ASCETIC AND MORAL: ON VIRGINITY
II. ASCETIC AND MORAL
PREFACE
A FEW words are necessary to explain the scope and aim of this remarkable
treatise. It is not the work of one who held a brief for monasticism. Gregory
deals with the celibate life in a different way from other Catholic writers upon
this theme. Athanasius and Basil both saw in it the means of exhibiting to the
world the Christian life definitely founded on the orthodox faith; and, for
each celibate himself, this visible imitation of Christ would be more
concentrated, when secular distractions and dissipations had been put aside for ever.
Their aims were entirely moral and ecclesiastical. But Gregory deals with the
entire human development in things spiritual. He has given the history of the
struggle for moral and intellectual perfection, and the conditions of its success. He
had his own inner Christian experience, the result of a recluse youth, on the
one hand; he had the systems of heathen and Christian philosophy on the other.
The ideal life that he has sketched is as lofty in its aspiration as the
latter, and is couched in philosophic rather than in Scriptural language; but its
scientific ground-work is entirely peculiar to himself. That groundwork is briefly
this; spirit must be freed, so as to be drawn to the Divine Spirit; and to be
so freed a "virginity" of the soul is necessary. He comes in this way to blame
marriage, because in most of the marriages that he has known, this virginity of
the soul is conspicuously absent. But he does not blame the married state in
itself; as he himself distinctly tells us. The virginity he seeks may exist even
there; and it is not by any means the same thing as celibacy. It is
disengagedness of heart; and is, as many passages in this treatise indicate, identical
with philosophy, whose higher manifestations had long ago been defined as Love,
called forth by the sight of the immaterial Beauty. Where this sight is not
interrupted, or not treated with indifference, there Virginity exists, With Gregory
philosophy had become Life, and it is virginity that keeps it so, and therein
keeps it from being lost. Another word with which Gregory identifies virginity
is "incorruptibility," in language sometimes which recalls the lines--
"What, what is Virtue, but repose of mind?
A pure ethereal calm that knows no storm,
Above the reach of wild ambition's wind,
Above the passions that this world deform,
And torture man, a proud malignant worm."
Yet no one would imagine that here the poet, any more than S. Paul in
Ephes. vi. 24 (see p. 343, note 3), meant celibacy per so. But it may be asked, how
came Gregory to use the word Virginity at all for pure disengagement of soul ?
The answer seems to be, that he was very loud of metaphors and elaborate
comparisons, ever since the days that he was a student of Rhetoric; this treatise
itself is full of similes from nature, and they are not so much poetry or
rhetoric, as necessary means of bringing his meaning vividly before readers.
Virginity, then, is one of these bold and telling figures; and in his bands it is a very
suggestive metaphor; though certainly at times it runs away with him. The
accusation, then, that when he identifies Piety and Virginity, he makes the former
consist in a mere externality, is unfounded. He uses the one word for the other
without apprising us that it is a metaphor, and he omits to give any dietary
rules by which this virginity is secured. Therefore he appears to mean celibacy.
But on the other hand no arguments can be drawn from this treatise against the
monastic life; only Gregory is busied with other matters. Rather, if the
actual marriages of his time are such as he describes, it is a silent witness to the
reasonableness, if not to the necessity, of such a life within the church. For
this view of virginity as solving the question of Gregory's supposed marriage,
see Prolegomena, p. 3.
ON VIRGINITY
INTRODUCTION.
THE object of this treatise is to create in its readers a passion for the
life according to excellence. There are many distractions(1), to use the word
of the Divine Apostle, incident to the secular life; and so this treatise would
suggest, as a necessary door of entrance to the holier life, the calling of
Virginity; seeing that, while it is not easy in the entanglements of this secular
life to find quiet for that of Divine contemplation, those on the other hand
who have bid farewell to its troubles can with promptitude, and without
distraction, pursue, assiduously their higher studies. Now, whereas all advice is in
itself weak, and mere words of exhortation will not make the task of recommending
what is beneficial easier to any one, unless he has first given a noble aspect
to that which he urges on his hearer, this discourse will accordingly begin
with the praises of Virginity; the exhortation will come at the end; moreover, as
the beauty in anything gains lustre by the contrast with its opposite, it is
requisite that some mention should be made of the vexations of everyday life.
Then it will be quite in the plan of this work to introduce a sketch of the
contemplative life, and to prove the impossibility of any one attaining it who feel's
the world's anxieties. In the devotee bodily desire has become weak; and so
there will follow an inquiry as to the true object of desire, for which (and
which only) we have received from our Maker our power of desiring. When this has
received all possible illustration, it will seem to follow naturally that we
should consider some method to attain it; and the true, virginity, which is free
from any stain of sin, will be found to fit such a purpose. So all the
intermediate part of the discourse, while it seems to look elsewhere, will be really
tending to the praises of this virginity. All the particular rules obeyed by the
followers of this high calling will, to avoid prolixity, be omitted here; the
exhortation in the discourse will be introduced only in general terms, and for
cases of wide application; but, in a way, particulars will be here included, and
so nothing important will be overlooked, while prolixity is avoided. Each of us,
too, is inclined to embrace some course of life with the greater enthusiasm,
when he sees personalities who have already gained distinction in it; we have
therefore made the requisite mention of saints who have gained their glory in
celibacy. But further than this; the examples we have in biographies cannot
stimulate to the attainment of excellence, so much as a living voice and an example
which is still working for good; and so we have alluded to that most godly
bishop(2), our father in God, who himself alone could be the master in such
instructions. He will not indeed be mentioned by name, but by certain indications we
shall say in cipher that he is meant. Thus, too, future readers will not think
our advice unmeaning, when the candidate for this life is told to school himself
by recent masters. But let them first fix their attention only on this: what
such a master ought to be; then let them choose for their guidance those who have
at any time by God's grace been raised up to be champions of this system of
excellence; for either they will find what they seek, or at all events will be no
longer ignorant what it ought to be.
CHAPTER I.
THE holy look of virginity is precious indeed in the judgment of all who
make purity the test of beauty; but it belongs to those alone whose struggles to
gain this object of a noble love are favoured and helped by the grace of God.
Its praise is heard at once in the very name which goes with it;
"Uncorrupted(3)" is the word commonly said of it, and this shows the kind of purity that is
in it; thus we can measure by its equivalent term the height of this gift,
seeing that amongst the many results of virtuous endeavour this alone has been
honoured with the title of the thing that is uncorrupted. And if we must extol with
laudations this gift from the great God, the words of His Apostle are
sufficient in its praise; they are few, but they throw into the background all
extravagant laudations; he only styles as "holy and without blemish(4)" her who has this
grace for her ornament. Now if the achievement of this saintly virtue consists
in making one "without blemish and holy," and these epithets are adopted in
their first and fullest force to glorify the incorruptible Deity, what greater
praise of virginity can there be than thus to be shown in a manner deifying those
who share in her pure mysteries, so that they become partakers of His glory
Who is in actual truth the only Holy and Blameless One; their purity and their
incorruptibility being the means of bringing them into relationship with Him ?
Many who write lengthy laudations in detailed treatises, with the view of adding
something to the wonder of this grace, unconsciously defeat, in my opinion,
their own end; the fulsome manner in which they amplify their subject brings its
credit into suspicion. Nature's greatnesses have their own way of striking with
admiration; they do not need the pleading of words: the sky, for instance, or
the sun, or any other wonder of the universe. In the business of this lower
world words certainly act as a basement, and the skill of praise does impart a look
of magnificence; so much so, that mankind are apt to suspect as the result of
mere art the wonder produced by panegyric. So the one sufficient way of
praising virginity will be to show that that virtue is above praise, and to evince our
admiration of it by our lives rather than by our words. A man who takes this
theme for ambitious praise has the appearance of supposing that one drop of his
own perspiration will make an appreciable increase of the boundless ocean, if
indeed he believes, as he does, that any human words can give more dignity to so
rare a grace; he must be ignorant either of his own powers or of that which he
attempts to praise.
CHAPTER II.
DEEP indeed will be the thought necessary to understand the surpassing
excellence of this grace. It is comprehended in the idea of the Father incorrupt;
and here at the outset is a paradox, viz. that virginity is found in Him, Who
has a Son and yet without passion has begotten Him. It is included too in the
nature of this Only-begotten God, Who struck the first note of all this moral
innocence; it shines forth equally in His pure and passionless generation. Again a
paradox; that the Son should be known to us by virginity. It is seen, too, in
the inherent and incorruptible purity of the Holy Spirit; for when you have
named the pure and incorruptible you have named virginity. It accompanies the
whole supramundane existence; because of its passionlessness it is always present
with the powers above; never separated from aught that is Divine, it never
touches the opposite of this. All whose instinct and will have found their level in
virtue are beautified with this perfect purity of the uncorrupted state; all
who are ranked in the opposite class of character are what they are, and are
called so, by reason of their fall from purity. What force of expression, then,
will be adequate to such a grace? How can there be no cause to fear lest the
greatness of its intrinsic value should be impaired by the efforts of any one's
eloquence? The estimate of it which he will create will be less than that which his
hearers had before. It will be well, then, to omit all laudation in this case;
we cannot lift words to the height of our theme. On the contrary, it is
possible to be ever mindful of this gift of God; and our lips may always speak of
this blessing; that, though it is the property of spiritual existence and of such
singular excellence, yet by the love of God it has been bestowed on those who
have received their life from the will of the flesh and from blood; that, when
human nature has been based by passionate inclinations, it stretches out its
offer of purity like a hand to raise it up again and make it look above. This, I
think, was the reason why our Master, Jesus Christ Himself, the Fountain of all
innocence, did not come into the world by wedlock. It was, to divulge by the
manner of His Incarnation this great secret; that purity is the only complete
indication(5) of the presence of God and of His coming, and that no one can in
reality secure this for himself, unless he has altogether estranged himself from
the passions of the flesh. What happened in the stainless Mary when the fulness
of the Godhead which was in Christ shone out through her, that happens in
every soul that leads by rule the virgin life. No longer indeed does the Master
come with bodily presence; "we know Christ no longer according to the flesh 6";
but, spiritually, He dwells in us and brings His Father with Him, as the Gospel
somewhere(7) tells. Seeing, then, that virginity means so much as this, that
while it remains m Heaven with the Father of spirits, and moves in the dance of
the celestial powers, it nevertheless stretches out hands for man's salvation;
that while it is the channel which draws down the Deity to share man's estate, it
keeps wings for man's desires to rise to heavenly things, and is a bond of
union between the Divine and human, by its mediation bringing into harmony these
existences so widely divided--what words could be discovered powerful enough to
reach this wondrous height? But still, it is monstrous to seem like creatures
without expression and without feeling; and we must choose (if we are silent)
one of two things; either to appear never to have felt the special beauty of
virginity, or to exhibit ourselves as obstinately blind to all beauty: we have
consented therefore to speak briefly about this virtue, according to the wish of
him who has assigned us this task, and whom in all things we must obey. But let
no one expect from us any display of style; even if we wished it, perhaps we
could not produce it, for we are quite unversed in that kind of writing. Even if
we possessed such power, we would not prefer the favour of the few to the
edification of the many. A writer of sense should have, I take it, for his chiefest
object not to be admired above all other writers, but to profit both himself and
them, the many.
CHAPTER III.
WOULD indeed that some profit might come to myself from this effort! I
should have undertaken this labour with the greater readiness, if I could have
hope of sharing, according to the Scripture, in the fruits of the plough and the
threshing-floor; the toil would then have been a pleasure. As it is, this my
knowledge of the beauty of virginity is in some sort vain and useless to me, just
as the corn is to the muzzled ox that treads(8) the floor, or the water that
streams from the precipice to a thirsty man when he cannot reach it. Happy they
who have still the power of choosing the better way, and have not debarred
themselves from it by engagements of the secular life, as we have, whom a gulf now
divides from glorious virginity: no one can climb up to that who has once
planted his foot upon the secular life. We are but spectators of others' blessings
and witnesses to the happiness of another(9) class. Even if we strike out some
fitting thoughts about virginity, we shall not be better than the cooks and
scullions who provide sweet luxuries for the tables of the rich, without having any
portion themselves in What they prepare. What a blessing if it had been
otherwise, if we had not to learn the good by after-regrets! Now they are the enviable
ones, they succeed even beyond their prayers and their desires, who have not
put out of their power the enjoyment of these delights. We are like those who
have a wealthy society with which to compare their own poverty, and so are all
the more vexed and discontented with their present lot. The more exactly we
understand the riches of virginity, the more we must bewail the other life; for we
realize by this contrast with better things, how poor it is. I do not speak only
of the future rewards in store for those who have lived thus excellently, but
those rewards also which they have while alive here; for if any one would make
up his mind to measure exactly the difference between the two courses, he would
find it well-nigh as great as that between heaven and earth. The truth of this
statement may be known by looking at actual facts.
