For the rest, Isaiah appeared to me to carry on throughout the book of his prophecies that thread of unexpectedness about which I spoke above—I mean, that what prophets (foreseeing them) call judgments, men of the world (not foreseeing) call surprises. Yes, and even prophets and righteous men—not foreseeing enough—often lift up their hands in amazement, exclaiming, “This hath God wrought!” or “The stone that the builders rejected hath become the headstone of the corner!” But there was a dark as well as a bright side in these surprises. The disappointments were often most strange. For example, Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord “high and lifted up.” But with what result? The prophet himself was straightway cast down with the thought of being “unclean.” Even afterwards, when his lips had been cleansed with the coal from off the altar so that he might deliver God’s message, the message was, “Hear ye, indeed, but understand not!”—because his warning was to be rejected. And so it was throughout, paradox on paradox! Israel was “chosen” in one sentence, “backsliding” in the next. The “despised and rejected” servant was to be “lifted up.” The transgressions of the world were to be taken away by a deliverer, who was to be “reckoned among transgressors.” Sometimes, as if despairing of the noble and learned among his own people, the prophet seemed to appeal to the poor and simple, according to the words of David, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength!” Sometimes he even seemed to turn away from Israel itself—at all events from the majority of the nation—to the remnant, and to the pious among other nations, as though they, yes, even foreigners, might receive the fulfilment of the promise made to the seed of Abraham!
Amid all these (to me) perplexing paradoxes, one thing was clear—constituting a great difference between Isaiah and Epictetus. The former saw God in history. The latter did not. Epictetus said (as I have shewn in a previous chapter) that, up to the time of death, man can always find peace by following the “logos” within himself during life; after death he ceases to exist. “Bearing these things in mind,” said he, “and seeing the sun and moon and stars, and enjoying the earth and sea, man is not deserted any more than unhelped.” These words now returned to my mind, and I perceived the force of what they did not say. They said that God was to be seen in the sun and moon and stars; but they did not say that He was to be seen where Isaiah saw Him, in the nations of the earth controlled by the Supreme. It is true that Isaiah, too—like Epictetus—bade his readers look up to the stars as witnesses to God. But Isaiah seemed to me to reckon men superior to stars.
David certainly did so. David had “considered” all the glories of the visible heaven. Yet he counted them inferior to “man,” who was “made but little lower than God,” and inferior to the “son of man,” who had received “dominion” over God’s works. In the same spirit, Isaiah, as it seemed to me, spoke of the Maker of the heavenly bodies as being adorable, not because He had made them multitudinous and bright, but because He led them like a flock—as though even a star might wander but for the kindness of the divine Shepherd. Moreover God seemed to him to be controlling the mighty powers of the heaven for the service of man, “Behold, the Lord, the Lord, He cometh with strength, and His arm with lordship. Behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. As a shepherd shall He shepherd His sheep, and with His arm He shall gather the lambs, and encourage those that are with young. Who measured out the water with His hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with His fingers? Who established the mountains by measure and the valleys with a scale? Who hath known the mind of the Lord and who hath become His fellow counsellor so as to instruct Him?”
Thus, according to the prophet, there was to be a great advent in which God was to “come” with “reward.” He predicted a future “shepherding” of the “sheep” and “gathering” of the “lambs,” corresponding to the past “measuring” of the “heaven.” According to the philosopher there was to be no such future. All things were to go round and round. Instead of “sheep” or “lambs,” bubbles in an eddy seemed a more appropriate metaphor to describe the results of human life in accordance with the general tendency of Epictetian doctrine.
CHAPTER XIII
EPICTETUS ON PROVIDENCE
It was now almost the third hour and I was on the point of rolling up the volume, when a fellow-student suddenly entered to borrow some writing materials. Thrusting the book in my garment I supplied him with what he needed, and we hastened together to the lecture-room.
We conversed, about trivial subjects, but my mind was not in them. It was with Isaiah. I could not help marvelling that a native of so small and weak a country should take so wide and imperial a view of the movements of the nations. In a Roman, I could have understood it better; or in a Greek of the days of Alexander. But that a Jew—whose people was as it were the shuttlecock between the great empires surrounding it—that a Jewish prophet should think such thoughts filled me with astonishment. Then I wondered what Epictetus would say on the administration of the world if he ever dealt with it fully. “He,” I said, “was a Phrygian and a slave. Is it possible that he, too, like Isaiah, could speak in this imperial fashion?” Arriving somewhat late, we found the room almost filled; but my seat was vacant, and I was glad to find Glaucus next to me, in the place vacated by Arrian’s departure.
Epictetus was just beginning his first sentence. I will give it as Glaucus took it down, exactly: “Be not surprised if other animals, all except ourselves, have ready at hand the things needful for their bodily wants provided for them, not only food and drink but also bedding, and no need of sandals or blankets or clothes—while we have need of all these additional things.” He proceeded to say that the beasts were our servants, and that it would be extremely inconvenient for us if we had “to clothe, shoe, and feed sheep and asses! As if,” said he, “a colonel had to shoe and clothe his regiment before they could do the service required of them! And yet men complain, instead of being thankful!” Any single created thing, he said, would suffice to demonstrate Providence to a grateful mind. Then he instanced the production of milk from grass and of cheese from milk. Thence he passed from the “works” of Nature to “by-works,” such as the beard, distinguishing man from woman. This (I think) was one of his customary digressions against the fashion of smooth-skinned effeminacy: “How much more beautiful than the comb of cocks! How much more noble than the mane of lions! Therefore it was our duty to preserve God’s appointed tokens of manhood: it was our duty not to give them up, not to confuse (so far as lay in us) the classes, male and female, distinguished by Him.”