) is worth noticing, because something much more wide and broad was meant by it then than now; indeed, the original word would be better translated religion or religiousness. The term, prophet, is also worthy of being remarked; a prophet means one who is at once teacher of the most exalted class and an ascetic who has perfectly trampled this world under his feet. Finally, the philosophers looked to him as their [{773}] master, though he professed to teach no philosophy but Christianity, and quoted the Hebrew scriptures instead of Plato and Aristotle when men came to him with difficulties about the soul, the logos, and the creator.
In the present article, therefore, we shall be concerned with his Caesarean life; and as it is impossible to compress within moderate limits all that might be said of the literary productions of this exceedingly rich period of his labors, we shall confine ourselves chiefly to the consideration of the great work Contra Celsum. First, however, let us take a glance at the events of the twenty years, for they are not void of events which give us a notion of the man.
Since his principal charge at Caesarea was to preach the Word of God to the people, perhaps the largest part of his extant writings has come to consist of the homilies that he delivered in the discharge of this honorable duty. It was the bishop himself who, as a rule, preached in the church, and no priest was substituted whose learning and piety were not beyond all question. We have before quoted the strong words in which Eusebius has handed down the opinion of Origen held by S. Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea. On the Sunday, therefore, as we learn from himself, on festivals, and sometimes, it would seem, on Fridays or other week-days, he stood forth from among the clergy with all the weight of his bishop's mandate and of his own character, to interpret and comment on the Holy Scriptures. It would be interesting to be able to picture to ourselves that church at Caesarea in which the great light of the east spoke, Sunday after Sunday, to the mingled Greek and barbarian Christians of the capital of Palestine. It would probably be a building designed and founded for the purpose. Yet it cannot have been grand or sumptuous, or in any way resembling. a heathen temple, for Origen himself allows that the Christians had no "temples." 'What it was inside we can better guess. We know from Origen's own hints that there existed in it the usual distinctions of position for the various ranks of faithful and of clergy that are so well known from writers of a century later. We may therefore conclude that the chancel or altar part was clearly separated from the rest of the interior, and perhaps elevated above it; that the altar itself stood at some distance from the eastern wall, and that round the apsis behind it ran the
or presbyters' bench. Here, in the centre, stood the chair of the bishop, and here he sat during the sacred liturgy in the midst of his priests, all in a semicircle of lofty seats. The deacons and inferior clergy occupied the rest of the sanctuary, which was separated by a railing from the nave. In the nave, immediately outside the rails, stood the ambo or reading-desk, sometimes called the choir, for here clustered the singers and readers whose place it was to intone the less solemn parts of the liturgy. Hangings, more or less magnificent, according to circumstances, suspended above the rails, were closed during the canon of the mass; and shut out the holies from the sight of the people. Over the altar was the canopy, on four pillars, and upon the altar a linen cloth; and the chair of the bishop was usually covered with suitable drapery. When the bishop preached, he stood or sat forward, probably in front of the altar, but within the chancel-rails; it was a very unusual thing to preach from the ambo, though S. John Chrysostom is recorded to have done so in Sancta Sophia, in order to be better heard by the people. Origen, therefore, would preach from the sanctuary on the Lord's-day; bishop, priests, clergy, and people, in their places to hear him; the pontiff in his flat mitre with the infulae of the high priesthood; the priests in the linen chasubles that came down and covered them on every side; the deacons and others in their various tunics and albs; the singers and readers with the diptychs and books of chant laid [{774}] ready open on the desk of the ambo; the faithful in the nave, men on one side and women on the other; the virgins and the widows in their seats apart; the various orders of penitents in the nave or in the narthex, and the band of listening catechumens in front of the "royal gates" (of the nave) that they hoped soon to be allowed to enter. His hearers would be of all degrees of fervor, and of many different ranks; they might include Greek philosophers and poor vernae or house slaves, patricians of Roman burghs, and Syrian porters; doubtless the bulk of them were the poor and the lowly of Caesarea. He had to say a word to all, and he found means to say it, in the word of Holy Scripture. He had, by this time, dispensed himself from previously writing his discourses; and hence many of those that have come down to us are the shorthand reports that were taken down as he spoke, and afterward corrected by himself. The text or subject of the discourse was that portion of Scripture which had just been recited by the reader, or part of it; though sometimes we find that he had a text given him by the bishop or by the presbytery, and that occasionally he selected a particular subject at the desire of "some of the brethren." He held his own copy of the Scripture in his hand; for we find him comparing it with the version just used by the reader. His discourses were not set pieces of eloquence; they were true homilies, that is, familiar and easy addresses, almost seeming to have developed themselves out of an earlier style of dialogue between priest