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[137] 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[138] 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[139] 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[140] 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[141] 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[142] 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.”