But in writing this sad tragedy what will be a fit beginning? How shall we
really bring to view the evils common to life? All men know them by
experience, but somehow nature has contrived to blind the actual sufferers so that they
willingly ignore their condition. Shall we begin with its choicest sweets? Well
then, is not the sum total of all that is hoped for in marriage to get
delightful companionship? Grant this obtained; let us sketch a marriage in every way
most happy; illustrious birth, competent means, suitable ages, the very flower of
the prime of life, deep affection, the very best that each can think of the
other(1), that sweet rivalry of each wishing to surpass the other in loving; in
addition, popularity, power, wide reputation, and everything else. But observe
that even beneath this array of blessings the fire of an inevitable pain is
smouldering. I do not speak of the envy that is always springing up against those
of distinguished rank, and the liability to attack which hangs over those who
seem prosperous, and that natural hatred of superiors shown by those who do not
share equally in the good fortune, which make these seemingly favoured ones
pass an anxious time more full of pain than pleasure. I omit that from the
picture, and will suppose that envy against them is asleep; although it would not be
easy to find a single life in which both these blessings were joined, i.e.
happiness above the common, and escape from envy. However, let us, if so it is to
be, suppose a married life free from all such trials; and let us see if it is
possible for those who live with such an amount of good fortune to enjoy it. Why,
what kind of vexation is left, you will ask, when even envy of their happiness
does not reach them? I affirm that this very, thing, this sweetness that
surrounds their lives is the spark which kindles pain. They are human all the time,
things weak and perishing they have to look upon the tombs of their progenitors;
and so pain is inseparably bound up with their existence, if they have the
least power of reflection. This continued expectancy of death, realized by no sure
tokens, but hanging over them the terrible uncertainty of the future, disturbs
their present joy, clouding it over with the fear of what is coming. If only,
before experience comes, the results of experience could be learnt, or if, when
one has entered on this course, it were possible by some other means of
conjecture to survey the reality, then what a crowd of deserters would run from
marriage into the virgin life; what care and eagerness never to be entangled in
that retentive snare, where no one knows for certain how the net galls till they
have actually entered it! You would see there, if only you could do it without
danger, many contraries uniting; smiles melting into tears, pain mingled with
pleasure, death always hanging by expectation over the children that are born,
and putting a finger upon each of the sweetest joys. Whenever the husband looks
at the beloved face, that moment the fear of separation accompanies the look.
If he listens to the sweet voice, the thought comes into his mind that some day
he will not hear it. Whenever he is glad with gazing on her beauty, then he
shudders most with the presentiment of mourning her loss. When he marks all those
charms which to youth are so precious and which the thoughtless seek for, the
bright eyes beneath the lids, the arching eyebrows, the cheek with its sweet
and dimpling smile, the natural red that blooms upon the lips, the gold-bound
hair shining in many-twisted masses on the head, and all that transient grace,
then, though he may be little given to reflection, he must have this thought also
in his inmost soul that some day all this beauty will melt away and become as
nothing, turned after all this show into noisome and unsightly bones, which wear
no trace, no memorial, no remnant of that living bloom. Can he live delighted
when he thinks of that? Can he trust in these treasures which he holds as if
they would be always his? Nay, it is plain that he will stagger as if he were
mocked by a dream, and will have his faith in life shaken, and will look upon
what he sees as no longer his. You will understand, if you have a comprehensive
view of things as they are, that nothing in this life looks that which it is. It
shows to us by the illusions of our imagination one thing, instead of something
else. Men gaze open-mouthed at it, and it mocks them with hopes; for a while
it hides itself beneath this deceitful show; then all of a sudden in the
reverses of life it is revealed as something different from that which men's hopes,
conceived by its fraud in foolish hearts, had pictured. Will life's sweetness
seem worth taking delight in to him who reflects on this? Will he ever be able
really to feel it, so as to have joy in the goods he holds? Will he not, disturbed
by the constant fear of some reverse, have the use without the enjoyment? I
will but mention the portents, dreams, omens, and such-like things which by a
foolish habit of thought are taken notice of, and always make men fear the worst.
But her time of labour comes upon the young wife; and the occasion is regarded
not as the bringing of a child into the world, but as the approach of death; in
bearing it is expected that she will die; and, indeed, often this sad
presentiment is true, and before they spread the birthday feast, before they taste any
of their expected joys, they have to change their rejoicing into lamentation.
Still in love's fever, still at the height of their passionate affection, not
yet having grasped life's sweetest gifts, as in the vision of a dream, they are
suddenly torn away from all they possessed. But what comes next? Domestics,
like: conquering foes, dismantle the bridal chamber; they deck it for the funeral,
but it is death's(2) room now; they make the useless wailings(3) and beatings
of the hands. Then there is the memory of former days, curses on those who
advised the marriage, recriminations against friends who did not stop it; blame
thrown on parents whether they be alive or dead, bitter outbursts against human
destiny, arraigning of the whole course of nature, complaints and accusations even
against the Divine government; war within the man himself, and fighting with
those who would admonish; no repugnance to the most shocking words and acts. In
some this state of mind continues, and their reason is more completely
swallowed up by grief; and their tragedy has a sadder ending, the victim not enduring
to survive the calamity. But rather than this let us suppose a happier case. The
danger of childbirth is past; a child is born to them, the very image of its
parents' beauty. Are the occasions for grief at all lessened thereby? Rather
they are increased; for the parents retain all their former fears, and feel in
addition those on behalf of the child, lest anything should happen to it in its
bringing up; for instance a bad accident, or by some turn of misfortunes a
sickness, a fever(4), any dangerous disease. Both parents share alike in these; but
who could recount the special anxieties of the wife? We omit the most obvious,
which all can understand, the weariness of pregnancy, the danger in childbirth,
the cares of nursing, the tearing of her heart in two for her offspring, and,
if she is the mother of many, the dividing of her soul into as many parts as she
has children; the tenderness with which she herself feels all that is
happening to them. That is well understood by every one. But the oracle of God tells us
that she is not her own mistress, but finds her resources only in him whom
wedlock has made her lord; and so, if she be for ever so short a time left alone,
she feels as if she were separated from her head and can ill bear it; she even
takes this short absence of her husband to be the prelude to her widowhood; her
fear makes her at once give up all hope; accordingly her eyes, filled with
terrified suspense, are always fixed upon the door; her ears are always busied
with what others are whispering; her heart, stung with her fears, is well-nigh
bursting even before any bad(5) news has arrived; a noise in the doorway, whether
fancied or real, acts as a messenger of ill, and on a sudden shakes her very
soul; most likely all outside is well, and there is no cause to fear at all; but
her fainting spirit is quicker than any message, and turns her fancy from good
tidings to despair. Thus even the most favoured live, and they are not
altogether to be envied; their life is not to be compared to the freedom of virginity.
Yet this hasty sketch has omitted many of the more distressing details. Often
this young wife too, just wedded, still brilliant in bridal grace, still perhaps
blushing when her bridegroom enters, and shyly stealing furtive glances at
him, when passion is all the more intense because modesty prevents it being shown,
suddenly has to take the name of a poor lonely widow and be called all that is
pitiable. Death comes in an instant and changes that bright creature in her
white and rich attire into a black-robed mourner. He takes off the bridal
ornaments and clothes her with the colours of bereavement. There is darkness in the
once cheerful room, and the waitingwomen sing their long dirges. She hates her
friends when they try to soften her grief; she will not take food, she wastes
away, and her soul's deep dejection has a strong longing only for her death, a
longing which often lasts till it comes. Even supposing that time puts an end to
this sorrow, still another comes, whether she has children or not. If she has,
they are fatherless, and, as objects of pity themselves, renew the memory of
her loss. If she is childless, then the name of her lost husband is rooted up,
and this grief is greater than the seeming consolation. I will say little of the
other special sorrows of widowhood; for who could enumerate them all exactly?
She finds her enemies in her relatives. Some actually take advantage of her
affliction. Others exult over her loss, and see with malignant joy the home failing
to pieces, the insolence of the servants, and the other distresses visible in
such a case, of which there are plenty. In consequence of these, many women are
compelled to risk once more the trial of the same things, not being able to
endure this bitter derision. As if they could revenge insults by increasing their
own sufferings! Others, remembering the past, will put up with anything rather
than plunge a second time into the like troubles. If you wish to learn all the
trials of this married life, listen to those women who actually know it. How
they congratulate those who have chosen from the first the virgin life, and have
not had to learn by experience about the better way, that virginity is
fortified against all these ills, that it has no orphan state, no widowhood to mourn;
it is always in the presence of the undying Bridegroom; it has the offspring of
devotion always to rejoice in; it sees continually a home that is truly its
own, furnished with every treasure because the Master always dwells there; in
this case death does not bring separation, but union with Him Who is longed for;
for when (a soul) departs(6), then it is with Christ, as the Apostle says. But
it is time, now that we have examined on the one side the feelings of those
whose lot is happy, to make a revelation of other lives, where poverty and
adversity and all the other evils which men have to suffer are a fixed condition;
deformities, I mean, and diseases, and all other lifelong afflictions. He whose life
is contained in himself either escapes them altogether or can bear them
easily, possessing a collected mind which is not distracted from itself; while he who
shares himself with wife and child often has not a moment to bestow even upon
regrets for his own condition, because anxiety for his dear ones fills his
heart. But it is superfluous to dwell upon that which every one knows. If to What
seems prosperity such pain and weariness is bound, what may we not expect of the
opposite condition? Every description which attempts to represent it to our
view will fall short of the reality. Yet perhaps we may in a very few words
declare the depths of its misery. Those whose lot is contrary to that which passes
as prosperous receive their sorrows as well from causes contrary to that.
Prosperous lives are marred by the expectancy, or the presence, of death; but the
misery of these is that death delays his coming. These lives then are widely
divided by opposite feelings; although equally without hope, they converge to the
same end. So many-sided, then, so strangely different are the ills with which
marriage supplies the world. There is pain always, whether children are born, or
can never be expected, whether they live, or die. One abounds in them but has
not enough means for their support; another feels the want of an heir to the
great fortune he has toiled for, and regards as a blessing the other's misfortune
each of them, in fact, wishes for that very thing which he sees the other
regretting. Again, one man loses by death a much-loved(7) son; another has a
reprobate son alive; both equally to be pitied, though the one mourns over the death,
the other over the life, of his boy. Neither will I do more than mention how
sadly and disastrously family jealousies and quarrels, arising from real or
fancied causes, end. Who could go completely into all those details? If you would
know what a network of these evils human life is, you need not go back again to
those old stories which have furnished subjects to dramatic poets. They are
regarded as myths on account of their shocking extravagance there are in them
murders and eating of children husband-murders, murders of mothers and brothers,
incestuous unions, and every sort of disturbance of nature; and yet the old
chronicler begins the story which ends in such horrors with marriage. But turning from
all that, gaze only upon the tragedies that are being enacted on this life's
stage; it is marriage that supplies mankind with actors there. Go to the
lawcourts and read through the laws there; then you will know the shameful secrets of
marriage. Just as when you hear a physician explaining various diseases, you
understand the misery of the human frame by learning the number and the kind of
sufferings it is liable to, so when you peruse the laws and read there the
strange variety of crimes in marriage to which their penalties are attached, you
will have a pretty accurate idea of its properties; for the law does not provide
remedies for evils which do not exist, any more than a physician has a treatment
for diseases which are never known.
CHAPTER IV.
BUT we need no lodger 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
occupiers(8) 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 thereof(9),"
for "God is king of all the earth(9)." 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 ever(1)," 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 grass(2),"
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 away(3)," the whole of necessity awaits its refashioning. As
long as he is "in this tabernacle(4)." 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 prolonged(5)," 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 welt or ill, "through
armour on the right hand and on the left, through evil report and good report(6)."
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 pleasures(7); it is
alienated from the life of God(8), 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 darkness(9)," 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 water(1), 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
torrent(2), 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 waters(3)," 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 shortlived 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.
CHAPTER V.
