something about ‘mere literary interest.’ I suspect him of Christian tendencies. Your recent letters have reassured me. But I cannot help feeling that there have been moments with you, as with me, when the ‘interest’ was more than ‘merely literary.’ I had half thought of sending you my copy. But I shall not. The subject is too fascinating—like chess; and, like chess, it leads to nothing. I was glad to hear—in your last letter, I think—that you were now giving your mind to practical affairs. If you decide on the army at once, there is likely to be work soon in Illyria.
“Things also look cloudy, not black yet but cloudy, in Syria. In spite of the thrashing they got from the late Emperor, these Jews have not yet learned their lesson. They are as stubborn and obstinate as Hannibal made us out to be:—
‘Gens quae cremato fortis ab IlioJactata Tuscis aequoribus sacraNatosque maturosque patresPertulit Ausonias ad urbes,Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibusNigrae feraci frondis in AlgidoPer damna, per caedes, ab ipsoDucit opes animumque ferro.’
‘Gens quae cremato fortis ab IlioJactata Tuscis aequoribus sacraNatosque maturosque patresPertulit Ausonias ad urbes,Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibusNigrae feraci frondis in AlgidoPer damna, per caedes, ab ipsoDucit opes animumque ferro.’
‘Gens quae cremato fortis ab Ilio
Jactata Tuscis aequoribus sacra
Natosque maturosque patres
Pertulit Ausonias ad urbes,
Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido
Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.’
“How every word of this would suit the Jews! I mean in their past history. According to my news (from a friend of Rufus the new Governor) it may suit their future, too; and wemay have to take Jerusalem again. Then—to quote Isaiah and Horace in one—there will be another ‘lopping of the boughs’ in the future. But I mean their past. I wonder whether you understand what I am dreaming of. Probably not, and it is not worth explaining. Nor indeed am I well enough to explain clearly and briefly. I have been going in too much for books of late, and feel at this moment (to quote an old friend) ‘dead from the waist down.’ However—as I am not going to write about these Jews again—I will scribble my last thoughts to the end.
“How strange it would have been, then, my dearest Quintus, if these Jews—I mean the Jewish Jews not the Christian Jews—how strange, I say, it would have been, looked at as a poem, if these fellows had fulfilled Hannibal’s prophecy. They went some way towards it. Though their Ilium has been twice burned they are still alive, numerous, and active. Their ‘ilex’ has had ‘pruning’ enough, heaven knows, from the Roman axe of late, and from the Assyrian and Babylonian axes in days gone by. But they want pruning still. Witness a score of eastern cities, where they have lately been massacring myriads of Greeks—not, I own, without having seen myriads of their countrymen massacred first.
“Their disadvantage has been that they have never made a new start as Æneas did, so as to turn old Troy into new Rome. Æneas could take his gods with him. The Jews could not. The only place where they have done anything of the kind is Alexandria. There they have an imitation temple—not a rival temple of course, but an imitation—and there they are at their best. But elsewhere the stubborn creatures—from Gaul to Euphrates—recognise no home or sacred ground except in a little corner of Syria. Providence has done its best to detach them from this servitude by using Titus to destroy their temple a second time, and by leaving their sacred utensils no existence except upon Titus’s arch. But still they are servants of thegenius loci, so to speak. As they cannot serve the temple, they serve the ground on which it stands and the traditions that have collected round it.
“The Christian Jews have immense advantages. They arelike the Trojan Romans. The Christians have left their Troy (that is to say, carnal Jerusalem) in order to dwell in Rome (that is to say, heavenly Jerusalem) the city of truth, the city of justice, the city of freedom and universal brotherhood. Their sacred fire is the Holy Spirit. Their sacred vessels are human beings. Every great city in Asia contains their ‘holy things.’ To celebrate their feast on the body and blood of their Saviour, a table of pine wood, a platter, and a mug, supply them with all they need! A little bread, and wine mingled with water, have taken the place of Solomon’s hecatombs! Surely this is the very perfection of religious simplicity—an ambassador in a plain Roman toga amid the courtiers of a Ptolemy!
