"The Early Dawn."

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2910, 13 June 1878, Page 2

"The Early Dawn."

The men of genius who had the misfortune, under the later Eoman Emperors, to be blind to the truths of Christianity have been punished by a neglect which they do not deserve. Their writings hare been thrown aside as either miscbieroui or useless. The age. itself and the cha- . racter of their contemporaries has been left to be described by the Fathers of the Church, and the last representatives of the old classical literature- remanr geaerally unread. Our indifference costs us more than we are aware of. It is supremely desirable that we should be . acquainted with the age in wnYe&Tjhrigtianity became vhe creed of -civilised - mankind, and we learn but half the truth from the Christian fathers. Whether we regard Christianity as a miracle from without, or as developed from within, out -; of the conscience and iutellect of man, we perceive, at any rate, that it grew bjr natural causes; that it commended tself by argument and example; that it was received or rejected according to the moral and mental condition of those to whom it was addressed. We shall under* stand the history of its triumph onlj when we see the heathen world as the ' heathen world saw itself. .... Let | us forget our prejudices and hear what Lucian has to say. Nine persons out xt every ten of those who have heard his name, if asked who he was, would be ready with the answer-that he-was a scoffer. and.4tt~ atheist, and in that answer would show decisively that they had never read a page of him. For in his genuine writings he mentions the. Christians but once, and then only as a simple-minded sect, whoge credulity made them the easy dupes of quacks and charlatans. The abomina*. tions of paganism and the cant of the popular philosophers were the real objects of his detestation |* and, so far as concerned the common enemy,' the Fathers and Lucian were fighting on the same side; yet he has been systematically • spoken of as a 'special servant of Batan, - and as a person whose company decent people were bound to avoid. It is doubtful/ had the Fathers known him as ho really was,* whether he would have been regarded as a welcome ally. The lightninglike mockery with which Lucian strike! at folly and imposture was unfavourable to the generation of a believing spirit; his dissecting knife cuts occasionally'into theories where their own nerves were

susceptible. His detestation of falsehood was a passion. No edifying falsehood', no ideal loveliness* no supposed beneficent influence to be derived from illusion could blind his judgment or seduce his allegiance to truth. He lived in an age when the established creeds were a mockery, and philosophy was a jingle of words; when itinerant thautnaturgists were the favorites of emperors, and were regarded by millions as the representatives of the gods ; while politicians and men of the world were striving with desperate conservatism to keep the pagau religion on its feet, for fear society should fall to pieces if it were openly confessed to be untrue. With this ignoble terror, and with the quackery and dishonesty which were the inevitable fruit of it, Lucian lived in perpetual war, striking at it with a pungent satire, which is perhaps without its equal in literature. ■ But there is, an' interest in Lucian beyond his satire, and beyond his literary excellence. Ho, more than any other writer, pagan or Christian, enables us to "•l^hat human bc'.ngs were, how they lived, what- they thought, felt, said and did in' the centuries when paganism was expiring and Christianity was taking its place. The kingdom of heaven, it was said, was like a grain of mustard seed. The world of spirits and the world of matter are full of such seeds, full of the germs of living organisms, waiting for the fitting conditions in which they can take root and grow. The germ, as it unfolds gathers its substance, out of the soil in ' which it is rooted, and out of the atmos-. phere which it inhales; and is it to.: that soil, to that atmosphere, and to the elements of which they are com-, posed, that we must look, if we would understand how, and.,why, at any ; particular time a new form of organised life makes it's appearance ? Critics have wearied themselves in searching for the origin of the Gospels, and arrive at nothing. They would discover the secret of the life of Christianity, and they are like children digging at the root of a plant to discover how and why it grows. The plant withers when, the root is exposed, but the net work of tangled fibre tells them nothing which they desire to know. The historical facts recorded in tne Gospels formed the tissue of the seed out of which the Christian Church was developed, but the tissue of the seed is not the-life: of it. How the Gospels were written, or when or by whom, is concealed, as the grain when growing is concealed in the earth. The life of the Church was a new ideal, a new spiritual principle to < which humanity turned for deliverance from the poison of the established theology and philosophy. In Lucian we learn what that theology and that philosophy was, and how the belief or want of belief m them was affecting intellect and morals. , ... His writings are not volumir. nous, but they belong to the rare class which will be read with delight as long as human nature remains unchanged ; and to us, in the: present speculative condition of our mind, and confronted with problems so like those which troubled Lucian's contemporaries, they have an exceptional and peculiar interest. Of • the true nature of our existence on this planet, on the origin of our being, and of the meaning and purpose of it; of what is life and what is death; and of the nature of the rule which is exerted over us, we really know nothing." We live merely on the crust or .rind of things. The inner essence is absolutely concealed from us. But though these questions admit of no., conclusive . answer, there is something in pur.character which perpetually impels us to seek for an answer. Hope and fear, conscience and imagination, suggest possibilities, and possibilities, become probabilities when allied with high and, noble aspira-' tions. We.feeltjbe action upon us of forces which we cannot see. The world in which we live we perceive to be moving in obedience to some vast overmastering power. We connect our inward emotions with what we outwardly perceive. Observation of facts creates a scheme or form into which our own souls infuse a spirit, and thus arise theogonies or theologies which for a series of age 3 seize possession of human belief, take control of conduct, and "silence, if they fail to satisfy, the questionings of the intellect. Such, undoubtedly, however degraded they became, were once the pagan religions. Incredible and absurd* as they appear on first acquaintance with them, they reveal, when inspected more closely, essential facts at the heart of them. They reveal generally.a rude observation of the Simplest astronomical phenomena, a recbgnition of the mysterious character of physical life, a perception of the eternal difference between nobleness and baseness •vof conduct, and;they contain vague aspirations after immortality. The convictions and bpinions^thus honestly-formed clothed themselves in a dress of myth and allegory, and the imaginative costume was no more than a graceful drapery of ideas which was easily seen through. But knowledge out-grew its infant cycle. Imagination flowed in new channels, and no lon^^pursued the sacred legend to its sourcei Poetry.became prose. The picturesque fable became a literal fact, and when claiming to be a fact became a mischievous, lie. The loves pf the gods and goddesses, transparent symbols of the workings of natural forces, became demoralising examples of vice. The system without the clue to its meaning was no longer credible, and the conflict began between piety, which dreaded to be irreverent in refusing to believe, and conscience, which dared not profess upon the lips a creed which was felt to be false.

Under such conditions the keenest intellects are brought once more face to faceiwith the limits of "attainable knowledge. The problems to which faith'had provided an answer are agairT recognised as insoluble as soon as the faith has disappeared ; and the painful questions have again to be wrestled with, which had been concealed behind the accepted traditions of healthier and happier ages. If we may judge from the "prevailing' tone of modern popular literature, from the loud avowals of incredulity on one side and the lamentations on the other on the spread of infidel opinions, it seems as if, after sixteen centimes of satisfied belief, which came in with Christianity, we were passing once more into a cycle-of analogous doubts; and the sentiments of so robust a thinker as Lucian under the same trials are the footprints of a friend who has travelled before us .the road, on which we are entering. We hear him telling us in every sentence to keep a sound heart in us; to tell no lies; to do right whatever may befall us; never to professtp believe what we know that we do not believe; to look phantoms in the face, and tq.be sure that they-cannot hurt us if we are true to ourselves.—" Lucian; " JFbotde. ■;■;■;:-■'.-.: . .-.;:', .:.''.■ -■.■ ■'-„-' '