Now we declare that Virginity is man's "fellow-worker" and helper in
achieving the aim of this lofty passion. In other sciences men have devised certain
practical methods for cultivating the particular subject; and so, I take it,
virginity is the practical method in the science of the Divine life, furnishing
men with the power of assimilating themselves with spiritual natures. The
constant endeavour in such a course is to prevent the nobility of the soul from being
lowered by those sensual outbreaks, in which the mind no longer maintains its
heavenly thoughts and upward gaze, but sinks down to the emotions belonging to
the flesh and blood. How can the soul which is riveted(4) to the pleasures of
the flesh and busied with merely human longings turn a disengaged eye upon its
kindred intellectual light? This evil, ignorant, and prejudiced bias towards
material things will prevent it. The eyes of swine, turning naturally downward,
have no glimpse of the wonders of the sky; no more can the soul whose body drags
it down look any longer upon the beauty above; it must pore perforce upon
things which though natural are low and animal. To look with a free devoted gaze
upon heavenly delights, the soul will turn itself from earth; it will not even
partake of the recognized indulgences of the secular life; it will transfer all
its powers of affection from material objects to the intellectual contemplation
of immaterial beauty. Virginity of the body is devised to further such a
disposition of the soul; it aims at creating in it a complete forgetfulness of natural
emotions; it would prevent the necessity of ever descending to the call of
fleshly needs. Once freed from such, the soul runs no risk of becoming, through a
growing habit of indulging in that which seems to a certain extent conceded by
nature's law, inattentive and ignorant of Divine and undefiled delights. Purity
of the heart, that master of our lives, alone can capture them.
CHAPTER VI.
THIS, I believe, makes the greatness of the prophet Elias, and of him who
afterwards appeared in the spirit and power of Elias, than whom "of those that
are born of women there was none greater(5)." If their history conveys any
other mystic lesson, surely this above all is taught by their special mode of life,
that the man whose thoughts are fixed upon the invisible is necessarily
separated from all the ordinary events of life; his judgments as to the True Good
cannot be confused and led astray by the deceits arising from the senses. Both,
from their youth upwards, exiled themselves from human society, and in a way from
human nature, in their neglect of the usual kinds of meat and drink, and their
sojourn in the desert. The wants of each were satisfied by the nourishment
that came in their way, so that their taste might remain simple and unspoilt, as
their ears were free from any distracting noise, and their eyes from any
wandering look. Thus they attained a cloudless calm of soul, and were raised to that
height of Divine favour which Scripture records of each. Elias, for instance;
became the dispenser of God's earthly gifts; he had authority to close at will
the uses of the sky against the sinners and to open them to the penitent. John is
not said indeed to have done any miracle; but the gift in him was pronounced
by Him Who sees the secrets of a man greater than any prophet's. This was so, we
may presume, because both, from beginning to end, so dedicated their hearts to
the Lord that they were unsullied by any earthly passion; because the love of
wife or child, or any other human call, did not intrude upon them, and they did
not even think their daily sustenance worthy of anxious thought; because they
showed themselves to be above any magnificence(6) of dress, arid made shift
with that which chance offered them, one clothing himself in goat-skins, the other
with camel's hair. It is my belief that they would not have reached to this
loftiness of spirit, if marriage had softened them. This is not simple history
only; it is "written for our admonition(7)," that we might direct our lives by
theirs. What, then, do we learn thereby? This: that the man who longs for union
with God must, like those saints, detach his mind from all worldly business. It
is impossible for the mind which is poured into many channels to win its way to
the knowledge and the love of God.
CHAPTER VII.
AN illustration will make our teaching on this subject clearer. Imagine a
stream flowing from a spring and dividing itself off into a number of
accidental channels. As long as it proceeds so it will be useless for any purpose of
agriculture, the dissipation of its waters making each particular current small
and feeble, and therefore slow. But if one were to mass these wandering and
widely dispersed rivulets again into one single channel, he would have a full and
collected stream for the supplies which life demands. Just so the human mind(so
it seems to me), as long as its current spreads itself in all directions over
the pleasures of the sense, has no power that is worth the naming of making its
way towards the Real Good; but once call it back and collect it upon itself, so
that it may begin to move without scattering and wandering towards the activity
which is congenital and natural to it, it will find no obstacle in mounting to
higher things, and in grasping realities. We often see water contained in a
pipe bursting upwards through this constraining force, which will not let it
leak; and this, in spite of its natural gravitation: in the same way, the mind of
man, enclosed in the compact channel of an habitual continence, and not having
any side issues, will be raised by virtue of its natural powers of motion to an
exalted love. In fact, its Maker ordained that it should always move, and to
stop is impossible to it; when therefore it is prevented employing this power
upon trifles, it cannot be but that it will speed toward the truth, all improper
exits being closed. In the case of many turnings we see travellers can keep to
the direct route, when they have learnt that the other roads are wrong, and so
avoid them; the more they keep out of these wrong directions, the more they will
preserve the straight course; in like manner the mind in turning from vanities
will recognize the truth. The great prophets, then, whom we have mentioned
seem to teach this lesson, viz. to entangle ourselves with none of the objects of
this world's effort; marriage is one of these, or rather it is the primal root
of all striving after vanities.
CHAPTER VIII.
LET no one think however that herein we depreciate marriage as an
institution. We are well aware that it is not a stranger to God's blessing. But since
the common instincts of mankind can plead sufficiently on its behalf, instincts
which prompt by a spontaneous bias to take the high road of marriage for the
procreation of children, whereas Virginity in a way thwarts this natural impulse,
it is a superfluous task to compose formally an Exhortation to marriage. We
put forward the pleasure of it instead, as a most doughty champion on its behalf.
It may be however, notwithstanding this, that there is some need of such a
treatise, occasioned by those who travesty the teaching of the Church. Such
persons(8) "have their conscience seared with a hot iron," as the Apostle expresses
it; and very truly too, considering that, deserting the guidance of the Holy
Spirit for the "doctrines of devils," they have some ulcers and blisters stamped
upon their hearts, abominating God's creatures, and calling them "foul,"
"seducing," "mischievous," and so on. "But what have I to do to judge them that are
without(9)?" asks the Apostle. Truly those persons are outside the Court in which
the words of our mysteries are spoken; they are not installed under God's
roof, but in the monastery of the Evil One. They "are taken captive by him at his
will(1)." They therefore do not understand that all virtue is found in
moderation, and that any declension to either side(2) of it becomes a vice. He, in fact,
who grasps the middle point between doing too little and doing too much has
hit the distinction between vice and virtue. Instances will make this clearer.
Cowardice and audacity are two recognized vices opposed to each other; the one
the defect, the other the excess of confidence; between them lies courage. Again,
piety is neither atheism nor superstition; it is equally impious to deny a God
and to believe in many gods. Is there need of more eXamples to bring this
principle home? The man who avoids both meanness and prodigality will by this
shunning of extremes form the moral habit of liberality; for liberality is the thing
which is neither inclined to spend at random vast and useless sums, nor yet to
be closely calculating in necessary expenses. We need not go into details in
the case of all good qualities. Reason, in all of them, has established virtue
to be a middle state between two extremes. Sobriety itself therefore is a middle
state, and manifestly involves the two declensions on either side towards
vice; he, that is, who is wanting in firmness of soul, and is so easily worsted in
the combat with pleasure as never even to have approached the path of a
virtuous and sober life, slides into shameful indulgence; while he who goes beyond the
safe ground of sobriety and overshoots the moderation of this virtue, falls as
it were from a precipice into the "doctrines of devils," "having his
conscience seared with a hot iron." In declaring marriage abominable he brands himself
with such reproaches; for "if the tree is corrupt" (as the Gospel says), "the
fruit also of the tree will be like it(3)"; if a man is the shoot and fruitage of
the tree of marriage, reproaches cast on that turn upon him who casts them(4).
These persons, then, are like branded criminals already; their conscience is
covered with the stripes of this unnatural teaching. But our view of marriage is
this; that, while the pursuit of heavenly things should be a man's first care,
yet if he can use the advantages of marriage with sobriety and moderation, he
need not despise this way of serving the state. An example might be found in
the patriarch Isaac. He married Rebecca when he was past the flower of his age
and his prime was well-nigh spent, so that his marriage was not the deed of
passion, but because of God's blessing that should be upon his seed. He cohabited
with her till the birth of her only children(5), and then, closing the channels
of the senses, lived wholly for the Unseen; for this is what seems to be meant
by the mention in his history of the dimness of the Patriarch's eyes. But let
that be as those think who are skilled in reading these meanings, and let us
proceed with the continuity of our discourse. What then, were we saying? That in
the cases where it is possible at once to be true to the diviner love, and to
embrace wedlock, there is no reason for setting aside this dispensation of nature
and misrepresenting as abominable that which is honourable. Let us take again
our illustration of the water and the spring. Whenever the husbandman, in order
to irrigate a particular spot, is bringing the stream thither, but there is
need before it gets there of a small outlet, he will allow only so much to escape
into that outlet as is adequate to supply the demand, and can then easily be
blended again with the main stream. If, as an inexperienced and easy-going
steward, he opens too wide a channel, there will be danger of the whole stream
quitting its direct bed and pouring itself sideways. In the same way, if (as life
does need a mutual succession) a man so treats this need as to give spiritual
things the first thought, and because of the shortness(6) of the time indulges but
sparingly the sexual passion and keeps it under restraint, that man would
realize the character of the prudent husband man to which the Apostle exhorts us.
About the details of paying these trifling debts of nature he will not be
over-calculating, but the long hours of his prayers(7) will secure the purity which is
the key-note of his life. He will always fear lest by this kind of indulgence
he may become nothing but flesh and blood; for in them God's Spirit does not
dwell. He who is of so weak a character that he cannot make a manful stand
against nature's impulse had better(8) keep himself very far away from such
temptations, rather than descend into a combat which is above his strength. There is no
small danger for him lest, cajoled in the valuation of pleasure, he should
think that there exists no other good but that which is enjoyed along with some
sensual emotion, and, turning altogether from the love of immaterial delights,
should become entirely of the flesh, seeking always his pleasure only there, so
that his character will be a Pleasure-lover, not a God-lover. It is not every
man's gift, owing to weakness of nature, to hit the due proportion in these
matters; there is a danger of being carried far beyond it, and "sticking fast in the
deep mire(9)," to use the Psalmist's words. It would therefore be for our
interest, as our discourse has been suggesting, to pass through life without a trial
of these temptations, lest under cover of the excuse of lawful indulgence
passion should gain an entrance into the citadel of the soul.
CHAPTER IX.
CUSTOM is indeed in everything hard to resist. It possesses an enormous
power of attracting and seducing the soul. In the cases where a man has got into
a fixed state of sentiment, a certain imagination of the good is created in him
by this habit; and nothing is so naturally vile but it may come to be thought
both desirable and laudable, once it has got into the fashion(1). Take mankind
now living on the earth. There are many nations, and their ambitions are not
all the same. The standard of beauty and of honour is different in each, the
custom of each regulating their enthusiasm and their aims. This unlikeness is seen
not only amongst nations where the pursuits of the one are in no repute with
the other, but even in the same nation, and the same city, and the same family;
we may see in those aggregates also much difference existing owing to customary
feeling. Thus brothers born from the same throe are separated widely from each
other in the aims of life. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that each
single man does not generally keep to the same opinion about the same thing,
but alters it as fashion influences him. Not to go far from our present subject,
we have known those who have shown themselves to be in love with chastity all
through the early years of puberty; but in taking the pleasures which men
think legitimate and allowable they make them the startingpoint of an impure life,
and when once they have admitted these temptations, all the forces of their
feeling are turned in that direction, and, to take again our illustration of the
stream, they let it rush from the diviner channel into low material channels,
and make within themselves a broad path for passion; so that the stream of their
love leaves dry the abandoned channel of the higher way(2) and flows abroad in
indulgence. It would be well then, we take it, for the weaker brethren to fly
to virginity as into an impregnable fortress, rather than to descend into the
career of life's consequences and invite temptations to do their worst upon
them, entangling themselves in those things which through the lusts of the flesh
war against the law of our mind; it would be well for them to consider(3) that
herein they risk not broad acres, or wealth, or any other of this life's prizes,
but the hope which has been their guide. It is impossible that one who has
turned to the world and feels its anxieties, and engages his heart in the wish to
please men, can fulfil that first and great commandment of the Master, "Thou
shall love God with all thy heart and with all thy strength(4)." How can he fulfil
that, when he divides his heart between God and the world, and exhausts the
love which he owes to Him alone in human affections? "He that is unmarried careth
for the things of the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things that
are of the world(5)." If the combat with pleasure seems wearisome, nevertheless
let all take heart. Habit will not fail to produce, even in the seemingly most
fretful(6), a feeling of pleasure through the very effort of their
perseverance; and that pleasure will be of the noblest and purest kind; which the
intelligent may well be enamoured of, rather than allow themselves, with aims narrowed
by the lowness of their objects, to be estranged from the true greatness which
goes beyond all thought.
