Work while ye- ..'■■•|' 
 Have the Light 
 
 BY 
 
 LYOF TOLSTOI 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN 
 BY 
 
 E. J. DILLON, Ph.D. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1891 
 
 [y4// rights reset ve^ 
 
 ^ OF THE ^h" 
 
 (■: UNIVERSITY ]) 
 

 RETAINED 
 
 'se 
 
MATA/ 
 
 NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION. . 
 
 Since this work was originally published, it 
 has been pointed out to the editor by Dr. W. 
 Robertson Smith that the MS. which Julius 
 reads on his sick bed, and which makes him 
 resolve for the second time to be a Christian, 
 is that of the first five chapters of the SiSayrj 
 rwv ciTToaToXojv — T/ie Teaching of the Twelve 
 Apostles — that very curious early Christian 
 work whose discovery by Bryennius at Con- 
 stantinople created so great a sensation a few 
 years ago. As these chapters are literally ren- 
 dered with some trifling omissions, it seemed 
 proper to compare our story with the Greek 
 text, and Dr. Robertson Smith has been so 
 kind as to do this. This has led to the making 
 of a considerable number of alterations in the 
 translation. For example, at p. 139, 1. 9, the 
 word originally given as " sermon " is now 
 altered to " precept " (c vroX^). 
 
 175596 
 
vi IslOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION. 
 
 It has been necessary to make these changes 
 with great caution, and they are offered with 
 all reserve. This book exists under very peculiar 
 conditions. The present translation is the 
 only printed text, since the book has never 
 appeared in Russian or in any other language. 
 But we consider that we are doing no wrong in 
 availing ourselvea of the learned and judicious 
 help of so distinguished a scholar and theo- 
 logian as the friend to whom we owe these 
 corrections. 
 
 E. G, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It has been the misfortune of Count Tolstoi to 
 become widely known in the West of Europe at 
 the . very moment when he was performing a 
 complete change of dress. The legitimate 
 enthusiasm which his works of the imagination 
 might awaken has been confused with the 
 perhaps equally legitimate, but certainly much 
 more obvious and vulgar surprise at the amazing 
 character of his new social and religious views. 
 If the alteration had taken place sooner or 
 later, it would have been pleasanter for us and 
 juster to him. If he had always written in a 
 language which we could understand, we should 
 long ago have comprehended the nature of his 
 literary genius, and should have been less 
 startled by his moral transformation ; if the 
 presentation to Europe had been delayed, we 
 should have taken his work as a whole. But in 
 point of fact, we were constantly being assured 
 
viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that behind the dyed curtains of that Scythian 
 tent there sat a mysterious chieftain, arrayed in 
 all the splendours of the Orient. We tear the 
 veil aside at last, and discover a gentleman 
 inpuris natiiralibus , selecting a new set of gar- 
 ments. It is true that this disturbing circum- 
 stance has enormously added to the fame and 
 success of the Russian writer, and that a hundred 
 persons are found to discuss his nakedness to 
 one who cares to think of what he was when he 
 was clothed. But this is little consolation to 
 the student of pure literature, who feels inclined 
 to drive out the social group, and to guard Count 
 Tolstoi's doors till he has wrapped himself once 
 more in raiment, whether civilised or savage. 
 
 Of the moral speculations of the great Russian 
 novelist nothing shall here be said. Most of 
 what has passed for recent criticism has occupied 
 itself with a vain and capricious agitation of 
 Tolstoi's views on marriage, on education, on 
 non-resistance to authority, to the exclusion of 
 all other considerations. It would be absurd 
 to deny that some of these theories irresistibly 
 invite discussion, or that the distinguished 
 gravity of the author is not justly fascinating 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 to an age which has been exhausted and 
 lacerated by the funniness of its funny men. 
 But it is difficult not to see, also, that specula- 
 tion of this kind has been pursued in one form 
 or another by every generation, that it has 
 never yet succeeded in solving the riddle of this 
 painful earth, and that in contrast to its evasive- 
 ness and intangibility, the positive consideration 
 of literature as literature has a great charm. In 
 these few words, then, Tolstoi will not be treated 
 as the prophet or saviour of society, but as the 
 writer of novels. For this extremely unpopular 
 mode of regarding him, a critic's best excuse is 
 to recall those touching and noble words written 
 by Tourgenieff in his last hours to his great 
 successor : — 
 
 " Dearest Lyof Nikolaievitch, it is long since 
 I wrote to you. I have been in bed, and it is 
 my death-bed. I cannot get well ; that is no 
 longer to be thought of. I write to you ex- 
 pressly to tell you how happy I have been to 
 be your contemporary, and to present to you a 
 last, a most urgent request. Dear friend, come 
 back to literary work ! This gift came to you 
 whence all gifts come to us. Ah ! how happy 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I should be if I could think that you would 
 listen to my request. My friend, great writer 
 of our land of Russia, grant me this request." 
 
 The author of Anna Karcftine has granted it 
 in some degree, but how rarely, how fitfully, 
 with how little of the artist's fire and consecra- 
 tion ! Let us hope that in a near future he will 
 . give us of the things of the spirit in less 
 niggardly a fashion. Let him remember that 
 at the present moment there is no man living 
 from whom a sane and complete work of fiction, 
 on a large scale, would be more universally 
 welcomed. 
 
 The life of the Russian novelist has often been 
 narrated, but presents no features of very re- 
 markable interest. Count Lyof Nikolaievitch 
 Tolstoi was born on August 28 (o.S.), 1828, at 
 Yasnaya Polyana, an estate on the road to Orel, 
 a few miles out of Tula, in the centre of Russia. 
 This place and its surroundings were described 
 in a very charming paper contributed by Mr. 
 Kennen to The Century Magazine for June 
 1887, Yasnaya Polyana has been the alpha and 
 
INTRODUCTION, xi 
 
 omega of Tolstoi's life, all absences from it being 
 of the nature of episodes. He has made it his 
 sole residence for the last thirty years, and it 
 is the scene of his much talked-of social expe- 
 riments. ! 
 
 We were long under the impression that 
 Tourgenieff and Tolstoi were isolated appari- 
 tions on a bare stage. But as familiarity with 
 Russian fiction increases in the West, we see the 
 same structural growths proceeding in Russia 
 as in the other countries of the world. The 
 novel there, in its modern form, began to exist 
 about 1840, and Gogol, whose Dead Souls ap- 
 peared in 1842, was its creator. The " Men of 
 the Forties," as they are called, arose from the 
 shadow of Gogol, and were young men when his 
 book made its first profound sensation. The 
 birth dates of Gontcharoff, 18 1 3, Tourgenieff, 
 1 8 18, Pisemsky, 1820, and Dostoieffsky, 1821, 
 explain why these four illustrious novelists were 
 roused and fired by. the publication of Dead 
 Souls, It came to them, with its realism, its 
 deep popular sympathy, and its strange humour, 
 as a revelation at the very moment when the 
 brain of a young man of genius is most incan- 
 
xii INTRODUCTION, 
 
 descent But Tolstoi, younger by seven years 
 than the youngest of these, did not arrive at 
 intellectual maturity till after the first ardour of 
 the new life had passed away. Russia, in its 
 rapid awakening, was a different place in 1850 
 from what it had been in 1840, and to under- 
 stand Tolstoi aright we must distinguish him 
 from the Men of the Forties. 
 
 In endeavouring to form an idea of the 
 literary influences which moulded his mind, we 
 are likely to be more perplexed than aided by 
 the strange book called Childhood y Boyhood, 
 Youth, which bears a striking relation to the 
 recently published autobiography of the infancy 
 and adolescence of Pierre Loti. In each book 
 the portrait is so different from what, one is 
 convinced, any other person, however observant 
 and analytical, would have made of the child in 
 question, that one is dubious how far the tale 
 should be looked upon as a charming and un- 
 conscious fiction. In Tolstoi the little anecdote 
 of the imaginary dream, the incidents of which 
 by being repeated, grew to seem absolutely 
 true, and moved the inventor to tears of self- 
 pity, though given as a sign of scrupulous verity 
 
INTRODUCTION, xiii 
 
 in autobiography, points to a tendency which 
 is very natural and in a novelist very fortu- 
 nate. But a strange fact is that these semi- 
 mythical, intensely personal and curiously 
 minute notes of the mind of a child were not 
 made late in life, when the memory often recurs 
 to the remotest past, but at the starting-point 
 of the writer's career. Before he had started he 
 stopped to look back, and he began in literature 
 where most old men leave off. The Childhood, 
 Boyhoody Youth was commenced as early as 
 1 85 1, before Tolstoi opened his brief adventure 
 as a soldier. This book appears to be one of 
 its author's favourites ; he was long caressing it 
 before it first appeared, and he has entirely re- 
 moulded it once, if not twice. It is excessively 
 ingenious, and one notes with interest that the 
 first book which attracted the future agricul- 
 turist's attention was a treatise on the growing of 
 cabbages. The analysis of the feelings of a 
 nervous child was seldom carried out in a more 
 masterly fashion. But the book is often dull, 
 which the author's later work can hardly be 
 accused of being. 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION, 
 
 II. 
 
 It was Caucasia, that Wunderland of Russian 
 sentiment and romance, which first awakened 
 the imagination of Tolstoi. The Vicomte de 
 Vogiie, in his deh'ghtful chapter on the idealism 
 of Russia, has shown us what a Byronic fascina- 
 tion was exercised by the moonlit gorges of the 
 Caucasus on the poets of seventy years ago. 
 It was to a province steeped in romantic 
 melancholy, penetrated by reminiscences of 
 Pouchkine and Lermantof, that Tolstoi, a spirit 
 of a very different order, travelled in 185 1. 
 Suddenly captured by the genius of the place, 
 he enlisted in the army, and became an officer 
 of artillery in a mountain fortress over the 
 Terek. Here he began to be an author, 
 though he published none of his Caucasian 
 studies till he had left the Caucasus, on the 
 breaking out of the Turkish war, in 1853. The 
 contrast between the Asiatic and himself is the 
 first problem which moves him in the world of 
 fiction. Now it is illustrated by Olenine, the 
 victim of ennui, who flings himself into the 
 friendship of the savage Orientals ; now by 
 Jiline, who, unwillingly and after a gallant 
 
INTROD UCTION, xv 
 
 struggle, is captured and made to live among 
 them, but ultimately casts his chains aside ; now 
 by the gross and comfort-loving Kosteline, who 
 pines away in the Tartar camp, and dies. In 
 each case, though not always so romantically as 
 in The Cossacks, what interests the novelist is the 
 difference of race and instinct, rendering the inner 
 meaning of those outward trappings whose 
 barbaric picturesqueness tempts him to loiter 
 on its details. Tolstoi left the Caucasus a 
 skilful writer, expert in the conduct of a nar- 
 rative, but still tinged with the blue mist of 
 romanticism. 
 
 But he had hardly started on the three years' 
 laborious campaign in which he was to learn so 
 much of life, than there was published at home 
 a book which revealed to Russian readers a new 
 genius. Polikouclika was issued in 1854, the 
 year after JJie Cossacks appeared, and if it 
 achieved a less popular success, it deserved 
 closer attention. It may be that Tolstoi, who 
 has filled wider canvasses, has never painted a 
 genre-picture more thoroughly characteristic of 
 himself than this study of manners on a large 
 Russian estate. Polikoiichka is the story of a 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION, 
 
 serf, who practises as a veterinary surgeon, but 
 who is really a quack and a thief, through weak- 
 ness and drink, since he is not essentially a bad 
 fellow. His mistress, the Barina, a sentimen- 
 talist, pities him, and beheves that if he went 
 through an ordeal, on his honour, it might be 
 the saving of him. Accordingly she sends him 
 to a neighbouring town to fetch a large sum of 
 money. Every one, even the man's wife, believes 
 that he will either steal it or squander it on 
 drink. However, he starts, gets the money, 
 returns faithfully, and just before reaching home 
 loses it. Unable to face the shame of this 
 discovery, he hangs himself, and the money is 
 found, all safe, directly afterwards. 
 
 We may take Polikouchka as typical of Tol- 
 stoi's work at this time. We first notice that, 
 although the book is short and episodical, the 
 author has lavished upon us an astounding 
 number of types, all sharply defined. The 
 recruiting scene in the Mir directly points to 
 the skill with which the vast spaces of War and 
 Peace were presently to be made to swarm with 
 human life. Then the power of sustained 
 analysis of the complex phenomena of character, 
 
INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 in its stranger forms, is now seen to be com- 
 pletely developed. The mixture of vanity, 
 cupidity, honour and stupidity which riots in 
 the brain of Polikouchka as he drives off to 
 fetch the money is described with a masterly 
 effect, and in a manner peculiar to Tolstoi. Nor 
 is this story less typical of its author in its 
 general construction than in its specific features. 
 In later years, indeed, Tolstoi rarely opens a tale 
 with the sprightly gaiety of Polikouchka^ yet he 
 has preserved the habit — he preserves it even in 
 the Kreiitzer Sonata — of beginning his stories 
 with a scene of an amusing nature. In Poli- 
 kouchka the tragical, the mystical element is 
 delayed longer than has since been the author^s 
 wont, but it comes. The ghost of the suicide 
 fingering about for the money in Doutlov's house 
 on the fatal night is the signal for the conven- 
 tionality of the tale, as a piece of literature, to 
 break up, and this book, which began so gaily 
 and with its feet so firmly planted on common 
 life, closes in a scene of wild and scarcely intelli- 
 gible saturnalia. 
 
 Unless I am mistaken, and no exact biblio- 
 graphy of Tolstoi's writings seems to be at hand 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 — the story which we call Katia (and the 
 Russians Conjugal Happiness) was written while 
 the novelist was still fighting the Turks. The 
 extraordinary volume named Sketches front 
 Sevastopol certainly belongs to this period. 
 Totally distinct as these are — the one being a 
 study of peaceful upper-class life on a Russian 
 estate, the other reflecting the agitation and 
 bewilderment of active war — they show an 
 advance in intellectual power which takes much 
 the same direction in either case. Tolstoi is 
 now seen to be a clairvoyant of unexampled 
 adroitness. If *' adroit " be thought an adjec- 
 tive incompatible with clairvoyance, it has at 
 least not been used here without due considera- 
 tion. T'he peculiar quality of Tolstoi's imagina- 
 tion seems to require this combined attribution 
 of the intentional and the accidental. His most 
 amazing feats in analysis are henceforth not 
 strictly experimental, but conjectural. The 
 feelings of Mikhailov when the bomb burst, and 
 he was wounded, may have been experienced ; 
 those of Praskouchlne, who was killed^ can but 
 have h^^w created. Few readers have not been 
 forced to acknowledge the amazing power of the 
 
INTRODUCTION, xix 
 
 passage last alluded to. But to call it realism, 
 in the ordinary sense, is to rob it of half its value 
 as a singularly lofty exercise of the imagination. 
 Yet it is precisely in this aptitude for conjectural 
 analysis that the occasion is presented for ambi- 
 tion to o'ervault itself. It is the mind that 
 sees the non-experienced quite as clearly as the 
 experienced, which is most liable to lose con- 
 sciousness of the difference between reality and 
 unreality. The spirit that "walks upon the 
 winds with lightness " may step into the cloud of 
 mysticism without having noticed its presence. 
 
 III. 
 
 The year 1858 was a great period of awaken- 
 ing in Russian fiction. It saw the publica- 
 tion of Gontcharoff's masterpiece, Oblo77tof ; 
 Pisemsky then rose to a height he was never to 
 touch again in his great realistic novel, A Thou- 
 sand Souls ; Tourganieff produced his exquisite 
 Assjuy and prepared the distinguished and 
 pathetic surprise of his Nest of Nobles. Dos- 
 toieffsky, still away in Siberia, was putting 
 together his notes for the lite House of the Dead. 
 Tolstoi, plunged for the moment in the fashion- 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 able life of St. Petersburg and Moscow, could 
 not be ignorant of this sudden revival of letters, 
 nor unmoved by it. Hitherto he had been 
 content to obtain striking effects within re- 
 stricted limits. If his short stories had not 
 always closed with artistic regularity, it was 
 that he felt the true observer's disinclination to 
 draw the strings together artificially. But he 
 could be contented with small spaces no longer. 
 His mind was now set on the production of 
 w^orks whose proportions should be properly 
 related to the vast and complex mass of figures 
 which was ever moving in procession behind 
 his eyelids. 
 
 His next important publication, Three Deaths, 
 which came out in 1859, resembles a bundle of 
 studies by a great artist who contemplates a 
 gigantic composition. The opening description 
 of the sick lady in her carriage, travelling in an 
 atmosphere of eau-de-Cologne and dust, with 
 its undemonstrative inventory of telling details, 
 and its extreme sincerity of observation, is 
 exactly like a page, like any page, from the two 
 great novels which were to succeed it. But the 
 volume is not without faults ; of three selected 
 
INTRODUCTION, xxi 
 
 deaths, two should scarcely have been taken 
 from the same class of the same sex. The 
 final picture of the conscience-smitten coachman 
 chopping a cross is not without a certain vague- 
 ness. We hurry on, since a book awaits us 
 which drowns Three Deaths as a star is drowned 
 in the sunrise. 
 
