The Catholic World Volume I Part 106

Septimus Severus had reigned for ten years, as we said above, before he began to persecute. He was undoubtedly an able and vigorous emperor; he could meet his enemies and get rid of his friends, bribe the Praetorians and slaughter his prisoners of war, with equal coolness and generally with equal success. In the course of a reign of twenty years he seems to have visited with hostile intent the greater part of his extensive empire, from the Syrtes of Africa, where he was born, to the banks of the Euphrates, and thence to Britain, where he died, at York, A.D. 211. At the time we speak of (198) he had just concluded a brilliant campaign against those pests of the Roman soldiery, the Parthians; and having then engaged the Arabs, still in arms for a chief whose head he had had the pleasure {723} of sending to Rome twelve months before, had got rather the worst of it in two battles. It was between this and the year 202 that he visited Alexandria. There can be no doubt he must have been received at Alexandria with no little triumph by one cla.s.s of its citizens. Some six years before, he had restored to the Greek inhabitants their senate and munic.i.p.al privileges. The Greeks, who, as far as intellect went, were the indisputable rulers of Alexandria, must have been highly elated at being now restored to civil importance; for though their senate was little more than an ornament, and their munic.i.p.al rights confined to holding certain a.s.semblies for the discussion of grievances, still, to have a recognized machinery of wards and tribes, and to be called "men of Macedon," as of old, was not without advantage, and was, indeed, all that their fathers had presumed to seek for, even in the days of the lamented Ptolemies. We cannot doubt, therefore, that by the Greeks Severus was received with much enthusiasm, and he, on his part, seems to have been equally satisfied with his reception, for we find that he enriched Alexandria with a temple of Rhea, and with public baths which he named after himself.

But more came of this visit than compliments or temples. It was an hour of favor for the Greeks; the chief among them were also the chiefs and ruling spirits of the university; we know they must have come across Christianity during the preceding twenty years in many ways, but chiefly as a teaching that was gaining ground yearly among their best men; as philosophers, we know they loathed it; as worshippers of the immortal myths, they were burning to put it down.

Does it seem in any way connected with these facts that Severus at this very time changes his policy of mildness, and issues a decree forbidding, under severest penalties, all conversions to Christianity or Judaism? There is something suggestive in the juxtaposition of facts, and it is not at all impossible that the commencement of the fifth persecution was a compliment to Clement of Alexandria. Severus, indeed, must have frequently come into contact with Christianity himself during the three or four years he spent in Syria and the East; he could not have visited Antioch, Edessa, and Caesarea without being obliged to notice the development of the Church. The Jews, too, had given him a great deal of trouble, which may account for that part of the edict which affected them, and perhaps the Montanist fanatics had helped to irritate him against the name of Christian. However these things may be, the prohibition, though apparently moderate in its scope, was the signal for the outburst of a tremendous persecution.

Laetus, the prefect of Alexandria, was so zealous in his work, that it is impossible not to suspect that he was acting under the very eye of his imperial master. He was not content with torturing and slaying in the city itself, but sent his emissaries up the Nile to the very extremity of the Thebaid to hunt up the Christians and send them by boatloads to the capital for judgment and punishment. Numbers of the Alexandrian Christians fled to Palestine and elsewhere on the first intimation of danger. Pantaenus, who had returned from his Indian mission, had perhaps already left Alexandria; but Clement was at the head of the Catechisms, and he was of the number of those who fled.

The great school was for a time broken up. The functions of the Church were suspended for want of ministers, or prevented by the impossibility of meeting in safety. It was taught in the Alexandrian Church that if they were persecuted in one city, they should flee into another; and, just at this time, the Motanist error, that it was unlawful to flee from persecution, caused this teaching to be acted upon with less hesitation than usual; and so, in the year 202, Christians in Alexandria, from being a comparatively flourishing community, became a proscribed and secret sect.

{724}

It would be very far from the truth, however, to suppose that the teachings of the Catechetical school had not been able to form martyrs. We know that mult.i.tudes stood up for their faith and shed their blood for it at Alexandria, during the first years of this persecution, and this amidst horrors so unusual even with persecutors, that it was thought they portended the coming of the last day. The name of Potamiana alone will serve to raise a.s.sociations sufficient to picture both the heroism of the confessors and the enormities of the tyrants. But there is another name with which we are more nearly concerned at present. Leonides, the father of Origen, was one of those Christians who had not fled from the persecution. He was an inhabitant of Alexandria, a man of some position and substance, and when the troubles began he was living in Alexandria with his wife and family.

It was not long before he was marked down by Laetus and dragged to prison. The martyr's crown was now within his grasp; but he left behind him in his desolate home another who was burning to share it by his side. His son, Origen, was not yet seventeen when his father was torn away by the Roman soldiers, and, in spite of the entreaties of his mother, he insisted upon following him to prison. His mother finally kept him beside her by a device which may raise a smile in this generation. She "hid all his clothes," says Eusebius, and so compelled him to stop at home. But his zeal was all aroused and on fire, and, indeed, in this, the earliest incident known to us of his life, we seem to read the zeal and fire of the man that was to be. He sent a message to his father in these words, "Be sure not to waver on _our_ account." The exact words seem to have been handed down to us, and Eusebius, who gives them, probably received them from Origen's own disciples in Caesarea of Palestine. The boy well knew what would be the martyr's chief and only anxiety in his prison. The thought of the wife and seven young children whom he was leaving desolate would be a far bitterer martyrdom than the Roman prisons. But Leonides gloriously persevered, confessed the faith, and was beheaded, while the whole of his property was confiscated to the emperor.

