CHAPTER V

THE HERMIT AND THE BOY

Tennyson, St. Telemachus.

Macedonius the hermit, the barley-eater, was seated at the entrance of his cavern, and enjoying—so far as he thought it not sinful to enjoy—the cool air of the dawn and the glorious pageant of sunrise. He allowed himself but little sleep at any time, and long before the dawn he had been watching the stars, which hung like the cressets of angels in the purple night, and shed on the world their almost spiritual lustre. The unintelligible mystery of the universe, which often lay so heavily on his soul, seemed to be lightened as he felt himself alone with God, amid the strength of the hills, under those vast and silent constellations. Then, across the dark and silent valley he saw the first beam of morning smite into vivid crimson the topmost summit of the range of Taurus, and the mountainsides began to shine as though the angels were pouring river after river of pure gold over their snowy cliffs. Then the Orontes, far beneath his feet, began to gleam out here and there in streaks of silver under the rich foliage of its banks, and he saw the grove of Daphne, with its lightning-scathed shrine of the dethroned sun god, and in the far distance Mount Casius flung its huge dark shadow over the glimmering sea.

Accustomed to long hours of unbroken solitude, he was surprised to see three figures approaching him so early up the steep mountain track. It was evident that they were seeking his cavern home, for the rocky and scarcely distinguishable path led to no other spot, and had, in fact, been 34 mainly worn by his own feet as he descended the cliff to fill his maple dish with water, or to find his winter fuel and supply his daily needs. As the figures approached him he recognised Anthusa, whom he had sometimes seen after she had waived her opposition to her son’s wish to lead the solitary life, and who visited John once or twice in the year when he, too, lived with the hermit Syrus in a mountain cave.

She knelt for his priestly blessing, for Flavian had constrained him to accept the priesthood. He addressed her in few words. To be talking to a woman was to the hermit, as to the Pharisees of old, a perilous condescension, and he involuntarily drew back his robe of skin as she bowed before him. Anthusa knew the prejudices of his Order, though her son did not share them, and she briefly told him that she had come to confide to his protection a boy from Antioch who was in danger of his life.

The hermit was startled by her request. He shrank from the invasion of his solitude. His one luxury was to feel himself far away from the world, and alone with God. How could he provide for a boy from the gay, guilty city whose temples and palaces gleamed far below? He felt inclined to refuse the responsibility, and Anthusa read his hesitation in his eyes.

‘Is the boy a Pagan?’ he asked.

‘He is.’

‘How can I be responsible for one of those servants of the demons?’

‘If God can bear with them, and love them,’ she said, ’cannot Macedonius? Had not Christ compassion on the ignorant and on those that are out of the way?’

But Macedonius was still troubled. ‘How can he live on barley, as I do,’ he asked, ‘and endure life in this oppressive silence, where no sound is heard but the roar of the mountain cataracts, or the fall of crags which the earthquake has set loose?’

‘Father,’ she said, rising from her knees, ‘I know that you dare not refuse the charge. It is God who says to thee, “Take this boy; and save him for Me.” He will tell you all. Farewell, or I shall be missed at home. Philip, may God be with thee! We shall meet again.’

She turned to go, and Damaris followed her. She had already taken off from Philip the veil and pallium, and the boy stood before the solitary in his everyday dress. He modestly awaited what the old man would say, but fixed his frank and fearless eyes on the gaunt face and emaciated form.

Macedonius was but fifty-seven years old; but age is not told by years only. His eyes had grown dim with many tears, his cheeks were sunken, his hair was thin and grey. He sat down on a ledge of rock and leaned his trembling hands on a staff, for at that moment he was faint with continued abstinence. The long years seemed to separate him from this lad like wastes of the ‘salt, unplumbed, estranging sea.’ Yet as he looked at him he recalled his own happy, unforgotten youth. He, too, had once been as bright, as active, as well-knit as the boy who stood before him. Youth, which ‘dances like a bubble, nimble and gay, and shines like a dove’s neck or the colours of the rainbow,’ had once been his. He, too, had heard the siren songs singing enchantment to him across the smiling summer waves. To him, too, Circe, the daughter of the sun, had offered her charmed cup. He had plunged into the follies and dissipations and delirious dreams of youth, and known the fatal glamour of Satan’s bewitchment. Then God had broken in succession all his idols. He had gambled away his patrimony; he had been abandoned by his love, and by his friends; he had been smitten with terrible illness. And as he sat like the Prodigal, friendless, forsaken, penniless, in rags, and amid the swine, a star had looked through the midnight. For Meletius, the good bishop, had visited him in his illness, and through his gentle, gracious ministrations the snare of the fowler had been broken and he had been delivered.

