Cease shall I never
But flow on for ever
FOR EVER.”
I was walking slowly onward, with the paper in my hand, my eyes bent on the ground. Suddenly a shadow, and a courteous salutation, made me aware that a stranger had met me and was passing by. Surprised and startled, I recovered myself after a moment and turned round to answer his greeting. He, too, turned, a man past threescore as I guessed, but vigorous, erect, with a dignity of carriage that appeared at the first glance. He bowed and passed on. The face reminded me of someone, but I could not think who it was. I turned again to Glaucus’s paper. “Don’t think too much of those scrawls” had been his last words. But how could I help thinking of them? How many myriads were in the same case! The myriads did not say what Glaucus said. But how many of them felt it! They had not suffered perhaps as he had, but they had suffered enough—crushed, maimed, forsaken!
Yes, FORSAKEN! As I uttered the word aloud, there came back to me both the face of the stranger and the face like his, the face that I had not been able to recall. I had been thinking of old Hermas, whom I had seen as a child of five or six and had never forgotten. Scaurus’s letters had recently brought him back to my memory again and again, depicting him just as I remembered him, and suggesting to me all sorts of new questions as to the mystery that lay behind those quiet eyes and that strong gentle look, which even in my childhood had left on me an indelible impression. I had been asking myself, What was the secret of it? Now I knew. Hermas was not “forsaken.” And this man, the man I had just met, he too looked not “forsaken.” “Yet I wonder,” said I, “what that stranger would think if Hermas were to invite him to worship a Son of God whose last words to the Father were, ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’ Epictetus, I know, would declare that the words expressed an absolute collapse of faith. How would old Hermas explain them? And what would Scaurus say if I confessed that I found no God anywhere in heaven or earth to whom my heart was so drawn as this ‘forsaken’ Christ? What would the Psalmist say if I used his words thus, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none on earth that I should desire in comparison with thee, O, thou FORSAKEN SON OF GOD!’”
By this time I had reached the wood. Pacing up and down, full of distracting thoughts, I came on the place where I had had my first vision of peace. There, tired out in body and mind, I threw myself down to rest. Presently, feeling in the folds of my garment for the gospel of Mark, I could not find it. Yet I had felt it when I first drew out Glaucus’s paper. There was nothing for it but to retrace my steps as exactly as possible in the hope of hitting on the place where I must have dropped it. But I had not gone a hundred paces before I heard a rustling in the bushes, and the tall stranger reappeared and a second time saluted me.
I returned his salutation. Then we were both silent. Nothing was in his hand, yet I felt sure that he had found my book, and I waited for him to speak. But a moment’s reflection shewed me his difficulty. Was he, a stranger, to ask a Roman knight whether he had dropped one of the religious books of a proscribed superstition? It was for me, if for either, to begin. I liked the stranger’s look even better than before and felt that he could be trusted; so I told him of my loss. He at once placed the volume in my hands saying that he had come back to restore it, believing me to be the owner. I thanked him heartily. He replied that I was welcome, then waited a moment or two, as though to allow me to say more if I pleased. I stood silent, wanting to speak, but as it were tongue-bound—not so much afraid as ashamed. At last, I stammered out something about the wood and its distance from Nicopolis. He smiled as though he understood my embarrassment. Then he repeated that I was welcome and moved away.
I had suffered him to go a dozen paces when a voice said within me, “Why do you let him go? Scaurus let Hermas go and repented it. You said that this man did not look ‘forsaken.’ Why do you let him ‘forsake’ you? Why do you make yourself ‘forsaken’? Perhaps he can help you.” I called him back. “Sir,” said I, “pardon me one question. Doubtless you looked at this roll to find some clue to its owner?” “I did,” he replied. “I am interested,” said I, “in this little book”⸺. Then I paused. I had grown into the habit of adding—in writing to Flaccus, to Scaurus, and in speaking to myself too—“from a literary point of view,” “as a historical investigation,” and so on. But now I could not say such things. In the first place, they would not be true. In the second place, I knew instinctively that the man would know that they were not true. Moreover I had a presentiment that he was to be to me what Hermas had almost been to Scaurus. On the other hand, had I the right to ask a perfect stranger whether he had studied a Christian gospel? He read my thoughts. “You desire,” he said, “to ask me something more. Am I acquainted with this book? That, I think, is your question? If so, I say, ‘Yes’.” “There are,” said I, very slowly, and almost as if the words were drawn out of me by force, “some few things that I greatly admire and many things that greatly perplex me, in this little book. I think I might understand some of the latter, had I some guidance.” “I am but a poor guide,” he replied. “Nevertheless, if it is your will, I am quite willing. I have an hour’s leisure. Then I must go on my business. Shall we sit down here?”
So we sat down, and I began to question him about Mark and the other gospels. But before I describe our conversation, I must remind my readers that at that time, forty-five years ago, in the second year of Hadrian, the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, were not regarded as on the same level as scripture, nor as entirely different from other writings composed by pious Christians such as, for example, the epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians. No doubt, some Christians, even at that date, were disposed to rank the three gospels by themselves as superior to all others past or future; and some of them may have asserted that the number three was, as it were, predicted in the Law. For Moses said, “Out of the mouth of two witnesses” (that might be Mark and Matthew) “or three witnesses” (that would include Luke) “shall every word be established.” But if they spoke thus, I do not know of it.
On the contrary, I have heard, that about the very time of our conversation, that is in the second year of Hadrian, there were traditions about Mark (current in the neighbourhood of Ephesus) placing him on a very much lower level than the Hebrew prophets. Some used to accuse him (as I have confessed above that I was perhaps too prone to do) of being disproportioned and lengthy in unimportant detail. An Elder near Ephesus defended Mark. He laid the blame on the necessities of the case, saying that Mark recorded what he had heard from Peter, and that Peter adapted his teachings to the needs of the moment, so that “Mark committed no error” in writing some things as he did. Whether this Elder was right or wrong, his words shewed that neither he, defending Mark, nor his opponents, attacking Mark, regarded the evangelist as perfect. Indeed his gospel was generally underrated, being placed far below that of Matthew and Luke, because people did not perceive that Mark often contained the account that was the truest—although expressed obscurely or in such a way as to cause some to stumble.