A PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN IN ROME.
It seems so strange to us of the new faith, Who feel its beauty, joy, and holiness, Rising above this lower Pagan creed,
Like morning o'er the dark and dreaming earth; To us who have beheld, known, talked with those Who walked beside our Lord, and heard his voice, And with their own eyes saw his miracles,- To hear these Romans, Marcus, Caius, nay, Even Lucius, who is learned, liberal, trained In every school of thought, deny them all: Calling them mere impostures, or at best, Distortions of the facts, half true, half false, With nothing but the false miraculous! It makes us grieve, as showing how they lack That sense by which alone the natural man, As Paul says, can receive the things of God. But when had any Roman in all time A spiritual sense? 'Tis to the East The power of prophecy is given: alone It shapes religions, has the inner sight That through the matter sees the soul beyond, Is through its faith receptive, not its mind, And nearer unto God, as is the child. The West, immersed in things, is as the man, And joys to fashion governments and laws; It orders facts, it thinks, invents, and works, But blind and deaf to spiritual truth Lives in the Present, builds no infinite bridge Into the Future, hopes not, nor divines. At highest, 'tis the world's great intellect, Its understanding, brain, and not its soul. Lucius is of the West; he cannot feel Those finer impulses beyond the sense, Those inward yearnings stretching out of sight, Where reason cannot follow, after truth. As far as intellect can lead him on
Up the clear path of logic, he will go ; The rest is nonsense, and, of course, he likes The well-trod path as being the most safe.
And thus he reasons on the miracles :- :-
"Of facts like these, conforming to no law, There are a thousand chances of mistake To one in favour of the apparent facts,- First, self-deception; strong desire to see Begets the power of seeing; from itself The nervously expectant sense projects Its image, its mirage, or hears returned The outward echo of the inward voice; And while the reason and the judgment drowse, The fancy all alive, sees, hears, accepts. Then come illusions of the senses:- -Facts Half seen are wholly false,-scarce facts at all. Let but the fact be strange and new, surprise Destroys the power of scrutiny.-Again, Wonder, the habitual state of many minds (Those, most of all, religiously inclined), Love of the marvellous, a dread to peer Too keenly into that which wears a garb Of holiness, a proneness to revere What others reverence-all lead astray. Belief is passive: it receives, accepts ; But doubt is active: it disputes, rejects. You think these wonders, facts. You say that Christ Was holy in his aspect, pure in life, And in his perfectness above mankind. I will not question this: I only say He was a man, at best, and not a God. The Jews could not have crucified a God. No, nor a demigod, like Hercules.
"Observe, I do not say as others do, That he was wicked in intent, and sought A kingly crown above his wretched tribe. And if he did, I care not. What he said Was well enough, only it was not new. All that is good is found in Socrates, Or Plato, or the old Philosophies.
Had he been born in Greece, he might, perhaps, Have graced the train of one of these great men. But in that dismal Syria, 'mid a herd
Of ignorant Jews, most of them fishermen, Who worshipped him, he lost all common sense. From what I hear, he grew half cracked at last, And thought himself a God, and claimed the power
Of miracles, like other madmen here. Well, well; he suffered for all that by death, And, I dare say, was better than the most Among that loathsome people. For all that Touched in his brain he was, you must admit. For what man in his senses ever dreamed
He from the dead should rise with pomp and power A kingdom to establish on the earth?
"As for his miracles, I do not doubt
That some among that herd of credulous fools,
On whom he practised, thought they saw these things. But who was there with eyes and mind well trained
To sift the facts, to judge the evidence,
To question, to examine, to record?
Not one; the stupid crowd cried 'miracle'
(For everything is miracle to them);
The scribes and Pharisees, the learned men,
All stood aloof and scorned him and his works.
