From The Dublin Review.
THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA--ORIGEN.
The scholar next comes to the more strictly ethical part of Origen's teaching. The preliminary dialectics had cleared the ground, and to a certain extent replanted it; physics made the process more easy, pleasant, and complete; but the great end of a philosophic life was ethics, that is, the making a man good. The making of a man good and virtuous seems now-a-days a simple matter, as far as theory is concerned, and so perhaps it is, if only theory and principles be considered; though morality is an extensive science, and one that is not mastered in an hour or a day. But in Origen's day a science of Christian ethics did not exist. The teaching of the Scripture and the voice of the pastors was sufficient, doubtless, for the guidance of the faithful; but science is a different thing. Such a science is shadowed out to us by the scholar in the record we are noticing. St. Thomas, the great finisher of scientific Christian ethics, embraces all virtues under two great classes, viz., the theological and the cardinal. The whole science of morality treats only of the seven virtues included under these two divisions. The master's teaching comprehended, of course, faith, and hope, and charity; indeed, it would be more correct to say that these three virtues were his whole ultimate object; but the scholar says little of them in particular just because of this very reason, and also because they were bound up in that piety which he mentions so often. But it is a most interesting fact that the virtues, and the only virtues, mentioned in the summary of Origen's moral teaching given by St. Gregory, are precisely the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The classification dates, of course, from the Stoics, but the circumstance that the framework laid down by a father in the beginning of the third century was used and completed by another father in the thirteenth, gives the early father an undoubted claim to be considered the founder of Christian ethics. And here we lay our hands on one of the earliest instances of heathen philosophy being made to hew wood and carry water for Christian theology. The division of virtues was a good one; all the schools pretended to teach it; but the distinctive boast and triumph of the Christian teacher was that he taught true prudence, true justice, fortitude, and temperance, "not such," says the scholar, "as the other philosophers teach, and especially the moderns, who are strong and great in words; he not only talked about the virtues, but exhorted us to practise them; and he exhorted us by what he did far more than by what he said." And here the scholar takes the opportunity of recording his opinion about "the other" philosophers, now that he has had a course of Origen's training. He first apologizes to them for hurting their feelings. He says that, personally, he has no ill-will against them, but he plainly tells them that things have come to such a pass, through their conduct, that the very name of philosophy is laughed at. And he goes on to develop what appeared to him the very essence of their faults, viz., too much talk, and nothing but talk. Their teaching is like a widely-extended morass; once set foot in it, and you can neither get out nor go on, but stick fast till you perish. Or it is like a thick forest; the traveller who once finds himself [{485}] in it has no chance of ever getting back to the open fields and the light of day, but gropes about backward and forward, first trying one path, then another, and finding they all lead farther in, until at last, wearied and desperate, he sits down and dwells in the forest, resolving that the forest shall be his world, since all the world seems to be a forest. This is, perhaps, one of the most graphic pictures ever given of the state of mind, so artificial, so unsatisfied, and yet so self-sufficient, brought about by a specious heathen philosophy, and the effect of enlightened reason destitute of revelation. The scholar cannot heighten the strength of his description by going on to compare it, in the third place, to a labyrinth, but the comparison brings out two striking features well worthy of notice. The first is, the innocent and guileless look of the whole concern from the outside; "the traveller sees the open door, and in he goes, suspecting nothing." Once in, he sees a great deal to admire, (and this is the second point in the labyrinth-simile;) he sees the very perfection of art and arrangement, doors after doors, rooms within rooms, passages leading most ingeniously and conveniently into other passages; he sees all this art, admires the architect, and--thinks of going out. But there is no going out for him; he is fast. All the artifice and ingenuity he has been admiring have been expended for the express purpose of keeping in for ever those foolish people who have been so unwary as to come in at the open door. "For there is no labyrinth so hard to thread," sums up the scholar, "no wood so deep and thick, no bog so false and hopeless, as the language of some of these philosophers." In this language we recognize another of of the characteristic feelings of the day--the feeling of profound disgust for the highest teachings of heathenism from the moment the soul catches a ray of the light of the Gospel In Origen's school the confines of the receding darkness skirted the advancing kingdom of light, and those that sat in the darkness to-day saw it leaving them to-morrow, and far behind them the morrow after that; and all the time the great master had to be peering anxiously into the darkness to see what souls were nearest the light, and to hold out his hand to win them too into the company of those that were already sitting at his feet. In such days as those, sharp comparisons between heathen wisdom and the light of Christ must have been part of the atmosphere in which the catechumens of the great school lived and breathed; there was a reality and interest in them such as can never be again. And yet the master was no bigot in his dealings with the Greek philosophies. "He was the first and the only one," says his scholar, "that made me study the philosophy of Greece." The scholar was to reject nothing, to despise nothing, but make himself thoroughly acquainted with the whole range of Greek philosophy and poetry; there was only one class of writers he was to have nothing to do with, and those were the atheists who denied God and God's providence; their books could only sully a mind that was striving after piety. But his pupils were to attach themselves to no school or party, as did the mob of those who pretended to study philosophy. Under his guidance they were to take what was true and good, and leave what was false and bad. He walked beside them and in front of them through the labyrinth; he had studied its windings and knew its turns; in his company, and with their eyes on his "lofty and safe" teaching, his scholars need fear no danger.
