Legate. I do assure you, Marchese, she was and will hear your reasonings, anticipating their then a fine woman, little above fifty. Gentlemen, validity. (Rises and goes.) I will visit your galleries, knowing their contents, | All. We are lost! LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS. Timotheus. I am delighted, my cousin Lucian, to observe how popular are become your Dialogues of the Dead. Nothing can be so gratifying and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the subversion of imposture by the force of ridicule. It hath scattered the crowd of heathen gods as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of them. Now, I am confident you never would have assailed the false religion, unless you were prepared for the reception of the true. For it hath always been an indication of rashness and precipitancy, to throw down an edifice before you have collected materials for reconstruction. Lucian. Of all metaphors and remarks, I believe this of yours, my good cousin Timotheus, is the most trite, and pardon me if I add, the most untrue. Surely we ought to remove an error the instant we detect it, although it may be out of our competence to state and establish what is right. A lie should be exposed as soon as born: we are not to wait until a healthier child is begotten. Whatever is evil in any way should be abolished. The husbandman never hesitates to eradicate weeds, or to burn them up, because he may not happen at the time to carry a sack on his shoulder with wheat or barley in it. Even if no wheat or barley is to be sown in future, the weeding and burning are in themselves beneficial, and something better will spring up. Timotheus. That is not so certain. Lucian. Doubt it as you may, at least you will allow that the temporary absence of evil is an advantage. Timotheus. I think, O Lucian, you would reason much better if you would come over to our belief. Lucian. I was unaware that belief is an encourager and guide to reason. Timotheus. Depend upon it, there can be no stability of truth, no elevation of genius, without an unwavering faith in our holy mysteries. Babes and sucklings who are blest with it, stand higher, intellectually as well as morally, than stiff unbelievers and proud sceptics. Lucian. I do not wonder that so many are firm holders of this novel doctrine. It is pleasant to grow wise and virtuous at so small an expenditure of thought or time. This saying of yours is exactly what I heard spoken with angry gravity not long ago. Timotheus. Angry! no wonder! for it is impossible to keep our patience when truths so incontrovertible are assailed. What was your answer? Lucian. My answer was. If you talk in this manner, my honest friend, you will excite a spirit of ridicule in the gravest and most saturnine men, VOL. II. who never had let a laugh out of their breasts before. Lie to me, and welcome; but beware lest your own heart take you to task for it, reminding you that both anger and falsehood are reprehended by all religions, yours included. Timotheus. Lucian! Lucian! you have always been called profane. Lucian. For what? for having turned into ridicule the gods whom you have turned out of house and home, and are reducing to dust? Timotheus. Well; but you are equally ready to turn into ridicule the true and holy. Lucian. In other words, to turn myself into a fool. He who brings ridicule to bear against Truth, finds in his hand a blade without a hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit flickers and expires against the incombustible walls of her sanctuary. Timotheus. Fine talking! Do you know, you have really been called an atheist? Lucian. Yes, yes; I know it well. But, in fact, I believe there are almost as few atheists in the world as there are Christians. Timotheus. How! as few? Most of Europe, most of Asia, most of Africa, is Christian. Lucian. Show me five men in each who obey the commands of Christ, and I will show you five hundred in this very city who observe the dictates of Pythagoras. Every Pythagorean obeys his defunct philosopher; and almost every Christian disobeys his living God. Where is there one who practises the most important and the easiest of his commands, to abstain from strife? Men easily and perpetually find something new to quarrel about; but the objects of affection are limited in number, and grow up scantily and slowly. Even a small house is often too spacious for them, and there is a vacant seat at the table. Religious men themselves, when the Deity has bestowed on them everything they prayed for, discover, as a peculiar gift of Providence, some fault in the actions or opinions of a neighbour, and run it down, crying and shouting after it, with more alacrity and more clamour than boys would a leveret or a squirrel in the play-ground. Are our years and our intellects, and the word of God itself, given us for this, O Timotheus? Timotheus. A certain latitude, a liberal construction... Lucian. Ay, ay! These "liberal constructions" let loose all the worst passions into those "certain latitudes." The priests themselves, who ought to be the poorest, are the richest; who ought to be the most obedient, are the most refractory and rebellious. All trouble and all piety are vicarious. They send missionaries, at the cost of others, into C foreign lands, to teach observances which they supersede at home. I have ridiculed the puppets of all features, all colours, all sizes, by which an impudent and audacious set of impostors have been gaining an easy livelihood these two thousand