PROBLEMS OF THE AGE.
IV.
THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE CREED DEMONSTRATED IN THE CONSTITUTIVE IDEA OF REASON.
As soon as we open the eye of reason we become spectators of the creation. The word creation in this proposition is to be understood not in a loose and popular sense, but in a strict and scientific one. We intend to say, not merely that we behold certain existing objects, but that we behold them in their relation to their first and supreme cause. We are witnesses of the creative act by which the Creator and his work are simultaneously disclosed to the mind. This is the original constitutive principle of reason, its primal light preceding all knowledge and thought, and being their condition. It is the idea which contains in itself, radically and in principle, all possible development of thought and knowledge, according to the law of growth connatural to the human intelligence. It includes--God with all his attributes: the work of God or the created universe; and the relation between the two, that is, the relation of God to the universe as first cause in the order of creation, and final cause in the order of the ultimate end and destination of things. The different portions of this idea are inseparable from each other. That is, our reason cannot affirm God separately from the affirmation of the creative act, or affirm the creative act separately from the affirmation of God. The being of God is disclosed to us only by the creation, and the creation is intelligible to us only in the light given by the idea of God. [Footnote 89] God reveals himself to our reason as creator, and by means of the creative act. This is the limit of our natural light, and beyond it we cannot see anything by a natural mode, either in God, or in the universe.
[Footnote 89: A careful attention to the succeeding argument will show that by the idea of God given to intuition, is not meant the evolved idea, but the idea capable of evolution, or the idea of infinite, necessary being, which is shown to be the Idea of God by demonstration.]
The idea of God must not be confounded with that distinct and explicit conception which a philosopher or well-instructed Christian possesses. If the human mind possessed this knowledge by an original intuition, every human being would have it, without instruction, from the very first moment of the complete use of reason, and could never lose it. The idea of God is the affirmation of himself as pure, eternal, necessary being, the original and first principle of all existence, which he makes to the reason in creating it, and which constitutes the rational light and life of the soul. This constitutive, ideal principle of the soul's intelligence exists at first in a kind of embryonic state. The soul is more in a state of potentiality to intelligence, than intelligence in act. The idea of God is obscurely enwrapped and enfolded in the substance of the soul, imperfectly evolved in its most primitive acts of rational consciousness, and implicitly contained but not actually explicated in every thought that it thinks, even the most simple and rudimental. The intelligence must be educated, in order to bring out this obscure and implicit idea of God into a distinct conception in the reflective consciousness. This education begins with the action of the material, sensible world on the soul through the body, and specifically through the brain. The human soul was not created to exist and act under the simple conditions of pure spirit; but as is incorporated in a material body. The body is not a temporary habitation, like the envelope of a larva, but an integral part of man. The [{519}] intelligence is awakened to activity through the senses, and all its perceptions of the intelligible are through the medium of the sensible. The sensible world is a grand system of outward and visible signs representing the spiritual and intelligible world. Language is the science and art of subsidiary signs, the equivalents of the phenomena of the sensible world and of all that we apprehend through them; and forming the medium for communicating thought among men. For this reason, all language so far as it represents the conceptions of men concerning the spiritual word is metaphorical; and even the word spirit is a figure taken from the sensible world.
When the obscure idea is completely evolved, and the soul educated, through these outward and sensible media, the reflective consciousness attains to the distinct conception of God. This education may be imperfect, and the reflective consciousness may have but an incomplete conception expressed in language by an inadequate formula; but the idea is indestructible, and the mental conception of it can never be totally corrupted. This would be equivalent to the cessation of all thought, the annihilation of all conception of being and truth, and the extinction of all rational life in the soul. It is a mere negation of thought, which cannot be thought at all, and a mere non-entity. There is no such thing as absolute scepticism. Partial scepticism is possible. Revelation may be denied as to its complete conception, but the idea expressed in revelation cannot be utterly denied. The being of God may be denied, as to its complete conception, but not completely as to the idea itself. No sceptic or atheist can make any statement of his doubt or disbelief, which does not contain an affirmation of that ultimate idea under the conception of real and necessary being and truth. Much less can he enunciate any scientific formulas respecting philosophy, history, or any positive object, without doing so. Vast numbers of men are ignorant of the true and formed conception of God, but every one of them affirms the idea in every distinct thought which he thinks; and every human language, however rude, embodies and perpetuates it under forms and conceptions which are remotely derived from the original and infallible speech of the primitive revelation. Although the mass of mankind cannot evolve the idea of God into a distinct conception, and even gentile philosophy failed to enunciate this conception in an adequate form, yet when this conception is clearly and perfectly enunciated by pure theistic and Christian philosophy, reason is able to recognize it as the expression of its own primitive and ultimate idea. It perceives that the object which it has always beheld by an obscure intuition, is God, as proposed in the first article of the Christian formula. The Christian church, in instructing the uninstructed or partially instructed mind in pure theism, interprets to it, and explicates for it, its own obscure intuition. Thus it is able to see the truth of the being of God; not as a new, hitherto unknown idea, received on pure authority, or by a long deduction from more ultimate truths, or as the result of a number of probabilities; but as a truth which constitutes the ultimate ground of its own rational existence, and is only unfolded and disclosed to it in its own consciousness by the word and teaching of the instructor, who gives distinct voice to its own inarticulate or defectively uttered affirmation of God. So it is, that God affirms himself to the reason originally by the creative act which is first apprehended by the reason through the medium of the sensible, and interpreted by the sensible signs of language to the uninstructed. Thus we know God by creation, and the creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side.
It has been said above, that we cannot separate the creative act from God in the primitive idea of reason. It is not meant by this that reason has [{520}] an intuition of God as necessarily a creator. What is meant is, that the idea of God present to an intelligent mind distinct from God, presupposes the creative act affirming to it an object distinct from itself, and itself as distinct from the object. When the subject is conscious of this truth, "God affirms himself to me," there are two terms in the formula, "God," and "Me;" involving the third uniting term of the creative act. The perception of other existences is simultaneous with the perception of himself, but logically prior to it; and his first rational act apprehends the existence of contingent, created substances, as well as the being of the absolute, uncreated essence. The elements of God and creation are in the most ultimate and primitive act of reason, and therefore in its constitutive idea. The creation is the idea of finite essences in God externized by the Word who speaks them into existence. By the same Word, the intelligent, rational portion of creation is enlightened with the knowledge of this idea. It beholds God, as he expresses this idea in the creative act, and in no otherwise. It cannot see immediately, the necessity of his being, or, so to speak, the cause why God is and must be, but only the affirmation of this necessity in the creative act. But this affirmation is necessarily in conformity with the truth. It presents being as absolute, and creation as contingent, and therefore not necessary. False conceptions may not discriminate accurately between the two terms, being and existence; but when these false conceptions are corrected, and the idea brought fully into light, the very terms in which it is expressed clearly indicate God as alone necessary, creation as contingent, and the creative act as proceeding from the free will of the Creator.
God, and creation, are thus simultaneously affirmed in the creative act constituting the soul; although God is affirmed as first and creation second, in the logical order: God as cause and creation as effect; and although creation may be first distinctly perceived and reflected on, as being more connatural to the reflecting subject himself, and more directly in contact with his senses and reflecting faculties. The knowledge of God is limited to that which he expresses by the similitude of himself exhibited in the creation. Our positive conceptions of God in the reflective order are therefore derived from the imitations, or representations of the divine attributes in the world of created existences. An infinite, and, to natural powers, impassable abyss, separates us from the immediate intuition of the Divine Essence. The highest contemplative cannot cross this chasm; and the ultimatum of mystic theology is no more than the confession that the essence of God is unseen and invisible to any merely human intuition, unknown and unknowable by the natural power of any finite intelligence. We know ut Deus sit, sed non quid sit Deus--that God is, but not what he is. We know that God is, by the affirmation of his being to reason. [Footnote 90] We form conceptions that enable our reflective faculties to grasp this affirmation, by means of the created objects in which he manifests his attributes, and through which, as through signs and symbols, images and pictures, he represents his perfections.
[Footnote 90: That is, after we have demonstrated that which is involved in the idea of being.]
This is the doctrine of St. Paul, the great father of Christian theology.
"Quis enim hominum, scit quae sunt hominis, nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est? Ita, et quae Dei sunt, nemo cognovit, nisi Spiritus Dei."
"For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of man which is in him? So the things also that are of God, no one knoweth but the Spirit of God."
We understand this to mean, that God alone has naturally the immediate intuition of his own essence and of the interior life and activity of his own being within himself.
"Quod notum est Dei manifestum est in illis, Deus enim illis manifestavit. Invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt intellecta, conspiciuntar; sempiterna quoqne ejus virtus et divinitas." "That which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it to them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also and divinity."
That is, God affirms himself distinctly to the reason by the creative act, and simultaneously with the showing which he makes of his works.
"Videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate."
"We see now through a glass in an obscure manner, or more literally, in a riddle, parable, or allegory." [Footnote 91]
[Footnote 91: 1 Cor. ii. 11; Rom. i. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xiii. 12.]
That is, we understand the attributes and interior relations of God as these are made intelligible to our minds by analogies derived from created things, in which, as in a mirror, the image of God is reflected. The original and obscure idea of God given to reason in its constitution--but given only on that side of it which faces creation, including therefore in itself creation and its relation to the creator--may be represented in various forms. It must be distinctly borne in mind that our natural intuition is not an intuition of the substance or essence of the divine being, or an intuition of God by that uncreated light in which he sees himself and his works. God presents himself to the natural reason as Idea, or the first principle of intelligence and the intelligible, by the intelligibility which he gives to the creation. He does not disclose himself in his personality to the intellectual vision, but affirms himself to reason by a divine judgment. Our natural knowledge of God is therefore exclusively in the ideal order. The intuition from which this knowledge is derived may be called the intuition of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute the necessary, the true, the beautiful, the good, the first cause, the ultimate reason of things, etc. Real and necessary being, considered as the ground of the contingent and as facing the created intellect, adequately embraces and represents all. This intuition enters into all thought and is inseparable from the activity of the intelligent mind. The intellect always does and must apprehend, the real, which is identical with the ideal, in its thought; and when this reality or verity which it apprehends is reflected on, it always yields up two elements, the necessary and the contingent, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the conditioned. In apprehending God, we necessarily apprehend that the soul which apprehends and the creation by which it apprehends him, must exists. In apprehending creation, we apprehend that God must be in order that the creation may have existence. If we could suppose reason to begin with the idea of God, pure and simple, we could not show how it could arrive at any idea of the creature. Neither could we, beginning with the exclusive idea of the conditioned, deduce the idea of the absolute and necessary. We can never arrive by discursive reasoning, by reflection, by logic, by deduction or induction, at any truth, not included in the principles or intuitions with which we start. Demonstration discovers no new truth, but only discloses what is contained in the intuitions of reason. It explicates, but does not create. All that we know therefore about being and existences is contained implicitly in our original intuition.