 Tolstoi was thirty-two when he published his 
 first great novel, War and Peace^ in i860. 
 Very soon after its appearance, he took himself 
 out of society, and began his retirement at 
 Yasnaya Polyana. For fifteen years the world 
 heard comparatively little of him, and then he 
 crowned the edifice of his reputation with the 
 successive volumes of Anna Karenine (1875-77). 
 It is by these two epics of prose fiction, these 
 massive productions, that he is mainly known. 
 By degrees the fame of these amazing books 
 passed beyond the ring of the Russian language, 
 and now most educated persons in the West 
 of Europe have read them. They dwarf all other 
 novels by comparison. The immense area of 
 place and time which they occupy is unexampled, 
 and the first thing which strikes us on laying 
 them down is their comprehensive character. 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The work of no other novelist is so populous 
 as that of Tolstoi. His books seem to include 
 the entire existence of generations. In War 
 and Peace we live with the characters through 
 nearly a quarter of a century. They are young 
 when we are introduced to them ; we accompany 
 them through a hundred vicissitudes of disease 
 and health, ill fortune and good^ to death or to 
 old age. There is no other novelist, whose name 
 I can recall, who gives anything like this sense 
 of presenting all that moves beneath the cope of 
 heaven. Even Stendhal is dwarfed by Tolstoi, 
 on his own ground ; and the Russian novelist 
 joins to this anthill of the soldier and the 
 courtier, those other worlds of Richardson, of 
 Balzac, of Thackeray. Through each of Tolstoi's 
 two macrocosms, thronged with highly vitalised 
 personages, walks one man more tenderly 
 described and vividly presented than any of the 
 others, the figure in whom the passions of the 
 author himself are enshrined, Pierre Bezouchof in 
 the one case, Levine in the other. This sort of hero, 
 to whose glorification, however, the author makes 
 no heroic concessions, serves to give a certain 
 soHdity and continuity to the massive narration. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxiii 
 
 These two books are so widely known, that in 
 so slight a sketch as this, their constitution may- 
 be taken as appreciated. Their magnificent 
 fulness of life in movement^ their sumptuous 
 passages of description, their poignancy in 
 pathos and rapidity in action, their unwavering 
 devotion to veracity of impression, without 
 squalor or emphasis, these qualities have given 
 intellectual enjoyment of the highest kind 
 to thousands of English readers. They are 
 panoramas rather than pictures, yet finished so 
 finely and balanced so harmoniously that we 
 forget the immense scale upon which they are 
 presented, in our unflagging delight in the 
 variety and vivacity of the scene. No novelist 
 is less the slave of a peculiarity in one of his 
 characters than Tolstoi. He loves to take an 
 undeveloped being, such as Andre in War and 
 Peace, or Kitty Cherbatzky in Anna Karenine, 
 and to blow upon it with all the winds of heaven, 
 patiently noting its revulsions and advances, 
 its inconsistencies and transitions, until the 
 whole metamorphosis of its moral nature is 
 complete. There is no greater proof of the 
 extraordinary genius of Count Tolstoi than this. 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION, 
 
 that through the vast evolution of his plots, his 
 characters, though ever developing and changing, 
 always retain their distinct individuality. The 
 hard metal of reflected life runs ductile through 
 the hands of this giant of the imagination. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In 1877 Anna Karenine was finished, and the 
 applause with which it was greeted rang from 
 one end of Russia to the other. But the author 
 remained in unbroken seclusion at Yasnaya 
 Polyana. He began to write another romance 
 on the same colossal scale, this time taking up 
 the history of Central Europe at a point some- 
 what subsequent to the close of War and Peace. 
 Before he had written many chapters, that 
 crisis, that social and religious conversion ensued, 
 which has tinctured his life and work ever 
 since. He threw his novel aside, and, at first, 
 he was swallowed up in didactic activity, com- 
 posing those volumes on religion, education, and 
 sociology which have created so great a stir. 
 But he has to some slight degree, perhaps in 
 answer to TourgeniefPs dying prayer, returned 
 to the exercise of his talent, and has added new 
 
INTRODUCIION. xxv 
 
 stories, most of them short, and most of them 
 eccentric or mystical, to his repertory. He has 
 composed very simple tales for children and 
 peasants, and some of these are of a thrilling 
 nji'vete. He has written, for older readers, 
 A Poor Devil and The Death of Ivan Iliitch, 
 
 To readers who desire a direct introduction 
 to the work of Count Tolstoi no better volume 
 can be recommended than that latest mentioned. 
 It is an unsurpassed example of his naturalism, 
 with its instinctive and yet imaginative interpre- 
 tation of the most secret sentiments of the soul. 
 It is piteously human ; nay, the outcome of it all, 
 pushed to its logical conclusion, is of a kind to 
 break the very heart. Yet it is scarcely morbid, 
 because wholesomely observed ; nor cynical, 
 because interpenetrated with pity and love. 
 Ivan Iliitch is a successful lawyer, rising to a 
 brilliant and commanding position in the world, 
 who sickens of an obscure internal complaint, 
 and slowly dies. His instincts, his thoughts, are 
 followed and evenly chronicled with extreme 
 minuteness, till all is obscured in the final 
 misery of dissolution. The feelings of the un- 
 happy wretch himself, of his wife, children, 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 servants, and friends, are rendered by Tolstoi 
 with that curious clairvoyance which we have 
 seen to be his cardinal gift. 
 
 In reflecting upon such a book as Tlie Death 
 of Ivan Iliztch, it is natural to ask ourselves in 
 what the realism of Tolstoi consists, and how it 
 differs from that of M. Zola and Mr. Howells. 
 In the first place, their habit of producing an 
 impression by exhaustingly recording all the 
 details which it is possible to observe is not his. 
 Tolstoi, if they are called realists, should be styled 
 an impressionist, not in the sense used by the 
 artists of the present moment, but as Bastien 
 Lepage was an impressionist in painting. If 
 Zola and Howells fill the canvas with details to 
 its remotest corner, Tolstoi concentrates his 
 attention upon one figure or group, and renders 
 the effect of that single object with a force and 
 minute exactitude, which is positively amazing, 
 and which far surpasses theirs. Of course, a 
 book on such a scale as War and Peace would 
 not have been conducted to a close at all if the 
 Zola method had been brought to bear upon it. 
 But an examination of Tolstoi's short tales will 
 show that even when he has no need of hus- 
 
INTRODUCTION, xxvii 
 
 banding space, he adopts the same impressionist 
 manner. With him, though observation is 
 vivid, imagination is more vigorous still, and he 
 cannot be tied down to describe more than he 
 chooses to create. 
 
 This may serve to explain why his style 
 sometimes seems so negligent, and even con- 
 fused, and why his stories invariably present 
 lacuncBy blank omissions where the writer has 
 simply overlooked a series of events. The pro- 
 gress of Anna's mind, for example, from after 
 her first meeting with Wronsky to the original 
 formation of her infatuated feeling for him, is a 
 hiatus. For some reason or other, it did not 
 interest the novelist, and he blandly omitted to 
 touch it. His lapses of memory, his negligence, 
 may likewise account for the tedious and inter- 
 minable length at which certain episodes are 
 treated. There are some country scenes in 
 Anna Karenine, in the course of which the 
 author seems to have gone to sleep, and 
 to be writing on automatically. Occasionally, 
 Tolstoi's love of what is real leads him to dis- 
 tinct puerility, as in The Story of a Horse, vjh^ro, 
 the satire, and something in the very tone of the 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTIOA, 
 
 narrator*s voice remind us, but not favourably, 
 of Hans Andersen. Yet these are slight points, 
 and they simply indicate the limits of a very 
 noble genius. The realists in Russia, as well as 
 elsewhere, have given us many good gifts — they 
 have awakened our observation, have exposed 
 our hallucinations, have shattered our absurd 
 illusions. It is mere injustice to deny that they 
 have been seekers after truth and life, and that 
 sometimes they have touched both the one 
 and the other. But one great gift has 
 commonly eluded their grasp. In their 
 struggle for reality and vividness, they have 
 too often been brutal, or trivial, or sordid. 
 Tolstoi is none of these. As vital as any one 
 of them all, he is what they are not — distin- 
 guished. His radical optimism, his belief in the 
 beauty and nobility of the human race, preserve 
 him from the Scylla and the Charybdis of 
 naturalism, from squalor and insipidity. They 
 secure for his best work that quality of 
 personal distinction which does more than any- 
 thing else to give durability to imaginative 
 literature. 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
/, OF THE ^r\ 
 
 (: UNIVERSITY 
 
 ' >. OF • 
 
 WORK WHILE YE HAVE 
 THE LIGHT. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A NUMBER of guests Were once gathered 
 under the hospitable roof of a rich man, 
 and it came to pass one day that their 
 conversation took a serious turn, the 
 theme being human Hfe. 
 
 They discussed persons who were *pre- 
 sent and persons who were absent, but 
 they were unable to find among all their 
 acquaintances one single man who was 
 satisfied with his life. Not that any one 
 
 A 
 
2 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 of them had reason to grumble at fortune ; 
 but not one of them could pretend to look 
 upon the life he was leading as one worthy 
 of a Christian. They all admitted that 
 they were squandering away their exist- 
 ence in a worldly mrmer, caring only for 
 themselves and their families ; taking no 
 thought of their neighbour, and still less 
 of God. 
 
 Such was the gist of their remarks, and 
 they were singularly unanimous in finding 
 themselves guilty of leading godless un- 
 christian lives. 
 
 '' Why then go on living in this miser- 
 able way ? " exclaimed a youth who had 
 taken part in the discussion ; '* why con- 
 tinue to do what we ourselves condemn ? 
 Are we not masters of our own lives, free 
 to modify and change them at our will ? 
 About one thing we are all perfectly clear : 
 
li^VJ^k^ WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 3 
 
 our luxury, our effeminacy, our riches, 
 but more than all else our overweening 
 pride, and our consequent isolation from 
 our brethren, are hurrying us on to irre- 
 parable ruin. In order that we may be- 
 come distinguished and wealthy, we are 
 forced to deprive ourselves of all that 
 which constitutes the joy of human life ; 
 we live huddled together in cities, we 
 grow lax and enervated, undermine our 
 health, and in spite of all our amuse- 
 ments die of ennui and of regret that our 
 life is so far removed from what it should 
 be. Now, why should we live so, w^hy 
 thus ruthlessly blast our whole life — • 
 wantonly trample upon a priceless boon 
 conferred upon us by God ? I, for one, 
 will no longer debase myself by living 
 as heretofore. My unfinished course of 
 studies I will cast to the winds, for they 
 
4 tVOl^I^ WHILE YE tiAVE THE UGHT. 
 
 can lead me to nought else but that 
 bitterly painful existence of which you are 
 all now complaining. I will renounce my 
 estates and retire to the country, where I 
 shall spend all my time with the poor. I 
 will work in their midst, will inure my- 
 self to such manual labour as they per- 
 form ; and should my intellectual culture 
 be needful to them, I will impart it, not 
 through the medium of establishments and 
 books, but directly, living and working 
 among them as among brothers. Yes," he 
 conchided, casting an interrogative glance 
 at his father, who stood there listening to 
 his words, '' I have taken my decision." 
 
 '* Your desire is noble at bottom," said 
 his father, *'but it is the unripe fruit of 
 an undeveloped brain. To you everything 
 appears thus feasible because you have not 
 yet tasted life. What would become of us 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 5 
 
 and the world at large if we were to 
 pursue everything that seemed good and 
 desirable? The realisation of all these 
 desirable things is generally very difficult 
 and complicated. It is no easy matter to 
 make headway even along a smooth and 
 well-beaten track ; but how hard must it 
 not be when we have to set to work to 
 make new roads of our own ? Such a 
 task is only for those members of the com- 
 munity who have grown perfectly mature, 
 and have assimilated the highest and best 
 that is accessible to man. To you the 
 ordering of life upon wholly new lines 
 seems but child's play, because life to you 
 is still a sealed book. This is the outcome 
 of the thoughtlessness and pride of youth. 
 Hence it is that we sedate people, older in 
 years and wiser in knowledge, are indis- 
 pensable in order to moderate your fiery 
 
6 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 outbursts, and give you the benefit of our 
 experience, while it is your duty to submit 
 to us and be guided by our riper wisdom. 
 Yours will be a life of activity in future 
 years ; at present you are in a period of 
 growth and development. Wait till your 
 education is completed, finish your studies, 
 develop your faculties to their fullest capa- 
 city, stand on your own legs, form your 
 own convictions, and then adopt the new 
 life you have been sketching for us, if you 
 feel that you possess the needful strength. 
 For the present you are only expected to 
 obey those who are guiding you for your 
 own good, and you are not called upon to 
 remodel human life upon a new basis." 
 
 The young man remained silent, and his 
 elders agreed that his father s advice was 
 sound. 
 
 '' You are perfectly right," cried a middle- 
 
IVOKK WHILE YE II A VE THE LIGHT. 7 
 
 aged married man, addressing his remarks 
 to the last speaker. " No doubt our young 
 friend here, utterly devoid as he is of expe- 
 rience, may easily go astray in his gropings 
 after new ways in the labyrinth of life ; ncr 
 can his resolve be seriously regarded as 
 steadfast. At the same time, however, we 
 are all agreed that the lives we are leading 
 run counter to the promptings of our con- 
 sciences, and are productive of no good 
 results to ourselves. Hence we cannot but 
 look with favour on the desire to effect a 
 thorough change in our manner of living. 
 Our young friend may, likely enough, mis- 
 take his own fancy for a logical conclusion 
 worked out by his reason; but I am no 
 longer a young man, and I will tell you 
 what I think and feel on the subject. 
 Following attentively the discussion that 
 has been going on here this evening, the 
 
8 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 self-same thought that occurred to him 
 suggested itself to me. Personally, I have 
 not the shadow of a doubt that the life I 
 am leading cannot possibly confer upon me 
 happiness or peace of conscience. Reason 
 and experience alike urge this truth upon 
 me. What, then, am I waiting for ? Frojn 
 morning to night I toil and moil for my family, 
 with the result that both they and myself, 
 far from living up to the law of God, are 
 sinking deeper day by day in the slough 
 of sin. You work hard for your family, but 
 in the long run your family is not a whit 
 the better for jour labour, because your 
 efforts are not a real benefit to it. Hence 
 I often ask myself, whether it would not 
 be much better if I were to change my life 
 completely, and realise the ideas which our 
 young friend has so clearly set before us, 
 taking no thought of my wife or children, 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, g 
 
 but caring only for the soul. It is not 
 without reason that Paul says, ' He that is 
 married careth for the things that are of 
 the world, how he may please his wife. 
 .... He that is unmarried careth for the 
 things that belong to the Lord, how he 
 may please the Lord.' " 
 
 Almost before the speaker could recite 
 this short text to the end, all the women 
 present, his own wife among the number, 
 indignantly protested. 
 
 ''You should have thought of this long 
 before," exclaimed an elderly lady, who 
 had been attentively listening. ''You 
 have made your bed and must lie on it 
 now. It would be a truly pretty state of 
 things, in which every one who found it 
 difficult to maintain his wife and family 
 might shirk his duty by merely signifying 
 a wish to save his soul. This is but fraud 
 
10 WORK WHILE YE HAVE HIE LI GUI. 
 
 and baseness. A man ought to be able to 
 lead a good, upright Hfe in the bosom of 
 his family ; to save oneself alone needs no 
 great art ; nay, more, it is even contrary 
 to Christ's teachincr. God commands us 
 to love others, and here are you wanting to 
 injure others for God's sake. The truth is 
 that a married man has certain well-defined 
 duties and obligations, and he should not 
 neglect them. It is quit3 a different 
 matter when the family is already cared 
 for, brought up, and all its members put 
 standing on their own legs. Then you 
 may do as you like for yourself. But 
 surely no one has a right to break up his 
 family." 
 
 To this the married man did not assent. 
 ** It is not my purpose," he replied, ''to 
 abandon my family. I merely contend 
 that it is my duty to bring up my family, 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGH7. ii 
 
 my children, in an unworldly manner, not 
 accustoming them to live for their own 
 pleasures, but, as was suggested a few 
 moments ago, inuring them to want, to 
 work, teaching them to give a helping 
 hand to their fellows, and, above all, to 
 treat all men as brothers. And to this 
 end it is indispensable to renounce distinc- 
 tion and riches." 
 
 '' It is quite absurd for you to go talking 
 about breaking in others to the new life 
 while you yourself are further from it than 
 any of us," exclaimed his wife, with much 
 warmth. '*You have always lived in the 
 lap of luxury, from your childhood upward-, 
 and why should you now wish to torture 
 your wife and children ? Let them grow 
 up in peace and quiet, and then leave them 
 to undertake for themselves whatever line 
 of life commends itself to them ; but don't 
 
12 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 you go compelling them to embrace this 
 way of living or that." 
 
 To this the married man made no reply, 
 but an aged man sitting near him delivered 
 himself as follows : 
 
 ** It is quite true, no doubt, that a mar- 
 ried man who has accustomed his wife and 
 children to ease and comfort should not 
 deprive them of it all of a sudden. There 
 is also great force in the argument that 
 once the education of the children has 
 been begun on certain lines, it is much 
 better to continue and complete it, than 
 breaking it off to commence something 
 else ; especially as the children themselves, 
 when grown up, will not fail to choose the 
 way that is best for them. I am therefore 
 of opinion that it is difficult — nay, and sin- 
 ful too — for a married man to change his 
 life. It is quite a different matter with us 
 
tvoRj^ While ye have the light. 13 
 
 old men, whom God himself, so to say, 
 has commanded to do so. I may, perhaps, 
 be allowed to speak for myself: J live 
 practically without any duties or obliga- 
 tions whatever ; I live, if the truth must be 
 told, solely for my belly. I eat, drink, rest 
 myself, and am myself disgusted and sick 
 of it all. Now for me it is surely high 
 time to abandon this wretched life, to dis- 
 tribute my earthly goods, and to live now, 
 at least, on the eve of my death, as God 
 ordained that Christians should live.'' 
 
 But even the old man found no support. 
 His niece was present, and his godchild, 
 all of whose children he had held at the 
 baptismal font and gratified with presents 
 on holidays ever since, and also his own 
 son. They one and all objected. 
 
 "No, no,'' said his son. *'You have 
 worked quite hard enough in your time, 
 
14 PVOJ^JiT WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 and it is meet that you should now rest 
 and not kill yourself outright. You have 
 lived for sixty years with your tastes and 
 habits, and it is not at this time of day 
 that you can think of giving them up. 
 The outcome of any such attempt on your 
 part would be that you would subject 
 yourself to great torture with no result 
 whatever." 
 
 ''Quite so," chimed in his niece, ^* and 
 when you are in want, you know, you will 
 be out of sorts and always grumbling, and 
 consequently will be sinning more griev- 
 ously than ever before. Besides, God is 
 merciful and pardons all sinners, not to 
 speak of such a dear, good uncle as your- 
 self." 
 