and people. They have all the abruptness, all the questionings and answerings, all the explanations of terms and sentences, and all the appreciation of difficulties that suggest rather the catechist with his class than the preacher with his auditory. We miss the poetry and fine fancy of Clement, but we gain in orderly and connected development. One is certainly tempted to think that more artistic and ornamental treatment might have been expected from the son of Leonides and the teacher of rhetoric. But Origen tells us more than once that he studiously avoids worldly and profane eloquence. His reason seems not far to seek. Rhetoric was the main profession of the pagan teachers that abounded in every town of the empire; and S. Augustin's expression, that rhetoric meant the art of telling lies, was not exaggerated. Rhetoric in those days did not mean the sound and immortal precepts of Aristotle, but the vain heaping together of empty words. It was the necessity of protesting against this that has undoubtedly given much of their ruggedness to the homilies of Origen. His watchword was, edification; his rule and law, as he expressly says, was, not completeness of exposition, not parade of words, but the benefit of those who listened. Because he was a speaker, he rejected tedious and minute disquisitions, which were more suitable for "the leisure of a writer." Because he was a speaker of the truth, he avoided, even to austerity, the imitation of profane and perverted art. He was rich in matter, and poured forth a stream of doctrine, of exhortation, of reproof. His name and character did the rest. A word from Origen had more weight than a treatise from an unknown mouth. We have no record of how his audience took his discourses, save what is implied in the general testimony to his prodigious reputation. But, on the other hand, he presents us with a few facts about his audience. We learn that some were readier to look after the adorning of the church than the beautifying of their own souls. It appears that it was difficult to get an audience together on common week-days, and that they were somewhat remiss in assembling even on festivals, though he speaks of a few as "constant attendants" on the preaching. Those who did come to church, too often came not so much to hear God's word, as because it was a festival, and because it was pleasant to have a holiday. And [{775}] some escaped the sermon altogether by going out immediately after the reading: "Why do you complain of not knowing this and not knowing that," he says, "when you never wait for the conference, and never interrogate your priests?" Moreover, many who were present at the discourse in body, were far away in spirit, for "they sat apart in the corners of the Lord's house and occupied themselves with profane confabulation." He did not preach to an immaculate audience: there were many who were Christians in name, Pagans in life; many who turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves; many who preferred the agora, the law courts, the farm, before the church; and many who could provide pedagogues, masters, books, money, and time, that their children might learn the liberal arts, but who failed to see that something of the same diligence and sacrifice was necessary on their own parts if they wished to become true disciples of the word of God. But from all this it would be wrong to infer that Origen's hearers were worse than others in their circumstances. Doubtless they listened with reverence both to his teaching and to his rebukes. Perhaps even they applauded him by acclamation; such a thing was not unknown a century or so later. It would be little to Origen's taste to have his audience waving their garments and rocking their bodies in ecstasy or calling out "orthodox!" as they did to S. Cyril, of Alexandria, or "Thou art the thirteenth apostle!" as the excitable Constantinopolitans did to S. Chrysostom; like S. Jerome, he preferred "to excite the grief of the people rather than their applause, and his commendation was their tears." S. Vincent, of Lerins, two centuries after Origen's preaching at Caesarea, speaks of the way in which his "eloquence" affected himself. If his audience were as well satisfied, they must have listened to him with great pleasure and profit. "His discourse," says S. Vincent, in the Commonitorium, "was pleasant to the fancy, sweet as milk, to the taste; it seems to me that there issued from his mouth honey rather than words. Nothing so hard to believe, but his powers of controversy made it plain; nothing so difficult to practise, but his persuasiveness rendered it easy. Tell me not that he did nothing but argue, There has never been a teacher who has used so many examples out of the Holy Writ." The homilies of Origen did not pass away with the voice that delivered them. Till he was sixty years old he had generally written them out beforehand. After that time the shorthand writers beside him caught every word as it fell, and so the discourses became a treasury for ever. Fortune and time have indeed destroyed far the greater part of the "thousand and more tractates" which S. Jerome says he delivered in the church, and of what remain some only exist in abbreviated Latin translations. But though their letter is diminished, their spirit pervades the whole field of patristic exposition, and many of the greatest of the Greek and Latin fathers have not hesitated over and over again to use at length the exact words of Origen. And so the sentences first uttered in the church of Caesarea have become the public property of the church universal, and while Caesarea is a ruin and its library scattered to dust, the living word and spirit of him who spoke there, speaks still in cities far greater, and to auditories far more wide; for every pulpit utters his thoughts, and Christian people, though they may not know it, are everywhere "edified" by that which was first the offspring of' his intellect.