Real being is the immediate object apprehended by reason, as St. Thomas teaches, after Aristotle. "Ens namque est objectum intellectus primum, cum nihil sciri possit, nisi ipsum quod est ens in actu, ut dicitur in 9 Met. Unde nec oppositum ejus intelligere potest intellectus, non ens." "For being is the primary object of the intellect, since nothing can be known but that which is being in act, as it is said in the 9 Met. Wherefore the intellect cannot [{522}] apprehend its opposite or not being." [Footnote 92] This appears to be plain. Either the intelligible which the intelligence apprehends is real or unreal, actual being or not being, entity or nonentity, something or nothing. If the intelligence apprehends the unreal, not being, not entity, no thing; it is not intelligence, it does not apprehend. These very terms are unstatable except as negations of a positive idea. I must have the idea of the real, or of being in act, before I can deny it. I must have the idea of my own existence before I can deny I existed a century ago. If I deny or question my present existence, I must affirm it first, before I deny it, by making myself the subject of a certain predicate, non-existence, or dubious existence.
[Footnote 92: Opus. cxiii. c. 1.]
There is only one door of escape open, which is the affirmation of an intuition of possible being. But what is the intuition of the possible without the intuition of the actual? How can I affirm that being is possible, unless I have an intuition of a cause or reason situated in the very idea of being which makes it possible, and if possible necessary and actual? The very notion of absolute being which is possible only, that is, reducible to act but not reduced to act, is absurd. For it is not reducible to act except by a prior cause which is then itself actual, necessary being, and ultimate cause. Potentiality or possibility belongs only to the contingent, and is mere creability [sic] or reducibility to act through an efficient cause. Wherefore we cannot apprehend possible existence except in the apprehension of an ultimate, creative cause. All that is intelligible is either necessary being, or contingent existence having its cause in necessary being. The abstract or logical world is only a shadow or reflection of the real in our own minds, and instead of preceding and conditioning intuition, it is its product.
The real object apprehended by reason has various aspects, but they are aspects of the same object. The intuition of one aspect of being is called the intuition of truth or of the true, including truth both in the absolute and the contingent order. Truth, in regard to finite things, is the correspondence of a conception to an objective reality. This finite reality cannot be apprehended as true without a simultaneous apprehension of necessary and eternal truth as its ground and reason. The mathematical truths, for instance, in their application to existing things, express the relations of finite numbers and quantities. They are, however, apprehended as necessarily and eternally true in an order of being independent of time, space, and all contingent existences; which order of being is absolute: the type of all existing things, the ultimate ground of truth, the intelligible in se.
The intuition of the beautiful, which is "the splendor of the true," is the intuition of a certain type and the conformity of existing things to it, causing a peculiar complacency in the intellect. This complacency is grounded on a judgment of the eternal fitness and harmony of things, that is, of an absolute and necessary reason of their order in eternal truth, that is, in absolute being.
The intuition of the good is an intuition of being considered as the necessary object of volition, and of existences as having in their essence a ground of desirableness or an aptitude to terminate an act of the will. Hence good and being are convertible terms. The absolute good is absolute being, and created good is a created existence conformed to the type of the good which is necessary and eternal.
The intuition of the infinite reduces itself in like manner to the intuition of absolute being accompanied by the intuition of the finite or relative with which it is compared. The absolute is being in its plenitude, the intelligible as comprehended by intelligence in its ultimate act, neither admitting of any increase. The finite is that which can be thought as capable of increase, but, increased indefinitely, never reaches [{523}] the infinite. The term infinite, as Fénélon well observes, though negative in form--expressing the denial of limitation--is the expression of a positive idea. Herbert Spencer proves the same in a luminous and cogent manner, even from the admissions of philosophers of the sceptical school of Kant. [Footnote 93] The intuition of the infinite gives us that which is not referable to an idea of a higher order, but is itself that idea to which all others are referred as the ultimate of thought and being. This intuition of the infinite always presents itself behind every conception, and makes itself the first element of every thought.
[Footnote 93: First Principles of a New System of Philosophy.]
This is clearly seen in the conceptions, commonly called the ideas, of space and time. The intuition of the infinite will never permit us to fix any definite, unpassable limits to these conceptions, but forces us to endeavor perpetually to grasp infinity and eternity under an adequate mental representation, which we cannot do. We must, however, if we are faithful to reason, recognize behind these conceptions of space that cannot be bounded and time that cannot be terminated either by beginning or end, the idea of being infinite as regards both, the reason of the possibility of finite things bearing to each other the relations of co-existence and successive duration.
The same intuition is at the root of the conception of the impossibility of limiting the divisibility of mathematical quantity. Whichever way we turn, the idea of the infinite presents itself. We can never reach the boundary of multiplicability, nor can we reach the boundary of divisibility, which is only another form of multiplicability. The conception of ideal space and number is rooted in the idea of the infinite power of God to create existences which have mathematical relations to each other. The positive multiplication or division of lines and numbers must always have a limit, but the radical possibility must always remain infinite, because it is included in the idea of God, which transcends all categories of space, time or limitation.
The intuition of cause is in the same order of thought. Necessary being and contingent existence cannot be apprehended in the same idea, without the connecting link of the principle of causation. It has been fully proved by Hume and Kant, that we cannot certainly conclude the principle of causation from any induction of particular facts. We always assume it, before we begin to make the induction. It is an a priori judgment that everything which exists must have a cause, and that all finite causes, receive their causality from a first cause or causa causarum. For every finite cause has a beginning, which comes from a prior cause, and an infinite series of finite causes being absurd, the idea of causation necessarily includes first cause, and is incapable of being thought or stated without it. Existence is not intelligible in itself, but in its cause, absolute being. Absolute being, though intelligible in itself, is not intelligible to human reason, except by the causative act terminated in existences, and making them intelligible. That is, being and existence, in the relation of cause and effect, are presented, and affirmed to reason, as the one complex object of its original intuition, and its constitutive idea.
This is the point of co-incidence of the a priori and a posteriori arguments, demonstrating the Christian theistic conception. They analyze the synthetic judgment of reason, and show its contents. The argument, a priori analyzes it on the side of being, showing what is contained in being, or ens. The argument a posteriori analyzes it on the side of existence, existentia. But either argument implicitly contains the other. It is impossible to reason on either the first or last term of the synthetic judgment, without taking in the middle term of causation, which implies the third term, existence, if you begin [{524}] with being, and the first term, being, if you begin with existence. The theistic conception is God Creator. The theologian who begins to prove the proposition, God creates the world, cannot deduce creation by showing what is contained in the pure and simple idea of necessary, self-existing being. The idea of God includes the creative power, but not the creative act, which is free, and cannot be deduced from the primitive intuition, unless God affirms it to the reason in that intuition; and even the creative power, or the possibility of creation, cannot be deduced by human reason from the idea of necessary being. Thus, the argument a priori really does not conclude the effect, that is, creation, by demonstrating it from the nature of the cause alone, but assumes it as known from the beginning.
In like manner, the theologian, who argues from the creation up to the creator, or from effect to cause, assumes that the creation is really created, and the effect of a cause exterior to itself; otherwise, the term existence could never conduct him to the term being.
We cannot demonstrate beyond what is given us in intuition, for all demonstration is a simple unfolding of the intuitive idea. The idea presents to us the creative act. If we reflect the causative or creative principle, whatever we logically explicate from it is indubitably true, because in conformity with the idea of first cause. If we reflect the terminus of the causative act, or creation, whatever we logically explicate from it respecting the nature of eminent cause is indubitably true, for the same reason. In both cases we reason validly, and demonstrate all that is demonstrable in the case. In the first instance, we demonstrate what is really contained in the idea of necessary being, and bring this idea--under the form of a distinct conception--face to face with the reflective reason. In the second instance, we demonstrate the order of the universe, and the manifestation in it of divine power, wisdom and goodness. We demonstrate that the theistic conception, or the conception of God and his attributes, contained in Christian Theology, is that which we know intuitively in the light of the primitive idea, logically explicated and represented by analogy in language. What we do not demonstrate, is the objective reality of the idea; for this is indemonstrable, as being the first principle of all demonstration. The idea is intelligible in itself, and illuminates the reason with intelligence. The office of logic and reasoning is to inspect and scrutinize the idea, to represent in reflection that which is intelligible. By this process the idea of necessary being evolves itself, necessarily, into the complete theistic conception of God, as is shown most amply in the treatises of theologians and religious writers. [Footnote 94] We will endeavor to sum up their results in as brief and universal a synopsis as possible.
[Footnote 94: It will be seen, therefore, that the arguments a priori and a posteriori demonstrating the Christian doctrine of God, as stated by the great Catholic Theologians, have not been impugned, but, on the contrary, vindicated from the misrepresentation of a more modern and less profound school of philosophers.]
Beginning at this point, real necessary being is in itself the intelligible; we lay down first that which is most radical and ultimate in the conception of the living, personal God and Creator; namely, absolute, infinite intelligence.
The absolute intelligible being must be absolute intelligent being. The intelligible is only intelligible to intelligence. What is the idea, or ideal truth or being, without an intelligent subject? What is infinite idea, or infinite object of thought, without infinite intelligent subject? That which is intelligible in itself necessarily, absolutely, and infinitely, must necessarily be the terminating object of intelligence equal to itself, that is infinite. This intelligence cannot be created, for then it would be finite. It must be included in absolute being. [{525}] Being includes in itself all that is. It therefore includes intelligence. It contains in itself all that is necessary to its own perfection. Its perfection as intelligible requires its perfection as intelligent. Absolute being is therefore infinitely intelligible and intelligent in its own nature and idea. It is the intelligible being which is intelligent being, and only intelligent spirit, which is in its very essence intelligence, can be necessarily and infinitely intelligible; for only self-existent infinite spirit has the absolute infinite activity necessary to irradiate the light of the intelligible. The light of the intelligible irradiates our created intelligence by an act which constitutes it rational spirit. This act must be the act of supreme, absolute, infinite intelligence. Whatever is in the creature, must be infinite in the creator. The world of finite, intelligent spirits can only proceed from an infinite, intelligent spirit, as first and eminent cause. The sensible and physical world also is apprehended by our reason as intelligible, and is intelligible, only in intelligent cause; which throws open the vast and magnificent field of demonstration from the order and harmony of nature. The intelligible in the order of the finite, is a reflection of the intelligible in the order of the infinite. The intelligible in the order of the infinite, is the adequate object of infinite intelligence. The intelligible in se is identical with being in its plenitude; and being in plenitude is necessarily infinite, intelligent spirit. [Footnote 95]
[Footnote 95: Because, if we conceive of any essence that it is not spiritual, we can conceive of one that is more perfect, namely, that which has these two attributes; and if we conceive of one that is finite in intelligence, we can conceive of one that is superior, or has greater plenitude of being, until we reach the infinite. The very conception of being in plenitude is being that excludes the conception of the possibility of that which is greater than itself.]
