CHAPTER XVIII PAUL’S ONLY RECORD OF WORDS OF CHRIST

The first words of the sentence were, “For I received from the Lord”—he emphasized “I,” as though it meant “I myself,” or “Whatever others may have received, I received so and so”—“that which I also delivered over to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night on which he was to be delivered over.…” Here I paused and looked back, to see what “for” meant (in “for I received”) and why Paul was introducing this saying of the Lord. I found that the apostle had been warning the Corinthians thus, “Ye meet together, not for the better, but for the worse.” In the first place, he said, there were dissensions among them, and in the next place, “When ye come together it is not possible to eat the Lord’s Supper, for each one taketh his own supper, and one is hungry while another is drunken.” Then I understood that the Lord’s Supper meant that same Christian feast of which Arrian had spoken. This interested me because in Rome, as a boy, I had heard it said that the Christians partook of “a Thyestean meal,” that is, they killed children and served up the flesh to the parents. This I do not think I had myself believed, except perhaps in the nursery; but it was commonly taken as truth among the lower classes in Rome.

Now I perceived that the meal was to have been a joint one—like that of the Spartan public meals or syssitia, where all fed alike. But in that luxurious city of Corinth many of the Christians had introduced Corinthian luxury and turned the public meal into a group of private meals, so that some[161] had too little and others too much. Paul tried to bring them back to better things by telling them what Christ said to his disciples on the night of his last meal, “the night on which he was to be delivered over.” He implied that their meal ought to have been like Christ’s last meal; and now the question for me was, what that, the Lord’s Supper, was like.

But first I had to ask myself the meaning of Christ’s being “delivered over.” About this I had no doubt that it referred to the prophecy in Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant, who “was delivered over on account of our sins.” These words Paul had quoted in the epistle to the Romans, and he elsewhere spoke of God, or the Father, as “giving,” or “delivering over,” the Son for the salvation of mankind. Now both Isaiah and Paul had made it quite clear that the Servant, or Son, thus “delivered over” by the Father, goes voluntarily to death, and this I assumed to be the case here. But I did not know by what agency God was said to have “delivered him over.” I thought it might be by a warning or d?monic voice, as in the case of Socrates, bidding him surrender himself to the laws of his country. Or Christ’s own people, the citizens of Jerusalem, might have delivered him up to Pilate, to procure their own exemption from punishment on account of some rebellion or sedition. Or he might be said to have been delivered over by a decree of Fate, to which he voluntarily submitted.

So much was I in the dark that for a moment I thought of Christ as fighting at the head of an army of his countrymen and giving himself up for their sakes, like Protesilaus or the Decii; and I tried to picture Christ doing this, or something like this. But I failed. Still I was being guided rightly so far as this, that I began faintly to recognise that this “delivering over” might be not a mere propitiation of Nemesis, occurring now and then in battles, but part of the laws of the Cosmopolis, occurring often when a deliverance is to be wrought for any community of men. Of such a propitiation Protesilaus was the symbol, concerning whom Homer says,
“First of the Ach?ans leaped he on Troy’s shore
Long before all the rest.”

He leaped first, in order to fall first. But his country rose by[162] his fall. His wife sorrowed, “desolate in Thessaly,” and his house was left “half built.” But in the minds of men he abides among the firstfruits of the noble dead, who have counted it life to lay down life for others. This legend I now began to apply to spiritual things. I was being prepared to believe that the sons of God in all places and times must needs be in various ways and circumstances “delivering themselves over” as sacrifices to the will of God, in proportion to their goodness, wisdom, and strength—the good spending their life-blood for the evil, the wise for the foolish, the strong for the weak.