 *' Yes ; and why should we stir in this 
 matter at all ? " asked another old man of 
 the same age as the uncle. '* You and I 
 
WOI^K WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 15 
 
 have perhaps two days more to live ; why 
 fritter them away in making plans and 
 projects ? " 
 
 ** How extraordinary ! " cried one of the 
 guests (he had uttered no word during the 
 entire discussion), *' how incomprehensible ! 
 We are all agreed that we should live in 
 accordance with God's law, and that we 
 are actually living badly, sinfully, and are 
 suffering in body and in soul in conse- 
 quence, and yet no sooner is it a question 
 of putting our conclusions in practice than 
 we discover that children should be ex- 
 cepted — they, forsooth, are not to be 
 disciplined in the new life, but educated 
 on the old lines. Then young men should 
 not go against the will of their parents, 
 and so instead of embracing the new ideas 
 should make the best of the old. Married 
 men, again, have no right to discipline 
 
16 H'ORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 their wives and children, and inure them 
 to the new way of living — and so they, 
 too, should live the sinful life of the past. 
 As for old men, it is too late for them to 
 begin ; they are not accustomed to the 
 hardships of the new life, and, besides, 
 they have only two or three days left to 
 live. It appears, therefore, that no one 
 should lead a good, upright, spiritual life ; 
 the utmost people may do is to discourse 
 about it*' 
 
( 17 ) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It happened in the reign of the Roman 
 Emperor Trajan, one hundred years after 
 the birth of Christ. The disciples of 
 Christs disciples were still in the flesh, 
 and the Christians of that day held fast to 
 the law of the Master, as the author of the 
 Acts of the Apostles tells us : " And the 
 multitude of them that believed were of 
 one heart and of one soul ; neither said 
 any of them that aught of the things which 
 he possessed was his own ; but they had 
 all things common. And with great power 
 gave the Apostles witness of the resurrec- 
 tion of the Lord Jesus; and great grace 
 
 B 
 
l8 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 was upon them all. Neither were there 
 any among them that lacked ; for as many 
 as were possessors of lands or houses sold 
 them, and brought the prices of the things 
 that were sold, and laid them down at the 
 Apostles' feet ; and distribution was made 
 unto every man according as he had need." 
 In those early years of Christianity there 
 lived in the province of Cilicia, in the town 
 of Tarsus, a wealthy Syrian merchant 
 named Juvenal, who dealt in precious 
 stones. By birth he belonged to the 
 poorest and lowest class of the community; 
 but by dint of hard work, and by the skill 
 he acquired in his calling, he accumulated 
 considerable riches, and won the respect of 
 his fellow-citizens. He had travelled much 
 in various lands, and, although he pos- 
 sessed no claim to be regarded as learned 
 or educated, he had seen and assimilated 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 19 
 
 much, and his fellow-burghers held him 
 in high esteem for his sound intellect and 
 keen sense of justice. He professed the 
 faith of Pagan Rome, the religion to which 
 all respectable citizens of the Roman Empire 
 belonged, and whose forms and ceremonies 
 began to be strictly enforced in the reign 
 of the Emperor Augustus, and were still 
 rigidly observed by the Emperor Trajan. 
 The province of Cilicia is at a consider- 
 able distance from Rome ; but it was ruled 
 by a Roman Governor, and the effects of 
 every wave of progress and retrogression 
 that passed over Rome were distinctly felt 
 in Cilicia, whose Governors were ever eager 
 to imitate their Emperor. 
 
 Juvenal had a vivid recollection of the 
 stories he had heard when a lad of Nero's 
 life and death ; it was within his own 
 memory how Emperor after Emperor had 
 
20 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 come to an untimely end, and, like a 
 shrewd observer, he perceived that there 
 was nothing sacred either in the Imperial 
 power or in the Roman religion ; that both 
 were the work of human hands. This 
 same native shrewdness of his served like- 
 wise to bring home to his mind the futility 
 of rising up against the Imperial authority, 
 and the necessity, for his own peace and 
 happiness, of submitting to the established 
 order of things. Yet for all this he was 
 often bewildered by the wild disorder of 
 the life around him, especially in Rome 
 itself, whither his affairs frequently took 
 him. And at such times he was seized 
 with disquieting doubts ; but he regained 
 his wonted composure by reflecting that 
 his mind was too circumscribed to take in 
 every point of view, too undisciplined to 
 draw the right conclusions from such facts 
 
tVORJ^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 21 
 
 as he observed. He was married, and 
 had had four children, three of whom died 
 young. His surviving son was named 
 Juhus. 
 
 In JuHus was centred all his love; he 
 was the object of all his tender care. It 
 was his special endeavour so to educate 
 and train up this boy as to spare him in 
 after life the excruciating pains which 
 he himself experienced from his frequent 
 doubts and perplexities about the problem 
 of life. 
 
 When Julius attained his fifteenth year, 
 his father confided him to the care of a 
 philosopher who had come to live in the 
 town for the purpose of taking in young 
 men and educating them. Into the charge 
 of this teacher he gave his son, and his 
 son s young comrade Pamphillus, the son 
 of a freedman of his who had died some 
 
22 work: while ye ha ve the light, 
 
 time previously. The boys were of 
 the same age, both of them handsome, 
 manly young fellows, and good friends to 
 boot. 
 
 They applied themselves vigorously to 
 their studies and made rapid progress. 
 They were also, both of them, well-con- 
 ducted. Julius evinced a marked pre- 
 dilection for letters and mathematics, while 
 Pamphilius' taste led him to pursue the 
 study of philosophy. 
 
 A year before the completion of the 
 prciscribed course of studies, Pamphilius 
 came into school one day and informed 
 the master that his widowed mother in- 
 tended to leave the city for good, and 
 settle with a few friends in the little town 
 of Daphne ; that it would be his duty to 
 accompany her and make himself useful 
 to her ; and that he must, in consequence. 
 
WORJ^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 23 
 
 withdraw from the school and bring his 
 studies thus abruptly to an end. 
 
 The master was sorry to lose a pupil 
 who reflected such credit on his teacher ; 
 Juvenal likewise regretted the departure 
 of his son's bosom friend, but no one felt 
 his loss so keenly as Julius. But Pam- 
 philius remained deaf to all their entreaties 
 that he should spend another year at 
 school and finish his education. Thank- 
 ing his friends for the many proofs of their 
 affection they had given him, he bade 
 them good-bye and departed. 
 
 Two years whirled past. Julius had 
 completed his course of studies without 
 having once seen his friend. One day he 
 was agreeably surprised to meet him in 
 the street ; he asked him to his father s 
 house, where he examined and cross- 
 examined him as to where and how he 
 
54 tt^ORk WHILE YE tIA VE THM LIGHT, 
 
 had lived since they parted. PamphiHiis 
 told him that he was still living with his 
 mother in the same place. 
 
 *'We are not living alone," he added. 
 "We have many friends with us with 
 whom we enjoy everything in common." 
 
 " How do you mean in common ? " asked 
 Julius. 
 
 *' So that none of us looks upon any- 
 thing as his own property." 
 
 ** Why do you do that, may I ask ? " 
 
 ** Because we are Christians," answered 
 Pamphilius. 
 
 '* Is it possible ! " cried Julius. 
 
 Now to be a Christian in those days 
 meant about the same thing as being a 
 conspirator in these. The moment a 
 person was convicted of belonging to the 
 Christian sect he was arrested, put in 
 prison, tried, and if he refused to abjure 
 
rVORJ^ WHILE VE HA VE THE LIGHT. 25 
 
 his faith, put to death. It was the con- 
 sciousness of all this that terrified JuHus 
 when he learned that his comrade had 
 embraced the new faith. He had heard 
 unutterable horrors attributed to the Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 " I am told that Christians butcher 
 little children and eat them. Can it be that 
 you too take part in these atrocities } " 
 
 " Come and see for yourself," replied 
 Pamphilius. '' We do nothing out of the 
 common, we live in a simple way, striving 
 to do nothing bad." 
 
 " But how, pray, is it possible to get 
 along without looking upon anything as 
 your own property } " 
 
 ** We support ourselves. And if we 
 labour in the service of our brethren, they 
 in turn share with us the fruits of their 
 toil." 
 
26 PVO/^JiT WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 '' Well, but how if your brethren take 
 your services and give you nothing in 
 return ? " insisted Julius. 
 
 ** We have no such persons among us," 
 replied Pamphilius. ** People of that bent 
 have a taste for living luxuriously, and it 
 is not in our community that they will 
 come to seek the realisation of their 
 desires ; our living is simple, not luxurious, 
 nor even comfortable." 
 
 '* Yes, but there exists a goodly number 
 of lazy, idle people who ask nothing better 
 than to be kept and fed for nothing." 
 
 ''There certainly are such persons, and 
 we receive them and give them a hearty 
 welcome. We lately had a man of that 
 description — a runaway slave. At first he 
 led a lazy, good-for-nothing life ; but he 
 soon turned over a new leaf, and is now an 
 exemplary brother.^' 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 27 
 
 ''Well, but what if he had not re- 
 formed ? " 
 
 '' There are some of that category also ; 
 our Elder, Cyril, says that it is especially 
 incumbent upon us to treat such people as 
 dearly beloved brethren, and to let slip no 
 opportunity of showing them our love." 
 
 *' But is it possible to love rascals ? " 
 
 ''It is wrong not to love your fellow- 
 
 man." 
 
 " Tell me now how you can bring your- 
 selves to give every one whatever it pleases 
 him to ask of you ? " inquired Julius. '' I 
 know,*' he added, *' that if my father were 
 to give every one what he wants and asks 
 for, in a very short space of time he would 
 be as poor as when he came into the 
 world." 
 
 ** I cannot say," Pamphilius made answer ; 
 *' but somehow we always have enough to 
 
28 WOI^K WHILE YE HA VE THE LICHT, 
 
 satisfy our needs. And if it should come 
 to pass that we have nothing to eat, or to 
 cover our bodies with, we ask what we lack 
 of others, and they do not withhold it. 
 That happens but very rarely, however. 
 For my part, I have only once had to lie 
 down at night without having had my 
 supper, and even then it was chiefly 
 because I was tired out that evening, 
 and did not feel disposed to go off to 
 one of the brethren and ask him for a 
 meal." 
 
 '' Well, of course I don*t pretend to know 
 how you manage these things," observed 
 Julius ; ** but my father maintains that if he 
 did not look carefully after his own, and if 
 he were to give to all who came a-begging, 
 he would very soon be eaten out of house 
 and home, and left to die of hunger." 
 
 *' We don't die of hunger. But you had 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 29 
 
 better come and see for yourself. Not 
 only are we alive, and not in want, but we 
 have even a superfluity." 
 
 '' How do you explain it ?" 
 
 ''In this way. We all profess one and 
 the same law ; but the degree of strength 
 we possess to observe it varies greatly, one 
 man being endowed with a much greater 
 degree of it than another. Thus one per- 
 son may have already attained to perfec- 
 tion in the good life, while another may be 
 still struggling with the difficulties that are 
 met with at the outset. High above us 
 all Christ stands clearly out with His life, 
 and it is our constant endeavour to imitate 
 Him. In this we place our happiness. 
 Some members of our community — like 
 the Elder Cyrill, for instance, and the 
 woman Pelagea — are farther advanced 
 than any of us ; others stand close behind 
 
30 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 them ; others, again, are still further 
 behind ; but we are, all of us, moving 
 forwards in the same direction, on the 
 same road. 
 
 '' The pioneers are already near the law 
 of Christ — abnegation of self — having lost 
 their soul in order to find it. Men of 
 this type want nothing. They feel no 
 pity for themselves, and to fulfil Christ's 
 law they would gladly give the last loaf, 
 the last garment, to him who asks for it. 
 There are others — weaker souls — who 
 cannot as j^et give up everything. They 
 grow faint and take pity upon themselves. 
 They lose their strength without their 
 usual food or clothing, and so they can- 
 not yet bring themselves to give away 
 everything demanded of them. 
 
 '' There are others still weaker than 
 these — persons who have only recently 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 31 
 
 entered upon the right road. They still 
 go on living as before ; hoarding up many 
 things for their own use, and give alms 
 only of their superfluity. Now these 
 soldiers of the rearguard afford material 
 help and support to those who are in the 
 front ranks. 
 
 ''Moreover, it should not be lost sight 
 of that we are all entangled in the web of 
 kinship with Pagans. One brother has a 
 father still living who is an idolater ; he 
 owns an estate, and he makes an allowance 
 to his son. The son distributes it in alms, 
 and the father in due time forwards more. 
 Another has a Pagan mother, who com- 
 miserates her son and sends him help. In 
 another case it is the children who are 
 heathens, while the mother is a Christian. 
 The children, anxious to ensure their 
 mother's comfort, give her what they can 
 
32 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 afford, entreating her not to distribute it to 
 others. She accepts it out of love for them, 
 but forthwith gives it all away. In other 
 cases the wife is a Pagan and the husband 
 a Christian, or else the reverse. 
 
 " Thus it is that we are all inextricably 
 entangled. Those in front would be happy 
 to give away the last crust of bread, the 
 last rag of clothing, but they cannot ; for 
 what seems the last is always succeeded 
 by another. It is in this wise that the 
 weak are always being strengthened in the 
 faith, and the same state of things explains 
 why it is that we are never without the 
 superfluous.'* 
 
 To which Julius made answer as fol- 
 lows : '* If that be so, it is obvious that you 
 swerve considerably from the teaching of 
 Christy and put seeming in the place of 
 being. If you do not give away every- 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 33 
 
 thing, there is no difference whatever 
 between you and us. To my thinking, if 
 you once set up to be a Christian, you 
 should go about it in a thorough fashion, 
 and fulfil every iota of the law, distribut- 
 ing everything in alms and remaining a 
 beggar." 
 
 *' Truly, that would be best of all," 
 assented Pamphilius ; '' why do you not do 
 so r 
 
 *' I will, when you Christians set me the 
 example." 
 
 ** Oh, we have no wish to do anything for 
 the sake of show. Nor should I advise 
 you to come over to us and leave your 
 own surroundings, merely for the sake of 
 effect. Whatever we do is undertaken in 
 virtue of our faith." 
 
 ** What do you mean by the expression 
 * in virtue of our faith ' ? " 
 
 c 
 
34 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 '' I mean that we hold that escape from 
 the evils of the world, from death, is to be 
 found only in life as Christ understood it. 
 As to what people will say of us, it does 
 not matter. We live as we do, not in 
 order to please people, but because we 
 see therein the only means of obtaining 
 life and happiness.'' 
 
 '' It is impossible not to live for oneself," 
 objected Julius ; '' the gods have made it 
 part of our nature that we should love our- 
 selves more dearly than all others, and 
 should seek our own enjoyment. And this 
 is precisely what you Christians also do. 
 You have admitted, yourself, that the pity 
 which many of your brethren feel is for 
 themselves. They will go on gradually 
 seeking more and more keenly their own 
 pleasures, and in a corresponding degree 
 throwing aside the teachings of your faith \ 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 35 
 
 and in this they will be doing just as we 
 do/' 
 
 '' No, not so," replied Pamphilius. **Our 
 brethren are travelling on a different road, 
 and they never grow fainter and weaker, 
 but continually stronger ; just as fire never 
 goes out as long as fuel continues to be 
 heap-sd upon it. Such is the force of 
 faith/' 
 
 ''Still I fail to see in what this faith 
 consists." 
 
 ''Our faith consists in this, that we un- 
 derstand life as Christ interpreted it for us." 
 
 ''And that is.^" 
 
 "Christ once related the following par- 
 able : Certain husbandmen cultivated a 
 vineyard planted by a householder, for 
 which they were bound to give him of the 
 fruit. We who live in the world are these 
 husbandmen, and we are bound to pay 
 
36 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 tribute to God, to fulfil His will. But the 
 people who lived and believed with the 
 world imagined that the vineyard was 
 theirs ; that they had nothing to pay for it, 
 but might enjoy the fruits it brought forth 
 without more ado. And the lord of the 
 vineyard sent a servant to collect the 
 tribute, but they drove him away. He 
 then despatched his son, but they killed 
 him, thinking that after this no one would 
 ever again interfere with them. Now this 
 is the world's faith, by which all worldlings 
 regulate their lives, ignoring the fact that 
 life is given to be spent in God. Christ 
 taught us that the faith of the world — viz., 
 that it will be better for a man if he drives 
 the lord's servant and his son out of his 
 garden and refuses to pay tribute — is false, 
 because every man must either pay tribute, 
 or be ejected from the vineyard. He 
 
PVOJ^/^ WHILE VE HAVk THM LIGHT. j; 
 
 taught us that the things which we term 
 pleasures — eating, drinking, amusements, 
 &c. — are not, and cannot be, pleasures, if 
 we make them our aim in life ; that they 
 become joys only when we place our 
 happiness in something different — namely, 
 the fulfilment of God's will. Then, and 
 only then, are these pleasures experienced, 
 as something added to and contingent 
 upon the performance of God's behests. 
 To wish to enjoy the pleasures without 
 being at the trouble of doing God's will, 
 to pluck out the flowers as it were from 
 among the thorns of labour, is as wise as 
 it would be to gather stalks and plant them 
 without the roots. This is our faith, and 
 it is in virtue of it that we refuse to go in 
 search of an illusion instead of the truth. 
 We know that the happiness of life is not 
 bound up with its pleasures, but lies in the 
 
3S Vf^ORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 fulfilment of the will of God, without our 
 entertaining a thought or a hope of any 
 pleasure. And we live thus in consequence ; 
 and the longer we live, the more clearly 
 we perceive that enjoyment and bliss 
 follow close upon the performance of God's 
 will, as the wheels of the cart follow the 
 shaft. Our Master said : * Come unto me 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
 I will give you rest. ' " 
 
 Thus spoke Pamphilius. Julius listened 
 with rapt attention, and his heart was 
 touched by what he heard; but still he 
 was not quite clear as to the significance of 
 all that Pamphilius had been saying. One 
 moment he suspected his friend of attempt- 
 ing to deceive him ; an instant later, as he 
 gazed steadily into his mild, truthful eyes, 
 he persuaded himself that Pamphilius was 
 deceiving himself. 
 
IVO/^A^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 39 
 
 Pamphilius invited his friend to pay him 
 a visit, during which he might study the 
 Hfe of their community for himself, and, 
 should it please him, to take up his abode 
 with them for the rest of his days. And 
 Julius promised that he would. 
 