From this point the way is clear and easy to verify all that theologians teach respecting the essential attributes of God. We have merely to explicate the idea of intelligent spirit possessing being in its plenitude. All that has being--that is, every kind of good and perfection that the mind can apprehend in the divine essence by means of creatures--must be attributed to God in the absolute and infinite sense. We cannot grasp plenitude of being fully under one aspect or form. We are obliged to discriminate and distinguish qualities or attributes of being in God. But this is not by the way of addition or composition of these attributes with the idea of the simple essence of God. It is by the way of identification. Thus, being is identified with the intelligible and with intelligence. All the attributes of God are identified with each other and with his being.
This is what is meant by saying that God is most simple being, ens simplicissimum. The pure and simple idea of being contains in itself every possible predicate: hence we can predicate nothing of it that can add to it, or combine with it, to make a composite idea greater than the idea of being in its simplicity. It comes to the same, when we say that God is most pure act, actus purissimus, which merely ascribes to him actual being in eternity to the utmost limit of possibility, or to the ultimate comprehensibility of the idea of being by the infinite intelligence of God.
In the first place, then, we demonstrate the unity of God. There can be but one infinite being. For the intelligible being of God is the adequate object of his intelligence. Therefore there is no other infinite, intelligible object of infinite intelligence.
God is absolutely good. For his own being is the adequate object of his volition, and the definition of good is adequate object of volition, so that being is identical with good.
God is all-powerful. For there is no intelligible idea of power, which transcends the knowledge God has of his own being as including the ability to create.
God is infinitely holy. For the intellect and the will of God terminate upon the same object, that is, upon his [{526}] own being, and consequently agree with each other; and the very notion of the sanctity of God is the perfect harmony of his intellect and will in infinite good.
God is immutable. For any change or progression implies a movement toward the absolute plenitude of being, and is inconsistent with the necessary and eternal possession of this plenitude.
God is infinite and eternal; above all categories of limitation, succession, time or space; for this is only to say that he is most simple being, and most pure act.
God is absolute truth and beauty, for these are identical with being.
He is infinite love, for he is the infinite object of his own intelligence comprehended as the term of his own volition.
For the same reason, he is infinite beatitude, since beatitude simply expresses the repose and complacency of intelligence and will in their adequate object and is identical with love.
God is an ocean of boundless, unfathomable good and perfection, to whom everything must be attributed that can increase our mental conception of his infinite being. We can go on indefinitely, explicating this conception, and every proposition we can make which contains the statement of anything positive and intelligible, is self-evident; requiring no separate proof, but merely verification as truly identifying something with the idea of being. "We shall say much and yet shall want words; but the sum of our words is, HE IS ALL." [Footnote 96] Nevertheless, our reason is not brought face to face with God by any direct intuition or vision of his intimate, personal essence. Every word, every conception, every thought expressing the most complete and vivid act of the reflective consciousness on the idea of God is derived from the creation, and gives only a speculative and enigmatical representation of the being of God itself, as mirrored in the perfections of created, contingent existences. Though we see all things by its light, the sun itself, the original source of intelligible light, is not within our rational horizon. The creation is illuminated by it with the light of intelligibility, and by this light we become spectators of the creative act of God.
[Footnote 96: Ecclus. xiiii. 99.]
The creative act is not a transient effort of power, but a durable, continuous, ever-present act, by which God is always creating the universe. The creation has its being not in itself but in God. All that we witness therefore and come in contact with, is but the radiation of light, life, truth, beauty, happiness; physical, mental, and spiritual existence; from God, the source of being. We see the architecture which proceeds from his mighty designs; we behold the infinitely varied and ever shifting pictures and sculptures in which he embodies his infinite idea of his own beauty. We hear the harmonies that echo his eternal blessedness; the colossal machinery of worlds plays regularly and resistlessly by the force which he communicates around us; his signs, emblems, and hieroglyphics are impressed on our senses; the perpetual affirmation of his being is always making itself heard in the depth of our reason. The perpetual influx of creative force from him is every instant giving life and existence to our body. We breathe in it, and see by it, and move through its energy. It is every instant creating our soul. When our soul first came out of nothing into existence, it was created by a whisper of the divine word, which simultaneously gave it existence and the faculty of apprehending that whisper, by which it was made. God whispered in the soul the affirmation of his own being as the author of all existence. This whisper is perpetual, like the creative act. It constitutes our rational life and activity. By its virtue we think and are conscious. It concurs with every intellectual act. When the soul is stillest and its contemplation of truth the most profound, then it is most distinctly heard; but it cannot be drowned by any [{527}] tumult or clamor. "In God we live, and move, and have our being." We float in the divine idea as in an ocean. It meets us everywhere we turn. We cannot soar above it, dive beneath it, or sail in sight of its coasts. It is our rational element, in which our rational existence was created, in which it was made to live, and we recognize it in the same act in which we recognize our own existence. It is necessary to the original act of self-consciousness, and enters into the indestructible essence of the soul, as immortal spirit.
The Creed, therefore, when it proposes its first article to a child who is capable of a complete rational act, only brings him face to face with himself, or with the idea of his own reason. It gives him a distinct image or reflection of that idea, a sign of it, a verbal expression for it, a formula by which his reflective faculty can work it out into a distinct conception. As soon as it is fairly apprehended, he perceives its truth with a rational certitude which reposes in the intimate depths of his own consciousness. It is true that he cannot arrange and express his conceptions, or distinctly analyze for himself the operations of his own mind, in the manner given above. This can only be done by one who is instructed in theology. But although he is no theologian or philosopher, he has nevertheless the substance of philosophy or sapientia, and of theology, in his intellect; deeper, broader and more sublime than all the measurements and signs of metaphysicians can express. We have taken the child as creditive subject in this exposition, in order to exhibit the ultimate rational basis of faith in its simplest act, and, so to speak, to show its genesis. But we do not profess to stop with this simple act which initiates the reason in its childhood into the order of rational intelligence and faith; rather we take it as only the terminus of starting in the prosecution of a thorough investigation of the complete development which the intelligent faith unfolds in the adult and instructed reason of a Christian fully educated in theological science. Hence we have given the conception God in its scientific form, but as the scientific form of that which is certainly and indubitably apprehended in its essential substance by every mind capable of making an explicit and complete act of rational faith in God as the creator of the world. In the language of Wordsworth, "The child is father of the man." A complete rational act in a child has in it the germ of all science. He is as certain that two and two make four, as is the consummate mathematician. A complete act of faith in a child is as infallible as the faith of a theologian, and has in it the germ of all theology. He is able to say "Credo in Deum" with a perfect rational certitude; and this conclusion is the goal toward which the whole preceding argument has been tending.
But here we are met with a difficulty. The principle of faith cannot itself fall under the dominion of faith, or be classed with the credenda, which we believed on the veracity of God. How then can Credo govern Deum. The necessity for an intelligible basis for faith has been established, and this basis located in the idea of God evolved into a conception demonstrable to reason from its own constitutive principles. It would therefore seem that instead of saying "I believe in God," we ought to say "I know that God is, and is the infinite truth in himself, therefore I believe," etc. only on you.
This formula does really express a process of thought contained in the act of faith, and implied in the signification of Credo. Credo includes in itself intelligo. Divine faith presupposes, and incorporates into itself, human intelligence and human faith, on that side of them which is an inchoate capacity for receiving its divine, elevating influence. Hence the propriety of using the word Credo, leaving intelligo understood but not expressed. The symbol of faith is not intended to express any object of our knowledge, [{528}] except as united to the object of faith. For this reason it does not discriminate in the proposition of the verity of the being of God, that which is the direct object of intelligence, but presents it under one term with those propositions concerning God which are only the indirect object of intelligence through the medium of divine revelation. When we say Credo in Deum, if we consider in Deum only that which is demonstrable by reason concerning God, the full sense of Credo is suspended, until the revelation of the superintellible [sic] s introduced in the succeeding articles. The term Deum terminates Credo, only inasmuch as it is qualified by the succeeding terms; that is, inasmuch as we profess our belief in God as the revealer of the truths contained in the subsequent articles.
The foregoing statement applies to the use of the word Credo in relation with Deum in the first article of the Creed, taking Credo in its strictest and most exclusive sense of belief in revealed truths which are above the sphere of natural reason. In addition to this, it can be shown that there is a secondary and subordinate reason on account of which the mental apprehension of that which is naturally intelligible in God is included under the term faith, taken in a wider and more extensive sense.
This intelligible order of truth, or natural theology, was actually communicated to mankind in the beginning, together with the primitive revelation. We are, therefore, instructed in it, by the way of faith. The conception of God, and the words which communicate to us that conception, and enable us to grasp it, come to us through tradition, and are received by the mind before its faculties are fully developed. We believe first, and understand afterward; and the greater part of men never actually attain to the full understanding of that which is in itself intelligible, but hold it confusedly, accepting with implicit trust in authority, many truths which the wise possess as science. Moreover, the term faith is often used to denote belief in any reality which lies in an order superior to nature and removed from the sphere of the sensible, although that reality may be demonstrable from rational principles. In a certain sense we may say that this region of truth is a common domain of faith and reason. But we have now approached that boundary line where the proper and peculiar empire of faith begins, and like Dante, left by his human guide on the coasts of the celestial world, we must endeavor under heavenly protection to ascend to this higher sphere of thought.
From Once a Week.
THE KING AND THE BISHOP.
Before Roskilde's sacred fane,
(The first the land has known.)
Attended by his courtier train,
And decked, as on his throne,
In costly raiment, glittering gay
Beneath the noon-day sun;
All fresh and fair, as though the day
Had seen no slaughter done--
[{529}]
As though the all-beholding eye
Of that Omniscient Deity,
Whom, turning from the downward way
His heathen fathers trod,
He guided by a purer ray,
Hath chosen for his God--
Had seen no darker, dreader sight,
Twixt yester morn and yester night,
Beheld by his approving eye,
Who, now, would draw his altar nigh;
Ay, fresh and fair as to his soul
No taint of blood did cling,
As though in heart and conscience whole,
Stands Swend, the warrior-king.
On his, as on a maiden's cheek,
(Though bearded and a knight,)
The royal hues of Denmark speak [Footnote 97]--
The crimson and the white;
But mark ye how the angry hue
Keeps deepening, as he stands,
And mark ye, too, the courtly crew,
With lifted eyes and hands!
[Footnote 97: The Danish king, Swend, soon after his entrance into the Christian church, slew some of his "jaris" without a trial, and, on presenting himself, after the commission of this crime, at the portal of the newly-built cathedral of Roskilde, in Zealand, found it barred by the pastoral staff of the English missionary and bishop who had converted him. After receiving the rebuke given in the poem, and forbidding his attendants to molest the bishop, he returned whence he came, and shortly after, made his reappearance in the garb of a penitent, when he was received by the prelate, and, after a certain time of penance, absolved; after which they became fast friends.]
Across the portal, low and wide,
A slender bar from side to side.
The bishop's staff is seen;
And holding it, with reverent hands
And head erect, the prelate stands,
A man of stately mien.
"Go back!" he cries, and fronts the king.
Whilst clear and bold his accents ring
Throughout the sacred fane--
And Echo seems their sound to bring
Triumphant back again--
"Go back, nor dare, with impious tread,
Into the presence pure and dread.