After this, came a sentence that perplexed me greatly, “This is my body, which is in your behalf. Do this to my remembering or reminding.” Not being able to make any sense at all of this, I read on, in hope of light: “In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” The word “covenant” helped me a little, because I had found Paul speaking elsewhere to the Corinthians in his own person about a “new covenant” and an “old covenant.” Also to the Galatians he mentioned “two covenants,” one of which, he said, “corresponds to Mount Sinai.” So I turned to the scripture that described how God made a “covenant” with Israel that they should obey the Law given to them from Mount Sinai. It had these words: “And Moses, having taken the blood”—that is, the blood from a “sacrifice of salvation” consisting of bullocks—“sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has covenanted with you concerning all these words’.” The blood of the old covenant (I perceived) was blood of “sprinkling,” purifying the body. David prayed for something more than that, when he said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” So it occurred to me that the “new covenant” was to purify, not the body but the heart and the spirit, entering into man and becoming part of him so as to cleanse him from within.

This seemed to agree with Paul’s opinion, and with what I had read in Isaiah, that the sacrifices of bulls and goats cannot make the heart clean. Now, therefore, going back[163] again to the first words “This is my body, which is in your behalf,” I inferred that Christ was speaking about Himself as being the “sacrifice of salvation” above mentioned, and that He used these words, purposing to devote Himself to death for the people, in order to redeem them from sin by purifying their hearts.

I am writing now in old age. Forty-five years have passed since the night when I first read, “This is my body, which is in your behalf.” During that interval I have done my best to ascertain the exact words spoken by the Saviour in His own tongue. And now it is much more clear to me than it was then that the Lord Jesus was herein giving Himself, His very self, both as a legacy to the disciples and also as a ransom for their souls. But even then I perceived that some such meaning must be attached to the words, and that they could not have been invented by any disciple; and they made me marvel more than anything else that I had met with in the Jewish scriptures or Paul’s epistles. Such a confidence did they shew in the power of His own love, as being stronger than death! I do not say that I believed that the words had been fulfilled. But I felt sure that Christ had uttered them in the belief of their being fulfilled; and, just for a few moments, the notion that He should have been deceived seemed to me so contrary to the fitness of things, and to the existence of any kind of Providence, that I almost believed that they must have had some kind of fulfilment. I did not stay to ask, “How fulfilled?” I merely said, “This is divine, this is like the ‘still small voice.’ This is past man’s invention. This must be from God.”

Then I checked myself, doubt rising up within me. “Paul,” I said, “was not present on the night of the Last Supper. He says concerning these words, ‘I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you.’ Is it not strange that the oracles or revelations supposed by Paul to have been delivered to him by Jesus after the resurrection should have included matters of historical fact, and historical utterances, which could have been ascertained from the disciples that heard them? I must wait till I receive the Christian gospels from Flaccus.”

Then this also occurred to me. “Socrates, too, like Christ,[164] was unjustly condemned. Socrates might have escaped from death, but he refused. The d?monic voice that told him what to do and not to do, bade him remain and die, and he obeyed. In effect, then, this voice from heaven ‘delivered over’ Socrates to death. Or he may be said to have ‘delivered himself over.’ Now what were the last words of Socrates? Did he leave any such legacy to his disciples? Might I not find some help here? For assuredly Socrates, like Christ, endeavoured to make men better and wiser.” I remembered hearing Epictetus say—and I recognised the truth of the saying—“Even now, when Socrates is dead, the memory of the words and deeds of his life is no less profitable to men, perhaps it is more so, than when he lived.” So I turned over Arrian’s notes and found several remarks of our Master about Socrates and his contempt for death; and with what a humorous appearance of sympathy he accepted the jailer’s tears, though he himself felt they were altogether misplaced. At last I came to a passage where Epictetus compared Socrates, on his trial, and in his last moments, to a man playing at ball: “And what was the ball in that case? Life, chains, exile, a draught of poison, to be parted from a wife, to leave one’s children orphans. These were his playthings, but none the less he kept on playing and throwing the ball with grace and dexterity.”

This was enough, and more than enough. It was hopeless, I perceived, to search in Epictetus for what I sought—some last legacy of Socrates to his disciples, implying that he longed to help them after death. Epictetus would have rebuked me, saying, “How could he help them when he was dissolved into the four elements? What could Socrates bequeath to them beyond the memory of his words and deeds?”