 He promised, but he did not visit Pam- 
 philius ; and, carried away by the whirl of 
 the life of a large city, he soon forgot all 
 about him. He seemed to have an in- 
 stinctive fear that the life of the Christians 
 might prove too attractive for him to with- 
 stand. He therefore pictured it to himself 
 as an existence in which one had to re- 
 nounce all the bright sides of life. And 
 he could not prevail upon himself to give 
 them up, because in them he centred the 
 aim and object of his life. He blamed 
 and condemned the Christians, and he set 
 great store by this condemnation ; he was 
 
40 IVOJiJC WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 apprehensive lest he might some time or 
 other cease to condemn them, and for this 
 reason he availed himself of every oppor- 
 tunity that offered to seek for the seamy 
 side of Christianity. Wherever and when- 
 ever he came in contact with Christians 
 in the city, he invariably discovered some 
 pretext in their conduct for censuring them. 
 When he saw them in the market-place 
 selling fruit and vegetables, he would say 
 to himself, and sometimes to them : " You 
 profess to own nothing, and yet here you 
 are selling products for money, instead of 
 giving them away for nothing to whoever 
 wants to take them; you are deluding 
 yourselves, and deceiving others." And 
 he refused to listen to their arguments, by 
 which they sought to convince him that 
 it was necessary and just that they should 
 sell their products in the market, and not 
 
H^OJ^A^ WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 41 
 
 give them away. Whenever he saw a 
 Christian wearing a good, well-made article 
 of clothing, he never failed to reproach 
 him with inconsistency for not having 
 given it away. It was indispensable to 
 his peace of mind that Christians should 
 be wrong, and, as they never denied that 
 they were in fault, they were always guilty 
 in his eyes. He looked upon them as 
 Pharisees, deceivers, whose force lay in 
 their high-flown phrases and their weak- 
 ness in action. And of himself, he re- 
 marked, by way of contrast, ** I at least 
 profess what I practise, whereas you say 
 one thing and do another." And, having 
 persuaded himself that this was really so, 
 he felt quite reassured and continued to 
 live as before. 
 
( 42 } 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 By nature, Julius was gifted with a mild, 
 amiable disposition ; but, like most young 
 men of his time and country, he was the 
 owner of slaves, whom he often punished 
 in a barbarous manner, either when tliey 
 neglected to carry out his commands, or 
 simply when he himself was out of sorts. 
 He was the possessor of a collection of 
 precious, useless curios, and rich cos- 
 tumes, to which he was continually making 
 new additions. He was also fond of 
 theatres and spectacles, and from his youth 
 upwards provided himself with mistresses ; 
 and he often abandoned himself, in the 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 43 
 
 society of his friends, to gross excesses in 
 eating and drinking. In a word, his Hfe 
 ghded onwards smoothly and gaily — as it 
 seemed to him ; for he could not himself 
 survey its course. It was made up almost 
 exclusively of amusements, and the number 
 of them was so great that he lacked even 
 the time to give the matter a thought. 
 
 Two years passed rapidly away in this 
 seemingly delightful manner, and Julius 
 took it for granted that all the years of life 
 must naturally roll by as pleasantly as 
 these two. But, in the nature of things, 
 this is an utter impossibility ; for in a life 
 like that which Julius was leading it is 
 indispensable to go on continually increas- 
 ing and intensifying the amusements, in 
 order to maintain the pleasure undimin- 
 ished. If, in the beginning, he enjoyed 
 quaffing a goblet of mellow wine in the 
 
44 IVOI^K WHILE Y^ Ha VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 company of a friend, the pleasure cloyed 
 after several repetitions, and he soon found 
 it necessary to drink two or three such 
 goblets of still better wine, in order to ob- 
 tain the same amount of enjoyment. If at 
 first it was pleasant to while away an hour 
 or two in converse with a friend, the pleasure 
 soon wore off ; and, in order to spend that 
 time with an equal degree of satisfaction, 
 It soon became needful to substitute a 
 female for a male friend ; and later on even 
 this failed of its effect, and something else 
 was required. In time, this new arrange- 
 ment likewise proved a failure ; the same 
 friends, even though they were female 
 friends, became tiresome in the end, and 
 had to be changed. And so with all his pas- 
 times and amusements : in order to make 
 them yield the same amount of pleasure, it 
 became necessary to increase and intensify 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 45 
 
 them, to make greater demands on the 
 co-operation of others ; and for people who 
 do not happen to be rulers, there was and 
 is but one way of making other people 
 comply with ones wishes — namely, by 
 means of money. It was so with Julius. 
 He gave himself up to pleasures of the 
 body, and, not being a ruler, could not 
 command others to be subservient to his 
 desires, so that, to purchase their co- 
 operation and increase his pleasures, he 
 needed money. 
 
 Now Julius' father was a rich man, and 
 as he loved and was proud of his only 
 son, he opened wide his purse to gratify 
 his every whim, stinting him in nothing. 
 Julius' life, therefore, was that of rich 
 young men all the world over — one of 
 idleness, luxury, and immoral amusements, 
 which have always been, and will ever 
 
 I 
 
46 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 remain, the same — wine, gambling, ''and 
 light, venal women. 
 
 But his pleasures continued to absorb 
 ever increasing sums of money, and his 
 sources of income frequently ran dry. 
 One day he asked his father for a larger 
 sum than usual. His father granted his 
 request, but reprimanded him for his pro- 
 digality. He knew in his heart that 
 he was guilty and the reproaches well 
 merited ; but he could not bear to admit 
 his guilt, and so he lost his temper and 
 was insolent to his father, as is usually the 
 way with persons who know themselves 
 to be in fault, but are unwilling to confess 
 it. He received the sum he asked for and 
 speedily squandered it. What was still 
 worse, he and a drunken comrade of his 
 picked a quarrel with some man and killed 
 him. The city prefect, informed of what 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 47 
 
 had taken place, had JuHus taken into 
 custody ; but his father, after considerable 
 exertions, succeeded in obtaining his par- 
 don. During all this time, the demands 
 on Julius' purse, in consequence of the 
 troubles into which his pleasures landed 
 him, became greater and more frequent. 
 He borrowed a large sum of a comrade, 
 promising soon to refund it. Moreover, 
 his mistress selected this time of all others 
 to demand more presents ; she had taken 
 a fancy to a necklace of pearls, and he 
 could see that if he did not humour her 
 caprice in the matter she would shake him 
 off, and give him a successor in the person 
 of a wealthy man who had made repeated 
 attempts to supplant Julius. In his straits 
 Julius went to his mother, told her that, 
 come what would, he must have the money, 
 and that if she could not raise the sum 
 
48 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 needed, he would put an end to his exist- 
 ence. 
 
 The circumstance that he had drifted 
 into this embarrassing situation, he ascribed 
 wholly to his father ; to himself he took 
 no share of the blame. 
 
 *^ My father," he argued, ** first accus- 
 tomed me to a life of luxury, and now he 
 turns round and grudges me the funds 
 necessary to maintain it. If in the be- 
 ginning he had given me, without any 
 reproaches, the sums he gave later on, I 
 should have been able to arrange my life 
 very comfortably, steering clear of im- 
 pecuniosity and want. But as he always 
 insisted on doling out his money in mites, 
 I never possessed enough for my needs, 
 and had to have dealings with usurers, 
 who suck me as a spider sucks a fly ; and 
 now that I lack the wherewithal to keep 
 
tVORi: iVfllLE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 49 
 
 up the kind of life to which I am accus- 
 tomed, and which alone beseems young 
 men of my station, I am ashamed to 
 meet my friends and companions, and 
 my father obstinately refuses to put 
 himself in my position and realise my 
 difficulties. He forgets that he, too, was 
 once young. Why, it is actually he whom 
 I have to blame for everything I am 
 now enduring ; and if he does not give 
 me the sum I have asked for I will kill 
 myself. That's just the long and the short 
 of it." 
 
 His mother, who had always spoiled 
 her son, straightway went to her husband. 
 He sent for his son and bitterly re- 
 proached both him and his mother. Julius 
 made insolent replies. His father struck 
 him. He seized his father by the hand. 
 His father shouted for the slaves, and 
 
50 IVORK WHILE YE BA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 ordered them to bind his son and lock 
 him up. 
 
 In the solitude of his room, Julius cursed 
 his father and his life. His own or his 
 father's death suggested itself to his mind 
 as the only issue out of his present 
 desperate condition. 
 
 Julius' mother suffered infinitely more 
 than her son. She did not pause to in- 
 quire who was really to blame in all this. 
 She was possessed by one sole sentiment 
 — compassion for her unhappy child. She 
 again sought out her husband and im- 
 plored him to forgive the boy. Instead of 
 listening to what she had to urge, he re- 
 viled her and accused her of having de- 
 moralised her son. She hurled back the 
 reproaches, and the scene ended by her 
 husband beating her. Undaunted by what 
 had come of her intercession with her 
 
WORIC WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 51 
 
 husband, she yielded again to her maternal 
 instinct, which prompted her to hurry off 
 to her son and beg him to ask his father's 
 forgiveness. In return for this sacrifice 
 on his part, she promised to supply him 
 with the sum of money he required un- 
 known to his father. He assented, and 
 she then went to her husband and im- 
 plored him to forgive his son. At first 
 he loaded mother and son with reproaches, 
 but at last he agreed to pardon his son 
 on one condition — that he would aban- 
 don for ever his dissolute life and marry 
 the daughter of a certain wealthy mer- 
 chant, whose consent he undertook to 
 obtain. 
 
 ''He will receive money from me as 
 well as a dowry from his bride," he added, 
 ''and then let him begin to lead a new 
 regular life. If he promises to do my will 
 
p WORk" WHILE YM HA VE Tll^ LIGHT, 
 
 in this matter, I forgive him. At present 
 I will give him nothing, and on his first 
 ofifence I will hand him over to the city 
 authorities." 
 
 Julius accepted the terms proposed by 
 his father and was set at liberty. He pro- 
 mised to marry as directed, and live a re- 
 formed life, but he had not the slightest 
 intention of doing either. His life at 
 home had become a hell to him. His 
 father never spoke to him, and was per- 
 petually upbraiding his mother on his ac- 
 count His mother was continually in 
 tears. 
 
 The day following his release, his 
 mother sent for him and secretly handed 
 him over jewels, which she had ab- 
 stracted from her husband. *' Here they 
 are," she said, ** take them away and sell 
 them ; but not here, in some other city, 
 
WORJ^ WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 53 
 
 and do with the proceeds what you say is 
 necessary. I think I can answer for their 
 disappearance remaining undiscovered for 
 some days at least. But if it should leak 
 out, I will put the blame on one of the 
 slaves." 
 
 Julius* heart was greatly troubled by 
 these words of his mother. He was 
 horrified at what she had done for him, 
 and, without taking or touching the pre- 
 cious stones, he left the house. Why and 
 whither was he going ? He knew not. 
 He went on and on beyond the city 
 boundaries, feeling the absolute necessity 
 of being alone and of meditating on all 
 that had happened to him, and on what 
 still awaited him. Leaving the city be- 
 hind him, he entered a shady grove sacred 
 to the goddess Diana. Making for a 
 solitary spot there, he gave himself up to 
 
54 WOKl^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 meditation. His first impulse was to pray 
 to the goddess and ask her for help. But 
 he no longer believed in the gods of the 
 empire, and knew that prayers to them 
 would prove unavailing, succour from that 
 quarter an impossibility. But if they could 
 not comfort and assist him, who could ? 
 It appeared strange and preposterous for 
 him to be compelled to do his own think- 
 ing in this matter. Disorder and darkness 
 reigned in his heart. And yet there was 
 no other alternative. There was nothinir 
 for it but to appeal to his own conscience, 
 and in the lurid light it shed he began to 
 scrutinise the main actions of his life. He 
 discovered that they were bad, and, what 
 he had never before suspected, foolish. 
 What made him torment himself so } 
 What impelled him to waste all the young 
 years of his life so wantonly ? The 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 55 
 
 . thoughts that these questions suggested 
 had Httle to console him and much to make 
 him miserable. What enhanced his suffer- 
 ing more than all else was the feeling 
 of utter loneliness that oppressed him. 
 Hitherto he had had a loving mother, a 
 father to look to ; he was not without a 
 certain number of friends. But now he 
 was quite alone in the universe. No 
 longer loved by any one, he was a burden 
 to all. He had crossed every one s path 
 in life ; had caused his mother to quarrel 
 with his father ; had scattered to the 
 winds the riches that his father had 
 
 ^ spent the labour of a lifetime in slowlj. 
 accumulating ; he had become a dis- 
 agreeable and dangerous rival to his 
 friends. Was it so strange, then, if they 
 all longed for his death, as he supposed 
 they did ? 
 
56 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 Prominent among the figures that rose 
 up before his mind's eye during this roll- 
 call of past years was Pamphilius, cordially 
 welcoming him to the Christian community, 
 and bidding him leave everything and cast 
 in his lot with them. And the impulse to 
 do so grew strong upon him. " But is my 
 position, then, so utterly hopeless ? " he 
 asked himself; and, as he again conjured 
 up the events of recent years, his heart 
 sank within him at the thought that no 
 one loved him more. Father, mother, 
 friends, could not possibly cherish any 
 affection for him ; indeed, they could not 
 do otherwise than desire his death. But 
 did he himself love any one ? He felt that 
 he was attached to none of his friends. 
 They were, all of them, his rivals, and had 
 not a throb of pity for him now that his 
 
WORA^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 57 
 
 misfortunes were thick upon him. And 
 his father? he asked himself. And, look- 
 ing into his heart to find the answer there, 
 was appalled at what he saw. Not only 
 did he not love his father, but he actually 
 hated him for the restrictions, the insults, 
 he had put upon him. Yes, hate was the 
 word ; he hated him, and, more than that, 
 he perceived clearly that to his own happi- 
 ness his father's death was absolutely indis- 
 pensable. 
 
 *' Yes, this is so. And suppose I knew 
 that no one would ever see or hear of it, 
 how would I act if I had it in my power to 
 take his life at a single blow, and free my- 
 self from his tyranny.'^" And Julius dis- 
 tinctly replied to himself : '* I would kill 
 him ; " and he was horrified that it was so. 
 **And my mother?" he asked. **Yes, I 
 
58 WOJ^K WHILE YE II A VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 pity, but do not love her. I do not care 
 what becomes of her; all I want is her 
 
 help Why, I am a wild beast! 
 
 A wild beast at bay, hounded down; and 
 the sole difference between myself and the 
 beast is that I can, if I so will it, leave 
 this deceitful, wicked life ; I can do what 
 the wild beast cannot — kill myself. I 
 hate my father; I love no one, neither 
 mother nor friends — perhaps Pamphilius 
 alone." 
 
 And he again reverted to his friend, 
 calling to mind their last meeting, their 
 conversation, and the words of Christ cited 
 by Pamphilius : '' Come unto me all ye 
 that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest." ''Can that be true.'^" he 
 asked himself. He began to stir up his 
 recollections of the discussion with Pam- 
 philius, and his memory dwelt with pre- 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 59 
 
 dilection on the serene, fearless, and joyful 
 countenance of his friend, and he was filled 
 with a desire to see and hear him again, 
 and, above all, to believe what he had 
 been told by him. '' Who am I after all ? 
 A man in search of happiness. I sought 
 for it in luxury and lust, but failed to find 
 it there. And those who live as I have 
 lived will fail in like manner. They are 
 malicious, and are all of them suffering. 
 On the other hand, there is one man who 
 is always joyful, because he is not in search 
 of anything. He tells me that there are 
 many such as he, that all men may become 
 such ; that I, for one, can, if I be so 
 minded, on condition that I carry out the 
 precepts given by his Master. Now, what 
 if all this be true } True or not true, there's 
 an attraction about it which I cannot with- 
 stand. I shall go." 
 
6o WORK IVIIILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 And repeating this to himself, Julius 
 passed out of the shady grove, and, deter- 
 termined never again to return home, 
 wended his way to the village in which 
 the Christians lived. 
 
( 6I ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Julius walked on briskly, his spirits rising 
 in proportion as he drew nearer the village, 
 and the colours grew more distinct and 
 life-like in the picture he set before his 
 mind of the life led by the Christians. 
 
 Just as the sun was sinking beneath the 
 horizon and he was about to take a short 
 rest, he met a man by the wayside, reposing 
 and taking his evening meal. 
 
 He was a person of middle age, and, to 
 judge by externals, of considerable intel- 
 lectual culture. He was seated, and was 
 leisurely eating olives and bread. As soon 
 as he saw Julius he said with a smile : 
 
Gi IVORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 ** Good-evening, young man, you have still 
 a long journey before you. Be seated and 
 rest yourself awhile." Julius thanked him 
 and sat down beside him. 
 
 '' Whither bound, may I ask ? " he 
 queried. 
 
 *' I am going to the Christians," replied 
 Julius; and in answer to further questions 
 narrated his whole life and the mental 
 process which had resulted in this sudden 
 resolution. 
 
