"Why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye,but the beam that is in thine own eyethou considerest not?"Disciple."How's this! And hath my brother ne'er a beamThat may be plucked from out his eye?And are my brother's beams all motes,And none have beams but I?"Master."E'en so, For beams enough there be, I trow;And who will claim them, if not thou?"Disciple."'Tis well! I'll claim mine own.(Methinks it has of late much larger grown.)"Master."Suffices it, if thou wilt claim but one.Then shall thy brother, in thy sight, have none.For beams do so prevent pride's selfish viewThat, if thy brother's beam did weigh a ton,It would appear the smallest mote to you."
[Footnote 251: This article is translated from the Conferences Destinées aux Femmes du Monde, par Mgr. Landriot.]
"De Nocte Surrexit."
Sleep was given man to sustain life, to invigorate his strength, and to serve him as the best and most useful of medicines; one single prescription perfectly accomplished sometimes sufficing for the cure of serious disease, or, at least, the amelioration of violent pain. Sleep is the salutary bath that renovates life, the entire being growing younger under its influence; it is a station in the desert of this world; and often, after dull and wearying journeys, one comes to repose in this oasis prepared by divine Providence, enabled the next day to pursue the route with renewed courage and activity. The time of sleep is not only useful to the body, but the soul: it calms all agitation, spreads a balm over piercing grief, and hinders the precipitation of words and actions. Thus the ancients designated night the good counsellor; those even whom passion or bodily infirmity keep awake are subservient to her designs, and, in the calm which, through shade, she diffuses everywhere, she recalls man to better sentiments. If he is Christian, she quickens within him the fibres of prayer; a single aspiration toward heaven sufficing sometimes to crush the bad or dangerous germs of thought, and prepare for the morrow a pure and uncloudy sky. In other times, there was so much calmness and placidity in the sleep of the just, said St. Ambrose, that it was like an ecstasy in which, while the body reposed, the soul, to speak thus, was separated from its organs, and united itself to Christ: Somnus tranquillitatem menti invehens, placiditatem animae ut tanquam soluto nexu corporis se ablevit, et Christo
[Footnote 252: Ep. xvi. No. 4, p. 960.]
Again, sleep is an excellent preacher, because it recalls to us the image of death: the ancients named it the brother of death, and both are sons of night. The daily arrival of sleep should make us say: "The other brother will come soon, and this time I will extend myself on my bed, never more to rise. Each visit of the night should be an invitation to prepare me for the last and solemn departure."
Sleep is, then, excellent in itself; but how greatly it may be abused; and, if we do abuse it, it will produce effects exactly contrary to those I have just enumerated; that is to say, it will weaken the body, stupefy the ideas, and that, far from refreshing and repairing life, it will prepare for it a kind of living sepulchre in which to bury it.
It is not sufficient to determine the quantity of sleep, which should be wisely regulated, without according or refusing too much to nature. We must also calculate the quality of sleep.
Now, according to general observation, the sleep from the real night to the real morning, that is to say, which is taken in the interval of nine and five or six o'clock, is the best, the most salutary, and the most favorable to health. I do not say that it is absolutely necessary to sleep all the time, I have indicated: this is merely the space designed to choose one's hours of sleep. Let us willingly admit all the exceptions necessitated by transitory relations; but, as a general thesis, it is better to retire early and rise early in the morning. It is the best, the most favorable time for the nocturnal bath we call sleep; the body better refreshes itself, the repose is more conformable to the laws of nature; therefore is it sweeter, at once lighter and more profound, and has not the heaviness which indicates an abnormal condition.Sleep, prolonged too much in the morning because it has been retarded at night, has serious inconveniences. It communicates to the general system a sickly languor which becomes the habitual condition of certain temperaments. Life with them is a sort of perpetual convalescence, and never do they enjoy the most precious gift of nature, a state of health, truly and solidly established. See, on the contrary, these robust village girls; at night at an early hour they demand of their beds the repose for their tired members; in the morning they rise with the crow of the cock. In winter, the fire is lighted at dawn of day on the domestic hearth; the house-keeping is arranged, the order of the day disposed in advance, the breakfast of the laborers is ready to be served, and the sun has not yet appeared above the horizon. During the summer, these same children of the village accompany the star of day in its matutinal march; their chests dilate, and they strengthen themselves in breathing the fresh and perfumed air shed with the rays of sun, and they seem to breathe life and health. Later these same girls marry, and, if they are not imprudent, they may for many years continue an existence made up of fruitful labor, and ornamented sometimes with all the charms and freshness of a vigorous old age; for their regimen is an excellent medicine which gives them a commission of long life.