Origen, as we have said, was not quite seventeen years old at his father's martyrdom, having been born about the year 185. Both his father and mother were Christians, and apparently had dwelt a long time in Alexandria. He had therefore been brought up from his infancy in that careful Christian training which it is the pride and joy of a good and earnest Christian father to bestow upon his son. The traces of this training, as we find them in Eusebius, are touching in the extreme. Leonides, to whom the teachings of Clement had made the Holy Scriptures a very fountain of life and sweetness, made them the princ.i.p.al means of the education of his son. Every day the child repeated to his father a portion of the holy books, and was instructed according to his capacity. Knowing what, in after life, was to be Origen's connection with the Holy Scriptures, we are not surprised to find that his father soon began to experience some difficulty in answering his questions. The boy, with true Alexandrian instinct, was not content with the bare letter of the book; he would know its hidden meaning and prophetic sense. Leonides discouraged these questions and speculations, not, it would seem, because he disapproved of them, but because he sensibly thought them premature in so young a child. But in the secret of his heart he was full of joy to see the ardor, eagerness, and amazing quickness of his dear child, and often, when the boy was asleep, would he uncover his breast and reverently kiss it, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is of very great importance for the right comprehension of the great Origen to bear in view this picture of his tender youth, and to reflect that he was no convert from heathenism, no {725} Christianized philosopher, whose early notions might from time to time be expected to crop up in the field of his orthodoxy, but a Christian child, born and bred in the Church's bosom, brought up by a father of unquestioned ability, who died a martyr and is honored as a saint. Origen began to think rightly as soon as he could think at all; his early education left him nothing to forget. As he grew up and began to be familiar with Alexandria the beautiful, he received that subtle education of the eye and imagination that every Alexandrian, like every Athenian, succeeded to as an heirloom. But with the heathen philosophers he had nothing to do, and it may be questioned whether he ever entered the walls of the Museum. His father had not neglected to teach him the ordinary branches of Greek learning. He attended the lectures of Clement, those brilliant and winning discourses, half apology, half exhortation, that he himself was afterward to emulate so well. He heard Pantaenus, also, after the venerable teacher had returned from his Indian mission. We may be sure that he dreaded worse than poison the society of the pagan youth of the university; this his subsequent conduct proves. But he had his circle of friends, and among them was a young man, somewhat older than himself, who was hereafter to leave an undying name as St.

Alexander of Jerusalem. Thus, by ear and eye, by master and by fellow-student, by his father's labor, and by the workings of his own wonderful intellect and indomitable will, he was formed into a man.

His education came to a premature end; but his father's martyrdom, though to outward seeming it left him a dest.i.tute orphan, really hardened the boy of seventeen into the man and the hero.

"When his father was martyred," continues Eusebius, writing, in all probability, from the relation of those who had heard Origen's own account, "he was left an orphan, with his mother and six young brothers and sisters, being of the age of seventeen. All his father's property was confiscated to the emperor's treasury, and they were in the utmost dest.i.tution; but G.o.d's providence took care of Origen." A rich and ill.u.s.trious lady of Alexandria received him into her house.

Whether this lady was professedly a Christian, a pagan, or a heretic, history does not say. She can hardly have been a pagan, though it is not impossible that a philosophic and liberal pagan lady should have taken a fancy to help such a youth as Origen. It is not likely that she was a heretic, for in that case Origen would never have entered her door. Thanks to the Gnostics, heretics in those days were looked upon in Alexandria as more to be dreaded than pagans. She was probably, by outward profession at least, a Christian, "ill.u.s.trious,"

says the historian, "for what she had done, and ill.u.s.trious in every other way." What she had done we are not permitted even to guess; but one fact in her history we do know, and it is very significant. She had living in her house, on the footing of an adopted son, one Paul, a native of Antioch, and one of the chiefs of the Alexandrian heretics.

It is certain that Origen's patroness must have had either very uncertain or very easy notions of Christianity, if she could lend her house, her money, and her influence to an arch-heretic, who had come from Syria to trouble the Church of Alexandria, as Basilides and Valentine had come before him. Gnosticism had probably lost ground in the city, under the eloquent attacks of St. Clement. This Paul was a man of great eloquence, and his reputation attracted great numbers to hear him, not only of heretics, but also of Christians. He came from Antioch, the headquarters of an unknown number of Gnostic sects, and, with the usual instinct of false teachers, he had "led captive" this Alexandrian lady. Mark, of infamous memory, had already done the same thing by others, and perhaps by her, and Paul had succeeded to his position and was now {726} the rival of the head of the Catechisms.

Such a state of things makes it easier to understand why St. Clement, in his _Stromata_, calls those who lean to heresy "traitors to Christ," and compares perverts to the companions of Ulysses in the sty of Circe, and why he makes the very treating with heretics to be nothing less than desertion in the soldier of Christ. It does seem a little strange, at first sight, that the uncompromising Origen should have consented to receive a.s.sistance from one whose orthodoxy must have been in such bad odor. The difficulty grows less, however, if we consider the circ.u.mstances. It was in the very heat of a terrible persecution, when the canons of the Church must have been suspended.

Origen had lost his father, and had nowhere to turn for bare subsistence. We can hardly wonder if, in such a strait as this, he asked few questions when the charitable lady wished to take him in.

But when the grief and agitation of his orphaned state had somewhat subsided, and when the persecutors had begun to slacken their fury, we may suppose that he began to examine the harbor of his refuge, and that it pleased him not. He was under the same roof as Paul of Antioch, a heretic and a leader of heretics; but never, young as he was, could he be induced to a.s.sociate with him in prayer, or in any way that could violate the canons of the Church, as far as it was possible to keep them in such times. "From his childhood," says his biographer, "he kept the canons, and execrated the teachings of heretics;" and he tells us that this last phrase is Origen's own. And it seems that he took the most energetic measures to get away from a companionship that he must have loathed. He had been well instructed, as we have said, by his father in the ordinary branches of education.

After his father's death he again applied himself to study with greater ardor than before, for he had an object in view now. It was not long before he was offering himself as a public teacher of those sciences that are designated by the general term "_Grammatica_." It was the first public step in a life that was afterward to be little less than the entire history of the Eastern Church. He was not yet eighteen, but there was no help for it. He must have bread, and he could not eat of the loaf that was shared by Paul of Antioch. Early writers lay much stress on this first exhibition of orthodox zeal in him who was afterward to be the "hammer" of heretics, from Egypt to Greece. Certain it is that his conduct as a boy was the same as his sentiments when he was in his sixtieth year. "To err in morals," he wrote in his commentary on Matthew, at Caesarea, forty years after his first essay as a teacher of grammar,--"to err in morals is bad, but to err in dogma and to contradict Holy Writ is much worse." If in after life he was to be so singularly earnest and so unaffectedly devout, so enthusiastic for the Gospel, so eager in exploring the depths of sacred science, and so unwavering in his faith, all this was but the growth and development of what was already springing in his soul in those early years of his trials and zeal. The strong will was already trying its first flights, the sensitive heart was being schooled to throw all its motive power into duty, and the quick, clear apprehension and the wonderful memory for which he was to be so famous, were already beginning to show what they would one day be.

