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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 CHAPTER XV
EPICTETUS’S GOSPEL

I went somewhat unwillingly to the next day’s lecture. It would

probably be interesting, I thought; but I could no longer deny that I
was beginning to feel doubtful about that. And certainly I was more
interested in Paul’s letters. Soon after I was seated, Glaucus came
in. He looked worn and haggard, but there was no time to ask him
questions. The subject of the lecture was, How are we to struggle
with adversity? The answer was, By bearing in mind that death is no
evil; that defamation is nothing but the noise of madmen; and that
only the rich, the lords and rulers of the earth, are the subjects of
tragedies. But the main point was that “the door” is always open:
“Do not be more cowardly than children. The moment they are tired,
they say, ‘I won’t play any more.’ Say you the same, ‘I won’t play
any more.’ And be off. But if you stay, don’t keep on complaining.”
This topic had become familiar. What followed, though not quite
novel, interested me more, because it seemed to bear on the Jewish
Law.
First came a general descant on the advantages of being
absolutely free from fear. Why should a man fear? Had he not power
over everything that might cause him fear? Then a pupil was
supposed to ask for more rules of life, saying, “But give me
commandments.” The reply was, “Why am I to give you
commandments? Has not Zeus given you commandments? Has He
not given and appointed for you what is your own, unhindered and
unshackled; but what is not your own, hindered and shackled? Well,
then, what is the commandment? Of what nature is the strict
injunction with which you have come into the world from Zeus? It is
this, ‘Keep in all ways the things that are yours, desire not the things
that are for others’.… Having such suggestions and commands from
Zeus, what further commands can you crave from me?” He finished
this section of his discourse thus, “Bring these commandments,
bring your preconceptions, bring the demonstrations of the
philosophers, bring the words you have often heard and have often
yourself spoken, read, and pondered.”
I could not feel sure whether “bring” meant “bring to bear on each
point,” or “bring to your aid”; but, in either case, this conclusion, to
me at least, was disappointing. “It is all very true,” I thought, “and
strictly according to reason. We are sure we have ‘preconceptions.’
We are not sure that we receive strength, in this or that emergency,
from any being except ourselves. And yet how tame—and, in
emergencies, how flat and unhelpful—such an utterance as this
appears in comparison with the oracle that the Christian believed he
had heard from his Lord, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee. For Power is
made perfect in weakness’!”
The rest of the lecture was more lively and expressed with more
novelty, but old in substance—addressed to those who wanted to
enjoy the best seats in the theatre of life but not to be squeezed by
the crowd. His prescription was, “Don’t go to see it at all, man, and
then you will not be squeezed. Or, if you like, go into the best seats,
when the theatre is empty, and enjoy the sun there.” Then he added
something that made my companion Glaucus shrug his shoulders
and cease taking notes, “Remember always, We squeeze ourselves,
we pinch ourselves. For example, we will suppose you are being
reviled. What is the harm in that? Why pinch yourself on that
account? Go and revile a stone. What harm will you do the stone?
Well then, when you are reviled, listen like a stone. And then what
harm does the reviler do you?”
We went out together, Glaucus and I. I think I have said before
that Glaucus had some troubles at that time in his home at Corinth,
but of what kind I did not exactly know. “Silanus,” he said presently
to me, with a bitter smile, “I am pinching myself with my shoe.”
“Then take it off,” said I. “By the immortal Gods,” he exclaimed, “I
wish I could! But what if my shoe is the universe? What if it is⸺”
He stopped. I replied at once, like a faithful disciple of Epictetus,
“Not the universe, Glaucus, but your opinions about the universe.”
“Well then,” said he, “my ‘opinions about the universe.’ What if my
‘opinions about the universe’ include ‘opinions about’ certain persons
and things—home, father, mother, sister, and other such indifferent
trifles? To put an imaginary case, could I by ‘taking off’ my ‘opinion
about’ my father, take my father out of prison, or save him from
death, or others from disgrace worse than death? No, Silanus, I am
beginning to be a little tired of hearing ‘Remember always, You pinch
yourselves.’ Often it is so. But not always. What say you?”
What ought I to have said? I knew exactly what was the correct
thing to say. “In such cases, give up the game. The door is open. Do
you say the universe pinches you? Then take off your shoe by going
out of the universe.” This would have been the orthodox consistent
answer. But I was inconsistent, not indeed in words, but in a
heretical glance of sympathy, which Glaucus—I could see—
interpreted rightly. We parted. As I walked slowly back to my rooms,
I had leisure to reflect that the gospel of Epictetus had no power to
strengthen Glaucus, and—I began to fear—no power to strengthen
me, except to bear comparative trifles. It was not strong enough—at
least in me—to stand up against the great and tragic calamities of
human life.
With these thoughts, I sat down once more to study Paul’s epistles
from the beginning. Once more (but now for the last time) I was led
into a digression. It was the word “gospel” that thus dragged me
away, coming upon me (in Paul’s first sentence) just when I had
been deploring the failure of the “gospel” of Epictetus. Reading on, I
found that Paul’s “gospel” had been “promised beforehand, through
God’s prophets, in the holy scriptures concerning His son.” A little
later, the writer said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is
God’s power tending to salvation for every one that hath faith, Jew
first, and then Greek. For God’s righteousness is therein revealed,
from faith tending to faith, even as it is written, ‘Now the righteous
shall live by faith’.”
 The next words surprised me by mentioning “God’s wrath” as a
part of the gospel: “For there is revealed therein God’s wrath from
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that
hold down the truth in unrighteousness.” But I immediately
perceived that it might be regarded as “gospel” or “good tidings” to
be informed that God does really feel “wrath” at unrighteousness, or
injustice, and that He will sooner or later judge and punish it.
Accordingly I was not surprised to find Paul, soon afterwards,
connecting “gospel” and “judging” thus: “In the day when God shall
judge the secrets of men according to my gospel, through Jesus
Christ.”