Thy guilty soul to bring,
Impenitent--O thou, who art
A murderer, though a king!"
A murmur, deepening to a roar,
'Mid those who were clust'ring round the door:
A few disjointed but eager words--
A sudden glimmer of naked swords;
And the bishop raised his longing eyes,
In speechless praise, to the distant skies;
[{530}]
For he thought his labor would soon be o'er.
And his bark at rest, on the peaceful shore;
And he pictured the crown, the martyrs wear,
Floating slowly down, on the voiceless air;
Till he almost fancied he felt its weight
On his brows--as he stood, and blessed his fate.
With a calm, sweet smile on his face, he bowed
His reverend head to the raging crowd--
(Oh! the sight was fair to see!)
And "Strike!" he cried, whilst they held their breath.
To hear his words; "For I fear not death
For him who has died for me!"
King Swend looked up, with an angry glare,
At the dauntless prelate, who braved him there,
Though he deemed his hour near;
And he saw, with one glance of his eagle eye.
That that beaming smile and that bearing high
Were never the mask of fear!
Right against might had won the day;--
And he bade them sheathe their swords; then turned,
Whilst an angry spot on his cheek still burned,
From the house of God away.
Ere the hour had winged its flight, once more,
Behold! there stood, at the temple door,
A suppliant form, with its head bowed down.
And ashes were there, for the kingly crown;
And the costly robes, which had made erewhile
So gallant a show in the sunbeams' smile.
Had been cast aside, ere its glow was spent,
For the sackcloth worn by the penitent!
The bishop came down the crowded nave;
His smile was bright, though his face was grave,
He paused at the portal, and raised his eyes.
Yet another time to those sapphire skies,
But he thought not now, that the look he cast
To that radiant heaven would be his last;
And he thanked his Master again--but not
For the martyrdom that should bless his lot;
For the close to the day of life, whose sun
Was to set in blood, on his rest was won:
Far other than this was his theme of praise,
As he murmured: "O thou, in thy works and ways
As wonderful now as when Israel went
Through the sea, which is Pharaoh's monument:
Though I pictured death in the flashing steel,
And I looked for the glory it should reveal,
Yet oh! if it be, as it seems to be,
Thy will, that I stay to glorify thee,
To add to thy jewels, one by one;
Then, Father in heaven, that will be done!"
[{531}]
Then on the monarch's humbled brow
The kiss of peace he pressed.
And led him, as a brother, now,
A little from the rest--
"Here, as is meet, thy penance do,
And as thy penitence is true,
So God will make it light!
Then mayst thou work with me, that thus
The light that he hath given us
May rise on Denmark's night!"
M. T. F.
Translated from Le Correspondant
THE YOUTH OF SAINT PAUL.
By L'ABBE LOUIS BAUNARD.
At the time when Jesus Christ came into this world, the Jews were scattered over the whole surface of the earth. From the narrow valley in which their religious law had confined them for the designs of God, these people of little territory had overflowed into all the provinces of the Roman empire. Captivity had been the beginning of their dispersion. Numerous Israelitish colonists, who had formerly settled in the land of their exile, were still existing in Babylon, in Media, even in Persia; others had pushed their way further on to the extreme east, even as far as China. Finally, under the reign of Augustus, they are found everywhere. [Footnote 98]
[Footnote 98: V. Remond "Histoire de la Propagation du Judaisme," Leipzig, 1789 Grost, "De Migrationibus Hebr. extra patriam," 1817. Jost, "Histoire des Israélites depuis les Machabées," etc.]
It was the solemn hour in which, according to the parable of the gospel, the Father had gone forth to sow the seed. The field, "that is the world," was filled with it already, and the time was not far distant when the Lord, "seeing the countries ripe for the harvest," would send out his journeymen to reap, and gather the wheat into his barns.
One of these families "of the dispersion," as they were styled, inhabited the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. Of this once famous city nothing now remains but a few ruins, and the modern Tarsous falls vastly short of that high rank which the ancient Tarsus held among the cities of the East. Even at present, however, it is called the capital city of Caramania. Situated on a small eminence covered over with laurels and myrtles, at a distance of about ten miles from the Mediterranean sea, it is washed by the rapid and cold waters of the Kara-sou, and its population during winter amounts to more than thirty thousand souls. In summer it is almost a desert. Chased away by the burning heats which prevail at this season from the sea-coast, men, women and children abandon their homes and emigrate to the surrounding heights, where they fix their camp under lofty cedars, which afford them shelter, shade, and coolness. [Footnote 99]
[Footnote 99: P. Belon, "Voyages"--cité dans Malte-Brun.]
It were difficult to draw, from what it is at present, an exact picture of the ancient Tarsus. Instead of the sad, disconsolate look of a Turkish city, there was then in it the movement, the ardor, the splendor of the Greek city, proud of her politeness and her recollections. According to Strabo, Tarsus was a colony of Argos. As a proof of the high state of its culture, the Greeks related that the companions of Triptolemus, perambulating the earth in search of Io, stopped at that place, charmed by its richness and beauty. Others traced its origin further back, to the old kings of Assyria. At one of the gates of Tarsus there had been seen for a long time the tomb of Sardanapalus with the following inscription under his statue: "I, Sardanapalus, have built Tarsus in one day. Passenger, eat, drink, and give thyself a good time; the rest is nothing." [Footnote 100] History, however, has written there other remembrances. It was not far from Tarsus that the intrepid Alexander had nearly perished in the icy waters of the Cydnus. It was there upon the sea, at the entrance of the river, that the memorable interview and the fatal alliance of Antony and Cleopatra had just taken place in the midst of voluptuous feasts. The wise providence that provides reparations for all our pollutions, had chosen the city of a Sardanapalus and of an Antony to be the cradle of St. Paul.
[Footnote 100: Strabo, liv, xvi.]
For the rest, Tarsus was a city perfectly well built and of remarkable beauty. From the fertile hill on which she rested, she could contemplate the direction toward the north and west of an undulating line, which traced rather than hid the horizon. This was the outline of the first ascending grades, of the mountains of Cilicia. At a short distance from the city the waters of numerous living springs met together and formed a rapid river, deeply enchased, which soon reached and refreshed that portion of her which the historians call the Gymnasium, and we would name the "Quarter of the schools." Further on there was a harbor of peculiar and distinctly marked outline. Philostratus has described in a striking and picturesque manner the different habitudes of the men of traffic and of the literary class, representing "the former as slaves to avarice, the latter to voluptuousness. All their talk," says he, "consisted in reviling, taunting, and railing at each other with sharp-biting words: whence one might have easily seen that it was only in their dress they pretended to imitate the Athenians, but not in prudence and praiseworthy habits. They did nothing else all day but walk up and down on the banks of the river Cydnus, which runs across this city, as if they were so many aquatic birds, passing their time in frolicsome levities, inebriated, so to speak, with the pleasing delectation of those sweet-flowing waters." [Footnote 101]
[Footnote 101: Philostrate, "De la Vie d'Apollonius Thyanéan traduction de Blaise de Vigenère," liv. iv. ch. ix. p. 103,104. Paris, 1611.]
Such, then, was the city in which a vast multitude of young men, elegant, voluptuous and witty, crowded and pressed each other like a swarm of bees, for Tarsus was the most brilliant intellectual focus of that time and country. The following is the description of it, given by Strabo: "She carries to such a height the culture of arts and sciences, that she surpasses even Athens and Alexandria. The difference between Tarsus and these two cities is, that in the former the learned are almost all indigenous. Few strangers come hither; and even those who belong to the country do not sojourn here long. As soon as they have completed the course of their studies in the liberal arts, they emigrate to some other place, and very few of them return to Tarsus afterward."
The best masters regarded it as an honor to teach in the schools of this city of arts. There were in it such grammarians as Artemidorus and Diodorus; such brilliant poets and professors [{533}] of eloquence as Plutiades and Diogenes; such philosophers of the sect of the stoics as the two Athenodori; of whom the first had been Cato's friend in life, and his companion in death, and the second had been the instructor of Augustus, who, in token of gratitude, appointed him governor of Tarsus. For, it was the fate of this learned city to be under the administration of men of letters, and of philosophers. She had been ruled by the poet Boethus, the favorite of Antony. Nestor, the Platonic philosopher, had also governed her. It is easily seen, however, that such men are better prepared for speculations in science, than for the administration of public affairs, so that, in their hands, Tarsus felt more than once those intestine commotions, of which cities of schools have never ceased to be the theatre.
It was in this city, and under these circumstances, almost upon the frontiers of Europe and Asia, in the very heart of a great civilization, that St. Paul was born, about the twenty-eighth year of Augustus' reign, two years before the birth of Christ. [Footnote 102] He himself informs us that he was a Jew of the tribe of Juda, [Footnote 103] born in the Greek city of Tarsus, and a Roman citizen: so that by parentage, by education, and by privilege, he belonged to the three great nations who bore rule over the realm of thought and of action. The grave historian [Footnote 104] who exhausts the catalogue of the illustrious men of Tarsus, never suspected what man--very differently illustrious--had just appeared there, and of what a revolution he was to become the zealous defender as well as the martyr.
[Footnote 102: This would be so, if St. Paul lived to the age of sixty-eight years, as is stated in a Homily of St. John Chrysostom, vol. vi. of his complete works.]
[Footnote 103: Benjamin. See Rom. xi 1.--Ep. C. W.]
[Footnote 104: Strabo, liv. xiv]
The Jewish origin of the Doctor of Nations was, as is easily understood, of vast importance for fulfilment of the designs of God. The religion of Jesus Christ proceeds from Judaism, continues and perfects it. It was, therefore, well worthy of the wisdom of God that his apostles should belong to the one as well as to the other covenant, and that he should thus extend his hand to all ages, as he was to extend it to all men.
This purity of origin was so considerable a privilege, that it is by it one may account to one's self for the rage and fury with which the Ebionite Jews in the first age of our era labored to deprive him of it. Adhering to the last rubbish of the law of Moses, and, for this reason, irreconcilable enemies to the great apostle of the Gentiles, these sectarians maliciously invented the following fable, according to the relation of St. Epiphanius. [Footnote 105] "They say that he was a Greek, that his father was a Greek as well as his mother. Having come to Jerusalem in his youth, he had sojourned there for a certain time. Having there known the daughter of the high priest, he had desired to have her for his wife; and to this end he had become a Jewish proselyte. As he could not, however, obtain the young maiden even at that price, he had conceived a burning resentment, and commenced to write against the circumcision, the sabbath, and the law." It seems to me that St. Epiphanius confers too great an honor upon this romance, by merely exposing and refuting it.
[Footnote 105: "Adv. Haeret" liv. ii. t. i. p. 140, No. xvi.]
