CHAPTER XXVII.

A CHANGE OF SCENE. THE SISTERS.

Adelaide was wondrously desolate on her return home. Her noble mansion, rcplete with elegance, what was it worth to her now? The famed Pantheon, for which a splendid gallery had been built, she never entered. The thought of it seemed to sicken her. Company wearied her, solitude distracted her. Miss Fairfield, the daughter of a decayed noble family, who acted as humble companion to her grace, was quite at a loss. What could be the matter with the lady? The poor humble lady companion did her best, her efforts were altogether unheeded. The duchess remained for the most part plunged in a profound reverie.

Adelaide was reviewing the past; comparing characters; examining principles. She had not loved the duke, but none the less his death had proved a loss to her. Rich as she was, powerful as she was, she was neither so rich nor so powerful as she had been while he lived. But there was a bitterer feeling far than this. It was, that she had never been an object of love to him, or to any one. She had coveted honor, power, wealth. She had these; but there were times when she would have given them all for the consciousness of having been loved as Ellen had been. She was jealous of the affections now laid in the grave, and would ask herself whether, had she been the one whom the duke had seen first, had they met ere his affections were engrossed, would he have loved her as he had loved the injured one? "I had youth, beauty, and intellect," thought she; "why should he not have loved me as he did that orphan girl?" {766} Strange that these thoughts should come upon her now; but only now had she compelled herself to acknowledge the great depth of feeling as well as the power of intellect which the duke had possessed.

Until she had read the mystery of the "Passion" in Avrillon, she had not understood the profound heavings of a contrite heart, which she had "mocked at" when he lay dying. Her eyes were beginning to open now; the world to wear a new aspect, although as yet a cloudy mist hovered over her higher visions; for she understood not the yearning of her own heart.

She was in this softened mood when she received a letter from her father. Six months had elapsed since her mother's death, and Mr. Godfrey complained that he could not yet rouse Hester to become anything like her usual self. He had taken her to Yorkshire, but she no longer cared to interest herself in "progression;" she had been disgusted at some scenes of immorality, and had voted that intellectual improvement without the observance of the moral law was a failure. "In fact," said Mr. Godfrey, "she is absorbed in discovering a 'new principle,' and more than once I have found her on her knees, bathed in tears. What can this mean? Has she also been tampered with? I am uneasy: I am coming next week to pay you a visit, and shall bring her with me. Help me to rouse her from her melancholy, and above all to banish fanaticism, if it is that disease which has taken hold of her."

Adelaide was not altogether reconciled to Hester, in spite of Eugene's explanation; but the moment that she realized from this letter that a restraint was likely to be put upon her sister's freedom of thought, the images of her mother and Annie rose before her, and she determined to use such influence as she could to prevent "persecution." "It is but a mistaken method after all," pondered she, "persecution can only tend to engender obstinacy, and rouse the pride of our natures. If Hester has any tendency to Catholicity, it can only be combated by reason, by showing its absurdity. My father will have to bring out his learned friends, and we will have the arguments of both sides plainly propounded. It will be an excitement, if nothing else. What was it that disgusted Hester with her 'march of intellect' scheme? She is not fickle-minded naturally; there is something fermenting in her mind which must be worked out. I am curious to see the termination; and if Hester makes a friend of me, she shall have freedom to think, and freedom too to act according to her conscience. There shall be no more persecution in the family."

Ah! Adelaide, you have learnt a lesson then from sorrow; it was not thus the proud young duchess reasoned when at the zenith of her power.

Adelaide received her visitor most kindly, and soon made Hester feel at home, though there was a sedateness, almost a melancholy, about her, quite foreign to her previous deportment. Mr. Godfrey fidgeted concerning her in a manner quite unusual with him, and seemed to make it his principal occupation to provide her with interest and amusement.

One morning, to the surprise of the sisters, as they were sitting together Mr. Godfrey entered, accompanied by the rector and his lady. Adelaide had certainly done the indispensable before, in receiving and returning a formal call with these parties, but nothing like intimacy had existed. Adelaide was so rarely at church, that the reverend doctor and lady did not feel encouraged to push themselves into her society. However, Mr. Godfrey now insinuated that his youngest daughter had taken a religious turn, and that he hoped from the doctor's reputation for learning that he would be able to give that turn a right direction, since unfortunately some developments in his family in religions matters had not been satisfactory.

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Dr. Lowell had looked somewhat askance on hearing this, as Mr. Godfrey's latitudinarian opinions and Eugene's Catholicity were both pretty well known, and had immediately enquired if Hester were a Catholic also. On receiving a decided negative he complied, though with some hesitation of manner. Controversy was not to the reverend gentleman's taste, and but that his wife offered to accompany him, and do her share of the talking, he would probably have backed out; but the lady possessing at once more earnestness of character and more confidence in her power of suasion than her husband, was anxious not to lose this opportunity of setting forth the value of Protestantism, and thus preserving Miss Hester Godfrey from following the pernicious examples set by Eugene and Lady Conway.

With these dispositions Dr. and Mrs. Lowell were ushered into the presence of the duchess and her sister, not altogether at ease at finding themselves in such aristocratic society. Adelaide received them with her usual quiet dignity, and turned the conversation to flowers, paintings, sculpture, literature, everything, in fact, save the topic which they came to discuss. At length, turning to Mr. Godfrey, she asked if he had introduced Dr. Lowell to the Pantheon.

"No, indeed," said Mr. Godfrey, laughing, "the doctor is more anxious about another subject just now; he is desirous of restoring his church, which has fallen out of repair."

"Indeed," said Adelaide, "then I must have the pleasure of assisting him," and she placed a well-filled purse before the doctor.

"Your grace is very good;" said the reverend gentleman. But Adelaide had risen to seek a volume of engravings on church architecture, which she placed in the lady's hand, telling her, as she presented it, that she presumed it would interest her, and might give her a hint or two to the style of embellishment suitable.

The doctor now took courage. "I am glad to see your grace so much interested in our church," he said. "I feared--" but here he stopped. Adelaide waited, perhaps a little maliciously, for the conclusion of the sentence. but it came not.

"May I ask what you fear, Dr. Lowell?" she said.

But as the answer did not seem quite ready, the lady of the reverend gentleman took up the word. "Your grace will pardon us," she said, "but as we have so seldom the pleasure of seeing you at church, the doctor feared that its reparation would not interest you so much as your kind acts now prove that it does."

Adelaide bowed, but replied simply by turning to an engraving. "I think it was in this style our church was originally built," she said; "do you propose to restore it in any way similar to the primitive idea?"

"I think not," said the doctor, "we only intend thoroughly to repair and cleanse it, unless, indeed, your grace desires your own pew altered."

"Oh! I will leave that matter to Miss Fairfield, she goes to church every Sunday, I believe, and I wish she should be made as comfortable as possible. If you will be kind enough to consult with her in this matter, I will agree to any arrangement she may make." And the duchess rang the bell; to request the attendance of the lady named.

"But," said the doctor, unwilling to lose the opportunity that seemed now to open, "I cannot believe that one so kind, so considerate, can be indifferent to matters of religion."

By this time Adelaide was amused, so she answered with a quiet smile: "It does not follow that one is indifferent to religion, because one does not consult the statute-book to find it. Great as is my reverence for English kings, queens, parliaments and prime-ministers, it is not to them I should go to learn religion."

{768}

The rector stared; his wife was equally confounded. The latter spoke first. "It is to church we were inviting you grace, to hear the word of God."

"The word of the preacher you mean, expounding what is termed the word of God, according to act of Parliament, and varying according as Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, James, William, Anne, or the Georges have dictated. You must excuse me, Dr. Lowell, I am a loyal subject, and as such duly uphold church and state, and you will ever find me willing to assist your wishes; but to take my religion by act of parliament home to my heart, to regulate my private motives, and unite my being to God, is quite another affair. Ah! in good time, here comes Miss Fairfield. My dear Lucy," continued the duchess, "Dr. Lowell wishes the advantage of your good taste in rearranging his church; I give you _carte blanche_ to act in my name on the subject. I must also beg your kind offices in entertaining him and his lady this morning. They will like to visit the hot-houses, the conservatories, the gardens, perhaps, also the picture gallery and the hall of sculpture. Dr. Lowell, Mrs. Lowell, I hope at my return from my drive I shall still find you here; you will favor me with your company to dinner."

Adelaide swept from the room like a queen who had issued commands none dared to gainsay, carrying off Hester with her.

Mr. Godfrey accompanied the rector and his lady on their tour through the house, but neither he nor anyone of the parties made the slightest allusion to Adelaide's remarks respecting the state religion; nor was the subject ever broached by them in her presence again. The dinner passed off pleasantly enough, and in the evening the carriage of the duchess conveyed the married pair to their homes, they feeling themselves honored by the gracious reception which on the whole they had experienced.

Mr. Godfrey could not but perceive from this attempt that it would be useless for him to attempt giving any direction to a religious movement, should such be the subject that occupied his daughter's mind; though in truth she was habitually so silent now, it was difficult for him to discover what did interest her. Suddenly he took it into his head he would like to go to London, and he asked Adelaide if she would not open her town house, and, go too.

"Certainly, if you wish it, father. It might amuse Hester also, for as yet Hester has never gone through the campaign of a London season."

But on their arrival in town Hester did not seem in any way eager to launch forth into the great world of fashion; its frivolities disgusted her, some of the fashions shocked her, particularly the ball dresses of some of her young compeers. She could not reconcile her native modesty to do the like, and was soon voted a prude by the exclusives of _bon ton_. However, as she made no effort to shine, and had "no success" in attracting the attentions of the gentlemen, she was soon forgiven and most times overlooked.

But this latter fact she did not even perceive; she was living within herself for the most part just now, and looking for a principle when she took a glance outside. It was not perhaps at Mayfair, among the sons and daughters of dissipation, that she might expect to find it. The only thing that was remarkable about her was her propensity to take a walk before breakfast; this in London was unusual, and but that the duchess imperiously forbade her household to comment on the subject, and jealously contrived to conceal the matter from Mr. Godfrey, threatening dismissal to anyone who spoke to him about it, it would have been a never-ending topic of discussion. Hester was accompanied in these walks by her little maid, Norah, but Norah could never be brought to tell where they had been. "Sure 'twas sometimes this way and sometimes that, and how should she know the names of all those fine London streets?"

{769}

Mr. Godfrey was not often up on her return, so did not perceive that she had been absent. One day, however, when Hester came in later than usual, Adelaide met her in the hall, took her bonnet and clock from her, and whispered that Mr. Godfrey was already in the breakfast-room.

Hester entered; but she found Mr. Godfrey so busy unfolding the newspaper that he did not perceive her entrance. She passed behind him ere he was aware, and impressed a kiss on his forehead; it was her usual morning's greeting.

"Ha! Hester, so you're up at last. I have a letter on your account."

"A letter for me?"

"No! yet one that you must answer; the great philosopher of the day is smitten with the charms of the fair vestal; he asked me ere we left Yorkshire if her heart was free."

"And what did you answer him?"

"That I did not know, but would enquire; this letter is a sort of reproachful remonstrance for not having fulfilled my promise."

Hester smiled, and Adelaide enquired who the gentleman was.

"A man," said Hester, "who thinks we have evolved into human beings from worms or bats or lower creatures still. By-the-by, father, he never told us why so many lower creatures remain unevolved."

"You piece of mischief, be serious; what answer shall I give him?"

"That I don't like his pedigree: I am looking higher than worms for my forefathers."

"But seriously, Hester--"

"But seriously, father, he says the character of the ancestry often reappears in the posterity, even after the lapse of many generations; and as he may have had, a tiger, a hyena, or even a boa-constrictor in his genealogical tree, I do not feel well inclined to trust myself to his keeping."

"Is that the new philosophy?" said Adelaide; "the vicious propensities of so many of the race are then accounted for, they are but beasts of prey in tailor's clothes."

"And yourselves, ladies?" said Mr. Godfrey.

"Oh!" said Adelaide, hastily, "please do not put us into the same category, Hester and I are well content with the old story. We are daughters of men and women, created in the good old style; reigning over the brutes by special privilege, and claiming no sort of kindred with them whatever."

"And Mr. Spence, Hester--"

"Mr. Spence, father, must seek a mate among his kindred, I am of another order of beings."

"Is that your final answer?"

"It is."

"You will revoke it, Hester; I will tell him to come and plead for himself."

"It will be useless; I shall tell him as I tell you, that I do not like his pedigree."

"Is that your only objection?"

"It is sufficient for a lady to give one objection, I think, especially when that one is insuperable."

Mr. Godfrey seemed disappointed, but he made no reply: the entrance of Miss Fairfield to pour out the coffee summoned the party to the breakfast table.

Mr. Godfrey took up the newspaper, and sipped his coffee in silence; it was his habit to read in company when annoyed. Suddenly, however, he laid the paper down. "De Villeneuve dead," he said, "my first, my earliest friend!" He rose and went to the window, but shortly afterward he left the room, evidently overpowered with the sudden news. Adelaide took up the paper. "It is the father, the old marquis, and his eldest son, drowned on Lake--in a sudden squall of wind. Why, Hester, our old acquaintance now succeeds to the property and title."

"Was not the elder brother married?"

"The paper says not; or at least it says he was a widower and childless, and that the estates now devolve on the second, the youngest son, the one who was in England last year."

{770}

"Yes, and it says that he was about to start for England again when this event detained him, and that he is expected shortly; why, it is three months ago since the old marquis died."

"It's strange the news did not reach us before, but what business can our M. de Villeneuve have in England now?"

"There is some talk of his coming over to take the 'Poor Clares' back with him. He was Euphrasie's guardian, and I know he wished to get her and the community established in America. It was that wish that took him back, to see what arrangements could be effected."

"But will they go?"

"Nay, that I know nothing about; I suppose he talked with them on the matter ere he made his plans."

By this time the breakfast table was cleared, and the sisters were alone together, and Adelaide suddenly turned the conversation into another channel. "Hester," she said, "you must make me your friend; you know that you are pursuing a path of difficulty. You are my father's idol, have you thought what it will be to break his heart?"

"O Adelaide! forbear; I have thought of that, and the thought is nearly killing me, but I must on in spite of myself."

"It is true, then?"

"What is true?"

"That you go to mass every morning, and weep yourself to sleep every night, my poor, dear sister!"

"How did you discover this?"

"Your attendant showed your pillow to Lucy Fairfield, it was no longer fit to use; and Lucy followed you more than once, and saw you enter the Bavarian Ambassador's chapel in Warwick street."

"But she did not tell my father?"

"No, I have threatened with dismissal anyone who makes a remark on the subject; meantime tell me, are you a Catholic?"

"No! but I must see the end of this. Adelaide, out of Christianity there is no 'power;' and 'power' it is that we want to effect good. Science is taking the form of Atheism more and more. It represses rather than elevates. The masses are awakening to consciousness of possessing a right to intellectual culture under influences that will finally subject them even more to tyranny; for when man seeks only sensuous gratification by his science, he must eventually fall under the empire of the appetites, and then barbarism results. Is not this the history of all anterior civilization? Our modern rise has been the gradual growth of intellect evolved under the restraining influence of religion; and though men have very imperfectly submitted to these restraints, they have produced immense fruit among the masses. Even indirectly, the consciousness of the possession of soul, of immortal power, has elevated the ideal, and the laborer assumes a legitimate place in humanity. And woman, Adelaide, what is woman out of Christianity? What was she in Pagan Greece and Rome; what will she be, again if Christianity is abolished? I see but three phases for her. The Turkish harem, the Mormon polygamy, or that worse than either state, which consigns an immense number of our sex to debasement utter and desperate."

"There is too much truth in this. But, Hester, be cautious; I will not hinder you, rather will I help you, and study with you, but you are not yet a Catholic. I must then say again, be cautions: I dare not think on the result of my father's knowing your present study!"

"Indeed it has troubled me more than a little. O Adelaide! why should there be such a prejudice against any one form of religion?"

"I cannot answer that, still less can I tell why men of science should hate it so supremely; but it is so, and you know, dear Hester, that the shock of your conversion might occasion a terrible convulsion in my father. Let us proceed quietly, until the result is decided. Have you ever considered {771} what is the first step to take in the investigation of truth?"

"I am inclined to think the process must be a moral one, as well as an intellectual one. I heard a preacher say lately: 'Souls who would come to Christ, must first be gathered to the Baptist!'"

Adelaide hid her face in her hands, "There is a deep meaning in that," she said. "Hester, I too have my secret. Do you remember the Catholic priest whom I ordered to quit the house as soon as the duke was dead? His visage haunts me, he looked up from his prayers at my words, and his face seemed so full of pity, pity for me, that I half relented; but matters had gone too far. Well, I wrote to Eugene lately to inquire about him, and Eugene says he is at H---- on a mission, among the poor Irish laborers, and that young Henry, the duke's son, is with him. The mother too, the Ellen of the duke's romance, lives in the neighborhood. I have an intense desire to pay the place a visit; had you not come, I should have gone alone; now will you go with me?"

"Willingly; you are, then, in communication with Eugene?"

"Slightly; I dare not tell him all that is in my thoughts, lest I should raise false hopes. I have not faith, but I feel it would be a great gift."

"So great that it would be worth any sacrifice; but Catholics say it is a supernatural gift, and that it must come from God."

"And Eugene insists that the presence of sin blinds the soul; by obscuring the spiritual faculty, thus hindering the reception of faith."

"If so," said Hester, "we must do what we can to get clear of sin, even at the price of confession."

"It is therefor I intend to see the abbé, to make reparation. I will not voluntarily put an obstacle to the reception of God's gifts. If grace comes, it shall find me ready to receive it."

Hester looked at Adelaide in surprise. The haughty duchess had disappeared; another spirit so gentle looked from those eyes, that Hester could only throw herself into her sister's arms and weep.

TO BE CONTINUED

ORIGINAL.

ON THE CURE OF BARTIMEUS.

"Bartimeus, the blind man, sat by the wayside begging. And they say to him: Be of better comfort: arise, He calleth thee."

Out of the windows of my mind---- From my heart's idly open door, My gaze the wide world wanders o'er, And yet, alas! how blind, how blind!

My sight of things divine how dim! Though there be not a single day But Jesus passeth by the way; All else I see, but blind to him.

Though rich, I seek the beggar's mite---- His beauty only do I prize; And all is darkness to my eyes Whilst he is hidden from my sight.

I hear a voice within my soul---- "Arise, of better comfort be, And come: the Master calleth thee---- Thy faith shall also make thee whole."