But whence, on the contrary, comes that weakness of temperament so observable in women of the world? It may be deduced from various causes, but one of the principal is the mode of life too generally adopted, especially in large cities. A part of the night is spent insoirées, to finish only with longermatinées; a portion of the day is given to sleep, and from this results a general debility of constitution, fatigue of the nervous system, a numbness of the organs, and in all an habitual and continual prostration. There may be exceptional temperaments that resist these effects; but it is incontestable, in the eyes of an impartial observer, that the loss of health, especially among women, is due in great part to the life of excess I here mention. "Prolonged night watches," said a learned man, "necessarily bring on a fatigue which bears on the brain and on the digestive and respiratory organs. And fatigue of this nature, far from favoring sleep, renders it incomplete and painful. From thence, in great measure, comes this valetudinary state which we meet with so habitually among the women of our cities; balls andsoiréesruin their health in advance, and it is often on youth even, but still oftener in ripe and old age, that the foolish and miserable dissipations of the world leave their sad and fatal impress." [Footnote 253]
[Footnote 253: Leçons de la Nature, nouvelle édition, par M. Desdouits, 1. 3. 188e considér, t. iii. p. 125.]
You would, then, condemnsoirées? I pray you to remark that, if there is something to condemn, it is not I who condemns them; these are facts according to nature and the temperament of the human body. Is it not true that the health of many women of the world is weakened? No one can deny this. Is it not also true that one of the principal causes is the world's manner of organizing social relations? It is a fact of which science every day gives undeniable proof. I am far from condemningsoirées; and perhaps you have not forgotten that, in our reunions, I applied myself some years ago to show you how religion was the friend of honest pleasures and the demands of society; on condition that they should be regulated by wisdom, and that the interests of both body and soul were faithfully managed; for so greatly does Christianity respect our bodies that we can sin in compromising one's health by serious imprudences. Merry conversations in the evening have all sorts of advantages. They divert the mind, refresh the body, bring hearts together, dissipate clouds, and bind more closely the ties of family and friendships. In a certain degree, pleasures are necessary to man.I speak of innocent pleasures that virtue can admit, and those who entertain some doubt in this respect can consult the writings of the greatest theologians of the church, and especially St. Thomas. This great doctor has on this point a clearness and precision, and at the same time a reason and wisdom, at once full of reserve and condescension. The rule he establishes is to use all pleasure with moderation, according to time, place, and the circumstance of those with whom we live:moderatè pro loco, et tempore, et congruentiâ eorum quibus convivit, (temperatus.)[Footnote 254]
[Footnote 254: See in particular L'Ethique et La Somme.]
"There are many people," said Fenélon, "who like to groan over everything, and weary themselves continually by encouraging a disgust for all rational amusement. For me, I avow I could not accommodate myself to such rigidity. I like something more simple; and I believe that God himself likes it much better. When diversion is innocent in itself, and is entered into according to the rules of the state wherein Providence has placed us, then I believe all required of us is to take part in it, as in God's sight and with moderation. Manners more rigid and more reserved, less complaisant and less open, only serve to give a false idea of piety to worldly people, who are already sufficiently prejudiced against it, and who believe God is only served through a sombre and mortified life." [Footnote 255]
[Footnote 255:Avis a une Personne de la Cour. Manuel de Piété. Ed. Dupanloup.]
We would wish, then, that Christian societies would adopt for their maxim these beautiful words of St. Chrysostom: "Christians have the sense for delicate pleasures, but decency should preside over all." It is impossible to make more reasonable concessions to human nature, but is not religion authorized, therefore, to show herself severe to all who exceed the bounds of wisdom, conformity, and virtue, and even for all who compromise the interests of health or fortune? Would it not be possible, to return to our subject, to combine in our reunions of family and society everything for the general good and the vigorous health of actual generations? Allowing for exceptional circumstances, where one may be obliged to be up later, would it not be possible to makesoiréesshorter, rendering them, at the same time, more agreeable and more frequent, more salutary and less compromising to health? This is the problem I propose to solve; and is it not a singular thing that here religion interposes to say to you, Think of the interests of your bodies; you sin the same by seriously neglecting them? "Hoc esset peccatum" said St. Thomas. This excess in the length ofsoiréescomes to us from paganism. In the time of Seneca they existed, and these are the terms which this philosopher used toward them: "There are people who reverse the uses of day and night. Thus, nothing looks more sad and broken-down than the appearance of such persons, who are, so to say, dedicated to the night; their color is that of sick people, they are pale and languishing, carrying a dead flesh in a living body. And this is not the only evil: their minds are surrounded by shadows apparently, benumbed, and inhabiting the clouds. Is it possible not to deplore an irregularity which banishes the light of day, and passes life in darkness and shade?" [Footnote 256]
[Footnote 256: Epist. 122.]
Sometimes I am asked, if religion were to command half the sacrifice that the world demands if it ordered a part of every night spent in fatiguing both body and soul, what would not be said against it? What anathemas, what bitter reproaches! But the world speaks, and no one says anything; we are enchanted, or, at least, appear so. St. Francis de Sales has given us, on this subject, some reflections wherein the delicate point of a pleasant malice is touched with superior reason, and I should reproach myself did I not present them to you: "We have seen gentlemen and ladies pass not only one night, but several in succession at play—worldly people said nothing, friends gave themselves no trouble concerning them; but let us give one hour to meditation, or rise a little earlier than usual to prepare for communion, these same friends would run for the doctor to cure us of jaundice or hypochondria.We may occupy thirty nights in dancing, no one complains; but for the single watch of Christmas night every one coughs, and cries next day with the stomach-ache."