“Again, when we Romans call on Jupiter, offering our costliest white oxen, who supposes that Jupiter descends? But when these Christians meet, without a denarius in their pockets, three in a room, they tell you that Christ is with them. What is more, many of them believe it! What is most, some of them act as though they believed it! I have called their city a city of dreams, and I repeat it. But, mark you, a city of dreams has one great advantage over a city of bricks or stone. You can smash the latter. But neither Nero, nor Trajan, has been able to smash the former; and I begin to doubt whether it could be smashed by Hadrian, if he tried. At the present rate, I should not be surprised if, in the next hundred years, the empire from the Euphrates to Britain were dotted with colonies of Christ.
“‘Let arms of war give place to the gown of peace!’ So sang the lawyer of Arpinum when he tried his hand at poetry. He was better advised, in his lawyer’s gown, when he confessed ‘Laws are silent among arms.’ But there is a third power more powerful than either laws or arms. You won’t believe me when I tell you its name. It is ‘dreams.’ Yes, ‘Among dreams,’ says Scaurus—and he knows, having been himself a dreamer, in his day, besides being a bit of a soldier and a good deal of a looker on—‘Among dreams, arms are vain.’ I don’t say they are ‘silent.’ That is their contemptible feature—they arenot‘silent.’ But they are impotent. Marsagainst dreams may make what fuss and bustle he pleases, clash, clang, thunder, like the brazen wheels of Salmoneus. But his thundering will effect nothing. Nor will his steel. ‘Frustra diverberet umbras.’
“When I say ‘dreams,’ do not take me to mean that the personality of a great prophet is a ‘dream.’ But the notion that an empire can be spun out of it, or built on it, seems to me a dream. Yet there is something attractive in it—I mean in the conception of a soul like a vast magnet, attracting and magnetizing a group of souls, of which each in turn becomes a new magnet, magnetizing a group of its own, and so on, and so on, till the whole empire (or family) of souls is bound together by this magnetic law. Yes, ‘law’ one may call it, not a magical incantation, but a natural law, the law of the spiritual magnet. It is all very strange. Yet, given the personality, it is possible.
“For it all comes to this, a personality—nothing more. There is nothing new in what the Christians call their Testament or Covenant—nothing new at all, from the Jewish point of view, except that the new Jews have cast aside a great deal of the Covenant of the old Jews. I sometimes think the Christian leader was really what Socrates calls himself, a ‘cosmian’ or ‘cosmopolite,’ going back, behind the law of Moses, to a beginning of things before unclean food was Levitically forbidden and before free divorce was Levitically sanctioned. His two fundamental rules are the same, both for Jews and for Christians, ‘Love God,’ ‘Love man.’
“The difference is, that to the Christians (so they assert) Christ has introduced a new kind of love, a new power of love. He has not only breathed it into his disciples but also given them (they say) the power of breathing it into others. The question is, Have they this power? I am obliged to admit—from what I hear—that a good many of them appear to me to have it. This is the real miracle. This, if true, is sunlight. All the so-called miracles of their books, even if true, are the merest, palest moonlight compared with this.
“This dreamer seems to me to have planned an imperial peace throughout his cosmopolis, to be brought about, not bythreats based on the power of inflicting death, not by edicts on stone backed by punishments with steel, but by means of a spirit that is to creep into our hearts, dethrone our intellects, drag us in triumph behind his chariot wheels, making us fanatically happy when we are in love with him—and with all the weak, the foolish, the suffering, and the oppressed—and making us unreasonably unhappy, foolishly sad and sick at heart, when we resist a blind affection for others and when we consult our own interests and our own pleasures, following the path of prudent wisdom.
