THE OLD AND THE NEW, FACE TO FACE.
A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH.
[This essay was published in Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "AThumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr.Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a fewyears earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life byConybeare and Howson, now so well known, were made public. Thechronology of my essay does not precisely agree with that of thesedistinguished scholars. But I make no attempt now either to recast theessay or to discuss the delicate and complicated questions which belongto the chronology of Paul's life or to that of Nero; for there is noquestion with regard to the leading facts. At the end of twenty years Imay again express the wish that some master competent to the greatestthemes might take the trial of Paul as the subject of a picture.]
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In a Roman audience-chamber, the old civilization and the newcivilization brought out, at the very birth of the new, their chosenchampions.
In that little scene, as in one of Rembrandt's thumb-nail studies for agreat picture, the lights and shades are as distinct as they will everbe in the largest scene of history. The champions were perfectrepresentatives of the parties. And any man, with the soul of a man,looking on, could have prophesied the issue of the great battle from theissue of that contest.
The old civilization of the Roman Empire, just at that time, had reacheda point which, in all those outward forms which strike the eye, wouldregard our times as mean indeed. It had palaces of marble, where evenmodern kings would build of brick with a marble front to catch the eye;it counted its armies by thousands, where we count ours by hundreds; itsurmounted long colonnades with its exquisite statues, for which modernlabor digs deep in ruined cities, because it cannot equal them from itsown genius; it had roads, which are almost eternal, and which, for theirpurposes, show a luxury of wealth and labor that our boasted locomotioncannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enterthe palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses whichmodern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern timescan only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalledby the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. Wehave not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained thisdistinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration ofpower. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. Andthus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment ofthe greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled intorest, after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation hadpassed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generationarose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Romansubjects,--then the Empire was at its height of power, itscentralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at thezenith of its success.
At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first graymorning-light of the new civilization.
At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber,contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in longcenturies.
There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exactrepresentative, of the old. That man is brought face to face withanother who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.
Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates theold civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhoodhe has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under onehead. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperorof the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of theworld flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained inall elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful,luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is theface of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensualcountenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imaginehim clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayedin jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expressionof tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisitelicentious features, and you have before you the type of Romancivilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later timeswill name as the lowest embodiment of meanness and cruelty! You arelooking upon Nero!
Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilization, itscentral power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this sketchof ours is the exact climax of the _moral_ results of the ancientcivilization. We are to look at Nero just when he has returned to Romefrom a Southern journey.[I] That journey had one object, whichsucceeded. To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. Hehas travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill hismother!
We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero'smother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all thebeauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is theEmpress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty--and of lust. She ismost beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty offeature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whosedaughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of sense alone, fitadornment of that external grandeur, of that old society.
In the infancy of her son, this beautiful Agrippina consulted a troop offortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he would live tobe Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all the ecstasy of amother's pride fused so strangely with all the excess of an ambitiouswoman's love of power, she cried in answer, "He may kill me, if only herules Rome!"[J]
She spoke her own fate in these words.
Here is the account of it by Tacitus. Nero had made all thepreparations; had arranged a barge, that of a sudden its deck might fallheavily upon those in the cabin, and crush them in an instant. He meantthus to give to the murder which he planned the aspect of an accident.To this fatal vessel he led Agrippina. He talked with her affectionatelyand gravely on the way; "and when they parted at the lakeside, with hisold boyish familiarity he pressed her closely to his heart, either toconceal his purpose, or because the last sight of a mother, on the eveof death, touched even his cruel nature, and then bade her farewell."
Just at the point upon the lake where he had directed, as the Empresssat in her cabin talking with her attendants, the treacherous deck waslet fall upon them all. But the plot failed. She saw dead at her feetone of her favorites, crushed by the sudden blow. But she had escapedit. She saw that death awaited them all upon the vessel. The men aroundsprang forward, ready to do their master's bidding in a less clumsy andmore certain way. But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprangfrom the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there,this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion,drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, bycrying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering thosewords of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while theEmpress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floatedto the shore.
Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could notstop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he sent asoldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was desertedeven by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy, they put todeath the daughter and the mother of a Caesar. And Nero only waits tolook with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse, before he returns toresume his government at Rome.
That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient civilization. Itis complete in its centralizing power; it is complete in its externalbeauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden to the eye, withluxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all; but dust and ashesbeneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head! It is corrupted atthe heart! There is nothing firm!
This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this verymoment there is announced the first germ of the new civilization. In thevery midst of this falsehood, there sounds
one voice of truth; in thevery arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to cleave himto the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He meets thecongratulations of a senate, which thank him and the gods that he hasmurdered his own mother. With the agony of an undying consciencetorturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turnthe mob from despising him by the grandeur of their publicentertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-ofbeasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actorsrant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, andthat his people may forget him.
At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs informhim that his personal attention is required one morning for a statetrial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the Emperor bethere? May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lyingcourtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress? If he chooses thusto postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his othercounsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy willbe pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. Thetime comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted bysome blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellors, andbids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend tothese cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment thatwe are to look upon him.
He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale withboyish debauchery; his young fore head worn with the premature sensualwrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance.He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, andforget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in theprisoner.
