Part 16 (1/2)
”Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking s.h.i.+ps, and praying hands,--”
was the unbelief and impiety of these hated Galileans, causes of offence which could only be expiated by the death of the guilty. ”Their enemies,” says Tertullian, ”call aloud for the blood of the innocent, alleging this vain pretext for their hatred, that they believe the Christians to be the cause of every public misfortune. If the Tiber has overflowed its banks, or the Nile has not overflowed, if heaven has refused its rain, if famine or the plague has spread its ravages, the cry is immediate, 'The Christians to the lions.'” In the first three centuries the cry of ”No Christianity” became at times as brutal, as violent, and as unreasoning as the cry of ”No Popery” has often been in modern days. It was infinitely less disgraceful to Marcus to lend his ear to the one than it has been to some eminent modern statesmen to be carried away by the insensate fury of the other.
To what extent is Marcus Aurelius to be condemned for the martyrdoms which took place in his reign? Not, I think, heavily or indiscriminately, or with vehement sweeping censure. Common justice surely demands that we should not confuse the present with the past, or pa.s.s judgment on the conduct of the Emperor as though he were living in the nineteenth century, or as though he had been acting in full cognisance of the Gospels and the stones of the Saints. Wise and good men before him had, in their haughty ignorance, spoken of Christianity with execration and contempt. The philosophers who surrounded his throne treated it with jealousy and aversion. The body of the nation firmly believed the current rumours which charged its votaries with horrible midnight a.s.semblies, rendered infamous by Thyestian banquets and the atrocities of nameless superst.i.tions. These foul calumnies--these hideous charges of cannibalism and incest,--were supported by the reiterated perjury of slaves under torture, which in that age, as well as long afterwards, was preposterously regarded as a sure criterion of truth.
Christianity in that day was confounded with a mult.i.tude of debased and foreign superst.i.tions; and the Emperor in his judicial capacity, if he ever encountered Christians at all, was far more likely to encounter those who were unworthy of the name, than to become acquainted with the meek, unworldly, retiring virtues of the calmest, the holiest, and the best. When we have given their due weight to considerations such as these we shall be ready to pardon Marcus Aurelius for having, in this matter, acted ignorantly, and to admit that in persecuting Christianity he may most honestly have thought that he was doing G.o.d service. The very sincerity of his belief, the conscientiousness of his rule, the intensity of his philanthrophy, the grandeur of his own philosophical tenets, all conspired to make him a worse enemy of the Church than a brutal Commodus or a disgusting Heliogabalus. And yet that there was not in him the least _propensity_ to persecute; that these persecutions were for the most part spontaneous and accidental; that they were in no measure due to his direct instigation, or in special accordance with his desire, is clear from the fact that the martyrdoms took place in Gaul and Asia Minor, _not in Rome_. There must have been hundreds of Christians in Rome, and under the very eye of the Emperor; nay, there were even mult.i.tudes of Christians in his own army; yet we never hear of his having molested any of them. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in addressing the Emperor, expresses a doubt as to whether he was really aware of the manner in which his Christian subjects were treated. Justin Martyr, in his _Apology_, addresses him in terms of perfect confidence and deep respect. In short he was in this matter ”blameless, but unfortunate.” It is painful to think that the venerable Polycarp, and the thoughtful Justin may have forfeited their lives for their principles, not only in the reign of so good a man, but even by virtue of his authority; but we must be very uncharitable or very unimaginative if we cannot readily believe that, though they had received the crown of martyrdom from his hands, the redeemed spirits of those great martyrs would have been the first to welcome this holiest of the heathen into the presence of a Saviour whose Church he persecuted, but to whose indwelling Spirit his virtues were due? whom ignorantly and unconsciously he wors.h.i.+pped, and whom had he ever heard of Him and known Him, he would have loved in his heart and glorified by the consistency of his n.o.ble and stainless life.
The persecution of the Churches in Lyons and Vienne happened in A.D.
177. Shortly after this period fresh wars recalled the Emperor to the North. It is said that, in despair of ever seeing him again, the chief men of Rome entreated him to address them his farewell admonitions, and that for three days he discoursed to them on philosophical questions.
When he arrived at the seat of war, victory again crowned his arms. But Marcus was now getting old, and he was worn out with the toils, trials, and travels of his long and weary life. He sunk under mental anxieties and bodily fatigues, and after a brief illness died in Pannonia, either at Vienna or Sirmium, on March 17, A.D. 180, in the fifty-ninth year of his age and the twentieth of his reign.