“In one respect, this work of John’s has proved me a false prophet. I prophesied that East and West could not unite in one religion. Theyhaveunited—on paper, and in theory—in this little book. But I also said that, if they did unite, their offspring would be a portent. To that I adhere. If John’s form of the Christian superstition were to overspread the world, do you seriously suppose that it would remain in his form? No, it is impossible but that the spiritual will be despiritualised. The superstition of pure spirit will probably become a superstition of unmixed matter. The life will be narrowed to the Body and the Blood. The Body and the Blood will be narrowed down still further to the Bread and the Wine. Then their hyperbolical self-sacrifice will give way to hyperbolical malignity. How these Christians will, in due time, hate one another! How they will wall in, and imprison, the Spirit that bloweth whither it listeth! How they will war against one another for their Prince of Peace! How they will philosophize and hair-split about the Father and the Son, tearing one another in pieces for the unity of the one God! And yet, and yet, even if all my prophecies of the worst come to pass, might not a Christian philosopher of those far-off days say that the ‘worst is often the corruption of the best,’ and that his Prophet had discovered a ‘best,’ buried for a time beneath all this rubbish and litter, but destined to emerge and grow into the tree of a great spiritual empire? It may be so. I do not deny that there may be such a ‘best.’ But it is not for me.
“I give it up. The problem of the Sphinx is too hard for my brains. Perhaps Destiny knows its own mind, and it maybe a good mind—not my mind, but perhaps an infinitely better and wiser. Perhaps this Christian superstition is intended to found an empire after the Spirit, an empire of ‘the Son of man,’ like, but unlike, the empires of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome. Daniel dreamed this for Jewish Jews. It may come true for Christian Jews. If it should come, what a tyranny it will be—for those, at least, who are tyrants at heart! The yoke of the Imperium Romanum will be nothing to the yoke of the Imperium Romanochristianum. We Romans despotize over bodies: the Roman Christians will despotize over souls. ‘Debellare superbos’ is only one of our arts. ‘Pacis imponere mores’ is a second. ‘Parcere subjectis’ is a third. These Roman Christians will know how to crush, but not how to spare. What saints it will create—for the spiritual! What devils—for the carnal! And which will win in the end, saint or devil? I incline, with oscillation, to the saint. But I am sick and tired of inclinations and oscillations; I want toknow. Iknowthat the sun shines. I want toknow—just at this moment I feel very near knowing, nearer than I ever have been in my whole life—that the world has been made all of a piece, and is being shaped by the Maker to one end, and that, the best.
“O, my dear Silanus, I am weary of these books. I must go out into the fresh air and see the sun. Books, books, books! I agree with Epictetus, who thinks that Chrysippus wrote some two hundred too many. I agree with John, too, who says, in effect, that not all the pens and paper in the world could draw the portrait of his master—or rather his friend, for ‘friend,’ not ‘servant,’ is the title at the end of the book. That reminds me, by the way, of a beautiful thought in this gospel—I mean that the author is ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’! As much as to say, ‘Do you want to know Jesus? Then get afriendof his—some onewhom Jesus loved—to introduce you. There is no other way. Not an impartial biographer—he is of no use—but afriend.’ And I think he means to hint, at the close of his little book, that there always will be, ‘tarrying,’ till Jesus comes again, a ‘disciple whom Jesus loved,’ to represent him to the world.
“That is most true. That is real insight, the insight of an artist and a prophet in one. I can forgive John almost all his faults—ambiguities, artificialities, statements of non-fact as fact, I can condone them all as orientalisms or Alexandrian Judaisms—for the sake of this one truth, that we cannot know the greatest of the departed great, save through a human being that has loved him and has been loved by him. This is the thought with which John ends and with which I will end. I wish to part friends with him. Indeed at this moment, for his sake, I could almost call myself an amateur Christian. But then I pull myself together and recognise that it only proves what I have said to you a score of times, and now repeat for the last time, that whereas we Romans are only coarse, clumsy, brutal Samnites, these Christians are the wiliest, kindest, and gentlest of retiarii.