From this I perceived that Paul’s gospel promised a righteous
judgment as well as immortality. But how could it be proved that
there would be this righteous judgment? Paul said that it was
“revealed from faith to faith.” He added, “as it is written”; and a note
in the margin of my ms. shewed me that he was referring to a certain
prophet named Habakkuk. I unrolled the passage. It seemed that
this Habakkuk was living in times when his nation was grievously
oppressed. The oppressors were like fishermen catching the
oppressed at their pleasure. The prophet, standing on a tower, said
to the people, “Wait and have faith. The righteous shall live by faith.”
Paul meant that if we would begin by having some faith in a
righteous God, in spite of appearances on the surface of things, we
should be helped to rise “from faith to more faith,” and consequently
that we should “live”—that is have real life. Faith seemed to Paul
needful for life. Life without faith seemed to him no real life but a
living death.
As I read on, I saw that this kind of “faith” was regarded by Paul
as the foundation of all righteousness. He quoted scripture thus,
“Abraham had faith in God, and it was reckoned unto him for
righteousness.” Then I remembered that he had quoted the same
passage in writing to the Galatians, in order to prove to them that
the seed of Abraham did not obtain righteousness by doing the
works prescribed in the code of Moses, but by following in the faith
of their forefather. Now this faith, in the case of Abraham, had
seemed to me at first of a narrow and selfish nature:—“God will
keep His promise to me, God will give me a child in my old age.” But
Paul shewed that the promise concerned “all the nations of the
earth,” and that Abraham was not selfish in his faith—any more than
in his pleading with God for such righteous people as might be in
Sodom and Gomorrah when he said, “Shall not the judge of all the
earth do right?” This faith in God’s truth and righteous judgments
was at the bottom of Paul’s gospel, and Paul taught that it was at
the bottom of all righteousness both of Jews and Gentiles.
But here came a great difficulty and obstacle in the way of faith,
because, when men departed from God’s righteousness, God Himself
(so Paul taught) departed from them for a time, allowing them to do
the unrighteousness that was in their hearts and to judge unjustly.
For this cause (according to Paul) God introduced Law into the
world, and especially the Law of Moses. The Law was brought in to
represent His righteousness in a poor rough fashion, until the time
should come when He would send into the world the real
righteousness or justice, the real judge or spirit of judgment. Such a
judge (according to Paul’s gospel) was Jesus Christ, judging the
world already to some extent, but destined to judge it in complete
righteousness, “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men
according to my gospel,” said Paul, “through Jesus Christ.”
At this point came the doctrine of the immortality of the soul,
enabling Paul to say, “Wait, and you will see justice done”; whereas
Epictetus was forced to say, in effect, “Justice will never be done,”—
not at least what a plain man would call justice—“since the justice of
this life was, is, and will be, oppression, and no second life is ever to
exist.”
The only passage in which Epictetus (as far as I could recollect)
described a good judge, was one in which the philosopher was
supposed to hold a dialogue with the Censor, or Judge, of Nicopolis.
The man was an Epicurean; and Epictetus, after representing him as
boasting that he was “a judge of the Greeks,” and that he could
order imprisonment or flogging at his discretion, replied that this
was coercing, not judging. “Shew us,” said he, “the things that are
unprofitable for us and we shall avoid them. Make us passionate
imitators of yourself, as Socrates made men of himself. He was really
a ruler of men. For he, above all others, so framed men that they
subordinated to him their inclinations, aversions, and impulses.”
This seemed to me, at first, a fine ideal of a spiritual judge. I
contrasted it with Paul’s picture of the Lord as Judge taking
vengeance in fire upon His enemies; and Epictetus seemed to have
the advantage. But on consideration it appeared that Epictetus was
confusing his hearers by passing suddenly from a judge to a ruler.
According to his own account elsewhere, Socrates did not persuade
a thousandth part of those to whom he addressed himself. On the
other hand Paul distinguished two aspects of Christ. In one, He
appeared as constraining His subjects to love Him and to become
“passionate imitators” of Him. In the other, He appeared as a judge,
making the guilty shrink from their own guilt, and feel pain at their
own sin, when the light of judgment reveals them to themselves.
Paul spoke of “fire” according to the metaphors of the scriptures. He
appeared to be describing the Supreme Judge as destroying the evil
while purifying the good—as fire may destroy some things but purify
others.
This was not the only occasion when the gospel of Epictetus
seemed to me—not at first, but upon full consideration—inferior to
the gospel of Paul in recognising facts fairly and fully. For example,
Paul, in the epistle I was now reading, adopted the ancient Jewish
tradition that death came into the world as a result of the sin of the
first man Adam. According to this view, death was a “curse.” Now
Epictetus appeared to be directly attacking this doctrine when he
spoke as follows, “If I knew that disease had been destined to come
upon me at this very moment, I would rush towards it—just as my
foot, if it had sense, would rush to defile itself in the mire. Why are
ears of corn created? Is it not that they may be parched and
ripened? And are they to be parched and ripened, and yet not
reaped? Surely, then, if they had sense, the ears of wheat ought not
to pray never to be reaped. Nay, this is nothing short of a curse
upon wheat—never to be reaped! So you ought to know that it is
nothing short of a curse upon men, not to die. It is all the same as
not being ripened—not to be reaped.”
How much finer, thought I at first, is this doctrine of Epictetus
than the doctrine of Paul! And how superstitious is that Hebrew story
about a serpent, causing death to fall upon man as a curse from
God! But coming back to the matter again after I read some way in
the epistle, and thinking over what “death” meant to Epictetus and
what it meant to Paul, I began to waver. For Epictetus thought that
“death” meant being dissolved into the four elements. And how was
this like “being ripened and reaped”? When corn is reaped, men get
good from it. But when I am “reaped,” that is to say, distributed into
my four elements, who will get any good from that? So, once more,
the gospel of Epictetus, as compared with the gospel of Paul,
seemed to be deficient not only in power but also in directness and
clearness of statement.
It reminded me of the saying of Paul when he said that God sent
him to preach the gospel “not in wisdom of word lest the cross of
Christ should be made of no effect.” “Wisdom of word” appeared to
mean “calling old facts by new names without revealing any new
truth.” So far as I could understand the gospel of Epictetus, his
language about my being “ripened and reaped” was like that other
earlier promise that I should find “friends” in the four elements when
I passed into them in the dissolution of death. It was all “wisdom of
word.”