I know on what foundation St. Jerome affirms, on the contrary, that St. Paul was a Jew not only by descent, but also by the place of his birth. According to him, St. Paul's parents dwelt in the small town of Girchala in Juda, when the Roman invasion compelled them to seek for themselves a home somewhere else. Therefore they took their son, yet an infant, with them, and fled to Tarsus, where they remained, waiting for better days. [Footnote 106]
[Footnote 106: "De Viris Illustrib. Catalog. Script. Eccles." t. i. p.849]
The declaration of St. Paul himself, however, allows no doubt to be [{534}] entertained as to his origin. Born in Tarsus, he was circumcised there on the eighth day after his birth, and received the name of Saul, which he exchanged afterward for that of Paul, probably at the time when Sergius Paulus had been converted by him to the Christian faith.
His parents failed not to instruct him in the law; for, how distant soever from their mother country might have been the place in which they lived, the Jews did not cease to render to the God of their fathers worship, more or less pure, but faithful. Like all other great cities of the Roman empire, Tarsus had her synagogue where the Law was read, and where the religious interests of the Israelitic people were discussed. It was there that prayers were solemnly made with the face turned toward the holy city: for there was no temple anywhere but in Jerusalem, whither numerous and pious caravans from all the countries of Asia went every year to celebrate in Sion the great festivals of the Passover and Pentecost, to pay there the double devotion, and present their victims. The bond of union was thus fastened more firmly than ever between the colonies and the metropolis, in which great things were soon expected to take place. Jerusalem was not only the country of memorials, but to Jewish hearts she was also the land of hope, and every eye was turned toward the mountain whence salvation was to come.
Saul grew up in Tarsus. We must not seek in the youth of Saul for those signs which reveal in advance a great man. In individuals of this sort, devoted to the work of God, all greatness is from him, the instrument disappearing in the hand of the divine artificer. Whatever illusion iconography may have impressed us with upon the point, Saul did not carry, either in stature of body or in beauty of features, the reflection of his great soul, and at first sight the world saw in him only an insignificant person, as he himself testifies, "aspectus corporis infirmus," Beside, he was a man of low condition, exercising a trade, and earning his daily bread by the sweat of his face. The rabbinical maxims said that, "not to teach one's son to work, was the same thing as to teach him to steal." Saul was, therefore, a workman, and everything leads us to believe that he, who was to carry light to nations, passed, like his master, the whole of his obscure youth in hard work. He made tents for the military camps and for travellers. This was an extensive industry in the East; and a great trade in these textures was carried on in Tarsus with the caravans starting from the ports of Cilicia and journeying though Armenia, Persia, the whole of Asia Major, and beyond. [Footnote 107]
[Footnote 107: These conjectures and regard to St. Paul's birth and parentage are not founded on any solid basis, but on the contrary appear to be quite improbable. The author's citation from the Rabbinical maxims overturns the argument which he derives from the fact that St. Paul practised a handicraft. All Jews, whatever their birth or wealth, learned a trade. St. Paul's knowledge of the tent-maker's trade, therefore, does not prove that he was of low birth, or belonged to the class of artisans. On the contrary, his possession of the privileges of Roman citizenship, which he must have inherited, and which could only have been conferred on account of some great service rendered to the state by one of his ancestors, together with his thorough education, go to show that he belonged to one of the most eminent Jewish families of Tarsus.--Ed. C.W.]
Manual occupation, however, did not absorb the whole time, nor the whole soul of the young Israelite; since the tradition of the fathers points to him as frequenting the schools of Tarsus, and joining that studious swarm of young civilians who crowded there to attend the lectures delivered by the professors of science and literature. [Footnote 108] His Epistles retain some traces of these his first studies. In these he quotes now and then words of the ancient poets, Menander, Aratus, Epimenides. He expressed himself with equal facility in the three great languages of the civilized world, the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin; and it is manifest that he knew the secrets of the art of eloquence, for which he [{535}] retained in later times only a magnanimous contempt. He was also initiated in philosophy, under the teachers whom I have named already. Besides Stoicism, whose patrons and success in Tarsus I have mentioned, Platonism flourished there under the protection of Nestor, a man of great distinction, who had been the preceptor of that illustrious youth Marullus, who was sung by Virgil, and bewailed by Augustus. Is it not, at this period, that a young man of Tyana, himself destined to acquire a strange celebrity, came to Tarsus in his fourteenth year, and passionately embraced there the precepts of Pythagorean doctrine? The uncertainties of the history, which was written by Philostratus afterward, do not permit us to say anything definite upon this point; but one cannot help thinking that it is from the same place, and at the same time, that those two extremes of the power of good and of the power of evil have set out--Apollonius of Tyana, and Saint Paul.
[Footnote 108: Sancte Hieronymi, t. vi. 322.--"Comm. Epist. ad Galat.">[
Finally, not far from there the oriental doctrines drove to their several beliefs respectively the multitudes of Asia, and invaded also the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Islands. Thus Parsism on the one hand, and Hellenism on the other, met in Tarsus with Judaism. By its position, as well as by its commerce, the birthplace of St. Paul was the point of confluence of the two currents of ideas, which shared the world between themselves. From this centre the future apostle was able to embrace in one view all those different sorts of minds which he was to embrace in his zeal afterwards.
Such were his beginnings. In them Saul plays an insignificant part; but God a great one; God does not act openly as yet; he prepares. But what preparation! What a concurrence of circumstances manifestly providential! What greatness even in this obscurity! The seal of predestination is visibly impressed upon that soul appointed to regenerate the world by the faith. The place, the time, the means, everything seems disposed, consecrated in advance, as it were, for a great scene. God incarnate was to fill it, but he had chosen Saul of Tarsus to be in it the actor most worthy of him.
II.
The second education of Saul took place in Jerusalem. He was yet young when his parents, yielding to that instinct which recalled the Jews to their native country, sent him, or, perhaps, went and took him with themselves, to the holy city, in order to fix their residence there.
There occur in history some solemn epochs; but that in which Saul arrived at Jerusalem possesses a consecration which cannot belong to any but to itself alone: it was what St. Paul called, afterward, "the fulness of the times." The seventy weeks determined by Daniel, entered then into the last phasis of their accomplishment. The sceptre had been taken away from Judah, and, at a few steps from the temple, a centurion, with the vine-stock in his hand, quietly walked around the residence of a Roman proconsul. People were waiting to see from what point the star of Jacob was to appear. It had risen already, and the young workman of Tarsus, while going to Jerusalem, might have met on his way with a workman like himself, who, sitting at the foot of some unknown hill, preached in parables to the people of his own country and of his condition. This was in fact taking place under the second Herod. Saul was then twenty-nine years old, and the Word made flesh dwelt among us full of grace and truth.
Did Saul have the happiness to see his divine Master during his mortal life? Grave historians formally affirm it, [Footnote 109] and some passages in the Epistles allow us to believe it. Others think [{536}] that what they refer to is only the vision on the road to Damascus.
[Footnote 109: Alzog, "Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise," t. i. p. 157.]
But, whatever may be the difference of opinions upon this point, it appears impossible that the fame of Jesus' teaching and miracles did not reach the ears of Saul, while living in Judea: it is even probable that Saul might have endeavored to see him. "We have known the Christ according to the flesh," he himself wrote to the Corinthians. [Footnote 110] This last testimony leaves yet some doubt as to the interpretation; but, when one reflects on the repeated utterance of these expressions, as well as upon the coincidence of dates and names, one cannot help starting at the thought, that on some unknown hour the God and the apostle must have met, and that Jesus, piercing into the future, bestowed on the youth that deep and tender look which he gave the young man spoken of in the Gospel; and that the Pharisee, who was to become a vessel of election, then condemned himself to the regret of having that day neglected and mistaken the blessed God, of whom he was afterward to say in that language invented by love, "Mihi vivere Christus est," "For me to live, is Christ."
[Footnote 110: 1 Cor. ix. 1 and 2 Cor. v. 16]
When Saul entered Jerusalem for the first time, the pious Israelite must doubtless have been astonished and saddened at the same time. Herod the Ascalonite had rendered her, according to Pliny's testimony, the most magnificent city of the East; but by the profane character of her embellishments, she had lost much of her holy originality. The prince courtier had erected near by a circus and a theatre, where festivals in honor of Augustus were celebrated every fifth year. He had repaired and transformed the temple, but also profaned it; and over the principal gate of the holy place one saw the glitter of the golden eagle of Rome and of Jupiter, a double insult to religion and liberty. Jerusalem was likely to become a Roman city; her part was on the point of being played out; her priesthood was expiring, she began to cast off its insignia, and one saw the line gradually disappear which separated her from the cities of paganism.
Beside, Saul found her torn in pieces by religious sects which had in these latter times fastened to the body of Judaism, as parasitical plants stick to the trunk of an old tree. Religious opinion was divided between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. I speak not of the Herodians, for in the order of ideas flatteries are not taken into account, for this reason--because to flatter is not to dogmatize. Sadduceeism, a sort of Jewish Protestantism, rejected all tradition; would admit of nothing but the text of the Pentateuch; denied an after-life because it was not found formally enough inculcated by Moses, and consequently endeavored to make this present one as comfortable as possible. It was Epicureanism under the mask of religion. Pharisaism, on the contrary, was the double reaction both in religion and nationality. In order to enhance the law, it multiplied practices and rites; in order to save the dogma, it burdened it with an oral tradition, to serve as a commentary, an interpreter, and a supplement to the law. Under the name of Mishna, this tradition proceeded, according to her account, from secret instructions of Moses himself, and composed a kind of sacred science, of which the doctors only possessed the key.
The sect of the Pharisees was, on the other hand, the great political as well as doctrinal power of the nation. The people venerated them, the inces [sic] treated them with regard, and Josephus informs us that Alexander Jannacus, being at the point of death, spoke of them to his wife in the following manner: "Allow the Pharisees a greater liberty than usual; for they," he told her, "would, for the favor conferred on them, reconcile the nation to her interest; that they had a powerful influence over the Jews, and were in [{537}] a capacity to prejudice those they hated and serve those they loved." [Footnote 111]
[Footnote 111: "Antiq.," liv. xili. eh, xv. p. 565.]
The Young Saul enrolled himself with the Pharisees: among them, however, he chose his school. Being sensible of the fact that foreign ideas were insinuating themselves into the bosom of Judaism, some choice minds were at this epoch in search of I know not what compromise between Moses's doctrine and philosophy, in which compromise the two elements might be fused together, and thus form a religion at the same time rational and mystic. This fusion is one of the signs by which this period is distinguished. Uneasy and attentive, every mind was laboring under the want of a universality and unity of belief, whose painful child-birth, twenty times miscarried, was yet submitted to without relaxation. One hundred and fifty years before the epoch we are now in, Aristobulus had attempted this eclecticism, and Philo was soon after to reduce it to system in Alexandria and give it a widely spread popularity in Egypt. Another man, however, took upon himself the business of planting it in the very heart of Palestine.