Origen had been laboring at Caesarea for barely four years when one of those interruptions occurred that he had already become familiar with at Alexandria. The Emperor Maximin (235), a barbarian giant, whose unchecked propensities for cruelty and blood seem to have driven him absolutely mad before the end of his three years' reign, followed up the murder of his [{776}] benefactor Alexander Severus by a series of horrors, in which were involved both pagans and Christians alike. Any man of name, character, or wealth, in any part of the world that could be reached by a Roman cohort, was liable to confiscation, torture, and death in order to appease his frantic suspicions. Caesarea was an important Roman post, and as no one in Caesarea was better known than the head of the Christian school, we soon find that Origen is marked out for a victim. He escaped, however, by a prompt flight, and reached the other Caesarea, of Cappadocia, the see of his friend Firmilian. He had no sooner arrived there than the capricious persecution fell upon the city of his refuge, under the auspices of Serenianus the governor, "a dire and bitter persecutor," as he is called by Firmilian. In these straits he managed to lie hid for two years in the house of a lady called Juliana—a house, indeed, to which he was attracted by other considerations beside that of safety; for this lady was the heiress of the whole library of Symmachus the Ebionite, one of those learned translators of the Hebrew Scriptures whom Origen incorporated in the Hexapla. He himself mentions with great satisfaction the advantages which his biblical labors derived from the opportunities he enjoyed in his Cappadocian retirement. We are also indebted to this period for two, not the least interesting, of his works. Maximin's informers seem to have contrived to implicate the good Christian Ambrose in some trouble. That Ambrose was a man of wealth we have seen, and he was undoubtedly, also, in some considerable charge or employment which necessitated his journeying frequently from one Roman city to another. Whether this persecution caught him at Alexandria or Caesarea, or elsewhere, is uncertain; but he had received notice of his danger and was preparing to place himself in security when the insurrection of the Gordians broke out in Syria and Asia, and in the confusion and trouble that ensued he became the prisoner of Maximin's troops, and was immediately sent, or destined to be sent, to Germany, where the emperor had just concluded a triumphant campaign. The news of the danger of his zealous friend and patron drew from Origen the letter that we know now as the Exhortatio ad Martyrium. It was accompanied by another, the De Oratione, which he had perhaps already composed. These two works, into an examination of which we cannot enter, show more of the interior spirit of their writer than anything else that has reached us. When a history of the early methods of prayer comes to be written, the treatise on prayer will have to be thoroughly examined. The Exhortation to Martyrdom is full of the true Adamantine vehemence and piety. Though addressed to Ambrose, it is really, and would be accepted as a general call to the Church of Palestine to stand fast and do manfully in the dangerous times on which they had fallen. The name of Protectetus, a priest of Caesarea, which is associated with that of Ambrose in the dedication, as he was also in danger of death, felicitously localizes it, and we may look upon it as a homily, delivered in writing and from a distance, and on a new and stirring subject, to that church which he had been accustomed to edify with his words during the three or four years preceding. We unwillingly omit to enter upon it at large. At Maximin's death (238) he returned to his own Caesarea. After this, his literary enterprises, completed and undertaken, come thick and frequent. Among other works we meet with the commentaries on Ezechiel and Isaiah, on S. Matthew and S. Luke, on Daniel and the twelve minor prophets, and on several of the epistles of S. Paul. It is to this time also that belongs the celebrated exposition of the Canticle of Canticles, of which S. Jerome has said, that whereas in his other works he surpassed all other men, so in this he surpassed himself. But little of the original has come down to us, and the translation [{777}] of Rufinus is too free and abridged to enable us to understand how this high praise was deserved.