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From the Dublin Review.

ORIGEN AT CAESAREA.

Origenis Libri contra Celsum (inter Opera omnia). Ed. Migne.1857.

In concluding our survey of the character and work of Origen, it will be useful to recall the leading dates in the chronology of his life to the date of his exodus from Alexandria. Born in or about 186, he became the head of the Catechetical school at the age of eighteen: About 211 he visited Rome. From that year till 231, he labored at Alexandria, with no other interruptions than short journeys into Arabia, to Caesarea, and into Greece. In 231 he left Alexandria never to return, and thenceforward the chief place of his residence was Caesarea of Palestine. In the fourth or fifth year of his sojourn there (235), Maximin's persecution compelled him to flee to Caesarea of Cappadocia. Returning to the other Caesarea in 238, he remained there for about eleven years, that is, until the commencement of the Decian persecution. During these years, however, he made another journey into Greece, and two more into Arabia. After the cessation of the persecution he lived a short time in Jerusalem, and thence removed to Tyre, where he died in 253, or 254, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. The chief divisions of his life after attaining manhood are therefore the following:

1. The twenty years (211-231) of his Alexandrian teaching. 2. The twenty years (231-251) of his life at Caesarea. 3. The three or four years from the end of the Decian persecution (251) till his death (254.)

In our present essay we shall be concerned chiefly with the second of these periods. It was the time of Origen's most active and dignified labor. He was now not so much the teacher of disciples as the teacher of teachers and the doctor of the whole East. The church was, on the whole, at peace, her numbers were increasing, her organization developing, and her doctrines becoming daily more and more a subject of inquiry to intellects, friendly and hostile. We have before taken notice (Dublin Review, April, 1866, p. 401) how Caesarea was an important centre, political, literary, and religious; and here Origen spent the twenty years of which we now speak, in intercourse with such bishops as S. Alexander, S. Theoctistus, and Firmilian, in training such pupils as Gregory Thaumaturgus, in preaching such homilies as those on Isaiah, Ezechiel, and the Canticles, in writing such apologies as the Contra Celsum, and in carrying through such an enterprise as the Hexapla. It is to this period that we must refer the emphatic testimony of S. Vincent of Lerins. "It is impossible," says he, "to tell how Origen was loved, esteemed, and admired by every one. All that made any profession of piety hastened to him from the ends of the world. There was no Christian who did not respect him as a prophet, no philosopher who did not honor him as a master." The word piety ([Greek text]) is worth noticing, because something much more wide and broad was meant by it then than now; indeed, the original word would be better translated religion or religiousness. The term, prophet, is also worthy of being remarked; a prophet means one who is at once teacher of the most exalted class and an ascetic who has perfectly trampled this world under his feet. Finally, the philosophers looked to him as their {773} master, though he professed to teach no philosophy but Christianity, and quoted the Hebrew scriptures instead of Plato and Aristotle when men came to him with difficulties about the soul, the logos, and the creator.

In the present article, therefore, we shall be concerned with his Caesarean life; and as it is impossible to compress within moderate limits all that might be said of the literary productions of this exceedingly rich period of his labors, we shall confine ourselves chiefly to the consideration of the great work Contra Celsum. First, however, let us take a glance at the events of the twenty years, for they are not void of events which give us a notion of the man.

Since his principal charge at Caesarea was to preach the Word of God to the people, perhaps the largest part of his extant writings has come to consist of the homilies that he delivered in the discharge of this honorable duty. It was the bishop himself who, as a rule, preached in the church, and no priest was substituted whose learning and piety were not beyond all question. We have before quoted the strong words in which Eusebius has handed down the opinion of Origen held by S. Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea. On the Sunday, therefore, as we learn from himself, on festivals, and sometimes, it would seem, on Fridays or other week-days, he stood forth from among the clergy with all the weight of his bishop's mandate and of his own character, to interpret and comment on the Holy Scriptures. It would be interesting to be able to picture to ourselves that church at Caesarea in which the great light of the east spoke, Sunday after Sunday, to the mingled Greek and barbarian Christians of the capital of Palestine. It would probably be a building designed and founded for the purpose. Yet it cannot have been grand or sumptuous, or in any way resembling. a heathen temple, for Origen himself allows that the Christians had no "temples." 'What it was inside we can better guess. We know from Origen's own hints that there existed in it the usual distinctions of position for the various ranks of faithful and of clergy that are so well known from writers of a century later. We may therefore conclude that the chancel or altar part was clearly separated from the rest of the interior, and perhaps elevated above it; that the altar itself stood at some distance from the eastern wall, and that round the apsis behind it ran the [Greek text] or presbyters' bench. Here, in the centre, stood the chair of the bishop, and here he sat during the sacred liturgy in the midst of his priests, all in a semicircle of lofty seats. The deacons and inferior clergy occupied the rest of the sanctuary, which was separated by a railing from the nave. In the nave, immediately outside the rails, stood the _ambo_ or reading-desk, sometimes called the choir, for here clustered the singers and readers whose place it was to intone the less solemn parts of the liturgy. Hangings, more or less magnificent, according to circumstances, suspended above the rails, were closed during the canon of the mass; and shut out the holies from the sight of the people. Over the altar was the canopy, on four pillars, and upon the altar a linen cloth; and the chair of the bishop was usually covered with suitable drapery. When the bishop preached, he stood or sat forward, probably in front of the altar, but within the chancel-rails; it was a very unusual thing to preach from the _ambo_, though S. John Chrysostom is recorded to have done so in Sancta Sophia, in order to be better heard by the people. Origen, therefore, would preach from the sanctuary on the Lord's-day; bishop, priests, clergy, and people, in their places to hear him; the pontiff in his flat mitre with the _infulae_ of the high priesthood; the priests in the linen chasubles that came down and covered them on every side; the deacons and others in their various tunics and albs; the singers and readers with the diptychs and books of chant laid {774} ready open on the desk of the _ambo_; the faithful in the nave, men on one side and women on the other; the virgins and the widows in their seats apart; the various orders of penitents in the nave or in the narthex, and the band of listening catechumens in front of the "royal gates" (of the nave) that they hoped soon to be allowed to enter. His hearers would be of all degrees of fervor, and of many different ranks; they might include Greek philosophers and poor _vernae_ or house slaves, patricians of Roman burghs, and Syrian porters; doubtless the bulk of them were the poor and the lowly of Caesarea. He had to say a word to all, and he found means to say it, in the word of Holy Scripture. He had, by this time, dispensed himself from previously writing his discourses; and hence many of those that have come down to us are the shorthand reports that were taken down as he spoke, and afterward corrected by himself. The text or subject of the discourse was that portion of Scripture which had just been recited by the reader, or part of it; though sometimes we find that he had a text given him by the bishop or by the presbytery, and that occasionally he selected a particular subject at the desire of "some of the brethren." He held his own copy of the Scripture in his hand; for we find him comparing it with the version just used by the reader. His discourses were not set pieces of eloquence; they were true homilies, that is, familiar and easy addresses, almost seeming to have developed themselves out of an earlier style of dialogue between priest and people. They have all the abruptness, all the questionings and answerings, all the explanations of terms and sentences, and all the appreciation of difficulties that suggest rather the catechist with his class than the preacher with his auditory. We miss the poetry and fine fancy of Clement, but we gain in orderly and connected development. One is certainly tempted to think that more artistic and ornamental treatment might have been expected from the son of Leonides and the teacher of rhetoric. But Origen tells us more than once that he studiously avoids worldly and profane eloquence. His reason seems not far to seek. Rhetoric was the main profession of the pagan teachers that abounded in every town of the empire; and S. Augustin's expression, that rhetoric meant the art of telling lies, was not exaggerated. Rhetoric in those days did not mean the sound and immortal precepts of Aristotle, but the vain heaping together of empty words. It was the necessity of protesting against this that has undoubtedly given much of their ruggedness to the homilies of Origen. His watchword was, edification; his rule and law, as he expressly says, was, not completeness of exposition, not parade of words, but the benefit of those who listened. Because he was a speaker, he rejected tedious and minute disquisitions, which were more suitable for "the leisure of a writer." Because he was a speaker of the truth, he avoided, even to austerity, the imitation of profane and perverted art. He was rich in matter, and poured forth a stream of doctrine, of exhortation, of reproof. His name and character did the rest. A word from Origen had more weight than a treatise from an unknown mouth. We have no record of how his audience took his discourses, save what is implied in the general testimony to his prodigious reputation. But, on the other hand, he presents us with a few facts about his audience. We learn that some were readier to look after the adorning of the church than the beautifying of their own souls. It appears that it was difficult to get an audience together on common week-days, and that they were somewhat remiss in assembling even on festivals, though he speaks of a few as "constant attendants" on the preaching. Those who did come to church, too often came not so much to hear God's word, as because it was a festival, and because it was pleasant to have a holiday. And {775} some escaped the sermon altogether by going out immediately after the reading: "Why do you complain of not knowing this and not knowing that," he says, "when you never wait for the conference, and never interrogate your priests?" Moreover, many who were present at the discourse in body, were far away in spirit, for "they sat apart in the corners of the Lord's house and occupied themselves with profane confabulation." He did not preach to an immaculate audience: there were many who were Christians in name, Pagans in life; many who turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves; many who preferred the agora, the law courts, the farm, before the church; and many who could provide pedagogues, masters, books, money, and time, that their children might learn the liberal arts, but who failed to see that something of the same diligence and sacrifice was necessary on their own parts if they wished to become true disciples of the word of God. But from all this it would be wrong to infer that Origen's hearers were worse than others in their circumstances. Doubtless they listened with reverence both to his teaching and to his rebukes. Perhaps even they applauded him by acclamation; such a thing was not unknown a century or so later. It would be little to Origen's taste to have his audience waving their garments and rocking their bodies in ecstasy or calling out "orthodox!" as they did to S. Cyril, of Alexandria, or "Thou art the thirteenth apostle!" as the excitable Constantinopolitans did to S. Chrysostom; like S. Jerome, he preferred "to excite the grief of the people rather than their applause, and his commendation was their tears." S. Vincent, of Lerins, two centuries after Origen's preaching at Caesarea, speaks of the way in which his "eloquence" affected himself. If his audience were as well satisfied, they must have listened to him with great pleasure and profit. "His discourse," says S. Vincent, in the Commonitorium, "was pleasant to the fancy, sweet as milk, to the taste; it seems to me that there issued from his mouth honey rather than words. Nothing so hard to believe, but his powers of controversy made it plain; nothing so difficult to practise, but his persuasiveness rendered it easy. Tell me not that he did nothing but argue, There has never been a teacher who has used so many examples out of the Holy Writ." The homilies of Origen did not pass away with the voice that delivered them. Till he was sixty years old he had generally written them out beforehand. After that time the shorthand writers beside him caught every word as it fell, and so the discourses became a treasury for ever. Fortune and time have indeed destroyed far the greater part of the "thousand and more tractates" which S. Jerome says he delivered in the church, and of what remain some only exist in abbreviated Latin translations. But though their letter is diminished, their spirit pervades the whole field of patristic exposition, and many of the greatest of the Greek and Latin fathers have not hesitated over and over again to use at length the exact words of Origen. And so the sentences first uttered in the church of Caesarea have become the public property of the church universal, and while Caesarea is a ruin and its library scattered to dust, the living word and spirit of him who spoke there, speaks still in cities far greater, and to auditories far more wide; for every pulpit utters his thoughts, and Christian people, though they may not know it, are everywhere "edified" by that which was first the offspring of' his intellect.

Origen had been laboring at Caesarea for barely four years when one of those interruptions occurred that he had already become familiar with at Alexandria. The Emperor Maximin (235), a barbarian giant, whose unchecked propensities for cruelty and blood seem to have driven him absolutely mad before the end of his three years' reign, followed up the murder of his {776} benefactor Alexander Severus by a series of horrors, in which were involved both pagans and Christians alike. Any man of name, character, or wealth, in any part of the world that could be reached by a Roman cohort, was liable to confiscation, torture, and death in order to appease his frantic suspicions. Caesarea was an important Roman post, and as no one in Caesarea was better known than the head of the Christian school, we soon find that Origen is marked out for a victim. He escaped, however, by a prompt flight, and reached the other Caesarea, of Cappadocia, the see of his friend Firmilian. He had no sooner arrived there than the capricious persecution fell upon the city of his refuge, under the auspices of Serenianus the governor, "a dire and bitter persecutor," as he is called by Firmilian. In these straits he managed to lie hid for two years in the house of a lady called Juliana--a house, indeed, to which he was attracted by other considerations beside that of safety; for this lady was the heiress of the whole library of Symmachus the Ebionite, one of those learned translators of the Hebrew Scriptures whom Origen incorporated in the Hexapla. He himself mentions with great satisfaction the advantages which his biblical labors derived from the opportunities he enjoyed in his Cappadocian retirement. We are also indebted to this period for two, not the least interesting, of his works. Maximin's informers seem to have contrived to implicate the good Christian Ambrose in some trouble. That Ambrose was a man of wealth we have seen, and he was undoubtedly, also, in some considerable charge or employment which necessitated his journeying frequently from one Roman city to another. Whether this persecution caught him at Alexandria or Caesarea, or elsewhere, is uncertain; but he had received notice of his danger and was preparing to place himself in security when the insurrection of the Gordians broke out in Syria and Asia, and in the confusion and trouble that ensued he became the prisoner of Maximin's troops, and was immediately sent, or destined to be sent, to Germany, where the emperor had just concluded a triumphant campaign. The news of the danger of his zealous friend and patron drew from Origen the letter that we know now as the Exhortatio ad Martyrium. It was accompanied by another, the De Oratione, which he had perhaps already composed. These two works, into an examination of which we cannot enter, show more of the interior spirit of their writer than anything else that has reached us. When a history of the early methods of prayer comes to be written, the treatise on prayer will have to be thoroughly examined. The Exhortation to Martyrdom is full of the true Adamantine vehemence and piety. Though addressed to Ambrose, it is really, and would be accepted as a general call to the Church of Palestine to stand fast and do manfully in the dangerous times on which they had fallen. The name of Protectetus, a priest of Caesarea, which is associated with that of Ambrose in the dedication, as he was also in danger of death, felicitously localizes it, and we may look upon it as a homily, delivered in writing and from a distance, and on a new and stirring subject, to that church which he had been accustomed to edify with his words during the three or four years preceding. We unwillingly omit to enter upon it at large. At Maximin's death (238) he returned to his own Caesarea. After this, his literary enterprises, completed and undertaken, come thick and frequent. Among other works we meet with the commentaries on Ezechiel and Isaiah, on S. Matthew and S. Luke, on Daniel and the twelve minor prophets, and on several of the epistles of S. Paul. It is to this time also that belongs the celebrated exposition of the Canticle of Canticles, of which S. Jerome has said, that whereas in his other works he surpassed all other men, so in this he surpassed himself. But little of the original has come down to us, and the translation {777} of Rufinus is too free and abridged to enable us to understand how this high praise was deserved.

About the same period he made a second journey into Greece. What occasion brought him to Athens we are not informed. We find, however, that he thought very highly of the Athenian Church. In his reply to Celsus, speaking of the influence and weight that Christians were everywhere acquiring, he instances the Church at Athens, and boasts that the assembly of the Athenian people was only a tumultuous mob in comparison with the congregation of the Athenian Christians. Since Athens was even then the central light of the whole world, we may perhaps conclude that Origen's journey thither was caused by some phase of the conflict between Philosophy and the Gospel with which he had been all his life so familiar. On his return to Caesarea he wrote the answer to Celsus, with which we shall concern ourselves presently. It was written during the reign of Philip the Arabian. We are told by Eusebius that Origen wrote a letter to this emperor. What this letter can have been about is somewhat of a puzzle in history. Eusebius, to be sure, a couple of chapters before he mentions the letter, relates a story, rather coldly, about Philip's coming to the church (at Antioch) one Easter time as a Christian, and his seating himself among the penitents when the bishop (S. Babylas) refused to admit him on any other terms. S. Babylas might well reject him and place him among the penitents, for his career, which commenced, as that of most of the Roman emperors, with the murder of his predecessor, the young Gordian, had been anything but innocent. Certain it is, however, that the story was current of Philip's being a Christian. Even if he were not, which seems the more probable, there is no improbability that he may have questioned such a man as Origen about Christianity. It must be recollected, moreover, that this Emperor Philip was by birth an Arabian, being a native of Bostra. He was the son of a robber-chief, and we are first introduced to him as taking an important part in the campaign of Gordian in which the Persians were driven out of Mesopotamia. The important Roman city of Bostra, though not within the boundaries of Arabia, was sufficiently near them to be considered the metropolis of the upper part of Arabia, as Petra was of the middle. Philip, therefore, was evidently nothing more than a powerful Bedouin Sheik, such as may be seen at this very day in the countries of which he was a native, and had succeeded his father in the possession of wide influence over the predatory tribes that ranged over all Palestine, Syria, and Arabia, except the actual spots occupied by a Roman military force. His character is significantly illustrated by the incident that raised him to the purple. When Gordian's army was in Mesopotamia, his dangerous captain of Free Lances took care to have the whole of the commissariat supplies intercepted, and thus caused the mutiny which, terminated in Gordian's death. Such a feat was easy and natural to a chief whose wild horsemen commanded every part of the great Syrian desert that lay between Mesopotamia and the Roman stations off the Mediterranean coast. But what is more to our purpose is, that Origen was frequently at Bostra, and was there at the very time of Gordian's campaign and Philip's accession. Bearing in mind the extent to which the name of Origen was known among the pagan men of letters, as well as among the Christian churches, it seems impossible but that Philip must have heard him mentioned. Only let us grant that the emperor had a leaning to Christianity, even though in no better spirit than that of an eclectic, and the occasion of Origen's letter becomes clear. The mention of the Syrian desert reminds us of another celebrated name. Palmyra, or Tadmor of the Wilderness, was, at the time of which we write, almost in the zenith of her beauty, though it was not till {778} twenty years afterward that her splendor culminated and collapsed under Zenobia and Longinus. Origen knew the great philosopher, who had been his auditor at Alexandria, and whom he had most probably met again at Athens. It is quite possible that Longinus may have become the guest of Zenobia before Origen left Caesarea for the last time, and, therefore, during the time he was so familiar with the Arabian Church. We know that he had more than a mere acquaintance with the author of the Treatise on the Sublime, and, perhaps, there were no two minds of the age more fitted to grapple with each other. Of their mutual influence we have no certain traces, but it may be noted that amongst the lost works of Longinus there is a treatise, [Greek text]. Can it have had any relation to that of Origen under the same name?

