§ 2. HOW ARTEMIDORUS REBUKED ME, SUPPOSING THAT I WAS IN DANGER OF BECOMING A CHRISTIAN
“ARTEMIDORUS TO ONESIMUS, HEALTH:
“So Onesimus thinks it possible to reconcile philosophy with the vilest and falsest of superstitions. Come now and let me demonstrate to you, if your ears are not yet altogether stopped against the truth, 1st, the blasphemy and absurdity of your new religion; 2nd, the uselessness of it; 3rd, the self-conceit of it; 4th, the uncertainty of it; 5th, the folly and puerility and degradation of the man who stoops his neck to the yoke of it.
“To begin, then, it is blasphemous. For it teaches that the Supreme God has sent down his only son in the shape of a man to deliver men from sin. What! are we to suppose that the Son of the Supreme can be made like unto a mortal? As if a convention of frogs around a puddle should croak among themselves debating which is the greater sin, and should say, ‘Behold, the Supreme God has sent down his only son, in the shape of a frog, verily born of a frog, to deliver all the race of frogs from their iniquities;’ or as if a number of worms should examine their souls and say ‘Alas, alas, we are fallen away from the divine image of the Supreme; and therefore our Father in heaven hath sent unto us his Son made in the image of a worm.’ Away with this impiety of likening the Architect of the Universe to sinful frogs and self-introspective worms! For if there be a God—which I do not myself believe, but if there be one—doubtless he is as little like a man as a frog or a worm, but infinitely superior to all his creatures, and transcending all their knowledge.
“But sin forsooth is a terrible evil, and the usefulness of this new religion consists in this, that it is to ‘take away sins.’ Which of the Greek or Roman philosophers, of any note, has recognized this absurd fiction of sin? It is a mere Jewish fantasy, unknown among other nations, except where it may have been insinuated by these vagrant proselytizers into the minds of a few women and children or imbecile dotards. Error there may be; but sin cannot be, whether there be gods or not. For if there be no gods there can be no sin; and if there be gods, who made all things, it is inconceivable that they should have made sin. Nor, if sin had any existence, could it be increased or diminished. For all rational people know that there neither were formerly, nor are there now, nor will there be again, more or fewer evils in the world than have always existed; the nature of all things, and the generation of all things, being always one and the same. And whereas these Christians profess, ‘We were sinners by nature, but the All-Merciful hath changed us’—they ought to be taught that no one even by chastisement, much less by merciful treatment, can effect a complete change in those who are sinners by nature as well as by custom. Hence this boast of removing sins is an imposture, and the religion that makes the boast is useless. Moreover what an insult is it to their superior god that these men should admit that he made them after a certain pattern and then changed his mind and desired to remake them! Or else they are forced to introduce a certain Satan, who by his devices, perverted men forsooth from the divine image, and so for a time overcame the superior god. But it is clear, even to a blind man, that a superior god, overcome, though but for a time, by an inferior god, is for that time, no longer superior, much less Supreme and All-Powerful. Therefore your religion is proved to be not only useless, but blasphemous.
“In the third place, mark the impudence of it and the self-conceit. For admitting that the superior god could send his son as a man, can we possibly believe that he would send him as a Jew, and not as a Greek, or as a Roman, or as a man of no particular nation? I have heard you laugh at Zeus in the comedy when he wakes up after his day’s debauch and despatches Hermes to the Athenians and Lacedæmonians to complain that they curtail his sacrifices and keep him on short commons. But why do you not laugh at your own superior god who, awakening after the slumber of many thousands of years, despatches his son to one single nation, and that the smallest and vilest and most contemptible upon earth? Moreover consider how exacting and impudent is your religion beyond all others. Heracles, Asclepius, and Romulus, claim not to be the only children of God, but leave room for others also. And how many others! Worship, if you will, him who was put to death upon the cross, but set not your selves above the Getæ who worship Zamolxis, or the Cilicians who worship Mopsus, or the Acrananians who pay divine honors to Amphilochus, or the Thebans who do the same to Amphiaraus, or the Lebedians who (in company with yourself) pay reverence to Trophonius. For how is your Syrian saviour better than the Theban, or the Cilician, or any other of the host of his rival saviours? Nay, he is inferior, if we are to trust that which is reported concerning him and them by the followers of each. For Christus did but show himself to men in times past, whereas these others, if you are to believe those who worship them, are still to be seen in human form in their temples, appearing with all distinctness.
