Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 41

_Timotheus._ To what can this refer? Our caverns open on verdure, and terminate in veins of gold.

_Lucian._ Veins of gold, my good Timotheus, such as your excavations have opened and are opening, in the spirit of avarice and ambition, will be washed (or as you would say, _purified_) in streams of blood.

Arrogance, intolerance, resistance to authority and contempt of law, distinguish your aspiring sectarians from the other subjects of the empire.

_Timotheus._ Blindness hath often a calm and composed countenance; but, my Cousin Lucian! it usually hath also the advantage of a cautious and a measured step. It hath pleased G.o.d to blind you, like all the other adversaries of our faith; but He has given you no staff to lean upon. You object against us the very vices from which we are peculiarly exempt.

_Lucian._ Then it is all a story, a fable, a fabrication, about one of your earlier leaders cutting off with his sword a servant's ear? If the accusation is true, the offence is heavy. For not only was the wounded man innocent of any provocation, but he is represented as being in the service of the high priest at Jerusalem. Moreover, from the direction and violence of the blow, it is evident that his life was aimed at. According to law, you know, my dear cousin, all the party might have been condemned to death, as accessories to an attempt at murder. I am unwilling to think so unfavourably of your sect; nor indeed do I see the possibility that, in such an outrage, the princ.i.p.al could be pardoned. For any man but a soldier to go about armed is against the Roman law, which, on that head, as on many others, is borrowed from the Athenian; and it is incredible that in any civilized country so barbarous a practice can be tolerated.

Travellers do indeed relate that, in certain parts of India, there are princes at whose courts even civilians are armed. But _traveller_ has occasionally the same signification as _liar_, and _India_ as _fable_.

However, if the practice really does exist in that remote and rarely visited country, it must be in some region of it very far beyond the Indus or the Ganges: for the nations situated between those rivers are, and were in the reign of Alexander, and some thousand years before his birth, as civilized as the Europeans; nay, incomparably more courteous, more industrious, and more pacific; the three grand criterions.

But answer my question: is there any foundation for so mischievous a report?

_Timotheus._ There was indeed, so to say, an ear, or something of the kind, abscinded; probably by mistake. But high priests' servants are propense to follow the swaggering gait of their masters, and to carry things with a high hand, in such wise as to excite the choler of the most quiet. If you knew the character of the eminently holy man who punished the atrocious insolence of that b.l.o.o.d.y-minded wretch, you would be sparing of your animadversions. We take him for our model.

_Lucian._ I see you do.

_Timotheus._ We proclaim him Prince of the Apostles.

_Lucian._ I am the last in the world to question his princely qualifications; but, if I might advise you, it should be to follow in preference Him whom you acknowledge to be an unerring guide; who delivered to you His ordinances with His own hand, equitable, plain, explicit, compendious, and complete; who committed no violence, who countenanced no injustice, whose compa.s.sion was without weakness, whose love was without frailty, whose life was led in humility, in purity, in beneficence, and, at the end, laid down in obedience to His Father's will.

_Timotheus._ Ah, Lucian! what strangely imperfect notions! all that is little.

_Lucian._ Enough to follow.

_Timotheus._ Not enough to compel others. I did indeed hope, O Lucian!

that you would again come forward with the irresistible arrows of your wit, and unite with us against our adversaries. By what you have just spoken, I doubt no longer that you approve of the doctrines inculcated by the blessed Founder of our religion.

_Lucian._ To the best of my understanding.

_Timotheus._ So ardent is my desire for the salvation of your precious soul, O my cousin! that I would devote many hours of every day to disputation with you on the princ.i.p.al points of our Christian controversy.

_Lucian._ Many thanks, my kind Timotheus! But I think the blessed Founder of your religion very strictly forbade that there should be _any_ points of controversy. Not only has He prohibited them on the doctrines He delivered, but on everything else. Some of the most obstinate might never have doubted of His Divinity, if the conduct of His followers had not repelled them from the belief of it. How can they imagine you sincere when they see you disobedient? It is in vain for you to protest that you worship the G.o.d of Peace, when you are found daily in the courts and market-places with clenched fists and b.l.o.o.d.y noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer; but really I am as anxious for the salvation of your precious time as you appear to be for the salvation of my precious soul, particularly since I am come to the conclusion that souls cannot be lost, and that time can.

_Timotheus._ We mean by _salvation_ exemption from eternal torments.

_Lucian._ Among all my old G.o.ds and their children, morose as some of the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the junior, I have never represented the worst of them as capable of inflicting such atrocity. Pa.s.sionate and capricious and unjust are several of them; but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed to a vulture, are among the worst of their inflictions.

_Timotheus._ This is scoffing.

_Lucian._ n.o.body but an honest man has a right to scoff at anything.

_Timotheus._ And yet people of a very different cast are usually those who scoff the most.

_Lucian._ We are apt to push forward at that which we are without: the low-born at t.i.tles and distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at the semblance of probity. But I was about to remark, that an honest man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most adverse to the spirit and essence of them all is falsehood. It is the business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the religious to worship her; under what name is unimportant. The falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbour; if, professing that the rich can never see G.o.d, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in His word, that, in regard to wordly weal, I need take no care for to-morrow, I acc.u.mulate stores even beyond what would be necessary, though I quite distrusted both His providence and His veracity; if, professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord', I question the Lord's security, and haggle with Him about the amount of the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship; how, when G.o.d hates liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter?

_Timotheus._ Let us hope there are few of them.

