“But is it weaker?” thought I, as he strode back to Nicopolis, and I in the opposite direction. Was not Apronius right in saying that Nature was on his side? Does not Providence, like Circe, throw down figs and nuts for us human creatures to make us swine? Is she not always saying to us, “Push, and be greedy! Then you will get what you want”? And did not Epictetus acquiesce in this, in effect, saying to the two or three non-pushers, “Be content. The others, the masses of men, are ‘better’ than you are for pushing and for kicking and for fighting like greedy swine”? But who made them “better”? Was it not Nature? And how could I feel sure that this same Nature or Providence that made “grass” (as Epictetus said) to produce “milk and butter and cheese,” did not make man to produce scrambling and scuffling and fighting—a spectacle for some amused God, who watches from the windows of heaven, like Apronius Rufus from the inn-door on earth?
After a long circuit, returning to Nicopolis, I sat down to rest in a copse when the sun was drawing towards the west. Tired out by my walk, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the sun had set and the evening star was shining. As I sat in silence gazing upon it, better thoughts were brought to me. “Five minutes,” I said, “with Hesper teach more about Providence than an hour with Epictetus.” Then it occurred to me, “But, were I Priam, and were this the evening before Troy was taken, would not Hesper shine as brightly before me? What does Hesper prove?” Presently, the lesser stars began to appear, growing each moment in number. Then I remembered how Moses represents the Lord God appearing to Abraham (when he was as yet childless) and saying to him, “Look up to the heaven and number the stars, if thou art able to number them all. So shall thy seed be.” And what had come of it all? A nation that was no nation, a race of captives, known to us in Rome chiefly as hating pork and strangers no less than they loved their sabbaths. Then I thought, “Had Hesper any more favour for Abraham than for Priam? Perhaps the stars promised peace and prosperity to both and broke their promise! What Troy is, that Jerusalem is. Nay, worse. Troy has produced a New Troy. Where is the New Jerusalem? And where is the great nation promised to Abraham? A flock (or flocks) of exiles, fanatics, and slaves!”
Just then came into my mind the memory of some words about the stars in Isaiah. I had taken the book with me to lecture. So I unrolled it till I came to them: “Lift up your eyes on high and see. Who hath appointed all these? He that leadeth forth His host in a numbered array. He will call them all by name. Because of thy great glory, and in the might of thy strength, not one escapeth from thine eye.” Then the prophet declared that, even as the stars of heaven are made visible in the darkness, so the seed of Abraham was not hidden by any darkness from God’s eye: “Say not, O Jacob (ah, why didst thou dare to say it, O Israel?) ‘My way is hidden from God, and my God hath taken away judgment and hath departed from me.’ Hast thou not even now found out the truth? Hast thou not clearly heard it? The God eternal, the God that framed and fashioned the earth, even to its furthest corners, He will not faint for hunger, nor is there any fathoming of His wisdom. To them that hunger He giveth strength—but sorrow to them that have no grief. For hunger shall fall on the youths, and weariness on the young men, and the chosen warriors shall utterly lose strength; but they that wait patiently for God shall renew their strength; they shall put forth wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk erect and shall not faint for hunger.”
I could not believe all this. But neither could I disbelieve it. One voice said to me, “The poet is casting on the God of the stars the mantle that he has borrowed from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” But another voice kept saying to me, “Wait patiently for God: He shall renew thy strength.” In the afternoon, when I had thrown myself down to rest, I had thought that I would give up the search after truth, get rid of all my books, leave Nicopolis, and go at once into the army. Now I was more hopeful. But I could not give any logical reason for my hope. Isaiah had not convinced me. Far from it! The promise to Abraham seemed still to me to have resulted in failure. I had broken off my study of Paul, almost at its commencement, in order to study Isaiah. And Isaiah, without Paul, presented many difficulties that might perplex wiser minds than mine. “Grant,” said I, “that David the son of Jesse was a great poet. Grant that Isaiah was a great prophet. Yet what were their poems and prophecies except so many pillars of vapour, or, if of substance, then substantial failures; pillars with the capital gone and the shaft broken, no longer sustaining anything? Their temple is burned a second time, never to be rebuilt; the rod of Jesse, cut off from the very root, with no life left in it, ‘despised indeed and rejected’ but with no compensation of being ‘exalted’ or of ‘dividing the spoils of the strong’!”
All these things I said over and over again to myself. But still another voice, deeper than my own, seemed to be repeating “Wait patiently on God and He will renew thy strength! Wait patiently! Wait!” Up to the moment of retiring to rest that night my mind was in a state of oscillation. On the one hand, Scaurus might be right, and my best course might be to give up the study of philosophy, and to prepare myself for a military career. On the other hand, there appeared nothing in these poems or prophecies of Isaiah that would make a man less fit to be a soldier. My last thought was, “I should like to see how the modern Jew, Paul, takes up the teaching of the ancient Jew, Isaiah. I have but glanced at his quotations as yet.” So I decided to examine this point on the following day.
CHAPTER XIV
PAUL’S CONVERSION
Hitherto my study of Christian or Jewish literature had never followed my intentions. I had intended to read Paul continuously. But first Isaiah, then David, then Moses, and then Isaiah again, had intervened. I was going forward all the while, but by a winding course, like a stream among hills and rocks. Now again I have to describe how—although I sat down with a determination to digress no more but to read through the epistles from the beginning to the end—I was led off to another investigation.
The first phrase in the volume did not long occupy me. True, I had greatly disliked it when I first glanced at it, a few days ago—“Paul a slave of Jesus Christ.” “Slave” was always used by Epictetus in a bad sense, and I had then thought it savoured of servility. But now I knew that the translation of Isaiah often used it to denote a devoted servant of God; and it seemed to me that Paul had perhaps no other word that could so well express how he felt bound to service by Christ’s “constraining love.”