The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 81

April 2d, in the evening.

And here we must leave Eugenie. Eight days later she resumed the journal at Nevers and wrote that wonderful eighth book, so pathetically expressive of the pain of waiting--fit prelude of the coming tragedy.

From Once a Week.

DAY-DREAMS

Call them not vain and false day-dreams we see With spirit-vision of our quicker youth; Thoughts wiser in the world's esteem may be Less near the truth.

When against some hard creed of life we raise Our single cry for what more pure we deem, 'Tis oft the working out in later days Of some old dream!

Dream of a world more pure than that we find Sad is the wak'ning, but not dull despair, While we can feel that we may leave behind One bright ray there.

Let us work up then to our young ideal, Nor weep the present nor regret the past, Till the soul, struggling 'twixt earth's false and real, Reach heaven at last.

{484}

From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA--ORIGEN.

The scholar next comes to the more strictly ethical part of Origen's teaching. The preliminary dialectics had cleared the ground, and to a certain extent replanted it; physics made the process more easy, pleasant, and complete; but the great end of a philosophic life was ethics, that is, the making a man good. The making of a man good and virtuous seems now-a-days a simple matter, as far as theory is concerned, and so perhaps it is, if only theory and principles be considered; though morality is an extensive science, and one that is not mastered in an hour or a day. But in Origen's day a science of Christian ethics did not exist. The teaching of the Scripture and the voice of the pastors was sufficient, doubtless, for the guidance of the faithful; but science is a different thing. Such a science is shadowed out to us by the scholar in the record we are noticing. St.

Thomas, the great finisher of scientific Christian ethics, embraces all virtues under two great cla.s.ses, viz., the theological and the cardinal. The whole science of morality treats only of the seven virtues included under these two divisions. The master's teaching comprehended, of course, faith, and hope, and charity; indeed, it would be more correct to say that these three virtues were his whole ultimate object; but the scholar says little of them in particular just because of this very reason, and also because they were bound up in that _piety_ which he mentions so often. But it is a most interesting fact that the virtues, and the only virtues, mentioned in the summary of Origen's moral teaching given by St. Gregory, are precisely the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fort.i.tude, and temperance. The cla.s.sification dates, of course, from the Stoics, but the circ.u.mstance that the framework laid down by a father in the beginning of the third century was used and completed by another father in the thirteenth, gives the early father an undoubted claim to be considered the founder of Christian ethics. And here we lay our hands on one of the earliest instances of heathen philosophy being made to hew wood and carry water for Christian theology. The division of virtues was a good one; all the schools pretended to teach it; but the distinctive boast and triumph of the Christian teacher was that he taught _true_ prudence, true justice, fort.i.tude, and temperance, "not such," says the scholar, "as the other philosophers teach, and especially the moderns, who are strong and great in words; he not only talked about the virtues, but exhorted us to practise them; and he exhorted us by what he did far more than by what he said." And here the scholar takes the opportunity of recording his opinion about "the other" philosophers, now that he has had a course of Origen's training. He first apologizes to them for hurting their feelings. He says that, personally, he has no ill-will against them, but he plainly tells them that things have come to such a pa.s.s, through their conduct, that the very name of philosophy is laughed at. And he goes on to develop what appeared to him the very essence of their faults, viz., too much talk, and nothing but talk. Their teaching is like a widely-extended mora.s.s; once set foot in it, and you can neither get out nor go on, but stick fast till you perish. Or it is like a thick forest; the traveller who once finds himself {485} in it has no chance of ever getting back to the open fields and the light of day, but gropes about backward and forward, first trying one path, then another, and finding they all lead farther in, until at last, wearied and desperate, he sits down and dwells in the forest, resolving that the forest shall be his world, since all the world seems to be a forest. This is, perhaps, one of the most graphic pictures ever given of the state of mind, so artificial, so unsatisfied, and yet so self-sufficient, brought about by a specious heathen philosophy, and the effect of enlightened reason dest.i.tute of revelation. The scholar cannot heighten the strength of his description by going on to compare it, in the third place, to a labyrinth, but the comparison brings out two striking features well worthy of notice. The first is, the innocent and guileless look of the whole concern from the outside; "the traveller sees the open door, and in he goes, suspecting nothing." Once in, he sees a great deal to admire, (and this is the second point in the labyrinth-simile;) he sees the very perfection of art and arrangement, doors after doors, rooms within rooms, pa.s.sages leading most ingeniously and conveniently into other pa.s.sages; he sees all this art, admires the architect, and--thinks of going out. But there is no going out for him; he is fast. All the artifice and ingenuity he has been admiring have been expended for the express purpose of keeping in for ever those foolish people who have been so unwary as to come in at the open door. "For there is no labyrinth so hard to thread," sums up the scholar, "no wood so deep and thick, no bog so false and hopeless, as the language of some of these philosophers." In this language we recognize another of of the characteristic feelings of the day--the feeling of profound disgust for the highest teachings of heathenism from the moment the soul catches a ray of the light of the Gospel In Origen's school the confines of the receding darkness skirted the advancing kingdom of light, and those that sat in the darkness to-day saw it leaving them to-morrow, and far behind them the morrow after that; and all the time the great master had to be peering anxiously into the darkness to see what souls were nearest the light, and to hold out his hand to win them too into the company of those that were already sitting at his feet. In such days as those, sharp comparisons between heathen wisdom and the light of Christ must have been part of the atmosphere in which the catechumens of the great school lived and breathed; there was a reality and interest in them such as can never be again. And yet the master was no bigot in his dealings with the Greek philosophies. "He was the first and the only one," says his scholar, "that made me study the philosophy of Greece." The scholar was to reject nothing, to despise nothing, but make himself thoroughly acquainted with the whole range of Greek philosophy and poetry; there was only one cla.s.s of writers he was to have nothing to do with, and those were the atheists who denied G.o.d and G.o.d's providence; their books could only sully a mind that was striving after piety. But his pupils were to attach themselves to no school or party, as did the mob of those who pretended to study philosophy. Under his guidance they were to take what was true and good, and leave what was false and bad. He walked beside them and in front of them through the labyrinth; he had studied its windings and knew its turns; in his company, and with their eyes on his "lofty and safe" teaching, his scholars need fear no danger.