It was at Caesarea, between the years 243 and the breaking out of the Decian persecution in 249, that was written the famous Contra Celsum. It is justly considered the masterpiece of its author. Ostensibly an answer to the gainsayings of a heathen philosopher, it really takes up, with the calmest scientific precision, the position that Christianity is so true and hangs together with such completeness of moral beauty, that the barkings of Gentile learning cannot confute it, nor the violence of Gentile hatred stop its inevitable march. With no rhetorical passion, with profound learning, with a knowledge of Holy Scripture truly worthy of Adamantins, with frequent passages of noble and profound eloquence, the Christian doctor builds up the monument of the faith he loved and taught; and the work that has come down to us through all those ages since it was written, has been recognized for fifteen hundred years as one of those great, complete, finished productions that are only given to the world by the pen of a genius. Eusebius, his biographer, speaks of it as containing the refutation of all that has been asserted, and, "by pre-occupation," of all that could ever be asserted on certain vital matters of controversy. S. Basil and S. Gregory Nazianzen strung together a series of favorite passages mainly from it and called their work Philocalia, "love for the beautiful." S. Jerome, whose praise cannot be suspected of partiality, puts him by the side of two other great apologists his successors, and exclaims that to read them makes him think himself the merest tyro, and shrivels up all his learning to a sort of a dreamy remembrance of what he was taught as a boy. Bishop Bull takes the Contra Celsum as the touchstone of Origen's dogmatic teaching; "he meant it for the public," he says, "he wrote it thoughtfully and of set purpose, and he wrote it when he was more than sixty years of age, full of knowledge and experience."

It must have been about the time when Marcus Aurelius was engaged in persecuting the church (160-180) that a certain eclectic Platonist philosopher called Celsus, in order to contribute his share to the good work, wrote an uncompromising attack on Christianity, and called it by the title of The True Word; or, The Word of Truth. We have called him an eclectic Platonist; but, in fact, it is very much disputed among the learned what sect of philosophers he honored with his allegiance. Some call him a Stoic, others an Epicurean, and this latter opinion is the common traditional one; and what would seem to settle the question, Epicurean is the epithet given to him by Origen himself. That Origen, when he took up The Word of' Truth to refute it, thought he was going to refute an Epicurean, is quite evident; but it is no less evident that he had not read many sentences of the work itself before he began to doubt and more than doubt whether the name of Epicurean was a true description of its author. In one place he is amazed to hear "an Epicurean say such things," in another he charges him with artfully concealing his Epicurism for a purpose, and in a third he {779} supposes that if he ever was an Epicurean he has renounced its tenets and betaken himself to something more sound and sensible. What made Origen hesitate to state plainly that he was no follower of Epicurus seems to have been the broad tradition that had attached the epithet to the name of Celsus, thereby identifying the writer of The Word of Truth with the writer of a certain work against magic, well known to literary men, which was beyond all doubt from the pen of an Epicurean Celsus. This latter was also probably the same as the Celsus to whom the scoffer Lucian dedicated his Alexander, in which he shows up that impostor's tricks and sham magic; and Lucian, in his dedication, alludes to the works against magic, just as Origen does. As Lucian died some years before Origen was born, the works against magic must have been very widely known, and their author must have been accepted as _the_ Celsus, and as he was certainly an Epicurean, that designation fastened itself also upon the other Celsus, the author of The Word of Truth, who had not had the advantage of an admiring Lucian to fix his proper title in the memory of the literary world. But an Epicurean he certainly was not. One proof is quite sufficient. The subject of magic was a decisive test of a true Epicurean. Not believing in Providence and professing, in fact, a sort of philosophic atheism, he considered that gods and demons never interfered in the concerns of the earth and the human race. Human and mundane atoms, as they got created by a species of accident and came together fortuitously, so they continued to blunder against each other in various ways, and thus caused what men foolishly called the cosmos, or order of the universe; whilst the divine nature of the immortals, serene on Olympus

Semotá a nostris rebus, sejunctaque longè, Jam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri, Nec benè pro meritis capitur nec tangitur irâ.

Lucretius, de Rerum Naturtâ, I. 50.

The Epicurian, therefore, laughed alike at the notion of benevolent god and malignant demon, at providence and at magic, and crowned himself with flowers and drank and sinned, if his means allowed it, under the soothing persuasion that "to-morrow" he was "to die." When, therefore, we find that the author of The Word of Truth not only attributes miracles to AEsculapius, Aristeas, and others, and magic to Christ, but also considers that this world and its various parts are committed to the custody of demons, whom it is, therefore, proper to propitate by worship and sacrifice, we need no other evidence that he was no follower of Epicurus.

On the other hand, a prominent belief in the agencies of unseen powers was a mark of the Platonist of the day. Whatever Plato may have thought of the inferior gods and demons (and on some occasions, as in the Timaeus, he speaks of them with considerable levity), the followers, who revived his doctrine in the first centuries after Christ, gave them a very large share of their attention. A creator or first father of all things was a Platonic dogma, and man and matter must have in some way come from him; but in order to bridge over the interval between two such extremes as God and matter, recourse was had to an immense army of intermediate beings, of which the highest was so dignified as to be little more than an abstraction, and the lowest shaded off into a species of superior animal. It is this, multitude of good and bad demons that makes its appearance in modified shape and number in Platonist and Gnostic cosmogonies, and which is so puzzling to follow through all its fantastic intermarriages and combinations. When Celsus must have been writing, that is, about the time S. Clement of Alexandria began to teach, the spirit of Plato was abroad, not only at Alexandria but at Athens and in Rome. Theurgy was openly professed by the most reputable teachers; their enemies called it sorcery; but whatever it was, it meant some intimate communion with {780} the invisible world. A writer; therefore, who puts the moon and stars under the guardianship of heavenly powers, who pathetically defends the case of the demons and deprecates their being deprived of the gratification they derive from the "smell" of a sacrifice, and who attributes supernatural powers to friends and enemies--calling them in the one ease miracles, in the latter, magic--is evidently closer to Saceas and Porphyry than to Epicurus and Democritus. Celsus, however, though he says all this, cannot be called a real Platonist or Neo-Platonist. He came in the early days of a revival, and his philosophic pallium hung rather loosely about him; he was not above following a new leader on an occasion, provided he saw his way to a new stroke against the Christians. It must be admitted that he shows a fair share or learning, some acuteness, and some acquaintance with a variety of different peoples and customs. On the other hand, he is occasionally guilty of the most absurd and transparent sophisms, his conceit is unbounded, and his tone generally sneering and often very offensive.

It was this philosopher then, Eclectic, Platonist, and man of the world, whose Word of Truth seemed to the pious and indefatigable Ambrose to be so dangerous and damaging that no time ought to be lost in answering it. With this view, he attacked Origen on the subject, and by dint of prayers and representations made him take in hand its refutation. Origen was by no means eager to undertake the work; and we can partly enter into his objections. The book of Celsus was not a new one: it had been in the hands of the reading world and in the centres of learning, such as Athens, Antioch, Caesarea, and Alexandria, for at least sixty years, and it is to be supposed that answers to its most important objections were common enough in the Christian schools, though, perhaps it was itself ignored. Then, it was not the sort of book that could do the faithful any harm, for they could not read it, or, if they did, they distrusted it even where they could not refute it. It was too late in the day for an open-mouthed pagan to have any chance against the gospel of Christ. The dangerous people were those who, like the heretics, came with the elements of this world disguised under the sheep's clothing of Christianity; but an honest wolf only lost his trouble; and so Origen, whilst promising to comply with the wishes of his friend, plainly says that what he has undertaken to overthrow, he cannot conceive as having the least effect in shaking the orthodoxy of a single faithful man. "That man," he says, "would be little to my taste, whose faith would be in danger of shipwreck from the words of this Celsus, who has not now even the advantage of being alive; and I do not know what I should think of one who required a book to be written before he could meet his accusations. And, yet, because there might possibly be some professing believers who find Celsus's writings a stumbling-block, and would be proportionally comforted by anything in the shape of a writing that undertook to crush him, I have resolved to take in hand the refutation of the work you have sent me." The expressions, "a book to be written," "writings," and "hand-writing," are noticeable, for they show clearly enough, what has not been much observed, that Origen's chief objection to answering Celsus was that Celsus was already answered in the oral teachings of the church. In this also we have the explanation of the contempt in which he seems to hold his antagonist--a temper which is seldom advisable either in war or polemics. But Celsus had been, and was daily being answered, and the only question was, whether it was worth while to put formally on paper what every Christian catechist had by heart. Was it not better to imitate the majestic silence of Jesus Christ, who spoke no word, but let his life speak for him? "I dare affirm," he says, "that the defence you ask me to write will be swamped and disappear before that other defence of {781} facts and the power of Jesus, which none but the blind can fail to see." And he adds, that it is not for the faithful he writes, but for those who have not tasted the faith of Christ, or for those weak believers who, in the apostle's phrase, must be kindly taken up.

And yet Ambrose seems to have been quite right in insisting that Origen should answer the book of Celsus. Its arguments might be stale, and its influence small, but there it was, a formal written record of some of the ugliest things that could be said against Christianity and its founder. What seemed more becoming, than that the foremost Christian doctor of his day should take in hand, at a time when external peace and internal growth seemed to warrant it, to give a formal, written answer to an attack that was a standing piece of impertinence, even if it did no harm? Besides, some harm it must have done, at least in the shape of keeping well-meaning pagans from the truth; and though Origen is always more fond of working for the spiritual welfare of his own household than of direct proselytizing, yet Ambrose, as a convert, knew what prejudice was, and what was the importance of a work from the pen of a Christian doctor who had the ear of the Gentile world. And Ambrose, moreover, was perfectly aware, as was everyone except the Adamantine himself, that even if the refutation embraced only the common topics that were handled daily in the Christian instructions, yet the result would be as far above the ordinary catechetical lesson as the master was above the ordinary catechist. Perhaps he hardly knew, as we know, that his instances would produce a master-piece of polemical writing, from which all ages have borrowed, and in which the immense knowledge of Scripture, the beautiful and tender piety, and the sustained eloquence of expression were unrivalled until, perhaps, Bossuet wrote his Histoire Universelle.

It is by no means our intention to give a detailed analysis of this wonderful work: it is described at great length in easily accessible authors. But it will be interesting to seize on some of its most salient characters, and thus to throw what light may be possible upon the subject of our discussion. And the first remark that occurs seems to be a contradiction of Origen's own statement. The Contra Celsum was written more for the faithful than for the philosophers, and was less aimed at the dead and gone Celsus than at the living children of the church. It may be true that it was not meant precisely to confirm tottering faith or to prop up consciences that the objections of Celsus had shaken; but its effect would naturally be to encourage the devout Christian by showing him how much could be said for his profession, and exposing to scorn with irresistible logic the best that could be said by his gainsayers. If Origen had not had in view the same audience as that to which he preached on Sundays and Fridays, he would hardly have dealt so abundantly in the citations from Holy Scripture which are such a marked. feature of the work, and he would not have cared to expand as he does the bare polemical branch into the flowers and fruit of homiletic exhortation. But the faithful were always his first thought, and the ground-color of all he has written is warm and outspoken piety. He knew much about pagan philosophy and worldly science, but when Porphyry (quoted by Eusebius) says that Plato was never out of his hands, we can only say that Plato is never mentioned in his writings save where an adversary or an error-compels him. A far truer picture of himself is given in his own words to his favorite pupil, Gregory Thaumaturgus. "You have talents," he says, "that might make you a perfect Roman lawyer, or a leader of any of the fashionable sects of Greek philosophy; but the wish of my heart is, dear lord and my most honored son Gregory, that you make Christianity your last end" ([Greek text]--alluding to the _summum bonum_ of the stoics), "and that you {782} use Greek philosophy and all its attendant sciences as handmaids to the Holy Scriptures, and as the means ([Greek text],) toward Christianity." This was written, of course, long after Gregory had become a Christian, and, indeed, about the very time that the Contra Celsum would be in progress. Not a little, therefore, in the work which would seem to beg the question, as against an enemy, becomes an eloquent development, as toward those who already believed. And this remark will be found not unimportant in explaining more passages than one.

The attack of Celsus is that of a clever, well-informed, travelled man. It is to be feared that we cannot call him a well-meaning one. The extra-ordinary impudence of one or two of the leading sophisms and a general tone of rancor and rabidness, very different from the politeness of Numenius and Porphyry, seem to force the conclusion that we are dealing with a man who ought to have known better but whose heart had been hardened by the world and the flesh. He goes over a large variety of topics, is not at all remarkable for order (as his opponent complains), and repeats himself more than once. Several German writers have published accurate accounts of his philosophic tenets, as far as they can be ascertained. For the present, in order to arrive at some definite knowledge of the sort of people who opposed Christianity from the time of S. Clement to the Decian persecution, we shall present Celsus in a few of the chief characters that he assumes in his onslaught on Christianity. For he is very many-sided in his anxiety to get at all the vulnerable points of his enemy, and perhaps it might be said that his memory is not so good as a polemic's memory ought to be, and that he contradicts himself once or twice. At any rate he acts with some success more parts than one.

The Scoffer was a character in which Celsus had the advantage of a few recent traditions. Perhaps the thorough pagan scoffer, who really laughed at Christianity because he believed it deserved to be laughed at, was rather out of date. But Lucian (and he may have known Lucian) could have let him see how a man of genius may scoff impartially at religion in all its shapes. Celsus was not a scoffer of this latter sort. Either he was really too conscientious, or else he instinctively hated Christ more than Zeus, and therefore tried to ridicule and crush the former, while he waived hostilities against the latter. The scoffer, as impersonated by him, is a decent, lawfearing citizen, who is quietly engaged in doing his duty to society and making what he can out of the queer problem called Life, when suddenly a man that calls himself a Christian bursts in upon his calm existence with the intelligence that he must believe in a person called Christ, or expect to burn everlastingly. Of course, the first thing the amazed Gentile does is to think the man mad. His second, and more charitable idea, which is the result of some little inquiry and of a comparison of notes with other amazed acquaintances at the bath and the theatre, is, that the obtrusive person is an adherent of a new and peculiar sect of philosophers. He, therefore, resolves to examine the tenets of these philosophers with the serene impartiality of one who sets small store by any tenets of philosophy. He finds that their doctrines are not new, but most of them quite old--the immortality of the soul and a future life, a rather strait-laced verbal morality, and so on; ideas which many respectable philosophers have held, and do hold. But is there any reason in the world for making such a parade, and noise, merely because another philosopher, called Christ, has chosen to teach them also? How impertinent, absurd, and unpleasant it is for these people, instead of keeping their doctrines to the schools, to force them with threats upon practical men! Of course, practical men and good citizens do not regard them. If the gods do interfere in the concerns of the earth {783} (a doctrine which Celsus, in his character of scoffer, is inclined to waive rather than to admit), why all this indispensable dogmatism about a Son of God? Let it be enough that we do admit that there is a God, who in some way is supreme; as sensible people you can demand nothing more. We call him Zeus; you call him the Most High, Sabaoth, Adonai, or what else you please, just as the Egyptians call him Ammon, and the Scythians, Pappaeus. Doubtless you talk of miracles; so do all these new-fangled sects, but they mean in reality Egyptian magic. You appeal, moreover, to your intellectual teaching; we know about that also: no sect is good for much in these days which does not hang on to the skirts of Plato. Besides, what is this we hear about disputes among yourselves? This makes the absurdity of the thing better still! The Jews say the Messiah is to come; the Christians declare he has come. Pray, which are we to believe? On what side are we solemnly to arrange ourselves in this momentous dispute about a donkey's shadow? Why, here we have a squadron of bats--or an army of ants swarming from their nest--or a congress of frogs in solemn session on the banks of their ditch--or a knot of worms assembled in full ecclesia in a corner of their native mud, in hot controversy which of the lot are the wickedest. We are the ones, they keep saying, to whom God has foreshown and announced all things; he has left the whole universe, the broad heavens, and the earth, to look after themselves, and makes his laws for us alone; to us alone he sends his heralds, and us he will never cease to prompt and to provide for, that we may be united with him for ever. He is God; and we are next to him, as being his sons and like him in all things. We are lords of all things, earth, water, air, and stars; on our account is everything, and all is ordained to minister to us. If some of us sin, God will come, or he will send the Son, to burn up the wicked, that the rest may live with him eternally. One could listen to worms and frogs going on in this fashion with more composure than to you Jews and Christians.

It is not Origen's object to prove directly the importance of Christianity. He says that it was no barbarous system of doctrine, and challenges any philosopher, fresh from the teachings and the schools of Greece, to come and examine it. "He will not only pronounce it true," he says, "but he will work it up into a logical system, and will be able to supply it with a complete demonstration, even to a Greek. But I must also add this: our doctrine has a certain method of demonstration peculiar to itself, and far more divine than any that the Greeks have in their schools. It is that which the apostle calls the demonstration of spirit and of power; of spirit, that is, by prophecies, which abundantly prove our whole system, especially those parts of it which concern Christ; of power, by the miracles which can be shown to have taken place among us, and traces of which still remain among those who live according to the will of the Word." And as Christianity was now well known to the whole world, to scoff at it either for its insignificance or its absurdity seemed very foolish: it was a standing fact, and challenged examination. This is partly taken for granted partly incidentally expressed throughout the reply. But the impudent scurrility of the passage about the bats, frogs, and worms, rouses Origen's indignation. "The Jews and the Christians," he says, "because they hold dogmas which Celsus does not approve, and which he does not seem to be very well acquainted with, are worms and ants, are they? The peculiar opinions in which the Jews and Christians differ from other men, are not unknown to the world. If a man, therefore, feels inclined to call a part of his fellow-men worms and ants, I will show him whom to call so. The men who have lost the true knowledge of God, whose religion is all a sham--the worshipping {784} brute beasts and graven stocks, and lifeless matter--creatures whose beauty should have led them to glorify and adore their Creator--these are the worms and ants. But those who, led on by reason, have risen above stocks and stones, above silver and gold, and everything material; who have risen above this whole created universe unto him that made all things; who have confided themselves wholly to him; who recognize him almighty over every creature, seeing every thought and hearing every prayer; who send up their prayers to him only, doing all that they do as though he saw it, and speaking all their words that none may be displeasing to him who heareth them all--these, surely, are _men_; nay, if it were possible, more than men. They may have, been worms once, but shall not such religion ([Greek text]) as this, that no trials can shake, no danger, not even death itself, destroy, no persuasiveness of words overcome, be their shelter against such jibes for the future? What! shall they who restrain the appetites that make men soft and yielding as wax--and restrain them because they know that by continence alone they can obtain familiarity with God [Footnote 208]--shall they be called the brothers of worms and the kindred of ants and the near neighbors of frogs? Forbid it Justice! glorious Justice, that gives social rights to fellow-men, that guards the equitable, the humane, and the kind--forbid that such men as these should be likened to birds of night! Call those worms of the slime, who wallow in lust--the common herd of men, who do evil and call it right--but surely not those who have been taught that their bodies, inhabited by the light of reason and the grace of the omnipotent Lord, are the temples of the God whom they adore.'" It is a subject that warms him, and he pursues it at some length. He does not imitate the scurrility and abusiveness of his adversary, though he must have been sorely tempted sometimes, to say some plain things about paganism. Celsus shows all the liveliness of language of a man who carries on a personal quarrel. He is not above calling his enemies "drunken" and "blear-eyed;" he hardly takes the trouble to mention that they are irrational fools; and for a specimen of his more fanciful bad language the passage quoted above will suffice. Origen sometimes complains of this, as well he may. He says that Celsus "scolds like an old woman," that he shouts calumny like the lowest of a street-mob, and, as a sort of climax, that he reminds him of a couple of "women slanging each other in the street." But the scoffer and the reviler is after all not our philosopher's favorite _rôle_. Perhaps he will show better as the man of intellect.