This man was the famous rabbi Gamaliel, the beloved teacher of Saint Paul. It must be admitted that no man could be better qualified to render it acceptable than he was, on account of his position and character. He was the grandson of Doctor Hillel, whose science as well as his consideration and holiness he had inherited. He was the oracle of his time, and "on his death," the Talmud says, "the light of the law was extinguished in Israel." The Talmudists add that he had been vested with the title of Nasi, or chief of the council, and the Gospel agrees with the Jewish authors, recognizing in him a just man, wise, moderate, impartial, an enemy to violence, and ruling the different parties by a moral greatness, which secured to him the confidence of all and the unanimity of their regards. He was the first who caused the text of the Bible to be read in Greek at Jerusalem. This innovation was of itself an immense progress, as it removed that barrier which Pharisaism had raised between the Hellenist and the Judaizing Jews. He dreamed not, however, of transforming Moses into a Socrates. He gave up nothing of pure Judaism. But, having a thorough knowledge of the Greek, Oriental and Egyptian philosophies, he held them all in check; he took out of each of them what could be reconciled with the law of God, enriched with it the inheritance of tradition, and boldly applying to ideas that generous and accommodating toleration which he made use of in social life, he allowed them entrance into the Synagogue. [Footnote 112]
[Footnote 112: Niemeyer, "Characteristik der Bibel," p. 638.]
Gamaliel, it seems, kept in Jerusalem what certain authors call an academy. It was frequented, for men of such a character possess a great power of attraction. Young Israelites brought to his feet, and placed at his disposal, for the service of his and their ideas, the intemperate zeal and warm convictions of their age--Christian tradition acquaints us with the names of some of them; among others, of Stephen and Barnabas, whom we shall soon see disciples of a greater master. [Footnote 113] But the most ardent of them all was, without contradiction, the young Saul of Tarsus. Proud, fiery, enthusiastic, he seems to have been passionately fond of the Pharisaism of Gamaliel, but mixing with the zeal a violent asperity which, certainly, he had not from his master. No man could be more attached, than he was, to the ancient traditions; it is himself who says so, adding that his proficiency in the interpretation of the law placed him at the head of the men of his time. [Footnote 114]
[Footnote 113: Cornel. a Lapide, in Act. v. 34.]
[Footnote 140: See Epist. to the Galatians, i. 14.]
These Jewish as well as these Greek studies were not lost time in the education of the apostle. They [{538}] made Saul sensible of the pressing need of a revealer which the world was then laboring under; and they caused those groanings to reach his ears from all parts, which he himself called the groaning of creation in childbed of her redeemer. They did also reveal to him, seeing the inability of sects for it, that redemption could not be the work of man, and they left in his mind that haughty contempt of human wisdom, which would be despair, if God had not come to reveal a better one possessing the promises both of this world and of the next.
Now, whilst young Saul and the Jewish rabbins were agitating these questions in the dust of schools and synagogue, our Lord Jesus Christ was giving the solution of them in his own life and by his death. His death was even more fruitful than his life, and when the Pharisees believed they had put an end to his doctrine, as they had to his life, it was a great surprise to them to see twelve fishermen, wholly unknown the day before, suddenly appear, preaching that the Son of God had risen from the dead, that they had seen him gloriously ascending into heaven, and that, in order to give testimony of it to the world, they were ready and would be happy to die. Their miracles, their doctrine, the conversions which they wrought by multitudes, their baptism conferred on thousands of disciples, the enthusiasm of some, the perplexity of others, the hatred of many, stirred up the politicians and the magistrates. The great council met under these circumstances. It seems that there was held in it a decisive deliberation, in which the destinies of Christianity were solemnly discussed. The question was to know, whether the new religion should be drowned in blood, or whether it should be allowed the liberty and time of dying by a natural death. It did not occur to any one's thought that it could live; and much less that it could be true: and it is remarkable that not a word was said on the doctrinal question, the most important of all! Thus some of them advised to put those men to death, others feared lest violence should excite a sedition, and there was division of counsel in the assembly, when Gamaliel rose up in it. Silence followed, the Scripture relates, because he was the sage of the nation. He made no speech. He cited only the names of some seditious men very well known in the city, the false prophet Theodas, and Judas of Galilee, who, after a little noise, had left no trace behind them. Hence he concluded that the new religion would have the same fortune if it was from man, and that if it was, on the contrary, the work of God, it would prove invincible against all human efforts. His advice appeared for a moment to prevail, on account of its wisdom; and the apostles, confiding in the future, readily accepted the challenge.
God had other designs in regard to his church, and it was not peace but war that he had come to bring with him. Wisdom had decided; passion executed. After reciting the advice of Gamaliel, the Scripture adds that, before being dismissed, the Apostles were scourged, and that "they went from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus." The signal had thus been given, and a pure victim was about to open the era of the martyrs.
We have thus far related only the human history of St. Paul. We now begin to enter into his supernatural and divine history.
Saul had put himself at the head of those who persecuted the Christians. Hence it is that the Scripture represents him to us as laying everything waste, like a rapacious wolf, spreading consternation amidst the flock. His very name was terror to the newly born church; above all the others, however, one Christian roused his jealous rancor.
It was a young man whose name I have already mentioned, and who is believed to have been of the same [{539}] country with Saul, and his relative. [Footnote 115] He was called Stephanos, which we have modified into Stephen.
[Footnote 115: Corn. a Lapide, in Act. Apost. vi. 18.]
Stephen, as everything indicates, was a Greek, and of the number of those who were then called Hellenistic Jews. In all probability, he belonged to that synagogue of Cilicians of which Saul, his friend and countryman, must likewise have been a member. Some of the ancients have even believed that he also belonged to the school of Gamaliel; and this is confirmed by the old tradition, which makes the remains of the great rabbin and those of the first martyr rest in the same grave. [Footnote 116] All these relations between Stephen and Saul, who persecuted him, are worthy of being taken into account. They throw a great light over those events, and define with precision the circumstances of which they give the key.
[Footnote 116: "Inventio Corporis S. Stephani, Visio S. Luciani," viii. te ix.]
The same tradition has taken a pleasure in surrounding the young neophyte with every gift and accomplishment that could make him a most precious victim. The memory which the fathers have preserved of Stephen is that of a youth of rare beauty, in the flower of his age, endowed with wonderful eloquence, and with a candor of soul yet more charming.
"He was a virgin," St. Augustine says of him, "and this purity of heart reflecting upon his features imparted to his face an angelic expression." St. John Damascene speaks in the same strain of that excellent nature which "made the light of grace shine with more brilliant lustre." Such souls are very near to Christianity. Stephen had become a Christian. St. Epiphanius affirms that he was such during the life of Jesus Christ, and that he was one of the seventy-two disciples. [Footnote 117] St. Augustine doubts of it. [Footnote 118]
[Footnote 117: "Haer." 21.]
[Footnote 118: Sermo xciv. "De Diversis.">[
What we are informed of in the Book of the Acts concerning this point is, that moved by "a murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews for that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration," the apostles caused seven men of that nation to be chosen, whom they "appointed over that business." The first named (and perhaps the most preëminent) among them was Stephen, characterized by the inspired historian as "a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost."
This conversion raised storms in the bosom of the synagogue; and as St. Paul, according to his own account, occupied a preëminent rank among the young men of that time, it was easy for him no doubt to breathe his own burning flame into them.
Besides, everything announced a violent crisis, and the whole city experienced that agitation and anxiety which, in troubled times, precede and portend a near commotion and a desperate struggle. As the disciples had not yet been outlawed, as they did not even have any peculiar name which distinguished them from the rest of the people, and their religious belief enjoyed as yet its freedom, they joined everywhere the Jewish assemblies, instilled there their doctrine, taught even in the temple, where they went to pray like the rest. But a deep-rooted dissension, pregnant with tempests, was growing in the heart of every synagogue. These were most numerous at Jerusalem, as it is said that well-nigh five hundred different ones were there in existence, each people possessing their own, about in the same manner as now in the city of Rome every Catholic nation possesses her proper church, for her own use, and in her own name. The synagogue of the Cilicians, is expressly mentioned in the holy Scripture and signalized as one of the most disturbed, and most opposed to the new sect. [Footnote 119] Interpreters are of opinion that it was there Saul and the deacon Stephen met together in the midst of other Asiatic Jews, their countrymen, [{540}] hot-headed and subtle, as are all of that country. [Footnote 120] They were of the same age, according to computations made for the purpose, and of equal learning; but Stephen's eloquence had no rival! It was, the Acts say, something at once sweet and powerful, that attracted by its grace, and bore away the soul by its force. One felt in it a higher spirit, it is said, and it was in vain that disputants from all the synagogues arose against Christ and his faith; none could resist that word, "full of wisdom and of the Holy Ghost." Some Greek copies add that he "reprehended the Jews with such an assurance that it was impossible not to see the truths which he announced."
[Footnote 119: Act. vi. 9]
[Footnote 120: Dom Calmet, "Comm. sur les Actes," vi. 9.]
His words gave displeasure on account of this freedom; as they could not refute him they soon resolved to calumniate him, waiting for a pretext to get rid of him. Witnesses were found; they are found everywhere. Stephen had preached that a more perfect worship was about to take the place of the worship of Moses, that the glory and the reign of the temple were soon to have an end, and that a better Jerusalem of larger destinies, was on the point of being built. It was but too easy to turn these words from their spiritual meaning, and convert them into threats against the city and the people. A purely moral and peaceful revolution was a thing, on the other hand, so entirely novel in the history of the world, that one would have naturally persisted in confounding it with a political and civil revolution. It was this gross and voluntary mistake that had furnished the text to the pretended lawsuit against our Lord Jesus Christ; it was equally the foundation of that which his disciples have been subjected to. To these accusations they took care to add that Stephen intended to change the ancient traditions, which thing in the eyes of the Pharisees was decisive.
The young deacon was therefore brought before the high-priest, that same Caiaphas by whom Jesus had suffered. When the accusers had been heard, the pontiff requested Stephen to answer them: "Are these things so?"
He rose up, and as soon as he could be seen, the book of the Acts observes, all the eyes in the assembly were fixed on him. Did he have already a glimpse of the martyr's crown, and did this vision transfigure him in advance? I know not, but it is said that his face appeared to their eyes as the face of on angel. "It was," says St. Hilary of Aries, "the flame of his heart overspreading itself upon his forehead; the candor of his soul was reflected on his features in a perfect beauty; and the Holy Ghost residing in Stephen's heart threw upon his face a jet of supernatural light."
The speech of Stephen was simple, but peremptory. To those who charged him with breaking off from the religion of his fathers, he opposed at the very beginning a long profession of faith from the books of Moses. But the question relating to the temple, whose fall he had foretold, was more serious. He viewed it firmly. He did not retract himself; but presently rising from the region of facts to that of superior principles which facts obey, he began to demonstrate that a material temple is nowise necessary to the honor of God. As a proof of this he pointed back to the times in which the patriarchs made their prayers on the top of the high places; when the Lord manifested his presence in a flame of fire in a bush; and when the Hebrew people carried through the desert the tabernacle, which was the sanctuary and the altar at the same time. When he had come to the time of the first temple he concluded, and his discourse suddenly assumed the character of a vivid and eloquent exaltation. Elevating himself from the imperfection of a national worship to the ideal of a universal and spiritual one, which would [{541}] have its sanctuary chiefly within man's soul, he said: "Yet the Most High dwelleth not in houses made by hands, as the prophet saith: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool; what house will you build me, saith the Lord, or what is the place of my resting? Hath not my hand made all these things?"
