Seekers after God Part 16

"Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands,--"

was the unbelief and impiety of these hated Galileans, causes of offence which could only be expiated by the death of the guilty. "Their enemies," says Tertullian, "call aloud for the blood of the innocent, alleging this vain pretext for their hatred, that they believe the Christians to be the cause of every public misfortune. If the Tiber has overflowed its banks, or the Nile has not overflowed, if heaven has refused its rain, if famine or the plague has spread its ravages, the cry is immediate, 'The Christians to the lions.'" In the first three centuries the cry of "No Christianity" became at times as brutal, as violent, and as unreasoning as the cry of "No Popery" has often been in modern days. It was infinitely less disgraceful to Marcus to lend his ear to the one than it has been to some eminent modern statesmen to be carried away by the insensate fury of the other.

To what extent is Marcus Aurelius to be condemned for the martyrdoms which took place in his reign? Not, I think, heavily or indiscriminately, or with vehement sweeping censure. Common justice surely demands that we should not confuse the present with the past, or pa.s.s judgment on the conduct of the Emperor as though he were living in the nineteenth century, or as though he had been acting in full cognisance of the Gospels and the stones of the Saints. Wise and good men before him had, in their haughty ignorance, spoken of Christianity with execration and contempt. The philosophers who surrounded his throne treated it with jealousy and aversion. The body of the nation firmly believed the current rumours which charged its votaries with horrible midnight a.s.semblies, rendered infamous by Thyestian banquets and the atrocities of nameless superst.i.tions. These foul calumnies--these hideous charges of cannibalism and incest,--were supported by the reiterated perjury of slaves under torture, which in that age, as well as long afterwards, was preposterously regarded as a sure criterion of truth.

Christianity in that day was confounded with a mult.i.tude of debased and foreign superst.i.tions; and the Emperor in his judicial capacity, if he ever encountered Christians at all, was far more likely to encounter those who were unworthy of the name, than to become acquainted with the meek, unworldly, retiring virtues of the calmest, the holiest, and the best. When we have given their due weight to considerations such as these we shall be ready to pardon Marcus Aurelius for having, in this matter, acted ignorantly, and to admit that in persecuting Christianity he may most honestly have thought that he was doing G.o.d service. The very sincerity of his belief, the conscientiousness of his rule, the intensity of his philanthrophy, the grandeur of his own philosophical tenets, all conspired to make him a worse enemy of the Church than a brutal Commodus or a disgusting Heliogabalus. And yet that there was not in him the least _propensity_ to persecute; that these persecutions were for the most part spontaneous and accidental; that they were in no measure due to his direct instigation, or in special accordance with his desire, is clear from the fact that the martyrdoms took place in Gaul and Asia Minor, _not in Rome_. There must have been hundreds of Christians in Rome, and under the very eye of the Emperor; nay, there were even mult.i.tudes of Christians in his own army; yet we never hear of his having molested any of them. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in addressing the Emperor, expresses a doubt as to whether he was really aware of the manner in which his Christian subjects were treated. Justin Martyr, in his _Apology_, addresses him in terms of perfect confidence and deep respect. In short he was in this matter "blameless, but unfortunate." It is painful to think that the venerable Polycarp, and the thoughtful Justin may have forfeited their lives for their principles, not only in the reign of so good a man, but even by virtue of his authority; but we must be very uncharitable or very unimaginative if we cannot readily believe that, though they had received the crown of martyrdom from his hands, the redeemed spirits of those great martyrs would have been the first to welcome this holiest of the heathen into the presence of a Saviour whose Church he persecuted, but to whose indwelling Spirit his virtues were due? whom ignorantly and unconsciously he worshipped, and whom had he ever heard of Him and known Him, he would have loved in his heart and glorified by the consistency of his n.o.ble and stainless life.

The persecution of the Churches in Lyons and Vienne happened in A.D.

177. Shortly after this period fresh wars recalled the Emperor to the North. It is said that, in despair of ever seeing him again, the chief men of Rome entreated him to address them his farewell admonitions, and that for three days he discoursed to them on philosophical questions.

When he arrived at the seat of war, victory again crowned his arms. But Marcus was now getting old, and he was worn out with the toils, trials, and travels of his long and weary life. He sunk under mental anxieties and bodily fatigues, and after a brief illness died in Pannonia, either at Vienna or Sirmium, on March 17, A.D. 180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age and the twentieth of his reign.