[Footnote 208: The expression of the contemporary Platonists.]

The man of intellect has a face of severely classic mould, whereon sits normally a thoughtful frown, as though he were ever asking himself the reason of things, varied by a pitying smile when he finds it necessary to recognize the existence of a non-intellectual being. His hands are very white, his pallium neat, his hair scented, and his whole appearance bespeaks him to be on the most distant terms with the profane multitude. When Christianity first had the bad taste to talk to him of penance and hell-fire, he did not deign to speak, but only scowled disgust; but in a century or two he began to see he must say something for his own credit. He therefore began to utter lofty sentences and to employ his smile of pity, though the early look of disgust was so very deeply printed on his countenance that it never afterward left him. This is the sum of his case:--"This foolish system called Christianity makes some little noise, it is true. But a philosopher has only to glance at it, to despise it. I have read and examined the books and writings of the sect; I have conversed with its learned men, and I find that it is essentially low, grovelling, and vulgar. It repudiates wisdom altogether; it formally forbids the educated, the learned, and the wise to be numbered among its {785} members. On the other hand, it energetically recruits its ranks from among the uneducated, the weak-headed, and the imbecile. These are the sort of men the Christian teachers declare to be most acceptable to their God, thus showing clearly that they have neither the ability nor the wish to make converts of any but the feeble-minded, common people, and country boors, slaves, women, and children. They are wary; they are like the quacks and cheap-jacks of the agora, who take care not to obtrude themselves upon those who could find them out, but show off before the children in the streets and the loitering house-slaves and an admiring mob of any fools they can collect. They are mean and underhand. You shall see, in a private house, your slave, your weaver, your sandal-maker, or your cloth-carder--a fellow wholly without education or manners, and silent enough before his master and his betters--the moment he finds himself alone with the children and the women, beginning to hold forth in marvellous style. Parents and preceptors are no longer to be obeyed, but he is to be believed implicitly; they are mad and doting, immersed in fatuous trifles, and incapable of seeing or doing what is really good, he alone can impart the secret of virtue; let the children believe him, and they will be happy themselves and bring a blessing on the house. Meanwhile, let father or tutor make his appearance, he mostly gets frightened and stops; but if he be a determined one, he just whispers in parting, that children of spirit should not submit to parental tyranny; that he has much to explain which the presence of others will not allow him to utter; that he cannot bear the sight of the folly and ignorance of such corrupted and lost men, who moreover are seeking every pretext for punishing him; finally, that if the dear children want to hear more, they must come, with the women and as many of their companions as they know of, into the women's apartment, or into the carding-room or the leather-shop--and so he contrives to get hold of them."

Perhaps there was nothing in Christianity that disgusted the philosophers so much as the fact that it went out after the poor, the lowly, and the sinful, and offered them a share in all that it could teach or promise. That the common herd had no need and no right to philosophy was an accepted tenet with the new Platonists. The passage just quoted is interesting; through its transparent misrepresentation we can see the poor man and the slave, in the second century, in the actual process not only of having the gospel preached to them, but also actively preaching it as well as they could to others. The sophism of Celsus, that Christians prefer fools and sinners for converts, therefore they must be all a foolish and wicked set, must have been stale, we may hope, by the time Origen undertook to answer it. He enters into the whole accusation, however, and refutes, almost word for word, the whole of what we have just given and more to the same purpose.

But the intellectual objector has something positive to say, as well as something negative. He announces, therefore, with almost ridiculous solemnity, that he will have pity on these poor Christians, and tell them how they are to obtain union with God, what masters they are to follow, and what heroes they are to imitate; in short, he will provide them with a theology, a gospel, and an assemblage of saints. For the saints, they are our grand Grecian heroes--Hercules, Orpheus, AEsculapius, and the rest, from Anaxarchus, who encouraged the tyrant who was having him bruised in a mortar to "pound away on the mortal coil of Anaxarchus," to Epictetus, who made a cheerful remark when his master broke his leg. For the gospel, it is the most powerful teaching of the divine and immortal Plato; and for the theology, it is the following sentence from the Timaeus: "To discover the maker and the father of the universe is a hard {786} thing; to make them known to others, when discovered, is impossible." This last doctrine he is afraid the wretched Christians will not be able to take in. They are such a poor frightened set that the sublimity of Platonic dictum scares them into their holes; they are such a body-loving race that they must have a God with a body, and be able to see him with the eyes of their flesh, which all philosophers pronounce to be impossible. Origen, in his reply, first of all disposes of these two sneers: "The Christians a timid set! when, rather than renounce a syllable of their Christianity, they are prepared to suffer torture and death in its worst shapes! The Christians a body-loving race! when they are readier to lay down their bodies for piety's sake than a philosopher is to put off his pallium! and when the injunction to be dead to sense and living to soul lies upon the very surface of their teaching! But let it pass. We must speak to Plato's theology." Here is the answer, as terse as an epigram, as luminous as the sunlight. "Plato, when he said God was hard to find, impossible to impart, said a sublime and a wonderful thing; but our Scriptures give a message from God to man that changes all the facts, and it is this: God the Word was with God in the beginning, and the _Word was made flesh_. It is not only hard for man to find God; it is impossible for him to seek him at all, or to find him in an elevated order ([Greek text]) unless he whom he seeks assist him. The knowledge of God is indeed far above man's nature; but God, out of his kindness and _philanthropy_" (Origen's usual expression when speaking of the incarnation), "through his wonderful and godlike grace, has willed that his knowledge appear unto those whom he foresees will live worthily of it, and whose piety will be firm even against death itself, though they who know not what piety is may jeer and ridicule. God, I think, seeing the arrogance and the insolence of those who, with all their boasted philosophical knowledge of the divine nature, are idol-ridden and temple-ridden and mystery-ridden as much as the most ignorant of the mob, has chosen the foolish things of this world, the poor, simple Christians, whose life is purer than the lives of most philosophers, to put to the blush those wise men who can unblushingly treat a lifeless thing as a god or the likeness of a god. Surely the man of sense must laugh to see the philosopher, after all his sublime talk about God and things divine, go and ogle his idol and pray to it, or think there is some being behind it that requires prayer to be offered up with such a ritual as that. But the Christian knows that God is everywhere; no image limits his vision, no temple bounds his power, for the whole world is his temple; and his servant, therefore, shutting the eyes of his body, raising on high the eyes of his soul--transcending all this world, piercing the concave of heaven itself, out of the world and above the heavens--makes his prayer to God: no sordid or grovelling prayer, for he has learnt from Jesus to ask for nothing little or sensible, but he prays only for what is great and really divine--for such things as lead to that blessedness which is in him, through his son, the Word, who is God." He has no wish to disparage Plato; Plato has spoken very beautifully, but the Christian Scriptures have not only beauty; but they have, what is much more important, plain morality and the divine virtue of changing the heart. The "ambassadors of the truth" propose to themselves to convert the whole world, the clever and the dull, the Greek and the barbarian; not a rustic, not a poor unlettered simpleton will they consent to abandon. Of what use is Plato in such a work as this? His brilliant and polished periods may possibly be of use to the few literary men that can understand them; but in the art of attracting the attention of the rude populace he is outdone even by Epictetus. But the Scripture has something in it that not even Epictetus can show. Its doctrines may possibly in certain cases seem to repeat the teachings of Grecian philosophy; but {787} it has the power of making men act on those doctrines, which never a Greek philosopher yet could boast of. And now as to the heroes and philosophers, the fathers and saints of paganism. "Let us see what leaders Celsus wishes us to follow, to the end that we may not be without ancient and reverend models of heroism. He sends us to God-imbued poets, as he calls them, the sages, and the philosophers, whom he indicates in a general way, without naming particular names. He sends us, also, to Hercules, AEsculapius, and the rest, to learn heroism from their brave contempt of death, not unfittingly rewarded by the myth that has deified them. Where he does not mention names it is hard to refute him. Had he named his divine poet or sage, I should have tried to show him to be a blind guide; but since he has not done so, I must content myself with appealing to what everyone knows of the divine poets as a body, and asking whether they can be compared for a moment to Moses, for instance; to the prophets of the creator of all things; above all, to him who has shone forth on all the race of man, and announced to all the true way in which God would be served; who, as far as lay in him, has willed that none should be ignorant of his secret teachings, but, in his super-abounding philanthropy, has both given to the learned a _theology_ that can raise their souls above all things here below, and yet at the same time condescends to the weak intellect of the untaught man, of the simple woman, and the household slave--himself assisting them to lead a better life, each in his degree, according to the teachings about God that _every one of them_ has been enabled to share. He mentions Hercules. Has he forgotten the ugly story about that hero's base servitude to Omphale. It would take some persuading to make us pay divine honors to the ruffian that seized the poor farmer's ox by main force, and devoured it before his eyes, whilst the owner cursed him, and he seemed to enjoy the curses as much as the meal itself; whence is derived the edifying custom of accompanying his sacrifices by a rite of powerful execrations. He mentions AEsculapius. I have already dealt with AEsculapius: he was a clever doctor, but he did nothing very extraordinary. He puts up Orpheus. Of course, Celsus is aware that Orpheus wrote about the gods far more impiously and fabulously than Homer ever did. Now, he considers, with Plato, that Homer's poems are unfit to be permitted in the model republic; so that it is perfectly evident that he introduces Orpheus here for the sole purpose of defaming us and disparaging Jesus. Poor Anaxarchus in his mortar undoubtedly affords a great example of fortitude; but as this happens to be the solitary fact that is known about Anaxarchus, it would be difficult to make him a model hero and absurd to make him a god. Then, as to Epictetus: there is no need of depreciating him; it is enough to say, that his words and deeds are not worthy of the most distant comparison with the words and deeds of one whom Celsus despises; for the sayings of Jesus _convert_ the wise and the simple. Celsus asks: 'What did your God say in his sufferings, like to this?' I answer that his patience and his bravery in his scourgings and his thousand ignominies were better shown by his _silence_ than by any word ever uttered by suffering Greek. But he did speak." And then he touches on some of the words of Jesus in his agony. It is to us like a new revelation of the gospel, like a new Epiphany, to read the comparison of the life of Jesus with the lives of the best and noblest of antiquity. It brings vividly to our imagination the brilliancy of the dawn of that day of Christ Jesus (into whose light we are baptized, and in which we live with little appreciation), when we can call back again the shades of paganism, and watch the gross darkness as it lifts and moves slowly off before the sun of justice. We can realize something of the feelings of earnest hearts as they came within the reach of that light, and share a little in the {788} excitement of a conflict wherein the victor overcame, not, like Perseus, by displaying the horrors of a Gorgon's head, but by unveiling, philosophically, artistically, enthusiastically, the charms of a "theology" upon whose beauty and truth there were no drawbacks, and in whose abysses of gladdening hope there were resting places for every want and wish of a human heart. Origen lets the light in upon the poor heroes and purblind sages of a Cimmerian night, and he forgets the scoffings of wretched philosophy, as he expiates on the love, the kindness, the philanthropy, the condescending grace of the Word, who is God. We cannot follow him far. The intellectual objector has much to say about the unreasonableness of faith; and the Christian doctor vindicates scientific theology, whilst he shows how the crowd of men must simply believe or be without any teaching whatever. He says deep and pregnant things about faith, science, and wisdom, that would bear fruit if reproduced in an age like ours. Then he enters at great length into the critical objections of the man of intellect against the life and actions of Jesus, more especially against the great corner-stone of faith, the resurrection. And throughout the whole of his demonstrations on intellectual grounds, he is fond of calling attention to two grand arguments of fact, that no amount of subtlety can explain away, and that the dullest wit cannot help seeing: first; that Christianity has changed and reformed men's morals in a way totally unexampled; second, that such a system of dogma and morality can never by any possibility have been the product of human thought, especially seeing what sort of men have propagated and professed it, "not many wise, not many noble;" therefore its origin is divine, and its author is the great creator of whom Plato spoke in stammering words, and whom all philosophy has sought.

Celsus, after having laughed at Christianity, and argued against it, and having sometimes laughed argumentatively, and at other times argued by a laugh, appears toward the end of his book in the entirely new character of the citizen, or patriotic opponent of impious innovations. He defends the old faith in the gods and the myths, the old sacrifices, in a word, the old civilization, from the awful radicalism of a sect that were upsetting the very foundations of social order, and endangering what little religion the common people could be got to practise. "All this private association and sectarianism is clearly against the law of the empire. They repudiate temples, they despise statutes, they mock at the offerings of incense and the sacrifices of living things; and they tell decent temple-goers and frequenters of the sanctuaries that they are doing an abomination and worshipping devils. Now, the proper, sensible, and right thing is, that each nation preserve its own customs and laws. One people has found the advantage of one set of institutions, another of another; let each keep what is once established by due and competent authority. The Jews are perfectly right in being tenacious of their particular laws." (This is cool, in one who had just been abusing the Jews with all his powers of ridicule and logic--but then he is now speaking in a different character.) "Besides, there is another and a deeper reason for this. It is probable that in the beginning of things the diverse parts of the earth were committed to diverse powers and dominations to be presided over and governed according to their pleasure; it must therefore be wrong to attack those institutions which they have established from the beginning in their several prefectures. It seems, indeed, perfectly certain that there is nothing in the world that is not given in charge to some demon. Man himself, the moment he enters the prison of his body, passes under the power of the keepers of this prison-house. Nay, the Egyptians, who are unexceptionable {789} authorities here, tell us that to look after the various parts of a man's body, there are told off no less than six-and-thirty demons or aerial powers (some say more); and they even mention their names, as Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Cnat, Sieat, and others, by invoking whom you obtain health in your various limbs. Certainly, therefore, if a man prefer health to sickness, and happiness to misery, there is no reason why he should not deliver himself from evil by propitiating these beings who have him in charge. One or two things, therefore; either the Christians must live in this world and worship those who rule this world, or they must abjure marriage, never have children, take no part in the affairs of men, in fact depart from the earth altogether, and leave no seed behind them. If they are to share in the goods, and to be protected from the evils of this world, then it is both unreasonable and ungrateful not to render tribute to the guardians of what they enjoy and the powers from whom they have so much to fear." The proud and fastidious philosopher has fallen low. What an interval between the grand sentences of Plato and the humiliating confessions of the apologist of idol-worship! And yet both extremes must be duly considered, before we can realize the Paganism of the Neo-Platonic revival. The demonology of Zoroaster, which was the practical religion of the whole East, had encountered the Platonic philosophy and engrafted itself upon it; and the sages of such Greek cities as Caesarea found themselves seriously defending the devil-worship of the wandering Arabs that roved over the plains of Syria and Asia, ignoring the centres of civilization that Alexander's conquest had erected in their midst."

The first part of the objectors patriotic appeal on behalf of established "institutions" is easily disposed of. The argument, carried to its lawful lengths, becomes ridiculous. "The Scythian law kills all the old men; the Persian law sanctions incest; the Crimeans sacrifice strangers to Diana; in one part of Africa they immolate their children to Saturn. One national law makes hanging a virtue, another commends death by fire. Some nations reckon it pious to worship crocodiles, others pay divine honors to cows, others again make gods of goats, and one people adores what another eats. This is making religion, not a truth, but a whim and a fancy. This is making piety, holiness, and righteousness, affairs of opinion, and not ascertainable, fixed realities. Suppose some one were to get up and say the same of temperance, prudence, justice, or fortitude, would he not be considered an imbecile? The truth is, there are two sorts of laws; the unwritten law of Nature, of which the author is God, and the written law of the state. If the state-law is not at variance with God's law, it ought to be kept and to be preferred before the laws of strangers; but if it oppose the law of God, it must be trampled upon, even though danger, ignominy, and death be the consequence." Thus much for the sentiment of nationality, and the common and obvious reasons, as Origen calls them, that will make plain men repudiate it. But the demon-theory and the alleged distribution of things to the aerial powers, leads to a deeper and more serious question. Knowing, therefore, that his book will fall into the hands of some who will be inclined to examine such questions to the bottom, he undertakes to speak more at length on the matter. This gives him an opportunity of showing, by the history of the dispersion of Babel, how it is that we find such diversity of peoples in different parts of the earth. Their dispersion was a punishment; the ministers of this punishment are the wicked spirits, acting as the instruments of God. One nation alone remained in God's favor, and even it had to be punished through the "princes" or spirits of other nations. Of God's mysterious dealings with this nation, and of the redemption that was to come {790} through it to all the other nations, he says he cannot speak out, an account of the _disciplina arcani_, which forbade the Christian teacher to enter into explicit details about the evil spirits, and this far the sake of not affording encouragement to idolatry.

