Out of the windows of my mind——
From my heart's idly open door,
My gaze the wide world wanders o'er,
And yet, alas! how blind, how blind!
My sight of things divine how dim!
Though there be not a single day
But Jesus passeth by the way;
All else I see, but blind to him.
Though rich, I seek the beggar's mite——
His beauty only do I prize;
And all is darkness to my eyes
Whilst he is hidden from my sight.
I hear a voice within my soul——
"Arise, of better comfort be,
And come: the Master calleth thee——
Thy faith shall also make thee whole."
From the Dublin Review.
ORIGEN AT CAESAREA.
Origenis Libri contra Celsum (inter Opera omnia). Ed. Migne.1857.
In concluding our survey of the character and work of Origen, it will be useful to recall the leading dates in the chronology of his life to the date of his exodus from Alexandria. Born in or about 186, he became the head of the Catechetical school at the age of eighteen: About 211 he visited Rome. From that year till 231, he labored at Alexandria, with no other interruptions than short journeys into Arabia, to Caesarea, and into Greece. In 231 he left Alexandria never to return, and thenceforward the chief place of his residence was Caesarea of Palestine. In the fourth or fifth year of his sojourn there (235), Maximin's persecution compelled him to flee to Caesarea of Cappadocia. Returning to the other Caesarea in 238, he remained there for about eleven years, that is, until the commencement of the Decian persecution. During these years, however, he made another journey into Greece, and two more into Arabia. After the cessation of the persecution he lived a short time in Jerusalem, and thence removed to Tyre, where he died in 253, or 254, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. The chief divisions of his life after attaining manhood are therefore the following:
1. The twenty years (211-231) of his Alexandrian teaching.
2. The twenty years (231-251) of his life at Caesarea.
3. The three or four years from the end of the Decian persecution (251) till his death (254.)
In our present essay we shall be concerned chiefly with the second of these periods. It was the time of Origen's most active and dignified labor. He was now not so much the teacher of disciples as the teacher of teachers and the doctor of the whole East. The church was, on the whole, at peace, her numbers were increasing, her organization developing, and her doctrines becoming daily more and more a subject of inquiry to intellects, friendly and hostile. We have before taken notice (Dublin Review, April, 1866, p. 401) how Caesarea was an important centre, political, literary, and religious; and here Origen spent the twenty years of which we now speak, in intercourse with such bishops as S. Alexander, S. Theoctistus, and Firmilian, in training such pupils as Gregory Thaumaturgus, in preaching such homilies as those on Isaiah, Ezechiel, and the Canticles, in writing such apologies as the Contra Celsum, and in carrying through such an enterprise as the Hexapla. It is to this period that we must refer the emphatic testimony of S. Vincent of Lerins. "It is impossible," says he, "to tell how Origen was loved, esteemed, and admired by every one. All that made any profession of piety hastened to him from the ends of the world. There was no Christian who did not respect him as a prophet, no philosopher who did not honor him as a master." The word piety (