CHAPTER V.

A PAGAN HERMIT, OLD AND GRAY.

At the age of sixteen, the lad Arius was very thoroughly informed in knowledge of the kingdom of heaven as that knowledge had been taught in the Church from the very days of Jesus and the twelve. In those days the only written authorities relied upon by Christians were the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The letters of Paul, especially those written against Judaism, the epistles of Peter, of John, of Jude, of Hermas, Irenaeus, Polycarp, and others, were held in high esteem as the deliberate utterances of wise and pious men; but even the humblest Christian never hesitated to quote the gospels and the Acts against any of them with whose opinions he was dissatisfied. The wilderness of creeds and dogmas which in later times grew up out of these epistles was entirely unknown to primitive Christianity; yet the perusal of them was advantageous to the young man in many ways. The journeys of Paul aroused in his active mind a keen desire to know more of the world, and of the religion, manners, and customs of other nations; and the knowledge that Ammonius had acquired of different lands and peoples, both by his sea-faring observations and by such reading and conversation as circumstances had rendered possible to him, seemed to have been absorbed by his son in the long years of constant and affectionate intercourse between them; and this was no small stock of information, for the Mediterranean was then in every sense the "middle" sea, the highway of the world; and it was impossible for a shrewd, intelligent ship-owner and sailor like Ammonius to navigate its waters for years without being brought into personal contact with men out of every nation under heaven.

In the same way the lad had almost unconsciously acquired an intimate knowledge of the fauna and flora of Cyrenaica, and in fact of Northern Libya, and could name almost every plant, animal, bird, and insect in the vicinity of Baucalis; so that even at this early age he had laid the foundations of future acquisitions in every department of knowledge that was in any way accessible unto him, and had acquired a sturdy habit of independent thought and examination about everything that came within the range of his observation.

On Sabbath evenings (the word Sunday was then unknown to the Christian world) he loved to wander along the sea-shore, or through the wooded mountains that everywhere around Baucalis rose up from the water's edge and rolled away like gigantic and immovable billows high and higher southwardly toward the great Barcan plateau.

On one bright afternoon he had wandered farther westward than ever before, going far beyond the limits of the land appurtenant to the farm. He was weary with climbing over the endless hills, and reclined to rest upon a projecting rock beneath an ample shade of forest-trees, and gazed away over the calm and brilliant expanse of the peaceful Mediterranean. But not long had he rested there when his quick ear caught the sound of slow and measured footfalls as some unseen person paced slowly back and forth upon a diminutive plateau that stretched still farther westwardly along the mountain-side. The intervening foliage hid the person from sight, and, the lad's curiosity being aroused by the presence of a stranger in a spot so secluded, he quietly went forward, and a few steps brought him to the place where this little stretch of level ground had been carefully denuded of trees and seemed to be cultivated as a garden. Then he saw a tall, gray-haired, venerable-looking man, with downcast eyes, and slow, deliberate step, coming in his direction along a narrow walk that led directly through the cultivated land. Almost at the same instant the aged man perceived him also, but quietly pursued his way, and, when he had come near, Arius respectfully bowed and saluted him. The ancient returned his salutation, and added words which the boy did not understand, but the lad said, in the Greek tongue, then in common use throughout Cyrenaica: "I think thou speakest the language of Egypt, which I do not comprehend. If thou wilt speak in Latin or in Greek, I can understand thy wishes or thine orders."

The old man gazed at him in astonishment, but answered in the Greek tongue: "Surely thou art an Egyptian!--and in the course of a long life I have never met with a son of Egypt that could not speak his mother-tongue if he could speak at all!"

"Yea, sir," answered Arius, "I am altogether a son of Egypt, although born on an adjacent farm, but my parents would never use that language, and, while they carefully instructed me in Greek and in Latin and in Hebrew, and in the Aramean tongue of the Israelites now in use, they would never permit me to learn an Egyptian word."

"Strange enough!" said the ancient. "Dost thou know any reason why thy parents thus forbade thee to acquire the primitive and wonderful old speech of the land of Kem?"

"Yea, sir," answered Arius. "I have heard my father say that in his childhood he was placed in a temple and dedicated to Ammon, and that when he grew older he liked neither the temple nor the god, and fled away to follow another course of life; and I think that he believed the language of the Nile region to possess some peculiar power over every son of Egypt, and that to preserve me from that influence, whatever it may be, he desired of me that I would never seek to learn that speech--at least not for many years to come."