years. Timotheus. Gently! gently! Ours have not been at it yet two hundred. We abolish all idolatry. We know that Jupiter was not the father of gods and men: we know that Mars was not the Lord of Hosts: we know who is: we are quite at ease upon that question. Lucian. Are you so fanatical, my good Timotheus, as to imagine that the Creator of the world cares a fig by what appellation you adore him? whether you call him on one occasion Jupiter, on another Apollo? I will not add Mars or Lord of Hosts; for, wanting as I may be in piety, I am not, and never was, so impious as to call the Maker the Destroyer; to call him Lord of Hosts who, according to your holiest of books, declared so lately and so plainly that he permits no hosts at all; much less will he take the command of one against another. Would any man in his senses go down into the cellar, and seize first an amphora from the right, and then an amphora from the left, for the pleasure of breaking them in pieces, and of letting out the wine he had taken the trouble to put in? We are not contented with attributing to the gods our own infirmities; we make them even more wayward, even more passionate, even more exigent and more malignant: and then some of us try to coax and cajole them, and others run away from them outright. quarrel least, and who bring into public use the most civility and good-humour. Timotheus. Our holy religion inculcates this duty especially. "I would not "The fact Lucian. Such being the case, a pleasant story will not be thrown away upon you. Xenophanes, my townsman of Samosata, was resolved to buy a new horse: he had tried him, and liked him well enough. I asked him why he wished to dispose of his old one, knowing how sure-footed he was, how easy in his paces, and how quiet in his pasture. "Very true, O Lucian," said he; "the horse is a clever horse; noble eye, beautiful figure, stately step; rather too fond of neighing and of shuffling a little in the vicinity of a mare; but tractable and good-tempered." have parted with him then," said I. is," replied he, "my grandfather, whom I am about to visit, likes no horses but what are Saturnized. To-morrow I begin my journey: come and see me set out." I went at the hour appointed. The new purchase looked quiet and demure; but he also pricked up his ears, and gave sundry other tokens of equinity, when the more interesting part of his fellow-creatures came near him. As the morning oats began to operate, he grew more and more unruly, and snapped at one friend of Xenophanes, and sidled against another, "All in play! all in and gave a kick at a third. play!" said Xenophanes; "his nature is more of a lamb's than a horse's." However, these mute salutations being over, away went Xenophanes. In the evening, when my lamp had just been replenished for the commencement of my studies, my friend came in striding as if he were still across the saddle. "I am apprehensive, O Xenophanes," said I, "your new acquisition has dis"Not in the least," answered appointed you." he. "I do assure you, O Lucian! he is the very horse I was looking out for." On my requesting him to be seated, he no more thought of doing so than if it had been in the presence of the Persian king. I then handed my lamp to him, telling him (as was true) it contained all the oil I had in the house, and protesting I should be happier to finish my Dialogue in the morning. He took the lamp into my bed-room, and appeared to be much refreshed on his return. Neverthe less, he treated his chair with great delicacy and circumspection, and evidently was afraid of breaking it by too sudden a descent. I did not revert to the horse: but he went on of his own accord. "I declare to you, O Lucian! it is impossible for Ime to be mistaken in a palfrey. My new one is Timotheus. Why! you seem to have forgotten the only one in Samosata that could carry me at on a sudden that I am a Christian: you are talk-one stretch to my grandfather's." "But has he?" ing of the heathens. Timotheus. No wonder: but only in regard to yours: and even those are types. Lucian. There are honest men who occupy their lives in discovering types for all things. Timotheus. Truly and rationally thou speakest now. Honest men and wise men above their fellows are they, and the greatest of all discoThere are many types above thy reach, verers. O Lucian! Lucian. And one which my mind, and perhaps yours also, can comprehend. There is in Italy, I hear, on the border of a quiet and beautiful lake,* a temple dedicated to Diana; the priests of which temple have murdered each his predecessor for unrecorded ages. Timotheus. What of that? They were idolaters. Lucian. They made the type, however: take it home with you, and hang it up in your temple. Lucian. True! true! I am near upon eighty years of age, and to my poor eyesight one thing looks very like another. Timotheus. You are too indifferent. said I, timidly. 