I explained to Clemens that I had been attending the lectures of Epictetus. He had taught us, I said, to neglect external things, and to value virtue, as being placed by God in our own power and a possession open to all. “This,” said I, “has strengthened me—this and the influence of his character—in the determination to lead a life above the mere pleasures of the flesh. But, on the other hand, Epictetus teaches us that we are never to be troubled, not even by the troubles or misdoings of those nearest and dearest to us. We are to say, ‘These things are nothing to us’.” I then explained to Clemens how this doctrine had repelled me, and how I had been led by an accident to study the letters of Paul, in which I found a very different doctrine.

“Paul,” said I, “counts many external things as evil, and especially the errors and transgressions of his converts. These he feels as evils and pains to himself. Yet he always seems hopeful and helpful, full of strength both for himself and for others. I have felt drawn towards him, and, through him, to the prophet Jesus, or Christ, whom he calls Son of God. Paul speaks of himself as led towards this Jesus by a ‘constraining love’ filling the heart with joy and peace. I have felt something of this, or at least have felt the possibility of it. In my childhood, ‘Christus’ was called one of the vilest of the vile, and I believed it. Now I have come to regard him as—I know not what. Just now I said ‘prophet.’ But Epictetus calls Diogenes God’s ‘own son.’ Christ, in my[292] judgment, stands far above Diogenes and perhaps even above Socrates. When I say ‘above Socrates,’ I do not mean in reason, but in feeling, and in the power to draw men towards kindness and steadfast welldoing. I think I had come almost to the point of calling this Jesus ‘God’s own son’ in a very real sense, as being above all other men, yes, and more—more than I could understand. And then?.”

“And then?” said Clemens. I had paused. He waited an instant longer, questioning, or rather interpreting me, with his eyes. “And then,” said he, “something threw you back?” “Yes,” said I, “something threw me back. And what do you think it was? Paul drew me on. But the author of this little book, he, and Matthew, and Luke—these threw me back. It happened in many ways. I must tell you the last first. A friend, a fellow-student, has just now left me for Corinth, crushed to the earth by the most shameful outrages on his family. I wished to give him some comfort, to point him towards some hope, to give him what you Christians—for surely you are a Christian?” He assented. “Well, what you Christians call ‘good tidings’ or ‘gospel.’

“Now if I could believe Paul, I should have a ‘gospel.’ For then the spirit of Jesus, having risen from the dead, would be travelling about the world everywhere at hand to strengthen His disciples, and to comfort their hearts, and to assure them that all will be well in the end. ‘I have prevailed over death’—so His Spirit would say to us—‘I will always help the poor and oppressed. I will never forsake them till I have made them sharers in my eternal kingdom.’ This it would say to each one of us, ‘You, Gaius, or you, Marcus, I will be with you always. I will never forsake you.’ But how can I believe these beautiful assurances, when I find Mark declaring (and Matthew agreeing with him) that Christ’s last articulate utterance was, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ How can I assure my friend that God never forsakes the oppressed, if He forsook His own Son? And how can I deny that ‘forsaking,’ when the Son Himself says, Why hast thou forsaken?? Epictetus forbade us to admit that we are ever alone. ‘God,’ said he, ‘is always within you.’ Is not that the[293] better and nobler doctrine? If the better and nobler doctrine is not true, does it not follow that the truth is bad and ignoble, and that, in real truth, there is no good and noble power controlling the world? Which of the two is right, Epictetus or Christ?”

“Both, I think,” said Clemens. He had been listening with attention and manifest sympathy, but without any change in that steadfast look of peace and trust which his face habitually wore. I seemed to read in his countenance at once pain and faith, pain for my burden, faith that he could help me to bear it or to cast it away. Presently he added, “Do not suppose that by answering so briefly and quickly I wished to cut short your objection or to deny the difficulty. Far from it. You have asked, I think, one of the hardest questions, perhaps the very hardest, that could be put to a worshipper of Christ. Often have I thought of it, and I should not like to answer it hastily. You know perhaps that Luke omits these words, and that he mentions, instead, something about the ‘sun’?” “Yes,” said I, “but that seemed to me only to shew that Luke was willing to accept a version that removed the difficulty in the original.” “I agree with you,” said Clemens, “and, if so, that indicates that the difficulty was recognised before Luke compiled his gospel. Certainly, certainly, those wonderful words were really uttered.”

