The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 55

Wherever minstrel harp is strung, There too thy praise shall sound among The beauteous and the brave.

And thou shalt slumber deep Beneath our chapel's cypress sheen; And there thy lord and his Christine Full oft shall watch at morn and e'en Around their Khalif's sleep.

There shalt thou wait for me Until the funeral bell shall ring.

Until the funeral censer swing.

For I would ride to meet my King, My stainless steed, with thee!

The song has ceased, and not an eye 'Mid all those mailed men is dry; The brave old Baron turns aside To crush the tear he cannot hide.

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With stately step the Bridegroom went To where, upon the battlement, Christine herself, all weeping, leant.

Well might that crested warrior kneel At such a shrine, well might he feel As if the angel in her eyes Gave all that hallows Paradise.

And when her white hands' tender spell Upon his trembling shoulder fell.

Upward one reverent glance he cast, Then, rising, murmured, "Mine at last!"

"Yes, thine at last!" Still stained with blood The Dauphin's self beside them stood.

"Fast as mortal steed could flee, My own Christine, I followed thee.

Saint George, but 'twas a gallant sight That miscreant hurled from yonder height: Brave boy, that single sword of thine, Methinks, might hold all Palestine.

But see, from out the shrine of Moan Cometh the good Monk of Cologne, Bearing the relic rare that woke Our warrior from his bed of oak.

See him pa.s.s with folded hands To where the shaded chapel stands.

The Bridegroom well hath won the prize, There stands the priest, and there the altar lies."

IV.

When the moon rose o'er lordly Miolan That night, she wondered at those ancient walls: Bright tapers flas.h.i.+ng from a hundred halls Lit all the mountain--liveried va.s.sals ran Trailing from bower to bower the wine-cup, wreathed With festal roses--viewless music breathed A minstrel melody, that fell as falls The dew, less heard than felt; and maidens laughed.

Aiming their curls at swarthy men who quaffed Brimmed beakers to the newly wed: while some Old henchmen, lolling on the court-yard green Over their squandered Cyprus, vowed between Their cups, "there was no pair in Christendom To match their Savoyard and his Christine?"

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The Trovere ceased, none praised the lay, Each waited to hear what the King would say.

But the grand blue eye was on the wave, Little recked he of the tuneless stave: He was watching a bark just anch.o.r.ed fast With England's banner at her mast, And quoth he to the Queen, "By my halidome, I wager our Bard Blondel hath come!"

E'en as he spoke, a joyous cry From the beach proclaimed the Master nigh; But the merry cheer rose merrier yet When the Monarch and his Minstrel met.

The Prince of Song and Plantagenet.

"A song!" cried the King. "Thou art just in time To rid our ears of a vagrant's rhyme: Prove how that recreant voice of thine Hath thriven at Cyprus, bard of mine!"

The Minstrel played with his golden wrest, And began the "_Fytte of the b.l.o.o.d.y Vest_."

The vanquished Trovere stole away Unmarked by lord or ladye gay: Perchance one quick, kind glance he caught, Perchance that glance was all he sought.

For when Blondel would pause to tune His harp and supplicate the moon, It seemed as tho' the laughing sea Caught up the vagrant melody; And far along the listening sh.o.r.e.

Till every wave the burthen bore, In long, low echoes might you hear-- "Alles, Alles zu Gott und Ihr!"

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From The Dublin Review.

THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.--ORIGEN.

_Origenis Opera Omnia_, Ed. De la Rue, accurante J. P. Migne.

Parisiis. _S. Gregorii Thaumaturgi_, Oratio Panegyrica in Origenem (Opera Omnia), accurante J. P. Migne. Parisiis.

Last July we commenced a sketch of the history and labors of Origen.

We resume our notes on those twenty years (211-280) which he spent with little interruption at Alexandria, engaged chiefly in the instruction of the catechumens. We have already seen what he did for the New Testament; let us now study his labors on the Old.