Such a harangue was a manifesto. He did not abolish every temple, nor every worship, as some people are pleased to insinuate; but he erased at a single stroke the exclusive privilege of the temple of Jerusalem, he extended it's boundaries, and for the old Jewish monopoly substituted the catholicity of a new church, as large as the world.
The Jews understood him too well. They were already trembling with rage against him, when, from the accused becoming the accuser, Stephen charged them with the murder of the prophets, and principally with that of the God, our Saviour, whom they had crucified. "You have received the law by the disposition of angels," he said to them, "and have not kept it." On hearing these words, their rage, incapable of longer restraint, burst out; "they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed with their teeth at him," as the Acts relate. Stephen felt that his last hour was at hand.
The Holy Ghost filled him as it were with a holy rapture. He looked steadfastly to heaven, where the glory of God began to shine on him, and there, in the midst of that glory, recognizing and saluting Jesus Christ, who extended his hand to him, "Behold," he exclaimed, "I see the heavens opened, the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." These words sealed his doom. On hearing him, the Jews, shaking with horror, "cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and with one accord ran violently upon him," as wild beasts do on their prey.
No judgment was passed on him. A text in the book of Deuteronomy allowed any one to be put to death, who enticed the people into idolatry. This summary justice sometimes tolerated by the Roman pro-consul, was termed the judgment of zeal. To apply this judgment to the young deacon, was found more convenient than to go through the formalities of a regular sentence; and they seized him to put him to death. By a last relic of Pharisaism, however, they took care to observe the practices of the law, even in such an arbitrary and cruel deed. To the end, therefore, that the holy city should not be stained with blood, the innocent victim was "cast forth without" the walls of Jerusalem.
They went out by the northern gate along that side which leads to country of Kedar. At the west of the valley crossed by the Kedron, on a desolate places and at the right of the distant mountains of Galaad, the crowd stopped. The witnesses began by raising their hands over the head of Stephen, which was the rite of devoting a victim to death; then stones innumerable, as thick as hail, fell upon him. The atrocious deed went on with unrelenting fury, and the body of the heroic martyr was now noting but a wound; but he held his eyes immovably fixed on that celestial vision, and as life was gradually receding from his breast, he was ever "invoking and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!"
The Acts of the Apostles conclude this narrative, with giving us the name of the person who was the most noted accomplice in this murder: "Saulus autem erat consentiens neci ejus. "
St. Luke, the disciple of St. Paul, says nothing further concerning his master in this business. But St. Paul came afterward, who, humbly giving a public testimony of his cruel error, denounced himself as the instigator of that iniquity. "When the blood of Stephen was shed," he said one day to the Jews, "I was the first, and over the others," Super ad stabam. [Footnote 121] It is the sense of the Greek text. Had [{542}] he for such a thing a mandate of the Sanhedrim, as we shall soon see him vested with full powers against the brethren of Damascus? Everything would make one believe so. The fathers and commentators say, it was for this reason that he kept the garments of those men of blood: and they, in fact, show us those murderers as going the one after the other, deferentially to lay their garments at the feet of Saul, as an homage, so to speak, paid to him, from whom they had the power and the command to strike.
[Footnote 121: Act. xxii. 20.]
Stephen saw him, and revenged himself in his way--the divine way. At the point of death, covered with blood, he lowered his eyes to the earth for the last time, and sadly resting them on his persecutors, perhaps he saw through their impious crowd one of them apart, more furious than the rest. He was moved to compassion for his soul; and then it was that "falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice," not of anger, but of grace, and said: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." He rose no more, and so saying, Stephen "fell asleep in the Lord."
He could sleep in peace, indeed, for he had just made a magnificent conquest. "If Stephen had not prayed," St. Augustine says, "the church had not won St Paul; the martyr fell, the Apostle rose." [Footnote 122] These substitutions are the most mysterious secrets of Providence. By an admirable law of a bond in solido, of fraternity and of love, God has willed that we, like himself, can, at the price of a little blood, or even of some tears, pay the ransom of souls, and secure to them a future for which they are indebted to us. He has permitted that the life and the death of Christians, like those of their Master, should be a redemption, completing the great redemption of Calvary, according to the saying of St. Paul himself. Coloss. i. 24
[Footnote 122: St. Aug. Sermo 1. "De Sanctis.">[
It was meant that this should be the first apostleship of all, and the most fruitful. In the midst of scaffolds, ever full of victims, and the catacombs which incessantly recruited new children of God, Tertullian proclaimed that "the blood of the martyrs was a seed of Christians." He gave thus form to a beautiful law, which the blood of Stephen, after the blood of God himself, had before inaugurated. The soul of Saul, therefore, was that day a conquered soul. It is in vain that on the road to Damascus he struggles and "kicks against the goad:" he is under the yoke of God; he carries a mark of blood on him which points him out, and which saves him; and Jesus, whenever he will, has only to show himself to throw him down and make him obey. This is admirable. Moses had written in the book of Leviticus, "The priest shall command him that is to be purified to offer for himself two living sparrows which it is lawful to eat, . . . . and he shall command one of the sparrows to be immolated, . . . . but the other that is alive he shall dip . . . . in the blood of the sparrow that is immolated; . . . . and he shall let go the living sparrow, that it may fly into the field." (Levit xiv. 4-7.) It was according to this rite that the transaction was accomplished. Stephen had been the chosen victim; and when Saul had covered himself with his redeeming blood, that blood set him free: he had no more to do but to spread his wings, and to start on his flight.
From Chambers's Journal
THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
Our oldest poet, and almost our best, unites in one sweet song the cuckoo and the nightingale--the former to be chidden, and spoken of despitefully; the latter to be made the theme of fervent praise, as the singer and harbinger of love. Taken altogether, the cuckoo, in fact, is far from being an attractive bird. Somehow, it has in all countries been regarded as a symbol of matrimonial infidelity, probably because it introduces itself into and defiles the nests of other, birds. Shakespeare, who loved to make eternal the fancies and prejudices of mankind, exclaims:
"Cuckoo! cuckoo! O word of fear!
Unpleasing to a married ear!"
Loved or hated, however, it is a creature about which we know less than any other winged animal. It comes and goes in mystery, no one being able to decide what is its original country, how far it extends its travels, to what peculiarity in its structure or constitution it owes its restless propensity, or why, almost as soon as born, it becomes a sort of feathered Cain, murdering its foster-brethren, and, according to some, devouring the very dam that fed it. Wide, indeed, are its wanderings. It is heard on the banks of the Niger and the Senegal in the heart of Africa; it is familiar to the dwellers on the Obi and the Irtish; it flies screaming forth its harsh dissyllables over the Baltic surge; it repeats them untiringly in the perfumed air of Andalusia and Granada, among the ruins of the Alhambra and the Generaliffe; it startles the woodman in the forests of France; it amuses the school-boy in the green vales of Kent, of Gloucestershire, and of Devonshire.
Our associations with the cuckoo are, in some cases, pleasant; it comes to us with the first of those peregrinating birds that usher in the summer; its cry is redolent of sunshine, of the scent of primroses, of lindens, of oaks, and elms, of solitary pathways, of the lilied banks of streams. Occasionally, we know not why, it flies early in the morning over the skirts of great cities, as if to invite their inmates to shake off drowsiness, and look forth upon the loveliness of the young day. Not many weeks ago, we heard it in London, just as the clouds were parting in the east to make way for the first beams of dawn. Many summers back, we heard the self-same notes echoing among the pinnacles of the Alps, before the morning-star had faded from behind the Jungfrau. The cuckoo is a sort of familiar chronicler, that gathers up the events of our lives, and brings them to our memory by his well-known voice. As he shouts over our heads, we call to mind the many summers the sweet scents of which we have inhaled, the rambles we have taken in the woods, our idolatry of nature, our innocent pleasures.
The cuckoo and the nightingale constitute the opposite poles of the ornithological world; one the representative of eternal monotony, the other of infinite variety. Among men, there are cuckoos and nightingales--individuals whose ideas are few, who think invariably after the same pattern, who repeat day after day the formulas of the nursery and the school-room, who, from their swaddling-bands to their shrouds, never break away from the social catechism dinned into them at the outset; while there are others who seem, at least in their range of thought, to know no limit but that of creation, to generate fresh swarms of ideas every moment, now to hover among the nebulas on the extreme verge of the [{544}] universe, and now to nestle in the chalice of the violet, where even Ariel could scarcely find room for the tip of his pinion. Naturalists may be fanciful, like poets; and if this liberty be ever allowable, it is surely so when they speak of the nightingale. The organization of this winged miracle, whose whole weight does not exceed an ounce, may in truth be looked upon as one of the most remarkable in the whole scale of animal life. The roar of the gorilla can, it is said, be heard a full mile. But the gorilla is a colossus, equalling in stature one of the sons of Anak; while Philomela, not exceeding in bulk the forejoint of the monster's thumb, is able at night, when all the woods are still, to cause the liquid melody of her notes to be heard at an equal distance. Consider the organ, measure the length of country, and the ecstacy of the listening ear, and you will perhaps acknowledge that there are few phenomena familiar to our experience more astonishing than this. We have stood at midnight on a mountain in the south of France, and at a distance quite as great, we think, as that mentioned above, have heard the notes of the songstress of darkness borne up to us, on the breeze from the depths of an unwooded valley. Faintly and gently they came through the hushed air, but there could be no mistake about their identity; no other mortal mixture of earth's mould than her throat could have given forth such sounds, crisp, clear, long-drawn, melancholy, as if she were still lamenting the sad hap that overtook her amid die solitudes of Hellas. The French, down even to the peasants, love the nightingale; and wild country girls, who in their whole lives never read a page of poetry, will sit out half the night on a hillside to listen to their favorite bird. A priest once invited us to pass a week with him in his village presbytère, and in enumerating the inducements, mentioned first that there were nightingales in the neighborhood. His home was in the valley of Mortagne, in the Bocages of Normandy, where these birds are in fact as plentiful as sparrows.
In Italy, especially in Tuscany and the Venetian states, the nightingale trills her notes with more than ordinary beauty. The great Roman naturalist who perished amid the lava-floods of Vesuvius, often, we may be sure, enjoyed her song from his nephew's garden in this part of the peninsula. No description of the wonders she achieves can approach the one he has left us for truth or eloquence, and it was written in all likelihood by the light of some antique lamp between the prolonged gushes of her music. Unhappily, it is true, as he says, that the nightingale's song can only be heard in perfection during fifteen out of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. The female bird is then sitting in her nest, imparting vital heat to the musicians of future years; and her lover, fully impressed with the importance of her duty, intoxicates her with his voice, to dispel the tedium of confinement. In spite of natural history, however, poetry transfers to the mute female the singing powers of her lord:
"Nightly she sings from yon, pomegranate-tree."