Then he said, “First let me give you an explanation that is not unreasonable and may have some truth in it. You know, I dare say, that the words are from the Psalms?” “Yes,” I replied, “but the Psalmist changes his mood. He goes on to say, ‘He hath not hid his face from him, but, when he cried unto him, he heard him,’ and afterwards, ‘All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord’.” “You have mentioned,” said Clemens, “the very words that seem to some of our brethren to answer your question; for they say that the Lord had in mind the whole of the Psalm when He quoted the first words, and that He meant this, ‘I cry unto thee, O Father, in the words of scripture Why hast thou forsaken me? knowing that thou hast not indeed hidden thy face from me, but thou art hearing me: and all the ends of the earth shall remember my crying and thy hearing and shall turn unto thee’.”

[294]

“And are not you content with this explanation?” said I. “Not quite,” said Clemens. “For, though this may be true, more may be true. I have read in another gospel, later than these three, that the Son did no work on earth and uttered no word, without looking up to the Father in heaven and listening to the Father’s voice, which told Him from time to time what to do and to say. And I have heard one of the brethren, a man full of spiritual understanding, and well read in the scriptures, interpret the question as though it were a real question, not an exclamation—the Son questioning the Father as to His will. If that were so, the Son might be conceived as saying, ‘For what reason, O Father, hast thou forsaken me for a while and hidden the light of thy countenance from me? Teach me, O Father, in order that I also may be willing to be forsaken, and may desire to be deprived of the light of thy countenance.’ And then the Father replies, ‘I forsake thee, O my Son, because thou must needs die, and in my presence is the fulness of life. The time hath come for thee to give up thy life, that is, to lose my presence for a brief space, that all men may gain for ever by thy brief loss and be saved from death by thy sacrifice of life.’ And after this, said the brother, the Lord cried out a second time. What He said then, Mark and Matthew have not recorded; but they write that He then expired or sent forth His Spirit. The brother I am speaking of believed that the Son, by crying aloud ‘Why hast thou forsaken?’ prepared Himself to be willingly forsaken, and to be under the darkness of this momentary forsaking just before He gave up His life as a sacrifice for men.”

“But you say,” said I, “that Epictetus, too, is right.” “Certainly,” replied Clemens. “Epictetus says that men, God’s children, are never ‘alone.’ And that is true. Indeed I can shew you presently a new Christian gospel—the one I mentioned just now—which represents Christ as saying this very thing, ‘Ye shall leave me alone—and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.’ Look at the matter thus. Do we not know that God may be regarded as being in all places at once, so that to speak of Him as ‘here and not there’ is no less a metaphor than to speak of His ‘hiding His countenance,’ or[295] ‘bearing us in His arms’? God therefore is, as Epictetus often affirms, ‘within us.’ But is He not also (as I think Epictetus seldom or never affirms) ‘outside us’? Is not the Psalmist’s metaphor right when he says that God, being outside us, hides His face sometimes from His children? Sometimes He does this because they have sinned, in order that they may seek His face and cease to sin. But does He not also do this when men have not sinned, in order that the righteous may become more righteous and the pure more pure, by longing more than ever for the sight of His countenance and by thirsting anew for His presence?

“I do not quite like to explain the dealings of God with men by anything that frail human creatures do in sport. And yet there is something so sacred (at least I think so) in the relations between parents and young children, that I have been sometimes led to liken God hiding His face from His children to a mother hiding her face from the babe in her arms. She hides it, but only for a moment, only that the child may be the more joyful afterwards. And the arms never let go their embrace.” Then, after a pause, he added, “But perhaps you say, ‘Do not you Christians believe that Christ was already perfectly righteous, and perfectly pure, and that He already rejoiced to the utmost in the Father’s love? Why then should God forsake such a Son? Why should He hide His face from the Holy One, even for a time?’ That, I think, is the question you would like to ask?”

Reading assent in my face, he proceeded, “Some might reply that this question has been answered by the brother above-mentioned, who says, in effect, ‘The Son was forsaken by the Father, not that the Son might be made purer, or freed from sin, but that He might know the Father’s will and might prepare Himself for His imminent self-sacrifice.’ But is that—I will not say a complete answer, for who will venture to say that he knows completely all the purpose of the Father in causing the Son to feel forsaken?—is it even an answer that ought rightly to satisfy us? Will you be patient with me, my friend—for friends we are already (are we not?) in our joint search after truth?” “We are indeed,” said I, “and I would[296] gladly hear your fullest thoughts on this matter.” “Permit me then,” said he, “to put another thought before your mind, namely, that the Son of God, being Son of man, may have been forsaken by the Father in order to learn, as a man, the heights and depths of human nature, and to what an abyss of darkness the purest and most faithful saint may sometimes sink; and how even in that abyss, the saint may feel, through faith, that there are still beneath him the arms of God, not indeed supporting him but ready to support him; and that he is—as the prophets say about Israel—‘forsaken’ yet ‘not forsaken.’ No height in saintliness is higher than such a faith as this.

“The scriptures tell us,” he continued, “that man is to love God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his power, and with all his understanding. You know t............