The authors.h.i.+p of that most famous Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, seems destined to be a mystery in literature. The gorgeous and circ.u.mstantial account of the Jew Aristeas, with all its details of emba.s.sy and counter-emba.s.sy, of the seventy-two venerable sages, the cells in the rock, the reverence of the Ptolemy, and the wind-up of banquets, gifts, and all good things, seems, as Dom Montfaucon says, to "savor of the fabulous." There is some little difficulty about dates in the matter of Demetrius Phalerius, the literary minister under whose auspices the event is placed. There is a far more formidable difficulty in the elevation of Philadelphus, a cruel, sensual despot, into a devout admirer of the law of Moses, bowing seven times and weeping for joy in presence of the sacred doc.u.ments, and in the sudden conversion of all the cultivated Greeks who are concerned in the story. The part of Aristeas's narration which regards the separate cells, and the wonderful agreement of the translations, is curtly set down by St. Jerome as a fiction. It seems probable, moreover, that the translator of the Pentateuch was not the same as the translate of the other parts of the Old Testament. In the midst of uncertainties and probabilities, however, four things seem to be tolerably clear; first, that the version called the LXX. was made at Alexandria; secondly, that it was the work of different authors; thirdly, that it was not inspired; fourthly, that it was a holy and correct version, quoted by the apostles, always used in the Greek church, and the basis of all the Latin editions before St Jerome's Vulgate.

All the misfortunes that continual transcription, careless blundering, and wilful corruption could combine to inflict upon a ma.n.u.script had fallen to the lot of the Septuagint version at the time when it was handed Origen to be used in the instruction of the faithful and the refutation of Jew and Greek. This was only what might have been fully expected from the fact that, since the Christian era, it had become the court of appeal of two rival sets of controversialists--the Christian and the Jew. Indeed, from the very beginning it had been defective, and, if we may trust St. Jerome, designedly defective; for the Septuagint translation of the prophetical books had purposely omitted {355} pa.s.sages of the Hebrew which its authors considered not proper to be submitted to the sight of profane Greeks and Gentiles. Up to the Christian era, however, we may suppose great discrepancies of ma.n.u.script did not exist, and that those variations which did appear were not much heeded in the comparatively rare transcription of the text. The h.e.l.lenistic Jews and the Jews of Palestine used the LXX. in the synagogues instead of the Hebrew. A few libraries of great cities had copies, and a few learned Greeks had some idea of their existence.

Beyond this there was nothing to make its correctness of more importance than that of a liturgy or psalm-book. But, soon after the Christian era, its character and importance were completely changed.

The eunuch was reading the Septuagint version when Philip, by divine inspiration, came up with him and showed him that the words he was reading were verified in Jesus. This was prophetic of what was to follow. The Christians used it to prove the divine mission of Jesus Christ; the Jews made the most of it to confute the same. Thereupon, somewhat suspiciously, there arose among the Jews a disposition to underrate the LXX., and make much of the Hebrew original. Hebrew was but little known, whereas all the intellectual commerce of the world was carried on by means of that h.e.l.lenistic Greek which had been diffused through the East by the conquests of Alexander. If, therefore, the Jews could bar all appeals to the well-known Greek, and remove the controversy to the inner courts of their own temple, the decision, it might be expected, would not improbably turn out to be in their own favor. Just before Origen's own time more than one Jew or Judaizing heretic had attempted to produce Greek versions which should supersede the Septuagint. Some ninety years before the period of which we write, Aquila, a Jewish proselyte of Sinope, had issued what professed to be a literal translation from the Hebrew. It was so uncompromisingly literal that the reader sometimes found the Hebrew word or phrase imported bodily into the Greek, with only the slight alteration of new characters and a fresh ending. Its purpose was not disavowed. It was to furnish the Greek-speaking Jews with a more exact translation from the Hebrew, in order to fortify them in their opposition to Christianity. Some five years later, Theodotion, an Ebionite of Ephesus, made another version of the Septuagint; he did not profess to re-translate it, but only to correct it where it differed from the Hebrew. A little later, and yet another Ebionite tried his hand on the Alexandrian version; this was Symmachus. His translation was more readable than that of Aquila, as not being so utterly barbarous in expression; but it was far from being elegant, or even correct, Greek.