The salutary regimen of retiring and rising early is very precious for the soul, and the duties of life much better fulfilled. The soul is calmer at night, calm as everything that is regular and not troubled and turned topsy-turvy by the thousand preoccupations of a too worldly life. In the evening, before going to sleep, we can fix our attention on ourselves, analyze the day, its thoughts, desires, and actions, praise, blame, or correct, and, as a skilful merchant, make an account of our losses and gains. Do not imagine such a practice is confined to narrow minds; it is the usage of reason and sound philosophy, as are all other practices of an enlightened devotion. Pagans as well as Christians have given us a lesson on this subject. Listen to Pythagoras: "Never allow sleep to close thine eyes before having examined every action of the day. In what have I failed? What have I done? What duty have I forgotten? Commence by the first of thy actions, run over the others; in fine, reproach thyself with what thou hast done ill, and rejoice in what thou hast done well." "What can be more beautiful," said Seneca, "than this habit of inquiring into a whole day? What sleep succeeds to such a review of one's actions! How calm, deep, and free it is when the soul has received its share of praise or blame, and, submitting to its own control, its own censure, it secretly tries its own conduct! For me, I have taken this authority on myself, and every day I cite myself to appear before the tribunal of my conscience. So soon as the light has gone, I scan my day entirely, weigh anew my acts and my words, dissemble nothing, and omit nothing." [Footnote 257] Adopt this habit, everything in you will gain by it—reason and piety; a sweet serenity will be diffused around your soul, and you will sleep in angelic peacesomnus sanitatis in homine. [Footnote 258] You have sometimes seen children sleep. What calm! What sweetness of expression! What kindness of feature! What living and silent rest! This will be the image of your sleep.
[Footnote 257: Da la Colere, 1. 3. c. 36.]
[Footnote 258: Ecclus. xxxi.]
But—and now we touch a delicate point—it is the result of life's organization that you ought to get up in the morning. I hear already a deep sigh of fear from your trembling couch. First, then, let us understand the value of the words, Get up in the morning. I do not exhort you to imitate a very delicate lady, who said, during her sojourn at Vichy, "I commence my day at four o'clock in the morning, in order that my body may not take off too much from my soul." [Footnote 259]
[Footnote 259: Lettres de Madame Swetchine. t. ii. p. 111.]
I do not propose you this model, for I am very sure, if I opened a register, I should find very few members for the confraternity of Madame Swetchine. Let us leave, then, the value of the expression slightly undecided. Get up in the morning; let it only be the earliest hour possible, and this, perhaps may be too late. Once, however, the hour of your rising determined, hold to it, with a firmness proportioned to the difficulty of the step, and let the unfortunate bed shut up again the magnetic fluid whereby one is drawn to it, I do not say in spite of one's self, but with a sweetness of violence which nails one to the post. I avow we are here in face of one of the most terrible of enemies, and this enemy the pillow. When we want to leave it in the morning, it assumes the artificial language of the siren, and caresses us with tender precaution. It seems to say: Why do you leave me? are you not better here? what a sweet temperature! what inappreciable well-being! don't you see it is too soon? do you not feel your limbs too tired, and as yet enjoying a very incomplete repose?Touch your forehead and you will see you begin to have headache; a few quarters of an hour more will dissipate it; to-morrow you will rise earlier! Then it's so cold out of bed: why brave the inclemency of the seasons? The day is long enough; you will have time enough for everything; in truth, do not be so severe with yourself. After such eloquent language the dear pillow extends its two arms to entangle you, and soon the victory is consummated; true, it was easy, none are so happy as the vanquished; and behold you fallen again and buried for several hours more.
I speak very seriously in telling you that one of the most difficult enemies to vanquish is this pillow of the morning; and there is but one way to conquer it: it is a prompt and decisive blow, a military charge, a jump out of bed: charge the enemy by a vigorous sally, and the victory is yours. An old Capuchin said that, after long years of a religious life, what cost him most was to rise at four o'clock in the morning. It is true there is a sacrifice to make, a real sacrifice, incontestable; but here life is full of sacrifices, and each one is followed by a sentiment of true happiness, and each victory gives to man an astonishing power. When I see a person who has the courage to get up in the morning, I have immediately a high opinion of his firmness of character, and I say to myself: This person, when occasion demands it, will know how to develop extraordinary energy; each morning his nature is tempered again in the struggle against his pillow, and this combat is often more difficult, especially on account of its continuity, than that of the soldier on the field of battle. Besides, wait as long as you will, even if you sleep until mid-day, you will have to make a sacrifice on leaving your bed. Sometimes the more you think of it, the sacrifice will be greater, and increased by the sad perspective of the approaching effort; so with one minute of decision, prompt and generous, all is over, and the enjoyment of the active day has commenced. Long waiting in bed when one is awake makes serious detriment to the soul; the whole being is softened, and plunged into a sort of reverie, more or less sensual, which may lead to the brink of certain abysses. Take care, the butterfly flutters on its golden wings, then goes to burn itself in the light which shines for it so treacherously; image of those aerial promenades where, by dint of approaching certain deceitful lights, one ends by damaging the wings of the soul, or, at least, rubbing off the velvet nap of a pure conscience. "It is dangerous," said St. Ambrose, "for the sun to come and trouble with its indiscreet rays the dreams of a lazy mind in its bed." [Footnote 260]
[Footnote 260: In Ps. 118, s. 19, No. 22, t. ii. p. 1476.]