Failing Epictetus, I took out from my bookcase such works of Plato and Xenophon as might contain the last thoughts of Socrates. Both of these writers believed in the immortality of the soul. Yet I could not find either of them asserting, or suggesting, that Socrates felt any trouble or anxiety for his friends and for their faith, nor any token of a hope that his soul might help theirs after his death—or rather, to use his phrase, after he had “transferred his habitation.” When I tried to find[165] such a hope, I could not feel sure that I was interpreting the words honestly. It seemed to me that I was importing something of the Jewish pathos, or feeling, into an utterance of the Greek logos. I still retained the conviction that Socrates, in his last moments, had his disciples at heart, and that, in enjoining that last sacrifice to ?sculapius, he wished to stimulate them to something more spiritual and more permanent than that single literal act. But I longed for something more. I thought of Christ’s “constraining love,” and how a man might be “constrained” in a natural way by the love of the dead—the love of a wife, father, mother, or child. Such a love I said, might be no less powerful, for help and comfort, than the hate of Clytemnestra following Orestes for evil. ?neas (I remembered) used the word “image,” speaking to the spirit of Anchises, “Thy image, O my father, constrained me to come hither.” But Anchises replies that he himself had been all the while following his son in his perilous wanderings, so that it was not a mere “image.” It was a presence. “Is it possible,” I asked, “that Christ, not in poetry but in fact, thought of bequeathing to His disciples such a presence, to follow and help them after His death?”

Yes. It seemed quite possible, nay, almost certain—that Christ thought this. But who, except a Christian, would believe that the thought was more than a dream? “Scaurus,” I said, “who often jests at me as a dreamer, would now jest more than ever. Here am I, pondering poetry, when I ought to be studying history! Yet how can I study history in Paul, when Paul himself tells me that he received these words from one that had died—presumably therefore in a vision? The right course will be to wait till Flaccus sends me the gospels. These may chance to be historical biographies—not records of things seen, or words heard, in visions.” And then Scaurus’s saying recurred to me, that no two writers agree independently in recording a speech or conversation for twenty consecutive words that are exactly the same. “And this,” said I, “I hope to test before many days are over, with regard to these mysterious words of Christ.”

But before rolling up the book it came into my mind that[166] Paul said somewhere to the Romans “I beseech you therefore by the compassionate mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.” Having found these words and read them carefully over, I thought that the writer must have had in view some allusion to the sacrifice of Isaac. For that was the only “living sacrifice” that I could find (and indeed it is the only one) mentioned in scripture. Then I turned to the first book of the Law and there I found that God’s promise of Isaac to Abraham had been called a covenant, and this, said Paul to the Galatians, was, so to speak, the real thought of God. The covenant of Sinai was only an afterthought. The sign of Abraham’s covenant by promise was in the blood of circumcision stamped permanently on man’s body. The sign of the covenant of Sinai was in the blood of bullocks merely sprinkled on the body. Also there was yet another covenant between God and man, earlier than both of these. This, the earliest covenant of all, was with Noah. Now the sign of this was not on man at all, but on the sky, being the rainbow. And in the covenant with Noah there was no mention of blood (either of man or beast) except this—that man was not to taste the blood of beasts when he ate their flesh, and that he was not to pour out the blood of men, much less to taste of it.

Then it seemed to me that the words and thoughts of Christ, being a Jew, must be studied in the light of the words and thoughts of his countrymen the ancient Jews. The first covenant, that of Noah, said, “The blood is the life, therefore ye shall not taste of blood; and whosoever shall taste of blood, whether of man or beast, shall die; and whosoever shall pour out the blood of man, his blood shall be poured out and he shall die.” This was confirmed by the Covenant of Moses the Lawgiver. Then came a second covenant, that of the Son, saying, “I have changed all that. I am the New Covenant. The New Covenant is in my blood, that is, in my life. My blood is truly my life. Ye shall taste of my blood. It shall be poured out for all, as a living sacrifice. Whosoever shall taste of my blood shall not die but shall live for ever, even as I live.”