Of course Origen could never dream of subst.i.tuting any of these translations for the Septuagint, stamped as it was with the approbation of the whole Eastern church. But still they might be made very useful; indeed, notwithstanding the original sin of motive to which they owed their existence, we have the authority of St. Jerome, and of Origen himself, for saying that even the barbarous Aquila had understood his work and executed it more fairly than might have been expected. What Origen wanted was to get a pure Greek version. To do this he must, of course, compare it with the Hebrew; but the Hebrew itself might be corrupt, so he must seek help also elsewhere. Now these Greek versions, made sixty, eighty, ninety years before, had undoubtedly, he could see, been written with the Septuagint open before their writers. Here, then, was a valuable means of testing how far the present ma.n.u.scripts of the Septuagint had been corrupted during the last century at {356} least. He himself had collected some such ma.n.u.scripts, and the duties of his office made him acquainted with many more. From the commencement of his career he had been accustomed to compare and criticise them, and he had grown skilful, as may be supposed, in distinguis.h.i.+ng the valuable ones from those that were worthless. We have said sufficient to show how the idea of the "Hexapla" arose in his mind. The Hexapla was nothing less than a complete transcription of the Septuagint side by side with the Hebrew text, the agreement and divergence of the two ill.u.s.trated by the parallel transcription of the versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus; the remaining column containing the Hebrew text in Greek letters. The whole of the Old Testament was thus transcribed sixfold in parallel columns. These extra ill.u.s.trations were furnished by the partial use of three other Greek versions which Origen found or picked up in his travels, and which he considered of sufficient importance to be occasionally used in his great work. And Origen was not content with the mere juxtaposition of the versions. The text of the Septuagint given in the Hexapla was his own; that is to say, it was an edition of the great authoritative translation completely revised and corrected by the master himself. It was a great and a daring work. Of its necessity there can be no doubt; but nothing except necessity could have justified it; and it is certainly to the bold and unprecedented character of the enterprise that we owe the shape that he has given it in performance. To correct the Septuagint to his own satisfaction was not enough; it must be corrected to the satisfaction of jealous friends and, at least, reasonable enemies. Side by side, therefore, with his amended text he gave the reasons and the proofs of his corrections. He was scrupulously exact in pointing out where he had altered by addition or subtraction. The Alexandrian critics had invented a number of critical marks of varied shape and value, which they industriously used on the works about which they exercised their propensity to criticise. Origen, "Aristarchus sacer," as an admiring author calls him, did not hesitate to avail himself of these profane _notae_. There was the "asterisk," or star, which marked what he himself had thought it proper to insert, and which, therefore, the original authors of the Septuagint had apparently thought it proper to leave out. Then there was the "obelus," or spit, the sign of slaughter, as St. Jerome calls it; pa.s.sages so marked were not in the original Hebrew, and were thereby set down as doubtful and suspected by sound criticism. Moreover, there was the "lemniscus," or pendent ribbon, and its supplement, the "hypo-lemniscus;" what these marks signified the learned cannot agree in stating. It seems certain, however, that they were not of such a decided import as the first two, but implied some minor degree of divergence from the Hebrew, as for instance in those pa.s.sages where the translators had given an elegant periphrasis instead of the original word, or had volunteered an explanation which a critic would have preferred to have had in the margin. The "asterisk" and "obelus" still continue to figure in those sc.r.a.ps of Origen's work that have come down to us; so, indeed, does the lemniscus; but since the times of St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome no MS. seems to make much distinction between it and the "asterisk." Of the other marks, contractions, signs, and references which the MSS. of Hexapla show, the greater part have been added by transcribers who had various purposes in view. Some of these marks are easy to interpret, others continue to exercise the ac.u.men of the keenest critics.

The Hexapla, as may be easily supposed, was a gigantic work. The labor of writing out the whole of the {357} Old Testament six times over, not to mention those parts which were written seven, eight, or nine times, was prodigious. First came the Hebrew text twice over, in Hebrew characters in the first column, in Greek in the second.

Biblical scholars sigh to think of the utter loss of Origen's Hebrew text, and of what would now be the state of textual criticism of the Old Testament did we possess such a Hebrew version of a date anterior to Masoretic additions. But among the scattered relics of the Hexapla the Hebrew fragments are at once fewest in number and most disputable in character. The two columns of Hebrew were followed by Aquila the stiff, and be by Symmachus, so that the Jews could read their Hebrew and their two favorite translations side by side. Next came the Septuagint itself, pointed, marked, and noted by the master.

Theodotion closed the array, except where portions of the three extra translations before mentioned had to be brought in. Beside these formidable columns, which may be called the text of the Hexapla, s.p.a.ce had to be found for Origen's own marginal notes, consisting of critical observations and explanations of proper names or difficult words, with perhaps an occasional glance at the Syriac and Samaritan.