CHAPTER X.
WHAT words indeed could possibly express the greatness of that loss in
falling away from the possession of real goodness? What consummate power of
thought would have to be employed! Who could produce even in outline that which
speech cannot tell, nor the mind grasp? On the one hand, if a man has kept the eye
of his heart so clear that he can in a way behold the promise of our Lord's
Beatitudes realized, he will condemn all human utterance as powerless to represent
that which he has apprehended. On the other hand, if a man from the atmosphere
of material indulgences has the weakness of passion spreading like a film over
the keen vision of his soul, all force of expression will be wasted upon him;
for it is all one whether you understate or whether you magnify a miracle to
those who have no power whatever of perceiving it(7). Just as, in the case of the
sunlight, on one who has never from the day of his birth seen it, all efforts
at translating it into words are quite thrown away; you cannot make the
splendour of the ray shine(8) through his ears; in like manner, to see the beauty of
the true and intellectual light, each man has need of eyes of his own; and he who
by a gift of Divine inspiration can see it retains his ecstasy unexpressed in
the depths of his consciousness; while he who sees it not cannot be made to
know even the greatness of his loss. How should he? This good escapes his
perception, and it cannot be represented to him; it is unspeakable, and cannot be
delineated. We have not learnt the peculiar language expressive of this beauty. An
example of what we want to say does not exist in the world; a comparison for it
would at least be very difficult to find. Who compares the Sun to a little
spark? or the vast Deep to a drop? And that tiny drop and that diminutive spark
bear the same relation to the Deep and to the Sun, as any beautiful object of
man's admiration does to that real beauty on the features of the First Good, of
which we catch the glimpse beyond any other good. What words could be invented to
show the greatness of this loss to him who suffers it? Well does the great
David seem to me to express the impossibility of doing this. He has been lifted by
the power of the Spirit out of himself, and sees in a blessed state of ecstacy
the boundless and incomprehensible Beauty; he sees it as fully as a mortal can
see who has quitted his fleshly envelopments and entered, by the mere power of
thought, upon the contemplation of the spiritual and intellectual world, and in
his longing to speak a word worthy of the spectacle he bursts forth with that
cry, which all re-echo, "Every man a liar(9)!" I take that to mean that any man
who entrusts to language the task of presenting the ineffable Light is really
and truly a liar; not because of any hatred on his part of the truth, but
because of the feebleness of his instrument for expressing the thing thought of(1).
The visible beauty to be met with in this life of ours, showing glimpses of
itself, whether in inanimate objects or in animate organisms in a certain
choiceness of colour, can be adequately admired by our power of aesthetic feeling. It
can be illustrated and made known to others by description; it can be seen drawn
in the language as in a picture. Even a perfect type(2) of such beauty does
not baffle our conception. But how can language illustrate when it finds no media
for its sketch, no colour, no contour(3), no majestic size, no faultlessness
of feature; nor any other commonplace of art? The Beauty which is invisible and
formless, which is destitute of qualities and far removed from everything which
we recognize in bodies by the eye, can never be made known by the traits which
require nothing but the perceptions of our senses in order to be grasped. Not
that we are to despair of winning this object of our love, though it does seem
too high for our comprehension. The more reason shows the greatness of this
thing which we are seeking, the higher we must lift our thoughts and excite them
with the greatness of that object; and we must fear to lose our share in that
transcendent Good. There is indeed no small amount of danger lest, as we can base
the apprehension of it on no knowable qualities, we should slip away from it
altogether because of its very height and mystery. We deem it necessary
therefore, owing to this weakness of the thinking faculty, to lead it towards the
Unseen by stages through the cognizances of the senses. Our conception of the case
is as follows.
CHAPTER XI.
Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe
the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and then trouble
themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is
enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating
and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the
measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not
seen amongst unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul. It
takes those of its characteristics which have been developed by his bodily
constitution, both in combination and singly; first singly, by analysis, and then in
that living combination which makes the personality of the subject. As regards
the inquiry into the nature of beauty, we see, again, that the man of half-grown
intelligence, when he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a
seeming beauty, thinks that that object is in its essence beautiful, no matter what
it is that so prepossesses him with the pleasure of the eye. He will not go
deeper into the subject. But the other, whose mind's eye is clear, and who can
inspect such appearances, will neglect those elements which are the material only
upon which the Form of Beauty works; to him they will be but the ladder by
which he climbs to the prospect of that Intellectual Beauty, in accordance with
their share in which all other beauties get their existence and their name. But
for the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties
of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of mental analysis
and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty, and thereby
of grasping the actual nature of the Beautiful; and if any one wants to know
the exact source of all the false and pernicious conceptions of it, he would
find it in nothing else but this, viz. the absence, in the soul's faculties of
feeling, of that exact training which would enable them to distinguish between
true Beauty and the reverse. Owing to this men give up all search after the true
Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to dead
metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly
honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art
and science. The most debased make their gluttony the test of what is good. But
he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is
seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial,
formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all
the objects of desire; he would never be so misled by these attractions as not
to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an
utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the
discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be they
never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never so
eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of
loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within
us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be cleansed from all
lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which sense can never
reach. Admiration even of the beauty of the heavens, and of the dazzling
sunbeams, and, indeed, of any fair phenomenon, will then cease. The beauty noticed
there will be but as the hand to lead us to the love of the supernal Beauty whose
glory the heavens and the firmament declare, and whose secret the whole creation
sings. The climbing soul, leaving all that she has grasped already as too
narrow for her needs, will thus grasp the idea of that magnificence which is
exalted far above the heavens. But how can any one reach to this, whose ambitions
creep below? How can any one fly up into the heavens, who has not the wings of
heaven and is not already buoyant and lofty-minded by reason of a heavenly
calling? Few can be such strangers to evangelic mysteries as not to know that there is
but one vehicle on which man's soul can mount into the heavens, viz. the
self-made likeness in himself to the descending Dove, whose wings(4) David the
Prophet also longed for. This is the allegorical name used in Scripture for the
power of the Holy Spirit; whether it be because not a drop of gall s is found in
that bird, or because it cannot bear any noisome smell, as close observers tell
us. He therefore who keeps away from all bitterness and all the noisome effluvia
of the flesh, and raises himself on the aforesaid wings above all low earthly
ambitions, or, more than that, above the whole universe itself, will be the man
to find that which is alone worth loving, and to become himself as beautiful
as the Beauty which he has touched and entered, and to be made bright and
luminous himself in the communion of the real Light. We are told by those who have
studied the subject, that those gleams which follow each other so fast through
the air at night and which some call shooting stars(6), are nothing but the air
itself streaming into the upper regions of the sky under stress of some
particular blasts. They say that the fiery track is traced along the sky when those
blasts ignite in the ether. In like manner, then, as this air round the earth is
forced upwards by some blast and changes into the pure splendour of the ether,
so the mind of man leaves this murky miry world, and under the stress of the
spirit becomes pure and luminous in contact with the true and supernal Purity; in
such an atmosphere it even itself emits light, and is so filled with radiance,
that it becomes itself a Light, according to the promise of our Lord that "the
righteous should shine forth as the sun(7)." We see this even here, in the case
of a mirror, or a sheet of water, or any smooth surface that can reflect the
light; when they receive the sunbeam they beam themselves; but they would not do
this if any stain marred their pure and shining surface. We shall become then
as the light, in our nearness to Christ's true light, if we leave this dark
atmosphere of the earth and dwell above; and we shall be light, as our Lord says
somewhere to His disciples(8), if the true Light that shineth in the dark comes
down even to us; unless, that is, any foulness of sin spreading over our hearts
should dim the brightness of our light. Perhaps these examples have led us
gradually on to the discovery that we can be changed into something better than
ourselves; and it has been proved as well that this union of the soul with the
incorruptible Deity can be accomplished in no other way but by herself attaining
by her virgin state to the utmost purity possible,--a state which, being like
God, will enable her to grasp that to which it is like, while she places herself
like a mirror beneath the purity of God, and moulds her own beauty at the
touch and the sight of the Archetype of all beauty. Take a character strong enough
to turn from all that is human, from persons, from wealth, from the pursuits of
Art and Science, even from whatever in moral practice and in legislation is
viewed as right (for still in all of them error in the apprehension of the
Beautiful comes in, sense being the criterion); such a character will feel as a
passionate lover only towards that Beauty which has no source but Itself, which is
not such at one particular time or relatively only, which is Beautiful from, and
through, and in itself, not such at one moment and in the next ceasing to be
such, above all increase and addition, incapable of change and alteration. I
venture to affirm that, to one who has cleansed all the powers of his being from
every form of vice, the Beauty which is essential, the source of every beauty
and every good, will become visible. The visual eye, purged from its blinding
humour, can clearly discern objects even on the distant sky(9); so to the soul by
virtue of her innocence there comes the power of taking in that Light; and the
real Virginity, the real zeal for chastity, ends in no other goal than this,
viz. the power thereby of seeing God. No one in fact is so mentally blind as not
to understand that without telling; viz. that the God of the Universe is the
only absolute, and primal, and unrivalled(1) Beauty and Goodness. All, maybe,
know that; but there are those who, as might have been expected, wish besides this
to discover, if possible, a process by which we may be actually guided to it.
Well, the Divine books are full of such instruction for our guidance; and
besides that many of the Saints cast the refulgence of their own lives, like lamps,
upon the path for those who are "walking with God(2).'' But each may gather in
abundance for himself suggestions towards this end out of either Covenant in
the inspired writings; the Prophets and the Law are full of them; and also the
Gospel and the Traditions of the Apostles. What we ourselves have conjectured in
following out the thoughts of those inspired utterances is this.
CHAPTER XII.
THIS reasoning and intelligent creature, man, at once the work and the
likeness of the Divine and Imperishable Mind (for so in the Creation it is written
of him that "God made man in His image(3)"), this creature, I say, did not in
the course of his first production have united to the very essence of his
nature the liability to passion and to death. Indeed, the truth about the image
could never have been maintained if the beauty reflected in that image had been in
the slightest degree opposed(4) to the Archetypal Beauty. Passion was
introduced afterwards, subsequent to man's first organization; and it was in this way.
Being the image and the likeness, as has been said, of the Power which rules all
things, man kept also in the matter of a Free-Will this likeness to Him whose
Will is over all. He was enslaved to no outward necessity whatever; his feeling
towards that which pleased him depended only on his own private judgment; he
was free to choose whatever he liked; and so he was a free agent, though
circumvented with cunning, when he drew upon himself that disaster which now
overwhelms humanity. He became himself the discoverer of evil, but he did not therein
discover what God had made; for God did not make death. Man became, in fact,
himself the fabricator, to a certain extent, and the craftsman of evil. All who
have the faculty of sight may enjoy equally the sunlight; and any one can if he
likes put this enjoyment from him by shutting his eyes: in that case it is not
that the sun retires and produces that darkness, but the man himself puts a
barrier between his eye and the sunshine; the faculty of vision cannot deed, even in
the closing of the eyes, remain inactive(5), and so this operative sight
necessarily becomes an operative darkness(6) rising up in the man from his own free
act in ceasing to see. Again, a man in building a house for himself may omit to
make in it any way of entrance for the light; he will necessarily be in
darkness, though he cuts himself off from the light voluntarily. So the first man on
the earth, or rather he who generated evil in man, had for choice the Good and
the Beautiful lying all around him in the very nature of things; yet he
wilfully cut out a new way for himself against this nature, and in the act of turning
away from virtue, which was his own free act, he created the usage of evil.