"And thy father was wise," cried the ancient; "for, if ever the powers of darkness gave any gift to man, it surely was the strange language of the dwellers by the Nile. Centuries before there were any such peoples as Greeks and Romans, centuries before the Israelites became a nation, so long ago that the universe seems growing old since then, and the earth itself hath nodded out of the line on which the mighty pyramid was built up to point to the polar star, even then, boy, the language of Egypt was a perfect instrument of thought, adapted with superhuman cunning to the purposes of idolatry, with rhythms and intonations in the utterance of it, that prick the sensuality of human nature like a goad, and deaden conscience with some mysterious, witch-like power which the intelligence can no more resist than the charmed bird can escape the python's fascination, and no more explain than it can explain why the iron touched by the magic stone pointeth for evermore unto the north. It is the natural language of sensualism and idolatry, and ought to be blotted out of human speech. I tell thee, lad, thy father was wise to forbid thee from seeking to acquire that fearful tongue!"

"But thou art thyself an Egyptian," said Arius, "and I suppose thou hast long used the wonderful language which thou dost condemn."

"Yea," answered the ancient, "but the speech I use is the hieratic form, invented by the priests for the very purpose of keeping their souls free from the polluting power of the popular forms of speech, to which a pure thought or expression is well-nigh impossible. But didst thou come hither to seek me out," asked the ancient, "or was thy coming accidental? What is thy name? Of what religion art thou? Why hast thou come to me?"

The old man spoke hurriedly and apparently with much anxiety, and the boy could not conjecture the cause of his manifest excitement, but after a moment's reflection upon the bitter and strange denunciation of man's ancient speech, and the subsequent things spoken by his companion, he replied in singularly musical and persuasive tones, the mesmeric light burning in his eyes, the bold, peculiar head erect and slightly bending forward toward him whom he addressed: "My name, sir, is Arius; my coming hither is purely accidental, as I supposed this mountain-side to be entirely uninhabited; my religion is that of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!"

"Thou art a Christian," said the ancient, in tones of great astonishment; "so young too, but clear, bold, and settled in the new faith, as thy voice and manner undoubtedly proclaim. I am much pleased with thee, boy. Come thou with me, where I dwell alone, for I desire to speak with thee more fully. Wilt thou not come, Arius!"

"Willingly, sir, if the distance be not too great," replied the lad.

"It is very nigh," said the ancient; and then he turned and followed the path west for, perhaps, fifty yards, and then the path led southwardly for about the same distance, and stopped at an abrupt and densely wooded elevation in the side of the mountain. Arius saw that a rough but substantial stone wall formed the outside of a room that was for the most part composed of a cavity under the rock; and having passed through a door, on each side of which was a long, narrow window admitting light into the apartment, the ancient said: "Here is my dwelling, Arius; come thou within."

The room was nearly twenty feet square: the floor was smoothly covered with dry, white sand, procured perhaps by pulverizing sand-rocks taken from the mountain; there was a wooden table in the middle of the apartment, above which a huge oil-lamp was suspended, and a smaller table upon one side, upon which rested a complete service of beautifully fashioned earthen plates, cups, pitchers, dishes, and similar articles. There were several large and comfortable chairs made of huge reeds curiously interwoven, and a couch constructed of the same material, and covered deep but smoothly with lamb-skins, dressed with the wool on. Everything about the place indicated a rather coarse but genuine comfort, even to the presence of several beautiful goats that came with their kids to the door and gazed in at the old man with confidence and affection, as if he were a familiar and trustworthy friend.

"Be thou seated, my son," said the ancient, "and, if thou wilt eat, I have here goat's milk, bread, and dried fish and fruits in abundance."

"I am not an hungered," answered the lad, "but partake of the bread and milk to honor thy hospitality," which he did, and found both excellent. "Thy very palatable bread," he said, "is the same with that made at my home by Thopt, and is, she saith, the same that priests at Memphis always preferred to eat."

"Even so," replied the ancient, "and at Memphis for many years, indeed, I did eat thereof, and learned there the manner of the preparation of it."

And, when the lad had finished his slight repast, the old man said: "Thou art a Christian, boy; in what, then, dost thou believe? Tell me briefly, what dost thou believe?"

Then the lad stood up as he had been accustomed to do at home: the fine but peculiar head involuntarily erected itself upon his long and shapely neck, and drooped a little forward, a strange, scintillant light gleamed in his sweet, dark eyes; his elevated and extended right hand waved gently from side to side like the _baton_ of a music-master, and his musical, penetrating voice rang out clearly and incisively as he said: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the holy common Church, in the forgiveness of sin, in the resurrection of the dead, and in the life everlasting. Amen!"

"So thou believest!" said the ancient. "But why dost thou say 'only-begotten' son? Are not all men the sons of God, even as the Greek poet saith, 'For we also are his offspring?'"