Fifty enormous _volumina_ would hardly have contained all this, when we take into consideration that the characters were in no tiny Italian hand, but in great broad uncial penmans.h.i.+p, such as befitted the text and the occasion. The poverty and unprovidedness of Origen would never have been able to carry such a work through had not that very poverty brought him the command of money and means. It is always the detached men who accomplish the really great things of the world. Origen had converted from some form of heresy, probably from Valentinianism, a rich Alexandrian named Ambrose. The convert was one of those zealous and earnest men who, without possessing great powers themselves, are always urging on and offering to a.s.sist those who have the right and the ability to work, but perhaps not the means or the inclination. The adamantine Origen required no one to keep him to his work; and yet the grateful Ambrose thought he could make no better return for the gift of the faith than to establish himself as prompter-in-chief to the man that had converted him. He seems to have left his master very little peace. He put all his wealth at his service, and it would appear that he even forced him to lodge with him. He was continually urging Origen to explain some pa.s.sage of Scripture, or to rectify some doubtful reading. During supper he had ma.n.u.scripts on the table, and the two criticised while they ate; and the same thing went on in their walks and recreations. He sat beside him far into the night, prayed with him when he left his books for prayer, and after prayer went back with him to his books again. When the master looked round in his catechetical lectures, doubtless the indefatigable Ambrose was there, note-book in hand, and doubtless everything pertaining to the lectures was rigidly discussed when they found themselves together again; for Ambrose was a deacon of the church, and as such had great interest in its external ministration. Origen calls him his [Greek text], or _work-presser_.

and in another place he says he is one of G.o.d's work-pressers. There is little doubt that the Hexapla is in great measure owing to Ambrose.

Origen resisted long his friend's solicitations to undertake a revision of the text; reverence for the sacred words, and for the tradition of the ancients, held him back; but he was at length prevailed upon. Ambrose, indeed, did a great deal more than advise and exhort; he put at Origen's disposal seven short-hand writers, to take down his dictations, and seven transcribers to write out fairly what the others had taken down. And so the gigantic work was begun. When it was finished we cannot exactly tell, but it cannot have been till near the end of {358} his life, and it was probably completed at Tyre, just before he suffered for the faith. After his death, the great work, "opus Ecclesia," as it was termed, was placed in the library of Caesarea of Palestine. Probably no copy of it was ever taken; the labor was too great. It was seen, or at least quoted, by many; such as Pamphylus the Martyr, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, Didymus, St. Hilary, St. Eusebius of Vercelli, St. Epiphanius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nyssen, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and especially St. Jerome and Theodoret. It perished in the sack of Caesarea by the Persians or the Arabs, before the end of the seventh century. [Footnote 54]

[Footnote 54: A new edition of the fragments of the Hexapla is announced, at we write, by Mr. Field, of Norwich. The first instalment of this important work, for which there are now many more materials than Dom Montfaucon had at command, may be expected almost as we go to press. The editor's new sources are chiefly the recently discovered Sinaitic MSS., and the Syro-Hexaplar version, part of which he has lately re-translated into Greek in a very able manner, by way of a specimen.]

We need not say much here about the Tetrapla. Its origin appears to have been as follows: When the Hexapla was completed, or nearly completed, it was evident that it was too bulky to be copied. Origen, therefore, superintended the production of an abridgment of it. He omitted the two columns of Hebrew, the great stumbling-block to copyists, and suppressed some of his notes. He then transcribed Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, putting his amended version of the Septuagint, without the marks and signs, just before the last. The two first answered the purposes of a Hebrew text, the last was a sort of connecting link between it and the freedom of the Septuagint; and so, for all practical purposes, he had a version that friends might put their trust in, and that enemies could not dispute.

Such was the work that Origen did for the Bible. It was not all done at once, in a year, or in ten years. It was begun almost without a distinct conception of what it would one day grow to. It progressed gradually, in the midst of many cares and much other labor, and it was barely completed when its architect's busy life was drawing to a close. Every one of those twenty years at Alexandria, which we are now dwelling upon, must have seen the work going on. The seven short-hand writers, and the seven young maidens who copied out, were Origen's daily attendants, as he seems to say himself. But the catechetical school was in full vigor all this time. Indeed, the critical fixing of the Bible text, wonderful as it was, was only the material part of his work. He had to preach the Bible, not merely to write it out. His preaching will take us to a new scene and to new circ.u.mstances--to Caesarea, where the greater part of his homilies were delivered. But, before we accompany him thither, we must take a glance at his school at Alexandria, and try to realize how he spoke and taught. We have already described his manner of life, and the description of his biblical labors will have given some idea of a very important part of his daily work; what we have now to do is to supplement this by the picture of him as the head of the great catechetical school.