Death to him was no calamity. He was sadly aware that "there is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen. Suppose that he was a good and wise man, will there not be at last some one to say of him, 'Let us at last breathe freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster. It is true that he was harsh to none of us, but I perceive that he tacitly condemns us.'... Thou wilt consider this when thou art dying, and wilt depart more contentedly by reflecting thus: 'I am going away _from a life in which even my a.s.sociates, on behalf of whom I have striven, and cared, and prayed so much, themselves wish me to depart_, hoping perchance to get some little advantage by it.' Why then should a man cling to a longer stay here? _Do not, however, for this reason go away less kindly disposed to them, but preserving thy own character, and continuing friendly, and benevolent, and kind_" And dreading death far less than he dreaded any departure from the laws of virtue, he exclaims, "Come quickly, O Death, for fear that at last I should forget myself." This utterance has been well compared to the language which Bossuet put into the mouth of a Christian soul:--"O Death; thou dost not trouble my designs, thou accomplishest them. Haste, then, O favourable Death!...

_Nunc Dimittis_."

A n.o.bler, a gentler, a purer, a sweeter soul,--a soul less elated by prosperity, or more constant in adversity--a soul more fitted by virtue, and chast.i.ty, and self-denial to enter into the eternal peace, never pa.s.sed into the presence of its Heavenly Father. We are not surprised that all, whose means permitted it, possessed themselves of his statues, and that they were to be seen for years afterwards among the household G.o.ds of heathen families, who felt themselves more hopeful and more happy from the glorious sense of possibility which was inspired by the memory of one who, in the midst of difficulties, and breathing an atmosphere heavy with corruption, yet showed himself so wise, so great, so good a man.

O framed for n.o.bler times and calmer hearts!

O studious thinker, eloquent for truth!

Philosopher, despising wealth and death, But patient, childlike, full of life and love!

CHAPTER IV.

THE "MEDITATIONS" OF MARCUS AURELIUS.

Emperor as he was, Marcus Aurelius found himself in a hollow and troublous world; but he did not give himself up to idle regret or querulous lamentations. If these sorrows and perturbations came from the G.o.ds, he kissed the hand that smote him; "he delivered up his broken sword to Fate the conqueror with a humble and a manly heart." In any case he had _duties_ to do, and he set himself to perform them with a quiet heroism--zealously, conscientiously, even cheerfully.

The principles of the Emperor are not reducible to the hard and definite lines of a philosophic system. But the great laws which guided his actions and moulded his views of life were few and simple, and in his book of _Meditations_, which is merely his private diary written to relieve his mind amid all the trials of war and government, he recurs to them again and again. "Plays, war, astonishment, torpor, slavery," he says to himself, "will wipe out those holy principles of thine;" and this is why he committed those principles to writing. Some of these I have already adduced, and others I proceed to quote, availing myself, as before, of the beautiful and scholar-like translation of Mr.

George Long.

All pain, and misfortune, and ugliness seemed to the Emperor to be most wisely regarded under a threefold aspect, namely, if considered in reference to the G.o.ds, as being due to laws beyond their control; if considered with reference to the nature of things, as being subservient and necessary; and if considered with reference to ourselves, as being dependent on the amount of indifference and fort.i.tude with which we endure them.

The following pa.s.sages will elucidate these points of view:--

"The intelligence of the Universe is social. Accordingly it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one another." (v. 30.)

"Things do not touch the soul, for they are eternal, and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.... _The Universe is Transformation; life is opinion_" (iv. 3.)

"To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs water causes fear; and to little children the ball is a fine thing. Why then am I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog?" (vi. 52.)

"How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome and unsuitable, and immediately to be at tranquillity."

(v. 2.)

The pa.s.sages in which Marcus speaks of evil as a _relative_ thing,--as being good in the making,--the unripe and bitter bud of that which shall be hereafter a beautiful flower,--although not expressed with perfect clearness, yet indicate his belief that our view of evil things rises in great measure from our inability to perceive the great whole of which they are but subservient parts.

"All things," he says, "come from that universal ruling power, either directly or by way of consequence. _And accordingly the lion's gaping jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn, as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful_. Do not therefore imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all."