 The stranger listened attentively and in 
 silence, broken rarely by such questions as 
 seemed necessary to clear up some obscure 
 allusion or throw light upon some event or 
 opinion, the knowledge of which had been 
 taken for granted. Comment or opinion 
 he offered none. When at length Julius 
 brought his story to an end, he gathered 
 up the food that remained over after his 
 
tVOJ^/^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 63 
 
 meal was done, adjusted his garments, and 
 said: ''Young man, do not carry out your 
 design ; you have wandered away from the 
 direct road. I know life; you do not. 
 Listen ; I shall analyse the principal events 
 of your past history and your reflections 
 upon them ; and after you have had them 
 presented to you in the form which they 
 have assumed in my mind, you can take 
 any course that commends itself to you as 
 wise. You are young, wealthy, handsome, 
 strong — your heart is a seething whirlpool 
 of raging passions. You now yearn for a 
 quiet retreat in which those passions shall 
 not disturb you, and you shall be spared 
 the suffering produced by their effects; 
 and you are willing to believe that you 
 will find such a haven among the Christians. 
 Now there is no such port of safety, dear 
 young friend, there or elsewhere ; because 
 
64 tVO/^Jt WHILE YE HA VM THE LIGHT. 
 
 that which agitates and torments you is 
 not located in Cilicia or in Rome, but has 
 its abode within yourself. In the quiet of 
 a sequestered village those same passions 
 will rage within you and convulse you, 
 only a hundredfold more violently than 
 before. The fraud or mistake of the 
 Christians (I have no mind to judge them) 
 consists in their refusal to recognise human 
 nature. The only persons really capable 
 of putting Christian teachings in practice 
 are old men, in whom the snow and frost 
 of age have quenched the last embers of 
 human passion. A man in the flower of 
 his years and strength, especially a young 
 man like yourself, who has not yet tasted 
 the fruits of life and does not even know 
 his own mind, cannot submit to their law, 
 because that law is founded, not on human 
 nature, but on the idle imaginings of Christ 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 65 
 
 their founder. If you become one of them, 
 you will continue to suffer from the same 
 causes as before, only to a much greater 
 extent. Now, your passions lure you out 
 of the right road into devious paths and 
 byways ; but having once gone astray, you 
 have it in your power to retrace your steps 
 and set yourself right; and you enjoy, 
 besides, the satisfaction of passions set free 
 — ix.^ the joy of life. But living as a 
 Christian and curbing your passions, so to 
 say, by force, you will still be able to go 
 astray, only more frequently and irremedi- 
 ably than before, and you will endure over 
 and above the undying torment caused by 
 the unappeased appetites of human nature. 
 Let loose the pent-up water of a dam, and 
 it will moisten and fructify field and meadow 
 and refresh the beasts that are grazing 
 thereon ; but dam it up, and it v/ill delve 
 
66 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 into the soil and flow in a thick muddy 
 stream. It is even so with the human 
 passions. The teaching of the Christians 
 (with the exception of certain behefs with 
 which they console and comfort themselves, 
 and on which I have no wish to dwell at 
 present), in so far as it affects their daily 
 life, may be summed up as follows : they 
 condemn violence ; they disapprove of wars 
 and courts of justice; they refuse to recog- 
 nise property ; they repudiate the sciences 
 and arts — in a word, they eschew every- 
 thing that tends to make life bright and 
 pleasant. Even this would be well, if all 
 men corresponded to the description which 
 they give of their teacher. But so far is 
 this from being the case, that it is an 
 absolute impossibility. Men are naturally 
 evil-minded and swayed by their passions. 
 It is this constant play of the passions, and 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 67 
 
 the clashing and struggling that results, 
 which hold people fast in that network of 
 conditions in which they live. Savages 
 know no restrictions, and a single individual 
 among them would, for the sake of glutting 
 his lusts, annihilate the entire world, if all 
 men submitted to evil as meekly as the 
 Christians. If the gods endowed man with 
 a sentiment of anger, vindictiveness, even 
 of malice against the malicious, we may 
 take it that they did so because those 
 sentiments were necessary to the preserva- 
 tion of human life. 
 
 '' The Christians hold that these senti- 
 ments are evil, and that without them 
 men would be happy ; there would then 
 be no murders, no executions, no wars. 
 This is true, but one might just as well 
 assert that it would materially contribute 
 to the happiness of men if they were 
 
68 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 relieved of the necessity of eating and 
 drinking. 
 
 *' There would, indeed, be no hunger nor 
 thirst, nor any of the calamities they pro- 
 duce. But this supposition does not 
 change human nature one iota. And so it 
 is with all the other human passions : 
 indignation, malice, vindictiveness, even 
 sexual love, and love of luxury, pomp and 
 greatness, are likewise characteristics of 
 the gods ; hence they are also, in a modi- 
 fied form, traits proper to mankind. Root 
 out the necessity of nourishing man, and 
 at the same stroke you annihilate man 
 himself; in like manner, demolish the 
 human passions, and you thereby demolish 
 humanity itself. The same remark holds 
 good of property, which the Christians, it 
 is alleged, refuse to recognise. Look 
 around you, and you will find that every 
 
IVOI^K IVHtLE Yk HAVE THE LIGHT. 69 
 
 vineyard, every kitchen garden, every 
 house, every mule, has been produced 
 solely and alone because property existed 
 and was respected. Abolish the principle 
 of private property, and there will not be a 
 single vineyard planted, not a beast of 
 burden trained or broken in. The Chris- 
 tians assert that they possess no property, 
 but they enjoy its fruits. They say that 
 they have everything in common, and that 
 they bring in all their possessions and put 
 them together. But what they bring in 
 they have received from men who own 
 property. They are simply throwing dust 
 in people's eyes, or, on the most favour- 
 able supposition, are deceiving themselves. 
 You tell me that they work with their own 
 hands to support themselves ; but what 
 they produce would not suffice to support 
 them if they did not lay under contribution 
 
70 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 that which had been produced by other 
 people who recognise the rights of pro- 
 perty. If they did succeed in supporting 
 life, there would be no place in their social 
 system for the arts and sciences. They 
 deny the advantages of our arts and 
 sciences. And they cannot do otherwise. 
 The whole gist and tenor of their teaching 
 is calculated to lead man back to his 
 primitive state — to savagery, to beastliness. 
 They cannot enjoy the arts and sciences in 
 the service of humanity, and, as they are 
 wholly Ignorant of them, they reject them. 
 Neither can they employ in the service of 
 humanity those capacities and gifts which 
 constitute the exclusive prerogative of man 
 and draw him nearer to the gods. They 
 will have no temples, no statues, no 
 theatres, no museums. They assert that 
 they have no need of them. The readiest 
 
WORK- WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 71 
 
 way to avoid blushing at one's own base- 
 ness is to contemn nobility. Their teacher 
 was an ignorant deceiver, and they are not 
 unsuccessful in their attempts to imitate 
 him. Furthermore, they are impious. 
 They refuse to recognise the gods or 
 their interference in human affairs. They 
 acknowledge only the Father of their 
 teacher, whom they call their Father, and 
 their teacher himself, who, they say, re- 
 vealed to them all the secrets of life. 
 Their doctrine is a wretched fraud. 
 Weigh this well : our belief is that the 
 universe is maintained by the gods, and 
 that the gods watch over and protect man. 
 In order to live well, people are bound to 
 honour the gods, to seek truth, and think. 
 Hence our life is regulated, on the one 
 hand, by the will of the godS; and on the 
 other by the collective wisdom of humanity. 
 
72 IVOIUC WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 We live, think, and seek, and are therefore 
 advancing towards truth. They, on the 
 contrary, have no gods, nor divine will, nor 
 human wisdom to look to, but must make 
 the best of their blind faith in their cruci- 
 fied teacher, and in whatever he taught 
 them. Now, decide for yourself, which is 
 the more trustworthy guide : the will of 
 the gods and the joint untrammeled 
 activity of the wisdom of all humanity, or 
 obligatory, unreasoning faith in the sayings 
 of one man.'* 
 
 Julius was struck by these remarks of 
 the stranger, especially by his last ques- 
 tion. Not only was his resolution to 
 become a Christian completely shaken, 
 but it now seemed quite incredible that 
 the stress of misfortune should have driven 
 him to the verge of such folly. There was, 
 however, one other question still unsettled : 
 
work: while ye ha ve the light. 73 
 
 what was he to do now, and how was he 
 to set about extricating himself from the 
 embarrassing situation that had made him 
 thus desperate ? And having pointed out 
 this difficulty, he asked the stranger for 
 advice. 
 
 '' I was coming to that very problem," 
 the stranger said. *' What is to be done ? 
 The line of action you must pursue is, as 
 far as human wisdom is accessible to me, 
 perfectly clear. All your troubles have 
 their source in your passions. It was 
 passion that whirled you away and took 
 you so out of your road, that you have 
 suffered gravely in consequence. Life's 
 lessons usually take this form. You 
 should learn them well and benefit by 
 them. You have experienced much, and 
 you now know what is sweet and what is 
 bitter. You run no risk of unwittingly 
 
74 IVOIiK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 repeating the same mistakes. Profit by 
 your experience. What grieves and upsets 
 you most is your enmity with your father. 
 It had its origin in your position. Choose 
 another one and it will vanish, or at least 
 will no longer manifest itself in the same 
 acute form. 
 
 **A11 your sufferings are due to the 
 irregularity of your position. You aban- 
 doned yourself to the pleasures of youth. 
 This was natural, and therefore right. 
 And it continued right as long as it be- 
 seemed your age. But the season passed, 
 and yet you continued with the strength of 
 a man to indulge in the freaks of a youth ; 
 and this was wrong. You are now of an 
 age when your will must supplement 
 Nature's, and you must become a man, a 
 citizen, and serve the commonwealth, 
 working for the good of all as well as your 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 75 
 
 own. Your father suggests that you 
 should marry. This is wise counsel. 
 You have passed through one stage of 
 life — youth — and have now entered upon 
 another. All our uneasiness and fears are 
 but so many symptoms of a period of 
 transition. Look the truth manfully in 
 the face; admit that the season of youth 
 is gone by, and flinging dauntlessly aside 
 everything that was proper to that season, 
 without being characteristic of manhood, 
 enter the new road. Marry : give up the 
 frivolous gaieties of youth ; occupy your 
 mind with the interests of commerce ; with . 
 public affairs ; with sciences and arts ; and 
 not only will you be reconciled with your 
 father and your friends, but you will find 
 rest and happiness. The root of your 
 troubles was the abnormal, unnatural posi- 
 tion you occupied. You have now reached 
 
76 tVO/^A WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 manhood's estate, and it is your duty to 
 take a wife and become a man. Hence 
 my chief counsel to you is : carry out your 
 father s wish — marry. 
 
 " If you feel that that isolation and re- 
 tirement which you imagine exists among 
 the Christians has still a charm for you ; if 
 you are attracted to the study of philosophy 
 rather than to the activity of public life, 
 you can give loose reins to your wishes 
 with benefit to yourself, only on condition 
 that you have first studied life and learned 
 its inner meaning. And this you can do 
 only as an independent citizen and father 
 of a family. If, when you have reached 
 that point, you still feel drawn as strongly 
 as ever towards retirement and contempla- 
 tion, give yourself up to it without hesita- 
 tion, for it will then be a genuine predilec- 
 tion, and not a mere outburst of discontent. 
 
WORJC WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 77 
 
 as it clearly is at present. Then follow 
 whither it leads you." 
 
 The last words, more than anything 
 that had gone before, brought conviction 
 to the mind of Julius. He warmly thanked 
 the stranger and returned home. His 
 mother gave him a most cordial welcome. 
 His father, too, informed of his resolution 
 to submit to his will and marry the young 
 girl he had chosen for him, became recon- 
 ciled with his son. 
 
( 78 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Tpiree months later Julius' marriage with 
 the beautiful Eulalia was duly celebrated, 
 and the young couple took up their resi- 
 dence in a house of their own. Julius, 
 having radically changed his way of life, 
 took over that branch of commerce which 
 his father ceded to him, and began fairly 
 to settle down as a respectable member of 
 the community. 
 
 One day he drove over to a little town 
 not far distant, on some business connected 
 with his firm, and there, while lounging in 
 a merchant's shop, he caught sight of Pam- 
 philius passing by the door along with a 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 79 
 
 girl who was unknown to him. They were 
 both heavily laden with grapes, which they 
 offered for sale. Julius, recognising his 
 friend, went out to him, greeted him, and 
 asked him in to pass an hour in quiet con- 
 versation. 
 
 The girl, observing Pamphilius desire 
 to enter the shop with his friend, and 
 noticinor that he hesitated to leave her 
 
 o 
 
 alone, at once assured him that she did 
 not need his services, and that she would 
 sit there by herself and wait for a purchaser 
 for the grapes. 
 
 Pamphilius thanked her, and accom- 
 panied Julius into the shop. Julius asked 
 and received permission of his friend, the 
 merchant, to retire with Pamphilius to an 
 inner apartment, where they might enjoy a 
 little quiet talk. 
 
 Once there, the friends began to ques- 
 
8o WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 tion each other about the ups and downs 
 they had met with since they had last seen 
 each other. 
 
 PamphiHus' life had glided smoothly on, 
 bringing no material change since then ; he 
 still lived in the Christian community, was 
 a bachelor as before, and felt, he assured 
 his friend, that every year, every day, and 
 every hour brought him increase of happi- 
 ness. 
 
 Julius thereupon narrated his experi- 
 ences, and described how he had been on 
 the point of becoming a Christian, and was 
 already on the road to the Christian village, 
 when he was stopped by the stranger, who 
 opened his eyes to the errors of the Chris- 
 tians, and made him sensible of his duty to 
 marry; '*and I acted upon his advice, and 
 am now a married man," he concluded. - 
 
 *'And are you happy now^?" asked 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 8l 
 
 Pamphilins. '' Have you found In mar- 
 riage the bliss the stranger promised 
 you r 
 
 '' Happy ? " repeated Julius. *' What Is 
 the meaning of the word happy? If we 
 are to take it to denote the perfect 
 realisation of one's desires, then I am 
 not happy. I am conducting my business 
 affairs with a fair degree of success, and I 
 am also beginning to be respected by my 
 neighbours ; and both these circumstances 
 afford me a considerable amount of satis- 
 faction. True, I daily come in contact 
 with many citizens who are much wealthier 
 and more widely respected than I am ; but 
 I flatter myself that a time will come when 
 I shall overtake and possibly outstrip them 
 in both these respects. This aspect of my 
 life, then, is very satisfactory. With re- 
 spect to my marriage, to be frank with you, 
 
82 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 I fear I cannot say quite as much. I will 
 go a step further, and confess that that 
 union, which was to have conferred joy and 
 happiness upon me, has disappointed me ; 
 and that the pleasure I experienced from 
 it in the beginning has ever since been on 
 the wane, and that now, in lieu of married 
 bliss, I am face to face with misery. My 
 wife is handsome, intelligent, good-natured, 
 accomplished. At first she made me inde- 
 scribably happy. But at present numerous 
 causes of disagreement are ever crop- 
 ping up between us — you cannot under- 
 stand this, not being married yourself — 
 now because she seeks my caresses when 
 I am cold and indifferent to her, now be- 
 cause the roles are changed and my 
 temporary indifference has passed over to 
 her. Love, moreover, needs the charm of 
 novelty to feed it. A woman much less 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 831 
 
 attractive than my wife exercises at first a 
 much greater fascination over me than she 
 does, and then again grows far more insipid 
 than even my wife. I have felt this more 
 than once. No ; honestly, I may say that 
 I have not found what I hoped for in mar- 
 riage. The philosophers, my friend, are 
 right; life never gives all that the soul 
 longs for. I have verified the truth of this 
 in marriage. But the circumstance that 
 life withholds from us the happiness which 
 the human soul yearns for, is by no means 
 a proof that your deceitful system supplies 
 it," he concluded, with a laugh. 
 
 **Why deceitful?'' asked Pamphilius. 
 '* In what do you detect symptoms of 
 fraud?" 
 
 '' Your deception consists in this : that in 
 order to deliver mankind from the calami- 
 ties that are inseparable from the affairs of 
 
84 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 life, you repudiate all the affairs of life, nay, 
 life itself. In order to spare men the pain 
 of disillusion, you cause them to eschew all 
 illusions, you repudiate — even marriage." 
 
 '* We do no such thing ! " protested 
 Pamphilius. 
 
 ** If it is not marriage that you repudiate, 
 then it is love." 
 
 ''Love!" exclaimed Pamphilius, "why 
 we abjure everything except love. Love 
 with us is the corner-stone of the whole 
 edifice." 
 
 *' I do not understand you, then," said 
 Julius. ''Judging by what I have heard 
 from others, and I may add by your own 
 example — for although you and I are of 
 the same age, you are still unmarried — I 
 gather that you Christians have no con- 
 jugal union. You do not sever the 
 marriage ties which you have already 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 85 
 
 contracted, but you make no new ones. 
 You take no thought for the perpetuation 
 of the human race, and if the earth were 
 peopled with none but Christians, humanity 
 would soon cease to exist," exclaimed 
 Julius, echoing an assertion which he had 
 heard many times before. 
 
 ** That is scarcely a fair way of stating 
 the facts, is it ?'' replied Pamphilius ; '' it is 
 true that we do not deliberately make it 
 our aim to perpetuate the human race, nor 
 do we take the matter so very much to 
 heart, as I have often heard it remarked 
 by some of your wise men. Our minds 
 are set at rest on the subject by our firm 
 belief that our Father, who vigilantly 
 watches over mankind, is mindful of all 
 their wants ; it is our object to live in 
 accordance w^ith His will. If He wills 
 it that the human race should subsist, He 
 
S6 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 will likewise find the means of perpetuat- 
 ing it ; if not, it will inevitably come to an 
 end. That, however, is no care of ours, 
 our task is the more modest one of living 
 according to His will. His will is mani- 
 fested in us both in our own nature and in 
 the revelation He has vouchsafed to give 
 us, which says that a man shall cleave to his 
 wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. 
 Marriage is not only not forbidden by our 
 laws, but is directly encouraged by our 
 Elders, who are learned in the law. The 
 main difference between your marriage and 
 ours consists in the revelation given to us 
 from on high that every lustful glance at a 
 woman is sinful, and the practical results 
 which our belief in that revelation has 
 produced, and which may be summed up 
 as follows : we and our women, instead of 
 leaving no means untried to dress finely 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGUl, 87 
 
 and beautify ourselves for the purpose of 
 kindling carnal desires in the hearts of 
 those who look upon us, direct all our 
 efforts to the stifling of all such impure 
 movements, so that the sentiment of love 
 among us, as among brothers and sisters, 
 should be strong enough to outweigh the 
 feeling of lust for one woman to which you 
 give the name of love.' 
 
 ^^ All that is well and good," remarked 
 Julius, *' but surely you cannot stifle the 
 feeling of pleasure and love that springs 
 up within us when we look upon the beau- 
 tiful. Not to wander far afield for an 
 instant, I am satisfied that that pretty girl 
 with whom you brought the grapes, in 
 spite of her attire, which works wonders 
 in the way of hiding her charms, kindles in 
 your breast the sentiment of love for 
 woman." 
 