One of the most striking characteristics of the career of Origen is the way in which his work grew upon him. It is, indeed, a feature in the lives of all the great geniuses who have served the church and lived in her fold, that they have achieved greatness by an apparently unconscious following of the path of duty rather than by any brilliant excursion under the guidance of ambition. Origen was the very opposite of a proud philosopher or self-appointed dogmatizer. He did not come to his task with the consciousness that he was the man of his age, and that he was born to set right the times. We have seen his birth and bringing up, we have seen how he found himself in the important place that he held, and we have seen how all his success {359} seemed to come to him whilst he was merely bent on carrying through with the utmost industry the affair that had been placed in his hands. We have seen that, so far was he from trying to fit the gospel to the exigencies of a cramped philosophy,--that he was brought up and pa.s.sed part of his youth without any special acquaintance with philosophy or philosophers. He found, however, on resuming his duties as catechist, that if he wished to do all the good that offered itself to his hand, he must make himself more intimate with those great minds who, erring as he knew them to be, yet influenced so much of what was good and n.o.ble in heathenism. At that very time, a movement, perhaps a resurrection, was taking place in Gentile philosophy. A teacher, brilliant as Plato himself, and with secrets to develop that Plato had only dreamt of, was in possession of the lecture-hall of the Museum.

Ammonius Saccas had landed at Alexandria as a common porter; nothing but uncommon energy and extraordinary talents can have given him a position in the university and a place in history, as the teacher of the philosophic Trinity and the real founder of Neo-Platonism. Origen, to whom the Museum had been strange ground in his early youth, saw himself compelled to frequent it at the age of thirty. Saccas, to be sure, was probably a Christian of some sort. At any rate, the Christian teacher went and heard him, and made himself acquainted with what it was that was charming the ears of his fellow-citizens, and furnis.h.i.+ng ground for half of the objections and difficulties that his catechumens and would-be converts brought to him for solution. That the influence of these studies is seen in his writings is not to be denied. It would be impossible for any mind but the very dullest to touch the spirit of Plato and not to be impressed and affected. The writings of Origen at this period include three philosophical works.

There is first the "Notes on the Philosophers," which is entirely lost. We may suppose it to have been the common-place book wherein was entered what he learnt from his teacher, and what he thought of the teacher and the doctrine. Then there is the "Stromata" (a work of the same nature as the Stromata of his master, St. Clement), whose leading idea was the great master-idea of Clement, that Plato and Aristotle and the rest were all partially right, but had failed to see the whole truth, which can only be known by revelation. This work, also, is lost--all but a fragment or two. Thirdly, there is the celebrated work, [Greek text], or, "De Principiis." Eusebius tells us expressly that this work was written at Alexandria. Most unfortunately, we have this treatise not in the original, but in two rival and contradictory Latin versions, one by St. Jerome, the other by Ruffinus. Both profess to be faithful renderings of a Greek original, and on the decision as to which version is the genuine translation depends in great measure the question of Origen's orthodoxy or heterodoxy. And yet this treatise, "De Principiis," much as it has been abused, from Marcellus of Ancyra down to the last French author who copied out Dom Ceillier, and waiving the discussion of certain particular opinions that we may have yet to advert to, seems to us to bear the stamp of Origen on every page. It is such a work as a man would have written who had come fresh from an exposition of deep heathen philosophy, and who felt, with feelings too deep for expression, that all the beauty and depth of the philosophy he had heard were overmatched a thousand times by the philosophy of Jesus Christ. It is the first specimen, in Christian literature, of a regular scientific treatise on the _principles_ of Christianity. Every one knows that a discussion on the principles or sources of the world, of man, of life, was one of the commonest shapes of controversy between the {360} schools of philosophy; and at that very time, the great Longinus, who probably sat beside Origen in the school of Ammonius Saccas, was writing or thinking out a treatise with the very t.i.tle of that of Origen. It was a natural idea, therefore, to show his scholars that he could give them better _principia_ than the heathens. The treatise takes no notice, or next to none, of heathen philosophy and its disputes; but it travels over well-known ground, and what is more, it provokes comparison in a very significant manner.