This brief a.n.a.lysis of part of St. Gregory's remarkable oration will serve to give us some idea of Origen's method of treating his more learned and cultivated converts, of whom we know he had a very great many. It will also have admitted us, in some sort, into the interior of his school, {486} and let as hear the question in debate and the matters that were of greatest interest in that most influential centre of Christian teaching. It does not, of course, deal directly with theology, or with those great controversies which Origen, in a manner, rendered possible for his pupils and successors of the next century.

The scholar, indeed, does go on now to speak of his theological teachings; but he describes rather his manner than his matter, and rather the salient points of characteristic gifts than the details of his dogmatic system. As this is precisely our own object in these notes, we need only say that St. Gregory, in the concluding pages of his farewell discourse, sufficiently proves that the great end and object of all philosophic teaching and intellectual discipline in the school of his master was faith and practical piety. To teach his hearers the great first cause was his most careful and earnest task.

His instructions about G.o.d were so full of knowledge and so carefully prepared that the scholar is at a loss how to describe them. His explanations of the prophets, and of Holy Scripture generally, were so wonderful that he seemed to be the friend and interpreter of the Word.

The soul that thirsted for knowledge went away from him refreshed, and the hard of heart and the unbelieving could not listen to him without both understanding, and believing, and making submission to G.o.d. "It was no otherwise than by the communication of the Holy Ghost that he spoke thus," says his disciple, "for the prophets and the interpreters of the prophets have necessarily the same help from above, and none can understand a prophet unless by the same spirit wherein the prophet spoke. This greatest of gifts and this splendid destiny he seemed to have received from G.o.d, that he should be the interpreter of G.o.d's words to men, that he should understand the things of G.o.d, as though he heard them from G.o.d's own mouth, and that through him men should be brought to listen and obey." Two little indications of what we may call the spirit of Origen are to be found in this address of his pupil. The first is the great value he sets upon purity as the only means of arriving at the knowledge and communion of G.o.d. We know what a watchword this "union with G.o.d" was among the popular philosophers of the day. To attain to it was the end of all the Neo-Platonic asceticism. It was Origen's great end as well; but he taught that purity alone and the subjugation of the pa.s.sions by the grace of G.o.d will avail to lead the soul thither, and that no amount of external refinement or abstinence from gross sin will suffice to make the soul pure in the sight of G.o.d. The second is, his devotion to the person of the Son, the ever-blessed Word of G.o.d. The whole oration of the scholar takes the form of a thanksgiving to "the Master and Saviour of our souls, the firstborn Word, the maker and ruler of all things." He never misses an opportunity all through it of bursting into eloquent love to that "Prince of the universe;" he cannot praise his master without first praising him, or ascribe anything to the powers of the earthly teacher without referring it first of all to the heavenly Giver. He had learned this from Origen, the predecessor, unconsciously certainly, but in will and in spirit, of another Alexandrian, the great Athanasius. And here again error was bringing out the truth, for unless the Gnostics and the Neo-Platonists had been at that very time theorizing about their demiurge and their emanations, we should probably have missed the tender devotion and repeated homage to the eternal Word which we find in the words of Origen and his disciple.

