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| Chapter IV
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Chapter
IV.
But we
need no longer show in this narrow way the drawback of this life, as if
the number of its ills was limited to adulteries, dissensions, and
plots. I think we should take the higher and truer view, and say at
once that none of that evil in life, which is visible in all its
business and in all its pursuits, can have any hold over a man, if he
will not put himself in the fetters of this course. The truth of what
we say will be clear thus. A man who, seeing through the illusion with
the eye of his spirit purged, lifts himself above the struggling world,
and, to use the words of the Apostle, slights it all as but dung, in a
way exiling himself altogether from human life by his abstinence from
marriage,—that man has no fellowship whatever with the sins of
mankind, such as avarice, envy, anger, hatred, and everything of the
kind. He has an exemption from all this, and is in every way free and
at peace; there is nothing in him to provoke his neighbours’
envy, because he clutches none of those objects round which envy in
this life gathers. He has raised his own life above the world, and
prizing virtue as his only precious possession he will pass his days in
painless peace and quiet. For virtue is a possession which, though all
according to their capacity should share it, yet will be always in
abundance for those who thirst after it; unlike the occupation of the
lands on this earth, which men divide into sections, and the more they
add to the one the more they take from the other, so that the one
person’s gain is his fellow’s loss; whence arise the fights
for the lion’s share, from men’s hatred of being cheated.
But the larger owner of this possession is never envied; he who
snatches the lion’s share does no damage to him who claims equal
participation; as each is capable each has this noble longing
satisfied, while the wealth of virtues in those who are already
occupiers1360
| 1360 ἐν
τοῖς
προλαβοῦσιν. Galesinius’ Latin seems wrong here, “rebus
iis quas supra meminimus,” though the words often have that force
in Gregory. | is not exhausted. The man, then, who,
with his eyes only on such a life, makes virtue, which has no limit
that man can devise, his only treasure, will surely never brook to bend
his soul to any of those low courses which multitudes tread. He will
not admire earthly riches, or human power, or any of those things which
folly seeks. If, indeed, his mind is still pitched so low, he is
outside our band of novices, and our words do not apply to him. But if
his thoughts are above, walking as it were with God, he will be lifted
out of the maze of all these errors; for the predisposing cause of them
all, marriage, has not touched him. Now the wish to be before others is
the deadly sin of pride, and one would not be far wrong in saying that
this is the seed-root of all the thorns of sin; but it is from reasons
connected with marriage that this pride mostly begins. To show what I
mean, we generally find the grasping man throwing the blame on his
nearest kin; the man mad after notoriety and ambition generally makes
his family responsible for this sin: “he must not be thought
inferior to his forefathers; he must be deemed a great man by the
generation to come by leaving his children historic records of
himself”: so also the other maladies of the soul, envy, spite,
hatred and such-like, are connected with this cause; they are to be
found amongst those who are eager about the things of this life. He who
has fled from it gazes as from some high watch-tower on the prospect of
humanity, and pities these slaves of vanity for their blindness in
setting such a value on bodily well-being. He sees some distinguished
person giving himself airs because of his public honours, and wealth,
and power, and only laughs at the folly of being so puffed up. He gives
to the years of human life the longest number, according to the
Psalmist’s computation, and then compares this atom-interval with
the endless ages, and pities the vain glory of those who excite
themselves for such low and petty and perishable things. What, indeed,
amongst the things here is there enviable in that which so many strive
for,—honour? What is gained by those who win it? The mortal
remains mortal whether he is honoured or not. What good does the
possessor of many acres gain in the end? Except that the foolish man
thinks his own that which never belongs to him, ignorant seemingly in
his greed that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness
thereof1361
,” for “God is king of all
the earth1362
.” It is the passion of having
which gives men a false title of lordship over that which can never
belong to them. “The earth,” says the wise Preacher,
“abideth for ever1363
,” ministering
to every generation, first one, then another, that is born upon it; but
men, though they are so little even their own masters, that they are
brought into life without knowing it by their Maker’s will, and
before they wish are withdrawn from it, nevertheless in their excessive
vanity think that they are her lords; that they, now born, now dying,
rule that which remains continually. One who reflecting on this holds
cheaply all that mankind prizes, whose only love is the divine life,
because “all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass1364
,” can never
care for this grass which “to-day is and to-morrow is not”;
studying the divine ways, he knows not only that human life has no
fixity, but that the entire universe will not keep on its quiet course
for ever; he neglects his existence here as an alien and a passing
thing; for the Saviour said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away1365
,” the whole of necessity awaits its
refashioning. As long as he is “in this tabernacle1366
,” exhibiting
mortality, weighed down with this existence, he laments the lengthening
of his sojourn in it; as the Psalmist-poet says in his heavenly songs.