This brief analysis of part of St. Gregory's remarkable oration will serve to give us some idea of Origen's method of treating his more learned and cultivated converts, of whom we know he had a very great many. It will also have admitted us, in some sort, into the interior of his school, [{486}] and let as hear the question in debate and the matters that were of greatest interest in that most influential centre of Christian teaching. It does not, of course, deal directly with theology, or with those great controversies which Origen, in a manner, rendered possible for his pupils and successors of the next century. The scholar, indeed, does go on now to speak of his theological teachings; but he describes rather his manner than his matter, and rather the salient points of characteristic gifts than the details of his dogmatic system. As this is precisely our own object in these notes, we need only say that St. Gregory, in the concluding pages of his farewell discourse, sufficiently proves that the great end and object of all philosophic teaching and intellectual discipline in the school of his master was faith and practical piety. To teach his hearers the great first cause was his most careful and earnest task. His instructions about God were so full of knowledge and so carefully prepared that the scholar is at a loss how to describe them. His explanations of the prophets, and of Holy Scripture generally, were so wonderful that he seemed to be the friend and interpreter of the Word. The soul that thirsted for knowledge went away from him refreshed, and the hard of heart and the unbelieving could not listen to him without both understanding, and believing, and making submission to God. "It was no otherwise than by the communication of the Holy Ghost that he spoke thus," says his disciple, "for the prophets and the interpreters of the prophets have necessarily the same help from above, and none can understand a prophet unless by the same spirit wherein the prophet spoke. This greatest of gifts and this splendid destiny he seemed to have received from God, that he should be the interpreter of God's words to men, that he should understand the things of God, as though he heard them from God's own mouth, and that through him men should be brought to listen and obey." Two little indications of what we may call the spirit of Origen are to be found in this address of his pupil. The first is the great value he sets upon purity as the only means of arriving at the knowledge and communion of God. We know what a watchword this "union with God" was among the popular philosophers of the day. To attain to it was the end of all the Neo-Platonic asceticism. It was Origen's great end as well; but he taught that purity alone and the subjugation of the passions by the grace of God will avail to lead the soul thither, and that no amount of external refinement or abstinence from gross sin will suffice to make the soul pure in the sight of God. The second is, his devotion to the person of the Son, the ever-blessed Word of God. The whole oration of the scholar takes the form of a thanksgiving to "the Master and Saviour of our souls, the firstborn Word, the maker and ruler of all things." He never misses an opportunity all through it of bursting into eloquent love to that "Prince of the universe;" he cannot praise his master without first praising him, or ascribe anything to the powers of the earthly teacher without referring it first of all to the heavenly Giver. He had learned this from Origen, the predecessor, unconsciously certainly, but in will and in spirit, of another Alexandrian, the great Athanasius. And here again error was bringing out the truth, for unless the Gnostics and the Neo-Platonists had been at that very time theorizing about their demiurge and their emanations, we should probably have missed the tender devotion and repeated homage to the eternal Word which we find in the words of Origen and his disciple.