The Italian poet, speaking of morning, says: "At the hour when one's mind is greatest stranger to the flesh, and less near terrestrial thoughts, then is it almost divine in its visions." [Footnote 261]
[Footnote 261: Dante, Purgat. c. 9, v. 16-19.]
Each day, after a good night, we can renew our souls with the wonders of a beautiful spring morning; all is fresh in mind and body, all interior faculties are warmed; life experiences a sort of need of expansion; all thoughts, all desires seem to tremble with cheerfulness, as plants in a celestial garden. If the sun of prayer arises on the horizon, all the germs of good awake, develop, and mount up in proportion as the divine heat becomes more intense. "The manna," said the prophet, "disappearing at the dawn of day; was to show us, my God, that we must anticipate the rising of the sun to receive thy most precious benedictions." [Footnote 262]
[Footnote 262: Sap. xvi. 28.]
There is something remarkable in our Lives of the Saints; morning prayer is always specially mentioned: "My God," said the prophet "thou wilt favorably hear my prayer in the morning." [Footnote 263]
[Footnote 263: Ps. v. 4.]
"I will present myself before thee in the morning, and will see thy glory." [Footnote 264]
[Footnote 264: Ps. v. 5.]
"It is in the morning that my prayer will surprise thee." [Footnote 265]
[Footnote 265: Ps. xxxvii. 14.]
"In the morning thy mercy is shed on us abundantly." [Footnote 266]
[Footnote 266: Ps. lxxxix. 14.]
"Those who watch from the morning," said Wisdom, "will find me." [Footnote 267]
[Footnote 267: Prov. viii. 17.]
Our Lord himself is called "splendid star, star of the morning:" "Ego Stella splendida et matutina." [Footnote 268]
[Footnote 268: Apoc. xxii. 16.]
In these continual repetitions I can only see a perfectly fixed and stationary thought: the natural relation established by divine Providence, and which she loves to preserve in a supernatural world. The morning is the hour when life recommences on earth; the hour when everything is reborn, solitude favoring the first leap of life, which retakes its course where the dew is deposited, and gives fresh nourishment to the plant. It is also the most delightful hour for the collection of thought, for the effusion of the dew of souls. The sky is charged with rain that night has condensed; the manna is everywhere, but it soon disappears; and, whilst indolence loses its power of body and mind in the swaddling-clothes of sleep, the active soul has laid in its provision of celestial nourishment, has disposed its interior heaven for the entire day, has dissipated in advance the shadows of the day, and established time's serenity until the next sleep. One of the most precious and the sweetest hours of life is the hour of morning prayer. I do not merely speak of vocal prayer; I wish to say the prayer of union with God, the silence and the repose of the soul in God; I wish to say this opening of the mouth of the soul which aspires to divine milk, drinking in silence, light, and love, and hiding itself in the bosom of that motherpar excellencewe call God, and that so few Christians understand.Os meum aperui et attraxi spiritum. [Footnote 269] If you only realized the gift of God we call the love of morning:Si scires donum Dei![Footnote 270]
[Footnote 269: Ps. cxviii. 181.]
[Footnote 270: Joan. iv. 10.]
.....
There is a freshness in it, a suavity and an energy, which come directly from God. Have you never been on the mountains in summer, at three o'clock in the morning, when the first rays of the sun appear? How limpidly they seem to come! They have not passed through other breasts; the purest essence of the planet of day is ours, and thus we seem to realize our union with God while most men are asleep. On these divine mountains the soul has the first-fruits of celestial favors; she is penetrated with light, love, and strength; a gentle intoxication for the day, which, far from weakening the soul, gives firmness to our thoughts and actions, and sheds a perfume of joy on all our works. Were there no other reasons for rising in the morning, I would say to you, Disengage yourself from your pillow, the Lord comes to visit you with choice favors; but the least delay will be proof of your indifference, and you will force him to go further to seek souls more worthy his benefits. There is no one who would refuse to rise early if each morning a messenger were to tell him, A prince is come among you and waits for you. Place your God in the place of your prince, and you will do well. If you wish to accomplish some great work in your life, get up in the morning. The morning hours are not so deranged, the calm of a sweet solitude surrounds you, and you more readily expedite your affairs. You can occupy yourself with business or the regulation of your household, with your reading, your intellectual work if you love study, and the result in some years of these extra hours will be incalculable. By rising two hours earlier each day, you will have gained at the end of forty years, twenty-nine thousand hours, that is more than seven years, and solely counting the twelve working hours of the day. To increase one's life seven years in forty is enormous, and what can be done during this continuous time is almost incredible. Clement of Alexandria said, "Wrest from sleep all of our lives we can."
Sleep is truly a thief who ravishes our greatest treasures; a thief, too, we cannot entirely chase away, but we can run him off the ground and hinder his encroachments on our actual life. "We live but the half of our lives," said Pliny the elder; "the other half is consumed in a state similar to death,.... and still we do not count the infancy which knows nothing, or the old age of imbecility."Then have the courage to take something each day from this brother of death, who thus divides our life in two, and for himself would reserve the better part; let us give to nature what is necessary, but make no concession to indolence.