For, be it observed, there is no such thing in the world as evil irrespective of a
will, and discoverable in a substance apart from that. Every creature of God
is good, and nothing of His "to be rejected"; all that God made was "very
good(7)." But the habit of sinning entered as we have described, and with fatal
quickness, into the life of man; and from that small beginning spread into this
infinitude of evil. Then that godly beauty of the soul which was an imitation of
the Archetypal Beauty, like fine steel blackened(8) with the vicious rust,
preserved no longer the glory of its familiar essence, but was disfigured with the
ugliness of sin. This thing so great and precious(9), as the Scripture calls him,
this being man, has fallen from his proud birthright. As those who have
slipped and fallen heavily into mud, and have all their features so besmeared with
it, that their nearest friends do not recognize them, so this creature has fallen
into the mire of sin and lost the blessing of being an image of the
imperishable Deity; he has clothed himself instead with a perishable and foul resemblance
to something else; and this Reason counsels him to put away again by washing
it off in the cleansing water of this calling(1). The earthly envelopment once
removed, the soul's beauty will again appear. Now the putting off of a strange
accretion is equivalent to the return to that which is familiar and natural; yet
such a return cannot be but by again becoming that which in the beginning we
were created. In fact this likeness to the divine is not our work at all; it is
not the achievement of any faculty of man; it is the great gift of God bestowed
upon our nature at the very moment of our birth; human efforts can only go so
far as to clear away the filth of sin, and so cause the buried beauty of the
soul to shine forth again. This truth is, I think, taught in the Gospel, when our
Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that
"the Kingdom of God is within you(2)." That word(3) points out the fact that the
Divine good is not something apart from our nature, and is not removed far away
from those who have the will to seek it; it is in fact within each of us,
ignored indeed, and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures
of life, but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking
towards it. If further confirmation of what we say is required, I think it will
be found in what is suggested by our Lord in the searching for the Lost
Drachma(4). The thought, there, is that the widowed soul reaps no benefit from the
other virtues (called drachmas in the Parable) being all of them found safe, if
that one other is not amongst them. The Parable therefore suggests that a candle
should first be lit, signifying doubtless our reason which throws light on
hidden principles; then that in one's own house, that is, within oneself, we should
search for that lost coin; and by that coin the Parable doubtless hints at the
image of our King, not yet hopelessly lost, but hidden beneath the dirt; and by
this last we must understand the impurities of the flesh, which, being swept
and purged away by carefulness of life, leave clear to the view the object of
our search. Then it is meant that the soul herself who finds this rejoices over
it, and with her the neighbours, whom she calls in to share with her in this
delight. Verily, all those powers which are the housemates of the soul, and which
the Parable names her neighbours for this occasion(5), when so be that the
image of the mighty King is revealed in all its brightness at last (that image
which the Fashioner of each individual heart of us has stamped upon this our
Drachma(6)), will then be converted to that divine delight and festivity, and will
gaze upon the ineffable beauty of the recovered one. "Rejoice with me," she says,
"because I have found the Drachma which I had lost." The neighbours, that is,
the soul's familiar powers, both the reasoning and the appetitive, the
affections of grief and of anger, and all the rest that are discerned in her, at that
joyful feast which celebrates the finding of the heavenly Drachma are well
called her friends also; and it is meet that they should all rejoice in the Lord
when they all look towards the Beautiful and the Good, and do everything for the
glory of God, no longer instruments of sin(7). If, then, such is the lesson of
this Finding of the lost, viz. that we should restore the divine image from the
foulness which the flesh wraps round it to its primitive state, let us become
that which the First Man was at the moment when he first breathed. And what was
that? Destitute he was then of his covering of dead skins, but he could gaze
without shrinking upon God's countenance. He did not yet judge of what was lovely
by taste or sight; he found in the Lord alone all that was sweet; and he used
the helpmeet given him only for this delight, as Scripture signifies when it
said that "he knew her not(8)" till he was driven forth from the garden, and
till she, for the sin which she was decoyed into committing, was sentenced to the
pangs of childbirth. We, then, who in our first ancestor were thus ejected, are
allowed to return to our earliest state of blessedness by the very same stages
by which we lost Paradise. What are they? Pleasure, craftily offered, began
the Fall, and there followed after pleasure shame, and fear, even to remain
longer in the sight of their Creator, so that they hid themselves in leaves and
shade; and after that they covered themselves with the skins of dead animals; and
then were sent forth into this pestilential and exacting land where, as the
compensation for having to die, marriage was instituted(9). Now if we are destined
"to depart hence, and be with Christ(1),'' we must begin at the end of the
route of departure (which ties nearest to ourselves); just as those who have
travelled far from their friends at home, when they turn to reach again the place
from which they started, first leave that district which they reached at the end
of their outward journey. Marriage, then, is the last stage of our separation
from the life that was led in Paradise; marriage therefore, as our discourse has
been suggesting, is the first thing to be left; it is the first station as it
were for our departure to Christ. Next, we must retire from all anxious toil
upon the land, such as man was bound to after his sin. Next we must divest
ourselves of those coverings of our nakedness, the coats of skins, namely the wisdom
of the flesh; we must renounce all shameful things done in secret(2), and be
covered no longer with the fig-leaves of this bitter world; then, when we have
torn off the coatings of this life's perishable leaves, we must stand again in the
sight of our Creator; and repelling all the illusion of taste and sight, take
for our guide God's commandment only, instead of the venom-spitting serpent.
That commandment was, to touch nothing but what was Good, and to leave what was
evil untasted; because impatience to remain any longer in ignorance of evil
would be but the beginning of the long train of actual evil. For this reason it was
forbidden to our first parents to grasp the knowledge of the opposite to the
good, as well as that of the good itself; they were to keep themselves from "the
knowledge of good and evil(3)," and to enjoy the Good in its purity, unmixed
with one particle of evil: and to enjoy that, is in my judgment nothing else
than to be ever with God, and to feel ceaselessly and continually this delight,
unalloyed by aught that could tear us away from it. One might even be bold to say
that this might be found the way by which a man could be again caught up into
Paradise out of this world which lieth in the Evil, into that Paradise where
Paul was when he saw the unspeakable sights which it is not lawful for a man to
talk of(4).
CHAPTER XIII.
BUT seeing that Paradise is the home of living spirits, and will not admit
those who are dead in sin, and that we on the other hand are fleshly, subject
to death, and sold under sin(5), how is it possible that one who is a subject
of death's empire should ever dwell in this land where all is life? What method
of release from this jurisdiction can be devised? Here too the Gospel teaching
is abundantly sufficient. We hear our Lord saying to Nicodemus, "That which is
born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit(6).'' We know too that the flesh is subject to death because of sin, but the Spirit
of God is both incorruptible, and life-giving, and deathless. As at our
physical birth there comes into the world with us a potentiality of being again
turned to dust, plainly the Spirit also imparts a life-giving potentiality to the
children begotten by Himself. What lesson, then, results from these remarks?
This: that we should wean ourselves from this life in the flesh, which has an
inevitable follower, death; and that we should search for a manner of life which
does not bring death in its train. Now the life of Virginity is such a life. We
will add a few other things to show how true this is. Every one knows that the
propagation of mortal frames is the work which the intercourse of the sexes has
to do; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and immortality
instead of children are produced by this latter intercourse; and the words of the
Apostle beautifully suit their case, for the joyful mother of such children as
these "shall be saved in child-bearing(7);" as the Psalmist in his divine songs
thankfully cries, "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful
mother of children(8)." Truly a joyful mother is the virgin mother who by the
operation of the Spirit conceives the deathless children, and who is called by
the Prophet barren because of her modesty only. This life, then, which is
stronger than the power of death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The
physical bringing of children into the world--I speak without wishing to
offend--is as much a starting-point of death as of life; because from the moment of
birth the process of dying commences. But those who by virginity have desisted
from this process have drawn within themselves the boundary line of death, and by
their own deed have checked his advance; they have made themselves, in fact, a
frontier between life and death, and a barrier too, which thwarts him. If,
then, death cannot pass beyond virginity, but finds his power checked and shattered
there, it is demonstrated that virginity is a stronger thing than death; and
that body is rightly named undying which does not lend its service to a dying
world, nor brook to become the instrument of a succession of dying creatures. In
such a body the long unbroken career of decay and death, which has intervened
between(9) the first man and the lives of virginity which have been led, is
interrupted. It could not be indeed that death should cease working as long as the
human race by marriage was working too; he walked the path of life with all
preceding generations; he started with every new-born child and accompanied it to
the end: but he found in virginity a barrier, to pass which was an impossible
feat. Just as, in the age of Mary the mother of God, he who had reigned from
Adam to her time found, when he came to her and dashed his forces against the
fruit of her virginity as against a rock, that he was shattered to pieces upon her,
so in every soul which passes through this life in the flesh under the
protection of virginity, the strength of death is in a manner broken and annulled, for
he does not find the places upon which he may fix his sting. If you do not
throw into the fire wood, or straw, or grass, or something that it can consume, it
has not the force to last by itself; so the power of death cannot go on
working, if marriage does not supply it with material and prepare victims for this
executioner. If you have any doubts left, consider the actual names of those
afflictions which death brings upon mankind, and which were detailed in the first
part of this discourse. Whence do they get their meaning? "Widowhood,"
"orphanhood," "loss of children," could they be a subject for grief, if marriage did not
precede? Nay, all the dearly-prized blisses, and transports, and comforts of
marriage end in these agonies of grief, The hilt of a sword is smooth and handy,
and polished and glittering outside; it seems to grow to the outline of the
hand(1); but the other part is steel and the instrument of death, formidable to
look at, more formidable still to come across. Such a thing is marriage. It
offers for the grasp of the senses a smooth surface of delights, like a hilt of
rare polish and beautiful workmanship; but when a man has taken it up and has got
it into his hands, he finds the pain that has been wedded to it is in his hands
as well; and it becomes to him the worker of mourning and of loss. It is
marriage that has the heartrending spectacles to show of children left desolate in
the tenderness of their years, a mere prey to the powerful, yet smiling often at
their misfortune from ignorance of coming woes. What is the cause of widowhood
but marriage? And retirement from this would bring with it an immunity from
the whole burden of these sad taxes on our hearts. Can we expect it otherwise?
When the verdict that was pronounced on the delinquents in the beginning is
annulled, then too the mothers' "sorrows(2)" are no longer "multiplied," nor does
"sorrow" herald the births of men; then all calamity has been removed from life
and "tears wiped from. off all faces(3);" conception is no more an iniquity,
nor child-bearing a sin; and births shall be no more "of bloods," or "of the will
of man," or "of the will of the flesh(4)", but of God alone. This is always
happening whenever any one in a lively heart conceives all the integrity of the
Spirit, and brings forth wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and
redemption too. It is possible for any one to be the mother of such a son; as our
Lord says, "He that doeth my will is my brother, my sister, and my mother(5)."
What room is there for death in such parturitions? Indeed in them death is
swallowed up by life. In fact, the Life of Virginity seems to be an actual
representation of the blessedness in the world to come, showing as it does in itself so
many signs of the presence of those expected blessings which are reserved for us
there. That the truth of this statement may be perceived, we will verify it
thus. It is so, first, because a man who has thus died once for all to sin lives
for the future to God; he brings forth no more fruit unto death; and having so
far as in him lies made an end(6) of this life within him according to the
flesh, he awaits thenceforth the expected blessing of the manifestation(7) of the
great God, refraining from putting any distance between himself and this coming
of God by an intervening posterity: secondly, because he enjoys even in this
present life a certain exquisite glory of all the blessed results of our
resurrection. For our Lord has announced that the life after our resurrection shall be
as that of the angels. Now the peculiarity of the angelic nature is that they
are strangers to marriage; therefore the blessing of this promise has been
already received by him who has not only mingled his own glory with the halo of the
Saints, but also by the stainlessness of his life has so imitated the purity of
these incorporeal beings. If virginity then can win us favours such as these,
what words are fit to express the admiration of so great a grace? What other
gift of the soul can be found so great and precious as not to suffer by comparison
with this perfection ?
CHAPTER XIV.
BUT if we apprehend at last the perfection of this grace, we must
understand as well what necessarily follows from it; namely that it is not a single
achievement, ending in the subjugation of the body, but that in intention it
reaches to and pervades everything that is, or is considered, a right condition of
the soul. That soul indeed which in virginity cleaves to the true Bridegroom
will not remove herself merely from all bodily defilement; she will make that
abstension only the beginning of her purity, and will carry this security from
failure equally into everything else upon her path. Fearing lest, from a too
partial heart, she should by contact with evil in any one direction give occasion for
the least weakness of unfaithfulness (to suppose such a case: but I will begin
again what I was going to say), that soul which cleaves to her Master so as to
become with Him one spirit, and by the compact of a wedded life has staked the
love of all her heart and all her strength on Him alone--that soul will no
more commit any other of the offences contrary to salvation, than imperil her
union with Him by cleaving to fornication; she knows that between all sins there is
a single kinship of impurity, and that if she were to defile herself with but
one(8), she could no longer retain her spotlessness. An illustration will show
what we mean. Suppose all the water in a pool remaining smooth and motionless,
while no disturbance of any kind comes to mar the peacefulness of the spot; and
then a stone thrown into the pool; the movement in that one part(9) will
extend to the whole, and while the stone's weight is carrying it to the bottom, the
waves that are set in motion round it pass in circles(1) into others, and so
through all the intervening commotion are pushed on to the very edge of the
water, and the whole surface is ruffled with these circles, feeling the movement of
the depths. So is the broad serenity and calm of the soul troubled by one
invading passion, and affected by the injury of a single part. They tell us too,
those who have investigated the subject, that the virtues are not disunited from
each other, and that to grasp the principle of any one virtue will be impossible
to one who has not seized that which underlies the rest, and that the man who
shows one virtue in his character will necessarily show them all. Therefore, by
contraries, the depravation of anything in our moral nature will extend to the
whole virtuous life; and in very truth, as the Apostle tells us, the whole is
affected by the parts, and "if one member(2) suffer, all the members suffer
with it," "if one be honoured, all rejoice."