"Yea!" answered Arius, "all men are his sons by creation, and some of them by adoption--Jesus alone by generation; he was 'begotten,' not made."

"True! true!" said the ancient; "so teach the gospels, which I have here with me. So thou believest! When didst thou learn this faith, thou whole Egyptian; and dost thou never doubt it?"

"I know not when I learned it," answered Arius; "I was learning it from my mother when I lay helplessly upon her breast; I was learning it from my father when he dandled me upon his knees; every day and hour of my life I have learned it more and more;" and then, involuntarily rising upon his tiptoes, like a python standing upon its tail, with his head erect and bending slightly forward, and sparkling eyes agleam, he exclaimed, "and I was never such an idiot as to doubt it at all."

Then, as if modestly conscious of some impropriety in such demonstrative utterances in the presence of one so aged and venerable, he sank lower upon his chair with an ingenuous blush.

"O glorious certitude of youth and hope!" said the ancient, mournfully. "O bold, triumphant faith, fitting its possessor for happy and jubilant exertion in the accomplishment of all life's aims and purposes! Thou wast 'never such an idiot as to doubt it!' But I, that have seen nigh fourscore years of misery, do doubt it much and painfully. I that have mastered all the arts, science, and religion of ancient Egypt--a land that was wrinkled with age centuries before the era of old Moses; I that know both all that the priests of Kem ever taught the people, and also the higher and more recondite forms of ignorance in which the priests themselves believed--I verily know nothing! I can scarcely believe in anything save universal spiritual darkness, for which no day-spring cometh, and universal wretchedness, for which there is no cure. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?"

The bloodless hands were clasped upon the ancient's aching breast, the noble gray head was bowed with hopeless sorrow, the weary eyes seemed dim with long and bitter anguish. Arius gazed upon him with astonishment and sympathy. Then the grand gifts of every born minister of Christ, the missionary's yearning to instruct, the physician's longing for the power to heal and to strengthen, moved in the boy's heart, and once more he sprang to his feet, and with extended hand that quivered with emotion like the python's tongue, and tearful, scintillant eyes, and head bent forward from the long, lithe neck, and a strange thrill in his vibrant musical voice, he cried: "Who shall deliver thee? Surely Jesus Christ, our Lord! He saveth even unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him. Believe and live!"

"So! so!" said the ancient, in tones of hopeless weariness. "Believe and live! Believe and live! 'He that believeth on me shall never die! He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live again.' O new, strange faith, hidden through all the dynasties like the Nile's undiscoverable source, yet ever hinted at in the few high, arid, half-intangible truths in which the priests of Ra believed! What if it be true? What if the spiritual dualism of the first cause, which the priests gradually elaborated into the splendid pageantry and elegant mysticism of Hesiri-Hes, and the offspring Horus, has at last become an actual truth by the incarnation of the spiritual Son of the one God that is necessarily a spiritual hermaphrodite? Through the long centuries the priests secretly sneered at the polytheisms which they taught to the people, and they did believe in one God that was utterly unknown to the masses of mankind, for whom they had neither name nor symbol; and they conceived him to be a dual entity, containing in himself the fullness of double spiritual sexhood; and they stood in awe of some grand revelation which they supposed would some time be made to mankind when this one, almighty, hermaphrodite spirit should 'beget' with one side of his spiritual nature and 'conceive' with the other, and incarnate its son in flesh, and save man by assuming human nature. This they saw foreshadowed in Hesiri-Hes; this was the mystery which the priests perceived in every Apis, the emblem of one 'hidden' like the fountains of the Nile; for in the hieratic language Hapi, which is 'hidden,' signifies both the sacred river and the sacred bull; for this they prepared the mummy that a body might be ready for the returning soul when 'the hidden' should be revealed; this, the sacred scarabaei dimly intimated, and this was the secret mystery that lurked beneath the veil of Hes that 'no mortal hand hath lifted.' Some such glorious revelation must have flitted past Greek Plato's vision, when he longed for a clearer statement of the will of God to men, and prophesied the coming man. This was the grand thought of Moses, the monotheist, when in the same breath he denounced all forms of polytheism, and yet designated the one God whom he worshiped by a name which is the plural number of a Hebrew noun"; and, as if he had forgotten the presence of Arius altogether, who sat listening to this strange monologue with silent wonder, the ancient continued the unconscious utterance of his fervid meditations: "So hath it been throughout the world with every ancientest form of all original myths; for while Assyria and the Medo-Persians and other comparatively modern nations, and afterward the Greeks and Romans, borrowed only the lower, vulgar forms which the Egyptians had fashioned for popular use, in China Chang and Eng symbolized the original conception of one dual God that afterward degenerated into anthropomorphism; and in India Indra and Agni, a primitive conception that antedates Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, by countless centuries, and is the burden of the ancientest and uncorrupted Rig-Veda, bears unequivocal testimony to the same primitive conception; and the Buddhas taught that they were, perhaps believed themselves to be, earthly manifestations of the spiritual self-conception of one dual God: for polytheism was never the original form of any primitive nation's faith, and every people that began with paganism borrowed from some older nation in which the original faith had already been degraded. Strange! most strange! Oh, if it could be proved! If it could only be proved that Jesus of Nazareth is, in very truth, the incarnation of that which was to be 'begotten' and 'conceived' of the one dual God, and born of a woman into the world, how grandly would the fact vindicate the primitive utterances of all human faith, and translate its vague but splendid dreams into a glorious reality! It must be true! Surely it must be true! For among Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, and Jews, this original faith preceded all idolatries!"