The most favorable time to commit this robbery is during the first hours of the morning. "The quality of time is different at this hour," said Madame Swetchine.
One hour of the morning is worth two at night, because the mind in its freshness is naturally more collected, its strength is not yet dispersed, and it is not exhausted by the fatigue of the day. The morning hours resemble, in the agility of the mind and the rejuvenated forces of the soul, the first hour of the courser just placed in the carriage. So the same author we love to cite advised early rising, cost what it might, "in order to reserve some hours of the morning for entire solitude." "It is not only," said one of her friends, "to consecrate to God the first hours of the day that she commenced it so early, but to have also considerable time to give to study." She said to me on that day, that the pleasure it gave her only increased with years. "I am come to this," she said, "when I approach my table to resume my labors, my heart beats with joy." [Footnote 271]
[Footnote 271: Lettres, t. ii. p. 443.]
She avowed, besides, that, deprived of these her accustomed hours, all the rest of the day seemed pillaged. If you would not be pillaged, rise in the morning; then you can do as you please, no one will come to disturb you, you will consecrate the closest and best of your strength to the most serious and truest duties of your existence; and, when the hour of pillage comes, that is, the hour when you must cut your life in little pieces, to dispense it in a thousand nothings more or less necessary, you will, at least, have secured its better and most precious part. If you rise late, your life will be a perpetual pillage, and whoever pleases will tear it in shreds from you.
Plato—if you will not consider pagan morality severe—Plato said somewhere: "It is a shame for the mistress of a household to be awakened by her servants; she should awaken them." [Footnote 272]
[Footnote 272: Les Lois, 1-7, p. 808.]
Such words may seem an exaggeration; but, if such were here the case, would not everything go better in the interior of the family? Woman, as we have said with the holy Scripture, is the sun of her household; but it should be the sun which everywhere announces the awakening of nature. It mounts first on the horizon, and soon everything rises in the universe, plants, animals, and men. The sun is never awakened by his satellites; he himself gives the signal. Let the strong woman do the same.Sicut sol oriens in altissimis Dei, sic mulieris bonae species in ornamentum domus ejus.[Footnote 273]
[Footnote 273: Eccl. xxvi. 21.]
[Footnote 274: Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. By S. Baring Gould, M.A., London, Oxford, and Cambridge, Rivingtons. 1866.]
There are certain popular fables which, in one shape or another, seem to have wandered all over the world, and to have planted themselves, and grown, and developed progeny in the folk-lore of nearly every nation. Of all these none has been more generally a favorite than the fiction of Time sparing in his flight some solitary human being, before whose eyes the centuries unroll their mighty panorama; cities and nations rise, flourish, and decay; changes pass over the face of nature herself; seas dry up and rocks crumble to dust; while for one man only age brings no decay and life seems to have no termination. The early Christian legends are full of such stories. There are rumors of mysterious witnesses, hidden for ages from the world's eyes, not dead but sleeping, who are to come forth in the last days of time, and bear testimony against Antichrist; and one of these was conjectured to be the apostle St. John, of whom our Lord said to St. Peter, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" So there was a belief that the beloved disciple still slept at Ephesus, awaiting the summons, and the earth above his breast heaved as he breathed. Joseph of Arimathea, according to another beautiful legend, was rewarded for the last tender offices which he performed for the dead Christ by perpetual life in the blessed city of Sarras, where he drew divine nourishment from the holy grail, that precious chalice which the Saviour used at the Last Supper, and which caught the blood that trickled from his side upon the cross. The poetical legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, who fled from the persecution of Decius to a cavern on Mount Celion, and slept there three hundred and sixty years, until God raised them up to confound a growing heresy against the immortality of the soul; and the still more beautiful story of the monk of Hildesheim, who, doubting how with God a thousand years could be as yesterday, listened to the melody of a bird in the greenwood during three minutes, and found that in those minutes three hundred years had flown away, are familiar to all our readers. But pagan literature also abounds in stories of miraculously long slumbers. The beautiful shepherd Endymion was condemned by Jupiter to perpetual sleep in a cavern of Mount Latmus; or, according to another form of the story, to a slumber of fifty years, at the end of which time he was to arise. The giant Enceladus was imprisoned under Mount Etna, and as often as he turned his weary body, the whole island of Sicily was shaken to its foundations. The epic poet Epimenides, while tending his sheep, retired one hot day into a cavern, and slept there fifty-seven years. This reminds one of the tale of Rip Van Winkle. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, so an old German fable relates, is waiting with six of his knights in the heart of a mountain in Thuringia, for the time to release Germany from bondage and raise it to the first place among nations. When his great red beard has wound itself thrice around the stone table at which he sits, he will awake and rush forth to do his appointed work. So, too, it was believed that Charlemagne survived in some mountain recess, and would appear again at the fulfilment of the days of Antichrist to avenge the blood of the saints.The British King Arthur, the Portuguese Don Sebastian, Ogier the Dane, and the three Tells of Switzerland were expected by the superstitious peasantry to reappear at some distant day and become the deliverers of their country; and there are even some remote parts of France where a popular belief survives that Napoleon Bonaparte is still living, and will put himself some day at the head of another victorious host. Who of us is not familiar with that pretty fairy tale of the sleeping beauty?
