Awaking early next morning, two or three hours before lecture, I spent the time in examining the gospels, and in particular the accounts of Christ’s last words. So few they were in Mark and Matthew that I could not anticipate that Luke would omit a single one of them or fail to give them exactly. They were uttered in public and in a loud voice. According to Mark and Matthew, they were a quotation from a Psalm, of which the Jewish words were given similarly by the two evangelists. They added a Greek interpretation. Luke, to my amazement, omitted both the Jewish words and the Greek interpretation. Afterwards, Mark and Matthew said that Jesus, in the moment of expiring, cried out again in a loud voice. On this occasion they gave no words. But there Luke mentioned words. Luke’s words, too, were from a Psalm, but quite different in meaning from the words previously given by Mark and Matthew.

Still more astonished was I to find what kind of words the two earliest evangelists wrote down as the last utterance of Christ—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That Christ said this I could hardly believe. Reading further, I found that some of the men on guard exclaimed “This man calls for Elias”—because the Jewish word “Heli” or “Eli,” “my God,” resembles the Jewish “Elias.” I wished that these men might prove true interpreters. Then I found that, although Luke mentions neither “Eli” nor “Elias,” he nevertheless mentions “Elios” or “Helios,” which in Greek means “sun.” This occurred in the passage parallel to Eli or[268] Heli. What Luke said was that there was an “eclipse,” or “failing,” of “the sun.” I thought then (and I think still) that Luke was glad—as a Christian historian might well be without being at all dishonest—to find that Mark’s “Eli” had been taken, at all events by some, not to mean “my God.” Perhaps some version gave “Elios,” or “Helios,” “sun.” This Luke might gladly accept. Indeed, in the genitive, which is the form used by Luke, the word “Heliou” may mean either “of the sun” or “of Elias.”

But, on reflection, I could not find much comfort from Luke’s version. For the difficult version seemed more likely to be true. And how could there be an “eclipse” of the sun during Passover, when the moon was at the full? Then I looked at the Psalm from which the words were taken, and I noted that although it began with “Why hast thou forsaken me?” it went on to say that God “hath not hid his face from him, but when he cried unto him he heard him.” Also the Psalm ended in a strain of triumph, as though this cry “Why hast thou forsaken me?” would end in comfort and strength for all the meek, so that “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord.” Nevertheless this did not satisfy me. And even the help that I afterwards received from Clemens (about whom I shall speak later on) left me, and still to this day leaves me, with a sense that there is a mystery in this utterance beyond my power to fathom, though not beyond my power to believe.

I was still engaged in these meditations when my servant brought me a letter. It was from Arrian, informing me of the death of his father, which would prevent him from returning to Nicopolis. He also requested me to convey various messages to friends to whom he had not been able to bid farewell owing to his sudden departure. In particular he enclosed a note, which he asked me to give to Epictetus. “Add what you like,” he said, “you can hardly add too much, about my gratitude to him. I owe him morally more than I can express. Moreover in the official world, where everybody knows that our Master stands well with the Emperor, it is sometimes a sort of recommendation to have attended his lectures. And perhaps it has[269] helped me. At all events I have recently been placed in a position of responsibility and authority by the Governor of Bithynia. I like the work and hope to do it fairly well. Even the mere negative virtue of not taking bribes goes for something, and that at least I can claim. I am not able, and never shall be able, to be a Diogenes, going about the province and healing the souls of men. But I try to do my duty, and I feel an interest in getting at the truth, and judging justly among the poor, so far as my limited time, energy and intelligence permit.

“In the towns, among the artisans and slaves, I have been surprised to find so many of the Christians. You may remember how we talked about this sect more than once. You thought worse of them than I did. But I don’t think you had much more basis than the impressions of your childhood, derived from what you heard among your servants and the common people in Rome. I have seen a great deal of them lately and have been impressed by the high average of their morality, industry, and charity to one another.

“You never see a Christian begging. What is more, they set their faces against the exposing of children. I have often thought that our law is very defective in this respect. We will not let a father strangle his infant son, but we let him kill it by cold, starvation, or wild beasts. Every such death is the loss of a possible soldier to the state. It is a great mistake politically, and I am not sure whether it is right morally. When I first came to Nicopolis I used to hear it said that our Epictetus—one of the kindest of men I verily believe—once adopted a baby that was on the point of being exposed by one of his friends, got a nurse for it, and put himself to a lot of trouble. I sometimes wonder why he did not first give his friend the money to find a nurse and food for the baby, and then give him a good sharp reprimand for his inhumanity. For I call it inhuman. But I never heard Epictetus say a word against this practice. The Jews as well as the Christians condemn it. Perhaps the latter, in this point, merely followed the former; but in most points the Christians seem to me superior to the Jews.

[270]

“I am proud to call myself a philosopher, and perhaps I should be prouder than Epictetus would like if I could call myself a Roman citizen; but I am free to confess that there are points in which philosophers and Romans could learn something from these despised followers of Christus. Fas est et a Christiano doceri. I have been more impressed than I can easily explain to you on paper by the behaviour of this strangely superstitious sect. There is a strenuous fervour in their goodness—I mean in the Christians, I am not now speaking of the Jews—which I don’t find in my own attempts at goodness. I am, at best, only a second-class Cynic, devoid of fervour.