 CHAPTER XVI
PAUL’S GOSPEL

In contrasting Epictetus with Paul to the disadvantage of the

former, I was far from imagining that the latter had unloosed the
knot of the origin of sin. But at all events he recognised the
existence of the knot. Epictetus ignored it, or failed to recognise it.
He spoke in the same breath of God’s ordaining “vice and virtue,
winter and summer,” as though God’s appointing that some men
shall be bad caused him no more difficulty than His appointing that
some days shall be cold.
Paul, on the other hand, treated death as though it were a curse
in the intention of Satan, but a blessing (or step towards blessing)
through the controlling will of God. He also spoke of a spiritual body
rising out of the dead earthly body, as flower and fruit rise out of the
decaying seed. I did not at first feel sure what he meant by this.
Flower and fruit resemble seed in that they can be touched. Did Paul
mean that the spiritual body resembled the earthly body in being
tangible, besides being more beautiful? I thought not. It seemed to
me possible that a person in the flesh, dying, might become a
person in the spirit, living for ever. A man’s actions and sufferings,
sown in the transient flesh, might after death become part of the
flower of the imperishable spirit, the real man, the spiritual body.
That, I thought, was what Paul meant. This belief I found also
stimulative to well-doing, according to the saying of Paul himself, “I
press on, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the
dead.” Moreover I remembered the “angel of Satan” appointed for
Paul to keep him from pride, and how he prayed against it, and
received a revelation “My grace is sufficient for thee.” If prayer and
strength were brought about for Paul by an “adversary” of prayer,
might not righteousness be brought about for the human race by the
“adversary” of righteousness? I did not myself at that time believe in
the existence of such an “adversary”; but Paul’s belief seemed to me
not unreasonable.
This turned me to other passages in the epistles concerning
“Satan,” or the “angels of Satan,” or “principalities and powers.” And
I contrasted them with what Epictetus had said, “All things are full of
Gods and daemons,” meaning good daemons. Once more, the words
of Epictetus seemed the nobler. But were they true? What did they
amount to in fact? Nothing except “wisdom of word,” calling the four
elements “friends”! Thus in the end—though very slowly and
reluctantly—I was brought, first, to understand, and then to favour,
Paul’s opinion, namely, that so far as we can see the truth in the
“enigma” of the “mirror” of this world, there is being waged a battle
of good against evil, order against disorder, light against darkness,
life against death.
What Isaiah said concerning the stars and God’s “leading them
forth” gave me some help, just when I was thinking about the
“conflict between light and darkness.” For how, I thought, does God
bring forth the stars except through the hand of His angel of
darkness? Yet we, men, mostly speak of “darkness” as an enemy.
And so, in a sense, it often is. Yet it is revealed in the aspect of a
servant of God when besides bringing us the blessing of rest and
sleep it leads forth the hosts of glories that (except for darkness)
would never have been perceived. So, darkness brings God’s
greatness to light. Paul certainly predicted that the same truth would
hereafter be recognised about death and about the apparent
disorder of Nature, and her “groanings and travailings”; and it
seemed to me that he extended the same doctrine even to sin.
The result was that I found myself content to accept—in a
manner, and provisionally—what Paul said about “Satan” and about
“principalities” and at the same time what he said to the effect that
all things are from God and through God and to God, and, “For them
that believe, all things work together for good.” In my judgment, it
was better—yes, and more reasonable, in Paul’s sense of the word
“reason”—to feel that I was in the Universe fighting a real fight
against evil but looking up to God as my Helper, than to feel that
there was no evil or enemy for me anywhere except in myself, and
no friend either. So in the end I said, “Better to have been under the
curse of death with Paul, if the curse may lead to a supreme blessing
of life eternal in the presence of the Father, than to pass out of life
with Epictetus, without any experience of curse at all, as so much
earth, air, fire and water, into the nominal friendship of Gods and
daemons!”
In allowing myself thus to be led away by my new Jewish teacher
I was not influenced by his letters alone, but by legends and
traditions—to some of which he referred—in the Hebrew histories,
visions, and prophecies. Some of these taught, predicted,
prefigured, or suggested that, while man and the brute forces of
man and nature blindly imagine that they are moving the wheel of
the universe, God alone is really moving it, and is using them to
move it, towards His own decreed and foreordained purpose.
To the most beautiful of all such visions I was drawn by these
words of Paul, “Know ye not what the scripture saith of Elijah?” Here
a marginal note in my MS. referred me to the whole story, how
Elijah, having slain with the sword the adversaries of God, was
himself forced to flee from the sword of King Ahab, to Mount Horeb
or Sinai, where the Law had once been given to Israel amid
lightnings and thunders. And here the prophet was taught that God
is not in the principalities of Nature, not in the tempest or fire or
earthquake, but in “the still small voice.” This agreed with a passage
in Isaiah concerning the Deliverer, “He shall not cry aloud.” In
comparison with these and other similar poems and prophecies, the
best things that the Greeks have written began to appear to me like
mere “wisdom of word.”
As regards the time when Paul’s “good news” or “gospel” of “the
righteous judgment” of God was to be fulfilled, I gathered that the
judgments of God had been revealed to the apostle as having been
working from the beginning of the world—seen, as it were, through
openings in a veil—in the deluge, in the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, in the punishment of the Egyptians for persecuting Israel,
in the punishments of Israel during and after the Exodus, and
especially in their captivity and the destruction of their temple. But
he seemed to believe that he had received also some special
revelation about a judgment to fall upon the Jews, or upon all
mankind, as soon as the gospel had been proclaimed to the world,
but not before.
His language, however, varied. To the Philippians he spoke as
though he were in doubt whether to desire to depart and to be with
Christ, or to “remain in the flesh” for the sake of his converts. This
shewed that he contemplated the possibility of his dying before the
Lord’s coming. And this was made still clearer in some of his sayings
to Timothy, such as “I have fought the good fight,” if taken with their
contexts. But to the Thessalonians he wrote somewhat differently. It
appeared that certain of them were grievously disappointed because
some of their brethren had died before the Lord’s coming. Paul
wrote to console them, saying that they, too—that is the dead
brethren—would be raised up. “We that are alive,” he said, “shall in
no wise precede them that are fallen asleep”—as though he
anticipated that, on the day of the Coming, the greater number of
the brethren, and he among them, would be still “alive.”
