Aurelian or Rome in the Third Century Part 20

FROM PISO TO FAUSTA.

Marcus and Lucilia are inconsolable. Their grief, I fear, will be lasting as it is violent. They have no resource but to plunge into affairs and drive away memory by some active and engrossing occupation.

Yet they cannot always live abroad; they must at times return to themselves and join the company of their own thoughts. And then, memory is not to be put off; at such moments this faculty seems to const.i.tute the mind more than any other. It becomes the mind itself. The past rises up in spite of ourselves, and overshadows the present. Whether its scenes have been prosperous or afflictive, but especially if they have been shameful, do they present themselves with all the vividness of the objects before us and the pa.s.sing hour, and infinitely increase our pains. We in vain attempt to escape. We are prisoners in the hands of a giant. To forget is not in our power. The will is impotent. The effort to forget is often but an effort to remember. Fast as we fly, so fast the enemy of our peace pursues. Memory is a companion who never leaves us--or never leaves us long. It is the true Nemesis. Tartarean regions have no worse woes, nor the h.e.l.l of Christians, than memory inflicts upon those who have done evil. My friends struggle in vain. They have not done evil indeed, but they have suffered it. The sorest calamity that afflicts mortals has overtaken them; their choicest jewel has been torn from them; and they can no more drown the memory of their loss than they can take that faculty itself and tear it from their souls. Comfort cannot come from that quarter. It can come only from being re-possessed of that which has been lost hereafter, and from enjoying the hope of that felicity now. See how Marcus writes. After much else, he says,

'I miss you, Piso, and the conversations which we had together. I know not how it is, but your presence acted as a restraint upon my hot and impatient temper. Since your departure I have been little less than mad, and so far from being of service to Lucilia, she has been compelled to moderate her own grief in the hope to a.s.suage mine. I have done nothing but rave, and curse my evil fortune. And can anything else be looked for? How should a man be otherwise than exasperated when the very thing he loves best in the wide universe is, without a moment's warning, s.n.a.t.c.hed away from him? A man falls into a pa.s.sion if his seal is stolen, or his rings, or his jewels, if his dwelling burns down, or his slaves run away or die by some pestilence. And why should he not much more when the providence of the G.o.ds, or the same power whatever it may be that gave as a child, tears it from us again; and just then when we have so grown into it that it is like hewing us in two? I can believe in nothing but capricious chance. We live by chance, and so we die. Such events are otherwise inexplicable. For what reason can by the most ingenious be a.s.signed for giving life for a few years to a being like Gallus, and who then, before he is more than just past the threshold of life, before a single power of his nature has put itself forth, but at the moment when he is bound to his parents by ties of love which never afterwards would be stronger--is struck dead? We can give no account of it. It is irreconcilable with the hypothesis of an intelligent and good Providence. It has all the features of chance upon it. A G.o.d could not have done it unless he had been the G.o.d of Tartarus. Dark Pluto might, or the avenging Furies, were they supreme. But away with all such dreams! The slaves who were his proper attendants, have been scourged and crucified. That at first gave me some relief; but already I repent it. So it is with me; I rush suddenly upon what at the moment I think right, and then as suddenly think and feel that I have done wrong, and so suffer. I see and experience nothing but suffering, whichever way I turn. Truly we are riddles. Piso, you cannot conceive of my loss. It was our only child--and the only one we shall ever know. I wish that I believed in the G.o.ds that I might curse them.'

And much more in the same frantic way. Time will blunt his grief; but it will bring him I fear no other or better comfort. He hopes for oblivion of his loss; but that can never be. He may cease to grieve as he grieves now; but he can never cease to remember. I trust to see him again ere long, and turn his thoughts into a better channel.

I did not forget to keep my promise to the wife of Macer. In truth I had long regarded it as essential to our safety almost, certainly to our success, that this man, and others of the same character, should be restrained in some way in their course of mistaken zeal; and had long intended to use what influence to that end I might possess. Probus had promised to accompany me, and do what in him lay, to rescue religion from this peril at the hands of one of her best friends. He joined me toward the evening of the same day on which I had seen the wife of Macer, and we took our way toward his dwelling.