Origen was now a teacher of grammar and the sciences, but he had not kept school for many months when his teachings took a turn that he can hardly have antic.i.p.ated. His text-books were the common pagan historians, poets, and philosophers that have been thumbed by the school-boy from that generation to this. It was no part of Origen's character to leave his hearers in error when plain speaking would prevent it; and so it happened that his exposition of his author often took in hand not merely the parts of speech, but the doctrine. Though he was only {727} school-master by profession, his scholars soon found out he was a Christian, and a Christian of uncommon power and clear-sightedness. The Catechetical school was closed; masters and scholars were scattered in flight or in concealment. It was not long, therefore, before the young teacher found himself applied to by first one heathen and then another, who, under other circ.u.mstances, would have applied to the school of the Catechisms. Among these were Plutarchus, who soon afterward showed how a young Alexandrian student could die a glorious martyr; and Heraclas, his brother, who, after his conversion, left everything to remain with his master, became his a.s.sistant and successor in his catechetical work, and finally died Patriarch of Alexandria. These were the first-fruits of his zeal for souls. Many others followed; and as the persecution was somewhat abating, Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, looking round for men to resume the work of the schools, saw no one better fitted to be intrusted with its direction than Origen himself. He was accordingly, though not yet eighteen, appointed the successor of Clement.

Laetus, prefect of Alexandria, who had exerted himself so strenuously to please Severus when the persecution commenced, had now been recalled; probably he had reaped the reward of his zeal, and was promoted. His successor, Aquila, signalized his entering upon office by an activity that outdid that of Laetus himself. The persecution that had calmed down a little toward the end of the first year and when Laetus was leaving, now raged with redoubled fury. We have already said that the authoritative tradition, and, in great measure, also the practice, of the Alexandrian Church was flight at a time like this. Origen, however, was very far from fleeing; never at any time of his life did he display such fearless baldness, such energetic contempt for the enemy, as during these years of blood, from 204 to 211. There was no prison so well-guarded, no dungeon so deep, that he could not hold communication with the confessors of Christ. He went up to the tribunals with them, and stood beside them at the interrogatory and at the torture. He went back with them in a sort of defiant triumph, after sentence of death had been p.r.o.nounced. He walked undauntedly by their side up to the stake and the beheading block, and kissed them and bade them adieu when it was time for them to die. It is no wonder that Eusebius sets down his own safety to a miraculous interposition of the right hand of G.o.d. Once, as he stood by a dying martyr, embracing him as he expired, the Alexandrian mob set on him with stones and nearly killed him; how he escaped none could tell.

Again and again the persecutors tried to seize him; as often ("it is impossible," says the historian, "to tell how often") was he delivered from their hands. He was nowhere safe: no sooner did the mob get a suspicion of where he was than they surrounded the house, and hounded in the soldiers to drag him out. He fled from house to house; perhaps he was a.s.sisted to escape by some of his numerous friends; perhaps he hid himself, as St. Athanasius in the next century did, in some of those underground wells and cisterns with which every house in Alexander's city was provided, and then sought other quarters when the mob had gone off. But it was not long before he was again discovered.

The numbers that came to hear him soon let the infuriated pagans know where their victim was, and he was again besieged and hunted out.

Once, St. Epiphanius relates, he was caught, apparently by a street-mob, and some of the low Egyptian priests as their leaders. It was near the Egyptian quarter of the city; perhaps, even, he was visiting some poor native convert in the dirty streets of the Rhacotis itself. If so, the name of Origen would have been enough to empty the whole quarter of its pariah race, and bring them yelling and cursing into the {728} Heptastadion. They showed him no mercy; they abused him horribly; they beat him and bruised him; they dragged him along the ground. But before killing him outright, the idea seized them that they should make him deny his religion, and at the same time make a shameful exhibition of himself. There must have been Greeks in the crowd, for Egyptians would never have had patience to spare him so long. The Serapeion, however, was at hand, and thither they dragged him. As they hauled him along, "they shaved his head," says St.

Epiphanius--that is, they tried to make him look like the Egyptian priests, who were distinguished by a womanish smoothness of face; and we may imagine that they did it with no gentle hands. When at length the rushing mob had surged up the steps of the great temple, their victim in the midst of them, they set him on his feet, and gave him some palm branches, telling him to act the priest and distribute them to the votaries of Serapis. The palm, we know, was a favorite tree with the Egyptian priests; it was sculptured and painted on the walls of their huge temples, and it was borne in the hands of worshippers on solemn festivals. On the present occasion there were, probably, priests of one rank or another standing before the vestibule of the Serapeion, ready to supply those who should enter. It was, therefore, the work of a moment to seize the stock of one of these ministers, and force Origen to take his place. If they antic.i.p.ated the pleasure of seeing the hated Christian teacher humiliated to the position of an _ostiarius_ of an idolatrous temple, they were never more mistaken in their lives. Origen took the palms, and began without hesitation to distribute them; but, as he did so, he cried out in a voice as loud and steady as if neither suffering nor danger could affect him, "Take the palms, good people!--not the palms of idols, but the palms of Christ!" How he escaped after this piece of daring, we are only left to conjecture. Perhaps the Roman troops came suddenly on the scene to quell the riot; and as they hated the dwellers in the Rhacotis almost as much as the latter hated Origen, the neighborhood of the Serapeion would have been speedily cleared of Egyptians. However it came about, Origen was saved.

Meanwhile, he saw his own scholars daily going to death. The young student Plutarchus fell among the first victims of Aquila's new vigor; Origen was by his side when he was led to execution, was recognized by the mob, and once more narrowly escaped with his life. Serenus, another of his disciples, was burnt; Heraclides, a catechumen, and Hero, who had just been baptized, were beheaded; a second Serenus, after enduring many torments, suffered in the same way. A woman named Heraeis, one of his converts, was burned before she could be baptized, receiving the baptism of fire, as her instructor said. Another who is numbered among his disciples is Basilides, the soldier who protected St. Potamiana from the insults of the mob, and whom she converted by appealing to him three nights afterward. We are told that the brethren, and we know who would be foremost among the brethren in such a case, visited him in prison as soon as they heard of his wonderful and unexpected confession. He told them his vision, was baptized, and the following day died a martyr. Probably it was Origen who addressed to him the few hurried words of instruction there was time to say.

"All the martyrs," says Eusebius, "whether he knew them or knew them not, he ministered to with the most eager affection." His reputation, it may well be conceived, suffered no diminution as these things came to be known. The horrors of the persecution could not keep scholars away from him, nor prevent increasing numbers from coming to seek him.