'No; he has not yet," answered my friend. "To-morrow, then, I am afraid, we really must lose you." "No," said he; "the horse does trot hard: but he is the better for that I shall soon get used to him." In fine, my Lucian. No indeed. I love those best who worthy friend deferred his visit to his grandfather: *The lake of Nemi. his rides were neither long nor frequent he was ashamed to part with his purchase boasted of him everywhere, and, humane as he is by nature, | it to pieces or defaced it. Be quite sure there are could almost have broken on the cross the quiet contented owner of old Bucephalus. Timotheus. Am I to understand by this, O cousin Lucian, that I ought to be contented with the impurities of paganism? Lucian. Unless you are very unreasonable. A moderate man finds plenty in it. Timotheus. We abominate the Deities who patronise them, and we hurl down the images of the monsters. many who think as much of their gods as you think of your ancestor Isknos, and who see in their images as good a likeness. Let men have their own way, especially their way to the temples. It is easier to drive them out of one road than into another. Our judicious and good-humoured Trajan has found it necessary on many occasions to chastise the law-breakers of your sect, indifferent as he is what gods are worshipped, so long as their followers are orderly and decorous. The fiercest of the Dacians never knocked off Jupiter's beard, or broke an arm off Venus: and the emperor will hardly tolerate in those who have received a liberal education what he would punish in barbarians. Do not wear out his patience : try rather to imitate his equity, his equanimity, and forbearance. Lucian. Sweet cousin! be tenderer to my feelings. In such a tempest as this, my spark of piety may be blown out. Hold your hand cautiously before it, until I can find my way. Believe me, no Deities (out of their own houses) patronise immorality; none patronise unruly passions, least of all the fierce and ferocious. In my opinion, you are wrong in throwing down the images of those among them who look on you benignly the others I give up to your discretion. But I think it impossible to stand habitually in the presence of a sweet and open countenance, graven or depicted, without in some degree partaking of the character it expresses. Never tell any man that he can derive no good, in his devotions, from this or from that: abolish neither hope nor gratitude. Timotheus. God is offended at vain efforts to the empire of the world. All arts, all sciences, represent him. Timotheus. I have been listening to you with much attention, O Lucian! for I seldom have heard you speak with such gravity. And yet, O cousin Lucian! I really do find in you a sad deficiency of that wisdom which alone is of any value. You talk of Trajan! what is Trajan? Lucian. A beneficent citizen, an impartial judge, a sagacious ruler; the comrade of every brave soldier, the friend and associate of every man eminent in genius, throughout his empire, all philosophies, all religions, are protected by him. Wherefore his name will flourish, when the proudest of these have perished in the land of Egypt. Philosophies and religions will strive, struggle, and suffocate one another. Priesthoods, I know not how many, are quarrelling and scuffling in the street at this instant, all calling on Trajan to come and knock an antagonist on the Lucian. No such thing, my dear Timotheus. If you knew him at all, you would not talk of him so irreverently. He is pleased, I am convinced, at every effort to resemble him, at every wish to remind both ourselves and others of his benefits. You can not think so often of him without an effigy. Timotheus. What likeness is there in the head; and the most peaceful of them, as it wishes perishable to the unperishable? Lucian. I see no reason why there may not be a similitude. All that the senses can comprehend may be represented by any material; clay or fig-tree, bronze or ivory, porphyry or gold. Indeed I have a faint remembrance that, according to your sacred volumes, man was made by God after his own image. If so, man's intellectual powers are worthily exercised in attempting to collect all that is beautiful, serene, and dignified, and to bring him back to earth again by showing him the noblest of his gifts, the work most like his own. Surely he can not hate or abandon those who thus cherish his memory, and thus implore his regard. Perishable and imperfect is everything human: but in these very qualities I find the best reason for striving to attain what is least So. Would not any father be gratified by seeing his child attempt to delineate his features? And would not the gratification be rather increased than diminished by his incapacity? How long shall the narrow mind of man stand between goodness and omnipotence? Perhaps the effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike him: whether it is or no, you can not tell: but you keep it in your hall, and would be angry if anybody broke to be thought, proclaiming him an infidel for turning a deaf ear to its imprecations. Mankind was never so happy as under his guidance and he has nothing now to do but to put down the battles of the gods. If they must fight it out, he will insist on our neutrality. Timotheus. He has no authority and no influence over us in matters of faith. A wise and upright man, whose serious thoughts lead him forward to religion, will never be turned aside from it by any worldly consideration or any human force. Lucian. True: but mankind is composed not entirely of the upright and the wise. I suspect that we may find some, here and there, who are rather too fond of novelties in the furniture of temples: and I have observed that new sects are apt to warp, crack, and split, under the heat they generate. Our homely old religion has run into fewer quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and Lapiths (whose controversy was on a subject quite comprehensible), than yours has engendered in twenty years. Timotheus. We shall obviate that inconvenience by electing a supreme Pontiff to decide all differences. It has been seriously thought about long