Onesimus: Memoirs of a Disciple of St. Paul

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

“This Christus lived in Syria less than forty years, and, after doing nothing worthy of mention, was put to death upon the cross by Pontius Pilatus, governor of Judea. He made no conquests, no laws, and few disciples; and, of these few, one betrayed him. He wrought, it may be, some cures of a kind to startle the multitude (doubtless in accordance with nature, by working on the imaginations of men); but in any case none marvellous enough to persuade men that he was a prophet; for it is not denied that his own countrymen delivered him to execution. After his death, his disciples constantly affirmed that he had appeared to them, and in one case this was confessed by an enemy; but (saving this belief in his resurrection, and some kind of expectation that he would always be present with them as an ally) he bequeathed to his followers nothing except a policy that was no policy, but rather a dream, somewhat after this fashion:—

“THE DREAM OF CHRISTUS.

“The world is to be a commonwealth wherein the Supreme God is to be King, and all mankind the citizens. But God being the Father of men, mankind are to be to him as children, and to one another as brethren. Of this commonwealth the laws are to be as follows:—

“1. The Law of Love. Love (and not Force nor Cunning) is the strongest power in the world; and as little children take captive the hearts of their parents by force of love, so are the Christians to take captive the world by becoming as little children, loving all men and thereby constraining all men to love them in return. [Surely the vainest of vain dreams! In the fulfilment of which I will then believe when I see the sheep loving the wolf and thereby constraining the wolf to love them in return.]

“2. The Law of Giving and Receiving. As by giving to Nature the husbandman receives a manifold return, so by giving to the Unseen Nature and Spiritual Harmony which Christus believed to exist, men shall receive an abundant harvest in return. Thus, by giving love, a man is to receive a return of love; or giving pity, a return of pity; or service, a return of service. [All this may be, and yet there may be no God. For doubtless, if a man give love to his fellow men, even though they love him not in return, yet he thereby enlarges his imagination of the Divine Love, and warms his heart with the fancy that he is now more perfectly loved by that Divine Person whom he has painted for himself out of the colors of his own mind. This dream may make some men happy, and more women; but though a dream may give pleasure, it does not cease to be a dream.]

“3. The Law of Sacrificing. All sacrifices of beasts are to be done away, the only true sacrifice being the sacrifice of the will, whereof the sacrifices of beasts are but as emblems. In the life and death of Christus (being a perfect sacrifice of the will) these Christians suppose the perfect sacrifice to have been offered up. Hence they regard Christus as the High Priest of mankind offering himself up for all men; supposing that by force of sympathy with him, which they call ‘faith,’ they are able to be united with him and so to take unto themselves his sacrifice. [I deny not this doctrine of sacrifice to be less ignoble and superstitious than the notions of the common sort; who vainly imagine that they can bribe the Supreme by sheep and oxen. But, even were it true, it seems too high and unsubstantial for the minds of the common people. Besides, as there is no God, there can be no sacrifice, so that this also is a dream, like all the rest.]

“4. The Law of Forgiving. It is supposed that, by force of sympathy, every disciple of Christus has a power of raising up men beneath him in goodness, whom they call sinners. This ‘sympathy’ they call bearing the sins of others, and the result of it is forgiveness; and Christus is said by them to have brought this power into the world and to have bequeathed it to his disciples. It differs, they say, from our ‘forgiveness,’ in that it means not the mere remission of punishment, but the putting away of sin itself. [All this is simply natural, and may be seen in any family or assembly of human beings; wherein the better always have a power of raising up the worse, and those who are injured have power to set at rest the minds of their injurers by forgiving them. Therefore all that they can claim for Christus is, that he possessed this power perchance in a singular degree, and discerned how great a force it had over the minds of men; and perhaps also that he (by some special and peculiar influence) imparted it to his disciples.]

“5. The Law of Faith and Trust. No man, said Christus, could be forgiven sins by him, except he had ‘faith;’ and in the same way his followers maintain that without ‘faith,’ it is impossible to obtain the forgiveness of sins, but by faith the worst of sinners can be forgiven.” [This again, so far as it is true, is merely natural; because no offender can so much as imagine himself freed from the consciousness of his wrong-doing by the forgiveness of the man injured, if he distrust the latter and esteem him as an hypocrite. And without doubt this “faith”—as one may see even in a dog that has faith or trust in his master—has not a little power to confer magnanimity on men by raising their minds to the level of a high idea of God, even though that idea be but an empty imagination. But here, as elsewhere, there is a deficiency of proof; for what is wanted is, not superstructure, but foundation; for I will not dispute the power of faith, if these Christians will first give me somewhat certain to have faith in.]

“ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM.

“This being the commonwealth and these the Laws of Christus, the problem is, whence comes it that so many thousands of men are drawn towards him, and thereby led out of evil and vile courses into lives of virtue? For other religions (and Onesimus justly urges this argument) hold out similar hopes of Elysian fields, and terrors of Hades, and purifications from sin; and some also, like the religion of Pythagoras, pretend to join men into brotherhoods; and almost all afford portents sufficient to satisfy the natural credulity of men; yet do they not succeed in persuading their votaries to lead virtuous lives.