The time had now come when all the nations were called to the one saviour, the one lawgiver Jesus Christ, who "issuing a master and a teacher from the midst of the Jews, feeds with the word of his teaching the universal world." For punishment, therefore, were the peoples of the earth delivered to demons; for salvation they must all return to the law of God, through Jesus. Then, as usual, the Christian doctor lays down the grand principle that withers with its first breath all this base and futile service of devils. "The Lord our God do we adore, and him only do we serve." If demons punish men, or if angels rule this lower world, it is by his supreme will that they act. "God, therefore, the one Supreme Lord of all--him we must conciliate and make propitious, by religion and all virtue. Is not this simple? Is it not reasonable? Bethink you for one moment. There are two men, of whom one devotes himself entirely to the Almighty God, the other busies himself in searching out the names of the demons, their powers and their deeds, the rhymes that raise them, the plants that please them, the magic gems and the wizard characters that will elicit their answers; which of these two, think you, will be most pleasing to the Lord of All? But little wisdom is required to see that the former, in his simplicity and trust, will be accepted of the Almighty God and his familiars; whilst he who for the sake of his health and his comfort and his base and mean wants, deals, in demon-worship and magic, will be rejected as evil and impious, and be left to the tender mercies of the devils he invokes, to the confusion and despair of diabolical suggestions, and to infinite evils. For Celsus himself owns that these demons are wicked, that they are covetous of blood, of the savour and smoke of a sacrifice and of the singing that evokes them; let their worshipper, then, beware lest they prove slippery in their faith to him, and lest the adorer of yesterday be abandoned or ruined in favor of the more ample offerings of blood and of burnt odors that are brought by the adorer of today. And let not Celsus accuse us of ingratitude. We know perfectly well what true gratitude is, and to whom we ought to be grateful for all that we possess; and we fear not to be ungrateful to the demons, our adversaries and our enemies; but we fear to be ungrateful to him with whose benefits we are laden, whose workmanship we are, whose Providence has placed us in our varied lots in life, and at whose hands we look for life eternal when this life shall be ended. And we have a symbol of this our thankfulness; it is the bread that we call the Bread of thanksgiving--the Eucharistic Bread." This last sentence would read commonplace to the infidel or the catechumen that might fall upon this answer of Origen to Celsus. They could not know what the faithful Christian knew, and what the writer himself knew and must have felt to his innermost heart, that these passing words were a veil that covered nothing less than the Tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament. The great central mystery, for well-known reasons, does not meet the eye in the pages of Origen, save in suggestive passages like this; but we Christians of today can pierce the mystery because we have its key, and can respond with our Catholic sympathies to a Catholic voice that speaks to us in veiled accents across the expanse of sixteen centuries. "For our citizenship," he concludes, "we are no rebels or traitors. You say, quoting the words of an ancient--

'King there is but one, whom Saturn's son hath established,'

We say with you, King there is but one; but in the place of Saturn's son' {791} we put him who 'raiseth up kings and deposeth them,' and 'who provideth a wise ruler in his season upon the earth.' The kingly power is from God, and by God's will we obey it; would that all believed this as we do! You exhort us to enter the imperial armies and fight for the state. But no men serve their country as the Christians do. They are taught to use heavenly arms in behalf of their rulers, and to pray to heaven for 'kings and all those who are in high places;' and their prayers, their mortifications, and their self-restraint are of more avail than many soldiers set in array of battle. And beyond all this, they teach their countrymen the worship of the Lord of All, and there is no earthly city so little and mean but they can promise its citizens a heavenly city with God. You exhort us to enter the magistracy and protect our country's laws and religion. We have in every city an organization that is to us a second _patria_, created by the word of God, governed by those who are powerful in word and sound in work; excuse us if we concern ourselves mainly with the magistracy of the church. The ambitious we reject; those whose modesty makes them refuse the solicitude of the church of God, these we compel to accept it. The presidents of God's state are called by God's will to rule, and they must not defile their hands with the ministry of human laws. Not that a Christian refuses his share of public burdens; but he prefers to reserve himself for burdens and for a service of a diviner and more necessary sort, wherein is concerned the salvation of men. The Christian magistrate has a charge over all men; of those that are within, that they live better every day; of those that are without, that they may be numbered among those who act and speak the things of God-service. Serving God in very truth, instructing whom he may, he lives full of the divine word and law, and so he is able to lead to the Lord of All every one that is converted and wishes to live in his holy law, through the divine Son of God that is in him, his word, his wisdom, his truth, and his righteousness."

With this description of the Christian bishop, we conclude our remarks on Origen. It will doubtless have occurred to most of our readers that we have too completely ignored the charges of heterodoxy that have so often been made against the name of Origen. But we do not admit that Origen was unsound in faith, much less that he was formerly heretical. Although not unprepared to justify this conviction, we cannot do more at present than invoke the authority of a new and important contribution to the Origen controversy, which was notified in our last number. [Footnote 209] Professor Vincenzi, it is confessed by competent and impartial critics, has totally dissipated the notion that Origen denied the eternity of punishment. As to the other accusations, he goes through them one by one and confutes them, without admitting anything whatever in the genuine works of Origen to be theologically unsound, "excepting a few points on which the fathers of his age were as doubtful and uncertain as himself, since the Church had not then defined them." [Footnote 210] Thirdly, he undertakes to prove that S. Jerome was completely mistaken, through no fault of his, with regard to the merits of a controversy in which he played so memorable a part; and, lastly, he maintains that Origen was never condemned by Pope or council, discussing especially the alleged condemnation by the fifth general council. Under shelter, then, of the authority of a work that comes to us with the approval of the Roman censorship, and which on two separate occasions has been warmly praised in the Civiltà, we cannot be wrong in waiving, at least, all discussion, in articles like the present, on the alleged errors of Origen. What has been said, though it has left the greater {792} part of his work unconsidered, may perhaps have served to draw attention to one who is in some respects the greatest of the Greek fathers. He did not live long after the completion of the Contra Celsum. As he had been the faith's champion from his orphaned boyhood to his old age, so he merited at least to suffer as a martyr for the Truth he had served so long. His tortures in the Decian persecution did not immediately cause his death, but they hastened it. He died at Tyre in 253 or 254. The cities where he taught are now mere names. Alexandria is a modern Turkish town, Caesarea is a heap of broken columns and ruined piers, Athens is the capital of a pitiful nation of mongrel Hellenes, Bostra and Petra are tombs in the deserts of Arabia. But two things are not likely to grow less in their greatness or to lose the vividness of their importance, the faith of Christ and what Origen has done for it. In another region of the world, and in cities with names that are different, yet with histories as grand as belonged to the cities of the East, unbelief seems to be bringing back a condition of mind, to encounter which the Catholic writer will have to put himself into the circumstances of those ancient giants who met and overthrew scientific paganism in the second and third centuries. Faith, and what is faith, and why men must believe, occupied Clement and Origen. The same questions are occupying the thought of our own day; and many a hint may be gathered and many a suggestive argument started, by those who will take the Alexandrian stand-point and look at faith as it is looked at in the polemical works of the great Alexandrian school.

[Footnote 209: In S. Gregorii Nysseni et Origenis scripta et doctrinam nova recension, per Aloysium Vincenzi. 4 vols. Romae 1865.]

[Footnote 210: "Dummodo tamen nonnulla exceperis, quae pariter apud Patres coaevos adhuc dubia manebant et incerta; quippe nondum ab Ecclesiá definita."--_Vincenzi_, ii. 524.]

ORIGINAL.

THE TALE OF A TOMBSTONE.

BY D. O'C. TOWNLEY.

It is quite true to say, that the American makes a mistake who, in his European tour, leaves Ireland out in the cold unvisited. He at least fails to make an acquaintance which could not prove otherwise than interesting, and possibly to find a burying-place where, if he had them, he might dispose of his superfluous prejudices bearing upon that island and its people--prejudices for the most part begotten of ill-directed reading or formed with the hasty conclusions of a very limited experience.

If a politician, he cannot fail to learn, ere he travels many miles, whether in Connaught or in Ulster, what he ought _not_ to do with a people having a desire to see them prosperous and contented. If a historian, he may find food for a chapter unwritten by Hume and Smollet, or even by the more impartial Macaulay; a chapter which may throw some light upon the cause, ever obscurely and often untruthfully given, whose effect is that spirit of retrogression which hovers over the unhappy island and lays its blighting hand upon every acre from Cork to the Giant's Causeway. If he be a painter, a poet, or a novelist, he may find in Ireland and her people an Eldorado with mines as inexhaustible as the ore is rich. If a tourist merely, even such a one as does London in a fortnight, Paris in a week, and the Rhine on the fastest steamer upon that ancient river--that brilliant soul who takes his sleep o' moonlit nights, and on the days which follow, sits yawning over dinner till the shadows fall, and the storied head· {793} lands have been passed unseen--even such as he, stupid or _blasé_, as the case may be, may find in Ireland something to awake to momentary energy, at least, his sleeping thought and action.

Approaching the fall of 18--, having done the continental celebrities the year before, and having been in England since early in the month of May, I concluded, before returning to New York, that I should pay a flying visit to the emerald cradle of that prolific race, which is, in the language of the stump, when it suits the orators to say so, the bone and sinew of these States; the great level which uproots our forests; the great spade which hollows our canals; the huge pick and shovel and barrow, that lay our iron roads over mountain and morass; and the mighty polling power which develops the peculiarities of legislators, contributes most generously to the revenue of the excise, and to the sustenance of the many good and bad people whose business of life it is to get this truly erratic people into all manner of trouble, including jails, and out of it.

With no prejudices against the Irish people, and some clear-sightedness as to the causes of their proverbial discontent, unthriftiness, and frequent turbulence, I went quite ready to sorrow or be glad, just as either mood was suggested by my surroundings; neither to sneer at their emotional enthusiasm nor to turn disgusted from their hilarious mirth.

Crossing from Holyhead to Dublin, I remained in that city for a few days, then visited the south and west, leaving the industrious north to finish off with. But as the purpose of this sketch is not to retail either impressions of the country or its people, or all the personal experiences of my journey, I must proceed to the narration of the single incident, the object of this writing, referring the reader, if his appetite lean in the direction, to the pencillings of Mr. Willis or the much more truthful story-telling of Mrs. Hall. My immediate purpose is gained if I have in a slight degree awakened the reader's interest for that which follows, and if he understands that I had now almost reached that period which I had set down for the close of my tour and my return home.

Of the month I had set apart for Ireland--the _bonne bouche_, or, if you like the Celtic better, the "_doch an durhas_" of my feast--I had but one week left when I found myself at Warrenpoint, a pleasant watering place on the margin of the bay of Carlingford, going northward to Belfast. Here I had been two days, rather longer than I had proposed to remain, but the season and the place at this time of the year are especially attractive. So near Ireland's' highest mountain as I then was, it occurred to me how discreditable the confession would be that I had not seen it save in the purple distance, and I concluded to do myself the honor of a near acquaintance--sit upon its topmost ridge, and rifle a sprig of heather from its venerable crown as a relic of the nearest spot to heaven on the Isle of Saints.

"No," said mine host, "your honor must never say good-by to Ireland until you see her only living monarch who has not emigrated or been transported to a penal colony!"

Slieve Donard, the king in question, was but twelve miles distant, or rather the village nestling at its foot. The road to Newcastle, the name this village bears, was one of peculiar beauty all the way, and I chose, to me, the most enjoyable of all ways of reaching it--I determined to walk there. So, about eight o'clock on a beautiful autumn morning, the dew still upon the grass and glistening upon the rustling leaves of the beeches in a grove of which my rustic hotel lay shadowed, armed with a stout blackthorn, a book in either pocket, and a light breakfast in its appropriate department, I set out upon my journey; accomplished it most enjoyably, arriving with but a {794} faint remembrance that I had eaten any breakfast whatever, and just in time for the _table d'hôte_ at Brady's.

The hotel was full with the motley occupants peculiar, there as elsewhere, to hotels by the seaside in the bathing season. Among the guests were reverend gentlemen assorted in the nicest manner, lean kine and fat; the good-natured parish priest and the more sanctimonious and exclusive curate of the orthodox persuasion; surly country squires who had rushed down to please their wives and the girls--"what did they want with salt water?" the city shopkeeper and his prim property, exulting in evidence of _ton_ in every word and movement. Even the eye-glassed, red, and wiry-whiskered Cockney could be seen and heard, possibly attracted there by the reputation of the "Hirish girls for fine hiyes and hintellects," or probably from a peculiar horror, for private reasons, of other watering places nearer home, where landlords were less generous and accommodating, being more experienced. These, and such as these, with a few who came to see rather than to be seen, made up the guests at Brady's.

After dinner I joined a party of the class last mentioned who purposed devoting the rest of the afternoon to an excursion upon the mountain, ascending as high at least as would enable them to enjoy a scene pronounced by travellers to be one of the finest in a land praised alike in song and story for its scenic beauty. The unmingled enjoyment of that ascent--for the labor of the journey was a pleasure too--is one of the most pleasant of the many happy memories which I owe to the "Isle of Tears." The landscape which unrolled itself like a scroll as we ascended was of remarkable beauty. Rich with all the gorgeous coloring of the season was spread out as far as the eye could reach the unshorn wealth of corn-field and of meadow. Here and there a clump of beech or chestnut sheltered, half hidden among the foliage, the snow-white walls of a farm house. Liliputian figures crept stealthily along through lane and over pasture, more like the tiny figures in a Flemish painting than men and cattle at their labor. The rock-bound bay was alive with its freight of toy-like fishing-boats, whose white sails borrowed the golden hues of evening as the sun stole down toward the heathery forehead of Slieve Donard. The whole scene, embraced from an altitude of fourteen hundred feet, is again before me, and I revel for a moment, whilst the illusion lasts, in the unspeakable emotion which was born of it.

But as I set out to tell a story whose theatre is not the mountain but the valley underneath, I must e'en come down again to supper and to prose, leaving, however reluctantly, Slieve Donard and its poetry behind me.

Leaving Newcastle with that regret which all must feel who leave it at such a season, I started next morning after breakfast for Castlewellan, where I intended taking the coach for Newry, having ordered my luggage to be forwarded there from my hotel at the Point.

Castlewellan is but four miles distant, and the journey thither was said to be one of the most enjoyable walks in this romantic region.

The road, for the entire distance, is one uninterrupted ascent toward the summit of one of the lesser hills on which the village stands, affording from every point--unless when now and then a jutting mountain crag overhangs the path, and for a moment, intercepts the vision--a view of the broad expanse of sea, the valley widening as you rise--each footstep of the ascent adding some new beauty of form and color, light and shadow to the scene.

Half way upon my journey I sat down to rest for a minute or two by the road side and lighted a cigar. Under its soothing influence and that of the scene beneath me, I dropped into one of those blissful reveries in which we sometimes forget our earthliness for a while, our souls absorbed in ecstatic {795} contemplation of the wondrous beauty, yet still more wondrous mystery, of the Creator's handiwork.

I had been thus but a short time indeed when the sound of approaching footsteps broke in upon my thought, followed by the customary salutation, "God save you, sir, 'tis a heavenly morning that we have."

Replying in the country phraseology, "God save you kindly," I raised my eyes to see the passing figure of a stooped old man, with a spade upon his shoulder, moving slowly onward 'neath his weight of years and in my direction. Always fond of a companion, when wandering in this way, being usually fortunate enough to meet with those to whom the scenes around me were familiar, and from whom I often learned much indeed that was new and interesting, I arose to resume my walk. Strongly impressed by the venerable form of the old peasant, as I deemed him, and thus attracted, I joined him, making some casual remarks about the appearance of the country, which easily opened the way to conversation. Enough of years have passed since that autumn morning to have worn out the then feeble thread of the old man's life, but palpable to my memory as the recollections of my wedding day is every lineament of that expressive face. I hear again, as I write, the gentle music of his voice, his white hairs float before me stirred by the morning mountain breeze, and I greet again his expressive salutation, felt again if again unspoken, "God save you kindly."

To all my inquiries touching the country round about, and the harvest, then all but gathered from the fields, he replied in that simple yet lucid manner common to the most uneducated Irish peasant, when he speaks of things familiar to him, chastened in his every remark by expressions of his gratitude to God for bounties received, and of his reliance upon his wisdom and goodness in affliction.

His calling, he told me, was a sad one. He, too, was a laborer in the field, but the harvest he gathered was moist with the tears of many. Death himself was the reaper. He was the village sexton.

I had often before met men of his melancholy occupation, but the hearts of these seemed to have been hardened by the very nature of their handicraft, as they became familiarized with that sorrow, bitterest to human nature--the parting for ever in this world with the truest and best beloved; but in the good old man beside me the keenest sympathy for his suffering fellow mortals seemed to have found a meet and fitting resting-place.

I learned from him that a few rods further on my way stood the chapel and burying-ground of Drumbhan, where, for some fifty years back, he had made the last dwelling-places of his friends and neighbors. Five minutes' walking brought us to the open gate and to the pathway leading to the modest village church, within whose sacred walls a number of the villagers had already gathered to early mass.

Guided by my new acquaintance, I also entered, joining in the sacred ceremony, which began soon afterward.

How is it, I ask you who have accompanied me thus far, reader, how is it--and the feeling is common to almost all of us--that in such a simple edifice as that I knelt in, paintless and unpictured, unadorned by the bright conceptions of genius or the cunning fingers of art; with naked floor and whitewashed wall; window untinted with Scripture story, itself suggestive of devotion; no ornament save the simple embellishments of the altar; no music save the solemn voice of the priest, distinctly audible in the respectful stillness of the place; how is it, I ask you, that in such a sanctuary our souls seem to reach nearer to their God in silent adoration, than when we kneel on velvet cushions in the temples of the city, with their graven oak and marble pillars, their lofty domes of painted glass, their frescoes and their statuary, their mighty organs and their hundred choristers?

{796}

On leaving the church, at the conclusion f the mass, I rejoined the sexton, who had stopped a moment at the porch for his spade, where he had left it in an angle as we entered. I followed him across the yard and through the wicket which separated us from the burying-ground. Calling my attention to some of the more imposing monuments of the place, he passed forward along the narrow pathway to perform the melancholy task which he had told me was his first duty of this morning--to make a grave for the last, the very last, of the companions of his boyhood; one, he said, whose death, like his life, was all peace, and that was part of the reward of the gentleness of his nature, the fulness of which was hereafter.

Passing from stone to stone, to linger for a moment at this which told its tale of the early call of the young and innocent, or at that which spoke of many years and mayhap of many sorrows, I stopped near to one which, from the quaintness of the inscription and chaste simplicity of its form had a peculiar attraction for me. It was a cross in granite with a wreath not unskilfully chiselled crowning the upper limb, whilst along the extended arms was a single line, "The 'Widow and her Son."