Theodore, or Gregory, as he had been named in baptism, had to thank his master and to praise him, and he had, Moreover, to say how sorry he was to leave him. He concludes his speech with the expression of his regrets. He is afraid that all the grand teaching he has received has been to {487} a great extent thrown away upon him. He is not yet prudent, he is not just, he is not temperate, he has no fort.i.tude, alas, for his own native imbecility! But one gift the master has given him he has made him love all these virtues with a love that knows no bounds; and he has made him love, over and above them all, that virtue which is alike their beginning and their consummation--the blessed virtue of piety, the service and love of G.o.d. And now, in leaving him, he seems to be leaving a garden full of useful trees and pleasant fruits, full of green gra.s.s and cheering sunshine. And he thereupon compares himself, at considerable length, to our first parents banished from Paradise. "I am leaving the face of G.o.d and going back to the earth from whence I came; and I shall eat earth all my days, and till earth--an earth that will produce me nothing but thorn and briers now that it is deprived of its good and excellent tending." He goes on to liken himself to the prodigal son; and yet he finds himself worse than he, for he is going away without receiving the "due portion of substance," and leaving behind everything he loves and cares for.

Again, he seems to be one of that band of Jewish captives that hang up their harps on the willows and wept beside the rivers of Babylon. "I am going out from my Jerusalem," he says, "my holy city, where day and night the holy law is being announced, where are hymns and canticles and mystic speech; where a light brighter than the sun shines upon us as we discuss the mysteries of G.o.d, and where our fancy brings back in the night visions of what has occupied us in the day; I am leaving this holy city, wherein G.o.d seems to breathe everywhere, and going into a land of exile: there will be no singing for me; even the mournful flute will not be my solace when my harp is hung on the willows; but I shall be working by river-sides and making bricks; the hymns I remember I shall not be allowed to sing; nay, it may be that my very memory will play me false, and my hard work will make me forget them." The youthful heart, that has left a cloistered retreat of learning and piety, where masters have been loved, studies enjoyed, and G.o.d tenderly served, will test these words by itself, and read in their eloquent painting another proof that nature is the same to-day as yesterday. Gregory the wonder-worker was truly a scholar to be proud of, but the master's pride must have been obliterated in his emotion when he listened to such a description of his school as this.

But the scholar, after all, will leave with a good heart. "There is the Word, the sleepless guardian of all men." He puts his trust in him, and in the good seed that his master has sown; perhaps he may come back again and see him yet once more, when the seed shall have sprung up and produced such fruits as can be expected from a nature which is barren and evil, but which he prays G.o.d may never become worse by his own fault. "And do thou, O my beloved master ([Greek text]), arise and send us forth with thy prayer; thou hast been our saviour by thy holy teachings whilst we were with thee; save us still by thy prayers when we depart. Give us back, master, give us up into the hands of him that sent us to thee, G.o.d; thank him for what has befallen us; pray him that in the future he may ever be with us to direct us, that he may keep his laws before our eyes and set in our heart that best of teachers his divine fear. Away from thee, we shall not obey him as freely as we obeyed him here. Keep praying that we may find consolation in him for our loss of thee, that he may send us his angel to go with us; and ask him to bring us back to thee once more; no other consolation could be half so great." And so they depart, the two brothers, never again to see their master more. They both became great bishops, Gregory the greatest; we find Origen writing to him, soon after his departure, a letter full of affection and good counsel; and who can tell how much the teaching of the catechist of Alexandria had to do with that wonderful life and never-dying reputation that distinguish Gregory Thaumaturgus among all the saints of the church?

{488}

Origen presided at Alexandria for twenty years--that is to say, from 211 to 231. In the latter year he left it for ever. During this period he had been temporarily absent more than once. The governor of the Roman Arabia, or Arabia Petraea, had sent a special messenger to the prefect of Alexandria and the patriarch, to beg that the catechist might pay him a visit. What he wanted him for is not recorded; but Petra, the capital of the Roman province, was not so far from the great road between Alexandria and Palestine as to be out of the way of Greek thought and civilization, and its interesting remains of art, belonging to this very period, which startled modern travellers only a short time past, prove that it was itself no inconsiderable centre of intellectual cultivation. We may, therefore, conjecture that his errand was philosophical, or, in other words, religious.

The second time that Origen was absent from Alexandria was for a somewhat longer s.p.a.ce. The emperor Caracalla, after murdering his brother and indulging in indiscriminate slaughter, in all parts of the world from Rome to Syria, had at last arrived, with his troubled conscience and his well-bribed legions, at Alexandria. The Alexandrians, it is well known, had an irresistible tendency to give nicknames. Caracalla's career was open to a few epithets, and the unfortunate "men of Macedon" made merry on some salient points in the character of the emperor and his mother. They had better have held their tongues, or plucked them out; for in a fury of vengeance he let loose his bloodthirsty bands on the city. How many were slain in that awful visitation no one ever knew; the dead were thrown into trenches, and hastily covered up, uncounted and unrecorded. The spectre-haunted emperor took special vengeance on the inst.i.tutions and professors of learning. It would seem that he destroyed a great part of the buildings of the Museum, and put to death or banished the teachers. As for the students, he had the whole youth of the city driven together into the gymnasium, and ordered them to be formed into a "Macedonian phalanx" for his army--a grim retort, in kind, for their pleasantries at his expense. Origen fled before this storm. Had he remained, he was far too well known now to have been safe for an hour. Doubtless obedience made him conceal himself and escape. He took refuge in Caesarea of Palestine, where the bishop, St. Theoctistus, received him with the utmost honor; and, though he was yet only a layman, made him preach in the church, which he had never done at Alexandria. When the tempest in Egypt had gone by, Demetrius wrote for him to come back. He returned, and resumed the duties of his post.