Looking back now to that moment, I seem to perceive that[167] I was being led on by the Spirit of God, far beyond my own natural powers of thought and reason, in order that I might have some foretaste of the revelation of the Lord’s sacrifice, so as to be strengthened and prepared for the trial that was shortly to fall upon me, when I was to be dragged away from the shore that I had just touched, back again into the tumultuous deep. For a long time I continued musing on this mystery, and turning over passage after passage in Paul’s epistles describing how believers are all one “in Christ,” and “Christ in them,” and how they are made righteous, or brought near to God, “in the blood of Christ.”

So passed the greater part of the day, up till the ninth hour. Then came a reaction. The thought of Scaurus returned, and of his criticisms. “He is right,” I said, “I am a dreamer. I will go out into the fields.” So I went out, taking my Virgil as company. When I came into the woods I sat down in the warmth of the westering sun. There, for a time, listening to the songs of the thrushes and the cooing of the doves, I felt at peace, and opened my Virgil, intending to read about the bees and the fields. But I had brought the ?neid by mistake, and the first words I met were these:
“Si nunc se nobis ille aureus arbore ramus
Ostendat nemore in tanto!”

Then back again came suggestions of doubt. For I recognised it as a kind of oracle from the Gods, that I must still be seeking for the light of the truth in the dark forest of error, and that I could not find it without divine help. “But,” said I, as I started up to return home, “it shall be such help as a Roman may accept without shame. The faith of Junius Silanus shall never be constrained by spells, or incantations, or by anything except reasonable conviction and the force of facts.”

Returning home as the sun was sinking I found letters awaiting me. Among these, one was from Flaccus, saying that he had sent me three little Christian books called “gospels,” in accordance with my order. After his usual fashion, addressing me as the son of his old master, but also as a companion in[168] the fellowship of book-lovers, he added some remarks on the contents of the parcel. “The third of these books,” he said, “is written by a man of some education, named Lucas, a companion of Paulus (whose works I recently sent you); and he has published a supplementary volume, which I have ventured to add although you did not order it. The supplement is entitled ‘The Acts of the Apostles,’ that is, of the missionaries sent out by Christus. The ‘gospel,’ as you probably know, is a record of the acts and words of Christus himself. Also, as you are interested in this sect, I have sent you a book called the Revelation of John. It is written in most extraordinary Greek, without pretensions to grammar, much less to style. But it has some poetic touches in it. Of the eastern style, of course. But that you will understand. This John was himself—(I am told)—one of their ‘apostles,’ and a man of note among the Christians. He is said to have written it soon after the reign of Domitian.”

There was also a letter from Scaurus, or rather a packet of letters. Out of it fell a separate note of the nature of a postscript, and I read that first, as follows: “Two things I forgot to say. First, if you decide to open my sealed note about the similarities of Paul and Epictetus, I shall not now feel hurt. For the reasons I have given in my letter, I hope you will not open it, because I trust you will turn your mind to other matters. But I do not now regard that note as important. By this time, you probably have the books of the Christians. You also know more than you did about Epictetus, so you have been able to judge for yourself whether I have not spoken the truth. But now—I repeat—my advice is to put the whole investigation aside. Go to Illyria and see whether you cannot find an opening there for a military philosopher.”

As to the sealed note, I have explained above that, when I opened it, I found it was, as Scaurus said, of very little importance to me—knowing what I then knew. Such effect as it had on me was produced before I had opened it, because it provoked my curiosity and stimulated me to study the books of the Christians.

