undisputed, the active, the unceasing, the devoted holiness of Christ?
I speak to you now only of His human character. He came in that as the
pattern of future ages, to show us the form of virtue which Plato
thirsted to see embodied. This was the true sacrifice that He made for
man; but the halo that encircled His dying hour not only brightened
earth, but opened to us the sight of heaven! You are touched--you are
moved. God works in your heart. His Spirit is with you. Come, resist
not the holy impulse; come at once--unhesitatingly. A few of us are now
assembled to expound the word of God. Come, let me guide you to them.
You are sad, you are weary. Listen, then, to the words of God: "Come to
me", saith He, "all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!"'
'I cannot now,' said Apaecides; 'another time.'
'Now--now!' exclaimed Olinthus, earnestly, and clasping him by the arm.
But Apaecides, yet unprepared for the renunciation of that faith--that
life, for which he had sacrificed so much, and still haunted by the
promises of the Egyptian, extricated himself forcibly from the grasp;
and feeling an effort necessary to conquer the irresolution which the
eloquence of the Christian had begun to effect in his heated and
feverish mind, he gathered up his robes and fled away with a speed that
defied pursuit.
Breathless and exhausted, he arrived at last in a remote and sequestered
part of the city, and the lone house of the Egyptian stood before him.
As he paused to recover himself, the moon emerged from a silver cloud,
and shone full upon the walls of that mysterious habitation.
No other house was near--the darksome vines clustered far and wide in
front of the building and behind it rose a copse of lofty forest trees,
sleeping in the melancholy moonlight; beyond stretched the dim outline
of the distant hills, and amongst them the quiet crest of Vesuvius, not
then so lofty as the traveler beholds it now.
Apaecides passed through the arching vines, and arrived at the broad and
spacious portico. Before it, on either side of the steps, reposed the
image of the Egyptian sphinx, and the moonlight gave an additional and
yet more solemn calm to those large, and harmonious, and passionless
features, in which the sculptors of that type of wisdom united so much
of loveliness with awe; half way up the extremities of the steps
darkened the green and massive foliage of the aloe, and the shadow of
the eastern palm cast its long and unwaving boughs partially over the
marble surface of the stairs.
Something there was in the stillness of the place, and the strange
aspect of the sculptured sphinxes, which thrilled the blood of the
priest with a nameless and ghostly fear, and he longed even for an echo
to his noiseless steps as he ascended to the threshold.
He knocked at the door, over which was wrought an inscription in
characters unfamiliar to his eyes; it opened without a sound, and a tall
Ethiopian slave, without question or salutation, motioned to him to
proceed.
The wide hall was lighted by lofty candelabra of elaborate bronze, and
round the walls were wrought vast hieroglyphics, in dark and solemn
colors, which contrasted strangely with the bright hues and graceful
shapes with which the inhabitants of Italy decorated their abodes. At
the extremity of the hall, a slave, whose countenance, though not
African, was darker by many shades than the usual color of the south,
advanced to meet him.
'I seek Arbaces,' said the priest; but his voice trembled even in his
own ear. The slave bowed his head in silence, and leading Apaecides to
a wing without the hall, conducted him up a narrow staircase, and then
traversing several rooms, in which the stern and thoughtful beauty of
the sphinx still made the chief and most impressive object of the
priest's notice, Apaecides found himself in a dim and half-lighted
chamber, in the presence of the Egyptian.
Arbaces was seated before a small table, on which lay unfolded several
scrolls of papyrus, impressed with the same character as that on the
threshold of the mansion. A small tripod stood at a little distance,
from the incense in which the smoke slowly rose. Near this was a vast
globe, depicting the signs of heaven; and upon another table lay several
instruments, of curious and quaint shape, whose uses were unknown to
Apaecides. The farther extremity of the room was concealed by a
curtain, and the oblong window in the roof admitted the rays of the
moon, mingling sadly with the single lamp which burned in the apartment.
'Seat yourself, Apaecides,' said the Egyptian, without rising.