Death to him was no calamity. He was sadly aware that ”there is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen. Suppose that he was a good and wise man, will there not be at last some one to say of him, 'Let us at last breathe freely, being relieved from this schoolmaster. It is true that he was harsh to none of us, but I perceive that he tacitly condemns us.'... Thou wilt consider this when thou art dying, and wilt depart more contentedly by reflecting thus: 'I am going away _from a life in which even my a.s.sociates, on behalf of whom I have striven, and cared, and prayed so much, themselves wish me to depart_, hoping perchance to get some little advantage by it.' Why then should a man cling to a longer stay here? _Do not, however, for this reason go away less kindly disposed to them, but preserving thy own character, and continuing friendly, and benevolent, and kind_” And dreading death far less than he dreaded any departure from the laws of virtue, he exclaims, ”Come quickly, O Death, for fear that at last I should forget myself.” This utterance has been well compared to the language which Bossuet put into the mouth of a Christian soul:--”O Death; thou dost not trouble my designs, thou accomplishest them. Haste, then, O favourable Death!...
_Nunc Dimittis_.”
A n.o.bler, a gentler, a purer, a sweeter soul,--a soul less elated by prosperity, or more constant in adversity--a soul more fitted by virtue, and chast.i.ty, and self-denial to enter into the eternal peace, never pa.s.sed into the presence of its Heavenly Father. We are not surprised that all, whose means permitted it, possessed themselves of his statues, and that they were to be seen for years afterwards among the household G.o.ds of heathen families, who felt themselves more hopeful and more happy from the glorious sense of possibility which was inspired by the memory of one who, in the midst of difficulties, and breathing an atmosphere heavy with corruption, yet showed himself so wise, so great, so good a man.
O framed for n.o.bler times and calmer hearts!
O studious thinker, eloquent for truth!
Philosopher, despising wealth and death, But patient, childlike, full of life and love!
CHAPTER IV.
THE ”MEDITATIONS” OF MARCUS AURELIUS.
Emperor as he was, Marcus Aurelius found himself in a hollow and troublous world; but he did not give himself up to idle regret or querulous lamentations. If these sorrows and perturbations came from the G.o.ds, he kissed the hand that smote him; ”he delivered up his broken sword to Fate the conqueror with a humble and a manly heart.” In any case he had _duties_ to do, and he set himself to perform them with a quiet heroism--zealously, conscientiously, even cheerfully.
The principles of the Emperor are not reducible to the hard and definite lines of a philosophic system. But the great laws which guided his actions and moulded his views of life were few and simple, and in his book of _Meditations_, which is merely his private diary written to relieve his mind amid all the trials of war and government, he recurs to them again and again. ”Plays, war, astonishment, torpor, slavery,” he says to himself, ”will wipe out those holy principles of thine;” and this is why he committed those principles to writing. Some of these I have already adduced, and others I proceed to quote, availing myself, as before, of the beautiful and scholar-like translation of Mr.
George Long.
All pain, and misfortune, and ugliness seemed to the Emperor to be most wisely regarded under a threefold aspect, namely, if considered in reference to the G.o.ds, as being due to laws beyond their control; if considered with reference to the nature of things, as being subservient and necessary; and if considered with reference to ourselves, as being dependent on the amount of indifference and fort.i.tude with which we endure them.
The following pa.s.sages will elucidate these points of view:--
”The intelligence of the Universe is social. Accordingly it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one another.” (v. 30.)
”Things do not touch the soul, for they are eternal, and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.... _The Universe is Transformation; life is opinion_” (iv. 3.)
”To the jaundiced honey tastes bitter, and to those bitten by mad dogs water causes fear; and to little children the ball is a fine thing. Why then am I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced, or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog?” (vi. 52.)
”How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome and unsuitable, and immediately to be at tranquillity.”
(v. 2.)
The pa.s.sages in which Marcus speaks of evil as a _relative_ thing,--as being good in the making,--the unripe and bitter bud of that which shall be hereafter a beautiful flower,--although not expressed with perfect clearness, yet indicate his belief that our view of evil things rises in great measure from our inability to perceive the great whole of which they are but subservient parts.
”All things,” he says, ”come from that universal ruling power, either directly or by way of consequence. _And accordingly the lion's gaping jaws, and that which is poisonous, and every hurtful thing, as a thorn, as mud, are after-products of the grand and beautiful_. Do not therefore imagine that they are of another kind from that which thou dost venerate, but form a just opinion of the source of all.”
In another curious pa.s.sage he says that all things which are natural and congruent with the causes which produce them have a certain beauty and attractiveness of their own; for instance, the splittings and corrugations on the surface of bread when it has been baked. ”And again, figs when they are quite ripe gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circ.u.mstances of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. And _the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars_, and many other things--though they are far from being beautiful, if a man should examine them severally--still, because they are consequent upon the things which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and they please the mind; so that if a man should have a feeling and deeper insight about the things found in the universe there is hardly _one of those which follow by way of consequence_ which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure.” (iv. 2.)
This congruity to nature--the following of nature, and obedience to all her laws--is the key-formula to the doctrines of the Roman Stoics.