About the same period he made a second journey into Greece. What occasion brought him to Athens we are not informed. We find, however, that he thought very highly of the Athenian Church. In his reply to Celsus, speaking of the influence and weight that Christians were everywhere acquiring, he instances the Church at Athens, and boasts that the assembly of the Athenian people was only a tumultuous mob in comparison with the congregation of the Athenian Christians. Since Athens was even then the central light of the whole world, we may perhaps conclude that Origen's journey thither was caused by some phase of the conflict between Philosophy and the Gospel with which he had been all his life so familiar. On his return to Caesarea he wrote the answer to Celsus, with which we shall concern ourselves presently. It was written during the reign of Philip the Arabian. We are told by Eusebius that Origen wrote a letter to this emperor. What this letter can have been about is somewhat of a puzzle in history. Eusebius, to be sure, a couple of chapters before he mentions the letter, relates a story, rather coldly, about Philip's coming to the church (at Antioch) one Easter time as a Christian, and his seating himself among the penitents when the bishop (S. Babylas) refused to admit him on any other terms. S. Babylas might well reject him and place him among the penitents, for his career, which commenced, as that of most of the Roman emperors, with the murder of his predecessor, the young Gordian, had been anything but innocent. Certain it is, however, that the story was current of Philip's being a Christian. Even if he were not, which seems the more probable, there is no improbability that he may have questioned such a man as Origen about Christianity. It must be recollected, moreover, that this Emperor Philip was by birth an Arabian, being a native of Bostra. He was the son of a robber-chief, and we are first introduced to him as taking an important part in the campaign of Gordian in which the Persians were driven out of Mesopotamia. The important Roman city of Bostra, though not within the boundaries of Arabia, was sufficiently near them to be considered the metropolis of the upper part of Arabia, as Petra was of the middle. Philip, therefore, was evidently nothing more than a powerful Bedouin Sheik, such as may be seen at this very day in the countries of which he was a native, and had succeeded his father in the possession of wide influence over the predatory tribes that ranged over all Palestine, Syria, and Arabia, except the actual spots occupied by a Roman military force. His character is significantly illustrated by the incident that raised him to the purple. When Gordian's army was in Mesopotamia, his dangerous captain of Free Lances took care to have the whole of the commissariat supplies intercepted, and thus caused the mutiny which, terminated in Gordian's death. Such a feat was easy and natural to a chief whose wild horsemen commanded every part of the great Syrian desert that lay between Mesopotamia and the Roman stations off the Mediterranean coast. But what is more to our purpose is, that Origen was frequently at Bostra, and was there at the very time of Gordian's campaign and Philip's accession. Bearing in mind the extent to which the name of Origen was known among the pagan men of letters, as well as among the Christian churches, it seems impossible but that Philip must have heard him mentioned. Only let us grant that the emperor had a leaning to Christianity, even though in no better spirit than that of an eclectic, and the occasion of Origen's letter becomes clear. The mention of the Syrian desert reminds us of another celebrated name. Palmyra, or Tadmor of the Wilderness, was, at the time of which we write, almost in the zenith of her beauty, though it was not till [{778}] twenty years afterward that her splendor culminated and collapsed under Zenobia and Longinus. Origen knew the great philosopher, who had been his auditor at Alexandria, and whom he had most probably met again at Athens. It is quite possible that Longinus may have become the guest of Zenobia before Origen left Caesarea for the last time, and, therefore, during the time he was so familiar with the Arabian Church. We know that he had more than a mere acquaintance with the author of the Treatise on the Sublime, and, perhaps, there were no two minds of the age more fitted to grapple with each other. Of their mutual influence we have no certain traces, but it may be noted that amongst the lost works of Longinus there is a treatise,
. Can it have had any relation to that of Origen under the same name?