“Next, as to the uncertainty of your new religion. Consider that just such another as your Christus, might come into the world to-morrow, and indeed such are continually coming forward in the market-place of every town in Asia, who are wont to say, ‘I am God, or I am the Son of God, or I am the Divine Spirit. I am come to save you because ye, O men, are perishing for your iniquities;’ and they persuade their dupes by promises or threats: ‘Blessed is he who does me homage; on all the rest I will send down eternal fire.’ And then the followers of such an one in a confident voice call on us saying, ‘Believe that he whom we preach is the Son of God, although indeed he died the death of a slave; yea, believe it the more on this very account.’ If these people bring forward a Christus every year, what is to be done by those who ‘seek salvation?’ Must they cast dice to decide to which of all the saviours they should pay homage?
“But lest you should imagine that I am entirely dependent upon you for my knowledge of this sect, understand that both here, and in Hierapolis, and in Ephesus, I have made search concerning it; and I am become an adept in their ridiculous jargon which speaks of ‘the narrow way’ and ‘the gates that open of themselves;’ and ‘those who are being slaughtered that they may live;’ and about ‘death made to cease in the world;’ and how ‘the Lord doth reign from the tree;’ and of ‘the tree of life’ and ‘the resurrection of life by the tree.’ All this talk of timber, forsooth, because their ringleader was not only slain on the cross of wood but also a maker of crosses, being a carpenter by trade! And I suppose if, instead of being crucified, he had been cast down a precipice, or into a pit, or hanged by the neck, or if, instead of being a carpenter by trade, he had been a leather-cutter, or a stone-mason or a worker in iron, then these absurd people would have exalted to the skies a ‘precipice of life,’ or a ‘pit of resurrection,’ or a cord of immortality,‘ or a ‘stone of blessing,’ or a ‘sacred leather.’ What child would not be ashamed of such babble as this!
“And this brings me to my last point, the shame and disgrace that any philosopher must needs bring both upon himself and upon philosophy, in stooping to so puerile a superstition. If you know not this, at least your new friends know it; for like the hyena, they seldom attack a full-grown man, but for the most part children or imbeciles; and to the best of their power they would destroy reason saying (like so many Metragurtæ, or Mithræ, or Sabbadii) ‘Do not examine, but believe,’ ‘Your faith will save you,’ ‘The wisdom of the world is evil, foolishness is good.’ For this cause, because they distrust the wise and sober, they prefer to decoy the young, saying to them, ‘If ye would attain to the knowledge of the truth, ye must leave your fathers and tutors and go with the women to the women’s apartments, or to the leather shop, or to the fuller’s shop, that he may there attain perfection.’ And they retail the sayings of these illiterate creatures as if they were repeating the precepts of a Socrates: ‘Simon the fuller, or Eleazar the leather cutter, or John the fisherman affirmed this, or that.’ I say nothing also of the immorality of a religion, which asserts that God will receive the unrighteous, if he humble himself, because of his unrighteousness, but he will not receive the righteous man who approaches him adorned with righteousness from the first. All these immoral theories, these lies, and myths, and vile superstitions, are taught by the Christians; and taught in the name of whom? Of one who died as a slave after being deserted (according to their own confession) by his most devoted followers. And taught for what cause? Simply because a phantom of him was seen after his death by a half frantic woman and some dozen of his other companions who conspired together for the purpose of deception. For my part, if I must needs give a reason why this most absurd religion attracts the multitude, I should say that it is because the multitude in their inmost heart, prefer falsehood to truth; and if I desired a new proof that the world is governed by chance, or by fate, and not by gods, I should discern it in the growth of this pernicious superstition. Farewell and return speedily to thyself.”