Then, buried in profoundest meditation, the old man ceased to speak. But after a time he roused himself, and looking upon the astonished youth he said: "And thou believest all this! thou hast 'never been such an idiot as to doubt it!' Happy art thou, boy, if thou shalt preserve unfalteringly and unquestioningly thy serene and all-reliant faith."

But the lad's sturdy independence of thought asserted itself, and he answered: "Nay, sir! I have professed faith in none of the things of which thou speakest. I believe in one God and in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, and in the Holy Ghost. I believe not in Hesiri-Hes, nor in Chang and Eng, nor in Indra and Agni, nor in any gods which Moses denounced as falsest idols. Nor in Jupiter, nor Venus, nor Mars, nor in any of the gods that came into fashion with the heathen long since Moses died."

The ancient smiled approvingly, and replied: "Thou art altogether in the right, my son. Many of the gods in which the nations believe were born long after the records kept by the Egyptian priests began; but all were born of the myths which Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian priests wove about the grand, primitive conception of one dual God. The idolaters of other lands received in various forms the mythologies which the priests wove about the most ancient, simple faith, which was primarily the same for all, only the children of Abraham refused to add anything to the original conception, clinging obstinately to the primitive monotheistic idea; and yet Moses designates the one God by his name of _Adonai_, the plural number of a Hebrew noun; and when the one God speaks of himself he uses the words 'we,' 'our,' and 'us': _Let us make man in our own image and likeness_. Thou seest that it would be contrary to reason that the original utterance of every faith should be the affirmation of God that was one, and yet more than one, unless the divine being is spiritually hermaphrodite, having a double spiritual sexhood. Thou seest that, if this were not so, Moses could not have used the plural number to designate one God. Thou seest that, if it were not so, the only act possible to God would have been creation, not generation; and thy faith in 'the only-begotten Son' must have been false; and the very ancientest forms of faith would have been demonstrated to be merely impossible falsehood--impossible, because there can not be a falsehood which does not originate in and grow out of a truth; for falsehood is a perversion or misconception of the truth; for falsehood is not that which hath no existence, but is the wrong statement or conception of that which doth exist. If it were not so, my son, thy faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, would be merest polytheism, for three are not one, nor is one three; but the three may be one divine nature and family. For the one God was always conceived of by the primary faiths as a dual being, possessed of both elements of spiritual sexhood perfectly; and 'begotten' is a proper thing to say of one side of the dual God, and 'conceived' is a proper thing to say of the other; and so thou mayst believe, without any imputation of polytheism, in Christ, as a being 'begotten,' not created; 'conceived,' not made. Would that I knew that Jesus of Nazareth is he!"

"This learning is entirely new to me," said the lad. "Perhaps it is higher than I am yet able to comprehend. I believe in just precisely what the gospels say, no more, no less; that Jesus is the Christ, only-begotten Son of God, conceived of the Holy Ghost, before there was a creation, and born of the Virgin into the world long after God by him had made all things that are created. But, with thy profound knowledge of all these mysteries, how is it that thou thyself dost not believe? Who and what art thou, thou ancient, learned, yet unhappy man, whom may our Lord soon bless and save?"

"I love thee, boy, but I am old, and now too weary to talk more with thee. Wilt thou not come unto me again? I desire to live in seclusion as I have done for years, and beg of thee to speak of me to none; but come again thyself whenever thou canst."

"I will return upon the seventh day hence," said Arius, "and speak of thee to none except my father's family, and thou wilt not be annoyed by them. And so fare-thee-well, sir, and may the peace of God come upon thee!"

"Amen!" said the ancient, "and farewell!"