CHAPTER XV.
BUT the ways in our life which turn aside towards sin are innumerable; and
their number is told by Scripture in divers manners. "Many are they that
trouble me and persecute," and "Many are they that fight against me from on
high(3)"; and many other texts like that. We may affirm, indeed, absolutely, that many
are they who plot in the adulterer's fashion to destroy this truly honourable
marriage, and to defile this inviolate bed; and if we must name them one by one,
we charge with this adulterous spirit anger, avarice, envy, revenge, enmity,
malice, hatred, and whatever the Apostle puts in the class of those things which
are contrary to sound doctrine. Now let us suppose a lady, prepossessing and
lovely above her peers, and on that account wedded to a king, but besieged
because of her beauty by profligate lovers. As long as she remains indignant at
these would-be seducers and complains of them to her lawful husband, she keeps her
chastity and has no one before her eyes but her bridegroom; the profligates
find no vantage ground for their attack upon her. But if she were to listen to a
single one of them, her chastity with regard to the rest would not exempt her
from the retribution; it would he sufficient to condemn her, that she had allowed
that one to defile the marriage bed. So the soul whose life is in God will
find her pleasure(4) in no single one of those things which make a beauteous show
to deceive her. If she were, in some. fit of weakness, to admit the defilement
to her heart, she would herself have broken the covenant of her spiritual
marriage; and, as the Scripture tells us, "into the malicious soul Wisdom cannot
come(5)." It may, in a word, be truly said that the Good Husband cannot come to
dwell with the soul that is irascible, or malice-bearing, or harbours any other
disposition which jars with that concord. No way has been discovered of
harmonizing things whose nature is antagonistic and which have nothing in common. The
Apostle tells us there is "no communion of light with darkness(6)," or of
righteousness with iniquity, or, in a word, of all the qualities which we perceive
and name as the essence of God's nature, with all the opposite which are
perceived in evil. Seeing, then, the impossibility of any union between mutual
repellents, we understand that the vicious soul is estranged from entertaining the
company of the Good. What then is the practical lesson from this? The chaste and
thoughtful virgin must sever herself from any affection which can in any way
impart contagion to her soul; she must keep herself pure for the Husband who has
married her, "not having spot or blemish or any such thing(7)."
CHAPTER XVI.
THERE is only one right path. It is narrow and contracted. It has no
turnings either on the one side or the other. No matter how we leave it, there is
the same danger of straying hopelessly away. This being so, the habit which many
have got into must be as far as possible corrected; those, I mean, who while
they fight strenuously against the baser pleasures, yet still go on hunting for
pleasure m the shape of worldly honour and positions which will gratify their
love of power. They act like some domestic who longed for liberty, but instead of
exerting himself to get away from slavery proceeded only to change his
masters, and thought liberty consisted in that change. But all alike are slaves, even
though they should not all go on being ruled by the same masters, as long as a
dominion of any sort, with power to enforce it, is set over them. There are
others again who after a long battle against all the pleasures(8), yield
themselves easily on another field, where feelings of an opposite kind come in; and in
the intense exactitude of their lives fall a ready prey to melancholy and
irritation, and to brooding over injuries, and to everything that is the direct
opposite of pleasurable feelings; from which they are very reluctant to extricate
themselves. This is always happening, whenever any emotion, instead of virtuous
reason, controls the course of a life. For the commandment of the Lord is
exceedingly far-shining, so as to "enlighten the eyes" even of "the simple(9),"
declaring that good cleaveth only unto God. But God is not pain any more than He is
pleasure; He is not cowardice any more than boldness; He is not fear, nor
anger, nor any other emotion which sways the untutored soul, but, as the Apostle
says, He is Very Wisdom and Sanctification, Truth and Joy and Peace, and
everything like that. If He is such, how can any one be said to cleave to Him, who is
mastered by the very opposite? Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose
that when he has striven successfully to escape the dominion of one particular
passion, he will find virtue in its opposite? For instance, to suppose that when
he has escaped pleasure, he will find virtue in letting pain have possession of
him; or when he has by an effort remained proof against anger, in crouching
with fear. It matters not whether we miss virtue, or rather God Himself Who is the
Sum of virtue, in this way, or in that. Take the case of great bodily
prostration; one would say that the sadness of this failure was just the same, whether
the cause has been excessive under-feeding, or immoderate eating; both failures
to stop in time end in the same result. He therefore who watches over the life
and the sanity of the soul will confine himself to the moderation of the
truth; he will continue without touching either of those opposite states which run
along-side virtue. This teaching is not mine; it comes from the Divine lips. It
is clearly contained in that passage where our Lord says to His disciples, that
they are as sheep wandering amongst wolves(1), yet are not to be as doves
only, but are to have something of the serpent too in their disposition; and that
means that they should neither carry to excess the practice of that which seems
praiseworthy in simplicity(2), as such a habit would come very near to
downright madness, nor on the other hand should deem the cleverness which most admire
to be a virtue, while unsoftened by any mixture with its opposite; they were in
fact to form another disposition, by a compound of these two seeming opposites,
cutting off its silliness from the one, its evil cunning from the other; so
that one single beautiful character should be created from the two, a union of
simplicity of purpose with shrewdness. "Be ye," He says, "wise as serpents, and
harmless as doves."
CHAPTER XVII.
LET that which was then said by our Lord be the general maxim for every
life; especially let it be the maxim for those who are coming nearer God through
the gateway of virginity, that they should never in watching for a perfection
in one direction present an unguarded side in another and contrary one; but
should in all directions realize the good, so that they may guarantee in all things
their holy life against failure. A soldier does not arm himself only on some
points, leaving the rest of his body to take its chance unprotected. If he were
to receive his death-wound upon that, what would have been the advantage of
this partial armour? Again, who would call that feature faultless, which from some
accident had lost one of those requisites which go to make up the sum of
beauty? The disfigurement of the mutilated part mars the grace of the part
untouched. The Gospel implies that he who undertakes the building of a tower, but spends
all his labour upon the foundations without ever reaching the completion, is
worthy of ridicule; and what else do we learn from the Parable of the Tower, but
to strive to come to the finish of every lofty purpose, accomplishing the work
of God in all the multiform structures of His commandments? One stone, indeed,
is no more the whole edifice of the Tower, than one commandment kept will
raise the soul's perfection to the required height. The foundation must by all
means first be laid but over it, as the Apostle says(3), the edifice of gold and
precious gems must be built; for so is the doing of the commandment put by the
Prophet who cries, "I have loved Thy commandment above gold and many a precious
stone(4)." Let the virtuous life have for its substructure the love of
virginity; but upon this let every result of virtue be reared. If virginity is believed
to be a vastly precious thing and to have a divine look (as indeed is the case,
as well as men believe of it), yet, if the whole life does not harmonize with
this perfect note, and it be marred by the succeeding s discord of the soul,
this thing becomes but "the jewel of gold in the swine's snout(6)," or "the pearl
that is trodden under the swine's feet." But we have said enough upon this.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IF any one supposes that(7) this want of mutual harmony between his life
and a single one of its circumstances is quite unimportant, let him be taught
the meaning of our maxim by looking at the management of a house. The master of a
private dwelling will not allow any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in
the house, such as a couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels
of price thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses
are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything arranged
neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most advantage; and then he can
welcome his guests, without any misgivings that he be ashamed of opening the
interior of his house to receive them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on
that master of our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything within
us, and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has
fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble uses. We will now
mention in detail the way in which any one might manage his life, with its
present advantages, to his improvement, hoping that no one will accuse us of
trifling(8), or over-minuteness. We advise, then, that love's passion be placed in
the soul's purest shrine, as a thing chosen to be the first fruits of all our
gifts, and devoted(9) entirely to God; and when once this has been done, to keep
it untouched and unsullied by any secular defilement. Then indignation, and
anger, and hatred must be as watch-dogs to be roused only against attacking sins;
they must follow their natural impulse only against the thief and the enemy who
is creeping in to plunder the divine treasure-chamber, and who comes only for
that, that he may steal, and mangle, and destroy. Courage and confidence are to
be weapons in our hands to baffle any sudden surprise and attack of the wicked
who advance. Hope and patience are to be the staffs to lean upon, whenever we
are weary with the trials of the world. As for sorrow, we must have a stock of
it ready to apply, if need should happen to arise for it, in the hour of
repentance for our sins; believing at the same time that it is never useful, except to
minister to that. Righteousness will be our rule of straightforwardness,
guarding us from stumbling either in word or deed, and guiding us in the disposal of
the faculties of our soul, as well as in the due consideration for every one
we meet. The love of gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in
every soul, when once applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has it;
for he will be violent z where it is right to be violent. Wisdom and prudence
will be our advisers as to our best interests; they will order our lives so as
never to suffer from any thoughtless folly. But suppose a man does not apply
the aforesaid faculties of the soul to their proper use, but reverses their
intended purpose; suppose he wastes his love upon the basest objects, and stores up
his hatred only for his own kinsmen; suppose he welcomes iniquity, plays the
man only against his parents, is bold only in absurdities, fixes his hopes on
emptiness, chases prudence and wisdom from his company, takes gluttony and folly
for his mistresses, and uses all his other opportunities in the same fashion, he
would indeed be a strange and unnatural character to a degree beyond any one's
power to express. If we could imagine any one putting his armour on all the
wrong way, reversing the helmet so as to cover his face while the plume nodded
backward, putting his feet into the cuirass, and fitting the greaves on to his
breast, changing to the right side all that ought to go on the left and vice
versa, and how such a hoplite would be likely to fare in battle, then we should
have an idea of the fate in life which is sure to await him whose confused
judgment makes him reverse the proper uses of his soul's faculties. We must therefore
provide this balance in all feeling; the true sobriety of mind is naturally
able to supply it; and if one had to find an exact definition of this sobriety,
one might declare absolutely, that it amounts to our ordered control, by dint of
wisdom and prudence, over every emotion of the soul. Moreover, such a condition
in the soul will be no longer in need of any laborious method to attain to the
high and heavenly realities; it will accomplish with the greatest ease that
which erewhile seemed so unattainable; it will grasp the object of its search as
a natural consequence of rejecting the opposite attractions. A man who comes
out of darkness is necessarily in the light; a man who is not dead is necessarily
alive. Indeed, if a man is not to have received his soul to no purpose(2), he
will certainly be upon the path of truth; the prudence and the science employed
to guard against error will be itself a sure guidance along the right road.
Slaves who have been freed and cease to serve their former masters, the very
moment they become their own masters, direct all their thoughts towards themselves
so, I take it, the soul which has been freed from ministering to the body
becomes at once cognizant of its own inherent energy. But this liberty consists, as
we learn from the Apostle(3), in not again being held in the yoke of slavery,
and in not being bound again, like a runaway or a criminal, with the fetters of
marriage. But I must return here to what I said at first; that the perfection
of this liberty does not consist only in that one point of abstaining from
marriage. Let no one suppose that the prize of virginity is so insignificant and so
easily won as that; as if one little observance of the flesh could settle so
vital a matter. But we have seen that every man who doeth a sin is the servant
of sin(4); so that a declension towards vice in any act, or in any practice
whatever, makes a slave, and still more, a branded slave, of the man, covering
him through sin's lashes with bruises and seared spots. Therefore it behoves the
man who grasps at the transcendent aim of all virginity to be true to himself
in h every respect, and to manifest his purity equally c in every relation of
his life. If any of the inspired words are required to aid our pleading, the
Truth s Itself will be sufficient to corroborate the truth when It inculcates this
very kind of teaching in the veiled meaning of a Gospel Parable: the good and
eatable fish are separated by the fishers' skill from the bad and poisonous
fish, so that the enjoyment of the good should not be spoilt by any of the bad
getting into the "vessels" with them. The work of true sobriety is the same; from
all pursuits and habits to choose that which is pure and improving, rejecting
in every case that which does not seem likely to be useful, and letting it go
back into the universal and secular life, called "the sea(6)," in the imagery of
the Parable. The Psalmist(7) also, when expounding the doctrine of a full
confession(8), calls this restless suffering tumultuous life, "waters coming in even
unto the soul," "depths of waters," and a "hurricane"; in which sea indeed
every rebellious thought sinks, as the Egyptian did, with a stone's weight into
the deeps(9). But all in us that is dear to God, and has a piercing insight into
the truth (called "Israel" in the narrative), passes, but that alone, over that
sea as if it were dry land, and is never reached by the bitterness and the
brine of life's billows. Thus, typically, under the leadership of the Law (for
Moses was a type of the Law that was coming) Israel passes unwetted over that sea,
while the Egyptian who crosses in her track is overwhelmed. Each fares
according to the disposition which he carries with him; one walks lightly enough, the
other is dragged into the deep water. For virtue is a light and buoyant thing,
and all who live in her way "fly like clouds(1)," as Isaiah says, "and as doves
with their young ones"; but sin is a heavy affair, "sitting," as another of
the prophets says, "upon a talent of lead(2)." If, however, this reading of the
history appears to any forced and inapplicable, and the miracle at the Red Sea
does not present itself to him as written for our profit, let him listen to the
Apostle: "Now all these things happened unto them for types, and they are
written for our admonition(3)."