Many of the unbelieving pagans, full of admiration for a holiness of life and a heroism they could not comprehend, came to his {729} instructions; and even literary Greeks who had gone through the curriculum of the Museum, and were deeply versed in Platonic myths and Pythagorean theories of mortification, came to listen to this fearless young philosopher, in whom they found a learning that could not be gainsaid, combined with a practical contempt for the things of the body that was quite unknown in their own schools.

The persecution seems to have died down and gone out toward the year 211, nine years after its commencement. Origen's labors became the more extraordinary in proportion as he had freer scope for pursuing them. The feature in his life at this time, which is most characteristic of the time and the city, and which more than anything else attracted the cultivated heathens to listen to him, was his severe asceticism. Times of persecution may be considered to dispense with asceticism; but Origen did not think so. It was a saying of his master, St. Clement, and, indeed, appears to have been a common proverb in that reformed school of heathen philosophy which resulted in Neo-Platonism, "As your words, so be your life." A philosopher in Alexandria at that time, if he would not be thought to belong to an effete race of thinkers who had long been left behind, or who only survived in the well-paid and well-fed professorships of the university, was of necessity a man whose strict and sober living corresponded to the high and serious truths which he considered it his mission to utter. St. Clement did not forget this, either in principle or in practice, when he undertook to win the heathen men of science to Christ. Origen, born a Christian, made a teacher apparently by chance and in the confusion of a persecution, cared little, in the first instance, for what pagan philosophy would think of him. The fact that all who pretended to be philosophers pretended also to asceticism may, indeed, have caused him to embrace a life of denial more as a matter of course. But the holy gospels and the teachings of Clement were the reasons of his asceticism. It is amazing that Protestant writers, when they write of the asceticism of the early Church, can see in it nothing but the reflection of Buddhism, or Judaism, or of the tenets of Pythagoras, and that they always seem nervously glad to prove by the a.s.sistance of the Egyptian climate or the Platonic hatred of matter, that it was not the carrying out of the law of Christ, but merely a self-imposed burden. Climate, doubtless, has great influence on food, and English dinners would no more suit an Egyptian sun than would the two regulation _paximatia_ of the Abbot Moses in Ca.s.sian be enough for even the most willing of English Cistercians. But why go to climate, to Plato, to Pythagoras, and to Buddha, to account for what is one of the most striking recommendations of the gospels? We need not stop to inquire the reason, but we may be sure that a child who had been taught the Holy Scriptures by heart would not be unlikely to know something of their teaching. His biographer tells us expressly, with regard to several of his acts of mortification, that they were done in the endeavor to carry out literally our Lord's commands. And yet it is very remarkable, and a trait of the times, that Eusebius, in describing his mode of life, uses the word philosophy three times where we should use asceticism. Origen, soon after being appointed head of the Catechetic school, found he could not do his duty by his hearers as thoroughly as he could wish, on account of his other occupation of teacher of grammar. He therefore resolved to give it up.

It was his only means of subsistence, but he might reasonably have expected "to live by the gospel" as long as he was in such a post as chief catechist. If he had expected this he would not have been disappointed, for there would have been no lack of charity. But he had an entirely different view of the matter. He would be a burden {730} to no one, and would live a life of the strictest poverty. Simple, straightforward, and great, here as ever, we may conceive how he would appreciate the fetters of a rich man's patronage. But, if we may trust the utterances of his whole life, his love for holy poverty was such that, while it makes some refer once more to Pythagoras, to a Catholic it rather suggests St. Francis of a.s.sisi. "I tremble," he said thirty years afterward, "when I think how Jesus commands his children to leave all they have. For my own part, I plead guilty to my accusers and I p.r.o.nounce my own sentence; I will not conceal my guiltiness lest I become doubly guilty. I will preach the precepts of the Lord, though I am conscious of not having followed them myself. Let us now at least lose no time in becoming true priests of the Lord, whose inheritance is not on earth but in heaven." Such language from one who can hardly be said to have possessed anything during his whole life can only be explained on one hypothesis. In order, therefore, at once to secure his independence in G.o.d's work, and to oblige himself to practise rigorous poverty, he made a sacrifice which none but a poor student can appreciate. He sold his ma.n.u.scripts, and secured to himself, from the sale, a sum of four oboli a day, which was to be his whole income.

This sum, which was about the ordinary pay of a common sailor, who had his food and lodging provided for him, was little enough to live upon; but miserable as it was, Origen must have paid a dear premium to obtain it. Those ma.n.u.scripts of "ancient authors" were probably the fruits and the a.s.sistance of his early studies; he must have written many of them under the eye of his martyred father. He had "labored with care and love to write them out fairly," we are told, and doubtless he prized them at once as a scholar prizes his library and a laborious worker the work of his hands. For many years, probably until he went to Rome in 211, he continued to receive his twopence or threepence every day from the person who had bought his books. But we cease in great part to wonder how little he lived on when we know how he lived. In obedience to our Lord's command, and in opposition to the prevailing practice of all but the poorest cla.s.ses, he wore the tunic single, and as for the pallium, he seems either to have dispensed with it altogether, or only to have worn it whilst teaching. For many years he went entirely barefoot. He fasted continually from all that was not absolutely necessary to keep him alive; he never touched wine; he worked hard all day in teaching and visiting the poor; and after studying what we should call theology the greater part of the night, he did not go to bed, but took a little rest on the floor. This "vehemently philosophic" life, as Eusebius calls it, reduced him in time, as might have been expected, to a mere wreck; insufficient food and scanty clothing brought on severe stomachic complaints, which nearly caused his death. It is not to be supposed that his disciples and the Church in general looked on with indifference whilst he practised these austerities. On the contrary, he was solicited over and over again to receive a.s.sistance and to take care of himself; and many were even somewhat offended because he refused their well-meant offers. But Origen had chosen to put his hand to the plough, and he would not have been Origen if he had turned back. It is probable, indeed, that he somewhat moderated his austerities when his health began to give way seriously; but hard work and hard living were his lot to the end, and the name of Adamantine, which he received at this time, and which all ages and countries have confirmed to him, shows what the popular impression was of what he actually went through. As might have been expected, a man of such singleness and determination had many imitators. We have seen that the very pagan philosophers came to listen to him. {731} The young scholars whom he instructed, and many of whom he converted, did more than listen to him; they joined him, and imitated as nearly as they could what Eusebius again calls the "philosophy" of his life. It was no barren aping of externals, such as might have been seen going on a little way off at the Museum; he, on his part, taught them deep and earnest lessons in the deepest and most earnest of all philosophies; they, on theirs, proved that his words were power by the severest of all tests--they stood firm in the horrors of a fearful persecution, and more than one of them witnessed to them by a cruel death.