"Year after year unto her feet,She lying on her couch alone,Across the purple coverletThe maiden's jet-black hair has grown......."She sleeps: her breathings are not heardIn palace chambers far apart.The fragrant tresses are not stirredThat lie upon her charmed heart.She sleeps: on either hand upswellsThe gold-fringed pillow lightly prest;She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwellsA perfect form in perfect rest."
And who of us in his childhood has not read with a delight which repeated perusals could not satiate of the coming of the fairy prince, who was fated, after a hundred years, to wake that sleeping palace into life, and bear away the happy princess far across the hills, "in that new world which is the old"?
"And o'er the hills, and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim,Beyond the night, across the day,Through all the world she followed him."
These many stories are only the protean forms of one favorite popular conception; the idea of one individual standing still, while the world sweeps by, and either blest or curst with a perpetual renewal of youth, or else awaking out of a sleep of centuries to find creation wearing a new face and new generations acting out the great drama of history. The different modifications of the story seem to derive their peculiar character from the peculiarities of the time and country in which they originate. The pagan tendency to personify all the phenomena of nature is exemplified in the myth of Enceladus, under which were represented the throes of Mount Etna. The wild, warlike, and semi-pagan spirit of Germany, which peoples dark mountain recesses with mysterious forms, and fastens a legend to each frowning crag and almost inaccessible fastness, finds apt expression in the legend of the sleeping Barbarossa and his mailed companions. And how beautifully the piety of the monkish chroniclers has embellished the same fiction in the fables of the seven sleepers and the monk of Hildesheim! In the former of these two stories, however, it is worthy of remark that an actual fact has been blended with the fiction. The seven sleepers are real historical personages, and their names are enrolled in the list of canonized saints. They were martyrs whom the Emperor Decius caused to be walled up alive in a cave, where many generations afterward their relics were found; and this discovery of the relics has been amplified into an actual resuscitation of the living men. The narrative in this spurious form is given by Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend, and was made the subject of a poem by Goethe. The German poet adds that there was a dog with the seven Christians, and that immediately after their awakening, as soon as they had been seen by the king and people of Ephesus, they disappeared for ever from the sight of man:
"The most blessed angel Gabriel,By the will of God Almighty,Walling up the cave for ever,Led them into paradise."
The most remarkable of all the varieties of this fiction is the legend of the Wandering Jew. Like the story of St. John's sleep at Ephesus, it seems to be based upon a false interpretation of Scripture. "There are some of them standing here," said our Lord, "who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," (St. Matt. xvi. 28.) And it was the old belief that this prophecy was being literally fulfilled in the person of a Jew who was wandering over the face of the earth, and would continue to wander until the day of judgment.The earliest mention of this mythical person occurs in Matthew Paris's Chronicle of English History, wherein he records that, in 1228, a certain Archbishop of Greater Armenia visited the abbey of St. Albans, on a pilgrimage to the shrines of the saints in England; and in the course of conversation he was asked "whether he had ever seen or heard any thing of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still alive in evidence of the Christian faith; in reply to which, a knight in his retinue, who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, 'My lord well knows that man, and a little before he took his way to the western countries the said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the Archbishop of Armenia, and he has often seen and conversed with him.'" The archbishop went on to relate that, when Jesus had been delivered up to the Jews and they were dragging him out to be crucified, "Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate's service, as Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery, 'Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker, why do you loiter?' And Jesus, looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to him, 'I am going, and you shall wait till I return.' And according as our Lord said this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our Lord's suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a hundred years he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord suffered. After Christ's death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias, (who also baptized the apostle Paul,) and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other divisions of Armenia, and in divers eastern countries, passing his time among the bishops and other prelates of the church; he is a man of holy conversation and religious; a man of few words, and very circumspect in his behavior; for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious; and then he relates the events of olden times, and speaks of things which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, of those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this," added the archbishop, (though we should think the statement rather superfluous,) "he relateswithout smiling or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judgment he should find him in anger, whom, on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance." There is something not easy to explain in this story. Matthew Paris was an eye-witness of the events which he relates, so there can be little doubt that the Armenian prelate or his interpreter did really tell some such wondrous tale as this to the monks of St. Albans. Was it a pure invention? Or did the interpreter, by a familiar species of embellishment, represent his master as having seen the wandering Jew when he had onlyheardof him? Or had the archbishop been deceived by some impostor who had taken advantage of the popularity of the legend to palm himself off upon the credulous as its veritable hero? One thing at all events is clear from the narrative of the monk of St. Albans; and that is, that the fable was by no means a new one in his time, though he is the earliest known writer who has handed it down to us. The Jew, according to this narrative, refused all gifts that were offered him, being content with a little food and scanty raiment; but with all his humble piety he seems to have cherished an odd sort of pride; for it is related that "numbers came to him from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation, and to them,if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts on the matters on which he is questioned."
After the Armenian had visited the shrine of "St. Tumas de Kantorbire" in England and "Monsigour St. Jake," whereby we suppose is meant Santiago de Compostela in Spain, he went to Cologne to see the heads of the three kings, and there he is reported, in a rhyming chronicle by Philip Mouskes, afterward Bishop of Tournay, as repeating the story he had told at St. Albans, but with very slight differences.
