Aurelian; or, Rome in the Third Century by William Ware (best color ebook reader .txt) 📖

as praiseworthy, as love. What trace of human wisdom—much less of divine—would there be in the arrangement, that should first bind us by chains of affection as strong as adamant to a child, or a parent, or a friend, and then treat the sorrow as criminal that wept, with whatever violence, as it saw the links broken and scattered, never again to be joined together?'

'That certainly is a proof that some just ideas are to be found in your opinions,' replied my friend. 'By nothing was I ever more irreconcilably offended in the stoical philosophy, than by its harsh violence towards nature under suffering. To be treated by your philosophy with rudeness and contempt, because you yield to[Pg 149] emotions which are as natural, and, therefore, in my judgment, as innocent as any, is, as if one were struck with violence by a friend or a parent, to whom you fled for protection or comfort. The doctrines of all the others failed in the same way. Even the Epicureans hold it a weakness, and even a wrong, to grieve, seeing the injury that is thereby done to happiness. Grief must be suppressed, and banished, because it is accompanied by pain. That too, seemed to me a false sentiment; because, although grief is indeed in some sort painful, yet it is not wholly so, but is attended by a kind of pleasure. How plain it is, that I should suffer greatly more, were I forcibly restrained by a foreign power, or my own, from shedding these tears, and uttering these sighs for Gallus, than I do now while I am free to indulge my natural feelings. In truth, it is the only pleasure that grief brings with it—the freedom of indulging it.'

'He,' I said, as Marcus paused, giving way afresh to his sorrow, 'who embraces the Christian doctrine, is never blamed, condemned, or ridiculed by it for the indulgence of the emotions, to which, the loss of those whom we love, gives birth. But then, at the same time, he will probably grieve and suffer much less under such circumstances than you—not, however, because he is forcibly restrained, but because of the influence upon his mind and his heart, of truths and opinions, which, as a Christian, he entertains, and which, without any will or act of his own, work within him and strengthen and console him. The Christian believing, so firmly as he does, for example, in a God, not only on[Pg 150] grounds of reason but of express revelation, and that this God is a parent, exercising a providence over his creatures, regardless of none, loving as a parent all, who has created mankind, not for his own amusement or honor, but that life and happiness might be diffused: they who believe thus, must feel very differently under adversity, from those who, like yourself, believe nothing of it at all, and from those who, like the disciples of the Porch and the Academy, believe but an inconsiderable part of it. Suppose, Marcus and Lucilia, your whole population of slaves were, instead of strangers and slaves, your children, toward whom you experienced the same sentiments of deep affection that you did toward Gallus, how would you not consult for their happiness; and how plain it is, that whatever laws you might set over them, they would be laws of love, the end of which, however they might not always recognize it, would be their happiness—happiness through their virtue. This may represent, with sufficient exactness, the light in which Christians regard the Divinity, and the laws of life under which they find themselves. Admitting, therefore, their faith to be well founded, and how manifest is it that they will necessarily suffer less under adversity than you; and not because any violence is done to their nature, but because of the benignant influences of such truths.'

'What you say,' observed Lucilia, 'affects the mind very agreeably; and gives a pleasing idea, both of the wisdom and mercy of the Christian faith. It seems at any rate to be suited to such creatures as we are. What a pity that it is so difficult to discern truth.'[Pg 151]

'It is difficult,' I replied; 'the best things are always so: but it is not impossible; what is necessary to our happiness, is never so. A mind of common powers, well disposed, seeking with a real desire to find, will rarely retire from the search wholly unsuccessful. The great essentials to our daily well-being, and the right conduct of life, the Creator has supplied through our instincts. Your natural religion, of which you have spoken, you find sufficient for most of the occurrences which arise, both of doing and bearing. But there are other emergencies for which it is as evidently insufficient. Now, as the Creator has supplied so perfectly in all breasts the natural religion, which is so essential, it is fair to say and believe, that He would not make additional truths, almost equally essential to our happiness, either of impossible attainment, or encompassed by difficulties which could not, with a little diligence and perseverance, be overcome.'

'It would seem so, certainly,' said Marcus; 'but it is so long since I have bestowed any thought upon philosophical inquiries, that to me the labor would be very great, and the difficulties extreme—for, at present, there is scarcely so much as a mere shred or particle of faith, to which as a nucleus other truths may attach themselves. In truth, I never look even to possess any clear faith in a God—it seems to be a subject wholly beyond the scope and grasp of my mind. I cannot entertain the idea of self-existence. I can conceive of God neither as one, nor as divided into parts. Is he infinite and everywhere, himself constituting his universe?—then he is scarcely a God; or, is he a being dwelling apart from his works, and watching their obedience to[Pg 152] their imposed laws? In neither of these conceptions can I rest.'