Truly, they live in darkness who sojourn in these living tabernacles;
wherefore that preacher, groaning at the continuance of this sojourn,
says, “Woe is me that my sojourn is prolonged1367
,” and he attributes the cause of his
dejection to “darkness”; for we know that darkness is
called in the Hebrew language “kedar.” It is indeed a
darkness as of the night which envelops mankind, and prevents them
seeing this deceit and knowing that all which is most prized by the
living, and moreover all which is the reverse, exists only in the
conception of the unreflecting, and is in itself nothing; there is no
such reality anywhere as obscurity of birth, or illustrious birth, or
glory, or splendour, or ancient renown, or present elevation, or power
over others, or subjection. Wealth and comfort, poverty and distress,
and all the other inequalities of life, seem to the ignorant, applying
the test of pleasure, vastly different from each other. But to the
higher understanding they are all alike; one is not of greater value
than the other; because life runs on to the finish with the same speed
through all these opposites, and in the lots of either class there
remains the same power of choice to live well or ill, “through
armour on the right hand and on the left, through evil report and good
report1368
.” Therefore the clearseeing mind
which measures reality will journey on its path without turning,
accomplishing its appointed time from its birth to its exit; it is
neither softened by the pleasures nor beaten down by the hardships;
but, as is the way with travellers, it keeps advancing always, and
takes but little notice of the views presented. It is the travellers
way to press on to their journey’s end, no matter whether they
are passing through meadows and cultivated farms, or through wilder and
more rugged spots; a smiling landscape does not detain them; nor a
gloomy one check their speed. So, too, that lofty mind will press
straight on to its self-imposed end, not turning aside to see
anything on the way. It passes through life, but its gaze is fixed on
heaven; it is the good steersman directing the bark to some landmark
there. But the grosser mind looks down; it bends its energies to bodily
pleasures as surely as the sheep stoop to their pasture; it lives for
gorging and still lower pleasures1369
| 1369 τοῖς μετὰ
γαστέρα (not, γαστέρος), Cod. Reg.; cf. Gregor. Nazian. orat. xvi. p. 250,
δοῦλος
γαστρὸς, καὶ
τῶν ὑπὸ
γαστέρα.