From several of these passages, and from similar words in the
prophets, I gathered that, had he lived long enough to witness it,
Paul would have considered the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus to
have been a “day of the Lord” or “day of judgment.” But he was
assured that the greatest day of all would not arrive till the sins of
mankind had come to a head. Also it appeared to me that Paul did
not profess to know when the last “judgment” would come to pass,
and that he, like other Christians, at first expected it to come soon,
and afterwards changed his mind.
Summing up the results of my study, I found that Paul’s gospel
appeared to be good news in a double aspect, first outside us, then
inside us. First, it said that man was made by a perfectly good God
to be, in the end, perfectly good, but was allowed by the Maker to
fall into imperfection, through Satan, as a step towards perfection.
This could be seen in the history of God’s judgments from the
beginning, but most of all in the fact that the Son of God, having
been sent into the world as a son of David, for the salvation of all
the nations of the earth, and having been killed by the Jews, had
been raised from the dead to save and judge mankind in
righteousness. Secondly, it said that there was in every human being
a faculty of faith in the goodness and love and righteous judgments
of God, and that this faith, when fixed on the Saviour, enabled men
to receive His spirit of righteousness and His love, to await His
judgments, and to lead a life of righteousness on earth followed by
an immortality of blessedness in heaven.
Comparing this with the gospel of Epictetus I could not but feel
that Paul’s was far more helpful, but also more difficult to believe.
Yet it was not incredible. Epictetus himself recognised in Socrates
some traces of a power to frame men to his own will. If Socrates the
Athenian, and Diogenes the Sinopian, and others, whom God called
“His own sons,” had this power in some degree, in proportion to
their possession of a share of the divine Logos, why might not Jesus
the Jew be regarded as possessing this power to the fullest extent,
having the fulness of the Logos so that he could succeed where
Socrates and Diogenes and Epictetus failed?
I write here “Jesus the Jew,” to shew that, at that time, I did not
know that Jesus was called the Nazarene, nor had I any notion that
he was born otherwise than naturally “of the seed of David.” But I
clearly perceived that Paul placed Jesus far above all patriarchs and
prophets. Also I think (but am not quite sure) that I already
understood Paul to believe that the Son of God was Son from the
beginning of the world, before taking flesh as “the seed of David”—
but not in any miraculous way. About this point I did not employ my
thoughts. The question for me was, Had this Jesus the power
attributed to him by Paul’s gospel—to conform men to himself? I
was obliged to answer, “Yes, with some men.” For the epistles had
long ago compelled me to give up the notion that the Christians
were a vicious, immoral, and rebellious sect. It was clear to me that
they were above the average in morality. And as for Paul himself, I
felt sure that Jesus had exerted this power over him, and, through
him, over vast multitudes in various nations.
Now, too, having a clearer conception of Paul’s gospel, I began to
understand better something that had perplexed me a good deal on
the first reading—I mean Paul’s description to the Galatians of the
course he took immediately after his conversion. I had expected that
he would have said something to this effect, “You Galatians are
revolting from my gospel. But it is the true gospel. I have told you
the truth about all Christ’s words and deeds. It is true that I did not
know Him—or hear Him, or even see Him—in the flesh. But after I
was converted, I took great pains to ascertain as soon as possible,
from those who had known Him in the flesh, all that He did and said.
I wrote down these traditions at once, and read them again and
again till I knew them by heart. These are the traditions I gave you.”
This is what I had expected Paul to say. But what I found him
actually saying to the Galatians was this: “I make known unto you
brethren, as to the gospel preached by me, that it is not on any
human footing, nor did I receive it from any human being, nor was I
taught it as teaching, but [it came to me] through revelation of
Jesus Christ.”
What he meant by “gospel” was—I now perceived—not Christ’s
teaching before the resurrection, but His teaching after the
resurrection. And this included an unfolding of the will of God as
revealed in the scriptures and in all the history of Israel. This
appeared in what followed. The Galatians all knew (he said) how
bitterly he had persecuted the Christians. For he had been a most
bigoted and bitter zealot of strict Judaism. But, said he, “When it
pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach His good
tidings among the nations, straightway I conferred not with flesh
and blood, nor went I up to Jerusalem to those that were apostles
before me, but I went away to Arabia.” Afterwards (but not in this
context) he spoke of “Mount Sinai in Arabia.” Sinai being the place
where Moses received the revelation of the old Law, and where
Elijah, too, received the revelation of the “still small voice,” I had
assumed (at the time of reading the epistle) that Paul went to Mount
Sinai in Arabia that he also might receive his revelation of the new
Law of Christ. Perhaps, however, it merely meant that he wished to
be alone. If so, I was wrong. But it does not seem to me, even now,
wrong to infer that, all through that sojourn in Arabia, Paul was in
communion with that same Jesus Christ, who had recently appeared
to him, and who had converted him from an enemy into a friend.
The same Galatian letter described Paul as not going up to
Jerusalem till “three years” had elapsed. Even then he remained only
“fifteen days” in Jerusalem, and saw (as I gathered) only one or two
of the apostles, and did not go up again till “after the space of
fourteen years.” All these details about time he appeared to add, not
out of any jealousy of the older apostles, but to shew that he did not
attach importance to the things that Christ had said “in the flesh,”
before death, in comparison with the things that He had said after
death, “being raised up according to the spirit of holiness.” And who
could be surprised at this? The things that Christ said after death,
when He had been “defined as Son of God from the resurrection of
the dead”—how should not these be more deeply impressed upon
the mind of the hearers, and also be most deep and spiritual in
themselves, being reserved till the disciples were spiritually prepared
to receive them?