There is no further mention of the Wandering Jew in literature for more than two hundred and fifty years; but, in 1505, he turns up to some purpose in Bohemia, where a poor weaver named Kokot was in great perplexity to find a treasure that had been buried by his great-grandfather sixty years before. The Jew had been present when the treasure was hid away, and he now appeared opportunely to show the heir where to find it. He seemed at this time to be about seventy years of age. About the same time we hear of him in the East, where there was a tradition that he appeared to the Arabian conqueror Fadhilah, and predicted the signs which were to precede the last judgment. But this mysterious visitor, who is called Zerib Bar Elia, seems to have been confounded in a curious way with the prophet Elijah. The most circumstantial account of the undying one was given about the middle of the sixteenth century by Dr. Paul von Eitzen, afterward Bishop of Schleswig, who seems to have been thoroughly deceived by one of the many impostors who arose during that century and the next, claiming to have been survivors of the rabble who followed Jesus to Calvary. Dr. Von Eitzen's story is that, being in church one Sunday in Hamburg, in the year 1547, "he observed a tall man with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing barefoot during the sermon over against the pulpit, listening with deepest attention to the discourse, and whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned bowing himself profoundly and humbly, with sighs and beating of the breast. He had no other clothing in the bitter cold of the winter, except a pair of hose which were in tatters about his feet, and a coat with a girdle which reached to his feet; and his general appearance was that of a man of fifty years." The learned doctor was so much struck by the man's looks that after the sermon he made inquiries about him. He found that he was a mystery to everybody. Many people, some of them of high degree and title, had seen him in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Persia, and other countries, and nobody knew what to make of him. So Dr. Von Eitzen sought him out and questioned him. "Thereupon he replied modestly that he was a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name Ahasuerus, by trade a shoemaker; he had been present at the crucifixion of Christ, and had lived ever since, travelling through various lands and cities, the which he substantiated by accounts he gave; he related also the circumstances of Christ's transference from Pilate to Herod, and the final crucifixion, together with other details not recorded in the evangelists and historians; he gave accounts of the changes of government in many countries, especially of the East, through several centuries, and moreover he detailed the labors and deaths of the holy apostles of Christ most circumstantially." The stranger added that he had done his best with others to have Christ put to death, and that, when sentence had been pronounced, he ran home and called his family together that they might look at the deceiver of the people as he was carried to execution. When the Lord was led by to Calvary, he was standing at the door of his shop with his little child on his arm. Spent with the weight of the cross which he was carrying, Christ tried to rest a little, but Ahasuerus, for the sake of obtaining credit among the other Jews, and also out of zeal and rage, drove the Lord forward and bade him hasten. "Jesus, obeying, looked at him and said, 'I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day.'At these words the man set down the child, and, unable to remain where he was, he followed Christ, and saw how cruelly he was crucified, how he suffered, how he died. As soon as this had taken place, it came upon him suddenly that he could no more return to Jerusalem, nor see again his wife and child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after another, like a mournful pilgrim. Now, when, years after, he returned to Jerusalem, he found it ruined and utterly razed, so that not one stone was left standing on another; and he could not recognize former localities.
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Dr. Paul von Eitzen, along with the rector of the school of Hamburg, who was well read in history and a traveller, questioned him about events which had taken place in the East since the death of Christ, and he was able to give them much information on many ancient matters; so that it was impossible not to be convinced of the truth of his story, and to see that what seems impossible with men is, after all, possible with God." It does not seem to have required Dr. Von Eitzen's investigation to prove that what is impossible with man may be possible with God; but how any amount of questioning could demonstrate the truth of the stranger's story we are at a loss to see. It apparently failed to strike the reverend doctor and his associate that the Jew could have learned the history of the East as easily as they learned it themselves; and even if he made a good many blunders in his narrative, it is by no means certain that his questioners were wise enough to detect them.
This impostor, for so we may safely call him, observed the traditional silence, modesty, temperance, and poverty which the legend uniformly ascribes to the Wandering Jew, never accepting a larger alms than two skillings, (about nine cents,) which he immediately gave to the poor; never laughing; gladly listening to pious discourse; reverencing with sighs the utterance of the divine name; and waxing very indignant whenever he heard any one swear, especially by God's death or pains. He spoke the language of whatever country he travelled in, and had no foreign accent; so at least the account runs, but it does not appear how that fact was ascertained, nor is there mention of any competent linguist having examined his abilities in that line. He never staid long in one place.
Twenty-eight years afterward, that is, in 1575, two legates sent from Schleswig to the court of Spain declared on their return home that they had encountered the same mysterious person in Madrid, and conversed with him. In appearance, manner of life, habits, and garb, he was just the same as he had appeared in Hamburg. He spoke good Spanish. It is not said, however, that these legates had themselves seen the man when Dr. Von Eitzen talked with him twenty-eight years before, and the probability is, that they only inferred from the description left of that strange traveller that the wanderer in Madrid was the same person. In 1599, he is reported at Vienna; in 1601, at Lubeck; and about the same date at Revel in Livonia, and Cracow in Poland. He was also seen in Moscow, and in January, 1603, we find record again of his appearance at Lubeck. The next year he was in Paris. Rudolph Botoreus, who records his visit to that city in his history, apologizes for mentioning what may seem a mere old wives' fable, but says the story was so widely believed that he could not omit it. Bulenger, about the same date, also mentions the report of the Jew's arrival in Paris, but confesses that he neither saw him nor could hear anything authentic concerning him.