As long as the persecution lasted, anything like regularity and completeness in a work like that of Origen was clearly impossible. But a persecution at Alexandria, though generally furious as long as it lasted, happily seldom lasted very long. Popular opinion was, no doubt, very bitter against Christianity. But popular opinion was one thing; the will of the prince-governor another. Moreover, the popular opinion of the Greek philosophers was generally diametrically opposed to that of their Roman masters, and the beliefs and traditions of the Rhacotis tended to the instant extermination of the Jews; and though these four antagonistic elements could, upon occasion, so far forget their differences as to unite in an onslaught against the Christians, yet, before long, quarrels arose and riots ensued among the allied parties to such an extent that the legionaries had no choice but to clear the streets in the most impartial manner. Again, it is quite certain that the Christian party included in it not a few men of rank; and, what is more important, of power and authority. This we know from the trouble St. Dionysius, one of Origen's scholars, afterward had with many such persons who had "lapsed" in the Decian persecution. As everything, therefore, depended on the humor of the governor, and as the governor was, as other men, liable to be influenced by bribes suggestions, and caprice, a furious persecution might suddenly die out, and the Church begin to enjoy comparative peace at the very time when things looked worst. Until the year 211, "Adamantius" taught, studied, prayed, and fasted amidst disturbance, martyrdoms, and fleeings from house to house; but that year wrought a change, not only in Alexandria, but over the whole world. It was simply the year of the death of Septimus Severus at York, and of the accession of Caracalla and Geta; but this was an event which, if precedents were to be trusted, invited all the nations that recognized the Roman eagle to be ready for any change, however unreasonable, beginning with the senate, and ending with the Christians. It was, probably, in this same year, 211, that Origen took advantage of the restoration of tranquillity to visit the city and Church of Rome. It would seem that this episode of his journey to Rome has not been sufficiently considered in the greater part of the accounts of his life. Protestant writers, as may be expected, pa.s.s it over quietly, either barely mentioning it, or, if they do put a gloss upon it, confining themselves to generalities about the interchange of ideas or the antiquity and renown of the Roman Church. But there is evidently more in it than this. Origen was just twenty-six years of age: though so young, he was already famous as a teacher and a holy liver in the most learned of cities, and one of the most ascetical of churches. His work was immense, and daily increasing. On the cessation of the persecution, the great school was to be reorganized, and put once more into that thorough working order which had made it so effective under Pantaenus and Clement. Yet, just at this busy crisis, he hurries off to Rome, stays there a short time, and hurries back again. In the first place, why go at all? What could Rome or any other church give him that he had not already at Alexandria? Not scientific learning, certainly; not a systematic {732} organization of work; not reverence for Holy Scripture; not the method of confuting learned philosophy. Again: why go specially to Rome? Was there not a high road, easy and comparatively short, to Caesarea of Palestine, and would he not find there facilities enough for the "interchange of thought?" For there, about fifteen years before, had a.s.sembled one of the first councils ever held since the council of Jerusalem. Was there not Jerusalem, the cradle of the Church? It was then, indeed, shorn of its glory, both spiritual and historical; for it was subject, at least not superior, to Caesarea, and was known to the empire by the name of Aelia Capitolina; but its aged bishop was a worker of miracles. Was there not Antioch, the great central see of busy, intellectual Syria, the see of St. Theophilus, wherein saintly bishops on the one hand, and Marcionite heresy and Paschal schism on the other, kept the traditions of the faith bright and polished? Were there not the Seven Churches? Was there not many a "mother-city"

between the Mediterranean and the mountain ranges where apostolic teachings were strong yet, and apostolic men yet ruled? Origen's motive in going to "see Rome" is given us by himself, or, rather, by his biographer in his words; but, unfortunately, in such an ambiguous way that it is almost useless as an argument; he wished, says Eusebius, "to see the very ancient Church of Rome." The word we have translated "very ancient" ([Greek text]) may also mean, as we need not say, "first in dignity." It is hardly worth while to argue upon it, but it will not fail to strike the reader that Jerusalem and Antioch, not to mention other sees, were both older than Rome, if age was the only recommendation. Origen's visit to Rome, then, is a very remarkable event in his life, for it shows undoubtedly that the chief of the greatest school of the Church found he required something which could only be obtained in Rome, and that something can only have been an approach to the chief and supreme depositary of tradition. He was at the very beginning of his career, and he could begin no better than by invoking the blessing of that rock of the Church of whom his master, Clement, had taught him to think so n.o.bly and lovingly. We shall see that, many a year after this, in the midst of troubles and calumnies, when his great life was nearly closed, the same see of Peter received the professions and obedience of his failing voice, as it had witnessed and blessed the ardor of his youth. He was not, indeed, the first who, though already great in his own country, had been drawn toward a greatness which something told them was without a rival. Three-quarters of a century before Rome had attracted from far-off Jerusalem that great St. Hegesippus, the founder of church history, whose works are lost, but whose fame remains. A convert from Judaism, he left his native city, travelled to Rome, and sojourned there for twenty years, busily learning and committing to writing those practices and traditions of the Roman Church which he afterward appears to have disseminated all over the East, and which he conveyed, toward the end of his life, to his own Jerusalem, where he died. From a.s.syria and beyond the Tigris the "perfume of Rome" had enticed the great Tatian--happy if, on his return, he had still kept pure that faith which, at Rome, he defended so well against Crescens the cynic.

A great mind and a widely cultivated genius found the sphere of its rest in Rome, when St. Justin finished his wanderings there and sealed the workings of his active intellect by shedding his blood at the bidding of the ruling clique of Stoics--_"philosophus et martyr"_ as the old martyrologies call him. A famous name, too, is that of Rhodon, of Asia, well known for his steady and able defence of the faith against Marcionites and other heretics. These, and such as these, had come from the world's ends to visit the great apostolic see before Origen's day dawned. But there were others, and as great, whom {733} he may actually have met in the city, either on a visit like himself, or because they were members of the Roman clergy. There was the great Carthaginian, Tertullian, who, for many years, lived, learned, and wrote in Rome; his works show how well he knew the Roman Church, and how often afterward he had occasion, in his polemical battles, to allude to the _"Ecclesia transmarina"_ as Africa called Rome. A meeting between Origen and Tertullian is a very suggestive idea; the only misfortune is, that we have no warrant whatever for supposing it beyond the bare possibility. But by naming Tertullian we suggest one view, at least, of the ecclesiastical society which Origen would meet when he visited Rome. Another celebrated man, whom there is more likelihood that Origen did meet, is the convert Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who employed his recognized talents and trained skill in vigorous apologetic writings, one of which we still possess. A third was the priest Caius, one of the Roman clergy, famed as the adversary of Proclus the Montanist, unless he had already started on his missionary career as regionary bishop. Finally, there was St.