In another curious pa.s.sage he says that all things which are natural and congruent with the causes which produce them have a certain beauty and attractiveness of their own; for instance, the splittings and corrugations on the surface of bread when it has been baked. "And again, figs when they are quite ripe gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circ.u.mstances of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And _the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars_, and many other things--though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them severally--still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight about the things found in the universe there is hardly _one of those which follow by way of consequence_ which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." (iv. 2.)

This congruity to nature--the following of nature, and obedience to all her laws--is the key-formula to the doctrines of the Roman Stoics.

"Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse, then, nor better is a thing made by being praised.... _Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub_?"

(iv. 20.)

"Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe.

Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee.

Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature! from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. _The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of G.o.d_?" (iv. 23.)

"Willingly give thyself up to fate, allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever thing she pleases." (iv. 34.)

And here, in a very small matter--getting out of bed in a morning--is one practical application of the formula:--

"In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let these thoughts be present--'I am rising to the work of a human being. _Why, then, am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist, and for which I was brought into the world_? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm?' 'But this is more pleasant.' _Dost thou exist, then, to take thy pleasure, and not for action or exertion_? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees, working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?" (v. 1.) ["Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise!"]

The same principle, that Nature has a.s.signed to us our proper place--that a task has been given us to perform, and that our only care should be to perform it aright, for the blessing of the great Whole of which we are but insignificant parts--dominates through the admirable precepts which the Emperor lays down for the regulation of our conduct towards others. Some men, he says, do benefits to others only because they expect a return; some men even, if they do not demand any return, are not _forgetful_ that they have rendered a benefit; but others do not even know what they have done, but _are like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit_. So we ought to do good to others as simple and as naturally as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season, without thinking of the grapes which it has borne. And in another pa.s.sage, "What more dost thou want when thou hast done a service to another? Art thou not content to have done an act conformable to thy nature, and must thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye demanded a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking?"

"Judge every word and deed which is according to nature to be fit for thee, and be not diverted by the blame which follows...but if a thing is good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee." (v. 3.)

Sometimes, indeed, Marcus Aurelius wavers. The evils of life overpower him. "Such as bathing appears to thee," he says, "_oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting--so is every part of life and everything_" (viii. 24); and again:--"Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment."

But more often he retains his perfect tranquillity, and says, "Either thou livest here, and hast already accustomed thyself to it, or thou art going away, and this was thine own will; or thou art dying, and hast discharged thy duty. _But besides these things there is nothing. Be of good cheer, then_." (x. 22.) "Take me, and cast me where thou wilt, for then I shall keep my divine part tranquil, that is, content, if it can feel and act conformably to its proper const.i.tution." (viii. 45.)

There is something delightful in the fact that even in the Stoic philosophy there was some comfort to keep men from despair. To a holy and scrupulous conscience like that of Marcus, there would have been an inestimable preciousness in the Christian doctrine of the "forgiveness of the sins." Of that divine mercy--of that sin-uncreating power--the ancient world knew nothing; but in Marcus we find some dim and faint adumbration of the doctrine, expressed in a manner which might at least breathe calm into the spirit of the philosopher, though it could never reach the hearts of the suffering mult.i.tude. For "suppose," he says, "that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,--for thou wast made by nature a part, but now hast cut thyself off--_yet here is the beautiful provision that it is in thy power again to unite thyself_. G.o.d has allowed this to no other part--after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again. _But consider the goodness with which He has privileged man; for He has put it in his power, when he has been separated, to return and to be reunited, and to resume his place_" And elsewhere he says, "If you cannot maintain a true and magnanimous character, go courageously into some corner where you _can_ maintain them; or if even there you fail, depart at once from life, not with pa.s.sion, but with modest and simple freedom--which will be to have done at least _one_ laudable act." Sad that even to Marcus Aurelius death should have seemed the only refuge from the despair of ultimate failure in the struggle to be wise and good!

Marcus valued temperance and self-denial as being the best means of keeping his heart strong and pure; but we are glad to learn he did _not_ value the rigours of asceticism. Life brought with it enough, and more than enough, of antagonism to brace his nerves; enough, and more than enough, of the rough wind of adversity in his face to make it unnecessary to add more by his own actions. "It is not fit," he says, "that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another." (viii. 42.)

It was a commonplace of ancient philosophy that the life of the wise man should be a contemplation of, and a preparation for, death. It certainly was so with Marcus Aurelius. The thoughts of the nothingness of man, and of that great sea of oblivion which shall hereafter swallow up all that he is and does, are ever present to his mind; they are thoughts to which he recurs more constantly than any other, and from which he always draws the same moral lesson.

"Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.... Death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." (ii. 11.)

Elsewhere he says that Hippocrates cured diseases and died; and the Chaldaeans foretold the future and died; and Alexander, and Pompey, and Caesar killed thousands, and then died; and lice destroyed Democritus, and other lice killed Socrates; and Augustus, and his wife, and daughter, and all his descendants, and all his ancestors, are dead; and Vespasian and all his Court, and all who in his day feasted, and married, and were sick and chaffered, and fought, and flattered, and plotted, and grumbled, and wished other people to die, and pined to become kings or consuls, are dead; and all the idle people who are doing the same things now are doomed to die; and all human things are smoke, and nothing at all; and it is not for us, but for the G.o.ds, to settle whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. "_There are many grains of frankincense on the same altar; one falls before, another falls after; but it makes no difference._" And the moral of all these thoughts is, "Death hangs over thee while thou livest: while it is in thy power be good." (iv. 17.) "Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou hast come to sh.o.r.e; get out. If, indeed, to another life there is no want of G.o.ds, not even there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures." (iii. 3.)

Nor was Marcus at all comforted under present annoyances by the thought of posthumous fame. "How ephemeral and worthless human things are," he says, "and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes." "Many who are now praising thee, will very soon blame thee, and neither a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor anything else." What has become of all great and famous men, and all they desired, and all they loved? They are "smoke, and ash, and a tale, or not even a tale." After all their rages and envyings, men are stretched out quiet and dead at last. Soon thou wilt have forgotten all, and soon all will have forgotten thee. But here, again, after such thoughts, the same moral is always introduced again:--"Pa.s.s then through the little s.p.a.ce of time conformably to nature, and end the journey in content, _just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew_" "One thing only troubles me, lest I should do something which the const.i.tution of man does not allow, or in the way which it does not allow, or what it does not allow now."

To quote the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius is to me a fascinating task. But I have already let him speak so largely for himself that by this time the reader will have some conception of his leading motives. It only remains to adduce a few more of the weighty and golden sentences in which he lays down his rule of life.

"To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour; and life is a warfare, and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What, then, is that which is able to enrich a man? One thing, and only one--philosophy. But this consists in keeping the guardian spirit within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, _doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely, and with hypocrisy_... _accepting all that happens and all that is allotted_ ... _and finally waiting for death with a cheerful mind_" (ii. 17.)

"If thou findest in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fort.i.tude, and, in a word, than thine own soul's satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and In the condition that is a.s.signed to thee without thy own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than this, turn to it with all thy soul, and enjoy that which thou hast found to be the best.

But ... if thou findest everything else smaller and of less value than this, give place to nothing else.... Simply and freely choose the better, and hold to it." (iii. 6.)

"Body, soul, intelligence: to the body belong sensations, to the soul appet.i.tes, to the intelligence principles." To be impressed by the senses is peculiar to animals; to be pulled by the strings of desire belongs to effeminate men, and to men like Phalaris or Nero; to be guided only by intelligence belongs to atheists and traitors, and "men who do their impure deeds when they have shut the doors.... There remains that which is peculiar to the good man, _to be pleased and content with what happens, and with the thread which is spun for him; and not to defile the divinity which is planted in his breast_, nor disturb it by a crowd of images; but to preserve it tranquil, following it obediently as a G.o.d, neither saying anything contrary to truth, nor doing anything contrary to justice. (iii. 16.)

"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-sh.o.r.es, and mountains, and thou too art wont to desire such things very much.

But this is altogether a mark of the commonest sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt chose to retire into thyself. For _nowhere either with more quiet or with more freedom does a man retire than into his own soul_, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity,--which is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind." (iv. 3.)

"Unhappy am I, because this has happened to me? Not so, but happy am I _though_ this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain; neither crushed by the present, nor fearing the future." (iv. 19.)

It is just possible that in some of these pa.s.sages some readers may detect a trace of painful self-consciousness, and _imagine_ that they detect a little grain of self-complacence. Something of self-consciousness is perhaps inevitable in the diary and examination of his own conscience by one who sat on such a lonely height; but self-complacency there is none. Nay, there is sometimes even a cruel sternness in the way in which the Emperor speaks of his own self. He certainly dealt not with himself in the manner of a dissembler with G.o.d.