“And that makes me think of old Hermas. You remember I told you of our last interview. It comes back to me while I am finishing this last dream. I always felt there was more in his face than I could understand. Now, after reading this gospel, I seem, just at this moment, to understand his face for the first time, quite well. The old man had in him the love of ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ It had been breathed into his being. This it was that half fascinated me, shining out of his eyes as he silently left the room on that afternoon—to me unforgettable—when I dismissed him. What if I had not dismissed him? What if⸺.”
These words were the last of a column. They were the last that Scaurus was ever to write. The next column was blank. At first I thought he had been again interrupted and had forgotten to finish the letter. But then I recollected with alarm that, quite contrary to custom, the cover had not been directed in his handwriting. I had thrown it hastily aside on the previous evening. Now I searched for it and my alarm was speedily justified. Inside was a short and hurried note from Marullus saying that my dear old friend had been struck suddenly with paralysis in the act of writing to me. A messenger (said Marullus) who happened to be at that moment waiting to carry Scaurus’s letter, would carry at thesame time Marullus’s note. On the following day, whatever might happen, he would send a second letter by a special messenger.
It was now drawing towards evening. I hastened out to ascertain how soon a vessel, available for my purpose, would be leaving Nicopolis. Finding that I could start on the following day at noon, I determined not to wait for Marullus’s second letter but to make preparations for an immediate return.
Scaurus, and not the fourth gospel, nor any other book, person, or thing, was uppermost in my mind, when, late in the evening, I hurried to the house of Justus to keep my engagement with Clemens. Two or three hours ago, I had been longing for this interview. Now I would willingly have avoided it. I seemed to see my old friend speechless on his bed in Tusculum, saying to me with his eyes, “Do not desert me. Do not go over to the enemy.” Not till later did I feel that Scaurus could not have called Clemens “enemy.”
“I am tired of books”—so Scaurus had written. So was I, quite tired. I wanted to think, not talk; or, if to talk, to talk about Scaurus, not about gospels or books of any sort. “How glad should I be to exchange this interview for five minutes’ chat with old Marullus!”—that was my thought when I found myself, more than an hour after sunset, sitting face to face with Clemens.
I returned him the book—so precious to me yesterday—with some words of formal thanks. What should I say next? About the one subject that filled all my thoughts I felt no desire to talk to a stranger—“yes” (I said to myself) “a stranger to Scaurus, though a friend, a real friend, to me.” Yet something had to be said. I began by excusing myself, at an absurd length, for being late. Clemens acknowledged the excuse with a slight inclination of the head. His face was questioning me, and his eyes were reading me. But he left it to me to speak, and to open our interview if I desired one.Then I blundered out some absurd stuff—in the way of humour!—about the possibility that he might suppose me to have forgotten my engagement.
Clemens did not seem in the least ruffled or even surprised. After a pause, in which the questioning look gave place to one of sympathy, he said, very slowly and gently, “No, my dear friend, I could not suppose that. Nor could you think that I could suppose that. Some trouble, I perceive, has befallen you. You felt bound to keep your engagement with me, and you have done so. You did right. But you will not do right if you stay longer, out of courtesy to me, when your conscience tells you that it would be better for you to be alone.”
When I entered the room, I had distinctly preferred to be alone. Even now, I so far desired solitude that I murmured some words of thanks for his consideration, and rose to go. But something kept me standing irresolute. I do not know what it was at first. Certainly it was not any thought about the new gospel. Perhaps it was my new friend’s directness, truthfulness and insight, in discerning and brushing aside my pretence, and his kind and courteous way of forgiving it, that made me suddenly feel, “This is a man that Scaurus would have liked to know. This is a man that Scaurus would like me to know. He tells me to go if I feel that it will be ‘better’ for me to be alone. But will it be ‘better’?”