The young man obeyed.
'You ask me,' resumed Arbaces, after a short pause, in which he seemed
absorbed in thought--'You ask me, or would do so, the mightiest secrets
which the soul of man is fitted to receive; it is the enigma of life
itself that you desire me to solve. Placed like children in the dark,
and but for a little while, in this dim and confined existence, we shape
our spectres in the obscurity; our thoughts now sink back into ourselves
in terror, now wildly plunge themselves into the guideless gloom,
guessing what it may contain; stretching our helpless hands here and
there, lest, blindly, we stumble upon some hidden danger; not knowing
the limits of our boundary, now feeling them suffocate us with
compression, now seeing them extend far away till they vanish into
eternity. In this state all wisdom consists necessarily in the solution
of two questions: "What are we to believe? and What are we to reject?"
These questions you desire me to decide.'
Apaecides bowed his head in assent.
'Man must have some belief,' continued the Egyptian, in a tone of
sadness. 'He must fasten his hope to something: is our common nature
that you inherit when, aghast and terrified to see that in which you
have been taught to place your faith swept away, you float over a dreary
and shoreless sea of incertitude, you cry for help, you ask for some
plank to cling to, some land, however dim and distant, to attain. Well,
then, have not forgotten our conversation of to-day?'
'Forgotten!'
'I confessed to you that those deities for whom smoke so many altars
were but inventions. I confessed to you that our rites and ceremonies
were but mummeries, to delude and lure the herd to their proper good. I
explained to you that from those delusions came the bonds of society,
the harmony of the world, the power of the wise; that power is in the
obedience of the vulgar. Continue we then these salutary delusions--if
man must have some belief, continue to him that which his fathers have
made dear to him, and which custom sanctifies and strengthens. In
seeking a subtler faith for us, whose senses are too spiritual for the
gross one, let us leave others that support which crumbles from
ourselves. This is wise--it is benevolent.'
'Proceed.'
'This being settled,' resumed the Egyptian, 'the old landmarks being
left uninjured for those whom we are about to desert, we gird up our
loins and depart to new climes of faith. Dismiss at once from your
recollection, from your thought, all that you have believed before.
Suppose the mind a blank, an unwritten scroll, fit to receive
impressions for the first time. Look round the world--observe its
order--its regularity--its design. Something must have created it--the
design speaks a designer: in that certainty we first touch land. But
what is that something?--A god, you cry. Stay--no confused
and confusing names. Of that which created the world, we know,
we can know, nothing, save these attributes--power and unvarying
regularity--stern, crushing, relentless regularity--heeding no
individual cases--rolling--sweeping--burning on; no matter what
scattered hearts, severed from the general mass, fall ground and
scorched beneath its wheels. The mixture of evil with good--the
existence of suffering and of crime--in all times have perplexed the
wise. They created a god--they supposed him benevolent. How then came
this evil? why did he permit it--nay, why invent, why perpetuate it? To
account for this, the Persian creates a second spirit, whose nature is
evil, and supposes a continual war between that and the god of good. In
our own shadowy and tremendous Typhon, the Egyptians image a similar
demon. Perplexing blunder that yet more bewilders us!--folly that arose
from the vain delusion that makes a palpable, a corporeal, a human
being, of this unknown power--that clothes the Invisible with attributes
and a nature similar to the Seen. No: to this designer let us give a
name that does not command our bewildering associations, and the mystery
becomes more clear--that name is NECESSITY. Necessity, say the Greeks,
compels the gods. Then why the gods?--their agency becomes
unnecessary--dismiss them at once. Necessity is the ruler of all we
see--power, regularity--these two qualities make its nature. Would you
ask more?--you can learn nothing: whether it be eternal--whether it
compel us, its creatures, to new careers after that darkness which we
call death--we cannot tell. There leave we this ancient, unseen,
unfathomable power, and come to that which, to our eyes, is the great
minister of its functions. This we can task more, from this we can learn