After this he took either one or two other journeys. He was sent into Greece, and visited Athens, with letters from his bishop, to refute heresy and confirm the Christian religion. He also stayed awhile at the great central see of Antioch.

On his journey to Greece, he had been ordained priest at Caesarea, by his friend St. Theoctistus. When he returned to Alexandria, about the year 231, Demetrius, the patriarch, was pleased to be exceedingly indignant at his ordination. We cannot go into the controversy here; we need only say that a synod of bishops, summoned by the patriarch, decreed that he must leave Alexandria, but retain his priesthood; which seems to show that they thought he had better leave for the sake of peace, though they could not recognize any canonical fault; for if they had, they would have suspended or degraded him. Demetrius, indeed, a.s.sembled another synod some time later, and did degrade and excommunicate him. But by this time Origen had left Alexandria, never to return {489} and was quietly living at Caesarea. We dare not p.r.o.nounce sentence in a cause that has occupied so many learned pens; but we dare confidently say this, that it is impossible to prove Origen to have been knowingly in the wrong. We must now follow him to Caesarea.

If some Levantine merchantman, manned by swarthy Greeks or Syrians, in trying to make Beyrout, should be driven by a north wind some fifty miles further along the coast to the southwest, she might possibly find herself, at break of day, in sight of a strange-looking harbor.

There would be a wide semi-circular sweep of buildings, or what had once been buildings; there would be a southern promontory, crowned with a tower in ruins; there would be the vestiges of a splendid pier; and there would be rows of granite pillars lying as if a hurricane had come off the land, and blown them bodily into the sea. An Arab or two, in their white cotton clothes, would be grimly looking about them, on some prostrate columns; and a stray jackal, caught by the rising sun, would be scampering into some hole in the ruins. Our merchantman would have come upon all that is left of Caesarea of Palestine. If she did not immediately make all sail to Jaffa, or back to Beyrout, it would not be because the place does not look ghostly and dismal enough. And yet it was once the greatest port on that Mediterranean coast, and far more important than either Jaffa, Acre, Sidon, or even Beyrout now. It owed its celebrity to Herod the Great. Twelve years of labor, and the expenditure of vast sums of money, made the ancient Turris Stratonis worthy to be rechristened Caesarea, in honor of Caesar Augustus. Its great pier, constructed of granite blocks of incredible size, afforded at once dwelling-places and hostelries for the sailors and a splendid columned promenade for the wealthy citizens. The half-circle of buildings, all of polished granite, that embraced the sea and the harbor, and terminated in a rocky promontory on either side, shone far out to sea, and showed conspicuous in the midst the great temple of Caesar, crowned with statues of Augustus and of the Roman city. An agora, a praetorium, a circus looking out to sea, and a rock-hewn theatre, were included in Herod's magnificent plans, and fittingly adorned a city that was to become in a few years the capital of Palestine. We see its importance even as early as the days immediately after Pentecost. It was here that the Gentiles were called to the faith, in the person of Cornelius the centurion, a commander of the legionaries stationed at Caesarea. His house, three hundred years later, was turned into a chapel by St. Paulo, and must therefore have been recognizable at the time of which we write. It was here that Herod Agrippa I. planned the apprehension of St. Peter and the execution of St. James the Greater; and it was in the theatre here that the beams of the sun shone upon his glittering apparel, and the people saluted him as a G.o.d, only to see him smitten by the hand of the true G.o.d, and carried to his palace in the agonies of mortal pain.

St. Paul was here several times, and last of all when he was brought from Jerusalem by the fifty hors.e.m.e.n and the two hundred spearmen.

Here he was examined before Felix, and before Festus, in the presence of King Agrippa, when he made his celebrated speech; and it was from the harbor of Caesarea that he sailed for Rome to be heard before Caesar. For many centuries, even into the times of the crusaders, it continued to be a capital and haven of great importance. Between 195 and 198, it was the scene of one of the earliest councils of the Eastern Church, and, as the see of Eusebius, the founder of church history, and the site of a celebrated library, it must always be interesting in ecclesiastical annals. But perhaps it would require nothing more to make {490} it a place of note in our eyes than the fact that when Origen was driven from Alexandria, in 231, he transferred to Caesarea not the Alexandrian school, it is true, but the teacher whose presence and spirit had contributed so much to make it immortal.

Caesarea, indeed, was at that time a literary centre only second to Alexandria or Antioch. It was in direct communication with Jerusalem by an excellent military road, and with Alexandria by a road that was longer, indeed, but in no way inferior. It was not far from Berytus both by land and sea. Like Capharnaum and Ptolemais, but in a yet higher degree, it was one of Herod the Great's model cities, in which he had embodied his scheme of _Grecianizing_ his country by the influence of splendid Greek art and overpowering Greek intellect. It was also the metropolis of Palestine. St. Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, Origen's fellow-student, was the intimate friend of Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea; and it is clear that bishops, or their messengers, from the cities all along the coast, as for as Antioch, and even the distant Cappadocia and Pontus, were not unfrequent visitors to this great rallying-point of the church and the empire.