“You may say, like an orthodox scholar of Epictetus, ‘Let them keep their fervour and leave me calmness.’ But these men have both. They can be seasonably fervid and seasonably calm. I have heard many true stories of their behaviour in the last persecution. Go into one of their synagogues and you may hear their priest—or rather prophet, for priests they have none—thundering and lightening as though he held the thunderbolts of Zeus. Order the fellow off for scourging or execution, and he straightway becomes serenity itself. Not Epictetus could be more serene. Indeed, where an Epictetian would ‘make himself a stone’ under stripes and say, ‘They are nothing to me,’ a Christian would rejoice to bear them ‘for the sake of Christus.’ And even Epictetus, I think, could not reach the warmth, the glow, of their affection for each other. I am devoutly thankful that I did not occupy my present office under Pliny. It has never been my fate to scourge, rack, torture, or kill, one of these honest, simple, excellent creatures, whose only fault is what Epictetus would call their ‘dogma’ or conviction—surely such a ‘dogma’ as an emperor might almost think it well to encourage among the uneducated classes, in view of its excellent results. Farewell, and be ever my friend.”

The third hour had almost arrived and I had to hasten to the lecture-room taking with me the note addressed to Epictetus. All the way, I could think of nothing but the contrast between what Arrian had said about the Christians, and what Mark and Matthew had said about Christ’s last words—the servants[271] tranquil, steadfast, rejoicing in persecution; their Master crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It perplexed me beyond measure.

In this bewilderment, I took my accustomed place beside Glaucus, who greeted me with even more than his usual warmth. He seemed strangely altered. It was no new thing for him to look worn and haggard. But to-day there was a strange wildness in his eyes. Absorbed though I was in my own thoughts, I could not help noticing this as I sat down, just before Epictetus began.

The lecture was of a discursive kind but might be roughly divided into two parts, one adapted for the first class of Cynics, those who aspired to teach; the other for the second class, those who were content to practise. The first class Epictetus cautioned against expecting too much. No man, he said, not even the best of Cynic teachers, could control the will of another. Socrates himself could not persuade his own son. It was rather with the view of satisfying his own nature, than of moving other men’s nature, that Socrates taught. Apollo himself, he said, uttered oracles in the same way. I believe he also repeated—what I have recorded before—that Socrates “did not persuade one in a thousand” of those whom he tried to persuade.

I remembered a similar avowal in Isaiah when the prophet declares that his message is “Hear ye indeed, but understand not”; and this, or something like it, was repeated by Jesus and Paul. But Isaiah says, “Lord, how long?” And the reply is that the failure will not be for ever. In the Jewish utterances, there was more pain but also more hope. I preferred them. Nor could I help recalling Paul’s reiterated assertions that everywhere the message of the gospel was a “power,”—sometimes indeed for evil, to those that hardened themselves against it, but more often for good—constraining, taking captive, leading in triumph, and destined in the end to make all things subject to the Son of God. Compared with this, our Master’s doctrine seemed very cold.

In the next place, Epictetus addressed himself to the larger and lower class of Cynics, those who were beginning, or who[272] aspired only to the passive life. These he exhorted to set their thoughts on what was their own, on their own advantage or profit—of course interpreting profit in a philosophic sense as being virtue, which is its own reward and is the most profitable thing for every man. It was all, in a sense, very true, but again I felt that it was chilling. It seemed to send me down into myself, groping in the cellars of my own nature, instead of helping me to look up to the sun. Most of it was more or less familiar; and there was one saying that I have quoted above, to the effect that the universe is “badly managed if Zeus does not take care of each one of His own citizens in order that they like Him may be divinely happy.” Now I knew that Epictetus did not use the word eud?mon, or divinely happy, referring to the next life, for he did not believe that a “citizen of Zeus” would continue to exist, except as parts of the four elements, in a future life. He meant “in this life.” And if anyone in this life felt unhappy—more particularly, if he “wept”—that was a sign, according to Epictetus, that he was not a “citizen of Zeus.” For he declared that Ulysses, if he wept and bewailed his separation from his home and wife—as Homer says he did—“was not good.” So it came to this, that no man must weep or lament in earnest for any cause, either for the sins or sorrows of others, or for his own, on pain of forfeiting his franchise in the City of Zeus. I had read in the Hebrew scriptures how Noah, and Lot, and others of the “citizens of God,” lived alone amongst multitudes of sinners; but they, and the prophets too, seemed to be afflicted by the sins around them. Also Jesus said in the gospels, “O sinful and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you and bear you!” as though it were a burden to him. And I had come to feel that every good man must in some sense bear the sins and carry the iniquities of his neighbours—especially those of his own household, and his own flesh and blood. So I flinched from these expressions of Epictetus, although I knew that they were quite consistent with his philosophy.

Glaucus, I could clearly see, resented them even more than I did. He was very liable to sudden emotions, and very quick[273] to shew them. Just now he seemed unusually agitated. He was writing at a great pace, but not (I thought) notes of the lecture. When Epictetus proceeded to warn us that we must not expect to attain at once this perfection of happiness and peace, but that we must practise our precepts and wait, Glaucus stopped his writing for a moment to scrawl something on a piece of paper. He pushed it toward me, and I read “Rusticus expectat.” I remembered that he had replied to me in this phrase when I had given him some advice about “waiting patiently,” saying that all would “come right,” or words to that effect. I did not now feel that I could say, “All will come right.” Perhaps my glance in answer to Glaucus expressed this. But he said nothing, merely continuing his writing, still in great excitement.

Epictetus proceeded to repeat that “pity” must be rejected as a fault. The philosopher may of course love people, but he must love them as Diogenes did. This ideal did not attract me, though he called Diogene............