Euseb. lib. 7, c. 20, ταῖς ὑπὸ
γαστέρα
πλησμοναῖς | ; it is
alienated from the life of God1370
, and a stranger to
the promise of the Covenants; it recognizes no good but the
gratification of the body. It is a mind such as this that “walks
in darkness1371
,” and invents all the evil in
this life of ours; avarice, passions unchecked, unbounded luxury, lust
of power, vain-glory, the whole mob of moral diseases that invade
men’s homes. In these vices, one somehow holds closely to
another; where one has entered all the rest seem to follow, dragging
each other in a natural order, just as in a chain, when you have jerked
the first link, the others cannot rest, and even the link at the other
end feels the motion of the first, which passes thence by virtue of
their contiguity through the intervening links; so firmly are
men’s vices linked together by their very nature; when one of
them has gained the mastery of a soul, the rest of the train follow. If
you want a graphic picture of this accursed chain, suppose a man who
because of some special pleasure it gives him is a victim to his thirst
for fame; then a desire to increase his fortune follows close upon this
thirst for fame; he becomes grasping; but only because the first vice
leads him on to this. Then this grasping after money and superiority
engenders either anger with his kith and kin, or pride towards his
inferiors, or envy of those above him; then hypocrisy comes in after
this envy; a soured temper after that; a misanthropical spirit after
that; and behind them all a state of condemnation which ends in the
dark fires of hell. You see the chain; how all follows from one
cherished passion. Seeing, then, that this inseparable train of moral
diseases has entered once for all into the world, one single way of
escape is pointed out to us in the exhortations of the inspired
writings; and that is to separate ourselves from the life which
involves this sequence of sufferings. If we haunt Sodom, we cannot
escape the rain of fire; nor if one who has fled out of her looks back
upon her desolation, can he fail to become a pillar of salt rooted to
the spot. We cannot be rid of the Egyptian bondage, unless we leave
Egypt, that is, this life that lies under water1372
| 1372 ὑποβρύχιον; referring to the floods of the Nile. | ,
and pass, not that Red Sea, but this black and gloomy Sea of life. But
suppose we remain in this evil bondage, and, to use the Master’s
words, “the truth shall not have made us free,” how can one
who seeks a lie and wanders in the maze of this world ever come to the
truth? How can one who has surrendered his existence to be chained by
nature run away from this captivity? An illustration will make our
meaning clearer. A winter torrent1373
, which,
impetuous in itself, becomes swollen and carries down beneath its
stream trees and boulders and anything that comes in its way, is death
and danger to those alone who live along its course; for those who have
got well out of its way it rages in vain. Just so, only the man who
lives in the turmoil of life has to feel its force; only he has to
receive those sufferings which nature’s stream, descending in a
flood of troubles, must, to be true to its kind, bring to those who
journey on its banks. But if a man leaves this torrent, and these
“proud waters1374
,” he will
escape from being “a prey to the teeth” of this life, as
the Psalm goes on to say, and, as “a bird from the snare,”
on virtue’s wings. This simile, then, of the torrent holds; human
life is a tossing and tumultuous stream sweeping down to find
its natural level; none of the objects sought for in it last till the
seekers are satisfied; all that is carried to them by this stream comes
near, just touches them, and passes on; so that the present moment in
this impetuous flow eludes enjoyment, for the after-current snatches it
from their view. It would be our interest therefore to keep far away
from such a stream, lest, engaged on temporal things, we should neglect
eternity. How can a man keep for ever anything here, be his love for it
never so passionate? Which of life’s most cherished objects
endures always? What flower of prime? What gift of strength and beauty?
What wealth, or fame, or power? They all have their transient bloom,
and then melt away into their opposites. Who can continue in
life’s prime? Whose strength lasts for ever? Has not Nature made
the bloom of beauty even more short-lived than the shows of spring? For
they blossom in their season, and after withering for a while again
revive; after another shedding they are again in leaf, and retain their
beauty of to-day to a late prime. But Nature exhibits the human bloom
only in the spring of early life; then she kills it; it is vanished in
the frosts of age. All other delights also deceive the bodily eye for a
time, and then pass behind the veil of oblivion. Nature’s
inevitable changes are many; they agonize him whose love is passionate.
One way of escape is open: it is, to be attached to none of these
things, and to get as far away as possible from the society of
this emotional and sensual world; or rather, for a man to go outside
the feelings which his own body gives rise to. Then, as he does not
live for the flesh, he will not be subject to the troubles of the
flesh. But this amounts to living for the spirit only, and imitating
all we can the employment of the world of spirits. There they neither
marry, nor are given in marriage. Their work and their excellence is to
contemplate the Father of all purity, and to beautify the lines of
their own character from the Source of all beauty, so far as imitation
of It is possible.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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