So the gospel of Paul resolved itself into this, that God, having
decreed from the beginning that men should love Him as Father and
one another as brethren, had sent His Son into the world to enable
them to do this, by dying for them, and by imparting to them His
Spirit. The Son dictated no code of laws to obey. All that He asked
was faith in Himself as the Son of God, dying for men, and victorious
over sin and death. This seemed simple, but its simplicity did not
deceive me into imagining that I believed it. “That is all that is
needed,” said I, as I closed the volume of the epistles; “but it is
more than I possess, or can possess. Paul’s gospel is not a message
but a person. It is, as he says somewhere, ‘Christ, dwelling in the
heart through faith.’ I feel no such indwelling. In the gospel of
Epictetus I am neither able nor willing to believe. I might perhaps be
willing, but I am not able, to believe in the gospel of Paul.”
 CHAPTER XVII
EPICTETUS CONFESSES FAILURE

From such thoughts about my own desires and inabilities it was a

relief to turn to some definite matter of fact. I had been spending
several hours in attempting to find out what Paul’s gospel was. But
what was Christ’s gospel, so far as it could be gathered from the
epistles? This I had made no attempt to discover. “Epictetus,” I
reflected, “though he does not profess to teach a gospel of Socrates
or Diogenes, yet frequently quotes from them. Might I not expect to
find at least a few words of Christ—whether uttered before or after
the resurrection—quoted here and there in some at least of these
numerous letters?” Hitherto I had met with none. But now, on
rapidly unrolling the volume and searching onwards from the end of
the epistle to the Romans, I came to a quotation that had escaped
me. It was in the first of the Corinthian letters, following immediately
after some details (not of great interest) about women’s head-
covering. I had just time to note that the passage contained the
words “the Lord Jesus said,” and “on the night on which he was
delivered over,” when my servant announced that Glaucus wished to
see me, and I put the book aside.
Ostensibly Glaucus had come to compare some of his lecture
notes with mine. But I soon found that his real object was to forget
his troubles in the society of a friend. To forget them, not to reveal
them. He avoided anything that might lead to personal questions,
and I respected his reticence. When, however, he rose to go, he
made some remark on the difficulty of retaining the imperturbability
on which Epictetus was always insisting, “under the sword of
Damocles.” Knowing vaguely that his alarm was not for himself but
for others, I suggested that he might return at once to Corinth. “I
would do so,” he said, “but my father expressly bids me remain at
Nicopolis.” He said this uneasily, and with a wistful look, as though
he suspected that something was amiss and longed for advice. “If
action of any kind is possible,” said I, “take it. If not⸺.” Then I
stopped. “Well,” said he, “‘if not’⸺.” He waited for me to complete
my sentence. I would gladly have left it uncompleted. For the truth
was that I had begun the sentence in one mood and was being
called on to complete it in another. When I said, “If not,” I had a
flash of faith coming with a sudden memory of Isaiah’s message
about God as the Shepherd of the stars and his exhortation to “wait
patiently on the Lord.” But it had vanished and left me in the dark.
“‘If not’⸺,” repeated Glaucus for the second time. I ought to have
replied, “Then at least keep yourself ready for action.” What I did
say, or stammer out, was, something about “waiting and trusting.”
Glaucus looked hard at me. “‘Wait and trust!’ That is to say, ‘Wait
and believe.’ That is not like you, Silanus. You don’t mean it, I see. It
is not like you to say what you don’t mean. I would sooner have
heard you repeat your old friend Scaurus’s advice, which was more
like ‘Wake and disbelieve.’ ‘Wait,’ say you, ‘and trust.’ Trust whom?
Wait for what? Wait for the river of time to run dry? I have kept you
up too late. Sleep well, and may sleep bring you better counsel for
me!” So saying, he departed, but turned at the door to fling a final
jibe at me, “Silanus, you are a Roman and I am only a Greek. But
you must not think we Greeks are quite ignorant of your Horace.
And what says he about waiting? Rusticus expectat: ‘Hodge sits by
the river.’ Farewell, and sleep well.”
This was bitter medicine; but I had deserved it, and it did me
good. My cheeks burned with shame as I recalled his words “It is
not like you to say what you don’t mean.” Had I come to this? Was
this the result of my study of these Jewish writings? And yet, did I
not “mean” it? Was not the fact rather this, that in my own mind I
did to some extent mean and believe it? But it was a dormant belief.
And I had no power to communicate it to others. Then I perceived
the reason. I had said “Wait and trust.” But Isaiah said “Wait thou
upon the Lord.” In preaching my gospel to Glaucus I had left out
“the Lord”—the life and soul of the precept! If “the Lord” had been
in me, as He was in Isaiah and in Paul, I could not have left Him out.
But I left Him out because He was not in me. The truth was that I
had no true gospel to preach.
In great dejection I was on the point of retiring to rest when it
occurred to me that I had left unfinished, and indeed hardly begun,
the study of Christ’s words in the Corinthian epistle. Too weary to
resume it now, I extinguished the light and flung myself down to
forget in sleep all thought of study. But I could not forget. All
through the dreams of a restless and troubled night ran threads of
tangled imaginations about what those words would prove to be,
intertwined with other imaginations about the words of Christ to Paul
at his conversion. Along with these came shadows or shapes, with
voices or voice-like sounds:—Epictetus gazing on the burning
Christians in Rome, Paul listening to the voice of Christ near
Damascus, Elijah on Horeb amid the roar of the tempest. Last of all,
I myself, Silanus, stood at the door of a chamber in Jerusalem where
Christ (I knew) was present with His disciples, and from this
chamber there began to steal forth a still small voice, breathing and
spreading everywhere an unspeakable peace—when a whirlwind
scattered everything and hurried me away to the Neronian gardens
in Rome.
There, someone, masked, took me by the hand and forced me to
look at the Christian martyrs whom he was causing to be tortured. I
thought it was Nero. But the mask fell off and it was Paul. The
martyrs looked down on us and blessed us. Paul trembled but held
me fast. I felt that I had become one with him, a persecutor and a
murderer. They all looked up to heaven as though they saw
something there. At that, Paul vanished, with a loud cry, leaving me
alone. Fear fell upon me lest, if I looked up, I should see that which
the martyrs saw. So I kept my eyes fixed on the ground. But the
blessings of those whom I had persecuted seemed to enter into me
taking me captive and forcing me to do as they did. Then I too
looked up. And I saw—that which they saw, Jesus the crucified. I
tried to cry out “I see nothing, I see nothing,” but my voice would
not speak. I struggled to regain control over my tongue, and in the
struggle I awoke.