Hippolytus, who, like Caius, was from the school of St. Irenaeus, and had come from Lyons to Rome, where he seems to have been no unworthy representative of his teacher's zeal against heretics. Nearly every step of the life of St. Hippolytus is enc.u.mbered by the ruin of a learned theory or the useless rubbish of an abandoned position; but he as far as we can conjecture, the chief scientific adviser of the Roman pontiffs in the measures they took at this time regarding Easter and against the Noetians. Until scientific men have settled their disputes as to who was the author of the _Philosophumena_, or Treatise _against All Heresies_, little more can be said about St. Hippolytus. The Treatise itself, however, whose recovery some twenty years ago excited so much interest, must have had an author, and it is nearly certain the author must have been one of the Roman clergy at this very time.

It is still more certain that the matters therein discussed must represent very completely one view of Church matters at Rome in the early part of the third century; and, therefore, even if Origen did not meet the author in person, he must have met many who thought as he did. Now it is rather interesting to read the _Philosophumena_ in this light, and to conjecture what Origen would think of some of its views.

The leading idea of the work, which is not even yet extant complete, is to prove that all heresies have sprung from Greek philosophy. This it attempts to do by detailing, first, the systems of the philosophers, then those of the heretics, and showing their mutual connection. The scandalous attack on St. Callistus, in the ninth book, may or may not be an interpolation by a later hand; if not, the author must have been much more ingenious than reputable. There is no denying the historical and literary value of the Treatise; but where it professes to draw deductions and to give philosophical a.n.a.lyses of systems, it seems of comparatively moderate worth. For instance, the author's a.n.a.lysis and appreciation of the philosophy of Aristotle is little better than a libel on the great _"maestro di lor chi sanno;"_ and Basilides, though doubtless a clever personage in his way, can hardly have taken the trouble to go so far for the small amount of philosophy that seasons his fantastical speculations. But a general opinion resembling the opinion maintained in the Treatise seems to have been common in the West; and when Tertullian says of the philosophy of Plato that it was _"haereticorum omnium condimentarium,"_ he was doubtless expressing the idea of many beside himself. To Origen, fresh from the school of Clement and the atmosphere of Alexandria, such language must have sounded startling, to say the least, and we cannot help feeling he would be rather {734} sorry, if not indignant, to hear the great names he had been taught to think of with so much admiration and compa.s.sion unfeelingly caricatured into a relationship of paternity with such men as the founders of Gnosticism. He does not appear to have been very familiar yet with the Greek systems; they had not come specially in his way, though he had heard of them in the Christian schools, and there is little doubt that he had already seen the necessity of studying them more closely, as he actually did on his return to Alexandria. What effect the views of the Western Church had on his teaching, and how he treated the philosophers, we shall have to consider in the sequel.

Meanwhile, his stay at Rome was over; he had studied the faith and heresy, discipline and schism, church organization and sectarian rebellion, in the most important centre of the whole Church, and his school at Alexandria was awaiting him, to reap the benefit of his journey.

On the return of Origen to Alexandria, it would almost appear as if he had wished to decline, for a time, the office of chief of the Catechisms. The historian tells us that he only resumed it at the strongly expressed desire of his bishop, Demetrius, who was anxious for the "profit and advantage of the brethren." Perhaps he wished for greater leisure than such a post would permit of, in order to carry into execution certain projects that were forming in his mind. But neither the patriarch nor his scholars would hear of his giving up, and so he had to settle to his work again; "which he did," says Eusebius, "with the greatest zeal," as he did everything. From this time, with one or two short interruptions, he lived and taught in Alexandria for twenty years. His life as an authoritative teacher and "master in Israel" may be said to commence from this point. It was an epoch resembling in some degree that other epoch, thirty years before, when Pantaenus had been called upon to take the charge of chief teacher in the Alexandrian Church. Now, as then, the winter of a persecution had pa.s.sed, and the season was sunny and promising. Now, as then, men were high in hope, and set to work with valiant hearts to repair the breaches the straggle had left, and to restore to the rock-built fortress that glory and comeliness that became her so well; but with which, if need was, she could securely dispense. But there was no slight difference between 180 and 211. The tide of Christianity had risen perceptibly all over the Church; most of all on the sh.o.r.es of its greatest scientific centre. The possibility of appealing to those who had heard the apostles had long been past, but now even the disciples of Polycarp, Simeon, and Ignatius had disappeared; instead of Irenaeus there was Hippolytus, and Demetrius of Alexandria was the eleventh successor of St. Mark. Heretics had multiplied, questions had been asked, tradition was developing itself, dogma was being fixed.

The form of teaching was, therefore, in process of change as other things changed. Greater precision, more "positive theology," a more constant look-out for what authority had said or might say--these necessities would make the teacher's office more difficult, even if more definite. The position of the Church toward its enemies, also, was sensibly changing. The "gain-sayers" were not of the same cla.s.s as had been addressed by St. Theophilus or St. Justin. The state of things had grown more distinctly marked. Christianity was no longer an idea that might, in a burst of n.o.ble rhetoric, be made to set on fire, for a moment, even the camp of the enemy. It was now known to the Gentile world as a stern and unyielding praxis; susceptible, perhaps, of scientific and literary treatment, but quite distinct from both science and letters. Enthusiastic but timid _dilettanti_ had lost their enthusiasm, and gave full scope to their fears. Amiable philosophers took back the right hand of fellowship, and retreated behind those who, by a {735} special instinct, had always refused to be amiable, and now thought themselves more justified than ever. On the Christian side the war had lost much of the adventure which accompanies the first dashing inroads into an enemy's country.