§ 3. OF MY REPLY TO ARTEMIDORUS
I was astonished at the passion of his letter; and though I was at this time neither a Christian nor likely to become one, the injustice of my friend moved me to say somewhat on the other side. My reply was to this effect:
“ONESIMUS TO ARTEMIDORUS, HEALTH.
“Your vehemence surprises me. That I am not, and shall not be, a Christian, must be clear from my previous letters; and that which I saw in Jerusalem has set me, even more than before, against the Jews and all things Jewish. Nevertheless, Artemidorus, I am far from agreeing with you in all your condemnation of this sect, which you seem to me, of set purpose to misunderstand.
“And why do you vent dogmas on me? How know you that God is unknowable? Were it not more seemly for a philosopher to conjecture, and not to know, where knowledge is impossible? Why, therefore, should a man be ashamed of conjecturing (in Plato’s company, I think), that the most perfect image of the Supreme God is neither a frog, nor a worm, but a righteous man? And if man be at all like unto the Supreme Goodness, then to be virtuous, I suppose is to be most like Him; and to be sinful is to be most unlike Him, a calamity from which the Supreme Being Himself might naturally desire to deliver mankind. However, I purpose not to argue with you, for I cannot think that you yourself believe in your own arguments, you who say that there is no difference between sin and error; or else I suppose you will be consistent and blame your slaves equally if Glaucus to-morrow commits theft or murder, and little Chresimus says that five and six make ten.
“But one word concerning Christus himself. It is but a few weeks ago that I heard you praise some Roman or other for saying that we ought to choose out some noble life, to be as it were a carpenter’s rule, by which we might straighten our own crooked life; why will you not praise me, then, if upon finding this Christus to be a truly great and noble man, I make his life the rule of mine? But you reply, ‘What do you know that is noble and heroic in him?’ I will answer this question when we meet. Meantime let me say that though I know but little, it is more than enough to assure me (for your letter proves it) that you know nothing of him. Do not again suppose that I am likely to be a Christian. I am prevented from this by arguments, and by feelings still more powerful than arguments. Yet I have at least this advantage, Artemidorus, over you, that I have not yet allowed prejudice unphilosophically to blind my eyes to the truth, and that, after studying the life of Christus, the store of the examples of great men, which you yourself have exhorted me to treasure up in my heart, is now enriched by the example of one more man, both good and great, who has been able, according to your own avowal (perchance by the mere memory of his goodness), to convert fullers and leather-cutters and thieves and adulterers into decent citizens. Farewell and be thyself.”
Although I spoke thus in defence of the Lord Jesus against the reproaches of Artemidorus, yet was I very far from following the Lord, yea and perhaps all the farther that I had learned to talk admiringly of him as of a man on a level with Socrates and Pythagoras and others. For this kind of admiration took up that place in my heart which should have been filled by faith or trust, and left no room for them. Nor indeed was I fit at that time to come to the Saviour because my eyes were not yet opened to discern my own sins so as to desire forgiveness; for the Saviour calls unto himself the “weary and heavy-laden,” but I was not yet weary enough nor felt as yet the burden of my sinfulness. And as for all those questionings of words, and traditions, and proofs, on which Artemidorus had set me, they had taught me indeed many new things about the Lord Jesus, and what other people believed concerning him, but they had not taught me the Lord himself, so that I might know him and love him and believe in him. And when at last I began to draw nigh unto him and to listen to his words and to meditate on them, behold, I was called away from my instructors in Antioch, and found afterwards no one like-minded who was willing to set forth before me the very words of the Lord; but, on the contrary, those of the brethren whom I met in Jerusalem cared not so much for the Lord as for the Law of Moses, and drove me back from him when I was desirous to draw near.
But why do I blame others when I was myself mainly to blame? For I erred in the pride of my heart, because I preferred the wisdom of the Greeks to the wisdom of the Lord Jesus. Therefore didst thou, O All-Wise, permit me to have my heart’s desire, and to serve the Greek Philosophy and to take that yoke upon my neck, that I might prove it and know it, whether that service were freedom indeed; and then didst thou make me to pass through the dark valley of affliction and didst suffer my wandering steps to stumble and sink in the mire of wickedness, to the intent that I might understand at last that the Wisdom of the Greeks, for all the beauty of it and the pleasant sound of it, has no power to lift up a drowning soul from the deep waters of sin.