The frequency of the reappearance of this mythical character in different parts of Europe during the seventeenth century seems to indicate that the imposture was a profitable one. He assumes different names and tells his story with several variations. In one work he is called Buttadaeus. Elsewhere he is known as Isaac Laquedem.In some accounts it is said that he was born of the tribe of Napluali, seven or eight years before the birth of Christ. He ran away from his father, who was either a carpenter or a shoemaker, to accompany the three wise men to Bethlehem; and his description on his return of the wonders he had seen and the rich presents which the magi laid at the feet of the babe whom they hailed King of the Jews, led to the massacre of the innocents. He was, according to this version, a carpenter by trade, and made the cross upon which the Lord suffered. At the end of every hundred years he falls into a fit or trance, from which he awakes with renewed youth, returning always to the age at which he was when the Saviour was crucified. He has tempted death in every conceivable form; he has courted pestilence, thrown himself into the thickest of battles, and called upon the sea to swallow him; but a miraculous interposition of divine power preserves him through everything, and the curse still drives him on from land to land, and will allow him no rest until the crucified Son of Man shall come in his glory to judge the world. Penitent and devout, yet tortured with remorse, he sweeps on perpetually round and round the world, and the sudden roar of a gale at night is attributed by the vulgar to the passing of the everlasting Jew. There is a Swiss story that he was seen one day standing on the Matterberg contemplating the scene with mingled awe and wonder. Once before he stood on that desolate spot, and then it was the site of a flourishing city. Once again he will revisit it, and that will be on the eve of judgment.
So late as the beginning of the last century a man calling himself the Wandering Jew made considerable noise in England, where many of the common people were found ignorant enough to believe in him. Following the custom of some of his early predecessors, he preferred the conversation of persons of distinction, and spared no pains to thrust himself into aristocratic company. Some of the nobility, half in jest, half out of curiosity, were wont to talk with him, and pay him as they might a mountebank. He used to say that he had been an officer of the sanhedrim, and that he had struck Christ as he was led away from Pilate's judgment seat. He remembered all the apostles, in proof of which he used to give what purported to be a description of their appearance, dress, and peculiarities; he had been acquainted with the father of Mohammed, and had disputed with the prophet himself about the crucifixion of Christ; he knew Saladin, Tamerlane, and Bajazet; he was in Rome when Nero set it on fire, and he remembered minutely the history of the crusades. He spoke many languages, and even conversed with an English nobleman in Arabic. Oxford and Cambridge sent professors to discover whether he was an impostor. It does not appear that he shrank from their examination, for it is pretty certain that he had been a great traveller, and it is not at all improbable that he was well enough read in history to perplex his questioners. On matters of detail it was easy enough for him to impugn the accuracy of authorities which contradicted him. Educated persons were not long in learning to laugh at his assumptions, but the vulgar trusted him, and even believed in his power of healing the sick. We are not aware that the humbug was ever thoroughly exposed to the satisfaction of the people at large, and when he afterward passed over to Denmark and Sweden he left probably a plenty of dupes behind him. The last recorded appearance of a person claiming to be the Wandering Jew was in 1774 at Brussels.
It would be a curious and interesting study to trace, if we could, the origin of this myth, but it is a baffling inquiry. Its kinship with the stories of long slumbers, marvellous resuscitations, and miraculous prolongation of life is sufficiently apparent, yet it presents remarkable differences from all these, and it is noteworthy that, during the five centuries and more in which we know that it flourished, it underwent no considerable modifications, such as popular legends in general are subject to.When we first hear of it, it is already wide spread and as completely developed as it was when it finally dropped out of popular belief. And, as our readers can see from the narratives we have quoted, there never was even plausible reason to believe that the story was true. None of the testimony as to the Jew's appearances will bear the very slightest examination. Either the stories are manifest fabrications, or the persons to whom they refer were merely ordinary vagabonds. No vagabond, however, could have established such pretensions unless there had previously been some legend in vogue to suggest them and to induce people to accept them. Some have imagined that Ahasuerus is a type of the whole Jewish race, which, since it rejected the Redeemer, has been driven forth to wander over the face of the earth, yet is not to pass away until the end of time. This, however, can hardly be; for Ahasuerus becomes a devout Christian, and, moreover, one of his principal characteristics is contempt of money. Others identify him with the gypsies, who are said to have been cursed in a similar way because they refused shelter to the Virgin and child during the flight into Egypt; but this is only a local superstition which never obtained extensive acceptation. The more probable explanation is, that some pious monk borrowed one of the old legends which we referred to at the beginning of this article, and adding to it a conception taken from the words of the Saviour, "There are some of them standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," constructed an allegory which was afterward accepted for literal truth in a not very critical age, and was kept alive by a succession of impostors.