It may have been this that checked my going. I do not know for certain. But I do know what decided me to stay. I suddenly saw Scaurus. He was in the library at Tusculum, with his back to me, at his writing-table, but not writing, half risen from his seat, and looking towards the door, which was slowly closing. As it closed, he turned and looked round at me, with such a sadness as I had never seen on his face except once or twice, when I had gone wrong and he was striving to lead me right. I knew what he meant, as well as if he had said the words aloud, “Hermas is gone, and I shall repent it through my life. Do not let your Hermas go!” I resumed my seat and tried to collect my thoughts.
It seemed to me now only right and natural that I shouldtell Clemens of Scaurus’s illness and of my intention to leave Nicopolis on the morrow. He took my departure as a matter of course. Could he be of service, he asked, in making arrangements for my sailing? I assured him that everything had been done that was needful for that day. Then I told him how Scaurus had urged me to join Epictetus’s classes, and that he wished me afterwards to join the army. Finding him interested and sympathetic, I gave him an account of my old friend’s life, his affection for me, his love of research, his literary pursuits, and his study of Jewish as well as Greek literature, not omitting his early reading of the gospels, nor forgetting to tell him about old Hermas the Christian, his librarian. He listened with more and more attention. “I am not surprised,” he said, “that you love so good a friend and so honest a man.”
Presently I said, “I wonder whether it would be still possible and right for me to join the army, if⸺” and there I stopped. “Dear friend,” said he, “if that unmentioned thing were to come to pass, trust me that nothing would be possible or right for you against which your conscience cried out, and nothing wrong that your conscience permitted. Some might condemn your decision—whether to join the army or not to join. But you would not be bound by their condemnation. Your conscience would receive guidance. Those who follow on that unmentioned path do not follow with an ‘if.’ Should that path be taken, it would be, not on conditions, but because of a friendly constraint. Let us not speak of that now. Tell me more about your friend.” “I have his letter here,” said I, “and would read it if you cared to hear it. But it deals freely, very freely, with the gospels. Once, at least, I think my old friend is unfair to them. It would perhaps pain you.” “It would not pain but please me,” said he. “I always like to hear honest, able, and educated men speak their minds freely about our Christian writings. The pity of it is, that we have hitherto had few such critics. If we had had them when the gospels were first written, perhaps they would have contained fewer things that may in after times cause some of the faithful to stumble.”
So I began to read Scaurus’s letter to him. At first I omitted portions here and there, either because they werepersonal, or because they might hurt the feelings of a Christian. Presently, halting in the middle of a bitter saying, I finished the sentence in my own way—somewhat awkwardly. Clemens smiled. “Pardon me,” said he, “for interrupting you. I am not a master of styles. Yet, if I mistake not, those last words did not come from Æmilius Scaurus. If I am wrong, forgive me. But if I am right in thinking that you altered something to spare my feelings, then let me assure you again that it would trouble me that you should do this, even though the criticism came from the bitterest enemy of the Christians. As it is, I have learned already to esteem your friend as a genuine lover of truth, and one from whom I have even now learned some things and hope to learn more. The more you will allow me to learn (without giving pain to yourself) the better shall I be pleased.” “Well then,” said I, “we will talk about the letter afterwards. For the present, I will read on steadily without omitting a single word, unless you stop me.” And so I did. Clemens listened intently, without stopping me, only he now and then, especially towards the end, expressed assent or interest, or sympathy, by a slight movement or inarticulate murmur; till we came to the last words, the uncompleted sentence, suggesting what might have happened on one memorable afternoon, if he had not dismissed a “disciple whom Jesus loved.” This I did not read, but I placed the letter before him. “These,” said I, “were his last words, the very last.”
He read them, and turned away his face. I thought, and rightly, that he was feeling with me. But I am sure now that he was also praying for me, and for Scaurus too. For a time we sat in silence. I was the first to break it, expressing my sorrow that the story of the Syrophœnician woman should have led Scaurus to form what seemed to me a wrong conception of Christ. “But you see,” replied Clemens, “he revolted from that wrong conception, or was ready to revolt from it, at the last moment of all. And I agree with you that, if he had approached that story with the preparation that Paul gave you, he would have regarded it as you did. I am sure Christ was never cruel to anyone. If He really uttered those seemingly cruel wordsto that sorrowful woman, He was cruel in word, only that He might be the more kind and the more helpful in deed. He intended this gospel to be preached to all the world, though He waited for the Father to teach Him the time and the manner of the preaching to the Gentiles.”