I had dreamed long past my usual hour for rising; and the lecture
was already beginning when I took my seat next Glaucus. It was a
relief to me to find him there; for his late outbreak of bitterness had
made me fear that he might prove a deserter. Epictetus was
describing man as being the work of a divine Artist, a wonderful
sculpture, he said, superior to the Athene of Phidias. Appealing to us
individually, “God,” he said, “has not only created you, but has also
trusted you to yourself alone, and committed the guardianship of
you to yourself, saying ‘I had no one more trustworthy than yourself
to take charge of yourself. Preserve this person for me, such as he is
by nature, modest, faithful, magnanimous’”—and he added many
other eulogistic epithets. Here Glaucus passed me his notes with a
bitter smile, pointing to the words “preserve me this person such as
he is by nature.” He had marked them with a query. Nor could I help
querying them in my mind. I felt that at all events they were liable
to be interpreted in a ridiculous way. My thought was, “Paul bids us
trust in God or in the Son of God. Epictetus never does this. But here
he says that God trusts us to ourselves. Does He then trust babies to
preserve themselves? And if not, when does He begin to trust us—
whether as boys or as youths or as men—to preserve ourselves as
we are by nature?” And here I may say that, as regards belief, or
trust, or faith, Epictetus differed altogether from Paul. The former
inveighed against babblers, who “trust” their secrets to strangers,
and against the Academic philosopher for saying “Believe me it is
impossible to find anything to be believed in.” But he never insisted
(as Paul does) on the marvellous power possessed by a well-based
belief or faith to influence men’s lives for good. For the most part
Epictetus used the word “belief,” like the words “pity” and “prayer,” in
a bad sense.
But to return to the lecture. In order to illustrate his favourite topic
of the necessity of seeking happiness in oneself, Epictetus, as it
were, called up Medea on the stage, expostulating with her for her
want of self-control: “Do not desire your husband, then none of your
desires will fail to be realised.” She complained that she was to be
banished from Corinth. “Well,” said he, “Do not desire to remain in
Corinth.” He concluded by advising her to desire that which God
desires. “And then,” said he, “who will hinder or constrain you any
more than Zeus is constrained?” To me, even as a dramatic
illustration, such advice seemed grotesque. Nor was it a good
preparation for what followed, in which he bade us give up desires
and passions relating, not only to honour and office, but also to
country, friends, children: “Give them all up freely to Zeus and to the
other Gods. Make a complete surrender to the Gods. Let the Gods
be your pilots. Let your desires be with them. Then how can your
voyage be unprosperous? But if you envy, if you pity, if you are
jealous, if you are timid, how do you dare to call yourself a
philosopher?”
I could perceive that Glaucus was ill pleased at this, and especially
at the connexion of “pity” with “envy”—though it was not the first
time, nor the last, that I heard Epictetus speak of “pity” in this
contemptuous way. Perhaps others were in the same mood as
Glaucus, and perhaps our Teacher felt it. If he did, he at all events
made no effort to smooth away what he had said. Far from it, he
seemed to harden himself in order to reproach us for our slackness
and for being philosophers only in name. “Observe and test
yourselves,” he exclaimed, “and find out what your philosophy really
is. You are Epicureans—barring perhaps a few weak-kneed
Peripatetics. Stoic reasonings, of course, you have in plenty. But
shew me a Stoic man! Shew me only one! By the Gods, I long, I
long to see one Stoic man. But perhaps you have one—only not as
yet quite completed? Shew him, then, uncompleted! Shew him to
me a little way towards completion! I am an old man now. Do me
this one last kindness! Do not grudge me this boon—a sight that up
to this day my eyes have never enjoyed!”
We were all very quiet at this outburst, so unusual in our Teacher.
Two or three youths near my seat seemed stimulated rather than
depressed. But to me it seemed a sad confession of failure,
amounting, in effect, to this, “I have taught from the days of
Vespasian to the second year of Hadrian. My business has been to
produce Stoics. Up to this day, a real Stoic is”—these were his words
—“a sight that up to this day my eyes have never enjoyed.” What a
contrast, thought I, between my Teacher (for “mine” I still called
him) and that other, the Jew, Paul, (whom I refused to call “mine”)
who numbered his pupils by cities, and whose campaigns from
Jerusalem to Rome, through Asia and Greece, had been a succession
of victories, leading trains of prisoners captive under the banner of
the Crucified!
What followed amazed me, forcing me to the conclusion that
Epictetus was profoundly ignorant of human nature, at all events of
our nature, and perhaps of his own. For instead of saying, “We have
been on the wrong road,” or “You have not the power to walk, and I
have not the power to make you walk,” he found fault with himself
and us, without attempting to shew what the fault was. At first it
seemed our lack of noble ambition. “Not one of you,” he exclaimed,
“desires, from being man, to pass into becoming God. Not one of
you is planning how he may pass through the dungeon of this paltry
body to fellowship with Zeus!” But then he shifted his ground,
saying, in effect, “I am your teacher. You are my pupils. My aim is so
to perfect your characters that each of you may live unrestrained,
uncoerced, unhindered, unshackled, free, prosperous, blessed,
looking to God alone in every matter great or small. You, on your
side, come here to learn and to practise these things. Why, then, do
you fail to do the work in hand, if you on your side have the right
aim, object, and purpose, and I on my side—in addition to right aim,
object, and purpose—have the right preparation? What is deficient?”