§ 4. OF EUCHARIS AND OF MY LIFE AT ATHENS
Partly perhaps because Eucharis had lived with her father some years in Rome, (where women lead not so sequestered a life as in Asia and at Athens) and partly for want of slaves, and because her mother had died when she was still in tender years, but also in great measure because of the ability of her mind and the depth and extent of her knowledge, Eucharis was rather as a pupil and companion to Molon than as a daughter and housewife. Her grace and beauty were more than equal to her learning; but that by which she drew my heart to herself was the gentleness of her disposition and the singular modesty with which she bore her many accomplishments. For though she was the flower of the house and the delight of her old father, yet did she never in any wise strain or try his affection by caprice or humors; yea rather, by reason of his poverty, and because he had scarce a slave whom he could call his own, she, to whom all should have ministered, was content and glad to minister both to the old man and to his friends, and this with all willingness and aptness, and yet so modestly and quietly that her coming was as noiseless as the sunshine, and we only knew that she had departed because the brightness seemed to have passed out of the chamber. When I became the old man’s pupil, and in no long time the most intimate of all his pupils, I obtained also a share in the pleasure of her constant and familiar society; and, by degrees, gaining the liking of my old tutor, I was helped to the friendship of his daughter as well; and conceiving for her an affection more intimate than friendship, I was blessed at last, in return, with the certainty of her undivided love.
The time had now come for me to put the kindness of Philemon to the proof. From the first, he had treated me rather as a son than as a slave; and, whithersoever I had accompanied him, his carriage towards me had always been such as to lead even those who knew that I had once been a slave, to suppose that I had been long ago emancipated. So I straightway wrote to him, telling him of my affection for Eucharis, and how I had obtained the consent of Molon; and although I did not venture to express the hope that he would make me free at once, yet I besought him to make some promissory emancipation (after the custom common in Asia) that I might be free, on condition of serving him faithfully for such period as he might please to name. This limited request I made, rather for form’s sake than as supposing that he would stand upon conditions; for, remembering his constant kindness, I looked for nothing less than that he should wholly emancipate me at once. So having sent off this letter I confidently waited for an answer. Meanwhile I spent the time pleasantly in the society of Eucharis, and Molon, and my companions in learning; and I also took a great delight in the beauties and antiquities of Athens.
The dreams and visions with which I had been visited in Syria, and still more while I was tempest-tossed sailing to Peiræus, soon ceased after I had been some few days in the house of Molon. Each day brought with it some new thing to see or hear. Though the streets of Athens were not to be compared with those of Antioch, being small and mean and narrow and not evenly built, yet the public buildings and temples and theatres far surpassed anything I had seen in any city of Asia; and as for the statues of the gods, they fairly ravished the heart with their beauty. Moreover an edge was given to every pleasure of sight by the hearing of some history or legend; how Demosthenes spoke in yonder place of assembly, and in these groves and porches walked Aristotle amid his disciples, or Plato taught, or Socrates conversed, and here the tyrant was slain by Aristogeiton, and there Pericles pronounced the funeral oration over them that fell in the wars. Also, it so chanced that, besides the daily sight of the palæstra and the attendance at the lectures, the Dionysian festival with its customary plays came round while I was still at Athens. I had seen plays before in Asia, yet these so enchanted me with the beauty of the masks and choruses and the marvellous skill of the actors that I was well-nigh swallowed up with the glory of the drama; and finding occasion to be introduced to some of the actors, I frequented their society and heard them rehearse, and sometimes myself practised recitations in their presence, endeavoring to gain some knowledge of their art. Amid all these engaging pursuits and delights, the time passed as if upon wings; and in the evening the greatest delight of all, after the thousand pleasant distractions of the day, was to talk with Eucharis and her father concerning all that I had seen and heard.