When Origen, therefore, left Alexandria and took up his abode in a city that was in a manner the diminished counterpart of one he had abandoned, he did not find himself in a strange land. St. Theoctistus received him with delight. It was not long before he journeyed the short distance to Jerusalem, to renew his acquaintance with St.

Alexander; and these two bishops were only too glad to put on his shoulders all the charges that he would accept. "They referred to him," says Eusebius, "on every occasion as their master; they committed to him alone the charge of interpreting and teaching Holy Scripture and everything connected with preaching the Word of G.o.d in the church." From the way in which the historian joins the two bishops together, it would appear that Caesarea was a common school for the two dioceses, and a sort of ecclesiastical seminary whither the clerics from Jerusalem came, as to a centre where learning and learned men would abound more than in ruined and fallen AElia. It is certain, however, that Origen, in a short time, was teaching and writing as fast as at Alexandria. His name soon began to draw scholars.

Firmilian, bishop of so distant a see as Caesarea of Cappadocia, one of the most stirring minds of his age, who had controversies on his hands all round the sea-coast to Carthage in one direction, and Rome in the other, was a friend of Theoctistus. It is possible that he knew Origen also, perhaps from having seen him at Alexandria, but more probably from having met him when Origen travelled into Greece. At any rate, he conceived an enthusiastic liking for him. Nothing would serve him but to make Origen travel to his own far-off province to teach and stimulate pastors and people; and, not long afterward, we find himself in Judaea, that is, at Caesarea, on a visit to Origen, with whom he is stated to have remained "some time," for the sake of "bettering himself" in divinity. And, as Eusebius sums up, "not only those who lived in the same part of the world, but very many others from distant lands, left their country and came flocking to listen to him." We need not mention here again the names Gregory and Athenodorus.

The position now occupied by Origen at Caesarea was, therefore, one of the highest importance. He was no longer a private teacher, or even an authorized master teaching in private; he was no less than the subst.i.tute for the bishop himself. In the Eastern Church, indeed, the custom by which no one but the Bishop ever preached in the church was not so strictly observed as it was in the West; but if a {491} presbyter did received the commission of preaching, it was always with the understanding that what he said was said on behalf of the pontiff, whose presence in his chair was a guarantee for its orthodoxy. When Origen, therefore, on the Lord's day, after the reading of the holy Gospel, stood forward from his place in the presbytery, and began to explain either the Gospel text itself or some pa.s.sage in the Old Testament which also had formed part of the liturgical service, it was well understood that he was speaking with authority. And this is the first light in which we should view his homilies.

It would be saying little to say that Origen's homilies and commentaries (for we need not distinguish them here) marked an era in the exposition of Scripture. They not only were the first of their kind, but they may be said to have created the art, and not only to have created it, but, in certain aspects, to have finished it and to have become like Aristotle in some of his treatises, at once the model and the quarry for future generations. It may be true, as of course it is, that he was not absolutely the first to write expositions of Scripture. The splendid eloquence of Theophilus of Antioch had already been heard on the four Gospels, and his spirit of interpretation seems to have had much more affinity for Origen's own spirit than for that of the school of his own Antioch two centuries later. Melito had written on the Apocalypse, but his direct labors on Scripture were only an insignificant part of his voluminous works, if, indeed, they were not all rather apologetic and hortatory than explanatory. The Mosaic account of the creation had occupied a few fathers with its defence against Gnostic and infidel. But we know from Origen's own words that he had read and used "his predecessors," as he calls them.

And yet we may truly say that he is the first of commentators, not only because no one before him had dared to undertake the whole Scripture, but on account of his novel and regular method. He is turned by one great authority, Sixtus Senensis, "almost self-taught,"

so little of what he says can he have gleaned from others. But in estimating how much Origen owed to those before him, we should lose a valuable hint towards understanding him if we forgot Clement of Alexandria and the great body of tradition, oral and written, of which the Alexandrian school was the headquarters. We know that the Alexandrian Jew, Philo, two hundred years before Clement's time, had written wonderful lucubrations on the mystical sense of Holy Scripture. The Alexandrian catechetical teachers, catching and using the spirit of the place, had always been Alexandrian in their Scriptural teachings. Clement himself had commented on the whole of the Scriptures in his book called the "Hypotyposes." Origen entered into inheritance. We see the spirit of the time and place in those questionings with which, in his early years, he used to puzzle his father. The unrivalled industry that made him collect versions of the sacred text from Syria, Asia, and even the sh.o.r.es of Greece, must have scrupulously sought out and exhausted every source of information and every extant doc.u.ment relating to Scripture exposition that was at hand for him in his own city. So that Origen, though in one sense the founder of a school, was really the culmination of a series of learned men, and, by the influence of his name, made common to the universal church that knowledge and method which before had been confined to the pupils that had listened to the Catechisms.