The postscript continued as follows. “The second thing,[169] much more important, concerns a fundamental matter in this Christian superstition. You know, I am sure, from Paul’s letters, that the ancient Jews—better called Israelites—have always claimed that God has honoured them above all nations by making a special ‘treaty’ or ‘covenant’ with them. Well, Paul admits this for Jews, but claims for Christians that they have a still better ‘treaty’ or ‘covenant,’ which he calls ‘new,’ as distinct from that of the Jews, which he calls ‘old.’ He represents his leader, Christ, as making or ratifying this ‘new covenant’ with his blood, on the night on which he was betrayed. Not only this, but he gives the exact words uttered by Christ—and, mark you, this is the only occasion on which he quotes any words of Christ at all. Not only this, but he says that he received them from his leader; ‘I received from the Lord that which I also delivered over to you.’ Now, Silanus, look for yourself. Do not believe me. Look in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, some way after the middle, and see whether he does not quote these words, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as ye are drinking, to my remembering.’ What the words mean I do not precisely know. But there they are. Next look in the three gospels?”

“Now,” said I, “I shall get light.” I put down the letter and took up the three gospels—the packet from Flaccus. But a glance shewed that it would be a long and difficult business to find the passage in them, and to compare their three versions with the one in Paul’s epistle. So I turned to the postscript again, “Next look in the three gospels and prepare to be surprised. You will find the following four facts. First, none of them contain the words ‘Do this to my remembering.’ Secondly, the latest gospel (that of Lucas) makes no mention of a ‘covenant.’ Thirdly, the two earliest gospels do not call the covenant ‘new.’ Fourthly, the Greek word may mean not ‘covenant’ at all, but ‘testament’; and the meaning may be that their leader bequeaths them his blood—whatever that may mean—by his last will and testament.

“Now I put it to you, Silanus, as a reasonable man, whether it is worth while investigating a superstition as to which the earliest documents disagree concerning such a fundamental fact[170] (or rather allegation). These Christians—for I am informed they mostly take Paul’s view—assert that their Founder made a ‘new covenant’ between them and God on a special night. Three of them give accounts—detailed accounts—of all manner of things that happened on that night. A fourth, Paul, professes to give the very words of the Founder of the Covenant, as he received them from the Founder himself, not alive of course but dead! And he, Paul, alone of the four, mentions the phrase ‘new covenant.’ What do you think of this?”

Indeed I did not know what to think of it. And Scaurus’s next words almost decided me to take his view of the whole matter, to put away all my Jewish and Christian books and to have done with every kind of philosophy. “Spare me,” so the postscript proceeded, “for the sake of the immortal Gods, my dearest Quintus, spare me the pain—during the few years or months of life that may still remain for me—of seeing the son of my dearest friend ensnared in the net of a beguiling superstition that must lead you away from your duty to your country. Be kind to me and to your father.”

Not having read the preceding part of his letter, I was amazed at this outburst of alarm in my behalf. But I perceived that, with his usual sympathetic insight, he had read some of my thoughts almost before I was conscious of them myself, and I was grateful to him. If he had stopped there, I sometimes think things might have happened differently. But he continued, “Truth, as Sophocles says, is always right. Be true to the truth. Be true to yourself. Amid all the shifting fancies and falsehoods around you, esteem the knowledge of yourself the only knowledge that is certain and unchangeable. In that respect the old philosophers were right. ‘Know thyself’ is the only divine precept. On self-knowledge alone is based the only covenant—if indeed it is fit to imagine any covenant—between God and man.”

From these last words I found myself in absolute revolt. During the past few days I had come to think that perhaps the only certain and unchangeable truth was that self-knowledge without other knowledge is impossible, or, if possible, most harmful. Dissenting from these last words I went back to[171] dissent further, or rather to draw a different inference. “Truth is always right.” Then could it be right for me to give up the search for truth, lest I should pain myself or Scaurus? From my father, one of the most just and honourable of men, how often had I heard the maxim, Audi alteram partem! Why should I not “hear the other side” since that very day had placed at my disposal (thanks to Flaccus) the means of doing this? Scaurus had indirectly challenged me to do it. My father had, in a sense, commanded it. Before I retired to rest that night, I resolved to devote the whole of the next day, and as much time as I could spare afterwards, to the examination of the Christian gospels.