‘Et cœli genitor de parte serena
Intonuit lævum.’”
“This thunder on the left was considered a good omen. But what was it you said after you asked the question? You seemed to be making a quotation in a strange tongue—at least a tongue I never heard.”
“That was Latin,” I answered, blushing a little, “and from Virgil—Virgilius, perhaps I ought to say, or perhaps Maro.”
“Ah! Latin, was it?” he said. “I beg your pardon; I thought it might have been a charm to avert the Evil Eye that you were uttering.”
“As difficult to understand as the Eleusinian mysteries,” I said. “And, by the way, what were the Eleusinian mysteries?”
“They were mysteries! I can merely say to you that they concealed under formal rites the worship of the spirit of nature, as symbolized in Demeter and Persephone and Dionysos. In their purest and hidden meaning, they represented the transformation, purification, and resurrection of humanity in a new form and in another existence. But I am not at liberty to say more than this. The outward rites were for the multitude, the inner meaning for the highest and most developed minds. Were it permitted to me to explain them to you, I think you would not take so low a view of our religious philosophy as you now seem to have. What you hear and read of was merely the outward and mystical drama, with its lustrations and fasting, and cakes of sesame and honey, and processions—as symbolical in its way as your mass and baptism, and having as pure a significance.
“But,” he continued, “to revert to the questions which we were previously discussing. It seems to me that in certain respects your faith is not even so satisfactory as ours; for its tendency is to degrade the present in view of the future, and to debase humanity in its own view. With us life was not considered disgraceful, nor man a mean and contemptible creature. We did not systematically humiliate ourselves and cringe before the divine powers, but strove to stand erect, and not to forget that we were made by God after his own image. We did not affect that false humility which in the view of the ancient philosophers was contemptible—nay, even we thought that the pride of humility was of all the most despicable. We sought to keep ourselves just, obedient to our best instincts, temperate and simple, looking upon life as a noble gift of the gods, to be used for noble purposes. We believed, beside this, that virtue should be practiced for itself, and not through any hope of reward or any fear of punishment here or hereafter. To act up to our highest idea of what was right was our principle, not out of terror or in the hope of conciliating God, but because it was right; and to look calmly on death, not as an evil, but as a step onward to another existence. To desire nothing too much; to hold one’s self equal to any fate; to keep one’s self in harmony with nature and with one’s own nature; calmly to endure what is inevitable, steadily to abstain from all that is wrong; to remember that there is no such thing as misfortune to the brave and wise, but only phantasms that falsely assume these shapes to shake the mind; that when what we wish does not happen, we should wish what does happen; that God hath given us courage, magnanimity, and fortitude, so that we may stand up against invasions of evil and bear misfortune,—such were our principles, and they enabled us to live heroic lives, vindicating the nobility of human nature, and not despising it as base and lost; believing in the justice of God and not in his caprice and enmity to any of us, and having no ignoble fear of the future.”
“But are not these principles for the most part ours?” I answered. “Do we not believe that virtue is the grand duty of man? Do none of us seek to live heroic lives, and sacrifice ourselves to do good to the world and to our brothers?”
“Certainly, you lead heroic lives; but your great principle is humility—your great motive, reward or fear. You profess to look on this life as mean and miserable, and on yourselves as creatures of the dust; and you declare that you have no claim to be saved from eternal damnation by leading a just life, but only by a capricious election hereafter. You profess that your God is a God of love, and you attribute to Him enmity and injustice of which you yourself would be ashamed. You think you are to be saved because Christ died on the cross for you, and you are not sure of it even then. But with us every one deserved to be tried on his own merits, and to expiate his own errors and crimes.”
“It is supposed by some that you were half a Christian yourself. Is this so?”