“Is there anything in John’s gospel,” said I, “that resembles this story?” “There is a dialogue,” he replied, “between Christ and a Samaritan woman, who is described as living in sin, just as you have suggested concerning the Syrophœnician. And Christ chides her, but with great gentleness, and finally reveals Himself to her as Messiah. It has occurred to me that this is one of the many instances where John steps in to remove a misunderstanding liable to be caused by some passage in Mark, which Luke omits.”
Then he added, “I will talk with you, if you please, about the letter or the gospel or anything else, if you really desire it. But if you would wish to be alone with your own thoughts (as you well might wish), do not, I beseech you, stay longer. You have laid me under a debt by introducing me to a genuine lover of truth on whom the Light of the World has dawned, even though it may not be given to him to see the full day. May he find peace!”
I was quite willing to stay now. “Do you agree with Scaurus,” said I, “that John alludes in parts of his gospel to the teaching of Epictetus?” “I feel sure,” replied Clemens, “that John alludes to the doctrine of the Stoics and Cynics. Now Epictetus has been, for some years past, most widely known among all classes, rich, poor—yes, and slaves, too—as the representative of the Cynic doctrine. So that your friend seems to me likely to be right.” “Scaurus,” said I, “mentions self-knowledge and God-knowledge as if the former were inculcated by Epictetus, the latter by John, in opposition. Is that so, in your opinion?” “Not quite,” said he, “but nearly so. All the Stoics lay stress, as you know, on self-knowledge. Epictetus, perhaps more than most, teaches men to look for God within themselves. Luke also—alone of the evangelists—has one tradition of this kind, ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ John, feeling that many were prevented thereby from lookingfor God out of themselves, laid stress on the latter. That is to say, John paraphrased Christ’s teaching about ‘the Father in heaven’ in such a form that it should be more familiar to the Greeks, urging them to ‘know God.’ So Paul is said by Luke to have taken as his text on the Areopagus an inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD; and he tried to teach the philosophers that God could be ‘known.’ But neither Paul nor John would deny that self-knowledge, and the consciousness of our own sins, and the sense of our own burdens, are necessary if we are to have our burdens lightened, our sins forgiven, and our souls brought into the light of the glory of the knowledge of God.”
“And as to the ‘troubling’ of Christ,” said I, “mentioned thrice in the fourth gospel, do you agree with Scaurus that there, too, the author is alluding to Epictetus?” “I do indeed,” said he. “I did so from the first moment when I read the new gospel. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. We are born to be lifted up to heaven by troubles. But trouble of soul does not mean confusion or turbidness of soul. Trouble is on the surface, peace is beneath, peace that is deeper than the deepest of depths. In the world, says the Saviour, we shall have tribulation, and tribulation brings trouble with it. But He bids us be of good cheer amidst and beneath all our trouble, because He has overcome the world. Perhaps, however, John emphasizes this doctrine of ‘trouble,’ not out of hostility to the Cynic philosophy, but rather out of a friendly feeling to it, as much as to say, ‘This notion of yours, that you must avoid “trouble,” is the weak point in your teaching. It tends to lower you to the level of the Epicureans. And it gives you a false and unworthy notion of God, who is our Father, and who bears the troubles of His children’.”
From that we passed to other matters, most of which I shall omit—details about the fourth gospel, about its authorship and about Scaurus’s view, that it blended history with allegory. On some of these he thought that Scaurus might be correct. But he was doubtful as to the possibility of explaining, as Scaurus had suggested, the different order in which the evangelists place the purification of the Temple. “For,” said he, “it seems to me scarcely possible that, within the time fromTiberius to Trajan, an evangelist should be led to change the order of such an event simply because of its order in some one book—because it was placed at what Gentiles might take to be the beginning (being really the end) of a Hebrew gospel.” At the same time Clemens admitted that there was an astonishing difference of opinion among Christians as to the period of Christ’s preaching, “and,” said he, “instead of quoting statements or referring to historical facts, they often quote prophecies, or argue from the fitness of things. It is all very unsatisfactory.”