Here was our Master assuming as absolutely certain that he had
“the right preparation”! But that was just the point on which I had
long felt doubtful, and was now beginning to feel absolutely certain
in a negative sense. However, he continued with the same perfect
confidence in himself and in the practicability of his theory, “I am the
carpenter, you the material. If the work is practicable, and yet is not
completed, the fault must rest with you or with me.” Then he
concluded with the following personal appeal; these were his exact
words, “Is not this matter”—he meant the art of living as a son of
Zeus, free, and in perfect peace—“capable of being taught? It is. Is
it not in our own hands? Nay, it is the only thing that is in our own
hands. Wealth is not in our own hands, health is not, reputation is
not. Nothing is—except the right use of our imaginations. This is the
only thing that is by nature ours, unpreventable, unhinderable. Why
do you not perform it then? Tell me the reason. Your non-
performance is either my fault, or your fault, or the natural and
inherent fault of our business. Now our business, in itself, is
practicable, and is indeed the only business that is always
practicable. It remains, then, that the fault rests either with me, or
with you, or, which is nearer the truth, with both of us. What is to be
done, then? Are you willing that we should begin together, at last
though late, to bring this purpose into effect? Let bygones be
bygones. Only let us begin. Believe me, and you will see.”
With that, he dismissed us. I was curious to know what Glaucus
thought of it, so I waited for him to speak. To my surprise, he said,
“It is not often that the Master speaks in this way or suggests that
he himself may be in fault. Who knows? He may have something
new in store. I felt so angry with him at the beginning of the lecture
that I was within an ace of going straight out. But now, as he says,
‘Let bygones be bygones.’ I shall go on with him a little longer. What
say you? For the most part he is too cold for me, always talking
about the Logos within us, and the God within us, as though I,
Glaucus the son of Adeimantus, who need the help of all the Gods
that are, were myself all the God that I needed! He chills me with his
Logos. But when he appealed to us in that personal way ‘Believe
me,’ he gave me quite a new sensation. Did it not stir you? I don’t
think I ever heard him say that before.”
“It did stir me,” said I, “and I am sure I never heard him say it
before. Plato represents Socrates as always persuading his hearers
to ‘follow the Logos,’ not to follow Socrates; and Epictetus, for the
most part, uses similar language. For the rest, I am not sure that our
Master will do me all the good I had hoped. But I shall do as you do.
We shall still sit, I hope, together.” So we parted.
 I had not said more than the truth. Epictetus had stirred me, but
not in the way in which he had stirred Glaucus. “Let bygones be
bygones”—the “bygones” of nearly forty years! Why were they to be
“bygones”? Had they no lesson to teach? Did they not suggest that
for forty years Epictetus had been on the road to failure and that he
had consequently failed? Could I believe that during all that time
Epictetus himself had been deficient in “purpose”? Not for a day! Not
for a moment!
As I sat down to revise the notes of my lecture, it occurred to me
that Glaucus—who was of a much less settled temperament than
Arrian—must have heard better news from home, and that this
helped him to take a brighter view of things in general and of
philosophy in particular. “If my old friend were here,” said I, “would
he not regard Glaucus’s change of mood as one more instance of
Epictetus’s power to ‘make his hearers feel precisely what he desired
them to feel’? But what if I went on to say that this ‘power’ was
mere rhetoric, not indeed ‘wisdom of word’ in the sense of hair-
splitting logic, but ‘wisdom of speech,’ the knowledge of the
language and imagery best fitted to stir the emotions? What would
Arrian say to that?”
I mentally constructed a dialogue between us. “There is
something more, Silanus.” “But what more?” “That I do not know.
Only I know there is something more behind.” Then Scaurus’s
explanation recurred to me of that “something more behind.” For
Scaurus had asserted that Epictetus had been touched by what he
called the Christian superstition, which, although he had shaken it
off, had left in his mind a blank, a vacant niche, which he vainly tried
to fill with the image of a Hercules or a Diogenes. That brought back
to my thoughts Scaurus’s first mention of “Christus”; and then it
came upon me as a shock that I had spent half-an-hour in my
rooms, musing over Epictetus and Glaucus and Arrian, and there, on
the table before me, was Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians
containing his only quotation of the words of the Lord, and I had
taken no notice of it. So I put my notes aside and unrolled the
epistle.
 CHAPTER XVIII
PAUL’S ONLY RECORD OF WORDS OF CHRIST

The first words of the sentence were, “For I received from the
Lord”—he emphasized “I,” as though it meant “I myself,” or
“Whatever others may have received, I received so and so”—“that
which I also delivered over to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night
on which he was to be delivered over.…” Here I paused and looked
back, to see what “for” meant (in “for I received”) and why Paul was
introducing this saying of the Lord. I found that the apostle had
been warning the Corinthians thus, “Ye meet together, not for the
better, but for the worse.” In the first place, he said, there were
dissensions among them, and in the next place, “When ye come
together it is not possible to eat the Lord’s Supper, for each one
taketh his own supper, and one is hungry while another is drunken.”
Then I understood that the Lord’s Supper meant that same Christian
feast of which Arrian had spoken. This interested me because in
Rome, as a boy, I had heard it said that the Christians partook of “a
Thyestean meal,” that is, they killed children and served up the flesh
to the parents. This I do not think I had myself believed, except
perhaps in the nursery; but it was commonly taken as truth among
the lower classes in Rome.
Now I perceived that the meal was to have been a joint one—like
that of the Spartan public meals or syssitia, where all fed alike. But
in that luxurious city of Corinth many of the Christians had
introduced Corinthian luxury and turned the public meal into a group
of private meals, so that some had too little and others too much.
Paul tried to bring them back to better things by telling them what
Christ said to his disciples on the night of his last meal, “the night on
which he was to be delivered over.” He implied that their meal ought
to have been like Christ’s last meal; and now the question for me
was, what that, the Lord’s Supper, was like.
But first I had to ask myself the meaning of Christ’s being
“delivered over.” About this I had no doubt that it referred to the
prophecy in Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant, who “was
delivered over on account of our sins.” These words Paul had quoted
in the epistle to the Romans, and he elsewhere spoke of God, or the
Father, as “giving,” or “delivering over,” the Son for the salvation of
mankind. Now both Isaiah and Paul had made it quite clear that the
Servant, or Son, thus “delivered over” by the Father, goes voluntarily
to death, and this I assumed to be the case here. But I did not know
by what agency God was said to have “delivered him over.” I thought
it might be by a warning or dæmonic voice, as in the case of
Socrates, bidding him surrender himself to the laws of his country.