Leaning on a more aspiring tombstone near, I read again and again these simple words, all the while imagination doing its work of making a history for the mother and her child, when from this my second reverie of the morning, I was again aroused by the voice of my aged friend.

"I see you have been reading that inscription, sir," he said. "I have," I, replied, "and it has stirred my curiosity rather strangely. It seems to me that there is much which the tombstone does not tell."

"Very much indeed, sir," returned the sexton; "look around me as I may at these familiar forms, there is not one amongst them tells as sad a tale as this one."

"Your reply does not lessen my curiosity," I said; "and even if it be the saddest of your sad experiences, and that I did not fear to trespass too much upon your feelings or your time, I should ask you to tell me the story of those whose resting-place is thus beautifully, yet strangely marked."

"No trespass, sir, no trespass," the old man replied. "If the story be one to recall a scene which will make my old eyes weep, it will just be such a one as suits my heart this morning. So having yet an hour to spare before the remains of my old friend can reach the ground, we shall sit down upon this grave here whilst I tell you the story of Mary Donovan and her boy."

Glancing around to see that no unexpected duty called him, he seated himself on the mound proposed. I sat down beside him, an eager listener to that which follows, given to you in words as near his own as may be, but wanting in that richness of accent and figurative expression peculiar to his class and to his country.

Had business or pleasure called you to Castlewellan some six years ago, began the sexton, you could hardly have failed to meet a good-natured innocent, [Footnote 211] some seventeen or eighteen years old, ever to be seen the first at Blaney's when a traveller pulled up his horse for refreshments or coach or car, to set down or to receive a passenger. Ere the rattle of hoof or wheel had ceased in the courtyard before the inn, the voice of poor Ned Donovan was sure to fall upon the stranger's ear in a greeting, wild, yet musical, and with that peculiarity of expression which told the story plainly, that he was one of those to whom, for his own wise purpose doubtless, God had been but sparing in the gift of mind. And yet there was a childish joyousness in his every look and tone that compensated in some measure for his misfortune, evidence as it was that he was saved from the cares and anxieties common even to those of his early years.

[Footnote 211: Synonymous with "Idiot" among the Irish peasantry when used in this way; they rarely use the word idiot unless in derision.]

{797}

Ned loved the horses and the cars, and knew every professional driver that came that way to fair or market for miles and miles around. He reserved, however, especial affection for the regular roadsters, man and beast; these I mean that drove daily to Blaney's from Newry, Rathfriland, or Dromore. The men, well acquainted with his ways, never spoke a hasty or unkind word to him, although he was occasionally self·willed in the matter of the horse-feed and the watering. The horses naturally returned the affection of one whose attendance upon them was untiring. He talked to them incessantly in public or in private; their comfort occupied the first place in his thought. He curried, whisked them down, patted and praised their best points with all the enthusiasm of a connoisseur, or, when the like happened, mourned over a broken knee or a windgall as over some serious domestic trouble, as indeed to him it was. All this and more of the kind was done without fee or reward, save the privilege at all hours of the kitchen fireside and the stables, with an occasional ride down to the river, "wid the creatures for a drink," as he would say or "to wash the mud from their legs, and bad scran to it."

Few days passed, however, failing to bring him a chance horse to hold for a fine gentleman "wid boots and spurs bedad," or when he had not an errand to run or to lend a helping hand with the luggage of some generous traveller; and with these opportunities came sixpences, sometimes even shillings, for his trouble, but oftener still just because he was Ned Donovan. Many to whom his story was unknown often wondered at the glistening eager eye with which he counted his earnings over, and at the happiness an additional sixpence seemed to give him; all this was so unlike the hourly evidences of his most unselfish nature. Strangers, less charitable in mind than in pocket, led astray by this seeming love of money, not unfrequently thought that much of the boy's idiocy was put on, and they said so; but they did not know him, nor happily he the meaning of their sneer. It was amusing to follow him at the lucky moment when he got a shilling or so in this way, when be invariably made straight for the bar of the inn to deposit it with the utmost gravity of manner in the safe keeping of good Mrs. Blaney. He had learnt from bitter experience how unsafe it was to be his own banker, as he had frequently lost his earnings in the hay loft or the stable, before the happy thought had struck him to find a better keeper for them. You would have heard there, too, how he invariably came at night to withdraw his funds, and how he always had money given him, more or less. For there were unlucky days for Ned, when travellers were few or forgetful; but his memory was far from faithful in this regard, and good Mrs. Blaney was more than kind.

The reason for this seeming selfishness of Ned is easily told. He had a mother whom he loved with all his strange impassioned nature, a widowed mother. To receive her grateful smile in return for the wages of his industry each evening when he reached his home was the crowning happiness of the day.

God was kindly with him--he was not alone, poor boy! He had a mother, and all that mother's love. Had you travelled that way you must have noticed their little cottage at the turning going up the hill to St. Mary's. You may see it even now as you pass, but the roses Mary trained there are dead and gone, the little latticed window broken, the garden weedy and desolate, telling its tale of sorrow like the tombstone.

Mary Donovan had lived there for many years--since her boy was quite a child. She came one morning, so the gossips said, a passenger by the coach, somewhere from the North. Her child was then but four years old, and then, as ever after, an object for the sympathy of the kind of heart. She took humble lodgings and applied to the {798} shopkeepers and the neighboring gentry for employment at her needle, with which she was wonderfully skilled, they said. The prejudices which met her at the first, from all save the kind landlady of the "Stag," soon gave way before her patient, unbending uprightness of character and the unfathomable sorrow that weighed her down, for sorrow is a sacred thing; even the voice of scandal hushes in its presence. Her past history was her secret. Whether it was one of shame or of suffering virtue no tongue could tell. Silent as the grave to all impertinent inquiry, meek and humble before her God, and gentle as gentleness itself with every living thing, her mystery became respected, and she and her boy beloved.

From that evening, when wet and weary from her journey, she first awoke the kindly sympathies of the hostess of the "Stag"--the same good-natured Mrs. Blaney--for twelve long years the widow pursued her peaceful way, earning for herself and for her child not merely a livelihood, but many of the comforts of dress and food, which were looked upon as luxuries by those around her; and never did mother receive more fulness of reward in the passionate love of offspring than she in that of her all but mindless boy.

When he was yet a child often have I watched him sitting at her feet, as she sat at the cottage door or window plying her ever busy needle, listening to the strange stories of the fairies and the leprechauns of the olden times she could tell so well. Of Heaven and its glories, too, she would sometimes speak, to be interrupted by some strange remark, suggestive of more than human wisdom. Then the startled mother would fix her eyes upon his face so earnestly, as if in hope that God at last would shed light upon the shadowed mind of her bereaved one, to meet ever and always the glance of childish adoration, but with it, alas! the vacant smile that spoke forgetfulness already of the transitory ray of reason that a moment rested there.

Often have I stopped, as I passed that way, to listen to some quaint old ballad full of the melancholy music of her voice, and make my friendly inquiries for herself and child, sure to find him in his usual resting-place. My welcome was a warm one always, and my grey hairs--for they were grey even then, sir--often mingled with the yellow curls of the boy as he clambered up my knee to kiss me. We were warm friends, sir, Mary and I, for I and I only, of all living beings, knew her secret and the story of her sorrow--and this was the way I learned it:

One day, soon after her arrival in the town, I had just risen from early mass in the chapel and turned in here upon my morning round, when the voice of some one weeping bitterly, and the sad wail of a child accompanying, drew my attention to a corner of the yard and to the kneeling figure of a woman and that of a little boy, seated among the long grass of the grave beside her. Mourners were no unfamiliar sights to me, even at such an early hour, but the woman's dress bespoke the stranger and awoke my curiosity. I neared the grave and recognized it as that of a good old man, once the village school-master, who had died two years before. I knew him well; for many years he had dwelt amongst us, respected for himself as for his calling. He had been happy in the affections of an only child--a daughter, the very picture of her mother, he used to say, whom he had buried amongst strangers. In her was centred his every earthly hope. She was his pride, and her pleasure all the reward he sought in a life laden with all the petty vexatious of the teacher. She forsook him and her happy home, and fled to England with one whom she had known for a few weeks only, who had met her at Rostrevor, where her father's fond indulgence had sent her for the season; forsook all for a husband--scandal said, a lover--who, whilst enamored of her beauty, scorned her father's poverty. The old man never raised his head again in the village. Two years of sorrow, and the grave closed over him. {799} I made it. The savings of his industrious life still lay in the hands of the village pastor in safe-keeping for the lost one should she ever return to claim it; but Mary never claimed it.

I drew nearer, for my heart told me who the mourner was. I, too, had loved the girl, as who indeed had not? I, too, had shared the sorrow of her honest father, and many a time had yearned to know the fate of the fair-haired daughter of his affection.

I drew still nearer; my step was noiseless upon the grass. I leaned upon a headstone near me. I spoke the words that pressed for utterance, "Mary, Mary," I said, "You come too late, too late!"

She started from the grave; an exclamation of terror and surprise broke from her. She looked me wildly in the face as if the spirit of her injured father stood in shape before her, and recognizing the sad features of that father's friend, she sank, sobbing convulsively, upon the grave again, hiding her pale face in the long grass which covered it.

I raised her kindly in my arms, and sitting down beside her, her wondering yet gentle boy between my knees, I heard her sad tale of passion and remorse. No other ever heard that story; she asked my silence and I spoke not.

From that time forward, year after year, the penitent paid frequent visits to her lather's grave; her gentle manner asked for no inquiry, and none was made, and there was nothing left of the once joyous daughter of the school-master to challenge recognition. The boy, too, seemed to love the place, and oftentimes accompanied her. For her sake it was he loved it, seeming to comprehend that here there was something sharing with him her affection, some link which bound them both to the place for ever.

Well, years passed on; and, as I have said, the voice of scandal had long been hushed; the child had almost reached to manhood, and the silver threads of time and sorrow had stolen in among the once golden locks of the mother. Childlike ever, and uniformly good and cheerful, Ned rose each morning, and as it had been for some years, the daylight was not more certain to enter the pleasant bar-room of the "Stag" than was the shadow of the innocent to fall across its threshold, its earliest visitor. Evening brought him home with his caresses, his childish chat; and his petty earnings to his mother, who, happy at the pleasure his employment gave him, was profuse in the praises that he loved to hear.

And so matters had gone on for years, just as if they might have done so for ever, when God in his wisdom brought that sore affliction upon us all--the famine and the sickness of '47. Who that has lived through that year of misery and horror, but shudders at the remembrances its very name recalls? Who but wails some beloved one snatched away with scarce a moment's warning?--the child from its mother's arms; the mother from the child's caresses; the youth standing, full of hope on the threshold of his manhood, when the warm blood froze suddenly in his veins, the glad visions of his future faded before him as the relentless hand of death seized him with a grasp of iron, leaving him upon the earth but one hour of agony, and the breath to say farewell; the aged flung into the grave upon whose brink they had, trembling, stood for years clinging to life with more than the tenacity of the young;--all, all stricken with that horror of dissolution; bowed down as if a curse had fallen upon us for our sins as once came the plague upon the Egyptians.

First amongst the victims was the long-tried, patient Mary. With sufficient warning only to bring the good priest to her side, to receive the last rites of her faith, to press in her enfeebled arms her terror-stricken son, and upon his lips one agonizing kiss--and her soul was with its God.

The agony of the boy when once he realized the great grief that had fallen upon him was, they told me, so fearful and so wild as, to wring with horror the {800} hearts of all who heard him. After a time he was somewhat pacified by the gentle persuasion of the priest and the kind soothing of some good-natured neighbors, who, disregarding the danger of the infection, had gathered in, out of love and pity. They strove to lead him from the death-bed; but no! the first paroxysm of despair once over, he sat him down, silent yet stern, by the bed side. He spoke not, he wept not. Apparently unconscious of the presence of others as of his own existence, the icy fingers of one hand clasped in his, he thus sat gazing, motionless as stone, upon the dead face of his mother.

On through the long hours of that autumn night sat the stricken mourner, and though daylight came, aye, even the sunlight that he loved stole in and crept up upon the bed till it fell upon the placid features of the dead illumining them as with the glory of immortality, still he moved not. Dead as the dead he seemed, in all but the strange, weird evidence of being in his eyes. Stolid he remained to all remonstrances; silent as motionless to all words of comfort. The hour came at last for preparation toward the removal of the body--for the cholera did not spare the poor body after death, decay set in so rapidly--when, contrary to the expectation of all, the innocent voluntarily arose and even assisted at the necessary duties, duties which must have conveyed to him the knowledge of his approaching parting with her to whom he still clung as lovingly in death as he had done in life.

It was the afternoon of the day following that of Mary's death when a few neighbors gathered to see her home, poor girl! I should not, say a few either, for they were many at such a time, when the dead cart rattled hourly past the door, and sorrowing and desolation was in every home.

They bore her from the cottage and along the way leading to the burying ground of Castlewellan, the parish she had lived and died in. The wailing orphan walked stealthily behind, his head low bent, unearthly pallor on his face, his fingers interlaced before him every motion and expression speaking of the sorrow unto death, of the mortal agony of desolation.

Mournfully the procession passed along till it reached the cross road leading to this village here; but continuing their journey, those forming it were suddenly interrupted by a wild unearthly cry from the lips of the idiot.

"Where are yez goin', men, where are yez goin', men, I say? You must take her to Drumbhan, you must take her to Drumbhan! She said she would lie there some day beside her father; do you hear that, men? So bring her to Drumbhan, I say!"

His agony was fearful, his shriek inhuman in the fierceness of its passion. The bearers stopped, the mourners gathered around the boy, but vain was every effort to appease him, and still his cry rose far above their words of comfort: "Bring her to Drumbhan, oh! bring her to Drumbhan!"

None there knew, as I have said, the mother's story, and all believed this but a wild unreasonable fancy of poor Ned's; but had it been otherwise, what could they do? The grave was already made, and the good priest waiting to give the last religious rite to the body of this patient and enduring Christian.

Seeing that they again moved on, Ned suddenly ceased his cry, as if he had formed some strange resolution which pacified him, and relapsed into the sudden gloom that had preceded the outcry of his anguish. They buried her; he came away quietly with them. They sought, some of them, to bring him to their houses, thinking to save him the agony of returning home just then to miss her presence; but all efforts to lead him any way but that toward his desolate home were fruitless He returned to the cottage. He sat down by the vacant bed and rocked himself to and fro, singing with mournful pathos snatches from an old ballad, a favorite of his mother's.

{801}

An old neighbor promising to remain with him that night and care for the cottage till next day, when arrangements were to be made for the disposal of its contents and for the future of poor Ned, the others went to their homes.

The shadows of the night came down. In and near the cottage all was silent. The old woman crept toward the boy to rouse him from his lethargy, and to urge him to take some food which she had prepared for him. He was asleep. Thanking God for this, his greatest gift to the sorrowing heart, the old woman sat down, and, covering her shoulders with her clock, dozed away an hour or two, then awoke and watched, then slept again, again awoke to find the idiot still asleep, then slept again.

About an hour after sunrise she started from her seat, alarmed by an outcry at the door, her name being loudly called, "In God's name, what's the matter? who's dead now? is it the priest, alanna?"

"Oh! may the Lord be betune us an harum," said a voice from amongst a crowd of excited people at the door, "if they haven't raised poor Mary's body in the night! Here's Brian an' myself saw the empty grave as we passed by the chapel yard just now. Sure never was such a thing as that ever heard of before in Castlewellan anyhow."

"Whisht, whisht, for the love av God," said the old woman, "or Ned will hear yez," and turning toward the bedside, hoping that he still slept quietly, she saw but his vacant seat--the boy was gone.

"I know it all, I know it all," she cried. "As sure as God's in heaven this day, he's gone and raised her up himself. I heard him in his sleep, the crature, but thought nothing of his demented talk. Go after him, men! Go after him, I say! He has gone wid her to Drumbhan."

They hurried off with many others who now heard this extraordinary story. They ran eagerly down the hill toward the village here. You know the distance, maybe? Two long miles at least. Well, when they had reached within half a mile of this spot, sure enough, God knows, they overtook the crazy boy, wheeling before him on a barrow the coffin containing the dead body of his mother.

Never did human eye see sight like this before. He heard their hurried footsteps coming on behind him, and setting down the barrow gently on the road, he turned suddenly upon them with all the frenzy of the fiercest madness in his face, and raising up the spade that lay beside the coffin, and brandishing it above his head, he cried, "Back, back, I tell you all; touch her one of you, and I'll cleave him! Didn't I tell you to bring her to Drumbhan? Didn't I tell you she wanted to sleep down here beside her father? You thought that you were good, did you, and Father Connor, too, to put her up in the hill beside the big church there? But what did you know? what did you know? Did she tell any of you last night that she couldn't rest there; did she do that, I say? No, no, she came to me who loved her, to her own poor Ned--she came and asked me to bring her to Drumbhan; and so I will--so I will, I say, in spite of you all! in spite of you all!"

So saying, he raised the barrow once again and passed onward with his burden. They spoke not. They made no effort to turn him from his purpose. Many there were who would gladly have eased the exhausted creature of his burden, but, awe-stricken, they feared to approach him, and silently fell behind a second time in sad procession at the widow's funeral.

At last he reached the gate there. I was standing at it when he came. He wheeled his burden along that path behind us, and to the grave, here. I followed with the rest, as powerless to interfere as they. He laid down the barrow gently again, and taking up the spade he had carried with him, began to dig the grave. I joined him. He looked at me at first inquiringly; then recognizing me, muttered something to himself as if approvingly. Other hands besides ours were soon at work, and a {802} few minutes more found Mary resting by her father's side and the last sod carefully replaced--when, failing only when his task was done, the worn-out boy sank senseless upon the grave.

They carried him away gently, and when consciousness returned, they soothed him with kind words. The women blessed him and praised his mother, and his love for her, till recollection returned, and tears for his loss stole silently down the idiot's cheeks. All traces of passion had disappeared, and in its place there seemed the evidence of a new-born intelligence in the mute yet expressive sorrow of that pale face.

He went with them without a murmur; several times turned hastily whilst in sight of the graveyard to look back, then disappeared.