CHAPTER XIX.
BUT besides other things the action of Miriam the prophetess also gives
rise to these surmisings of ours. Directly the sea was crossed she took in her
hand a dry and sounding timbrel and conducted the women's dance(4). By this
timbrel the story may mean to imply virginity, as first perfected by Miriam; whom
indeed I would believe to be a type of Mary the mother of God(5). Just as the
timbrel emits a loud sound because it is devoid of all moisture and reduced to the
highest degree of dryness, so has virginity a clear and ringing report amongst
men because it repels from itself the vital sap of merely physical life. Thus,
Miriam's timbrel being a dead thing, and virginity being a deadening of the
bodily passions, it is perhaps not very far removed from the bounds of
probability(6) that Miriam was a virgin. However, we can but guess and surmise, we cannot
clearly prove, that this was so, and that Miriam the prophetess led a dance of
virgins, even though many of the learned have affirmed distinctly that she was
unmarried, from the fact that the history makes no mention either of her
marriage or of her being a mother; and surely she would have been named and known,
not as "the sister of Aaron(7)," but from her husband, if she had had one; since
the head of the woman is not the brother but the husband. But if, amongst a
people with whom motherhood was sought after and classed as a blessing and,
regarded as a public duty, the grace of virginity, nevertheless came to be regarded
as a precious thing, how does it behove us to feel towards it, who do not
"judge" of the Divine blessings(8) "according to the flesh"? Indeed it has been
revealed in the oracles of God, on what occasion to conceive and to bring forth is
a good thing, and what species of fecundity was desired by God's saints; for
both the Prophet Isaiah and the divine Apostle have made this clear and certain.
The one cries, "From fear of Thee, O Lord, have I conceived(9);" the other
boasts that he is the parent of the largest family of any, bringing to the birth
whole cities and nations; not the Corinthians and Galatians only whom by his
travailings he moulded for the Lord, but all in the wide circuit from Jerusalem to
Illyricum; his children filled the world, "begotten" by him in Christ through
the Gospel(1). In the same strain the womb of the Holy Virgin, which ministered
to an Immaculate Birth, is pronounced blessed in the Gospel(2); for that birth
did not annul the Virginity, nor did the Virginity impede so great a birth.
When the "spirit of salvation(3)," as Isaiah names it, is being born, the willings
of the flesh are useless. There is also a particular teaching of the Apostle,
which harmonizes with this; viz. each man of us is a double man(4); one the
outwardly visible, whose natural fate it is to decay; the other perceptible only
in the secret of the heart, yet capable of renovation. If this teaching is
true,--and it must be true s because Wisdom is speaking there,--then there is no
absurdity in supposing a double marriage also which answers in every detail to
either man; and, maybe, if one was to assert boldly that the body's virginity was
the co-operator and the agent of the inward marriage, this assertion would not
be much beside the probable fact.
CHAPTER XX.
Now it is impossible, as far as manual exercise goes, to ply two arts at
once; for instance, husbandry and sailing, or tinkering and carpentering. If one
is to be honestly taken in hand, the other must be left alone. Just so, there
are these two marriages for our choice, the one effected in the flesh, the
other in the spirit; and preoccupation m the one must cause of necessity alienation
from the other. No more is the eye able to look at two objects at once; but it
must concentrate its special attention on one at a time; no more can the
tongue effect utterances in two different languages, so as to pronounce, for
instance, a Hebrew word and a Greek word in the same moment: no more can the ear take
in at one and the same time a narrative of facts, and a hortatory discourse; if
each special tone is heard separately, it will impress its ideas upon the
hearers' minds; but if they are combined and so poured into the ear, an
inextricable confusion of ideas will be the result, one meaning being mutually lost in the
other: and no more, by analogy, do our emotional powers possess a nature which
can at once pursue the pleasures of sense and court the spiritual union; nor,
besides, can both those ends be gained by the same courses of life; continence,
mortification of the passions, scorn of fleshly needs, are the agents of the
one union; but all that are the reverse of these are the agents of bodily
habitation. As, when two masters are before us to choose between, and we cannot be
subject to both, for "no man can serve two masters(6)," he who is wise will
choose the one most useful to himself, so, when two marriages are before us to
choose between, and we cannot contract both, for "he that is unmarried cares for the
things of the Lord, but he that is married careth for the things of the
world(7)," I repeat that it would be the aim of a sound mind not to miss choosing the
more profitable one; and not to be ignorant either of the way which will lead
it to this, a way which cannot be learnt but by some such comparison as the
following. In the case of a marriage of this world a man who is anxious to avoid
appearing altogether insignificant pays the greatest attention both to physical
health, and becoming adornment, and amplitude of means and the security from
any disgraceful revelations as to his antecedents or his parentage; for so he
thinks things will be most likely to turn out as he wishes. Now just in the same
way the man who is courting the spiritual alliance will first of all display
himself, by the renewal of his mind(8), a young man, without a single touch of age
upon him; next he will reveal a lineage rich in that in which it is a noble
ambition to be rich, not priding himself on worldly wealth, but luxuriating only
in the heavenly treasures. As for family distinction, he will not vaunt that
which comes by the mere routine of devolution even to numbers of the worthless,
but that which is gained by the successful efforts of his own zeal and labours;
a distinction which only those can boast of who are "sons of the light" and
children of God, and are styled "nobles from the sunrise(9)" because of their
splendid deeds. Strength and health he will not try to gain by bodily training and
feeding, but by all that is the contrary of this, perfecting the spirit's
strength in the body's weakness. I could tell also of the suitor's gifts to the
bride in such a wedding(1); they are not procured by the money that perishes, but
are contributed out of the wealth peculiar to the soul. Would you know their
names? You must hear from Paul, that excellent adorner of the Bride(2), in what
the wealth of those consists who in everything commend themselves. He mentions
much else that is priceless in it, and adds, "in chastity(3)"; and besides this
all the recognized fruits of the spirit from any quarter whatever are gifts of
this marriage. If a man is going to carry out the advice of Solomon and take for
helpmate and life-companion that true Wisdom of which he says, "Love her, and
she shall keep thee," "honour her, that she may embrace thee(4)," then he will
prepare himself in a manner worthy of such a love, so as to feast with all the
joyous wedding guests in spotless raiment, and not be cast forth, while
claiming to sit at that feast, for not having put on the wedding garment. It is plain
moreover that the argument applies equally to men and women, to move them
towards such a marriage. "There is neither male nor female(5)," the Apostle says;
"Christ is all, and in all(6)"; and so it is equally reasonable that he who is
enamoured of wisdom should hold the Object of his passionate desire, Who is the
True Wisdom; and that the soul which cleaves to the undying Bridegroom should
have the fruition of her love for the true Wisdom, which is God. We have now
sufficiently revealed the nature of the spiritual union, and the Object of the pure
and heavenly Love.
CHAPTER XXI.
IT is perfectly clear that no one can come near the purity of the Divine
Being who has not first himself become such; he must therefore place between
himself and the pleasures of the senses a high strong wall of separation, so that
in this his approach to the Deity the purity of his own heart may not become
soiled again. Such an impregnable wall will be found in a complete estrangement
from everything wherein passion operates.
Now pleasure is one in kind, as we learn from the experts; as water parted
into various channels from one single fountain, it spreads itself over the
pleasure-lover through the various avenues of the senses; so that it has been on
his heart that the man, who through any one particular sensation succumbs to the
resulting pleasure, has received a wound from that sensation. This accords
with the teaching given from the Divine lips, that "he who has satisfied the lust
of the eyes has received the mischief already in his heart(7)"; for I take it
that our Lord was speaking in that particular example of any of the senses; so
that we might well carry on His saying, and add, "He who hath heard, to lust
after," and what follows, "He who hath touched to lust after," "He who hath
lowered any faculty within us to the service of pleasure, hath sinned in his heart."
To prevent this, then, we want to apply to our own lives that rule of all
temperance, never to let the mind dwell on anything wherein pleasure's bait is
hid; but above all to be specially watchful against the pleasure of taste. For
that seems in a way the most deeply rooted, and to be the mother as it were of
all forbidden enjoyment. The pleasures of eating and drinking, leading to
boundless excess, inflict upon the body the doom of the most dreadful
sufferings(8); for over-indulgence is the parent of most of the painful diseases. To secure
for the body a continuous tranquillity, unstirred by the pains of surfeit, we
must make up our minds to a more sparing regimen, and constitute the need of it
on each occasion not the pleasure of it, as the measure and limit of our
indulgence. If the sweetness will nevertheless mingle itself with the satisfaction of
the need (for hunger knows how to sweeten everything(9), and by the vehemence
of appetite she gives the zest of pleasure to every discoverable supply of the
need), we must not because of the resulting enjoyment reject the satisfaction,
nor yet make this latter our leading aim. In everything we must select the
expedient quantity, and leave untouched what merely feasts the senses(1).
CHAPTER XXII.
WE see how the husbandmen have a method for separating the chaff, which is
united with the wheat, with a view to employ each for its proper purpose, the
one for the sustenance of man, the other for burning and the feeding of
animals. The labourer in the field of temperance will in like manner distinguish the
satisfaction from the mere delight, and will fling this latter nature to
savages(2) "whose end is to be burned(3)," as the Apostle says, but will take the
other, in proportion to the actual need, with thankfulness, Many, however, slide
into the very opposite kind of excess, and unconsciously to themselves, in their
over-preciseness, laboriously thwart their own design; they let their soul fall
down the other side from the heights of Divine elevation to the level of dull
thoughts and occupations, where their minds are so bent upon regulations which
merely affect the body, that they can no longer walk in their heavenly freedom
and gaze above; their only inclination is to this tormenting and afflicting of
the flesh. It would be well, then, to give this also careful thought, so as to
be equally on our guard against either over-amount(4), neither stifling the
mind beneath the wound of the flesh, nor, on the other hand, by gratuitously
inflicted weakenings sapping and lowering the powers, so that it can have no
thought but of the body's pain(5); and let every one remember that wise precept,
which warns us from turning to the right hand or to the left. I have heard a
certain physician of my acquaintance, in the course of explaining the secrets of his
art, say that our body consists of four elements, not of the same species, but
disposed to be conflicting: yet the hot penetrated the cold, and an equally
unexpected union of the wet and the dry took place, the contradictories of each
pair being brought into contact by their relationship to the intervening pair. He
added an extremely subtle explanation of this account of his studies in
nature. Each of these elements was in its essence diametrically(6) opposed to its
contradictory; but then it had two other qualities lying on each side of it, and
by virtue of its kinship with them it came into contact with its contradictory;
for example, the cold and the hot each unite with the wet, or the dry; and
again, the wet and the dry each unite with the hot, or the cold: and so this
sameness of quality, when it manifests itself in contradictories, is itself the agent
which affects the union of those contradictories. What business of mine,
however, is it to explain exactly the details of this change from this mutual
separation and repugnance of nature, to this mutual union through the medium of
kindred qualities, except for the purpose for which we mentioned it? And that
purpose was to add that the author of this analysis of the body's constitution
advised that all possible care be taken to preserve a balance between these
properties, for that in fact health consisted in not letting any one of them gain the
mastery within us. If his doctrine has truth in it, then, for our health's
continuance, we must secure such a habit, and by no irregularity of diet produce
either an excess or a defect in any member of these our constituent elements. The
chariot-master, if the young horses which he has to drive will not work well
together, does not urge a fast one with the whip, and rein in a slow one; nor,
again, does he let a horse that shies in the traces or is hard-mouthed gallop his
own way to the confusion of orderly driving; but he quickens the pace of the
first, checks the second, reaches the third with cuts of his whip, till he has
made them all breathe evenly together in a straight career. Now our mind in like
manner holds in its grasp the reins of this chariot of the body; and in that
capacity it will not devise, in the time of youth, when heat of temperament is
abundant, ways of heightening that fever; nor will it multiply the cooling and
the thinning things when the body is already chilled by illness or by time; and
in the case of all these physical qualities it will be guided by the Scripture,
so as actually to realize it: "He that gathered much had nothing over; and he
that had gathered little had no lack(7)." It will curtail immoderate lengths in
either direction, and so will be careful to replenish where there is much lack.