Pliny, too, after stating the fact, that it is the male that sings, immediately avails himself of the aid supplied by metonymy, and changes the sex of the musician. Let us take his description, as honest Philemon Holland supplies it in the language of Elizabeth's time: "Is it not a wonder," he says, "that so loud and clear a voice should come from so little a body? Is it not as strange that she should hold her breath so long, and continue with it as she doth? Moreover, she alone in her song keepeth time and measure truly; she riseth and falleth in her note just with the rules of music and perfect harmonic: for one while in one entire breath she draweth out her tune at length treatable; another while she quavereth, and goeth away as fast in her running points; sometimes she maketh stops and short cuts in her notes, another time she gathereth in [{545}] her breath and singeth descant between the plain song; she fetcheth her breath again, and then you shall have her in her catches and divisions; anon, all on a sudden, before a man would think it, she drowneth her voice, that one can scarce hear her; now and then she seemeth to record to herself; and then she breaketh out to sing voluntarie. In some she varieth and altereth her voice to all keys; one while full of her larges, longs, briefs, semibriefs, and minims; another while in her crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, and double semiquavers, for at one time you shall hear her voice full and loud, another time as low; and anon shrill and on high: thick and short when she list; drawn out at leisure again when she is disposed; and then (if she be so pleased) she riseth and mounteth up aloft, as it were with a wind-organ. Thus she altereth from one to another, and singeth all parts, the treble, the meane, and the base. To conclude; there is not a pipe or instrument again in the world (devised with all the art and cunning of man so exquisitely as possibly might be) that can afford more music than this pretty bird doth out of that little throat of hers."
We have persons here in England who earn their livelihood by catching nightingales. It is the same in most other countries. Near Cairo, there is, or used to be, a pretty grove of mingled mimosas, palms, and sycamores, where the netters of nightingales station themselves at night, in the proper season, to take the bird when in full song. According to their report, which there is no reason to discredit, the male bird becomes so intoxicated by the scented air, by love, and by his own music, that the cap-net, fixed at at the summit of a long reed, may be raised and closed about him before he is sensible of his danger. From the free woods he is then transferred to a cage, where in nine cases out of ten, he dies of nostalgia. Nor is this all. The female bird, accustomed not only to be cheered by his song, but likewise fed by his industry, pines and perishes with all her brood. The wren, the swallow, the titlark intermit the business of incubation, and leave their nests for a minute or a minute and a half to help themselves while they are sitting, or to assist the male in feeding the young after the eggs are hatched: but the female nightingale used, like an eastern sultana, to be provided for entirely by her lord, feels her utter helplessness when she is deserted, and leaning her little head and neck over the edge of the nest, with her eyes fixed in the direction in which he used to come, dies in that attitude of expectancy. The reason is, that the instinct of pairing, which is strong in many other birds, reaches its culminating point in the nightingale--the same males and females keeping together for years without ever seeking other mates.
The cuckoo, as we have said, offers the most striking contrast in the development of its instincts. It does not pair at all, and as there are more males than females, we may often see two or three of the former sex following one of the latter, and fighting for her favors. As the parents care not for one another, neither do they care for their young. It was long supposed that the cuckoo laid only one egg in the season; but this has been found to be an error, for though they leave no more than one egg in one nest--we mean generally--they have been observed to make deposits in various nests, and then fly away to a distant part of the country, or even to other lands. In the female cuckoo, therefore, the maternal instinct is entirely wanting, which, though it acts in obedience to an imperious law of nature, makes it a hateful bird. As soon as it quits the shell, it begins to exhibit its odious qualities. When the cuckoo's egg is placed in the nest of the hedge-sparrow, for example, the deluded mother perceives no difference between the alien production and her own. She sits, therefore, on what she finds, and having no idea of numbers, of course never thinks of counting the eggs. [{546}] When hatching-time arrives, however, she is made the witness of an extraordinary scene. The villainous young cuckoo, which often escapes from the shell a whole day before the others, immediately begins to clear the nest by pitching out the unhatched eggs; or if the young ones have made their appearance, forth they are thrown in like manner. Nature has fabricated the little monster with a view to this ungrateful proceeding, for in its back there is a hollow depression, in which egg or chick may be placed while he is rising to shunt it over the battlements. The process is extremely curious: the young assassin, putting shoulder and elbow to the work, keeps continually thrusting against his victim till he gets it on his back; he then rises, and placing his back aslant, tumbles it out into empty space. This done, and finding that he has all the dwelling to himself, he subsides quietly into his place, and waits with ever-open bill for the dole which the foolish sparrow wears itself almost to death in providing for the faithless wretch. When the nest happens to be situated in a high hedge, you may often see the young sparrows spiked alive on the thorns, or the eggs still palpitating with living birds lying unbroken on the soft grass below. This inspires naturalists with no pity; they observe that neither the eggs nor the young birds are thrown away, since various reptiles that feed on such substances make a comfortable meal of what is thus placed within their reach.
As the cuckoo does nothing in life but eat, scream, and lay eggs for other birds to hatch, it needs no education, and receives none. On the other hand, the nightingale, having to perform the highest functions allotted to the class aves, requires much training and discipline, study and preparation. The young nightingale does not sing by mere instinct. If taken from the nest soon after it is hatched, and brought up among inferior creatures, it is incapable of performing its lofty mission, and deals in vulgar twittering like them; just as a baby, if removed from the society of speech-gifted mortals, and entrusted to the care of dumb persons, will lack that divine quality of expressing ideas which distinguishes man from the brute. The nightingale needs and receives a classical education. When the grass is dewy--when the leaves are green and fresh--when the soft breath of the morning steals over the woods like incense, the old bird takes forth the young ones, before it is quite light, and placing them on some bough, with strict injunctions to listen, goes a little way off, and begins his song. In this he commences with the easier notes, and is careful to keep the whole in a comparatively narrow compass. He then pauses to watch the result of his first instructions. After a brief delay, during which they are turning over the notes in their minds, the young ones take up the lay one by one, and go through it, as our neighbors say, tant bien que mal. The teacher watches their efforts with attention; applauds them when right; chides them when they have done amiss; and goes on day by day reïterating his lessons till he considers his pupils quite equal to the high duties they have to perform. Mankind, of course, imagine that those duties consist in soothing their ears, and driving away melancholy. But apropos of the performances of another bird, our philosophic poet inquires:
"Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?"
And replies:
"Joy tunes his voice, joy animates his wings."
So with the nightingale--
"Loves of his own and raptures swell the note."
Some one speaking of our own species, says:
"We think, we toil, we war, we rove.
And all we ask is--woman's love."
It is to win the love of Philomela that the male nightingale studies, watches, and pours forth his soul in song. He had much rather that men did not listen; he is a shy, solitary, and timid bird, and takes his love away into [{547}] the forests, where, undisturbed by the sounds of vulgar life, he ravishes her ears with music. It is a question much discussed by poets and naturalists, whether the nightingale's song be joyous or melancholy. It probably derives its character from the frame of mind in which the listener happens to be--to the joyous it is mirthful, to the sorrowful it is sad--but in its real nature it is what Milton suggests--
"She all night long her amorous descant sung."
Still it must be owned that they who discover melancholy in her long, low, meltingly sweet notes, seem to approach nearer the truth than they who describe her as a merry bird. It is superstition, perhaps, that attributes to her the strange philosophy which makes anguish the well-spring of pleasure. When desirous, it is said, of reaching the sublimest heights of song, she leans her breast against a thorn, in order that the sense of pain may tone down her impetuous rapture into sympathy with human sorrow.
Another strange notion is, that the nightingale fixes her eyes--
"Her bright, bright eyes; her eyes both bright and full"--
on some particular star, from which she never withdraws them till her song is concluded, unless she be alarmed by the approach of some footstep, or other sound indicative of danger. We remember once, in Kent, going forth to spend a night in the fields to enjoy the strange delight imparted by the nightingale's notes. We placed ourselves on a little eminence overlooking a valley, covered at intervals by scattered woods. It was the dead watch and middle of the night; silence the most absolute brooded over the earth. We stood still in high expectation. Presently, one lordly nightingale flung forth at no great distance from the summit of a lofty tree his music on the night. The lay was not protracted, but a rich, short, defiant burst of melody; he then, like the Roman orator, paused for a reply. The reply came, not close at hand, but, as it seemed, from some copse or thicket far down in the valley. If one might presume to judge on the spur of the moment, the second songster did really outdo the first. The notes came forth bubbling, gushing, quivering, palpitating, as it were, with soul, for nothing material ever resembled it. He went over a broad area of song, with a sort of wilderness of melody; his notes followed each other so rapidly, high, low, linked, broken--now sweeping away like a torrent, now sinking till it sounded like the scarcely audible murmur of a distant bee. He then stopped abruptly, confident that he had given his rival something to reflect upon. We now waited to hear that rival's answer, but he appeared to consider himself defeated, and remained silent. Another champion now stepped forward, and took up the challenge. He must surely have been the prince of his race. From a tree on the slope of a height, not far to the right of our position, he gave us a new specimen of the poetry of his race. The former two, evidently younger and more inexperienced, had been in a hurry. He took up his parable at leisure, beginning with a few light flourishes by way of preface, after which he plunged into his epic, seeming to carry on the subject from the epoch of Deucalion and Pyrrha, down to that moment, displaying all the resources of art, and presenting us with every form into which music could be moulded. What he might have achieved at last, or to what pitch he might have raised our ecstasy, must remain a mystery, for before he had concluded his song, a thundering railway train, belching forth fire and smoke as it advanced, seemed to be on the very point of annihilating the songsters; so they all took to flight, or at least remained obstinately silent. We waited hour after hour, now pacing in one direction, now in another; stopping short, pausing in our talk, listening till the streaky dawn, climbing slowly up the eastern hills, revealed to us the inutility of further hope.
The first time we heard the nightingale was from the deck of a vessel in the Avon, near Lee Woods. It was a starlight night; we were leaning on the bulwarks, speculating on the reception we were to meet with in England--in which we had that day arrived for the first time. As we were chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, from an indenture in the woods, called, as we have since learned, Nightingale Valley, there burst forth at once a flood of sound, the strangest, the sweetest, the most intoxicating we had ever heard--it must be, it was the voice of the nightingale---
To the land of my fathers that welcomed me back.
Years not a few have rolled by since then, but we remember as distinctly as if it were yesternight the pleasure of that exquisite surprise. We heard the nightingale in England before the cuckoo--a circumstance which, according to Chaucer, should portend good-luck; and so it did--good-luck and happy days.
Perhaps much of the pleasure tasted in such cases is derived from the time of year--for both the cuckoo and the nightingale belong to the spring--when the air is full of balm, when the foliage is thick, when the grass is green and young--and when, especially in the morning, delicate odors ascend from the earth, which produce a wonderful effect upon the animal spirits. Through these scents, the cry of one bird and the song of the other invariably come to us: the one flitting at early dawn over the summits of woods, the other in loneliest covert hid, making night lovely, and smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiles.
[ORIGINAL.]