_Lucian._ We cannot hope against what is: we may, however, hope that in future these will be fewer; but never while the overseers of a priesthood look for offices out of it, taking the lead in politics, in debate, and strife. Such men bring to ruin all religion, but their own first, and raise unbelievers not only in Divine Providence, but in human faith.

_Timotheus._ If they leave the altar for the market-place, the sanctuary for the senate-house, and agitate party questions instead of Christian verities, everlasting punishments await them.

_Lucian._ Everlasting?

_Timotheus._ Certainly: at the very least. I rank it next to heresy in the catalogue of sins; and the Church supports my opinion.

_Lucian._ I have no measure for ascertaining the distance between the opinions and practices of men; I only know that they stand widely apart in all countries on the most important occasions; but this newly-hatched word _heresy_, alighting on my ear, makes me rub it. A beneficent G.o.d descends on earth in the human form, to redeem us from the slavery of sin, from the penalty of our pa.s.sions: can you imagine He will punish an error in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief, with everlasting torments? Supposing it highly criminal to refuse to weigh a string of arguments, or to cross-question a herd of witnesses, on a subject which no experience has warranted and no sagacity can comprehend; supposing it highly criminal to be contented with the religion which our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to us as the most precious of possessions, and which it would have broken their hearts if they had foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal pains the just retribution of what at worst is but indifference and supineness?

_Timotheus._ Our religion has clearly this advantage over yours: it teaches us to regulate our pa.s.sions.

_Lucian._ Rather say it _tells_ us. I believe all religions do the same; some indeed more emphatically and primarily than others; but _that_ indeed would be incontestably of Divine origin, and acknowledged at once by the most sceptical, which should thoroughly teach it. Now, my friend Timotheus, I think you are about seventy-five years of age.

_Timotheus._ Nigh upon it.

_Lucian._ Seventy-five years, according to my calculation, are equivalent to seventy-five G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses in regulating our pa.s.sions for us, if we speak of the amatory, which are always thought in every stage of life the least to be pardoned.

_Timotheus._ Execrable!

_Lucian._ I am afraid the sourest hang longest on the tree. Mimnermus says:

In early youth we often sigh Because our pulses beat so high; All this we conquer, and at last We sigh that we are grown so chaste.

_Timotheus._ Swine!

_Lucian._ No animal sighs oftener or louder. But, my dear cousin, the quiet swine is less troublesome and less odious than the grumbling and growling and fierce hyena, which will not let the dead rest in their graves. We may be merry with the follies and even the vices of men, without doing or wishing them harm; punishment should come from the magistrate, not from us. If we are to give pain to any one because he thinks differently from us, we ought to begin by inflicting a few smart stripes on ourselves; for both upon light and upon grave occasions, if we have thought much and often, our opinions must have varied. We are always fond of seizing and managing what appertains to others. In the savage state all belongs to all. Our neighbours the Arabs, who stand between barbarism and civilization, waylay travellers, and plunder their equipage and their gold. The wilier marauders in Alexandria start up from under the shadow of temples, force us to change our habiliments for theirs, and strangle us with fingers dipped in holy water if we say they sit uneasily.

_Timotheus._ This is not the right view of things.

_Lucian._ That is never the right view which lets in too much light.

About two centuries have elapsed since your religion was founded. Show me the pride it has humbled; show me the cruelty it has mitigated; show me the l.u.s.t it has extinguished or repressed. I have now been living ten years in Alexandria; and you never will accuse me, I think, of any undue partiality for the system in which I was educated; yet, from all my observation, I find no priest or elder, in your community, wise, tranquil, firm, and sedate as Epicurus, and Carneades, and Zeno, and Epictetus; or indeed in the same degree as some who were often called forth into political and military life; Epaminondas, for instance, and Phocion.

_Timotheus._ I pity them from my soul: they were ignorant of the truth: they are lost, my cousin! take my word for it, they are lost men.

_Lucian._ Unhappily, they are. I wish we had them back again; or that, since we have lost them, we could at least find among us the virtues they left for our example.

_Timotheus._ Alas, my poor cousin! you too are blind; you do not understand the plainest words, nor comprehend those verities which are the most evident and palpable. Virtues! if the poor wretches had any, they were false ones.

_Lucian._ Scarcely ever has there been a politician, in any free state, without much falsehood and duplicity. I have named the most ill.u.s.trious exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a darker colour run along the bright blade that decides the fate of nations, and may indeed be necessary to the perfection of its temper. The great warrior has usually his darker lines of character, necessary (it may be) to const.i.tute his greatness. No two men possess the same quant.i.ty of the same virtues, if they have many or much. We want some which do not far outstep us, and which we may follow with the hope of reaching; we want others to elevate, and others to defend us. The order of things would be less beautiful without this variety. Without the ebb and flow of our pa.s.sions, but guided and moderated by a beneficent light above, the ocean of life would stagnate; and zeal, devotion, eloquence, would become dead carca.s.ses, collapsing and wasting on unprofitable sands.

The vices of some men cause the virtues of others, as corruption is the parent of fertility.

_Timotheus._ O my cousin! this doctrine is diabolical.

_Lucian._ What is it?

_Timotheus._ Diabolical; a strong expression in daily use among us. We turn it a little from its origin.

_Lucian._ Timotheus, I love to sit by the side of a clear water, although there is nothing in it but naked stones. Do not take the trouble to muddy the stream of language for my benefit; I am not about to fish in it.

_Timotheus._ Well, we will speak about things which come nearer to your apprehension. I only wish you were somewhat less indifferent in your choice between the true and the false.