A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years.This soldier is a tried veteran of the Praetorian cohorts. He wasselected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for thatpurpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads that otherthrough the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness whichsay he is no criminal to him. Long since, the criminal has been theguardian of his keeper. Long since, the keeper has cared for theprisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son's affection.
They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye heglances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bademonarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall makethe world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The statelyEastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes asubject's salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him. And when,then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see theprophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! Yousee Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero![K]
Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In thatjudgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; wehave also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, therestands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of histime; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. Wewill own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sagehad been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world.This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness whenhe could, and with his colleague had conducted the generaladministration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy waswearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say moreto Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the youngtiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. YetSeneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman moralityand Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravestof the men of the old civilization. He is the type of theirexcellences, as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments.And yet all that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce thebaby-tyrant into the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of aprovince he would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From themurder of a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From theruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruinof a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He saidhe used all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one ofthose men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time,he satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crimefrom public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared notorder him to the right.
But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trainedconscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother,Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged himto pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul hadcorresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero'spresence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[L] When Paularose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the newcivilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there hadbeen one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that thatwas a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that littlehall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centurieswould be acted out upon the larger stage.
Faith on the one side, before expediency and cruelty on the other! Paulbefore Seneca and Nero! He was ready to address Nero, with the eloquenceand vehemence which for years had been demanding utterance.
He stood at length before the baby Caesar, to whose tribunal he hadappealed from the provincial court of a doubting Festus and a tremblingAgrippa.
And who shall ask what words the vigorous Christian spoke to the dastardboy! Who that knows the eloquence which rung out on the ears ofastonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense and thehecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the gabblingclamor of a wild mob at Jerusalem,--who will doubt the tone in whichPaul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment before the man! Thegilded dotard shrunk back from the home truths of the new, young,vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred legions was nothing before theGod-commissioned prisoner.
No; though at this audience all men forsook Paul, as he tells us; thoughnot one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained athis side,--still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's minister.
From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old inlust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on thisGod, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in suchuncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of adying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive himforth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Pauland the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever.He does not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre ofa mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternitywhich Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of thearena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of theonly captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of sturdypower!
And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a great manwho has detected his own meanness.
We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and itis with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one oranother pettiness. Seneca goes home to say: "This wild _Easterner_ hasrebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him. He stoodthere, as I have wanted to stand, a man before a brute.
"He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright,straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, andas to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I amafraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and leftundone. _What is the mystery of his power?_"
Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The "Eastern mystery" was inpresence before them, and they knew it not!
What was the mystery of Paul's power?
Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished the hopeof long years. Those solemn words of his, "After that,
I _must_ also seeRome," expressed the longing of years, whose object now, in part, atleast, is gratified. He must see Rome!
It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul hasseen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,--that heis to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should passfirst from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. He knowsthat he is God's messenger to bear this mystery of life eternal from theone land to the other, and to unfold it there. And to-day has made real,in fact, this his inward confidence. To-day has put the seal of fact onthat vision of his, years since, when he first left his Asiatic home. Aprisoner in chains, still he has to-day seen the accomplishment of thevows, hopes, and resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famousfrom the night he spent there. There was another of these hours when Godbrings into one spot the acts which shall be the _argument_ of centuriesof history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiaticjourneys,--Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament, Easternin his outward life, and Eastern in his faith,--to that narrowHellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore madlyup the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even love when itsought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs frowning eternal hatefrom shore to shore. Paul stood upon the Asian shore and looked acrossupon the Western. There were Macedonia and the hills of Greece, hereTroas and the ruins of Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellesponthas no voice but separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, itmight be, on the tomb of Achilles, that night the "man of Macedonia"appears, and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt ofTroy.
"Come over _and help us._" Give us life, for we gave you death. Give ushelp for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenlyvision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon with the words ofpeace instead of war,--the Christian shepherd of the people, he carriesto Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation instead of carnage, ofcharity instead of license. And he knows that to Europe it is thebeginning of her new civilization, it in the dawn of her new warfare, ofher new poetry, of her reign of heroes who are immortal.
That _faith_ of his, now years old, has this day received its crowningvictory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may wellstand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and of license.
And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved himin planning it and carrying it through, was the "Asian mystery." Askwhat was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby Emperor, andabashed the baby Philosopher? What did he give the praise to, as he leftthat scene? What was the principle in action there, but faith in the newlife, faith in the God who gave it!
We do not wonder, as Seneca wondered, that such a man as Paul dared sayanything to such a boy as Nero! The absolute courage of the new faithwas the motive-power which forced it upon the world. Here were thesternest of morals driven forward with the most ultra bravery.
Perfect faith gave perfect courage to the first witnesses. And there wasthe "mystery" of their victories.
And so, in this case, when after a while Seneca again reminded Nero ofhis captive, poor Nero did not dare but meet him again. Yet, when he methim again in that same judgment-hall, he did not dare hear him long;and we may be sure that there were but few words before, with suchaffectation of dignity as he could summon, he bade them set the prisonerfree.
Paul free! The old had faced the new. Each had named its champion. Andthe new conquers!