For instance, the words wherewith it commences are words which Plato introduces in the "Gorgias," and to those who knew that elaborate dialogue, the sudden and unhesitating introduction of the name of Christ, and the calm position that he and none else is the truth, and that in him is the science of the good and happy life, must have been quite as striking as its author probably intended it to be. The treatise is not in the Platonic form--the dialogue; that form, which was suitable to the days of the Sophists and the sharp-tongued Athenians, had been superseded at Alexandria by the ornate monologue, more suitable to an audience of novices and wonderers. Origen adopts this form. One G.o.d made all things, himself a pure spirit; there is a Trinity of divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; of the rational creatures of G.o.d, some fell irremediably, others fell not at all; others again--that is, the race of man--fell, but not irremediably, having a mediator in Jesus Christ, being a.s.sisted by the good angels and persecuted by the bad; the wonderful fact that the Word was made flesh; man's free will, eternal punishment and eternal reward; such are the heads of the subjects treated of in the "De Principiis." The lame and disjointed condition of the present text is evident on a very cursory examination; it is perfectly unworthy of the "contra Celsum." But the reader who studies the text carefully, by the light of contemporary thought, can hardly help thinking that materials so solid and good must have been put together in a form as satisfactory and as conclusive. A first attempt in any science is always more admired for its genius than criticised for its faults.

This of Origen's was a first attempt toward a scientific theology. We say a theology, not a philosophy; for, though philosophic in form, and accepted as philosophy by his hearers, it is wholly theological in matter, being founded on the continual word of Holy Scripture, and not unfrequently undertaking to refute heresy. Christianity, as we have before observed, was looked upon by strangers as a philosophy, and its doctors rightly allowed them to think so, and even called it so themselves. Now the "De Principiis" was Origen's philosophy of Christianity. It did not prove so much as draw out into system. It answered all the questions of the day. What is G.o.d? asked the philosophers. He is the creator of all things, and a pure spirit, answered the Christian catechist. Is not this Trinity a wonderful idea? said the young students to each other, after hearing Saccas.

Christianity, said Origen, teaches a Trinity far more awful and wonderful, and far more reasonable, too--a Trinity, not of ideas, but of persons. The new school talked of the inferior G.o.ds that ruled the lower world, and of the demons, good and bad, who executed their behests. The Christian philosopher explained the great fact of creation, and laid down the true doctrine of guardian angels and tempting devils. The const.i.tution of man was another puzzle; the rebellion of the pa.s.sions, the nature of sin, the question of free-will. Plotinus, who listened to Saccas at the same time as Origen, has left us the attempts at the solution of these difficulties that were accepted in the school of his master; the answers of Origen may be read in the "De Principiis." The earnest among the heathen {361} philosophers were totally in the dark as to the state of soul and of body after death. Some were ashamed of having a body at all, and few of them could see of what use it was, or how it could subserve the great end of arriving at union with G.o.d. Origen dwells with marked emphasis, and with tender lingering, on the great key of mysteries, the incarnation, and its consequences, the resurrection of the flesh; and shows how the body is to be kept down in this life by the rational will, that it too may have its glory in the life to come. The whole effort and striving of Neo-Platonism was to enable the soul to be united with the Divinity. Origen accepted this; it was the object of the Christian philosophy as well; but he drew into prominence two all-important facts--first, the necessity of the grace of G.o.d; secondly, the moral and not physical nature of the purification of the soul; together with the Christian dogma that it was only after death that perfect union could take place. All this must have been perfectly fitted to the time and the occasion. And yet there are evident signs that it was not delivered or written as a manifesto to the frequenters of the Museum; it was evidently meant as an instruction to the upper cla.s.s of the catechetical school. Its author's first idea was that he was a Christian teacher, and he spoke to Christians who believed the Holy Scriptures. What his words might do for others he was not directly concerned with, but there is no doubt that the subjects treated of in the "De Principiis" must have been discussed over and over again with those students and philosophers from the university who, as Eusebius tells us, flocked to hear him in such numbers, and also with that large cla.s.s of Christians who still retained their love of scientific learning, though believing most firmly in the faith of Jesus Christ.

Of the matter of his ordinary catechetical instructions we need say little, because it is evident that it would be mainly the same as it has been under the like circ.u.mstances in all ages. Those of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, delivered a century later, may furnish us with a good idea of them, saving where doctrinal distinctions are discussed which had not arisen in the time of the elder teacher. It is rather extra-ordinary that so little trace has reached us of any formal catechetical discourse of Origen. We are inclined to think, however, that the "De Principiis," in its _original_ form, must have been the summary or embodiment of his periodical instructions. But we have numerous hints at what he taught in the several works on Holy Scripture, some lost, some still partly extant, which he composed during these twenty years at Alexandria. It appears that he was in the habit of writing three different kinds of commentary on the Scriptures; first, brief comments or notices, such as he has left in the Hexapla; secondly, scholia, or explanations of some length; and thirdly, regular homilies. But his homilies belong to a later period.