Theodore, or Gregory, as he had been named in baptism, had to thank his master and to praise him, and he had, Moreover, to say how sorry he was to leave him. He concludes his speech with the expression of his regrets. He is afraid that all the grand teaching he has received has been to [{487}] a great extent thrown away upon him. He is not yet prudent, he is not just, he is not temperate, he has no fortitude, alas, for his own native imbecility! But one gift the master has given him he has made him love all these virtues with a love that knows no bounds; and he has made him love, over and above them all, that virtue which is alike their beginning and their consummation--the blessed virtue of piety, the service and love of God. And now, in leaving him, he seems to be leaving a garden full of useful trees and pleasant fruits, full of green grass and cheering sunshine. And he thereupon compares himself, at considerable length, to our first parents banished from Paradise. "I am leaving the face of God and going back to the earth from whence I came; and I shall eat earth all my days, and till earth--an earth that will produce me nothing but thorn and briers now that it is deprived of its good and excellent tending." He goes on to liken himself to the prodigal son; and yet he finds himself worse than he, for he is going away without receiving the "due portion of substance," and leaving behind everything he loves and cares for. Again, he seems to be one of that band of Jewish captives that hang up their harps on the willows and wept beside the rivers of Babylon. "I am going out from my Jerusalem," he says, "my holy city, where day and night the holy law is being announced, where are hymns and canticles and mystic speech; where a light brighter than the sun shines upon us as we discuss the mysteries of God, and where our fancy brings back in the night visions of what has occupied us in the day; I am leaving this holy city, wherein God seems to breathe everywhere, and going into a land of exile: there will be no singing for me; even the mournful flute will not be my solace when my harp is hung on the willows; but I shall be working by river-sides and making bricks; the hymns I remember I shall not be allowed to sing; nay, it may be that my very memory will play me false, and my hard work will make me forget them." The youthful heart, that has left a cloistered retreat of learning and piety, where masters have been loved, studies enjoyed, and God tenderly served, will test these words by itself, and read in their eloquent painting another proof that nature is the same to-day as yesterday. Gregory the wonder-worker was truly a scholar to be proud of, but the master's pride must have been obliterated in his emotion when he listened to such a description of his school as this.
But the scholar, after all, will leave with a good heart. "There is the Word, the sleepless guardian of all men." He puts his trust in him, and in the good seed that his master has sown; perhaps he may come back again and see him yet once more, when the seed shall have sprung up and produced such fruits as can be expected from a nature which is barren and evil, but which he prays God may never become worse by his own fault. "And do thou, O my beloved master (
), arise and send us forth with thy prayer; thou hast been our saviour by thy holy teachings whilst we were with thee; save us still by thy prayers when we depart. Give us back, master, give us up into the hands of him that sent us to thee, God; thank him for what has befallen us; pray him that in the future he may ever be with us to direct us, that he may keep his laws before our eyes and set in our heart that best of teachers his divine fear. Away from thee, we shall not obey him as freely as we obeyed him here. Keep praying that we may find consolation in him for our loss of thee, that he may send us his angel to go with us; and ask him to bring us back to thee once more; no other consolation could be half so great." And so they depart, the two brothers, never again to see their master more. They both became great bishops, Gregory the greatest; we find Origen writing to him, soon after his departure, a letter full of affection and good counsel; and who can tell how much the teaching of the catechist of Alexandria had to do with that wonderful life and never-dying reputation that distinguish Gregory Thaumaturgus among all the saints of the church?
Origen presided at Alexandria for twenty years--that is to say, from 211 to 231. In the latter year he left it for ever. During this period he had been temporarily absent more than once. The governor of the Roman Arabia, or Arabia Petraea, had sent a special messenger to the prefect of Alexandria and the patriarch, to beg that the catechist might pay him a visit. What he wanted him for is not recorded; but Petra, the capital of the Roman province, was not so far from the great road between Alexandria and Palestine as to be out of the way of Greek thought and civilization, and its interesting remains of art, belonging to this very period, which startled modern travellers only a short time past, prove that it was itself no inconsiderable centre of intellectual cultivation. We may, therefore, conjecture that his errand was philosophical, or, in other words, religious.
The second time that Origen was absent from Alexandria was for a somewhat longer space. The emperor Caracalla, after murdering his brother and indulging in indiscriminate slaughter, in all parts of the world from Rome to Syria, had at last arrived, with his troubled conscience and his well-bribed legions, at Alexandria. The Alexandrians, it is well known, had an irresistible tendency to give nicknames. Caracalla's career was open to a few epithets, and the unfortunate "men of Macedon" made merry on some salient points in the character of the emperor and his mother. They had better have held their tongues, or plucked them out; for in a fury of vengeance he let loose his bloodthirsty bands on the city. How many were slain in that awful visitation no one ever knew; the dead were thrown into trenches, and hastily covered up, uncounted and unrecorded. The spectre-haunted emperor took special vengeance on the institutions and professors of learning. It would seem that he destroyed a great part of the buildings of the Museum, and put to death or banished the teachers. As for the students, he had the whole youth of the city driven together into the gymnasium, and ordered them to be formed into a "Macedonian phalanx" for his army--a grim retort, in kind, for their pleasantries at his expense. Origen fled before this storm. Had he remained, he was far too well known now to have been safe for an hour. Doubtless obedience made him conceal himself and escape. He took refuge in Caesarea of Palestine, where the bishop, St. Theoctistus, received him with the utmost honor; and, though he was yet only a layman, made him preach in the church, which he had never done at Alexandria. When the tempest in Egypt had gone by, Demetrius wrote for him to come back. He returned, and resumed the duties of his post.