Surprises were not so easy, systematic opposition was frequent, and their writers were obliged to fight by tactics, and in the prosaic array of argument for argument. Doc.u.ments, moral testimony, inst.i.tutions, were the objects of attack from without. The apostles were vilified, faith was proved to be irrational, the Bible was ranked with Syrian impostures and Jewish charm-books. And here, in the matter of the Bible, was a mighty enterprise for the Christian teacher. The canon had not yet been officially promulgated. A generation that would despise an apocryphal book of Homer or a false Orphic hymn would not be easily satisfied with the credentials of a religion. Great, then, would be that Christian teacher who should at once teach the faithful, and yet not "take away from" the faith; win the philosophers, and yet fight them hand to hand; and give to the world a critical edition of the Bible, yet hold fast to ancient tradition. Such was the work of Origen.

He began by external organization; he divided the mult.i.tudes that flocked to the Catechisms into two grand cla.s.ses; one of those who were commencing, another of those who were more advanced. The former cla.s.s he gave to his first convert, Heraclas; the latter he kept to himself. Heraclas was "skilled in theology," and "in other respects a very eloquent man;" and, moreover, he was "fairly conversant with philosophy," three qualifications in an Alexandrian catechist none of which could be dispensed with. In any case, the division was a matter of absolute necessity, for these extraordinary Alexandrian scholars, models and patterns that deserve to be imitated more extensively than they have been, gave him no respite and kept no regular school-hours, but crowded in and out "from morning till night;" "not even a breathing-s.p.a.ce did they afford him," says his biographer. In such circ.u.mstances theological study and scriptural labors were out of the question, even if he had been the man of adamant that his admirers, with the true Alexandrian pa.s.sion for nicknames, had already begun to call him. He therefore looked about among "his familiars," those of his disciples who had attached themselves to him and lived with him a life of study and asceticism; and from them he chose out Heraclas, the brother of the martyred Plutarchus, to be the chief a.s.sociate of his work.

It need not be again mentioned that Origen's work, as that of Pantaenus and of Clement before him, had three cla.s.ses of persons to deal with--catechumens, heretics, and philosophers. His dealings with the heretics and philosophers will be treated of more appropriately when we come to consider his journeys, the most important of which occurred after the expiration of the twenty years with which we are now concerned. As the school of Alexandria was chiefly and primarily connected with the catechumens, the account of the twenty years of his presidency will naturally be concerned chiefly and primarily with the latter, that is to say, with those whom that great school undertook to instruct in faith and discipline. And here we approach and stand close beneath one side of that monumental fane that bears upon it for all generations the name of Origen. The neophytes of Alexandria were chiefly taught out of one book; it was the custom handed from teacher to teacher; each held up the book and explained it, according to the "unvarying tradition of the ancients." For two hundred and ten years the work had gone on; but time has destroyed nearly every trace of what was written and spoken. For the first time since St. Mark wrote the gospel, Alexandria speaks now in history with a voice that shall commence a new era in the history of {736} Holy Scripture. Pantaemus had written "Commentaries" on the whole of the Bible; Clement had left, in the _Hypotyposes_, a summary exposition of all the canonical Scripture, not forgetting a glance at the "Contradictions" of heretics. Both these writings have perished long ago. When Origen came, in his turn, to take the same work in hand, a pressing want soon forced itself upon his mind. There was no authentic version of the sacred Word. The New Testament canon was still uncertain, one Church upholding a greater number of books, another less. The Roman canon was, indeed, from the first identical with the Tridentine (see Perrone, _"De Locis Theologicis"_). But the Church of Antioch, _e.g._, ignored no less than five of the canonical books. Alexandria, well supplied with learned expositors, and not a little influenced by the native Alexandrian instinct for criticism and grammar, had got further in the development of the canon than the majority of its sisters. Yet, so far, there had hardly been any distinct interference on the part of authority, and though, as we shall see, Origen's New Testament canon was the same as that of the Council of Trent, yet there were not wanting private writers who expressed doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse. One thing, however, is very clear in all these somewhat troublesome disputes about the canon; whether we turn to Tertullian in Africa, to St. Jerome in Italy, to St. Irenaeus in the West, or to Clement and Origen in the East, we find one grand and large criterion put forth as the test of all authenticity, viz., the tradition of the ancients. "Go to the oldest churches," says St.

Irenaeus. "The truest," says Tertullian, "is the oldest; the oldest is what always was; what always was is from the apostles; go therefore to the churches of the apostles, and find what is there held sacred." "We must not transgress the bounds set by our fathers," says Origen. It took several centuries to complete this process; but the principle was a strong and a living one, and its working out was only a matter of time. It was worked out something in this fashion. A provincial presbyter, we will say from Pelusium, or Syene, or Arsinoe, came up to Alexandria (he may easily have done so, thanks to the police arrangements and engineering enterprise of Ptolemy Philadelphus); having much ecclesiastical news to communicate, and perhaps important business to arrange on the part of his bishop, he would be thrown into close contact with the presbytery of the metropolitan Church. Let us suppose that, in order to support some point of practical morality, touching the "lapsed" or the converts, he quoted Hermas' "Shepherd" as canonical Scripture. The archdeacon with whom he was arguing would demur to such an authority; let him quote Paul, or Jude, or Peter, or John, but not Hernias; Hernias was not in the canon. The presbyter from the provinces would be a little amazed and even ruffled; how could he say it was not in the canon when he himself had heard it read on the Lord's day before the sacred mysteries in the patriarchal Church, in the presence of the very patriarch himself, seated on his throne, and surrounded by the clergy? A canonical book meant a book within the Church's general rule ([Greek text]), and the rule of the Church was that a book read at such a time was thereby declared true Scripture. The archdeacon would reply that the presbyter was right in the main, both as to facts and principles; but would point out that at Alexandria they had a set of books which were read at the solemn time he mentioned, beside regular Scripture; and if he had known their usages better, or if he had asked any of the clergy, or the patriarch, he would be aware that such writings were only _read to the people_ as pious exhortations, not _defined_ as the repository of the faith. The presbyter would consider this inconvenient, and would doubtless be right in thinking so. The practice was {737} condemned by various councils in the next century. But he would at once admit that if the tradition were so, then the Alexandrian Church certainly appeared to reject Hernias. But he would have another difficulty. Did not Clement, of blessed memory, consider Hernias as authentic, or, at any rate, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was quite a parallel case? And did not Origen (whom we suppose to be then teaching) call the "Shepherd"