It was already past the hour of twilight when we reached the part of the city where Macer dwells, and entered the ruins among which his cabin stands. These ruins are those of extensive and magnificent baths destroyed a long time ago, and to this day remaining as the flames left them. At the rear of them, far from the street and concealed from it by arches and columns and fragments of wall, we were directed by the rays of a lamp streaming from a window, to the place we sought. We wound our way among these fallen or still standing ma.s.ses of stone, which frequently hid from us the object of our search, till, as we found ourselves near the spot, we were arrested by the sound of a single voice uttering itself with vehemence and yet solemnity. We paused, but could not distinguish the words used; but the same conviction possessed us as to its cause. It was Macer at prayer. We moved nearer, so that, without disturbing the family, we might still make ourselves of the number of hearers. His voice, loud and shrill, echoed among the ruins and conveyed to us, though at some distance, every word that he uttered. But for the noise of carriages and pa.s.sengers it would have penetrated even to the streets. The words we caught were such as these--

--'If they hear thee not, O Lord, nor reverence thy messengers, but deny thee and turn upon those whom thou sendest the lip of scorn and the eye of pride, and will none of their teachings, and so do despite to the spirit of thy grace, and crucify the Lord afresh, then do thou, O Lord, come upon them as once upon the cities of the plain in the times of thine anger. Let fire from Heaven consume them. Let the earth yawn and swallow them up. Tear up the foundations of this modern Babylon; level to the earth her proud walls; and let her stand for a reproach, and a hissing, and a scorn; through all generations; so that men shall say as they pa.s.s by, lo! the fate of them that held to their idols rather than serve the living G.o.d; their proud palaces are now dwellings of dragons, and over her ruins the trees of the forest are now spreading their branches. But yet, O Lord, may this never be; but may a way of escape be made for them through thy mercy. And to this end may we thy servants, to whom thou hast given the sword of the spirit, gird it upon our sides, lift up our voices and spare not, day and night, morning and evening, in the public place, and at the corners of the streets; in all places, and in every presence, proclaiming the good news of salvation. Let not cowardice seal our lips. Whether before gentile or jew, emperor or slave, may we speak as becomes the Lord's anointed. Warm the hearts of the cold and dead; put fire into them; fire from thine own altar. The world, O Lord, and its honors and vanities, seduce thine own servants from thee. They are afraid, they are cold, they are dead, and the enemy lifts himself up and triumphs. For this we would mourn and lament. Give us, O Lord, the courage and the zeal of thine early apostles and teachers so that no fear of tortures and death may make us traitors to Christ and thee.'

It was a long time that he went on in this strain, inveighing, with heat and violence, against all who withdrew their hand from the work, or abated their zeal. When he had ceased, and we stood waiting to judge whether the service were wholly ended, the voices of the whole family apparently, were joined together in a hymn of praise--Macer's now more gentle and subdued, as if to hear himself the tones of the children and of his wife who accompanied him. The burden of the hymn was also a prayer for a spirit of fidelity and a temper of patience, in the cause of truth and Christ. It was worship in the highest sense, and none within the dwelling could have joined more heartily than we did who stood without.

When it was ended, and with it evidently the evening service, we approached, and knocked for admittance. Macer appeared holding a light above his head, and perceiving who his guests were, gave us cordial welcome, at the same time showing us into his small apartment and placing stools for our accommodation. The room in which we were was small and vaulted, and built of stone in the most solid manner. I saw at once that it was one of the smaller rooms of the ancient bath, which had escaped entire destruction and now served as a comfortable habitation. A door on the inner side appeared to connect it with a number of similar apartments. A table in the centre and a few stools, a shelf on which were arranged the few articles which they possessed both for cooking and eating their food, const.i.tuted the furniture of the room. In the room next beyond I could see pallets of straw laid upon the floor, which served for beds. Macer, his wife, and six children, composed the family then present; the two elder sons being yet absent at their work, in the shop of Demetrius. The mother held at her breast an infant of a year or more; one of three years sprang again upon his father's lap, as he resumed his seat after our entrance, whence he had apparently been just dislodged; the rest, sitting in obscure parts of the room, were at first scarcely visible. The wife of Macer expressed heartily her pleasure at seeing us, and said even more by her flushed and animated countenance than by her words. The severe countenance of Macer himself relaxed and gave signs of satisfaction.

'I owe you, Piso,' he said, 'many thanks for mercies shown to my wife and my little ones here, and I am glad to see you among us. We are far apart enough as the world measures such things, but in Christ we are one. At such times as these, when the Prince of Darkness rules, we ought if ever to draw toward each other, that so we may make better our common defence. I greet you as a brother--I trust to love you as one.'