S8 IVORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 '' I do not think that that is so," said 
 Pamphilius, blushing. ** I never thought 
 of her beauty. You are the first who has 
 suggested such a thing. She is but a 
 sister to me. But to come back to what I 
 was saying about the difference between 
 marriage with you and with us ; it arises, 
 as I was remarking, from the circumstance 
 that with you carnal lust, under the name 
 of beauty, love, service of the goddess 
 Venus, is deliberately provoked and main- 
 tained ; whereas with us, on the contrary, 
 it is avoided, not because we hold it to be 
 an evil (God has created no evil) — indeed, 
 we esteem it a positive good — but because 
 it can and does become an evil, a tempta- 
 tion, as we call it, when not confined to its 
 proper place. Now we strain every nerve 
 to avoid this. And that is the reason why 
 I am not married yet, although I know of 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 89 
 
 nothing to prevent me from taking a wife 
 to-morrow.'* 
 
 '' And what will determine j^our choice?'*' 
 
 ^' The will of God.'* ' 
 
 " How do you discover it ?" 
 
 *' If you never look for its manifestations 
 you will never find them. If you are con- 
 tinually on the watch for them they become 
 visible and clear, as clear as divination by 
 sacrifices or by the flight of birds is to you. 
 As you have wise men among you who 
 interpret to you the will of your gods by 
 the light of their own knowledge and 
 signs they discern in the entrails of the 
 victim or the flight of birds, in like manner 
 we, too, have our wise men — Elders — who 
 make known to us the will of our Father, 
 by means of the. Christ's revelation, the 
 promptings of their heart and the thoughts 
 of others, and more than anything else by 
 
90 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHl, 
 
 the love they cherish for their fellow- 
 man." 
 
 '' All that IS much too vague,'* objected 
 Julius. *' Who is to tell you, for example, 
 when and whom you should marry ? Now, 
 when the time came for me to marry, I 
 had the choice of three girls. These 
 possible wives were selected from among 
 all the others by reason of their uncommon 
 beauty and great wealth, and my father 
 consented in advance to my marriage with 
 any one of the three. It was from these 
 three that I selected my E alalia, because 
 she was the prettiest and, in my eyes, 
 the most fascinating. All that was 
 quite natural. But who will guide your 
 choice ?" 
 
 *' Before giving a direct reply to your 
 question," said Pamphilius, *'let me first 
 tell you that in our religion all men are 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 91 
 
 equal in the eyes of our Father, so they 
 are equal in our eyes also, both in respect 
 of their position and in regard to their 
 physical and moral qualities. It follows 
 from this that our choice (if I must employ 
 a word which for us has no meaning) is 
 not, and cannot be, in any way circum- 
 scribed. Any human being living on this 
 earth can become the husband or wife of a 
 Christian." 
 
 *' That makes it all the more difficult to 
 fix one's choice/' said Julius. 
 
 '' Let me tell you what one of our Elders 
 remarked to me the other day on the 
 difference between Christian and Pao^an 
 marriages," replied Pamphilius. ** The 
 Pagan chooses that girl of all others who, 
 to his thinking, is qualified to yield him 
 the highest degree and greatest variety of 
 enjoyment. The effect of this condition is 
 
92 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 to make him dart his eyes with lightning 
 rapidity from one to another, irresolute 
 which to choose ; for what makes it the 
 more difficult to come to a decision is that 
 the enjoyment in question is an unknown 
 quantity veiled in the shadowy future. A 
 Christian, on the other hand, is not embar- 
 rassed by the element of personal choice, 
 or rather considerations of a purely per- 
 sonal nature occupy a secondary instead 
 of the foremost place. His one absorbing 
 care is, not by his marriage to run counter 
 to the will of God.'' 
 
 '' But how is it possible to oppose God s 
 will by a marriage ? " 
 
 '' If I were to forget the Iliad,'' replied 
 Pamphilius, *'that you and I were wont to 
 study and read aloud together in bygone 
 times, there would be little to wonder at, 
 and nothing to censure. But if you forget 
 
woi^k: while ye ha ve the light, 93 
 
 it, who live in the midst of philosophers 
 and poets, you cannot plead the same 
 justification. Now, what else is the Iliad 
 but the story of the transgression of the 
 will of God by a marriage ? And Mene- 
 laus and Paris, and Helen and Achilles, 
 and Agamemnon and Chryseis, are all 
 elements of a description of the terrible 
 calamities that overtook, and do nowa- 
 days still overtake, people who oppose 
 their will to that of God in this matter of 
 marriage." 
 
 ** In what does this opposition consist ?" 
 ''In the fact that what a man loves in a 
 woman is not a fellow-creature like him- 
 self, but the personal enjoyment which his 
 union with her will bring him, and for the 
 purpose of procuring this pleasure he con- 
 tracts marriage. A Christian marriage is 
 not possible unless a man is inspired by 
 
94 WORX WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 love for his fellow-creatures, and the person 
 whom he takes for partner must, in the 
 first place, be the object of this brotherly 
 affection of man for his fellow. As it is 
 out of the question to build a house unless 
 a foundation has been laid, or to paint a 
 picture unless you have first prepared the 
 canvas or other material upon which you 
 propose to paint it, so carnal love can 
 never be lawful, reasonable, or enduring 
 unless it is raised upon a structure of love 
 and reverence of man for man. Only on 
 this basis is it possible to establish a wise 
 Christian family life.'' 
 
 ''Still it is not, I confess, quite clear to 
 my mind why the marriage you term. 
 Christian should exclude that species of 
 love for womankind which Paris felt." 
 
 '* I do not suggest that Christian mar- 
 riage does not admit exclusive love for one 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 95 
 
 woman ; on the contrary, it is judicious and 
 holy only when such love is one of its 
 elements. But what I should like to bring 
 out with a degree of clearness equal to the 
 importance of the point is, that real exclu- 
 sive love for a woman is possible only 
 when the more general love for all man- 
 kind is respected and maintained intact. 
 That description of exclusive love for a 
 woman which the poets sing and proclaim 
 excellent in itself, although not founded 
 upon the love of man for his fellows, does 
 not deserve the name of love. It is animal 
 lust, which very often loses itself in hatred. 
 The best proof of my thesis that what is 
 usually termed love — Eros — changes to 
 beastliness when not resting on the broad 
 basis of brotherly affection for all men, is 
 the case in which violence is employed 
 against the very woman whom the ravisher 
 
96 WORK WHILE YE HA VE 7 HE LIGHT, 
 
 professes to love, even while causing her 
 pain that will retain its sting as long as life 
 endures. Can a man be said to cherish 
 affection for a person whom he thus tor- 
 tures ? Now, in Pagan marriages one 
 frequently finds cases of masked violence; 
 when a man marries a orirl who either 
 simply does not love him in return or loves 
 another, and ruthlessly inflicts pain and 
 suffering upon her, simply that he may 
 appease the brutal appetite which is mis- 
 named love." 
 
 ** I grant all that," interrupted Julius; 
 **but am I to take it that, if the girl does 
 love him, it follows that there is no injustice 
 in the matter. If so, I do not see in v/hat 
 respect a Christian union differs from a 
 Pagan marriage." 
 
 '' I am not acquainted with the details of 
 your own marriage," replied Pamphilius; 
 
IVOKIx IVIIILE YE ITA VE THE LIGHT. 97 
 
 *'but it is perfectly obvious to me that 
 every marriage, wherever and whenever 
 contracted, at the root of which Hes mere 
 personal enjoyment, cannot but prove an 
 abundant source of discord, just as the 
 process of feeding cannot take place among 
 animals, or among human beings who are 
 but little removed from the mere animal 
 stage, without breeding quarrels and fights 
 — each one is eager to seize upon a tit-bit ; 
 and, as there are not enough such delicious 
 morsels for them all, the result is a scramble 
 and fight. If the quarrel does not actually 
 break out into active hostilities, it is none 
 the less real for being latent. The weak 
 individual longs for the luscious morsel, 
 conscious though he is that his more power- 
 ful neighbour will never cede it to him, and, 
 although he discerns the impossibility of 
 snatching it from his rival by force, still he 
 
 G 
 
98 JVOJ^A WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 eyes him with secret envious hatred, and 
 is ever ready to profit by any favourable 
 opportunity that offers to deprive him of it. 
 It is just the same with Pagan marriages — 
 only that the results are far worse in degree, 
 owinor to the circumstance that the coveted 
 object is a human being, and so discord 
 and hatred are engendered between the 
 spouses themselves." 
 
 '* And how do you propose to compel 
 the intending spouses to love each other 
 and no one else besides? In every case 
 the young girl or the young man will be 
 found to love some one else, in which case, 
 according to you, marriage is impossible. 
 From this I clearly perceive that the people 
 who maintain that you Christians do not 
 marry at all, are quite right. This is also 
 the reason why you are single, and will 
 probably ever remain so. For how is it 
 
IVORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 99 
 
 Conceivable that a man who marries a girl 
 should have never previously inflamed the 
 heart of any other woman, or that a girl 
 should have reached the age of maturity 
 without having ever awakened the feeling 
 of love in the breast of any man ? What 
 do you suggest that Helen should have 
 done?" 
 
 '' Our Elder, Cyril, speaking once of this 
 matter, remarked that people in the Pagan 
 world, without spending even a passing 
 thought upon their duty of loving their 
 fellov/-men, without having ever done any- 
 thing to educate such a feeling, are solici- 
 tous about one thing only : how to excite 
 in their own breasts a passionate love for 
 woman ; and they leave nothing undone to 
 foster this passion. It is for this reason 
 that in their world every Helen or Helen- 
 like woman arouses the love of many men. 
 
100 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 The rivals fight with each other and strain 
 every nerve to excel each other, just like 
 brutes eager to win the female. And to a 
 greater or lesser extent their marriage is a 
 struggle — a form of violence. In our com- 
 munity we not only never think of personal 
 enjoyment of beauty, but we sedulously 
 avoid all those seductive contrivances and 
 artifices likely to act as temptations thereto, 
 which the Pagan world has raised almost 
 to the dignity of apotheosis. We fix our 
 thoughts upon the obligation we are under 
 to reverence and love our neighbour — 
 comprising in this term all men, whether 
 they happen to be of unsurpassing beauty 
 or of repulsive ugliness. We do our best 
 to educate that sentiment, and this is why 
 with us love for our fellow-men gets the 
 upper hand over the seductions of beauty, 
 conquers them, and removes all pretexts 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. loi 
 
 for quarrels and feuds that have their source 
 in the relations of the sexes. 
 
 *'A Christian contracts marriage only 
 when his union with the woman, between 
 whom and himself there is a bond of 
 mutual affection, causes bitterness to no 
 one. Cyril goes even so far as to say that 
 a Christian will not even feel an attachment 
 for a woman unless he knows that his 
 marriage with her will not cause a feeling 
 of pain to any one." 
 
 ''But is such a thing conceivable?" 
 objected Julius. '' Is a man then the master 
 of his likes and dislikes ? " 
 
 " Not if he have already given them 
 loose rein ; but he can avoid arousing them 
 and arrest their development. Take as a 
 case in point the relations of fathers to 
 their daughters, mothers to their sons, bro- 
 thers to their sisters. A mother, daughter, 
 
102 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 or sister, how beautiful soever she may be, 
 is never conceived of as an object of per- 
 sonal enjoyment by her son, her father, or 
 her brother, and so the coarse animal feel- 
 ings are not awakened. They would be 
 aroused in such a case, if the man discovered 
 that his supposed daughter, mother, or 
 sister was no relation whatever ; but even 
 then the sentiment in question would be 
 feeble, easily amenable to reason, and it 
 would cost the man but little effort to curb 
 or wholly suppress it. The reason why 
 the coarse carnal feeling would be weak is 
 because there would He at its root a senti- 
 ment of filial, paternal, or brotherly love. 
 Why do you persist in doubting that it is 
 possible and even easy to evoke and edu- 
 cate in man exactly such a sentiment 
 towards all women as is actually enter- 
 tained towards mothers, daughters, and 
 
TFOI^Jir WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 103 
 
 sisters, and to cause the feeling of conjugal 
 love to flourish on this basis ? As a young 
 man will not allow himself to cherish any- 
 thing like sexual affection for the young 
 girl whom he looked upon as his sister, 
 until he is perfectly satisfied that she is not 
 his sister, so a Christian refuses to entertain 
 a similar feeling for any woman whatever, 
 until he knows that such love for her on 
 his part will cause no one pain or dis- 
 pleasure." 
 
 "' But how if two men fall in love with 
 the same girl ? " 
 
 ^* One of them will sacrifice his love for 
 the happiness of the other." 
 
 •'* But suppose she herself loves one oi 
 them ? " 
 
 ** Then he whom she loves less will 
 sacrifice his love for her happiness." 
 
 '*Well, but if she loves the two, and both 
 
104 IVORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 insist on sacrificing their sentiments, she 
 will not marry either, I take it ? '' 
 
 '' In a case of that kind the Elders would 
 weigh the matter well, and advise the 
 parties to take a course that would result in 
 the greatest amount of happiness for all 
 concerned^ combined with the greatest 
 amount of love." 
 
 ** But that is not the course usually taken, 
 and the reason is that it is contrary to 
 human nature." 
 
 " Human nature ! Which human nature ? 
 Besides being an animal, a man is, I pre- 
 sume, likewise a man, and if the relations 
 to woman which our Christian religion 
 advocates are not in harmony wit h man's 
 animal nature, they are in perfect accord- 
 ance with his rational nature. And when 
 he makes his reason the handmaid of his 
 animal nature, he falls lower in the scale of 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 105 
 
 God s creatures than the very brutes ; he 
 descends to violence, to incest, to which no 
 animal sinks. But when he employs his 
 rational nature to curb his animal instincts, 
 when the latter are forced into the service 
 of the former, then, and only then, does 
 he obtain that happiness which alone is 
 capable of satisfying his yearnings." 
 
( 105 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 *' But now let me hear what you have to 
 tell me about j^ourself. I noticed you in 
 the street with a beautiful girl, with whom, 
 if I may judge by appearances, you live 
 together in that town of yours. Now tell 
 me, can it be possible that you have no 
 desire to become her husband ? " 
 
 ^' I have never given the subject any 
 serious consideration," replied Pamphilius. 
 '' She is the daughter of a Christian widow 
 to whom I render what services I can, just 
 as others do besides myself. I serve the 
 mother as I do the daughter, and I love 
 both equally well. You w^ish to know 
 
WOJ^/C WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 107 
 
 whether the love I feel for her is of a 
 nature to justify my marrying her ? The 
 question is a painful one for me ; but I will 
 give you a straightforward answer. The 
 idea has, I confess, occurred to me ; but 
 there is a youth of my acquaintance who 
 also loves her, and that is why I have 
 never yet seriously entertained it. He, 
 too, is a Christian, and he loves us both 
 dearly, and I could not for a moment think 
 of doing anything that might give him 
 pain. So I live on without giving these 
 ideas any place in my thoughts. All my 
 desires are centred in one aim — to fulfil 
 the law of love — love for our fellow- men. 
 That is the one thing necessary. As for 
 wedlock, I shall marry when I am con- 
 vinced that it is my duty to do so." 
 
 ** Those are your ideas ; but the mother's 
 standpoint may be different. It cannot 
 
io8 WOI^K IVrilLE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 surely be immaterial to her whether she 
 gets a son-in-law who is kind and indus- 
 trious, or on 2 who is the reverse. She 
 will be naturally desirous of having you 
 for such a near relation." 
 
 '' By no means. It is perfectly in- 
 different to her ; because she is well aware 
 that all our brethren are to the full as 
 willing as I am to serve her just as we are 
 to be useful to every other brother and 
 sister ; and that I shall continue to do what 
 I can for her in exactly the same way 
 whether I do or do not become her son- 
 in-law. If the outcome of it all should be 
 my marriage with her daughter, I shall 
 welcome such a consummation with joy — 
 just as I should her marriage with some- 
 body else.'* 
 
 ''No, no; what you are saying now is 
 utterly impossible. And herein lies the 
 
VVOJ^J^ WHILE YR HA VE THE LIGHT. 109 
 
 most terrible thing I have observed in 
 you Christians — that you so completely 
 deceive yourselves ! And in this way you 
 deceive others as well. That stranger 
 whom I told you about a few minutes ago 
 was right in what he asserted about you. 
 While listening to your glowing descrip- 
 tions I involuntarily succumb to the spell 
 of the charming life which you depict, but 
 when I think it carefully over, I see that 
 it is all deception — and a deception which 
 leads to savagery, to brutality, to a life 
 approaching that of the beasts." 
 
 '* In what do you discern this savagery?" 
 *' In the circumstance that as you work 
 to earn a livelihood, you have no leisure 
 or opportunity to devote yourselves to 
 science and art. Here are you, for in- 
 stance, attired in a ragged garment, with 
 rough, horny hands and feet, while your 
 
no WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 mate, who might well be a goddess of 
 beauty, is as like a slave as a freewoman 
 could be. You Christians have no hymns 
 of Apollo, no temples, no poetry, no games 
 — in a word, nothing of all those gifts of 
 the gods to man which adorn life and 
 make it beautiful. To grind, grind, and 
 grind, like slaves or oxen, merely in order 
 to support yourself on the coarsest of food 
 — what else is that but voluntary and im- 
 pious renunciation of the human will and 
 nature." 
 
 *' There it is again," exclaimed Pam- 
 pbilius, '' that tiresome human nature ! In 
 what does this nature consist, pray? Is it 
 in torturing slaves with work beyond their 
 strength, in the butchering of one's brothers 
 or reducing them to slavery ; or is it in 
 transforming woman from what she was 
 and is into an object of amusement ? . . . • 
 
WORJ<: WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. in 
 
 And yet all this alone beseems human 
 nature. Is that the essence of human 
 nature, or does it not rather consist in 
 living in love and fellowship with all men, 
 and feeling oneself a member of one 
 universal brotherhood ? 
 
 ''You, too, are grievously mistaken, if you 
 imagine t^at we refuse to recognise science 
 and arts. We highly appreciate all the 
 gifts and talents with which human nature 
 is endowed. 
 