"divinely inspired?" It was true, the archdeacon would rejoin, that both Clement in former years and Origen then spoke very highly of several writings of this cla.s.s; but he must refer him once more to the authoritative tradition of the Alexandrian Church, to be learned, in the last instance, from the lips of Demetrius himself: this would at once show that Clement and Origen could not mean to put Hernias on a level with Paul, and Origen himself would certainly admit so much, if he were asked. The presbyter would inquire, during his stay, of the heads of the Catechetical school, of the ancient priests, and of the patriarch; he would be satisfied that what the archdeacon said was true; and he would return to his city on the Red Sea, or at the extremity of the Thebaid, or on the north-western coast of the continent, with authentic intelligence that the Apostolic Church of Alexandria rejected Hermas from the Scripture canon, and that, therefore, it certainly ought to be rejected by his own Church. He would, perhaps, in addition to this, bring the information that the metropolitan Church, so he had found out in his researches, upheld the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, to be true and genuine Scripture; would it not, therefore, be well to consider whether these also should not be admitted by themselves? In this way, or in some way a.n.a.logous, the Churches that lay within the "circ.u.mscription" of a patriarchal or apostolic see would by degrees be led to conform their canon to the canon of the princ.i.p.al Church. As time went on, the great metropolitan sees themselves became grouped round the three grand centres of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and, finally, in the process of the development of tradition, at least as early as A.D. 800, the whole Church had adopted the canon as approved by Rome in the decretal of Innocent I. It is, therefore, a remarkable fact that Origen quotes the canon of the New Testament precisely as it now stands in the Vulgate. It would hardly be true to say that he formally states as exclusively authentic the complete list of the Catholic canon; but that he does enumerate it is certain. Moreover, in addition to the remarkable correctness of his investigations on the canon, Origen did much, in other ways, for a book that was emphatically the textbook of his school. The exemplars in general use were in a most unsatisfactory state: there were hardly two alike.

Writers had been careless, audacious innovators had inserted their interpolations, honest but mistaken bunglers had added and taken away whenever the sense seemed to require it. It is Origen himself who makes these complaints, and n.o.body had better occasion to know how true they were. The ma.n.u.script used in the great Church probably differed from that used by the chief catechist; his, again, differed from every one of those brought to cla.s.s by the wealthier of his scholars. One would bring up a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, on investigation, would turn out to be full of Nazarite or Ebionite "improvements"--another would have an Acts of the Apostles, which had been bequeathed to him by some venerable Judaizant, and wherein St.

James of Jerusalem would be found to have a.s.sumed more importance than St. Luke was generally supposed to have given him. A third would have a copy so full of monstrous corruptions in the way of mutilation and deliberate heretical glossing, that the orthodox ears of the {738} master would certainly have detected a quotation from it in two lines: it would be one of Valentine's editions. A fourth, newly arrived from some place where Tertullian had never been heard of, would appear with a bulky set of _volumina_, which Origen would find to his great disgust to be the New Testament "according to Marcion." That first and chief of reckless falsifiers had "circ.u.mcised" the New Testament, as St. Irenaeus calls it, to such an extent that he had to invent a quant.i.ty of new Acts and Apocalypses to keep up appearances, and what he retained he had freely cut and tortured into Marcionism; for he said openly that the apostles were moderately well-informed, but that his lights were far in advance of them. Such examples as these are, of course, extremes; but even in orthodox copies there must have been a bewildering number of _variantes_. Origen's position would bring him into contact with exemplars from many distant churches. The work of copying fresh ones for the "missions," or to supply the wants of the provinces, would necessitate some choice of ma.n.u.scripts; and in a matter so important, we may be sure that his catechists, fellow-townsmen of Aristarchus, rather enjoyed than otherwise the vigorous critical disputes which the collation of MSS. has a special tendency to engender. It is nearly established--indeed, we may say, it is certain--that Origen wrote a copy of the New Testament with his own hand. It was not a new edition, apparently, but a corrected copy of the generally received version. He corrected the blunders of copyists; he struck out of the text everything that was evidently a mere gloss; he re-inserted what had clearly dropped out by mischance, and adopted a few readings that were unmistakable improvements. But he made no alteration of the text on mere conjecture. However faulty a reading might seem, he never changed it without authority; he had too much reverence for Holy Scripture, and probably, also, too bitter an experience of conjectural emendations, to sanction such dangerous proceedings by his own practice. This precious copy, the fruit of his labors and study, the depositary of his wide experience, and the record of his "adamantine" industry, was apparently the one from which he himself always quoted, and, therefore, we may conclude, which he always used. It lay, after his death, in the archives of Caesarea of Palestine, with his other Biblical MSS. Pamphilus the Martyr is related to have copied it; and in the time of Constantine, Eusebius sent many transcripts of it to the imperial city. Eusebius himself copied it with all the reverence he would necessarily feel for his hero, Origen; and by means of his copy, or of copies made by his direction, it became the basis of that recension of the New Testament known as the Alexandrine. St. Jerome was well acquainted with the library of Caesarea, and often mentions the _"Codices Adamantii"_ which he was privileged to consult there; and we need not remind the reader of the well-known agreement of the Latin versions with those of Palestine and Alexandria. Now Palestine meant--first, Jerusalem, where was the celebrated library formed by St. Alexander, Origen's own college friend and an Alexandria man, as we should say, and partly under Origen's influence; and, secondly, Caesarea, which inherited Origen's traditions and teaching, at least equally with Alexandria, as we shall see later on, and in which the originals of his works were preserved with religious veneration, until war and sack of Persian or Moslem destroyed them. Thus the work of Origen on the New Testament, begun and mainly carried out during those twenty years at Alexandria, is living and active at this very day. But if the New Testament needed setting to rights, it was correct and accurate in comparison with the Old. How he treated the Septuagint, and how the Hexapla and the Tetrapla grew under nimble hands and learned heads, we must for the present defer to tell.

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From The Fortnightly Review.

MARTIN'S PUZZLE.

I.

There she goes up the street with her book in her hand, And her "Good morning, Martin!" "Ay, la.s.s, how d'ye do?"

"Very well, thank you, Martin!" I can't understand; I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!

I can't understand it. She talks like a song: Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a gla.s.s; She seems to give gladness while limping along; Yet sinner ne'er suffered like that little la.s.s.

II.

Now, I'm a rough fellow--what's happen'd to me?

Since last I left Falmouth I've not had a fight With a miner come down for a dip in the sea; I cobble contented from morning to night.

The Lord gives me all that a man should require; Protects me, and "cuddles me up," as it were.

But what have I done to be saved from the fire?

And why does his punishment fall upon her?

III.

First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.

Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade-- Why the deuce does he tell us it hah broke his heart?

His heart!--where's the leg of the poor little maid!

Well, that's not enough; they must push her d