I told him that nothing should be wanting on my part toward a free and friendly intercourse; that from all I had heard of him I had conceived a high regard for him, and owed him more thanks for what he had done in behalf of our religion, than he could me for any services I had rendered him.

'Me?' said he, and his head fell upon his bosom. 'What have I done for Christ to deserve the thanks of any? I have preached and I have prayed; I have opposed heresies and errors; I have wrestled with the enemies and corrupters of our faith within our own body and without; but the fruit seems nothing. The gentile is still omnipotent--heresy and error still abound.'

'Yes, Macer,' I replied, 'that is certainly so, and may be so for many years to come, but still we are gaining. He who can remember twenty years can count a great increase. After the testimony borne by the martyrs of the Decian persecution to their faith, and all the proof they gave of sincere attachment to the doctrine of Christ, crowds have entered the church, an hundred for every one whose blood then flowed.'

'And now,' said Macer, his eye kindling with its wild fires, 'the church is dead! The truest prayer that the Christian can now offer is, that it would please G.o.d to try us again as it were by fire! We slumber, Piso!

The Christians are not now the Nazarites they were in the first age of the church. Divisions have crept in; tares have been sown with the wheat, and have come up, and are choking the true plants of G.o.d. I know not but that the signs of terror which are scaring the heavens ought rather to be hailed as tokens of love. Better a thousand perish on the rack or by the axe, than that the church itself faint away and die.'

'It will not do,' said Probus, 'always to depend upon such remedies of our sloth and heresies. Surely it were better to prosper in some other and happier way. All I think we can say of persecution, and of the oppositions of our enemies, is this, that if it be in the providence of G.o.d that they cannot be avoided, we have cause to bless him that their issue is good rather than evil; that they serve as tests by which the genuine is tried and proved; that they give the best and highest testimony to the world that man can give, of his sincerity; that they serve to bind together into one compact and invincible phalanx the disciples of our common master, however in many things they may divide and separate. But, were it not better, if we could attain an equal good without the suffering?'

'I believe that to be impossible,' said Macer. 'Since Jesus began his ministry, persecution has been the rod that has been laid upon the church without sparing, and the fruit has been abundant. Without it, like these foolish children, we might run riot in all iniquity.'

'I do not say that the rod has not been needed,' answered Probus, 'nor that good has not ensued; but only, that it would be better, wiser, and happier, to reach the same good without the rod; just as it is better when your children, without chastis.e.m.e.nt, fulfil your wishes and perform their tasks. We hope and trust that our children will grow up to such virtue, that they will no longer need the discipline of suffering to make them better. Ought we not to look and pray for a period to arrive in the history of the church, when men shall no longer need to be lashed and driven, but shall of themselves discern what is best and cleave to it?'

'That might indeed be better,' replied the other; 'but the time is not come for it yet. The church I say is corrupt, and it cries out for another purging. Christians are already lording it over one another. The bishop of Rome sets himself up, as a lord, over subjects. A Roman Caesar walks it not more proudly. What with his robes of state, and his seat of gold, and his golden rod, and his altar set out with vessels of gold and silver, and his long train of menials and subordinates, poor simple Macer, who learned of Christ, as he hopes, is at a loss to discern the follower of the lowly Jesus, but takes Felix, the Christian servant, for some Fronto of a Heathen temple! Were the power mine, as the will is, never would I stay for Aurelian, but my own arm should sweep from the places they pollute the worst enemies of the Saviour. Did Jesus die that Felix might flaunt his peac.o.c.k's feathers in the face of Rome?'

'We cannot hope, Macer,' answered Probus, 'to grow up to perfection at once. I see and bewail the errors at which you point as well as you. But if, to remove them, we bring down the heavy arm of Rome upon our heads--the remedy may prove worse than the disease.'

'No. That could not be! Let those who with open eyes abuse the gifts of G.o.d, perish! If this faith cannot be maintained undefiled by Heathen additions, let it perish!'

'But G.o.d dealeth not so with us,' continued Probus; 'he beareth long and patiently. We are not destroyed because in the first years of our life we do not rise to all virtue, but are spared to fourscore. Ought we not to manifest a like patience and forbearance? By waiting patiently we shall see our faults, and one by one correct them. There is still some reason and discernment left among us. We are not all fools and blind.