Although, however, we may guess, we cannot be certain how progressively or gradually a methodical and scientific exegesis had been growing up at Alexandria; and we come upon the commentaries of Origen with all the freshness of a discovery. Before him we have been accustomed to writings like those of the apostolic fathers: we have been reading apologies of the most wonderful eloquence, whose Greek shames the rhetoricians, {492} or whose Latin has all the spirit, earnestness, and tenderness of new language, but in which Holy Scripture is at the most only summarized and held up to view. Or, again, we have been listening to a venerable priest crushing the heretics with the word of G.o.d, or to a philosopher confuting the Jews out of their own mouth. Or, once more, we have heard the pagan intellect of the world convinced that truth was nowhere to be found but in Jesus, that the writings of the prophets were better than those of the philosophers, and that the morality of the New Testament cast far into the shade the sayings of Socrates. Splendid ideas, striking applications, telling proofs, grand views, all these the early fathers found in holy Scripture, and all these they used in the exhortations, apologies, or refutations that were called for by the several necessities of their times. But sustained, regular commentary, as such, they have none, or, what is the same to us now, none has come down. The explanation of words, the cla.s.sification of meanings, the distinction of senses, the answering of difficulties and the solution of objections--all this, done, not for an odd portion of the text here and there, but regularly through the whole Bible, is what distinguishes the labors of Origen from those of all who have gone before him, and makes them so important for all who shall come after him. In making acquaintance with him we feel that we have come across a master, with breadth of view enough to handle ma.s.ses of materials in a scientific way, and with learning enough never to be in want of materials for his science. We see in his Scripture commentaries the pressure of three forces of unequal strength, but each of them of marked presence, the tradition of the church, the teachings of the great school, and the needs of his own times. To understand him we must understand this pressure under which he wrote. The first two forces may be pa.s.sed over as requiring no explanation. We must dwell a little on the latter, for unless we vividly realize the necessities under which the Christian teacher in his time lay, of meeting certain enemies and withstanding certain views, we shall be led to join in the cry of those who exclaim against Origen's Scripture exposition as partly useless and partly dangerous.

These necessities arose from two phenomena that appeared almost with the birth of Christianity, and which, with a somewhat wide generalization, we may call the Ebionite and the Gnostic. No one can have looked into early church history without being struck by the difficulty the church seems to have had to free herself from the trammels of Judaism. We need not allude to St. Paul, and his Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans, and his various contentions with friend and foe for the freedom of the Gospel. The Epistle to the Hebrews, with its thoroughness of dogmatic exposition and its grand style, was also addressed to the Judaizants. Nay, if Ebion himself ever had an existence, it is more than probable that he was teaching at Jerusalem about the very time at which the Epistle seems to have been written and sent, if sent, to the Christian Jews of that city. It is certain, however, that Alexandria was one of the very earliest of the churches which shook itself free, in a marked manner, from the traditions of the law. The cosmopolitan spirit of the great city was a powerful natural auxiliary in a development which was substantially brought about by the Holy Ghost and the pastors of the patriarchal see. The Hebrew element hardly ever had such a footing at Alexandria as it had at Antioch. We can see in the writing of Justin Martyr, (_circa_ 160,) whose wide experience of all the churches makes his testimony especially valuable, a. picture of Christianity, young and exuberant, with its face joyously set to its destined career, and with the swathing-bands of the synagogue lying neglected behind it. Justin had an {493} Alexandrian training, and among his many-sided gifts shone pre-eminent that intellectual culture which was the most effectual of the human weapons that beat off the spirit of Judaism.

And in Clement himself there is no trace of any narrow formalism, but, on the contrary, a grand, world-embracing charity, that can recognize the work of the Divine Logos in all the manifold varieties of human wisdom and human beauty. So that long before the time that Origen succeeded his master, the Alexandrian church was free from all suspicion of clinging to what St. Paul calls the "yoke of bondage;"

and knew no distinction of Jew or Greek. But the party that had troubled the Apostle, and spread itself through the churches almost as soon as the churches were founded, was by no means extinct, even at Alexandria. Since the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews had become scattered all over the empire. The great towns, such as Antioch, Caesarea, and Alexandria, each contained a strong Jewish community. At Alexandria they were numerous enough to have a quarter to themselves.