We conversed together of all matters of art and letters and philosophy, and not seldom about my own life, the sorrows of the past, and what remained in the future; and, as was natural, my travels in Syria were not forgotten. Yet about these I spoke seldom and sparingly, lest I should be forced to make mention of the Christians; concerning whom at that time I was loth, I scarce know why, to say aught either for good or evil. But on the last day of our being together, some fate (as I then called it) decreed that I should no longer keep silence concerning them. It was after this manner. We had been conversing together, Molon and I, touching the Pythagoreans, by what bond of fellowship their society was in former times bound together, and by what cause that bond was broken. And thereupon I all unwittingly let fall some words (and repented as soon as they had been spoken) how a certain Christus, a Syrian, had founded a society, somewhat akin to the Pythagorean sect. Then Eucharis straightway would have give me some account of this Christus and his society; and when I made as if I had not heard her, and afterwards would have put her off on some pretext—saying that the matter was not worth her hearing, or that I knew not much of it for certain, and the like—she looking steadfastly upon me and perceiving (I suppose) that I was in some confusion, besought me not to hide from her anything that I knew. So I, not finding any escape, began to describe to her the new Brotherhood or Commonwealth or Christus, as I conceived it; and being carried onward I spoke more freely than I had intended, and summing up all that I had heard and some things that I had imagined, I described how wealth and violence were to have no more power in the world, and there was to be no more oppression, and sin was to be taken away by forgiveness; and those that the world counted great were to be cast down, and he that was humblest and made himself least was to be lifted up and, in a word, the most willing servant of all was to be king of all; and all the nations of the earth were to be as one Family, wherein Christus was to be the Elder Brother, and the Father was none other than the Supreme God; and how (as his followers averred) he had foretold that he should be slain, yea, and declared that he would willingly die, but that, overcoming death, he should manifest himself to his disciples after death, and be constantly with them; and how his disciples alleged that somewhat of this kind had indeed come to pass, for that many of them had seen him in apparitions by day or dreams by night; and lastly how (whatever error else there might be among this sect) this Christus of a truth appeared to have a marvellous power to turn the vile and wicked to lives of virtue and purity.
All this time Eucharis was rapt in thought; but I was so intent on the matter of my discourse that I noted not her countenance till I had well-nigh made an end of speaking; but when I perceived it, I broke off, saying that after all, it was but a Jewish superstition, and that as for these apparitions of Christus, they were but according to nature, if there were indeed any apparitions at all. But Eucharis, still musing and pondering, made no answer for a while, and at last asked my opinion concerning all dreams and visions, whether they came from the gods or no. I said, “No, but from natural causes.” Then replied Eucharis, “Yes, but if, as your Artemidorus says, the twin-stars that bring mariners help, come to us from natural causes, and yet you worship the gods that send them; may it not also be that some dreams and some visions, though coming to us—like air and light and the fruits of the earth—in the common course of nature, may nevertheless be sent to us by the immortal gods?” Then after a pause she added, “And you too, Onesimus, while studying the life of this Teacher, have you too been visited by him in your dreams?”
Fearing to be engaged in any further discourse concerning this matter I rose up to bid Molon farewell, alleging the lateness of the hour; but at that moment there came a knocking at the door, and presently appeared Chresimus, a slave of Philemon, bearing a letter for me, and with the letter this message by word of mouth, that the old man desired my most speedy return. I broke the seal at once, fearing that Philemon might be sick and nigh unto death. But the latter said not a word touching his health, nor did it give any answer to my request for freedom, neither “yes” nor “no,” only bidding me use all expedition to return because “something of great import” had taken place, concerning which he would gladly have speech with me before resolving further in the matter on which I had written to him. I wished to have tarried yet a few days in Athens, but Philemon’s command was express that I should return on the next day, and that Molon should excuse me to my friends; and, so saying, Chresimus went forth to make ready for our departure on the morrow. My heart sank within me as I turned to bid farewell to Eucharis, foreboding that I should henceforth live without her, and that life without her would be death. But she comforted me, saying that her memory must always live with me, as mine with her; and that we must take hope as our common friend; and clasping round my neck a little amulet, which I was ever to guard with the token of my brother Chrestus, “On thy brother’s gift,” she said, “there is written TRUST, and on mine there is HOPE; and with trust and hope we must needs do well; for as to love we need no assurance:” and with these words she bade me her last farewell.