And the faults which we correct ourselves, by our own action, and the conviction of our own minds acting freely and voluntarily, will be more truly corrected, than if we are but frightened away from them for a time by the terrors of the Roman sword. I think, Macer, and so thinks Piso, that, far from seeking to inflame the common mind, and so drawing upon us the evils which are now with reason apprehended, we should rather aim to ward them off.'

'Never!' cried Macer with utmost indignation. 'Shall the soldier of the cross shrink--'

'No, Macer, he need not shrink. Let him stand armed in panoply complete; prompt to serve, willing to die; but let him not wantonly provoke an enemy who may not only destroy him, that were a little thing, but, in the fury of the onset, thousands with him, and, perhaps, with them the very faith for which they die! The Christian is not guiltless who--though it be in the cause of Christ--rushes upon unnecessary death.

You, Macer, are not only a Christian and soldier of Jesus Christ, but a man, who, having received life from the Creator, have no right wantonly to throw it away. You are a husband, and you are bound to live for your wife;--these are your children, and you are bound to live for them.'

'He,' said Macer, solemnly, 'who hateth not father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sister, yea and his own life also, cannot be my disciple.'

'Yes,' replied Probus, 'that is true; we are to be ready and willing to suffer for Christ and truth; but not to seek it. He who seeks martyrdom is no martyr. Selfish pa.s.sions have then mingled their impure current with that of love to G.o.d, and the sacrifice is not without spot and blemish. Jesus did not so; nor his first followers. When the Lord was persecuted in one city, he staid not there to inflame it more and more; he fled to another. Paul and Peter and Barnabas stood ever for their rights; they suffered not wrong willingly. When the ark of truth is intrusted to few hands, they must bear it forward boldly, but with care, else are they at a blow cut off, and the ark with its precious burden borne away and lost--or miracles alone can rescue it. But when the time comes that no prudence or care will avail, then they may not refuse the issue, but must show that life is nothing in comparison of truth and G.o.d.'

'Probus,' said Macer, 'I like not your timid counsels. 'Tis not by such that Christ's cause shall ever advance, or that period ever come when he, the long-looked and waited for, shall descend, and the millenial reign begin. Life is nothing to me and less than nothing. I hold it as dirt and dross. And if by throwing it away I can add such a commentary to my preaching as shall strike a single Pagan heart, I shall not have died in vain; and if the blood that shall flow from these veins, may serve but as a purge, to carry off the foul humors that now fester and rage in the body of the church, thrice happy shall I be to see it flow.

And for these--let them be as the women and children of other times, and hold not back when their master calls. Arria! do thou set before thee St. Blandina, and if the Lord let thee be as her, thou wilt have cause to bless his name.'

'Never, Macer, would I shrink from any trial to which the Lord in his wisdom might call me--that you know. But has not Probus uttered a truth, when he says, that we are not innocent, and never glorious, when we seek death? that he who seeks martyrdom is no martyr? Listen, Macer, to the wisdom of Probus and the n.o.ble Piso. Did you not promise that you would patiently hear them?'

'Woman--I have heard them--their words are naught, stark naught, or worse. Where would have been the blessed gospel at this hour, had it been committed to such counsels? Even under Nero would it have died for want of those who were willing to die for it. I am a soldier of the cross, whose very vocation it is to fight and die. And if I may but die, blessed Jesus, for thee! then may I hope that thou wilt deal mercifully with thy servant at thy judgment-seat. I hear thy voice ever sounding in my ear, reproving me for my cowardice. Have patience with me, and I will give thee all. And if labor, and torture, and death, would but cancel sin!--But alas! even they may not suffice.'

'Then, dear father,' said one of his daughters who had drawn near and seated herself at his knee, while the others had gathered round, 'then will we add ourselves to the sacrifice.'

'Would you?' said Macer--in an absent, musing way--as if some other thought were occupying him.

Thinking that his love of his children, evidently a very strong affection in him, might be made to act as a restraint, I said, 'that I feared he greatly exposed his little family to unnecessary danger.

Already had his dwelling been once a.s.sailed, and the people were now ripe for any violence. This group of little ones can ill encounter a rude and furious mob.'

