Hypatia - or New Foes with an Old Face

liffs, crested with drifting sand. Behind him the desert sand-waste stretched, lifeless, interminable, reflecting its lurid glare on the horizon of the cloudless vault of blue. At

everywhere was silence, desolation-the grave of a dead nation, in a dying land. And there he sat musing above it all, full of life and youth and health and beauty-a young Apollo of the desert. His only clothing was a ragged sheep-skin, bound with a leathern girdle. His long black locks, unshorn from childhood, waved and glistened in

y some gathering dream, and sighing, rose and wandered along the cliffs, peering downw

t of wood from some deserted quarry or ruin, it was becoming scarcer and scarcer round Abbot Pambo's Laura at Scetis; and

ne of the thousand wars of old. The abbot, his spiritual father-indeed, the only father whom he knew, for his earliest recollections were of the Laura and the old man's cell-had strictly forbidden him to enter, even to approach any of those relics of ancient idolatry: but a broad terrac

that rainless air. But he was young, and youth is curious; and the devil, at least in the fifth century, busy with young brains. Now Philammon believed most utterly in the devil, and night

heir knees in everlasting self-assured repose, seeming to bear up the mountain on their stately heads? A sense of awe, weakness

ht not be hidden there about the great world, past, present, and future, of which he knew only so small a speck? Those kings who sat there, they had known it all; their sharp lips seem parting, ready to speak to him.... Oh that they would speak for o

ium, eating and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and knowing nothing better.... how could they know anything better? Their forefathers had lost the light ages and ages before they were born.... And Christ had not come for ages and ages after they were dead.... How could they know?.... And yet they were all in hell.... every one of them. Every one of these ladies who sat there, with her bushy locks, and garlands, and jewelled collars, and lotus-flowers, and gauzy dress, displaying all her slender limbs-who, perhaps, when she was alive, smiled so sweetly, and went so gaily, and had children, and friends, and never once thought of what was going to happen to her-what must happen to her.... She was in hell.... Burning for ever, and ever, and ever, there below his feet. He stared down on the rocky floors. If he could but see through them.... and the eye of faith could see

h him as he deserved, pray for him, forgive him. And yet could he tell him all? Could he, dare he confess to him the whole truth-the insatiable craving to know the mysteries of learning-to see the great roaring world of men, which had been growing up in him slowly, month after month, til

mon care and joy of all. For the common good, as well as for his own, each man had toiled up the glen with his palm-leaf basket of black mud from the river Nile, over whose broad sheet of silver the glen's mouth yawned abrupt. For the common good, each man had swept the ledges clear of sand, and sown in the scanty artificial soil, the harvest of which all were to share alike. To buy clothes, books, and chapel furniture for the common necessities, education, and worship, each man sat, day after day, week after week, his mind full of high and heavenly thoughts, weaving the leaves of their little palm-copse into baskets, which an aged monk exchanged for goods with the more prosperous and frequented monasteries of the opposite bank. Thither Philammon rowed the old man over, week by week, in a light canoe of papyrus, and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the common meal. A simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portioned out by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than

t, steadfastly working away at his

, and I was for

questioned. I did not ask the reaso

temple, far

What didst th

looked up with hi

it, and lusted afte

t enter; bu

idst thou s

on was

ubtlest of all Satan's snares? Are they not accursed for ever, for the deceit of their first mother, by whom sin entered into the wo

ut painted o

how knewest thou them to be women, when thou hast never yet, unless th

by a new suggestion-'perhaps they were only devils. They

thou that devil

gathering flowers on the shore. Father Aufugus turned away; but I.... I could not help thinking them the most beautiful things that I had ever seen....so I asked him why he turned away; and he said that those were the same sort of devils which

ing confession of a deadly and shameful sin, blu

flesh!-oh subtilty of Satan! The Lord forgive thee, as I do, m

ust whenever I approach a woman. But I must-I must see the world; I must see the great mother-church in Alexandria, and the patriarch, and his clergy. If they can serve God in the city, why not I? I could do more for God there than here .... Not that I despise this work-not that I am ungrateful to you-oh, never, never that!-but I pant for the battle. Let m

y, after long companionship, thought, and prayer, they had elected Pambo for their abbot-Abba-father-the wisest, eldest-hearted and headed of them-if he was that, it was time that he should be obeyed. And obeyed he was, with a loyal, reasonable love, and yet with an implicit, sol

d then, slowly rising, left Philammon kneeling there, and moved away delibera

even reproved-perhaps he never required it; but still it was the meed of all; and was not the abbot a little partial? Yet, certainly, when Theophilus sent up a messenger from Alexandria, rousing every Laura with the news of the sack of Rome by Alaric, did not Pambo take him first to the cell of Aufugus, and sit with him there three whole hours in secret consultation, before he told the awful story to the rest of the brotherhood? And did not Aufugus himself give letters to the messenger, written with his o

ura, and of His Church, and of the great heathen world beyond; and still Philammon knelt motionless, awaiting his sentence; his heart filled-who can tell how? 'The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.' So thought he as he k

till, and slow, as he had gone, and s

... And he took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with ri

him. Long and passionately he spoke, in answer to the gentle questions of the old man, who, without the rigidity or pedantic solemnity of the monk, interrupted the you

, whose prayers we invoke, were learned in the wisdom of the heathen, and fought and laboured, unspotted, in the world; a

the thick locks of the kneeling youth, gazed, with

world, poor fool? And th

convert t

e mercy on my soul: but little thou knowest how I have seen it. Little thou knowest, or thou wouldst be well content to rest here till the end. I was Arsenius.... Ah! vain old man that I am! Thou hast never he

ror of By

ypocrites taking pride in their hypocrisy. The many sold and butchered for the malice, the caprice, the vanity of the few. The plunderers of the poor plundered in their turn by worse devourers than themselves. Every attempt at reform the parent of worse scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties; every persecutor silenced, onl

Satan, his kingdo

past again, and yet overwhelm it after all-that black flood of the northern barbarians. I foretold it; I prayed against it; but, like Cassandra's of old, my prophecy and my prayers were alike unheard. My pupil spurned my warnings. The lusts of youth, the intrigues of courtiers, were stronger than the warning voice of God; then I ceased to hope; I ceased to pray for the glorious city, for I knew that her sentence was gone forth; I saw her in the spirit, even as St. John saw her in the Revelations; her, and her sins, and her ruin. And I fled secretly

ful, I should be doing awful things in them. Send me, and let that day f

owing that the Lord bad need of such as thee elsewhere. We did but prove thee, to see by thy readiness to obey, whether thou wert fit to rule. Go, and God be with thee. Covet no man's gold or silver. Neither eat flesh nor drink wine, but live as

joy, sorrow, almost of d

ies at the ferry; thou shalt descend in it. The Lord will replace it for us when we need it. Speak with no man on the river except the monks of God. When thou hast gone five days'

blessing.'We have nothing to forgive. Follow thou thine inward call. If it be of the flesh, it will avenge itself; if it be of the Spirit, who are we that we should fight against God? Farewell.' A few minutes more, and the youth and his canoe were lessening down the rapid stream in the golden summer twilight. Again