But when he rose from the bed of sickness, utterly changed in heart, he felt driven to fly from the world. Even the Church could not satisfy him, for it was tainted with worldliness and rent with partisanship. As a youth he had been accustomed to the trimming attitude of mind which made the old Bishop Leontius mumble the Gloria in such a way that no party could claim him for its own shibboleth; and he had heard the old man say, as he 36 touched his white hairs, ‘When this snow melts there will be plenty of mud.’ Plenty of mud there was! Not even the blameless life, ‘the sweet, calm look, the radiant smile, the kind hand seconding the kind voice’³³Gregory of Nyssa. of the much-loved Meletius, could exorcise the intruding world from the schism-troubled Church. Macedonius not only saw the sad spectacle of at least three Christian bishops of Antioch—an Arian and two orthodox bishops—but he saw the heated votaries of two such good men as Paulinus and Meletius railing at each other in the assemblies, and even assaulting each other in the streets. In vain had Meletius said to his rival, ‘We hold the same doctrines; let us be friends. If the episcopal chair be a source of rivalry between us, let us place the Holy Gospel upon it, the symbol of Christ Himself, and let us sit on either side of it till one of us dies, and then the other shall become sole bishop.’ But ecclesiasticism, theological pettiness, sacerdotal arrogance, and the fatal force and fascination of opinionated orthodoxy, were too strong for Divine charity; and the thoughts of Macedonius were not of these things. He cared but little for nice dogmatic definitions and curiously articulated formulæ; what he longed to do was to save his soul and keep himself unspotted from the world. He loathed the petty baseness of partisan wranglings, with their accompaniment of subterranean intrigues and bitter personalities. As though amid the spiteful flash of petty runnels turbid with shallow mud, he heard the far-off voices of the great sea of eternity. He determined to retire from the world. The ideal of contemplative cœnobitic communities living apart from the world under strictest discipline had dazzled the age in which he lived. False and unscriptural as the ideal was, entirely alien as it was from the example of Christ and His Apostles, yet in these seething and troubled times the life of ‘the sainted eremite’ exercised a maddening fascination over countless men of high faculties, until this ‘unsocial passion’ leavened a great part of the Christian community, filling many a household with anxious forebodings and needless suffering. When hermits were looked upon as representing the perfection 37 of Divine philosophy, it was hardly strange that the ambition to reach these imagined altitudes haunted many a youthful mind.

So Macedonius had joined a little community of monks near Antioch, of which the famous Diodorus of Tarsus was the abbot. He sought always the most menial offices. But he soon found that the world could intrude even into a monastery. He could not escape from disputes about the episcopal claims of Meletius and Paulinus, and about the nice questions respecting the hypostatic union. Macedonius found no comfort in such matters. What he was aiming at in the great warfare which has no discharge was to subdue the flesh to the spirit, to secure a tranquil empire over himself. He left the cœnobium, and began to live as a hermit on the hills.

But any empire over himself which he had gained was infinitely far from tranquil. As he had found that the monastic life did not involve any exception from trials, but only a substitution of meaner and smaller ones for those which had of old assailed him, so it was his bitter experience that by flying to the mountain cave he had not escaped either from the devil or the flesh. He carried himself with him as all men do, and it was contrary to the law of life that he should find any condition which temptation left unassailed.