 ** We look upon all men's inborn capacities 
 as means given to assist him to attain one 
 sole end, to the realisation of which our 
 wh^le life is devoted, and that is the fulfil- 
 ment of the will of God. In science and 
 arts we discern, not a vulgar pastime fit 
 only to give transient pleasure to idle 
 people, but serious avocations of which we 
 have a right to demand what we require of 
 
112 WORK- WHILE y.E HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 all human callings — namely, that in pursuing 
 them^ the same active love of God and of 
 one*s fellow-man be made manifest which 
 permeates all the acts of a Christian. We 
 do not recognise as true science anything 
 so called which fails to help us to live 
 better ; neither do we value art but that 
 which purifies our thoughts and projects, 
 raises up the soul, and increases the forces 
 necessary to a life of labour and of love. 
 We lose no opportunity to develop, as far 
 as is possible, knowledge of this kind in 
 ourselves and in our children ; and the 
 charms of such art we feel and delight in 
 during our leisure moments. We read and 
 study the writings bequeathed to us by 
 the wisdom of men who lived before us ; 
 we chant songs, we paint pictures, and our 
 songs and our pictures comfort us, cheer us 
 up in moments of sadness. Therefore it is 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 113 
 
 that we cannot bring ourselves to approve 
 the way in which you Pagans apply the 
 arts and sciences. Your scholars employ 
 their natural capacities and acquired know- 
 ledge to invent new ways of working evil 
 toothers ; ihey are always busy making the 
 methods of war more effective, more deadly 
 — that is to say, they are engaged in making 
 murder easier ; they are ever concocting 
 new schemes for earning money — that is, 
 for enriching some persons at the expense 
 of others. Your art is utilised for the 
 building and ornamentation of temples in 
 honour of gods in whom the most en- 
 lightened among you have long since ceased 
 to believe, but faith in whom you try to 
 keep alive in others, in the hope that by 
 means of this fraud it will be all the more 
 easy for you to keep them well in hand. 
 Your statues are raised to the strongest 
 
114 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 and most cruel of your tyrants, whom no 
 one esteems, but all fear. In the plays 
 given in. your theatres, criminal love is 
 lauded and applauded. Music among you 
 is degraded to the role of a means of 
 tickling the senses of rich gluttons, after 
 they have gorged themselves to satiety on 
 the meats and drinks of their luxurious 
 banquets. The highest use of which paint- 
 ing is put is to depict in houses of ill-fame 
 scenes at which no man can glance without 
 blushing, whose senses are not paralysed 
 by the fumes of wine or blunted by beastly 
 passion. 
 
 '^ No, it is not for such purposes that man 
 is endowed with those higher attributes 
 which distinguish him from the beasts of 
 the field. They were not given to be 
 turned into a plaything for the delectation 
 of our bodies. By consecrating our whole 
 
IVOKK ]V:iILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 115 
 
 life to the fulfilment of God's will, we are 
 employing, and employing to the highest 
 purpose, all those nobler gifts and faculties 
 which w^e have received fronf God." 
 
 ''Yes," Julius answered, ''all that would 
 be sublime, if only life w^ere possible under 
 such conditions. But one cannot live so. 
 You are only deluding yourselves. You 
 refuse to acknowledge our protection, but 
 if it were not for the Roman legions, could 
 you live peaceably ? You enjoy the pro- 
 tection which you refuse to acknowledge. 
 Even certain members of your own com- 
 munity — you yourself told me — defended 
 themselves. You do not recognise property, 
 and yet you enjoy it ; your brethren own 
 property and give it to you ; you yourself 
 take care not to give away for nothing the 
 grapes you carry ; you sell them, and you 
 >vill also in turn make purchases. Now all 
 
Ii6 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 this is a delusion. If you carried out what 
 you say to the letter, then I should under- 
 stand your position ; but as it is, you are 
 deceiving others and yourselves to boot." 
 
 Julius waxed hot during the conversa- 
 tion, and gave expression to every thought 
 that flitted through his mind. Pamphilius 
 remained silent, awaiting the end. When 
 Julius ceased speaking, he said : 
 
 *' You are in error when you say that 
 we enjoy without recognising the protec- 
 tion you afford us. We have no need of 
 Roman legions, because we attach no im- 
 portance whatever to those things which 
 require to be protected by violence. Our 
 happiness is centred in that which needs 
 no defence, and which no man can take 
 away from us. If material objects which 
 you regard as personal property pass 
 through our hands, it should be borne in 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 117 
 
 mind that we do not look upon them or 
 treat them as our own, we hand them over 
 to those for whose support they are neces- 
 sary. It is true that we sell grapes, but 
 not for profit ; only in order to obtain the 
 necessaries of life for those who are in need 
 of them. If any one wanted to take those 
 grapes from us, we should give them up 
 without the slightest resistance. For the 
 same reason we have nothing to fear from 
 an invasion of barbarians. If they wanted 
 to deprive us of the products of our labour, 
 we should yield them up at once ; if they 
 insisted on our working for them, this also 
 we should do with joy ; and not only would 
 the barbarians have no cause to kill us, but 
 it would be detrimental to what they con- 
 sider their own interests to do so. They 
 would soon get to understand us, would 
 even grow to love us, and we should have 
 
Ii8 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 less to suffer from them than we now have 
 to endure from the enHghtened people in 
 whose midst we live and by whom we are 
 persecuted. 
 
 ''It has been frequently urged by you and 
 yours that it is only in consequence of the 
 rights of property being respected that one 
 is enabled to obtain all those articles of 
 food and clothing with which people are 
 nourished and kept alive. But weigh the 
 matter well, and then decide for yourself 
 — by whom are all these necessaries of 
 life really produced ? By whose labour are 
 those riches stored up and accumulated of 
 which you are so proud ? Is it by those 
 who, sitting comfortably with folded arms, 
 command their slaves and mercenaries to 
 go hither and thither — to do this and that, 
 and who alone possess property to enjoy ; 
 or is it not rather by those poor neces- 
 
IFOJ^J^ WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 119 
 
 sitous workmen who, to earn a crust of 
 bread, carry out their lords commands, 
 while they themselves are deprived of all 
 property, and scarcely receive for their 
 share enough to keep them alive for a 
 single day ? And what grounds have you 
 for supposing that these workmen who are 
 so lavish of their strength and energy now, 
 when it is a question of executing orders 
 which they frequently do not even under- 
 stand, will give up every kind of exertion 
 the moment it is made possible for them 
 to undertake intelligible and moderate 
 work, the results of which will benefit 
 themselves and those whom they love and 
 pity? 
 
 " The accusations you launch against us 
 are mainly these : that we do not com- 
 pletely attain the end which we have in 
 view, and that we actually deceive others 
 
120 IVOJ^^Iv wmiM YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 when we say that we do not recognise 
 violence, nor property, seeing that we enjoy 
 the results of both. Now, if we are 
 deceivers, it is useless to waste words 
 upon us ; we are fit objects not for anger 
 or for accusation, but for scorn. And the 
 scorn we joyfully accept, because it is one 
 of our rules to contemn our own nothing- 
 ness. But if we sincerely and earnestly 
 strive to reach the end towards which we 
 profess to be directing all our efforts, then 
 your accusations would be purely unjust. If 
 we aspire to strive, as my brethren and 
 myself do, to live, in accordance with the 
 law laid down by our Master, without 
 violence or property, which is none of its 
 fruits, our object in doing so obviously 
 cannot be the attainment of material ends, 
 the acquisition of riches, powder, honours — 
 for we gain none of these things thereby-— 
 
PFOJ^A^ WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 121 
 
 but something wholly different. We are 
 quite as keen as you Pagans are in the 
 search of happiness ; the only difference 
 between us consisting in the opposite views 
 we take of what constitutes it. You place 
 it in riches, honours ; we in something very 
 different. Our faith tells us that bliss is 
 to be found not in violence, but in sub- 
 mission ; not in riches, but in giving every- 
 thing away. And even as the flowers 
 struggle upwards towards the light, so do 
 we move outwards towards what we see to 
 be our happiness. We do not carry out 
 everything that we should like to do for 
 the attainment of our happiness — that is to 
 say, we have not quite succeeded in casting 
 off every habit of violence and property. 
 This is true. But could it well be other- 
 wise ? Take yourself, for instance : you 
 strain every nerve to obtain the prettiest 
 
122 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 wife, to acquire the largest fortune ; but 
 do you, does any one, succeed in this ? If 
 an archer does not hit the target, will he, 
 because he has missed it many times in 
 succession, cease altogether to aim at it ? 
 We are in exactly the same position. Our 
 happiness is, according to Christ's teaching, 
 in love ; but love excludes violence, and 
 property which flows from violence. We 
 are all of us bent on seeking our happiness, 
 but we do not fully succeed ; moreover, we 
 do not all set about it in precisely the same 
 way, nor do we all attain it to the same 
 extent." 
 
 '' Yes, but why do you refuse to listen to 
 the accumulated wisdom of mankind, why do 
 you turn away from it and give ear only to 
 your own crucified Master? Your thral- 
 dom, your servile submission to him is pre- 
 cisely what most of all repels us in you." 
 
WORIC WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 123 
 
 *' You are again mistaken, as are all 
 those who imag'ne that while professing 
 the teachings which we do, we believe in 
 them only because the man in whom we 
 trust commanded us to do so. On the 
 contrary, all those who with their whole 
 soul seek for knowledge of the truth, for 
 communion with the Father, all who year.i 
 for true happiness, involuntarily, and with- 
 out conscious effort, find themselves travel- 
 ling along the same road that Christ 
 traversed, and, instinctively taking their 
 stand behind him, are soon aware that he 
 is leading the way. All who love God 
 will converge towards, and finally meet, on 
 this road — yourself among the number. 
 He is the Son of God, the mediator be- 
 tween God and man ; it is not that we 
 have been told this by some one and 
 therefore blindly believe it, but we hold it 
 
 ^; 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
124 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 to be true because all those who seek God 
 find His Son before them, and only through 
 the Son do they understand, see, and know 
 God." 
 
 Julius made no reply, and they both sat 
 for a considerable time in unbroken silence. 
 
 *' Are you happy ? " he asked at length. 
 
 '' I desire nothing better than what I 
 have and am. Nor is this all. I am 
 continually experiencing a feeling of per- 
 plexity, a dim consciousness of injustice 
 somewhere. Why is it that I am so 
 unspeakably happy ? " exclaimed Pam- 
 philius with a smile. 
 
 *'Yes," sighed Julius ; "it may be that 
 I too should have been happy, happier than 
 I am, had I not met the stranger I told 
 you of, and had I gone over to you." 
 
 " If you think so, what is keeping you 
 back.?' 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 125 
 
 ** How about my wife ? " 
 
 ** You say that she has a leaning towards 
 Christianity ; if so, she will join us along 
 with you." 
 
 '' True ; but we have only just begun a 
 different kind of life ; would it be wise to 
 break it up thus suddenly ? We have 
 begun it now, and we had better live it out 
 to the end," said JuHus, vividly picturing 
 to himself the disappointment of his father, 
 his mother, his friends, if he were to 
 become a Christian ; but more vividly still 
 the continuous and painful effort it would 
 cost him to effect this revolution. 
 
 At this moment the young girl, 
 Pamphilius friend, accompanied by a 
 youth, came up to the shop-door. Pam- 
 philius went out to them, and the youth 
 told him, in the presence of Julius, that 
 he had been sent by Cyril to buy some 
 
126 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 leather. The grapes were already sold, 
 and wheat purchased with the money 
 received. Pamphilius proposed that the 
 youth should return home along with 
 Magdalen, bringing the wheat with them, 
 and undertaking himself to buy the leather 
 and carry it home. 
 
 '' It will be better for you," he urged. 
 
 '' No, it is better for Magdalen that you 
 should go with her," the youth answered, 
 and went away. Julius accompanied his 
 friend to the stores of a merchant uath 
 whom he was acquainted, where Pamphilius 
 filled the sacks with wheat, handed a small 
 portion to Magdalen, slung his own heavy 
 burden over his shoulders, said good-bye 
 to his friend, and, walking side by side with 
 the young girl, left the city. 
 
 At a bend in the street, Pamphilius 
 looked back and smilingly nodded to Julius, 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 127 
 
 and then smiling still more joyfully, made 
 * some remark to Magdalen as they disap- 
 peared from Julius' horizon. 
 
 ''' Yes, it would indeed have been better 
 for me had I then gone over to the Chris- 
 tians," exclaimed Julius to himself. And 
 in his imagination arose two pictures which 
 kept alternating with each other : now he 
 beheld the robust Pamphilius, with the tall, 
 strong girl, carrying baskets on their heads, 
 their faces radiant with kindliness and joy ; 
 now he saw his own domestic hearth, which 
 he had quitted that morning, and to which 
 he would return that night — and his pam- 
 pered, pretty wife, whose charms had 
 already begun to pall upon him, decked out 
 in fine apparel, adorned with wristbands, 
 and lolling on rich carpets and soft yield- 
 ing cushions. 
 
 But Julius had little time for thinking 
 
128 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 he was accosted first by some merchants 
 who had come to see him^ then by com- 
 rades, and they entered at once upon the 
 usual occupations, which wound up with 
 dinner and drinking, and at night with his 
 wife. 
 
t 129 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Ten years passed away ; and during all 
 that time Julius never once came across 
 his friend. He thought less and less fre- 
 quently of their former meetings and dis- 
 cussions, and the impressions they had 
 created in his mind respecting Pamphilius 
 himself, and the life of the Christians 
 generally, grew gradually dimmer and 
 dimmer, till at last they seemed to have 
 faded away. Julius' own life ran in the 
 common groove. His father had died, and 
 he had taken over the entire business of 
 the firm — a very complicated concern, with 
 its old customers, its salesmen in Africa, 
 
130 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 its clerks at home, its debts to be collected 
 and debts to be paid. Julius was en- 
 grossed by affairs in spite of himself, and 
 gave up all his time to them. Besides, 
 he had the new cares of his wife to bear. 
 Then, again, he was elected to discharge 
 the duties of a civic office ; and this new 
 occupation, flattering his self-love, delighted 
 him. From that time forward, in addition 
 to his business affairs, he turned his atten- 
 tion to public matters ; and, being a man 
 of parts, and endowed with the gift of 
 flowing, facile speech, he began to make 
 his mark among his fellow-citizens, and 
 bade fair to rise in time to the highest 
 civic honours in his native place. 
 
 Those ten years had likewise wrought 
 considerable changes in the sphere of his 
 family life— changes which to him at least 
 were highly distasteful. He was now the 
 
IVORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 131 
 
 father of three children, and one of the 
 effects of their birth was to estrange him 
 still more from their mother. In the first 
 place, his wife had lost much of her former 
 freshness and beauty; and, in the next 
 place, she had grown less solicitous about 
 her husband than of yore, all her tender- 
 ness and caresses being lavished upon her 
 offspring. Although the children were 
 confided to the care of wet nurses and dry 
 nurses, as was the custom of the Pagans, 
 Julius often found them in their mothers 
 apartments, or, having looked for her 
 there in vain, discovered her in her chil. 
 dren's room. For the most part Julius 
 looked upon his children as an irksome 
 burden — a source of trouble and vexation 
 rather than pleasure. Absorbed in private 
 and municipal aflfairs, Julius had given up 
 his former dissolute life ; but he considered 
 
i32 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 that he stood in need of elegant repose 
 after his day's labours, and this he no 
 longer found in the society of his wife, 
 especially as her intercourse with her 
 female slave — a Christian — grew more and 
 more intimate, and she allowed herself to 
 be carried away by the charm of the new 
 doctrine to such an extent that she dis- 
 carded from her life all the outward gloss 
 and varnish of Paganism, by which Julius 
 set such store. Not finding in his wife's 
 society what he sought there, Julius culti- 
 vated the friendship of a woman of light 
 conduct, in whose company he spent those 
 leisure moments which remained to him 
 after the day's duties were discharged. If 
 you had asked him whether he was happy 
 during those years of his life, he would 
 have been at a loss what to answer, so 
 numerous and absorbing were his occupa- 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 133 
 
 tlons. From one business matter and 
 pleasure he rushed rapidly onwards to 
 another ; but not one of them was of a 
 nature thoroughly to satisfy his yearnings, 
 of not one of them could he truly say that 
 he desired it to last. Every serious affair 
 he took in hand was such that the sooner 
 he accomplished it, and had done with it, 
 the easier he felt in mind, and there was 
 not one of his pleasures which was not 
 poisoned by something or other, not one 
 free from the loathing that comes of satiety. 
 In this wise the stream of Julius life 
 rolled smoothly on, till one day an untoward 
 event took place which nearly changed its 
 whole course. He was taking part in the 
 Olympian games, and was guiding his 
 chariot successfully towards the goal, 
 putting forth all his energies to outstrip 
 another chariot that was slightly ahead of 
 
134 WOFIi WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 his, when he dashed up against it. One of 
 the wheels of his chariot snapped in two ; 
 he was thrown violently out, breaking two 
 ribs and his right arm. The injuries he sus- 
 tained were very severe, but not mortal ; he 
 was conveyed to his house, and was con- 
 fined to his bed for three months. 
 
 Durlnof these three months of intense 
 physical pain, his mind became unusually 
 active ; he employed his enforced leisure in 
 meditating upon his life, which he contem- 
 plated from a purely objective point of 
 view, as if it were the life of a perfect 
 stranger. 
 
 And his past life appeared to him in an 
 unpleasant light, which was intensified by 
 the occurrence just then of three disagree- 
 able events, which occasioned him no in- 
 considerable pain. The first of these was 
 the dishonesty of an old and trusted slave. 
 
IV0J?J^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 135 . 
 
 who had loyally served Julius' father for 
 many years past, but now suddenly ab- 
 sconded with a heap of precious stones 
 which he had received in Africa for his 
 master's firm, thus inflicting heavy losses 
 on Julius, and throwing his affairs into 
 disorder. The second blow was the in- 
 constancy of his concubine, who uncere- 
 moniously left him, and chose another pro- 
 tector for herself The third and most 
 painful stroke of all was the election of his 
 rival to the high post of director, for which 
 he himself was a candidate ; the public 
 elections took place during his illness, and 
 he was rejected. All these reverses, Julius 
 was convinced, were the outcome of his 
 illness, which in turn resulted from his 
 chariot having moved just half an inch 
 too much to the left. Lying thus helpless 
 in bed, his thoughts involuntarily turned on 
 
135 IVORk' WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 the trifling casualties on which his happi- 
 ness depended, and then dwelt on the re- 
 membrance of his previous misfortunes, his 
 attempt to become a Christian, and on 
 Pamphilius, whom he had not seen for ten 
 years. These recollections were refreshed 
 by the conversations he had with his wife, 
 who, now that he was suffering and in bed, 
 used to pass the greater part of her time 
 with him, telling him everything she had 
 learned from her female slave about 
 Christianity. This slave had lived for 
 a time in the very community in which 
 Pamphilius resided, and was personally 
 acquainted with him. Julius, on learning 
 this, expressed a wish to see her, and when 
 she drew near his couch, questioned her in 
 great detail concerning the life led by the 
 Christians, and about Pamphilius in par- 
 ticular. 
 