At Alexandria he commented St. John's Gospel (a labor that occupied him all his life), Genesis, several of the Psalms, and the "Canticle of Canticles," a celebrated work, yet extant in a Latin version, of which it has been said that whereas in his other commentaries he excelled all other interpreters, in this he excelled himself. But the whole interesting subject of his creation of Scripture-commenting must be treated of when we follow him to Caesarea, and listen to him preaching.

What we desire now, to complete our idea of his Alexandrian career, and of what we may call the inner life of his teaching, is, that some one--a contemporary and a scholar, if possible--should describe his method and manner, and let us know how he treated his hearers and how they liked him. Fortunately, the very witness and doc.u.ment that we want is ready to our hands. One of the most famous of Origen's scholars was St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and the most {362} interesting of the extant works of that father is undoubtedly the discourse and panegyric which he p.r.o.nounced upon his master, on the occasion of bidding farewell to his school. Gregory, or, as he was then called, Theodore, and his brother Athenodorus, were of a n.o.ble and wealthy family of Cappadocia; that is to say, probably, descendants of Greek colonists of the times of the Alexandrian conquests, though, no doubt, with much Syrian blood in their veins. When Gregory was fourteen they lost their father, and the two wealthy young orphans were left to the care of their mother. Under her guidance they were educated according to their birth and position, and in a few years began to study for the profession of public speakers. As they would have plenty of money, it mattered little what they took to; but the profession of an orator was something like what the bar is now, and gave a man an education that would be useful if he required it, and ornamental whether he required it or not. The best judges p.r.o.nounced that the young men would soon be finished _rhetores_; St. Gregory tells us so, but will not say whether he thinks their opinion right, and before proof could be made the two youths had been persuaded by a master they were very fond of to take up the study of Roman jurisprudence. Berytus, a city of Phoenicia, better known to the modern world as Beyrout, had just then attained that great eminence as a school for Roman law which it preserved for nigh three centuries. Thither the young Cappadocians were to go. Their master had taught them what he could, and wished either to accompany them to the law university or to send them thither to be finished and perfected. It does not appear, however, that they ever really got there. Most biographies of St. Gregory say that they studied there; what St. Gregory himself says is, that they were on their way thither, but that, having to pa.s.s through Caesarea (of Palestine), they met with Origen, to whom they took so great an affection that he converted them to Christianity and kept them by him there and at Alexandria for five years. The "Oratio Panegyrica" was delivered at Caesarea, and after the date of Origen's twenty years as catechist at Alexandria; but it will be readily understood that the whole spirit, and, indeed, the whole details, of the composition are as applicable to Alexandria as to Caesarea; for his teaching work was precisely of the same nature at the latter city as at the former, with a trifling difference in his position. The oration of St. Gregory is a formal and solemn effort of rhetoric, spoken at some public meeting, perhaps in the school, in the presence of learned men and of fellow-students, and of the master himself. It is written very elegantly and eloquently, but it is in a style that we should call young, did we not know that to make parade of apophthegms and weighty sayings, to moralize rather too much, to pursue metaphors unnecessarily, and to beat about a thing with words so as to do everything but say it, was the characteristic of most orators, old and young, from the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus till the days when oratory, as a profession, expired before anarchy and the barbarians. But its literary merits, though great, are the least of its recommendations. Its value as a theological monument is shown by the appeals made to it in the controversy against Arius; and in more recent times Bishop Bull, for instance, has made great use of it in his "Defensio Fidei Nicaenae." To us, at present, its most important service is the light it sheds upon the teaching of Origen. We need make no apology for making St. Gregory the type of the Alexandrian or Caesarean scholar; they may not have been all like him, but one real living specimen will tell us more than much abstract description.

First of all, then, the scholar was not of an emphatically philosophic cast of mind. The Greek philosophers were absolutely unknown to him.