The conquest was granted to his sincerity, but the same reward would have been given to him, with less frightful struggles and more complete blessedness, if he had lived as Christ lived, among his kind, and not done violence to the laws of Nature and the ordinances of God. How constantly had he to wrestle with the instigations of spiritual pride! How often did the secret devil of his loneliness whisper into his soul high flatteries of his spiritual supremacy, telling him that his name and fame had spread through all Syria and Asia—yes, and even to the great western and southern realms of Italy and Spain and Africa! Thus did Satan strive to puff him up with vain self-exaltation in that inner world of the soul which remains untouched by outward ordinances. How often, in spite of his austerities—nay, not only in spite of, but (had he only known it) because of them—did evil and carnal thoughts come 38 over him like a flood! The enfeebled body was too weakened to fight against the rebellious soul. His bones, as he sank back and writhed on the rocky floor of his cave, clashed like those of a skeleton, yet all the while his imagination was still rioting, in spite of himself, amid the sinful scenes of his youth in Antioch.

As these thoughts passed through his mind, writing all his past history as on flashes of lightning, the hermit kept a long and embarrassed silence; but rousing himself at last, he said:

‘Boy, the mother of John the Presbyter told me that you would explain why she has brought thee hither.’

‘My name, sir,’ he said, ‘is Philip, and the Lady Anthusa led me here in disguise because I am in imminent peril of death for having flung a stone at the statue of the Emperor.’

‘You should not have done it, Philip,’ said the hermit. ’” The powers that be are ordained of God.“’ But when he saw that Philip hung his head, he added gently; ‘Tell me the whole story, lad.’

Then, often interrupted by the barley-eater’s eager interrogations, Philip told him of the imperial proclamation, of the outbreak of the populace, of the wrecking of the Baths, of the bursting into the Judgment Hall, of the destruction of the statues, of the fear and silence which had afterwards fallen on the city, of his father’s execution, of the cruel deaths of his young companions—of one of which he had been the horrified spectator.

Macedonius listened with an interest all the more intense because news from the world rarely reached his cave. As he heard the story he seemed himself to be passing through the whole scene, and, catching the contagion of the boy’s anguish, he was carried away by a storm of pity and indignation. Philip was amazed to see how his whole form seemed to dilate and his eye to flash with its old fire as he strode up and down the cavern when the tale was ended. Then, raising his hands to heaven, he said, ‘Antioch shall not be destroyed, shall not be decimated! Theodosius shall listen to God’s voice through me. Useless, I fear, and evil has been my life, but its sacrifices shall not 39 have been all in vain. They have given me a right to speak. I will gather all the hermits of the hills around me. We will go down to Antioch. We will in the name of God forbid all earthly vengeance. Yes, I will at least render this one service to my country before I die!’

He spoke more to himself than to his solitary listener, but again realising the lad’s presence, and glancing up at the sun, which was now high in heaven, he said, ‘Forgive me, boy; you must be hungry, and I have nothing for you but my sole food, which is barley; and I drink only the pure diamond of God which sparkles in yonder rill.’

‘Hunger is the best sauce, father,’ said Philip smiling.

‘Yes, but I cannot bid thee share my privations. Not far away is another hermit, whose fare is not so meagre. I will go and ask him for something for thee. Canst thou kindle a fire? Canst thou bake a barley-cake in the embers? Yes? Then, by the time it is ready I will be back.’

Philip deftly kindled a fire, and kneaded the barley-meal into two cakes, and the hermit soon returned. He had brought with him some dates and dry grapes and figs, and the boy enjoyed them with a very healthy appetite, while the hermit watched him with large eyes. When the meal was over Macedonius said:

‘Boy, it is impossible for thee to stay in this my wretched abode; but four miles distant is the monastery of Diodore, and at this moment the great Bishop is in his old house. There are a few young novices there of thine own age, and if he will receive thee, thou wilt there find work, and safety, and holy companionship. I will go and intercede with him.’

He took his staff and set forth over the steep mountain tracks. When he reached the monastery he was warmly welcomed by Diodore and the brethren, who promised to shelter Philip till the peril was over. His soul had been much troubled all the day; it was troubled still more by an incident of his return.