ago; and latterly we have been making out an ideal series down to the present day, in order that our successors in the ministry may have stepping stones up to the fountain-head. At first the disseminators of our doctrines were equal in their commission: we do not approve of this any longer, for reasons of our own. dent that his life was aimed at. According to law, you know, my dear cousin, all the party might have been condemned to death, as accessaries to an attempt at murder. I am unwilling to think so unfavourably of your sect; nor indeed do I see the possibility that, in such an outrage, the principal could be pardoned. For any man Lucian. You may shut, one after another, all but a soldier to go about armed is against the our other temples, but, I plainly see, you will Roman law, which, on that head, as on many never shut the temple of Janus. The Roman others, is borrowed from the Athenian: and it is empire will never lose its pugnacious character incredible that in any civilised country so barbawhile your sect exists. The only danger is, lest rous a practice can be tolerated. Travellers do the fever rage internally and consume the vitals. indeed relate, that, in certain parts of India, there If you sincerely wish your religion to be long- are princes at whose courts even civilians are lived, maintain in it the spirit of its constitution, armed. But traveller has occasionally the same and keep it patient, humble, abstemious, domestic, signification as liar, and India as fable. Howand zealous only in the services of humanity. ever, if the practice really does exist in that Whenever the higher of your priesthood shall remote and rarely visited country, it must be in attain the riches they are aiming at, the people some region of it very far beyond the Indus or will envy their possessions and revolt from the Ganges for the nations situated between their impostures. Do not let them seize upon those rivers are, and were in the reign of Alexthe palace, and shove their God again into the ander, and some thousand years before his birth, manger. as civilised as the Europeans: nay, incomparably Timotheus. Lucian! Lucian! I call this im- more courteous, more industrious, and more piety. Lucian. So do I, and shudder at its consequences. Caverns which at first look inviting, the roof at the aperture green with overhanging ferns and clinging mosses, then glittering with native gems and with water as sparkling and pellucid, freshening the air all around; these caverns grow darker and closer, until you find yourself among animals that shun the daylight, adhering to the walls, hissing along the bottom, flapping, screeching, gaping, glaring, making you shrink at the sounds, and sicken at the smells, and afraid to advance or retreat. Timotheus. To what can this refer? Our caverns open on verdure, and terminate in veins of gold. : pacific; the three grand criterions. But answer my question: is there any foundation for so mischievous a report ? Timotheus. There was indeed, so to say, an ear, or something of the kind, abscinded; probably by mistake. But High Priests' servants are propense to follow the swaggering gait of their masters, and to carry things with a high hand, in such wise as to excite the choler of the most quiet. If you knew the character of the eminently holy man who punished the atrocious insolence of that bloody-minded wretch, you would be sparing of your animadversions. We take him for our model. Lucian. I see you do. Timotheus. We proclaim him Prince of the Apostles. Lucian. Veins of gold, my good Timotheus, such as your excavations have opened and are Lucian. I am the last in the world to question opening, in the spirit of avarice and ambition, his princely qualifications: but, if I might advise will be washed (or as you would say purified) in you, it should be to follow in preference him whom streams of blood. Arrogance, intolerance, resist you acknowledge to be an unerring guide; who ance to authority and contempt of law, distin-delivered to you his ordinances with his own hand, guish your aspiring sectarians from the other subjects of the empire. Timotheus. Blindness hath often a calm and composed countenance: but, my cousin Lucian! it usually hath also the advantage of a cautious and a measured step. It hath pleased God to blind you, like all the other adversaries of our faith but he has given you no staff to lean upon. You object against us the very vices from which we are peculiarly exempt. Lucian. Then it is all a story, a fable, a fabrication, about one of your earlier leaders cutting off with his sword a servant's ear? If the accusation is true, the offence is heavy. For not only was the wounded man innocent of any provocation, but he is represented as being in the service of the High Priest at Jerusalem. Moreover, from the direction and violence of the blow, it is evi equitable, plain, explicit, compendious, and complete; who committed no violence, who countenanced no injustice, whose compassion was without weakness, whose love was without frailty, whose life was led in humility, in purity, in beneficence, and, at the end, laid down in obedience to his father's will. Timotheus. Ah, Lucian! what strangely imperfect notions! all that is little. Lucian. Enough to follow. Timotheus. Not enough to compell others. I did indeed hope, O Lucian! that you would again come forward with the irresistible arrows of your wit, and unite with us against our adversaries. By what you have just spoken, I doubt no longer that you approve of the doctrines inculcated by the blessed founder of our religion. Lucian. To the best of my understanding. Timotheus. So ardent is my desire for the sal- | ing that "he who giveth to the poor lendeth to vation of your precious soul, O my cousin! that the Lord," I question the Lord's security, and I would devote many hours of every day to dis- haggle with him about the amount of the loan; putation with you, on the principal points of our if, professing that I am their steward, I keep Christian controversy. ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship; how, when God hates liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter? Lucian. Many thanks, my kind Timotheus! But I think the blessed founder of your religion very strictly forbade that there should be any points of controversy. Not only has he prohibited them on the doctrines he delivered, but on everything else. Some of the most obstinate might never have doubted of his divinity, if the conduct of his followers had not repelled them from the belief of it. How can they imagine you sincere when they see you disobedient? It is in vain for you to protest that you worship the God of Peace, when you are found daily in the courts and market-places with clenched fists and bloody noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer; but really I am as anxious for the salvation of your precious time, as you appear to be for the salvation of my precious soul; particularly since I am come to the conclusion that souls can not be lost, and that time can. Timotheus. Let us hope there are few of them. Lucian. We can not hope against what is: we may, however, hope that in future these will be fewer; but never while the overseers of a priesthood look for offices out of it, taking the lead in politics, in debate, and strife. Such men bring to ruin all religion, but their own first, and raise unbelievers not only in divine providence, but in human faith. Timotheus. If they leave the altar for the market-place, the sanctuary for the senate-house, and agitate party questions instead of Christian verities, everlasting punishments await them. Lucian. Everlasting? : Timotheus. Certainly at the very least. I rank it next to heresy in the catalogue of sins; Timotheus. We mean by salvation exemption and the church supports my opinion. from eternal torments. Lucian. Among all my old gods and their children, morose as some of the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the junior, I have never represented the worst of them as capable of inflicting such atrocity. Passionate and capricious and unjust are several of them; but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed to a vulture, are among the worst of their inflictions. Timotheus. This is scoffing. Lucian. I have no measure for ascertaining the distance between the opinions and practices of men: I only know that they stand widely apart in all countries on the most important occasions : but this newly-hatched word heresy, alighting on my ear, makes me rub it. A beneficent God descends on earth in the human form, to redeem us from the slavery of sin, from the penalty of our passions: can you imagine he will punish an error in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief, with everlasting torments? Supposing it highly Lucian. Nobody but an honest man has a right criminal to refuse to weigh a string of arguments, to scoff at anything. Timotheus. And yet people of a very different cast are usually those who scoff the most. or to cross-question a herd of witnesses, on a subject which no experience has warranted and no sagacity can comprehend; supposing it highly criminal to be contented with the religion which our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to us as the most precious of possessions, and which it would have broken their hearts if they had foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal pains the just retribution of what at worst is but indifference and supineness? Timotheus. Our religion has clearly this advantage over yours: it teaches us to regulate our passions. Lucian. We are apt to push forward at that which we are without the low-born at titles and distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at the semblance of probity. But I was about to remark, that an honest man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most adverse to the spirit and essence of them all, is falsehood. It is the business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the religious to worship her; under what name, is unimportant. The falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbour; if, professing that the rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in his word, that, in Lucian. Seventy-five years, according to my calregard to worldly weal, I need take no care for culation, are equivalent to seventy-five gods and to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what goddesses in regulating our passions for us, if we would be necessary, though I quite distrusted speak of the amatory, which are always thought both his providence and his veracity; if, profess-in every stage of life the least to be pardoned. Lucian. Rather say it tells us. I believe all religions do the same; some indeed more emphatically and primarily than others; but that indeed would be incontestably of divine origin, and acknowledged at once by the most sceptical, which should thoroughly teach it. Now, my friend Timotheus, I think you are about seventyfive years of age. Timotheus. Nigh upon it. |