more: its evidence is around us--its name is NATURE. The error of the
sages has been to direct their researches to the attributes of
necessity, where all is gloom and blindness. Had they confined their
researches to Nature--what of knowledge might we not already have
achieved? Here patience, examination, are never directed in vain. We
see what we explore; our minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes and
effects. Nature is the great agent of the external universe, and
Necessity imposes upon it the laws by which it acts, and imparts to us
the powers by which we examine; those powers are curiosity and
memory--their union is reason, their perfection is wisdom. Well, then,
I examine by the help of these powers this inexhaustible Nature. I
examine the earth, the air, the ocean, the heaven: I find that all have
a mystic sympathy with each other--that the moon sways the tides--that
the air maintains the earth, and is the medium of the life and sense of
things--that by the knowledge of the stars we measure the limits of the
earth--that we portion out the epochs of time--that by their pale light
we are guided into the abyss of the past--that in their solemn lore we
discern the destinies of the future. And thus, while we know not that
which Necessity is, we learn, at least, her decrees. And now, what
morality do we glean from this religion?--for religion it is. I believe
in two deities--Nature and Necessity; I worship the last by reverence,
the first by investigation. What is the morality my religion teaches?
This--all things are subject but to general rules; the sun shines for
the joy of the many--it may bring sorrow to the few; the night sheds
sleep on the multitude--but it harbors murder as well as rest; the
forests adorn the earth--but shelter the serpent and the lion; the ocean
supports a thousand barks--but it engulfs the one. It is only thus for
the general, and not for the universal benefit, that Nature acts, and
Necessity speeds on her awful course. This is the morality of the dread
agents of the world--it is mine, who am their creature. I would
preserve the delusions of priestcraft, for they are serviceable to the
multitude; I would impart to man the arts I discover, the sciences I
perfect; I would speed the vast career of civilizing lore: in this I
serve the mass, I fulfill the general law, I execute the great moral
that Nature preaches. For myself I claim the individual exception; I
claim it for the wise--satisfied that my individual actions are nothing
in the great balance of good and evil; satisfied that the product of my
knowledge can give greater blessings to the mass than my desires can
operate evil on the few (for the first can extend to remotest regions
and humanize nations yet unborn), I give to the world wisdom, to myself
freedom. I enlighten the lives of others, and I enjoy my own. Yes; our
wisdom is eternal, but our life is short: make the most of it while it
lasts. Surrender thy youth to pleasure, and thy senses to delight. Soon
comes the hour when the wine-cup is shattered, and the garlands shall
cease to bloom. Enjoy while you may. Be still, O Apaecides, my pupil
and my follower! I will teach thee the mechanism of Nature, her darkest
and her wildest secrets--the lore which fools call magic--and the mighty
mysteries of the stars. By this shalt thou discharge thy duty to the
mass; by this shalt thou enlighten thy race. But I will lead thee also
to pleasures of which the vulgar do not dream; and the day which thou
givest to men shall be followed by the sweet night which thou
surrenderest to thyself.'
As the Egyptian ceased there rose about, around, beneath, the softest
music that Lydia ever taught, or Iona ever perfected. It came like a
stream of sound, bathing the senses unawares; enervating, subduing with
delight. It seemed the melodies of invisible spirits, such as the
shepherd might have heard in the golden age, floating through the vales
of Thessaly, or in the noontide glades of Paphos. The words which had
rushed to the lip of Apaecides, in answer to the sophistries of the
Egyptian, died tremblingly away. He felt it as a profanation to break
upon that enchanted strain--the susceptibility of his excited nature,
the Greek softness and ardour of his secret soul, were swayed and
captured by surprise. He sank on the seat with parted lips and
thirsting ear; while in a chorus of voices, bland and melting as those
which waked Psyche in the halls of love, rose the following song:
THE HYMN OF EROS
By the cool banks where soft Cephisus flows,
A voice sail'd trembling down the waves of air;
The leaves blushed brighter in the Teian's rose,