'They can die, can they not?' said Macer. 'Is that difficult, or impossible? If the Lord need them, they are his. I can ask no happier lot for them than that by death they may glorify G.o.d. And what is it to die so, more than in another way? Let them die in their beds, and whom do they benefit? They die then to themselves, and no one is the gainer; let them die by the sword of Varus, or by the stones of the populace, and then they become themselves stones in the foundation of that temple of G.o.d, of which Jesus is the chief corner-stone, and they are glorious forever. What say you, Cicer, will you die for Christ?'

The little fellow hid his head in his father's bosom at this sudden appeal, but soon drew it out and said,

'I would rather die for you, father.'

'Ah!' said Macer, 'how am I punished in my children! Cicer, would you not die for Christ?'

'I would die for him if you wish it.'

'Macer,' said Probus, 'do you not see how G.o.d has bound you and this family into one? and he surely requires you not to separate yourself, their natural protector, from them forever; still less, to involve them in all the sufferings which, taking the course you do, may come upon them at any hour.'

'Probus! their death would give me more pleasure than their life, dying for Christ. I love them now and here, fondly as ever parent loved his children,--but what is now, and here? Nothing. The suffering of an hour or of a moment joins us together again, where suffering shall be no more, and death no more. To-morrow! yes, to-morrow! would I that the wrath of these idol-worshippers might be turned against us. Rome must be roused; she sleeps the sleep of death; and the church sleeps it too; both need that they who are for the Lord should stand forth, and, not waiting to be attacked, themselves a.s.sail the enemy, who need but to be a.s.sailed with the zeal and courage of men, who were once to be found in the church, to be driven at all points.'

'But, father,' said the daughter who had spoken before, 'other Christians think not so. They believe for the most part, as I hear, with Probus and Piso, that on no account should we provoke the gentiles, or give them cause of complaint against us; they think that to do so would greatly harm us; that our duty is to go on the even tenor of our way, worshipping G.o.d after our own doctrine, and in our own manner, and claiming and exercising all our rights as citizens, but abstaining from every act that might rouse their anger, or needlessly irritate them--irritated, necessarily, almost beyond bearing, by the wide and increasing prosperity of our faith, and the daily falling away of the temple worshippers. Would it be right, dearest father, to do that which others approved not, and the effect of which might be, not only to draw down evil upon your and our heads, but upon thousands of others? We cannot separate ourselves from our brethren; if one suffer all will suffer--'

'aelia, my daughter, there is a judge within the breast, whom I am bound to obey rather than any other counsellor, either man or woman. I cannot believe, because another believes, a certain truth. Neither can I act in a certain way because others hold it their duty to act so. I must obey the inward voice, and no other. If I abandon this, I am lost--I am on the desert without sun, moon or stars to guide me. All the powers of the earth could not bribe nor drag me from that which I hold to be the true order of conduct for me; shown by the finger of G.o.d to be such.'

'But, father,' continued the daughter, pursuing her object, 'are we not too lately entered among the Christians to take upon us a course which they condemn? It is but yesterday that we were among the enemies of this faith. Are we to-day to a.s.sume the part of leaders? Would not modesty teach us a different lesson?'

'Modesty has nothing to do with truth,' said Macer. 'He who is wholly a Christian to-day, is all that he can be to-morrow, or next year. I am as old in faith and zeal as Piso, Probus, or Felix. No one can believe more, or more heartily, by believing longer. Nay, it is they who are newly saved who are most sensible to the blessing. Custom in religion as in other things dulls the soul. Were I a Christian much longer before G.o.d called me to serve him by suffering or death, I fear I should be then spiritually dead, and so worse than before I believed. Let it be to-morrow, O Lord, that I shall glorify thee!'

It was plain that little impression was to be made upon the mind of Macer. But we ceased not to urge him farther, his wife and elder children uniting with us in importunate entreaty and expostulation. But all in vain. In his stern and honest enthusiasm he believed all prudence, cowardice; all calculation, worldliness; all moderation and temperance, treason to the church and Christ. Yet none of the natural current of the affections seemed to be dried up or poisoned. No one could be more bound to his wife and children; and, toward us, though in our talk we spared him not, he ever maintained the same frank and open manner--yielding never an inch of ground, and uttering himself with an earnestness and fury such as I never saw in another; but, soon as he had ceased speaking, subsiding into a gentleness that seemed almost that of a woman, and playfully sporting with the little boy that he held on his knee.

Soon as our conversation was ended, Macer, turning to his wife, exclaimed,

'But what hinders that we should set before our visiters such hospitality as our poor house affords? Arria, have we not such as may well enough entertain Christians?'