Of this I afterwards had experience. For, after I had become a Christian, I found that some, even though they received the gospel of John, argued that Christ could only have preached for one year—because Isaiah contains the words, “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”! On the other hand, the young Irenæus, bitterly attacking this view, maintained that Christ must have preached till His fortieth or fiftieth year! As I have said above, I have actually heard him supporting this extraordinary supposition by appealing to the authority of the elders that had seen John!
Clemens therefore admitted that he could not feel certain as to the order of events in John’s gospel. It might be, he said, that two events, mentioned in different parts of the gospel as taking place at, or before, a feast, and apparently at, or before, different feasts, might really have taken place at, or before, the same feast. Among several details in which he agreed with Scaurus, one was the narrative of the Walking on the Water. Concerning this he said that, according to John, the walking was not reallyonthe water, any more than a city is really “ona sea” when it is said to lie “onthe Ægean” or “onthe Hadriatic.” He also agreed with Scaurus as to the story about Peter plunging into the water to come to Christ, which might (he thought) explain Matthew’s story, according to which Christ first walked on the water, and then Peter attempted to walk on it towards the Lord, but failed. Both these, he thought, might be metaphorical.
As regards what Scaurus had said concerning the ambiguity of many words and phrases in the fourth gospel, Clemensadmitted it. “But,” said he, “my conviction is that the writer did not use them thus for the mere purpose of being ambiguous, like the oracle ‘Aio te, Æacida.’ I do not deny that he plays upon words, but so does Isaiah. He also repeats and varies phrases, but so do all the prophecies and the Psalms. Similarly he is often dark and obscure. But are there not obscurities also in Æschylus, and Pindar, and in the deepest thoughts of Plato? And whence do these arise? Not surely from a desire to be ambiguous, but from the lawful feeling of a great poet, prompted to use strange language, and sometimes dark language, that is put into his mind to express strange and dark thoughts. So it is with John, at least in my judgment. And as to other parts, which seem artificial—as, for example, when he repeats things twice or thrice in a kind of refrain—I should plead in the same way that a poet, even when most inspired, follows rules. Æschylus and Pindar do not break the laws of Greek metre. Well, Jewish tradition also has rules of its own, quite different from ours, and I believe John observes them.”
Then he referred to John’s use of the word “logos.” Scaurus had described John as leading on his readers fromlogostopathos. Clemens admitted that this was true ifpathosmeant the affections and included that one affection in particular which we call “love.” And he justified John’s course. “For,” said he, “if the Logos is related to God as word is to thought, must we not say that ‘word’ should include every expression of thought, and that the perfect Logos must be the expression of the perfect thought? And what thought can be more perfect than that which Scaurus himself suggests, in his similitude of a magnet attracting all things to itself and causing each attracted object to attract others, so that the multitudinous world is made one harmony? And in the region of the affections, what is this but the highest kind of love, as your friend himself testifies, binding men together in families, cities, nations, and destined, in the end, to unite all as citizens of the city of the universe, or children in the family of God?”
Then Clemens added, without any questioning from me,that he entirely concurred with Scaurus in his feeling that the miracles or signs of Christ, however far they might be literally true, would not be so convincing a proof of His greatness as the power of His Spirit to infuse peace and power, yes, and wisdom, and harmony of thought, into the minds of those who received Him. “I do not mean to assert,” said he, “that all who receive Christ remain steadfast in Him. Many have fallen away through subtle temptations of the world and the flesh; some few, under persecution and the open cruelty of the devil. But as to these last I have noted this. Strong men have fallen while boasting ‘We can endure every torture.’ Weak women have stood fast confessing ‘We can do nothing. Our strength is in the Lord. Our Saviour will stand fast for us.’ Yes, that has been the great miracle, to see slaves changed to nobles, peasants and clowns to orators, fools become wise, and human beasts, not worthy to be called men—ape-like and wolf-like creatures—transmuted into citizens of the kingdom of God.