Or Christ’s own people, the citizens of Jerusalem, might have
delivered him up to Pilate, to procure their own exemption from
punishment on account of some rebellion or sedition. Or he might be
said to have been delivered over by a decree of Fate, to which he
voluntarily submitted.
So much was I in the dark that for a moment I thought of Christ
as fighting at the head of an army of his countrymen and giving
himself up for their sakes, like Protesilaus or the Decii; and I tried to
picture Christ doing this, or something like this. But I failed. Still I
was being guided rightly so far as this, that I began faintly to
recognise that this “delivering over” might be not a mere propitiation
of Nemesis, occurring now and then in battles, but part of the laws
of the Cosmopolis, occurring often when a deliverance is to be
wrought for any community of men. Of such a propitiation
Protesilaus was the symbol, concerning whom Homer says,
 “First of the Achæans leaped he on Troy’s shore
Long before all the rest.”

He leaped first, in order to fall first. But his country rose by his fall.
His wife sorrowed, “desolate in Thessaly,” and his house was left
“half built.” But in the minds of men he abides among the firstfruits
of the noble dead, who have counted it life to lay down life for
others. This legend I now began to apply to spiritual things. I was
being prepared to believe that the sons of God in all places and
times must needs be in various ways and circumstances “delivering
themselves over” as sacrifices to the will of God, in proportion to
their goodness, wisdom, and strength—the good spending their life-
blood for the evil, the wise for the foolish, the strong for the weak.
After this, came a sentence that perplexed me greatly, “This is my
body, which is in your behalf. Do this to my remembering or
reminding.” Not being able to make any sense at all of this, I read
on, in hope of light: “In the same way also the cup, after supper,
saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The word
“covenant” helped me a little, because I had found Paul speaking
elsewhere to the Corinthians in his own person about a “new
covenant” and an “old covenant.” Also to the Galatians he mentioned
“two covenants,” one of which, he said, “corresponds to Mount
Sinai.” So I turned to the scripture that described how God made a
“covenant” with Israel that they should obey the Law given to them
from Mount Sinai. It had these words: “And Moses, having taken the
blood”—that is, the blood from a “sacrifice of salvation” consisting of
bullocks—“sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of
the covenant that the Lord has covenanted with you concerning all
these words’.” The blood of the old covenant (I perceived) was blood
of “sprinkling,” purifying the body. David prayed for something more
than that, when he said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and
renew a right spirit within me.” So it occurred to me that the “new
covenant” was to purify, not the body but the heart and the spirit,
entering into man and becoming part of him so as to cleanse him
from within.
This seemed to agree with Paul’s opinion, and with what I had
read in Isaiah, that the sacrifices of bulls and goats cannot make the
heart clean. Now, therefore, going back again to the first words
“This is my body, which is in your behalf,” I inferred that Christ was
speaking about Himself as being the “sacrifice of salvation” above
mentioned, and that He used these words, purposing to devote
Himself to death for the people, in order to redeem them from sin by
purifying their hearts.
I am writing now in old age. Forty-five years have passed since
the night when I first read, “This is my body, which is in your behalf.”
During that interval I have done my best to ascertain the exact
words spoken by the Saviour in His own tongue. And now it is much
more clear to me than it was then that the Lord Jesus was herein
giving Himself, His very self, both as a legacy to the disciples and
also as a ransom for their souls. But even then I perceived that
some such meaning must be attached to the words, and that they
could not have been invented by any disciple; and they made me
marvel more than anything else that I had met with in the Jewish
scriptures or Paul’s epistles. Such a confidence did they shew in the
power of His own love, as being stronger than death! I do not say
that I believed that the words had been fulfilled. But I felt sure that
Christ had uttered them in the belief of their being fulfilled; and, just
for a few moments, the notion that He should have been deceived
seemed to me so contrary to the fitness of things, and to the
existence of any kind of Providence, that I almost believed that they
must have had some kind of fulfilment. I did not stay to ask, “How
fulfilled?” I merely said, “This is divine, this is like the ‘still small
voice.’ This is past man’s invention. This must be from God.”
Then I checked myself, doubt rising up within me. “Paul,” I said,
“was not present on the night of the Last Supper. He says
concerning these words, ‘I received of the Lord that which I also
delivered unto you.’ Is it not strange that the oracles or revelations
supposed by Paul to have been delivered to him by Jesus after the
resurrection should have included matters of historical fact, and
historical utterances, which could have been ascertained from the
disciples that heard them? I must wait till I receive the Christian
gospels from Flaccus.”
Then this also occurred to me. “Socrates, too, like Christ, was
unjustly condemned. Socrates might have escaped from death, but
he refused. The dæmonic voice that told him what to do and not to
do, bade him remain and die, and he obeyed. In effect, then, this
voice from heaven ‘delivered over’ Socrates to death. Or he may be
said to have ‘delivered himself over.’ Now what were the last words
of Socrates? Did he leave any such legacy to his disciples? Might I
not find some help here? For assuredly Socrates, like Christ,
endeavoured to make men better and wiser.” I remembered hearing
Epictetus say—and I recognised the truth of the saying—“Even now,
when Socrates is dead, the memory of the words and deeds of his
life is no less profitable to men, perhaps it is more so, than when he
lived.” So I turned over Arrian’s notes and found several remarks of
our Master about Socrates and his contempt for death; and with
what a humorous appearance of sympathy he accepted the jailer’s
tears, though he himself felt they were altogether misplaced. At last
I came to a passage where Epictetus compared Socrates, on his
trial, and in his last moments, to a man playing at ball: “And what
was the ball in that case? Life, chains, exile, a draught of poison, to
be parted from a wife, to leave one’s children orphans. These were
his playthings, but none the less he kept on playing and throwing
the ball with grace and dexterity.”
This was enough, and more than enough. It was hopeless, I
perceived, to search in Epictetus for what I sought—some last legacy
of Socrates to his disciples, implying that he longed to help them
after death. Epictetus would have rebuked me, saying, “How could
he help them when he was dissolved into the four elements? What
could Socrates bequeath to them beyond the memory of his words
and deeds?”
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