"And were they true, what prove they ?-Why, in Rome
These wonder-working magians come by scores,
Each with his new inspired theogony,
Each with his miracles to prove him God! For instance, there is Judas, whom they call The Gaulonite; and his three sons as well; There is Menander, and Cerinthus too, Theudas, and the greatest two of all, Simon of Gitton, named the Magian, And Apollonius of Tyana.
Thousands assert for them, as you for Christ, A supernatural power, a gift divine.
What shall I say? All surely are not Gods! No! nor a single one. Some, as I hear, Are scholars versed in Egypt's mystic lore, And by the subtle thought of Greece imbued, With minds enriched by travel and strange tongues, And skilled in writing, teaching, prophecy; "Tis even said their prophecies prove true; If so, by chance, by happy guess, no more. Yet if I hold these miracles of theirs As mere delusions (and you say they are), How can you ask me to accept on Faith Those Christ (a good man, if you will, but yet An untaught Jew of Galilee) performed,
Far out of sight, with none to vouch for them Except a ruck of wretched ignorant Jews. As for their doctrines, systems, forms of Faith, There is an Eastern likeness in them all, Simon or Christ-'tis nearly the same thing.
"And so this magian had the power, you think, To drive out shrieking devils from the breasts Of madmen, and compel them by his will To rush into a herd of guiltless swine;
Nay, that he cured the sick, and raised the dead, One Lazarus, four days buried, till he stank; Even more, that he could raise himself to life When crucified and dead, and in his tomb; And all because these awe-struck vulgar Jews Saw some one like him, and affirmed 'twas he. A woman first, a Mary Magdalene, Set all these stories going. Who was she? A half-mad courtesan, one who had owned Her seven devils-but of her the less You say the better. You'll at least admit The kingdom that he promised on the earth, The pomp, the power, the glory, were all trash. He vanished very swiftly out of sight For all his promises, and left the fools Who trusted him to gape and stare to see Some day the heavens open, as he said, And him with angels coming. When he comes Pray give me notice;-I, too, will believe; Till then, excuse me; on such evidence Of such grave portents, I to change my faith! I would not hang a sparrow on it all."
So Lucius thinks, and talks, and never sees How strange a contradiction in him lies; For he believes in all the wildest myths, And miracles, and wonders of his gods, Ay, and his demigods as well, and pays To them his reverential sacrifice. Like a good Pagan, he believes them all, Though he admits, of course, he never saw, Nor any eyes of any living man ;
Though all the evidence is far away,
Dimmed and obscured by misty centuries;
And though these myths are vouched by writings vague
Or by tradition only, differing, too,
In each tradition. Yet this faith being fixed, Established by long ages of belief,
It must be true; and our good Lucius sees In all these variations proofs of truth. The facts remain, he says, despite them all, Coloured by this report or that report, For this is human merely-only shows How various minds are variously impressed, One sees the fact as red, one green, one blue, But all this difference proves the existing fact.
But when Christ comes within our very reach, And living crowds behold his miracles, Attesting them by strenuous belief,
And sudden cries, and life-long change of faith, All were deceived; such strange things cannot be ! Yet either they were true or false. If false,
How were these crowds impressed to think they saw What never happened? Is not this as strange,
As wondrous as the miracles themselves?
Tricks, tricks," he says, "they only thought they saw; Do not a juggler's tricks deceive us all?
I have no faith in Apollonius
For all the evidence-it must be trick.
In ancient times the Gods came down to man, Assuming human powers-but that is past; But when a human creature of to-day Assumes their functions, and works miracles Against the laws of nature, and calls up The dead, the best thing is to hold him mad."
No! Lucius will not try the old and new
By the same test; a kind of mystery shrouds The ancient fact; the current of belief
For generations carries him along.
The early faith, stamped on his childish mind,
Can never be erased-'tis deep as life. The priest, the sacrifice, the daily rites, The formula, the fashion, the old use
Possess him, colouring all his life and thought; And we, who in the new, pure faith rejoice, Seem to his eyes, at least, but fools misled, Who only seck his gols to overthrow, And to whom ruin in the end must come.
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