Now, it is not too much to say that many so-called Jews and Christians in such a city were neither Jews nor Christians, but Ebionites; that is, they acknowledged the divine mission of Christ, which destroyed their genuine Judaism, but denied his divinity, which was still more fatal to their Christianity. The consequences of such a state of things to the interpretation of Scripture are manifest. The law was still good and binding. Jerusalem was still the holy city, the chosen of G.o.d, and the spiritual and temporal capital of the world. St. Paul was denounced as one who admitted heathen innovations and destroyed the word of G.o.d. Everything in holy Scripture, that is, in the Old Testament and in the scanty excerpts from the New, which they admitted, was to be understood in a rigorously literal sense; and the "Clementines," once falsely attributed to St. Clement of Rome, but now considered to belong to the second century, and to be the work of an Ebionite, are the only writings of the period in which the allegorical sense is totally and peremptorily denied. Ebionism was not very consistent with itself, and the Ebionites of St. Jerome's time would hardly have saluted their sterner brethren of the apostolic age; but the name may always be truly taken to typify those whose views led them to hold to the "carnal letter" of the Old Testament. They carried the old Jewish exclusiveness into Christianity. They considered the historical parts of the Scripture to have been written merely because their own history was so important in G.o.d's sight that he thought it right to preserve its minutest record. The prophecies were only meant to glorify, to warn, or to terrify themselves, and had no message for the Gentiles. Even the parables and figures that occurred in the imagery of the inspired writer were dragged down to the most absurd and literal significations. The adherents of Ebionism were neither few nor silent in the time of Origen.

But if the Ebionite party in Alexandria, and in the Church generally, was strong and stirring, there was a party not less important, perhaps, who, in their zeal for the freedom of Christianity against the bonds of Judaism, were in danger of going quite as far wrong in a different direction. It is always the case in a reaction, that the returning force finds it difficult to stop at its due mark. So it had been with the reaction against the Ebionites, and especially at Alexandria. There was a body of advanced Christians who did not content themselves with not observing the law, but went on to depreciate it. It was not enough for them to see the Old Testament fulfilled by Jesus Christ, but they must needs show that it never had much claim to be even a preparation and a type. It was full of frivolous details, useless records, and absurd narrations. {494} Who cared for the _minutiae_ about Pharaoh's butler, Joseph's coat, or Tobias's dog? Of what importance to the world were the marchings and counter-marchings, the stupid obstinacy and the unsavory morality of a few thousand Hebrews? Who was interested to hear how their prophets scolded them, or their enemies destroyed them, or their kings tyrannized over them? How could it edify Christians to know the number and color of the skins of the tabernacles or the names of the masons and blacksmiths that built the Temple, or the fact that the Jewish people considerably varied their carnal piety by intervals of still more carnal crime and idolatry? The state of things represented by the Old Testament had pa.s.sed away, and they were of no interest save as ancient history; and therefore, it was absurd to treasure up the Pentateuch and the Prophets as if they were anything more, and not rather much less, than the rhapsodies of Homer and the travels of Herodotus. In fact--and to this conclusion a considerable party came before long--the Old Testament was certainly not divine at all; at any rate, it was not the work of the Father of the Lord Jesus, but of some other principle. And here the Gnostic interest was at hand with an opportune idea. Who _could_ have written the Old Testament but the Demiurge? That primary offshoot of the Divinity, just, but not good, (this was their distinction,) can never have been more worthily employed than in concocting a series of writings in which there was some skill, some justice, and very little goodness. The Demiurge was certainly a handy suggestion, and the consigning of the Old Testament to his workmanship made all commentary thereon compressive into a very brief s.p.a.ce. Away with it all, for a farrago of nonsense, lies, and nuisances!

Of course, neither of these parties, when extremely developed, could lay any claim to Christianity. But the world of that day had in it Ebionites and Gnostics of every degree and every changing hue of error. They were not unrepresented in the very bosom of the Church.

Pious Christians might be found who, strong in filial feeling to their Jewish great-grandfathers, would see in the records of the old covenant nothing but a most interesting family history, with delightfully long pedigrees and a great deal of strong language about the glory and dignity of the descendants of Israel. On the other hand, equally pious Christians, and among them a great majority, perhaps, of the Gentile converts, would consider it an extravagant compliment to read in the house of G.o.d the sayings and doings of such a very unworthy set of people as the Hebrews. And the remarkable fact would be, that both these sets of worthy Christians would begin with the same fundamental error, though arriving at precisely opposite conclusions. That the Old Testament had a literal meaning, _and no other_ was the starting-point of both Ebionite and Gnostic The former concluded, "therefore let us honor it, for we are a divine race;" the latter, "therefore let us reject it, for what are the Jews to us?"

It would not require many sentences to prove, if our object in these notes were proof of any sort, that Origen's leading idea in his Scripture exposition is to look for the mystical sense. His very name is a synonym for allegory, and he is perhaps as often blamed for it as praised. But even blame, when outspoken and honest, is better than feeble excuse; and and unfortunately not a few of the great Alexandrian's critics have undertaken to excuse him for having such a leaning to allegory. The Neo-Platonists, they say, dealt largely in myths, and allegorized everything; somebody allegorized Homer just about that time. Now Origen was a Platonist. We might answer, that Origen was above all a Christian, and knew but very little of Plato till he was thirty years old; and that the Greek allegories {495} were invented by a more decorous generation for the purpose of veiling the grossness of the popular mythology; whereas the Christian allegory, as introduced by St Paul, or indeed by our Blessed Saviour, was a spiritual and mysterious application of real facts. Others, again, offer the excuse that Philo had allegorized very much, and Origen admired Philo. This is saying that allegory was very usual at Alexandria, as we have said ourselves when speaking of St. Clement.