All that day the picture of that poor creature and the scene in which he played so strange a part, haunted me at every step. Still I saw him coming as he did that morning down the hill; the barrow, the coffin, the crowd walking solemnly after. Still I saw it through that long, long day, and leave my fancy it would not. That night I could not rest. True, I had loved poor Mary and I had loved her boy; still I had laid away in their narrow beds many, very many that were dear to me, linked to my affection by the closest ties of kindred, but I had never sorrowed, old man as I was, as I had done that day; never felt such awe at the untold mystery of our nature and the wonderful ways of my God.

In the morning I arose early, early for me, and although no duty called me here till after early prayer's, I took my spade upon my shoulder and came upon my way, feeling drawn toward the place, I knew not why.

The morning was as beautiful as this one, and, as I think I have said before, the season of the year the same. Already here and there I noticed, as I came along, familiar faces in the fields, and some, too, of my neighbors I met upon the road; but contrary to my usual custom l avoided the familiar chat so frequently indulged in when we met each other at such an early hour, passing on with a "good morrow" only, eager to reach Drumbhan.

Some twenty minutes brought me to the chapel, for I lived then as I do now, a short mile below there. I went in to say a prayer, conscious of my weakness, in the hope to shake the weight from off my shoulders that pressed me down so heavily. Thence passing into the graveyard here, I turned my eyes in this direction to behold, prostrate upon the grave of his. mother, the loving, harmless boy.

My knees trembled as with palsy. How came he here? I said, and when? Why, I asked not; I knew too well of this love that was more than earthly. Tottering, I drew near; I called him by his name. He answered not. I called again. No voice replied; nor sound, nor motion was there save the echo of my voice and my hurried footfall as I neared the spot. I stooped, I raised him in my arms, I parted from his brow the long hair damp with the dew of morning. I gazed upon that pale, pale face, which, in the holy peace that rested there, spoke of the goodness and the mercy of our Heavenly Father, into whose holy keeping the spotless soul had passed. He was dead.

The sexton's tale was told.

{803}

ORIGINAL.

LIGHT.

Gaudium lucis AEternae.

When the twilight veil is closing Gently o'er each darkening scene, Love we not the shades reposing Underneath its misty screen?

When, like ruins dim and hoary, Forms are outlined on the sky, See we not surpassing glory In the day-god's closing eye?

Yes! But from the LIGHT is given All the grace of coming night; And the change from day to even Is a change of varied light!

Silent midnight reigneth over Scenes so lately bright and fair, Shades like gliding spectres hover. Round each faint-traced image there;

And the darkness' onward stealing Shrouds the earth with dusky pall, But from LIGHT, the dim revealing Even of midnight's glories fall.

And the purer spirit-vision Is a world all fair and bright; Ever in the dream elysian Joy is of "eternal light."

Marie.

{804}

From The Dublin University Magazine.

MEDIAEVAL BOOKS AND HYMNS. [Footnote 212]

[Footnote 212: The reader will bear in mind that the author of the following paper is a Protestant minister.-ED. CATH. WORLD.]

The fall of Rome was the annihilation of a great dominant power, a power which had been supreme; and when the barbarians marched into her streets and devastated her homes, the world sunk back into a tenebrous night of social, intellectual, and moral darkness. Her mighty empire, held together like one country by her genius, was broken up and divided amongst the different tribes who had poured down from the north and overrun Europe, divided just as the fortune of war or the caprice of choice indicated. It was the approach of a moral chaos; but the hand whose guidance is to be felt in the life of individuals, and may be traced in the history of nations, did not abandon the world to the utter confusion of its own impulses. As the imperial power of Rome fell away and died out like an effete thing, wasted by its own' corruption, a new power was springing up in vigorous youth by the side of that which was declining. Christianity was advancing toward the west with rapid strides, victorious through the persecution of tyranny and the jealousy of philosophy; it was then taking its stand in the world as an influence; but if at this moment amid the vast changes and subversion of things which took place after the fall of Rome, Christianity had been merely a reformed philosophy, and had been left to the mercy of pagan barbarians, it would have been extinguished in its infancy. That was avoided by a remarkable concatenation of circumstances. For centuries there had been an apprehension in the Roman empire of an advance of the barbarous nations in the north of Europe, symptoms of which had manifested themselves in the earliest period of the Christian era. Toward the latter end of the second century the most powerful of these tribes, the Goths, impelled by some influx of other barbarians, advanced from their position near the mouth of the Vistula, invaded the Roman frontier, and took Dacia, where they were found by the Emperor Caracalla at the opening of the third century, in the middle of which they were allowed by Aurelian to settle along the banks of the Euxine, when they were divided into two parts--the "Ostro" or Eastern, and the "Visi" or Western Goths. In the next century a terrible alarm was raised amongst them, which even penetrated into the Roman empire, and up to its capital, where it was related that an awful race of beings--savage, ugly, inhuman, begotten of the devil--were pouring in thousands out of the deserts and plains of Asia into Europe. Such were the Huns. Already they had reached the territory of the Ostrogoths, whom they compelled to supply them with guides to lead them on toward the Visigoths. These latter at their approach fled in the extremity of terror toward the Danube, and implored the protection of Valens the emperor, who allowed them to settle in Moesia, upon the condition that they should defend the imperial frontier. In less than forty years afterward from defending the Roman frontier they sacked Rome. But during this interval an incident took place which had a great influence upon the destinies of Christianity. After the settlement with Valens, an intercourse of a somewhat friendly character sprung up between the Romans and {805} these barbarian defenders of the frontier. The church was suffering from her great Arian apostasy--a form of scepticism exactly parallel to that new light of modern times called Rationalism. Valens was an Arian, and, wishing to convert these pagan barbarians, sent a missionary amongst them in the person of the renowned Ulphilas, whom he made bishop of the Moeso-Goths. This great bishop labored assiduously for the conversion of the barbarians, invented an alphabet, and translated the Scriptures with his own hand into their strange idiom. His labors were blessed with success; the Goths embraced Christianity, though in the Arian form; and fifty years afterward, when Alaric led them into Rome, amid the tumult of the unfettered license of the soldiers, an order was issued to respect the churches of the apostles and the sacred places. In the midst of the devastation of the city and through the very thick of the riot, a band of priests and devotees were seen marching under the protection of Gothic soldiery, carrying on their heads the sacred vessels of St. Peter, and mingling with the shoutings of the ravagers the chant of solemn psalms. Under Gothic protection, and by the express order of the Gothic king, the sacred vessels were deposited in safety at the Vatican; numbers of Christians joined the procession and received shelter, whilst many who were not Christians also availed themselves of the opportunity to join the band of believers and escape in the general confusion. [Footnote 213]

[Footnote 213: Oroslus Hist., lib. vii. c. 39.]

This was the first indication of the new life which was to dawn upon the world under the influence of Christianity. Gradually all the tribes of barbarians yielded to its influence--the Burgundians in Gaul, the Vandals in Africa, the Suevi in Spain, the Ostrogoths, the Franks, and then the Saxons in England; but the early conversions of these barbarians were to the Arian form of Christianity then in the ascendant. Its principal tenet was the denial of the equality of the Son to the Father; and the heresy spread until the error, after being vigorously combated, was suppressed, and the new nations won back to the orthodox faith. Thus was this compensation for the overturn of civilization effected; the world was not abandoned to utter destruction, it was indeed given up to the hands of rude barbarians, but they in turn were subjected to a new influence which accompanied them to the various kingdoms founded upon the ruins of' the extinct empire, and formed the basis in each of those kingdoms of a new and higher civilization. With the fall of Rome the gods of the pagans were overturned, their temples destroyed; and in the midst of the devastation, the ruin, and, the despair into which the world was sinking, the Church of Christ arose as the guiding spirit, the pioneer of the new life. Another incident in connection with the establishment of Christianity, which saved the lore of ancient times from destruction, was the adoption of the Latin language by the church; for although that language had made a settlement in many of the countries subject to the Roman arms, yet a tendency soon sprung up, from the mixture with barbarian invaders, to the degeneracy of the Latin tongue and the rise of new and separate idioms. But it was preserved in comparative purity in the church, which naturally led to the preservation of its most noble monuments; and it ultimately became, when the modern languages were in their infancy, the tongue especially devoted to the transmission of learning. History, poetry, science, and what little there was of literature, found a medium of communication and a means of preservation in the Latin language. Had it not been adopted by the church then for some centuries, whilst the new tongues were gradually developing and settling into a form, the world would have been dark indeed, not a book, not a page, not a {806} syllable would have reached us of the thought, the life, or the events of that period.

From the fourth to the seventh century there would have been an impenetrable gap in the annals of humanity--the voice of history would have been hushed into a dead silence, and the light of the past which beacons the future would have been extinguished in the darkness of a universal chaos. In England, however, the case was somewhat different. From the earliest period of the Saxon domination there was a struggle for a literature in the vulgar tongue. The Saxons had brought with them a vast store of traditional poetry out of which one specimen has been preserved, consisting of an epic poem in forty-three cantos, and about 6,000 lines--the oldest epic of modern times. It is called, "The Gleeman's Song," and was composed by Beowulf in their native wilds and brought over with them in the fifth century. It is a strange poem, impregnated with the vigorous air of the North; strength and simplicity being its chief characteristics. The principal personage is Hrothgar the king, and the poem is full of incidental descriptions of manners and customs which afterward became native to England, and linger about among us even now: there are great halls, ale-carousals, fighting with giants, the elements of a rude chivalry, and an invincible prowess which dares both dragons and ghosts. But the first native writer in Anglo-Saxon after the conversion to Christianity is Caedmon, who lived in the latter part of the seventh century (680); The story of his miraculous inspiration is recorded by Bede. [Footnote 214]

[Footnote 214: Eccl. llist., lib. iv., c. 24.]

He was born in Northumbiria and was a monk of Whitby. He paraphrased large portions or the Scripture, and has aptly been called the Anglo-Saxon Milton; indeed it is more than probable that the Puritan poet borrowed the ideas of his sublime soliloquy of Satan in Pandemonium from this Saxon monk; After Satan's overthrow, Caedmon says--[Footnote 215]

[Footnote 215: Thorpe's edition of Caedmon.]

"Then spake he worde: This narrow place is most unlike that other that we formerly knew high in Heaven's kingdom, which my master bestowed on me, Though we it for the All·powerful may not possess. We must cede our realm."

So Milton--

"O how unlike the place from whence they fell!"

and in the words of Satan--

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid What shall be right."

Caedmon's notion of Pandemonium is the prototype of Milton:

"But around me lie iron bonds; presseth this cord of chain, I am powerless! me have so hard the clasps of hell so firmly grasped. Here is a vast fire above and underneath; never did I see a loathlier landskip; the flame abateth not hot over hell. Me hath the clasping of these rings, this hard polished band, impeded in my course, debarred me from my way. My feet are bound, my hands are manacled . . . . . About me the huge gratings of hard iron, forged with heat, with which me God hath fastened by the neck."

Nearly all these ideas are incorporated in Milton's sublime picture--

". . . . down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire." . . . . . _Line 48_. "Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild?" . . . . . _Line 180_. "A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed." _Line 61_ ". . . . torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed." _Line 67_.

But after the death of Caedmon (680), there must have been a great deal of poetry written which is now lost, for we read that Bede, on his {807} death-bed, repeated several passages from national poets, one of which is preserved in that interesting description of the last moments of the great historian, written by S. Cuthbert, who was with him to the end. [Footnote 216] But the chivalrous poetry of tradition gave way to that of religion, which is the characteristic of Saxon song after the sixth century.

[Footnote 216: Asseri Annaies (Gale's Collec.) ann.; 731.]

We are also told that Aldhelm, bishop of Sherbourne, who died in the year 709, was one of the best poets of his day. But still at this period, although there was a struggle after a national literature, the great works were all written in Latin; and Bede, much as he admired the Saxon poets of his country, intrusted his Ecclesiastical History to the only idiom sacred to learning. Gildas and Nennius, who preceded Bede, also wrote in Latin. But the Saxons were the first out of all the barbarians to acquire a vernacular literature. Of that literature we are scarcely competent to judge; but from what has come down to us, from allusions in history, from the state of education among them, we may safely conclude that although little has survived, it was not a poor literature. We must remember the continual scenes of devastation which took place during the period of their domination; when monasteries were rifled, books burnt, and manuscripts wantonly destroyed. From the time of Alfred, only one Anglo-Saxon writer of any consequence has come down to us, Olfric; but from what we know of Saxon progress we may be assured there were many others. It is evident from the state of education among them. Before the middle of the seventh century schools had sprung up, and toward the latter end an impetus was given to learning by the labors of Theodore and Adrian, of whom Bede asserts that they gathered together a crowd of disciples, and taught them not only the books of Holy Writ, but the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and arithmetic, and adds in proof that some of their scholars were alive in his day who were as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as their own. [Footnote 217]

[Footnote 217: Eccl. Hist. lib., iv., c. 2.]

Even the ladies among the Saxons were well educated, for it was to them that Aldhelm addressed his work De Laude Virginitatis, and Boniface corresponded with ladies in Latin. In the ninth century also we find that schools were flourishing in various parts of the kingdom, especially the one at York, under Archbishop Egbert, who taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to the scholars, amongst whom was Alcuin the friend of Charlemagne. From the letters of Alcuin, but more especially from his History of the Church of York, we may learn that for the same there was a renowned library there, and as it is the earliest list of books--the first catalogue of an English library extant--we may as well subjoin it. Alcuin says that in his library were the works of Jerome, Hilarius, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory, Pope Leo, Basil, Chrysostom, and others. Bede and Aldhelm, the native authors, of course were there. In history and philosophy there were Orosius, Boethius, Pompeius, Pliny, Aristotle, and Cicero. In poetry, Sedulius Juveneus, Prosper, Arator, Paulinus, Fortunatus, Lactantius; and of the classics, Virgil, Statius, and Lucan. Of grammarians there was a great number, such as Probus, Phocas, Donatus, Priscian, Servius, Eutyehius, and Commianus. Boniface was a great book collector, and used to send them home to England. So that we may fairly conclude that if the Danish depredations and the internal dissensions of the country had not been so fatal to the treasures hoarded up in monastic libraries we should have had much more of Saxon literature. The influence of Dunstan, too, gave an impulse to learning both in the country {808} generally and in the church. He himself was a scholar, a musician, an artist, an illuminator, and a man of science; [Footnote 218] but the most prominent figure is Bede, who, as we observed, wrote in Latin; he was well versed in Greek and Hebrew.

[Footnote 218: "Artem scribendi necne citharizaudi pariterque pingendi peritiam diligenter excoluit."--Cotton MSS.---Cleop., B xiii., fol., 69. ]

He wrote many works--thirty-seven according to his own list, including compilations; but the most important was his Ecclesiastical History, which traces the course of the national church from the earliest times down to 731, within four years of his own death. In his introduction he honestly gives us a list of his materials, from which we can gather that in all parts of the country the bishops and abbots had instinctively turned their attention to historical writing; for he says he was indebted to Albinus, abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, for the particulars of the Augustinian mission and the history of the Kentish Church generally, and to Northelm, a priest of London, who had discovered at Rome the epistles of Pope Gregory upon the subject; from Daniel, bishop of the West Saxons, he received much assistance as to the history of that province and the adjoining. Abbot Esius, of East Anglia, and Cunebert, of Lindsey, are also mentioned as contributing valuable materials. So that this history of Bede is compiled from the most authentic sources, and forms one of the most valuable collections of ecclesiastical annals extant in any nation. It is a fact worthy of note in the history of letters, that these early prelates of the Saxon Church, and in fact the monks in the various monasteries scattered over the country from the earliest period, and even down to their decadence, silently and patiently recorded the events of their times and of their church, and that their labors, such as have been rescued from the ravages of the past, form the only true "materia historica" of modern writers. But we pass on from the time of Bede to that of Alfred, under whose influence the Saxon language almost displaced the use of the Latin. The extraordinary vicissitudes of his life have been elsewhere recorded, but in literature he was an historian, a theologian, a commentator, and a transcriber. His principal works were translations of Gregory's Pastoral Care, the Universal History of Orosius, Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and several parts of the Bible; but he not only translated, but interpolated whole pages of his own. In the Pastoral Care he has inserted original prayers; in the History of Orosius there is a sketch of the state of Germany by him, and the translation of Boethius is tesselated with profound and pointed thoughts, which fairly entitle him to the name of philosopher. The greatest achievement of King Alfred was perhaps the reviving and restarting the Saxon Chronicle. It is probable that from the earliest times of the Saxon rule a national record of events had been kept somewhere, either from the instinct of preservation or by concert. The evidence of Bede proves that it was done in the church as regards ecclesiastical matters, and we know that in the time of Alfred there was a short record of bare events, with now and then a genealogy treasured up and handed down from age to age. It was his thought and care to reform these records and restart the Chronicle as a great national archive. For this purpose, he enjoined Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, to collect what could be found, write it out fairly, and commence his labors as the chronicler of the period. From that time the records are fuller and more in detail, and down to the year 1154 it was kept up by different men in different monasteries, who were eye-witnesses of the events they recorded, and out of whose labors there are only six original MSS. extant of this great national work. The first is called the Plegmund, or Benet MSS., because it was, as we have said, compiled by Plegmund at the instigation of Alfred, and is preserved in Benet {809} (Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge. From the year 891 it is written in different hands and by different people down to the year 1070. The second copy is in the Cottonian Collection at the British Museum (Tiberius, A vi.), written apparently by one hand, which has been attributed to Dunstan, and it terminates at the year 977, eleven years before his death. The third copy is in the same collection (Cotton Tiberius, B i.), and is thought to have been written in the monastery of Abingdon; it reaches down to 1066. The fourth copy is also in the Cottonian collection (Tiberius, B iv.), written by different men down to the year 1079. The fifth manuscript is in the Bodleian library at Oxford (Laud, E 80), from internal evidence, written in the year 1122, compiled from older materials, and carried down in different hands to the year 1154, showing the gradual degeneracy of the Saxon language under Norman influence, from 1132 to the end. The sixth and last manuscript is in the Cottonian library (Domitian, A viii.). It has been accredited to a Canterbury monk; it is written in Latin and Saxon, and terminates in 1058. Besides these six, one other MS. is mentioned as of great value, being a transcription of a Cottonian MS., which perished in a fire at Dean's yard in 1731. It is in the Dublin library (E, 5-15), and was written by Lombard in 1863-64. [Footnote 219]

[Footnote 219: For a more detailed account of these MSS. see Preface to Bohn's edition of the Translation of Bede and Saxon Chronicle.]