“And that reminds me of what I specially admired in your friend—the sagacity with which he penetrated to the root of the matter, declaring that our religion is, in reality, no religion at all (not at least what augurs or priests would call a religion) but only union with a personality, a Lord and Saviour and Friend, who is in us and in whom we are, ‘a very present help in trouble.’ We have no system of sacrifices. For He is our sacrifice offered up once visibly on the cross, and offering Himself up invisibly and continually in the hearts of His faithful disciples. We have no code of laws. For He is our law, uttered by Himself once to the ears of the disciples in the two commandments ‘Love God’ and ‘Love thy neighbour,’ when He shewed them how to make all men ‘neighbours’; and now He utters the same law to our hearts, every moment of our lives, giving us a strong desire to do that which is best for our ‘neighbours,’ and helping us to see what is best, and, seeing it, to do it.”
When Clemens said, “He is our sacrifice,” I thought of Paul’s words, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” and of “the blood of sprinkling” about which Scaurus had written.And this led me to ask concerning that other tradition which (Scaurus had told me) was written in the fourth gospel alone, about blood and water issuing from Christ’s side.
“That,” said Clemens, “was the only passage in your friend’s letter where I was strongly moved to ask you to stop reading that we might talk of it at once. His view was new to me. Yet I confess I had always found it difficult to explain how the writer could call on himself to testify to what he himself had asserted. If Æmilius Scaurus should prove right, that difficulty of mine would be removed. Moreover I cannot but admit that John, or any other disciple, would probably have been prevented by the soldiers from approaching to the cross close enough to distinguish the water from the blood flowing from His side. Yet it came on me as a shock to believe that this particular narrative—to which I attach great importance—was based on a vision. Now the shock is somewhat softened. I have been thinking over your friend’s arguments. He is quite right in saying that in John’s epistle, which may be called an epilogue to his gospel, the words ‘He knoweth,’ as expressed in this particular emphatic phrase, would mean ‘Jesus knoweth.’ The meaning may be the same here. Nevertheless, even if it is so, and even if the narrative describes a vision, I should still feel as certain as ever that this vision expressed the real eternal truth.”
“What do you mean,” I said, “by eternal truth?” “I mean this,” replied Clemens, “that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross appears to me foreordained from eternity and destined to last to eternity, as the symbol of the fundamental law of the universe, what Scaurus calls the Law of the Magnet. Call it a dream, if you please. Then such is my dream. But I act on it, or try to act on it, as a reality. The Father gives His life to men in giving His Son to them. The life, says the scripture, is the blood. Some of our brethren would not scruple to say ‘God gives His blood to men.’ I would rather say God has been giving of His life to men from the time when man was first created—not only as a Father and a Mother, but also as a Servant, serving His servants, nursing His children, ‘washing their feet’ (so to speak) as a nurse does, and as Christdid. There are two spiritual realities, or, if you like, two metaphors, to express this spiritual reality. One is, that life or blood is to be infused, like new blood, into our veins. The other is, that in this life, or life-blood, we are also to bathe ourselves, that we may be born again. I know that this will seem to you and to many others an exaggerated, or (as I have heard it called) an ‘unsavoury and distasteful similitude.’ But these protests are outweighed, in my mind, by the faith and feeling of multitudes of simple devout Christians of the deepest and purest insight. One of these, a woman—the most inspired of all women known to me with holy wisdom—continually speaks of bathing herself in the blood of Christ crucified; and so do some of our most inspired poets. You have spoken to me of ‘the constraining love of Christ.’ One of our poets—a man experienced in troubles and knowing only too well what it is to feel forsaken of God—describes it thus in the person of Christ:—