But it is not saying why allegory was kept up so warmly in the school of the Catechisms, or what was the radical cause that made its being kept up there a necessity for the well-being of the Church. This we have endeavored to state in the foregoing remarks.

When Origen, then, announces his grand principle of Scripture commentary, in the fourth book of the De Principiis, we may be excused if we see in it the statement of an important canon, whereby to understand much that he has written. He says, "Wherefore, to those who are convinced that the sacred books are not the utterances of man, but were written and made over to us by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, by the will of G.o.d the Father of all through Jesus Christ, we will endeavor to point out how they are to read them, keeping the rules of the divine and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ." This is the key-note of all his exposition, and derives its significance from the state of opinions among those for whom he wrote; and a dispa.s.sionate application of it to such pa.s.sages as seem questionable or gratuitous in his writings, will explain many a difficulty, and show how clearly he apprehended the work he had to do. If the Old Testament be really the word of the Holy Ghost, as, he says, all true Christians believe, then nothing in it can be trivial, nothing useless, nothing false.

This he insists upon over and over again. And, descending more to particulars, he states these three celebrated rules of interpretation, which may be called, with their development, his contribution to Scripture exposition. They are so plainly aimed at Ebionites and Gnostics, that we need merely to state them to show the connection.

His first rule regards the old Law. The Law, he says, being abrogated by Jesus Christ, the precepts and ordinances that are purely legal are no longer to be taken and acted up to literally, but only in their mystical sense. This seems rudimentary and evident nowadays; but at that period it greatly needed to be clearly stated and enforced.

His second rule is about the history and prophecy relating to Jew or Gentile that is found in the Old Testament. The Ebionite who kissed the Pentateuch, and the Gnostic who tore it up, were both foolish because both ignorant. These historic and prophetic details were undoubtedly true in their letter; but their chief use to the Christian Church, and the main object the Holy Spirit had in giving them to us, was the mystical meaning that lies hidden under the letter. Thus the earthly Pharaoh, the earthly Jerusalem, Babylon, or Egypt, are chiefly of importance to the Church from the fact that they are the allegories of heavenly truths.

Origen's third canon of scriptural exposition is this: "Whatever in holy Scripture seems trivial, useless, or false," (the Gnostics could not or would not see that parabolic narratives are most unjustly called false,) "is by no means to be rejected, but its presence in the divine record is to be explained by the fact that the divine Author had a deeper and more important meaning in it than appears from the letter. Such portions, therefore, must be taken and applied in a spiritual and mystical sense, in which sense chiefly they were dictated by Almighty G.o.d."

These three rules look simple now; they were all-important and not so simple then. It was by means of them, {496} and in the spirit which they indicate, that the great catechist led his hearers by the hand through the flowery paths of G.o.d's word, and in his own easy, simple, earnest style, so different from that of the rhetoricians, showed them the true use of the Old Testament. We hope it is not a fanciful idea, but it has struck us that, the difference of circ.u.mstances considered, there are few writers so like each other in their handling of holy Scripture as Origen and St. John of the Cross. Both treat of deep truths, and in a phraseology that sounds uncommon--the one because his hearers were intellectual Greeks, the other because he is professedly treating of the very highest points of the spiritual life. Both use holy Scripture in a fashion that is absolutely startling to those who are accustomed to rationalistic Protestantism, or to what may be called the domestic wife-and-children interpretation of the Evangelicals. Both bring forward, in the most unhesitating manner, the mystic sense of the inspired words to prove or ill.u.s.trate their point, and both mix up with their more abstruse disquisitions a large amount of practical matter in the very plainest words. From communion with both of them we rise full of a new sense of the presence and nearness of the Spirit of G.o.d, and of reverence for the minutest details of his Word. Finally, both the Greek father and the Spanish mystic interpret the ceremonial prescriptions, the history, the allusions to physical nature, and the incidents of domestic life that occur in the Old Testament, as if all these, however important in their letter, had a far deeper and more interesting signification addressed to the spiritual sense of the spiritual Christian.

To ill.u.s.trate Origen's principles of Scripture interpretation by extracts from his works would exceed our present limits, however interesting and satisfactory the task might be. Neither have we s.p.a.ce to notice his celebrated division of the meaning of the text into literal, mystical, and moral, a division he was the first to insist upon formally. To answer the objections of critics against both his principles and his alleged practice would also be a distinct task of great length. We must content ourselves with having briefly sketched and indicated his spirit. There are grave theological controversies too, as is well known, connected with his name; and on these we have had no thought of entering. The purpose of this and the preceding articles has not been dogmatical, but rather biographical. We have attempted to set forth on the one hand the personal character of this great man; on the other, the external circ.u.mstances by which that character was influenced, and through which it exercised influence on others.