He was a rich and clever young {363} man, bade fair to be a good speaker, studied the law not because he liked it, but because his friends and his master wished it; thought the Latin language very imperial, but _very_ difficult; and had a habit of taking up what opinions he did adopt more after the manner of clothes that he could change as he pleased than as immutable truths. He was of a warm and affectionate disposition, and had a keen appreciation of physical and moral beauty. He was not without leanings to Christianity, but he leaned to it in an easy, off-hand sort of way, as he might have leaned to a new school in poetry or a new style of dress. He had no idea that there is such a thing as the absolutely right and the absolutely wrong in ethics any more than in taste. He was confirmed in this state of mind by the philosophic schools of the day, among whom it was considered disreputable to change one's opinions, however good the reasons for a change might be; which was to degrade philosophy from truth to the mere spirit of party, and to make a philosopher not a lover of wisdom but a volunteer of opinion. So prepared and const.i.tuted, the scholar, on his way to Berytus, fell in with Origen, not so much by accident as by the disposition of Providence and the guidance of his angel guardian; so at least he thought himself. The first process which he went through at the hands of the master is compared by the scholar to the catching of a beast, or a bird, or a fish, in a net. Philosophizing had small charms for the accomplished young man; to philosophize was precisely what the master had determined he should do. We must remember the meaning of the word [Greek text]; it meant to think, act, and live as a man who seeks true wisdom. All the sects acknowledge this theoretically; what Clement and Origen wanted to show, among other things, was that only a Christian was a true philosopher in practice. Hence the net he spread for Theodore, a net of words, strong and not to be broken. "You are a fine and clever young man," he seemed to say; "but to what purpose are your accomplishments and your journeys. .h.i.ther and thither? you cannot answer me the simple question, Who are you? You are going to study the laws of Rome, but should you not first have some definite notion as to your last end, as to what is real evil and what is real good? You are looking forward to enjoyment from your wealth and honor from your talents; why, so does every poor, sordid, creeping mortal on the earth; so even do the brute beasts. Surely the divine gift of reason was given you to help you to live to some higher end than this." The scholar hesitated, the master insisted. The view was striking in itself, but the teacher's personal gifts made it strike far more effectually. "He was a mixture," says the scholar, "of geniality, persuasiveness, and compulsion. I wanted to go away, but could not; his words held me like a cord." The young man, unsettled as his mind had been, yet had always at heart believed in some sort of Divine Being. Origen completed the conquest of his intellect by showing him that without philosophy, that is, without correct views on morality, the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, or _piety_, as it used to be called, is impossible. And yet wisdom and eloquence might have been thrown away here as in so many other cases had not another influence, imperious and all-powerful, been all this time rising up in his heart. The scholar began to love the master. It was not an ordinary love, the love with which Origen inspired his hearers. It was an intense, almost a fierce, love (we are almost translating the words of the original), a fitting response to the genuineness and kindly spirit of one who seemed to think no pains or kindness too great to win the young heart to true morality, and thereby to the wors.h.i.+p of the only G.o.d--"to that saving word," says St. Gregory, in his lofty style, "which alone can teach G.o.d-service, which to whomsoever it comes home {364} it makes a conquest of them; and this gift G.o.d seems to have given to him, beyond all men now in the world." To that sacred and lovely word, therefore, and to the man who was its interpreter and its friend, sprang up in the heart of the scholar a deep, inextinguishable love. For that the abandoned pursuits and studies which he had hitherto considered indispensable; for that he left the "grand" laws of Rome, and forsook the friends he had left at home, and the friends that were then at his side. "And the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David," quotes the scholar, noting that the text speaks emphatically of the union of the soul, which no earthly accidents can affect, and finding a parallel to himself in Jonathan, to his master in David, the wise, the holy, and the strong. And though the hour for parting had come, the moment when these bonds of the soul should be severed would never come!

The scholar was now completely in the hands of his teacher---"as a land," he says, "empty, unproductive, and the reverse of fertile, saline" (like the waste lands near the Nile), "burnt up, stony, drifted with sand; yet not absolutely barren; nay, with qualities which might be worth cultivating, but which had hitherto been left without tillage or care, to be overgrown with thorn and thicket." He can hardly make enough of this metaphor of land and cultivation to show the nature of the work that the teacher had with his mind. We have to read on for some time before we find out that all this vigorous grubbing, ploughing, harrowing, and sowing represents the dialectical training which Origen gave his pupils, such pupils, at least, as those of whom Gregory Thaumaturgus was the type. In fact, the dialectics of the Platonists and their off-shoots is very inadequately represented by the modern use of the word logic. It seems to have signified, as nearly as a short definition can express it, the rectifying the ideas of the mind about itself, and about those things most intimately connected with it. A modern student takes up his manual of logic, or sits down in his cla.s.s-room with his most important ideas, either correct and settled, or else incorrect, beyond the cure of logic. At Alexandria manuals were scarce, and the ideas of the converts from heathenism were so utterly and fundamentally confused, that the first lessons of the Christian teacher to an educated Greek or Syrian necessarily took the shape of a Socratic discussion, or a disquisition on principles. And so the scholar, not without much amazement and ruffling of the feelings, found the field of his mind unceremoniously cleared out, broken up, and freshly planted. But, the process once complete, the result was worth the inconvenience.