LETTER VI.
FROM PISO TO FAUSTA.
Having confined myself, in my last letter, to the affairs of Marcus and Lucilia, I now, Fausta, turn to those which concern us and Rome.
I found, on my return to the city, that the general anxiety concerning the designs of Aurelian had greatly increased. Many rumors were current of dark sayings of his, which, whether founded in truth or not, contributed to alarm even the most hopeful, and raise serious apprehensions for the fate of this much and long-suffering religion. Julia herself partakes—I cannot say of the alarm—but of the anxiety. She has less confidence than I have in the humanity of the Emperor. In the honours heaped upon Zenobia, and the favors shown herself and Vabalathus, she sees, not so much the outpouring of benevolent feeling, as a rather ostentatious display of imperial generosity, and, what is called, Roman magnanimity. For the true character of the man she looks into the graves of Palmyra, upon her smoking ruins, and upon the blood, yet hardly dry, that stains the pavements of the Cœlian. Julia may be right, though I am unwilling to believe it. Her judgment is entitled to the more weight in this severe decision, that it is ever inclined to the side of a too favorable opinion of character and motive. You know her nature too well, to believe her capable of exaggerating the faults of even the humblest. Yet, though such are her apprehensions, she manifests the same calm and even carriage as on the approach of more serious troubles in Palmyra. She is full of deepest interest in the affairs of the Christians, and by many families of the poorer sort is resorted to continually for aid, for counsel, or sympathy. Not one in the whole community is a more frequent and devout attendant upon the services of the church; and, I need not add, that I am her constant companion. The performance of this duty gives a value to life in Rome such as it never had before. Every seventh day, as with the Jews, only upon a different day of the week, do the Christians assemble for the purposes of religious worship. And, I can assure you, it is with no trifling accession of strength for patient doing and patient bearing, that we return to our every-day affairs, after having listened to the prayers, the reasonings, or exhortations of Probus.
So great is the difference in my feelings and opinions from what they were before I left Rome for Palmyra, that it is with difficulty I persuade myself that I am the same person. Between Piso the Pyrronist and Piso the Christian, the distance seems immeasurable—yet in how short a time has it been past. I cannot say that I did not enjoy existence and value it in my former state, but I can say that my enjoyment of it is infinitely heightened as a Christian, and the rate at which I value it infinitely raised. Born and nurtured as I was, with Portia for my mother, a palace for my home, Rome for my country and capital, offering all the luxuries of the earth, and affording all the means I could desire for carrying on researches in study of every kind, surrounded by friends of the noblest and best families in the city,—I could not but enjoy life in some very important sense. While mere youth lasted, and my thoughts never wandered beyond the glittering forms of things, no one could be happier or more contented. All was fair and beautiful around me—what could I ask for more? I was satisfied and filled. But, by and by, my dream of life was disturbed—my sleep broken. Natural questions began to propose themselves for my solution, such, I suppose, as, sooner or later, spring up in every bosom. I began to speculate about myself—about the very self that had been so long, so busy, about everything else beside itself. I wished to know something of myself—of my origin, my nature, my present condition, my ultimate fate. It seemed to me I was too rare and curious a piece of work to go to ruin, final and inevitable—perhaps to-morrow—at all events in a very few years. Of futurity I had heard—and of Elysium—just as I had heard of Jupiter, greatest and best, but, with my earliest youth, these things had faded from my mind, or had already taken upon themselves the character of fable. My Virgil, in which I early received my lessons of language, at once divested them of all their air of reality, and left them naked fiction. The other poets, Livy helping them, continued the same work and completed it. But, bent with most serious and earnest desires toward truth on what seemed to me the greatest theme, I could not remain where I was, and turned with highest expectations to the philosophers. I not only read, but I studied and pondered them with diligence, and with as sincere a desire of arriving at truth as ever scholar sat at the feet of his instructer. The result was anything but satisfying, I ended a universal sceptic, so far as human systems of philosophy were concerned, so far as they pretended to solve the enigma of God and man, of life and death; but with a heart, nevertheless, yearning after truth; and even full of faith, if that may be called faith which would instinctively lay hold upon a God and a hope of immortality; and, though beaten back once and again, by every form which the syllogism could assume, still keep its hold.
This was my state, Fausta, when I was found by Christianity. Without faith, and yet with it; doubting, and yet believing; rejecting philosophy, but leaning upon nature; dissatisfied, but hoping. I cannot easily find words to tell you the change which Christian faith has wrought within me. All I can say is this, that I am now a new man; I am made over again; I am born as it were into another world. Where darkness once was, there is now light brighter than the sun. Where doubt was, there is now certainty. I have knowledge and truth, for error and perplexity. The inner world of my mind is resplendent with a day whose luminary will never set. And even the outer world of appearances and forms shines more gloriously, and has an air of reality which before it never had. It used to seem to me like the gorgeous fabric of a dream, and as if, at some unexpected moment, it might melt into air and nothingness, and I, and all men and things, with it; for there appeared to be no purpose in it; it came from nothing, it achieved nothing, and certainly seemed to conduct to nothing. Men, like insects, came and went; were born, and died, and that was all. Nothing was accomplished, nothing perfected. But now, nature seems to me stable, and eternal as God himself. The world being the great birth-place and nursery of these myriads of creatures, made, as I ever conceived, in a divine likeness, after some godlike model,—for what spirit of other spheres can be more beautiful than a perfect man, or a perfect woman—each animated with the principle of immortality—there is a reason for its existence, and its perpetuity, from whose force the mind cannot escape. It is, and it ever will be; and mankind upon it, a continually happier, and more virtuous brotherhood.
Yes, Fausta, to me as a Christian, everything is new everything better; the inward world, the outward world, the present, and the future. Life is a worthier gift, and a richer possession. I am to myself an object of a thousand-fold greater interest; and every other human being, from a poor animal, that was scarce worthy its wretched existence, starts up into a god, for whom the whole earth may, one day, become too narrow a field either to till, or rule. I am, accordingly, ready to labor both for myself and others. I once held myself too cheap to do much even for myself; for others, I would do nothing, except to feed the hunger that directly appealed to me, or relieve the wretchedness that made me equally wretched. Not so now. I myself am a different being, and others are different. I am ready to toil for such beings; to suffer for them. They are too valuable to be neglected, abused, insulted, trodden into the dust. They must be defended and rescued, whenever their fellow-men—wholly ignorant of what they are, and what themselves are about—would oppress them. More than all, do they need truth, effectually to enlighten and redeem them, and truth they must have at whatever cost. Let them only once know what they are, and the world is safe. Christianity tells them this, and Christianity they must have. The State must not stand between man and truth! or, if it do, it must be rebuked by those who have the knowledge and the courage, and made to assume its proper place and office. Knowing what has been done for me by Christian truth, I can never be content until to others the same good is at least offered; and I shall devote what power and means I possess to this task. The prospect now is of opposition and conflict. But it dismays not me, nor Julia, nor any of this faith who have truly adopted its principles. For, if the mere love of fame, the excitement of a contest, the prospect of pay or plunder, will carry innumerable legions to the battle-field to leave there their bones, how much more shall the belief of a Christian arm him for even worse encounters? It were pitiful indeed, if a possession, as valuable as this of truth, could not inspire a heroism, which the love of fame or of money can.
These things I have said, to put you fully in possession of our present position, plans, and purposes. The fate of Christianity is to us now as absorbing an interest, as once was the fate of Palmyra.
I had been in the city only long enough to give Julia a full account of my melancholy visit in the country, and to write a part of it to you, when I walked forth to observe for myself the signs which the city might offer, either to confirm, or allay, the apprehensions which were begun to be felt.