'It is not strange,' I replied; 'nor that, refusing to believe in the fact of a God until you should be able to comprehend him perfectly, you should to this hour be without faith. If I had waited before believing, until I understood, I should at this moment be as faithless as you, or as I was before I received Christianity. Do I comprehend the Deity? Can I describe the mode of his being? Can I tell you in what manner he sprang into existence? And whether he is necessarily everywhere in his works, and as it were constituting them? Or whether he has power to contract himself, and dwell apart from them, their omniscient observer, and omnipotent Lord? I know nothing of all this; the religion which I receive, teaches nothing of all this. Christianity does not demonstrate the being of a God, it simply proclaims it; hardly so much as that indeed. It supposes it, as what was already well known and generally believed. I cannot doubt that it is left thus standing by itself, untaught and unexplained, only because the subject is intrinsically incomprehensible by us. It is a great fact or truth, which all can receive, but which none can explain or prove. If it is not believed, either instinctively, or through the recognition of it, and declaration of it, in some revelation, it cannot be believed at all. It needs the mind of God to comprehend God. The mind of man is no more competent to reach and grasp the theme through reason, than his hands are to mould a sun. All the reasonings, imaginations, guesses, of self-styled philosophers, are here like the prattlings[Pg 153] of children. They make you smile, but they do not instruct.'

'I fear,' said Marcus, 'I shall then never believe, for I can believe nothing of which I cannot form a conception.'

'Surely,' I answered, 'our faith is not bounded by our conceptions, or our knowledge, in other things. We build the loftiest palaces and temples upon foundations of stone, though we can form no conception whatever of the nature of a stone. So I think we may found a true and sufficient religion on our belief in the fact of a God, although we can form no conception whatever of his nature and the mode of his existence.'

But I should fatigue you, Fausta, were I to give you more of our conversation. It ran on equally pleasant, I believe, to all of us, to a quite late hour; in which time, almost all that is peculiar to the faith of the Christians came under our review. It was more than midnight when we rose from our seats to retire to our chambers. But before we did that, a common feeling directed our steps to the tomb of Gallus, which was but a few paces from where we had been sitting. There these childless parents again gave way to their grief and was I stone, that I should not weep with them?

When this act of duty and piety had been performed, we sought our pillows. As for me, I could not sleep for thinking of my friends and their now desolate house. For even to me, who was to that child almost a stranger, and had been so little used to his presence, this place is no longer the same: all its brightness, life, and spirit of gladness, are gone. Everything seems changed. From every place and scene something seems to have[Pg 154] been subtracted to which they were indebted for whatever it was that made them attractive. If this is so to me, what must it be to Marcus and Lucilia? It is not difficult to see that a sorrow has settled upon their hearts, which no length of time can heal. I suppose if all their estates had been swept away from them in a night, and all their friends, they would not have been so overwhelmed as by this calamity—in such a wonderful manner were they each woven into the child, and all into each other, as one being. They seem no longer to me like the same persons. Not that they are not often calm, and in a manner possessed of themselves; but that even then, when they are most themselves, there has a dulness, a dreamy absence of mind, a fixed sadness, come over them that wholly changes them. Though they sit and converse with you, their true thoughts seem far away. They are kind and courteous as ever, to the common eye, but I can see that all the relish of life and of intercourse is now to them gone. All is flat and insipid. The friend is coldly saluted; the meal left untasted, or partaken in silence and soon abandoned; the affairs of the household left to others, to any who will take charge of them. They tell me that this will always be so; that however they may seem to others, they must ever experience a sense of loss; not any less than they would if a limb had been shorn away. A part of themselves, and of the life of every day and hour, is taken from them.

How strange is all this, even in the light of Christian faith! How inexplicable, we are ready to say, by any reason of ours, the providence of God in taking away the human being in the first blossoming; before the[Pg 155] fruit has even shown itself, much less ripened! Yet is not immortality, the hope, the assurance of immortality, a sufficient solution? To me it is. This will not indeed cure our sorrows—they spring from somewhat wholly independent of futurity, of either the hope, or despair of it,—but it vindicates the ways of the Omnipotent, and justifies them to our reason and our affections. Will Marcus and Lucilia ever rejoice in the consolations which flow from this hope? Alas! I fear not. They seem in a manner to be incapable of belief.

In the morning I shall start for Rome. As soon as there, you shall hear from me again. Farewell.

While Piso was absent from Rome on this visit to his friend, it was my fortune to be several times in the city upon necessary affairs of the illustrious Queen, when I was both at the palace of Aurelian and that of Piso. It was at one of these later visits, that it became apparent to me, that the Emperor seriously meditated the imposing of restrictions of some kind upon the Christians; yet no such purpose was generally apprehended by that sect itself, nor by the people at large. The dark and disastrous occurrences on the day of the dedication, were variously interpreted by the people; some believing them to point at the Christians, some at the meditated expedition of the Emperor, some at Aurelian himself. The popular mind was,