The inefficiency of the body from either cause will be that which it guards
against; it will train the flesh, neither making it wild and ungovernable by
excessive pampering, nor sickly and unstrung and nerveless for the required work by
immoderate mortification. That is temperance's highest aim; it looks not to
the afflicting of the body, but to the peaceful action of the soul's functions.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Now the details of the life of him who has chosen to live in such a
philosophy as this, the things to be avoided, the exercises to be engaged in, the
rules of temperance, the whole method of the training, and all the daily regimen
which contributes towards this great end, has been dealt with in certain written
manuals of instruction for the benefit of those who love details. Yet there is
a plainer guide to be found than verbal instruction; and that is practice: and
there is nothing vexatious in the maxim that when we are undertaking a long
journey or voyage we should get an instructor. "But," says the Apostle(3), "the
word is nigh thee;"the grace begins at home; there is the manufactory of all the
virtues; there this life has become exquisitely refined by a continual
progress towards consummate perfection; there, whether men are silent or whether they
speak, there is large opportunity for being instructed in this heavenly
citizenship through the actual practice of it. Any theory divorced from living
examples, however admirably it may be dressed out, is like the unbreathing statue,
with its show of a blooming complexion impressed in tints and colours; but the man
who acts as well as teaches, as the Gospel tells us, he is the man who is
truly living, and has the bloom of beauty, and is efficient and stirring. It is to
him that we must go, if we mean, according to the saying(9) of Scripture, to
"retain" virginity. One who wants to learn a foreign language is not a competent
instructor of himself; he gets himself taught by experts, and can then talk
with foreigners. So, for this high life, which does not advance in nature's
groove, but is estranged from her by the novelty of its course, a man cannot be
instructed thoroughly unless he puts himself into the hands of one who has himself
led it in perfection; and indeed in all the other professions of life the
candidate is more likely to achieve success if he gets from tutors a scientific
knowledge of each part of the subject of his choice, than if he undertook to study
it by himself; and this particular profession(1) is not one where everything is
so clear that judgment as to our best course in it is necessarily left to
ourselves; it is one where to hazard a step into the unknown at once brings us into
danger. The science of medicine once did not exist; it has come into being by
the experiments which men have made, and has gradually been revealed through
their various observations; the healing and the harmful drug became known from the
attestation of those who had tried them, and this distinction was adopted into
the theory of the art, so that the close observation of former practitioners
became a precept for those who succeeded; and now any one who studies to attain
this art is under no necessity to ascertain at his own peril the power of any
drug, whether it be a poison or a medicine; he has only to learn from others the
known facts, and may than practise with success. It is so also with that
medicine of the soul, philosophy, from which we learn the remedy for every weakness
that can touch the soul. We need not hunt after a knowledge of these remedies
by dint of guess-work and surmisings; we have abundant means of learning them
from him who by a long and rich experience has gained the possession which we
seek. In any matter youth is generally a giddy(2) guide; and it would not be easy
to find anything of importance succeeding, in which gray hairs have not been
called in to share in the deliberations. Even in all other undertakings we must,
in proportion to their greater importance, take the more precaution against
failure; for in them too the thoughtless designs of youth have brought loss; on
property, for instance; or have compelled the surrender of a position in the
world, and even of renown. But in this mighty and sublime ambition it is not
property, or secular glory lasting for its hour, or any external fortune, that is at
stake;--of such things(3), whether they settle themselves well or the reverse,
the wise take small account;--here rashness can affect the soul itself; and we
run the awful hazard, not of losing any of those other things whose recovery
even may perhaps be possible, but of ruining our very selves and making the soul
a bankrupt. A man who has spent or lost his patrimony does not despair, as long
as he is in the land of the living, of perchance coming again through
contrivances into his former competence; but the man who has ejected himself from this
calling, deprives himself as well of all hope of a return to better things.
Therefore, since most embrace virginity while still young and unformed in
understanding, this before anything else should be their employment, to search out a
fitting guide and master of this way, lest, in their present ignorance, they
should wander from the direct route, and strike out new paths of their own in
trackless wilds(4). "Two are better than one," says the Preacher(5); but a single
one is easily vanquished by the foe who infests the path which leads to God; and
verily "woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to
help him up(6)." Some ere now in their enthusiasm for the stricter life have
shown a dexterous alacrity; but, as if in the very moment of their choice they had
already touched perfection, their pride has had a shocking fall(7), and they
have been tripped up from madly deluding themselves into thinking that that to
which their own mind inclined them was the true beauty. In this number are those
whom Wisdom calls the "slothful ones(8)," who bestrew their "way" with
"thorns"; who think it a moral loss to be anxious about keeping the commandments; who
erase from their own minds the Apostolic teaching, and instead of eating the
bread of their own honest earning fix on that of others, and make their idleness
itself into an art of living. From this number, too, come the Dreamers, who put
more faith in the illusions of their dreams(9) than in the Gospel teaching,
and style their own phantasies "revelations." Hence, too, those who "creep into
the houses "; and again others who suppose virtue to consist in savage
bearishness, and have never known the fruits of long-suffering and humility of spirit.
Who could enumerate all the pitfalls into which any one might slip, from
refusing to have recourse to men of godly celebrity? Why, we have known ascetics of
this class who have persisted in their fasting even unto death, as if "with such
sacrifices God were well pleased(1);" and, again, others who rush off into the
extreme diametrically opposite, practising celibacy in name only and leading a
life in no way different from the secular; for they not only indulge in the
pleasures of the table, but are openly known to have a woman in their houses(2);
and they call such a friendship a brotherly affection, as if, forsooth, they
could veil their own thought, which is inclined to evil, under a sacred term. It
is owing to them that this pure and holy profession of virginity is "blasphemed
amongst the Gentiles(3)."
CHAPTER XXIV.
IT would therefore be to their profit, for the young to refrain from
laying down(4) for themselves their future course in this profession; and indeed,
examples of holy lives for them to follow are not wanting in the living
generation(5). Now, if ever before, saintliness abounds and penetrates our world; by
gradual advances it has reached the highest mark of perfectness; and one who
follows such footsteps in his daily rounds may catch this halo; one who tracks the
scent of this preceding perfume may be drenched in the sweet odours of Christ
Himself. As, when one torch has been fired, flame is transmitted to all the
neighbouring candlesticks, without either the first light being lessened or blazing
with unequal brilliance on the other points where it has been caught; so the
saintliness of a life is transmitted from him who has achieved it, to those who
come within his circle; for there is truth in the Prophet's saying(6), that one
who lives with a man who is "holy" and "clean" and "elect," will become such
himself. If you would wish to know the sure signs, which will secure you the real
model, it is not hard to take a sketch from life. If you see a man so standing
between death and life, as to select from each helps for the contemplative
course, never letting death's stupor paralyze his zeal to keep all the
commandments, nor yet placing both feet in the world of the living, since he has weaned
himself from secular ambitions;--a man who remains more insensate than the dead
themselves to everything that is found on examination to be living for the
flesh, but instinct with life and energy and strength in the achievements of virtue,
which are the sure marks of the spiritual life;--then look to that man for the
rule of your life; let him be the leading light of your course of devotion, as
the constellations that never set are to the pilot; imitate his youth and his
gray hairs: or, rather, imitate the old man and the stripling who are joined in
him; for even now in his declining years time has not blunted the keen
activity of his soul, nor was his youth active in the sphere of youth's well-known
employments; in both seasons of life he has shown a wonderful combination of
opposites, or rather an exchange of the peculiar qualities of each; for in age he
shows, in the direction of the good, a young man's energy, while, in the hours of
youth, in the direction of evil, his passions were powerless. If you wish to
know what were the passions of that glorious youth of his, you will have for
your imitation the intensity and glow of his godlike love of wisdom, which grew
with him from his childhood, and has continued with him into his old age. But if
you cannot gaze upon him, as the weak-sighted cannot gaze upon the sun, at all
events watch that band of holy men who are ranged beneath him, and who by the
illumination of their lives are a model for this age. God has placed them as a
beacon for us who live around; many among them have been young men there in
their prime, and have grown gray in the unbroken practice of continence and
temperance; they were old in reasonableness before their time, and in character
outstripped their years. The only love they tasted was that of wisdom; not that their
natural instincts were different from the rest; for in all alike "the flesh
lusteth against the spirit(7);" but they listened to some purpose to him who said
that Temperance "is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her(8);" and
they sailed across the swelling billows of existence upon this tree of life, as
upon a skiff; and anchored in the haven of the will of God; enviable now after so
fair a voyage, they rest their souls in that sunny cloudless calm. They now
ride safe themselves at the anchor of a good hope, far out of reach of the tumult
of the billows; and for others who will follow they radiate the splendour of
their lives as beacon-fires on some high watch-tower. We have indeed a mark to
guide us safely over the ocean of temptations; and why make the too curious
inquiry, whether some with such thoughts as these have not fallen nevertheless, and
why therefore despair, as if the achievement was beyond your reach? Look on
him who has succeeded, and boldly launch upon the voyage with confidence that it
will be prosperous, and sail on under the breeze of the Holy Spirit with Christ
your pilot and with the oarage of good cheer(9). For those who "go down to the
sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters" do not let the
shipwreck that has befallen some one else prevent their being of good cheer; they
rather shield their hearts in this very, confidence, and so sweep on to accomplish
their successful feat. Surely it is the most absurd thing in the world to
reprobate him who has slipped in a course which requires the greatest nicety, while
one considers those who all their lives have been growing old in failures and
in errors, to have chosen the better part. If one single approach to sin is such
an awful thing that you deem it safer not to take in hand at all this loftier
aim, how much more awful a thing it is to make sin the practice of a whole
life, and to remain thereby absolutely ignorant of the purer course! How can you in
your full life obey the Crucified? How can you, hale in sin, obey Him Who died
to sin? How can you, who are not crucified to the world, and will not accept
the mortification of the flesh, obey Him Who bids you follow after Him, and Who
bore the Cross in His own body, as a trophy from the foe? How can you obey Paul
when he exhorts you "to present your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
unto God(1)," when you are "conformed to this world," and not transformed by
the renewing of your mind, when you are not "walking" in this "newness of life,"
but still pursuing the routine of "the old man"? How can you be a priest unto
God(2), anointed though you are for this very office, to offer a gift to God; a
gift in no way another's, no counterfeited gift from sources outside yourself,
but a gift that is really your own, namely, "the inner man(3)," who must be
perfect and blameless, as it is required of a lamb to be without spot or blemish?
How can you offer this to God, when you do not listen to the law forbidding
the unclean to offer sacrifices? If you long for God to manifest Himself to you,
why do you not hear Moses, when he commands the people to be pure from the
stains of marriage, that they may take in the vision of God(4)? If this all seems
little in your eyes, to be crucified with Christ, to present yourself a
sacrifice to God, to become a priest unto the most high God, to make yourself worthy of
the vision of the Almighty, what higher blessings than these can we imagine
for you, if indeed you make light of the consequences of these as well? And the
consequence of being crucified with Christ is that we shall live with Him, and
be glorified with Him, and reign with Him; and the consequence of presenting
ourselves to God is that we shall be changed from the rank of human nature and
human dignity to that of Angels; for so speaks Daniel, that "thousand thousands
stood before him(5)." He too who has taken his share in the true priesthood and
placed himself beside the Great High Priest remains altogether himself a priest
for ever, prevented for eternity from remaining any more in death. To say,
again, that one makes oneself worthy to see God, produces no less a result than
this; that one is made worthy to see God. Indeed, the crown of every hope, and of
every desire, of every blessing, and of every promise of God, and of all those
unspeakable delights which we believe to exist beyond our perception and our
knowledge,--the crowning result of them all, I say, is this. Moses longed
earnestly to see it, and many prophets and kings have desired to see the same: but the
only class deemed worthy of it are the pure in heart, those who are, and are
named "blessed," for this very reason, that "they shall see God(6)." Wherefore
we would that you too should become crucified with Christ, a holy priest
standing before God, a pure offering in all chastity, preparing yourself by your own
holiness for God's coming; that you also may have a pure heart in which to see
God, according to the promise of God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to Whom
be glory for ever and ever. Amen.