Scarcely any country in Europe possesses such an historical treasure as this, so authentic and so characteristic. It is a very interesting study to note its many peculiarities; there are sad gaps in its records, as though the sorrow of the land was too great to be recorded, and the hand had failed; there are songs of triumph at the defeat of the enemy, and pathetic lamentations over desolated homes; there are noble panegyrics upon men of blessed memory, who had fought up bravely for their church and country, and words of bitter scorn for traitors, cowards, and profligates; it contains pious reflections, ejaculations, and aspirations; it is a most vivid picture of the manners, the thoughts, the joys, the sorrows of the most interesting and important period in the history of our country, as though the life itself, with its characters and incidents, were made to pass before our eyes in a rapid panorama.

Such was the result of one of Alfred's many plans for the good of his kingdom. His own diligence as a writer and translator told vitally upon the language, then rapidly improving. Latin manuscripts had for some time previously been interlined with Anglo-Saxon "glosses"--that is, interpretations of Latin words and passages in Anglo-Saxon--and this gradually led to the complete transcription of Latin MSS. into Anglo-Saxon, and the writing of original matter in the vernacular tongue. [Footnote 220]

[Footnote 220: A specimen of this interlinear translation may be seen in the Cottonian collection--Vespasian, A i.--a Psalter written in the year 1000, in Latin capitals, with an Anglo-Saxon interpretation between the lines.]

Although only one writer of any consequence has been handed down to us from the time of Alfred, yet we may fairly infer that many others lived and wrote, whose works were destroyed in the ravages made by the Danes from that time to the Norman conquest, and afterward when Norman monks looked with contempt upon Saxon MSS., and used them for other purposes, such as binding or transcription after erasure. The Latin then once more became the language of literature in this country. Still the Saxon lived, and would not be trampled out by the Normans, though it degenerated sadly until, in the fourteenth century, an idiom sprung up by a mingling of the two, which has been called Semi-Saxon. Out of this came the early English, from which, after an additional Saxon infusion from Puritan times, came the idiom we now use, whose strong Saxon basis bids fair to make it live through all time, and, is spreading it in every quarter of the world.

{810}

It will be interesting to note at this point that two men managed to preserve a great deal of literary matter out of the gross Vandalism which was rife, Archbishop Parker and Sir Robert Cotton. Parker's collection is in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and those of Cotton in the British Museum, the present reference to which, under the titles of Roman emperor's, arose from the circumstance that in his own library they were arranged on shelves, over each of which was a bust of one of the Roman emperors. In this way, and by the diligence of these two men, many valuable MSS. were rescued which had passed into the hands of private individuals and booksellers.

All hopes of a national vernacular literature were, however, frustrated by the advent of the Normans. Centuries before, the French had ceased to sing their mournful litany, "A furore Normannorum libera nos Domine," and had found it advisable to give these troublesome strangers a settlement. Here they had multiplied and thriven until the middle of the eleventh century, when they were the most promising people in Europe. There are traits in the Norman character not unlike the Roman. The Gothic tribes generally adopted the language and, to a certain extent, the customs of the countries they conquered; but the Normans, like the Romans, always endeavored to graft their own language and customs upon their vanquished. As soon, therefore, as William had made his tenure sure in England, he began the work of Saxon extermination by ordering that the elements of grammar should be taught in the French language, that the Saxon caligraphy should be abandoned, and all deeds, pleadings in courts, and laws should be in French. Saxon then sunk into contempt, and those of the old race who were more politic than patriotic set to work vigorously to acquire the elements of the favorite tongue. Then also the custom of writing books in Latin was revived, and continued, as regards all important works, down to the sixteenth century; for although books were written in English before that time, the language was in a very crude state; for as in Germany and other countries, so in England, the event which first fixed the language was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular; the book, which everybody read, soon became an authority, and was appealed to on points of language. Still the influence of the Normans was beneficial, both upon the manners and the literature of the country. The Saxons, with all their greatness, were not a very refined people; they were given to carousals of which we can scarcely form any conception, their diet was coarse, and their manners unpolished; but the Normans, if not more simple in their habits, were more refined. Norman extravagance found vent, not in drunken orgies and riotous feasting, but in fine buildings, horses, trappings, and dress. [Footnote 221] The importation of provincial poetry in the shape of Trouvère poems, romances, and fabliaux, had a refining effect upon the literature, and laid the foundation of English chivalry. But the most beneficial effect was the introduction of two or three master spirits into the country, whose friendship William had formerly cultivated. Of the two most important we will give a rapid sketch.

[Footnote 221: There is a very good comparison of the manners of the two races drawn by William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum; and, being related to both, he is likely to have given a fair estimate.]

In the early morning of a day in the first quarter of the eleventh century, a poor young scholar walked through the gates of Pavia, staff in hand, into the open country, and made his weary way across the Alps. He was heavy in heart and light in purse; he had lost his parents, and had left his native city to seek the scanty livelihood of a vagrant scholar, and yet bound up in that ragged form, as it were in an undeveloped germ, were wealth, power, and influence; he was making his way, {811} as far as he knew, to some of those French schools of disputation which had sprung up, where a poor scholar whose wits had been sharpened by scanty fare, might, by a happy sophism or a crushing conclusion, earn a bed and refreshment for the night; but he was in reality making his way to fame, distinction, and wealth, to a conqueror's court, and to the episcopal throne of Canterbury. This ragged scholar, who thus left his native city, was Lanfranc, a name familiar to English ears and ever memorable in English history, For some years he led this vagrant life, travelling from place to place, disputing and studying, when he once more returned to Pavia and established himself as a pleader. His eloquence soon brought fame and competence; but urged by some hidden impulse, he threw up the prospects open to him; once more left the city, and once more took his way across the Alps and settled at Avranches in Normandy, where many schools were established. He soon found disciples; but the secret yearning of his heart developed itself--the monastery of Bea was not far distant, and to it he bent his steps, hoping to find that peace which the cloister alone could afford. But he was not allowed to remain in obscurity, his scholars and others, attracted by his fame, crowded around him, flocked to his lectures, and the school of Bea became so renowned that the attention of the young Duke of Normandy, who also had in him the germ of a glorious career, was attracted to this rising dialectician, and through the medium of intellectual intercourse a friendship was engendered which procured for the conqueror of England a wise and trusty adviser, and paved the way to fortune for, the poor student. The remainder of his career may be summed up in a few words. William had just founded a new monastery at Caen, and over it, he placed his friend as abbot. But during the twenty years which had elapsed between the time of his settlement at Bea and his elevation to the abbacy of Caen, the school he had founded had become most renowned, and some of the great men of after times boasted of having sat there at Lanfranc's feet. Among these were Bishops Guimond, Ives, and another Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm. On one occasion after the elevation of Lanfranc to the primacy of England, he was obliged to visit Rome and have an audience of Pope Alexander II., who paid him such marked respect that the courtiers asked the reason, and the Pope replied, "It is not because he is primate of England that I rose to meet him, but because I was his pupil at Bea, and there sat at his feet to listen to his instruction."

While at Caen, however, he entered into the renowned controversy with Berenger upon the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, Berenger admitting the fact but denying the change of substance. The results of this controversy, however, were anticipated by neither party. It led to a thorough change in the mode of investigation of truth, more especially of divine truth. Berenger had adopted the course of arguing the point upon the grounds of pure reason, a course not unfamiliar to an expert dialectician like Lanfranc, but utterly novel in theological disputation, where authority was omnipotent. Lanfranc himself says of his opponent that he desired "relictis saeris auctoritatibus ad dialecticam confugium facere." But like a true athlete, he meets his adversary with his own weapons, and for the first time in Europe men beheld a vital theological dogma being discussed by champions who had agreed to throw aside all the weight of authority and rely upon the strength of their own logic. This was the first signal for the union of scholasticism with theology, which prevailed in Europe for centuries, tingeing even the writings of the early reformers. What Lanfranc had done in the pressure of controversy, Anselm took up with all the ardor of a convert; and the change which passed over the thought of Europe {812} amounted to a sort of intellectual revolution. But to return to the fortunes of Lanfranc;--soon after William had been consecrated he returned to Normandy, taking with him Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose deposition he ultimately procured, when he immediately installed his friend and adviser, Lanfranc, into the see of Canterbury. At first, however, Lanfranc declined the post, upon the grounds that he did not know the language; but his objection was overruled, and in the year 1070 he was consecrated and took up his residence in England.

To him at Bea succeeded as teacher, Anselm, who made great advances in the scholastic mode of teaching. He was also prior of the monastery, and during this period he wrote six treatises on the Fall of Satan, on Truth, on Original Sin, on the Reason why God created Man, the Liberty of the Will, and the Consistency of Freedom with the Divine Prescience. These great questions were then uppermost in men's minds, and they were treated by Anselm in the new and more attractive mode of appeal to pure reason. Whilst in the midst of these studies he was appointed abbot of his monastery, which he reluctantly accepted, and in the year 1093, fifteen years afterward, four years after the death of Lanfranc, he was appointed by William II. to the archbishopric of Canterbury. His relations with the king were not happy; he opposed that obstinate and rapacious monarch, and a series of misunderstandings ensued, which led him to retire to Rome to consult with the Pope. During his absence he wrote that book by which he is most known, Cur Deus Homo, Why God was made Man. He also took a prominent part in the Council of Bari, in 1098, where he procured the decision against the Greek delegates, upon the question of the Procession of the Holy Ghost. Upon the death of William he returned; but the rest of his life was occupied in continual disputes on points of privilege with the king, Henry, and he died in the year 1109.

But we will now advance to the consideration of that great change which came over the thought of Europe, and bears the name of scholasticism. The controversy of Lanfranc with Berenger on the doctrine of the real presence, may be accepted as the point where the new method was applied to theology; from that time it became the favorite mode. But although the scholastic philosophers professed to rely upon bare reason, they appear to have instinctively felt that great want of human nature, the want of an oracle, and they found their oracle in the works of Aristotle, then in use in the university and schools of Spain, sadly perverted by being filtered through an Arabic translation. Men flew to Arabic grammars, and to Spain, to Arabic versions of Aristotle, and the Stagyrite then became the oracle of the Scholastics just as the fathers were of their opponents. But still, as is and must be the case in all religious controversies, both parties lay under the same necessity, and, after all, drew their premises from the same quarter. The defender and the opposer were alike subject to the influence of revelation; without that, the opponent would have wanted the subject of opposition, and the defender the object of his defence, so that the premises of both appear to be involved in the same thing, and in fine the Scholastics fell back also upon the fathers, as may be seen in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the handbook of scholasticism, which is nothing but a mass of extracts from the fathers and popes, worked up together into a system of theology. In its earliest form it cannot be denied that scholasticism did good. It was a healthy revival of intellectual life, it stimulated all classes of thinkers, and created a passion for inquiry; it brought out such great minds as Abelard, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas. The very subjects upon which men debated gave an elevation to thought, and the result was an intellectual activity which has rarely been equalled. It must be remembered also that the schoolmen did not discard {813} the facts laid down by the fathers; they were not infidels, but their investigations turned more upon the mode of operation--they accepted the divine presence in the Eucharist, but what they wanted to ascertain was the way in which it manifested itself. They believed in the Incarnation, but they desired to know the exact mode in which that sacrifice had worked out human redemption.

But we must return to the development of English literature. After the Norman Conquest, we have already observed, the Latin tongue became once more the medium of communication for the learned, and all great works were written in that idiom, so that there were three tongues used in England: the Latin by the clergy and scholars, the Norman-French by the court and nobles, and the Saxon, which fell to the common people. The literature of that period was rich in some departments, poor in others. In philosophy, whatever we may think of its merit, it was anything but scanty, and a perfect library of scholastic writings has come down even to our times, a desert of argumentation and reasoning, but containing veins of gold, could a mortal ever be found endowed with the patience to dig deep enough, and labor long enough to open them. The Book of Sentences, by Peter the Lombard, bishop of Paris, to which we have already alluded, was one of the wonders of the twelfth century. It was divided into four parts: the first treated of the Trinity and divine attributes, the second of the Creation, the origin of angels, of the fall of man, of grace, free will, of original and actual sin; the third of the Incarnation, faith, hope, charity, the gifts of the spirit, and the commandments of God; and the fourth treated of the Sacraments, the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the state of the righteous in heaven. Although a great deal is borrowed from the fathers, yet there is in this work a marked tendency toward the scholastic method; he wanders into abstruse speculations and subtle investigations as to the generation of the Word, the possibility of two persons being incarnate in one, sins of the will and of the action. It did much to mould the thought of succeeding writers, and it won for its author the title of Master of Sentences; it was appealed to as an authority; what the "Master" said was a sufficient answer to an opponent. Another great work was the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, a book which excites admiration even now. Duns Scotus and Occam, also contributed voluminously to the stores of scholastic theology. The literature, however, was richer in history. Whilst the theologians were debating about questions beyond the reach of the human intellect, a band of quiet pious men devoted their time to the recording the tale of human actions. Upward of forty men lived from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, who have written the history of the country from the earliest periods down to the dawning of the sixteenth century. Probably no country in the world is richer in historical material than ourselves; and as an admirable instance of monastic diligence, and evidence of intellectual activity in what has been usually termed an age of dense ignorance, we subjoin a table of the historical writers, upon whose labors the authentic history of the country must rest. [Footnote 222]

[Footnote 222: We omit in our list the supposititious history of Croyland, by Ingulphus, which has been disposed of by Richard Palgrave, as of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and of little historical value.]

MONASTIC WRITERS OF ENGLISH HISTORY.

_Twelfth Century._

William of Poictiers, History of Conquest--Chaplain to William I.

Ordericus Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History to 1141--Monk of St. Evroult.

Anonymous, Gesta Stephani.

William of Jumièges, History of Normandy--Monk of Jumièges.

Florence of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicis to 1119--Monk of Worcestcr.

Matthew of Westminstcr, Flores Historiarum--Doubtful.

{814}

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, Historia Novella, Gesta Pontificum, Vita Anselmi, De Antiquitate Glastoniae--Monk of Malmesbury.

Eadmer, Historia Novorum, and others-- Monk of Canterbury.

Turgot, Confessor of Margaret, Queen of Malcolm Canmore; wrote her Life and History of Durham (called Simeon of Durham), History of St. Cuthbert, De Rebus Anglorum, and other works--Monk of Durham.

Ailred, Account of Battle of Standards--Abbot of Rivault, York.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, British History--Monk of Monmouth.

Alfred of Beverley, Gestis Regum--Canon of St. John's, Beverley.

Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium Cambriae, Topographia Hiberniae, De Rebus a se Gestis, etc--Politician.

Henry of Huntingdon, Eight Books History, Julius Caesar to 1154--Archdeacon.

Roger of Hovenden, Chronicle, 732 to 1202, in continuation of Bede.

William of Newburgh, Hist. from Conquest to 1197--Monk of Newburgh.

Benedictus Abbas, Chronicle, 1170 to 1192 --Abbot of Peterboro'.

Ralph de Diceto, Two Chron., one 589 to 1148, and the other to 1199, Hist. of Controversy between Henry and à Becket, Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury to 1200, in the Anglia Sacra--Archdeacon of London.

Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, from 1100 to end of century, three other pieces, Contests between Monks and Archbishop Baldwin, History of the Archbishops, from Augustine to Walter, 1205--Monk of Canterbury.

_Thirteenth Century._

Richard of Devizes, Chron. of Reign of Richard I--Monk.

Jocelyn de Brakelond, Chron., 1173 to 1202 --Monk of St. Edmondsbury.

Roger of Wendover, Hist. to 1235--Monk of St. Albans.

Matthew Paris, Historia Major. Conq. to 1259--Monk of St. Albans.

_Fourteenth Century._

William Rishanger, Continuation of M. Paris to 1322, Wars of the Barons--Monk of St. Albans.

John of Brompton, [Footnote 223] Chron. to 1199, from Saxons--Monk of Jerevaux.

[Footnote 223: Authorship doubtful.]

Thomas Wickes, Chron., of Salisbury to 1304 --Canon of Osney.

Walter Hemingford, Hist. Conquest to 1273 --Monk of Gisbro'.

Robert of Avesbury, Hist. Reign of Edward III to 1356--Register of Canterbury.

Nicholas Trivet, Hist. from 1135 to 1307--Dominican.

Adam Murimuth, Chron. 1303 to 1337--Monk.

Henry Knyghton, Hist. from Edgar to Richard II--Canon of Leicester.

Thomas Stubbs, Chron. of Archbishops of York to 1373--Monk.

William Thorne, Chron. of Abbots of St. Augustine, 1397--Monk.

Ranulph Higden, Polychronicon [Footnote 224] to 1357--Monk.

[Footnote 224: Caxton printed it, with a continuation of his own, to 1460.]

_Fifteenth Century._

Thomas Walsingham, Hist. Brevis to Hy. of Normandy--Monk of St. Albans.

Thomas Otterbourne, Hist. to 1420--Franciscan.

John Whethamstede, Chron. 1441 to 1461-- Abbot of St. Albans.

Thomas Elmham, Life of Henry V.--Prior of Linton.

William of Worcester, Chron. 1324 to 1491--Monk.

John Rouse, Hist. Kings of England to 1490-- Chaplain to Earl of Warwick.

_Monastic Registers._

Glastonbury, 63 to 1400 Melrose, 735 to 1270 Margan, 1066 to 1232 Waverly, 1066 to 1291 Ely, 156 to 1169 Abingdon, 870 to 1131 Bishops of Durham, 633 to 1214 Burton 1004 to 1263 Rochester, 1115 to 1124 Holyrood, 596 to 1163

Add to these many historical documents which have been preserved from destruction, such as the Doomsday Book, the Liber Niger, rolls and public registers, and we have a repertoire of historical materials such as scarcely any other nation in Europe can boast of. From the time when the Saxon Chronicle was commenced down to the age of printing, the pens of the monks were unwearied in recording the history of their country; and although they had their share of human weakness, and were influenced in matters of opinion frequently by the treatment shown to their order, still among such a mass of writers the truth may surely be ascertained. The severity of criticism applied to history in these {815} days is driving men rapidly to active research among these _origines histoicae_. Formerly when a man wrote a history, he framed his work upon other men's labors and his own fancy, as was instanced in the case of Robertson, who coolly tells us that he had made up his mind to write a history of something, but was undecided whether it should be a history of Greece, of Leo X., William III. and Anne, or Charles V. At last he decided upon the latter, and we may infer from a letter of his to Dr. Birch in what degree of preparation he was for the work. He says: "I never had access to any copious libraries, and do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down as _I have found them mentioned in any