WORJC WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 137 
 
 Pamphilius, she told him, was one of 
 the best members of the brotherhood, 
 and was beloved and esteemed by all ; he 
 was married to that same Magdalen with 
 whom Julius had seen him ten years be- 
 fore, and he was now the father of several 
 children, ''Yes," concluded the slave, 
 " those who doubt that God created men 
 for their happiness, should pay a visit to 
 that community and look upon Pamphilius 
 and Magdalen." 
 
 Julius dismissed the slave and remained 
 alonC; pondering upon the significance of 
 what he had heard. He was smitten by a 
 feeling of envy, whenever he compared Pam- 
 philius' life with his own, and he resolved 
 to drive such thoughts away. In order to 
 distract himself somewhat he took up a 
 Greek manuscript which his wife had left 
 for him to peruse, and read the following : 
 
138 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 ** There are two ways : leading the one 
 to life, the other to death. The way of 
 life is this : In the first place you must 
 love God who created you, and in the 
 second place love your neighbour as your- 
 self ; and do not unto another that which 
 you would not wish done to yourself. Now 
 the teaching implied in these words may 
 be expressed thus : Bless those that curse 
 you ; pray for your enemies and fast for 
 your persecutors, for if ye love them v/ho 
 love you w^hat thank have ye, do not the 
 heathens do even so ? Love ye them 
 that hate you and ye shall have no 
 enemies. Flee the lusts of the flesh and 
 the world. Whosoever shall smite thee 
 on thy right cheek, turn to him the other 
 also, and thou shalt be perfect. Whoso- 
 ever shall compel thee to go a mile, go 
 with him twain. If any man take away 
 
f. ■ 
 
 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 139 
 
 thy coat, let him have thy shirt also. If 
 any man take what is thine, seek not to 
 have it back, for this thou canst not. Give 
 unto every one that asketh and demand 
 not back what once thou hast given ; for 
 the Father willeth that his beneficent gifts 
 be bestowed upon all. Blessed is he who 
 giveth according to the commandment. . . . 
 '' The second precept of the Teaching : 
 Thou shalt not kill ; thou shalt not commit 
 adultery ; thou shalt not commit fornica- 
 tion ; thou' shalt not steal; thou shalt not 
 use enchantment; thou shalt not poison; 
 thou shalt not covet what belongs to thy 
 neighbour. Thou shalt not swear, thou 
 shalt not bear false witness ; thou shalt 
 not speak ill of any one ; thou shalt not 
 remember evil. Be not double-minded ; 
 be not double-tongued. . . . Let not thy 
 w^ord be false, nor vain, but let it be true 
 
140 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 to the deed. Be not greedy of gain, be not 
 rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor malicious, 
 nor puffed up. Do not design evil plans 
 against your neighbour. Do not foster 
 hatred towards any man, but admonish 
 some, pray for others, and love others 
 more than thou lovest thine own soul. 
 
 *' My child, flee evil of every kind and 
 everything akin to evil. Be not angry, 
 because anger leads up to murder ; nor 
 jealous, nor quarrelsome, nor hot-tempered ; 
 for the outcome of all these is murder. Be 
 not lustful, my son, for lust leads up to 
 fornication ; use not loose words in thy 
 conversation, for the result thereof is adul- 
 tery. My son, do not practise sorcery, 
 cast not spells, pronounce no charms, and 
 flee those who do such things, for they 
 are idolatry. My son be not mendacious, 
 for lying is the road to robbery ; be not 
 
Pi^OJ^J^ WHILE VE HA VE THE LIGHT. 141 
 
 greedy of silver, nor of honours, for robbery 
 comes of these. Be not querulous, my son, 
 for this is the road to blasphemy; nor inso- 
 lent, nor evil-minded, for blasphemy is the 
 fruit of all these. But be meek, for the 
 meek shall inherit the earth. Be patient 
 and kindly and forgiving, and lowly and 
 good. . . . Exalt not thyself, and frequent 
 not the proud, but converse with the 
 righteous and the humble. Whatsoever 
 happeneth to thee welcome as a blessing, 
 knowing that nothing happens against 
 God's will. . . . My son, foment not divi- 
 sions, but make peace between those who 
 have quarrelled. . . . Open not wide thy 
 palms to receive, nor narrow them when 
 giving. Do not shrink from giving away, 
 and, having given, murmur not ; for thou 
 shalt know who is the good Dispenser of 
 rewards. Turn not away thy face from the 
 
142 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 needy, but share all things with thy brother; 
 call nothing thine own, for, if ye are 
 sharers and co-partners in the incorruptible, 
 how much more in what is perishable. 
 Teach thy children from their tender years 
 to fear God. Command not thy servants 
 or thy slaves in anger, lest they should 
 not cease to fear God who rules over you 
 both ; for He cometh not to call people 
 according to their looks, but He calls those 
 whom the spirit has prepared. . . . 
 
 '' And the way of death is this : first of 
 all it is evil and full of curses ; and there is 
 murder upon it and adultery, lust, fornica- 
 tion, robbery, idolatry, sorcery, poisoning, 
 rapacity, false witness, hypocrisy, double 
 dealing, cunning, pride, malice, haughti- 
 ness, greed, foul language, envy, insolence, 
 arrogance, boastfulness ; here are to be 
 found the persecutors of the just, the haters 
 
^ORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 143 
 
 of truth and lovers of lies, they who deny 
 that there will be a reward for the just, they 
 who hold aloof from what is right and from 
 the just judgment ; those who are wakeful 
 not for righteous but for evil purposes, who 
 are strangers to meekness and to patience; 
 here are they who delight in vanity and 
 follow after rewards, who feel no pity for 
 the poor, and have no compassion for those 
 who are crushed wdth toil, who know not 
 their Creator ; the murderers of children, 
 destroyers of that which God hath fashioned, 
 those who turn away from the needy, who 
 trample on the oppressed, defenders of the 
 rich, unjust judges of the poor, sinners in 
 all things. Be on your guard, my children, 
 with all such persons." 
 
 Long before he had read the manuscript 
 through, he felt himself in the position in 
 which many persons find themselves when 
 
t44 IVORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 they read a book — that is to say, other 
 people's thoughts, with a shicere desire of 
 seeking for truth : their souls enter into 
 communion with those who suggested the 
 thoughts. He kept on reading, divining be- 
 forehand what was to follow, and not only 
 assenting to the ideas put forward, but him- 
 self, as it were, giving them expression. 
 
 There then occurred to him something 
 so usual, and seemingly so commonplace, 
 that it generally escapes our notice, and is 
 yet one of the most mysterious, most mo- 
 mentous phenomena of our lives ; it con- 
 sists in the circumstance that a so-called 
 living man becomes truly alive when he 
 enters into communion, unites himself with 
 the so-called dead, living one life with 
 them. Julius' soul merged itself in those 
 of the writers of these thoughts, and after 
 this intimate communion he contemplated 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 145 
 
 himself, surveyed his own life. And he 
 himself, and his whole life, seemed to him 
 a terrible mistake. He had not lived ; 
 but he had, by all his cares and anxieties 
 about life, and all the temptations he had 
 succumbed to, destroyed the very possi- 
 bility of true life. 
 
 ''I do not wish to trample upon and 
 quench my life," he exclaimed to himself; 
 *' I wish to live, to take the road that leads 
 to life." 
 
 All that Pamphilius had told him in 
 their former conversations rose up before 
 him now with the vividness and force of 
 ten years before ; and it all seemed so 
 clear and obvious, that he was astonished 
 that he could have given heed to the words 
 of the stranorer and foreo^one his intention 
 of becoming a Christian. One piece of 
 advice which the stranger had given him 
 
146 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 also recurred to him : '* When you have 
 tasted life, then, if you will, go over to the 
 Christians!^ 
 
 " I have tasted life/' he said to himself, 
 "• and have found it void of attraction, void 
 of substance." He likewise called to mind 
 Pamphilius promise that, whenever he 
 came to the Christians, he would be sure 
 of a cordial reception. "Enough," he 
 exclaimed, '* I have erred and suffered long 
 enough ; I will now leave everything and 
 become a Christian, and live according to 
 the rules laid down here." He informed 
 his wife of his intention ; and she was de- 
 liorhted to hear of it. 
 
 His wife was ready to follow him in all 
 this. The only question now was how to 
 set about executing his plan. What was to 
 be done with the children ? Should they, 
 too, be taken and baptised or left behind 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 147 
 
 with their Pagan grandmother ? Would it 
 be advisable, would it be humane to make 
 them Christians and thus expose them, 
 after years of comfort and luxury, to all 
 the hardships and privations in which the 
 members of this sect delighted ? The 
 female slave offered to go with them and 
 watch over them as Christians. But the 
 mother's heart would not allow her to 
 consent to this. She insisted on leaving 
 them with their grandmother. Julius' ap- 
 proval of this arrangement removed the 
 only serious obstacle in the way ; and, this 
 satisfactorily disposed of, the remaining 
 preparations were at once begun by 
 Julius and his wife for taking the most 
 momentous step in their lives. 
 
( 148 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIL. 
 
 At last all the preparations were concluded 
 and everything finally settled, the only re- 
 maining difficulty being Julius* health — his 
 wounds had not yet healed — which com- 
 pelled him to put off for a few days, or it 
 might be weeks, the last formal act that 
 would sever the ties that bound him to the 
 religion, traditions, and ways of thinking of 
 his fathers, and introduce him to the new 
 life he had chosen. One night he fell 
 asleep in the same resolute mood as 
 usual, and on awaking next morning was 
 informed that a clever physician, who 
 chanced to be passing through the town. 
 
 % 
 
PVOI^A- WHILE yE HA VE THE LIGHT, 149 
 
 had expressed a desire to see him, and 
 undertake to restore him speedily to health 
 and strength. Julius was delighted, said 
 he would see the physician at once, and a 
 few moments later was exchanging saluta- 
 tions with the identical stranger whom he 
 had met and discoursed with many years 
 before on his way to the Christians. 
 
 Having carefully examined his .wounds, 
 the doctor prescribed a decoction of cer- 
 tain simples which he promised would for- 
 tify his patient, and hasten his recovery. 
 
 "Shall I ever be able to work with my 
 hand ?'* Julius inquired. 
 
 ** Oh, certainly. You will be able to * 
 drive a chariot as deftly as ever you did, 
 and to write, too, as much as you desire.'* 
 
 ** Yes ; but I mean hard work ; digging, 
 for instance ?" 
 
 "Well, I confess, I had not that kind of 
 
150 WOJ^K WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 work in mind," said the physician, "be- 
 cause a man in your position never need 
 take to anything of that kind." 
 
 " On the contrary, that is precisely the 
 kind of labour I shall be engaged in/' re- 
 plied Julius ; and he thereupon told the 
 stranger how he had scrupulously acted 
 upon his advice and tasted life, had found 
 all its promises deceitful, and now, full of 
 disappointment and dissatisfaction, was 
 firmly resolved to carry out the intention 
 he had conceived several years before and 
 join the Christian community. 
 
 *'Well, they must have spun a very 
 pretty web of charming falsehoods for you, 
 have enticed you into it and hold you now 
 nicely fastened up, if you, a man occupying 
 such a high social position, with onerous 
 and honourable duties and responsibilities 
 - — especially in respect to your children — 
 
PVOI^Jir WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 151 
 
 are unable to penetrate the mask and dis- 
 cern their errors." 
 
 '' Will you kindly read this ? " said 
 Julius significantly in reply, handing him 
 the Greek manuscript which he had him- 
 self pondered over some days before, with 
 such wonderful results. 
 
 The physician took the scroll, and 
 glanced at it. 
 
 " I know this fraud," he exclaimed. 
 '' the only thing that surprises me is that 
 a man of your intellect should so easily 
 fall into such a snare." 
 
 '* I confess I do not understand you. 
 What snare ? '' 
 
 '' The pith and essence of the whole 
 thing lies in one's conception of human 
 life ; and here are these sophists and rebels 
 against men and gods declaring that one 
 way of life leads to happiness; and defin- 
 
153 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 ing it as a kind of life organised in such a 
 way that all men are to be happy, that 
 there are to be no wars, nor executions, nor 
 poverty, nor immorality, nor quarrels, nor 
 malice. And then they go on to affirm 
 that all these conditions will be realised as 
 soon as people carry out Christ's command- 
 ments not to quarrel, not to commit forni- 
 cation, not to swear, not to do violence, 
 not to ^gg on nation to rise up against 
 nation. But the fact is that they are 
 deceiving people by taking the end for 
 the means. The real aim and object is to 
 keep from quarrelling, from swearing, from 
 dissoluteness, &c., and the only way of 
 attaining it is by employing the means 
 afforded by social life. Their way of pre- 
 senting the facts is about as natural and 
 logical as would be that of a teacher of 
 archery who should say to his pupil : ^ You 
 
WORJ^ WHILE VE HA VE THE LIGHT, 153 
 
 will easily hit the very centre of the target 
 if you only let your arrow fly along in a 
 perfectly straight line from the bow to the 
 point to be hit.' The question is how to 
 make the arrow fly along this perfectly 
 straight line — that is the problem, and to 
 re-state it is not to solve it. In archery the 
 question is solved by fulfilling many condi- 
 - tions, such as having your bowstring tight, 
 your bow elastic, your arrow straight, &c. 
 It is even so with life. The best kind of 
 life — which will exclude or greatly lessen 
 quarrels, dissoluteness, murders— is also 
 arrived at by having your bow-string 
 tight — viz., wise rulers ; your bow elastic — 
 viz., power invested in the authorities ; and 
 your arrow straight — viz., the laws just and 
 impartial. They, under pretext of organ- 
 ising the best way of living, demolish all 
 that has heretofore bettered, and is still 
 
154 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 calculated to better, human life. They 
 acknowledge no rulers, nor authority, nor 
 laws." 
 
 *' But they maintain that without rulers, 
 authority, and laws, human existence will 
 be in all respects better, if only people will 
 fulfil the law of Christ." 
 
 " Yes, but what guarantee have we that 
 people will fulfil his law ? Absolutely 
 none. They say : ' You have tried life 
 with authorities and laws, and it has never 
 been anything but a failure. Try it now 
 without authorities and laws, and you will 
 soon see that it will become perfect. You 
 have no right to deny this, not having put 
 it to the test of experience.' But here the 
 sophistry of these impious men is manifest. 
 Speaking in this tone, are they a whit more 
 logical than the agriculturist who should 
 say : * You sow the seed in the ground, 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 155 
 
 and then cover it up with earth, and yet the 
 harvest crop falls far below what you would 
 wish it to be. But my advice to you is — 
 sow in the sea, and the results will be far 
 more satisfactory. And do not attempt to 
 meet this thesis with a bare denial ; you 
 have no right to do so, never having put it 
 to the test of experience.* *' 
 
 '' Yes, there is much truth in what you 
 say," answered Julius, beginning to falter in 
 his resolution. 
 
 '' Nor is this all," continued the physi- 
 cian ; **let us suppose that what's absurd, 
 nay, impossible, has come to pass ; that the 
 fundamental beliefs and practices of Chris- 
 tianity can in some mysterious manner be 
 communicated to mankind, by means, say, 
 of medicinal drops,, and that suddenly all 
 men take to fulfilling Christ's teachings — 
 loving God and their neighbour, and obey- 
 
156 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 ing the commandments. Even then, I 
 submit, the way of life laid down in their 
 books will not stand fair criticism. There 
 will be no life ; life will cease to exist. 
 Their teacher was an unmarried tramp ; his 
 followers will be — according to our supposi- 
 tion — what their master was, and so will 
 the whole world. Those who are now 
 alive will live on, but their children will 
 not, or certainly not more than one in ten 
 of the children who would otherwise grow 
 up to manhood. According to their own , 
 doctrine, the children should and would be 
 all equal, parents not preferring their own 
 children to those of perfect strangers. 
 Now, how, I ask, will these children 
 be tended, cared for, brought up and 
 shielded from all the dangers with which 
 life bristles, when we see now that all the 
 passionate love which nature has planted 
 
H ORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 157 
 
 in the mother's breast for her own offspring 
 is scarcely enough to preserve children 
 from ruin and death. If children fall like 
 grass before the scythe now that the con- 
 ditions are most favourable to them, what 
 will it be when the only feeling left to 
 mothers will be equal pity for all children. 
 Whose child will a woman bring up and 
 educate ? Who will sit up wakeful, night 
 after night, with the sick, foul-smelling 
 child, if not the mother who gave it 
 life ? Nature provided the child with a 
 shield — motherly love ; they tear it away, 
 and put nothing in its place. Who is 
 to teach the child, to train it, to penetrate 
 to its very soul, and from that centre 
 shape and mould it, if not its own 
 father ? Who will ward off dangers and 
 suffering from it ? All this Is taken away 
 by Christianity; nay, life itself — I mean the 
 
158 JVOI^K WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 perpetuation of the human race — is taken 
 away." 
 
 *' There, too, you are right," interrupted 
 JuHus, who was carried away by the phy- 
 sician's clear, business-like, eloquent way 
 of putting things. 
 
 '' No, my friend, turn away from all these 
 wild ravings and live in accordance with 
 the dictates of reason, especially at the 
 present time, when such noble, momentous, 
 and urgent duties still weigh upon you. 
 To fulfil them is a point of honour. You 
 have lived to enter upon this your second 
 period of doubt, and now, if you will only 
 march onwards, all doubt will vanish. 
 Your first and most urgent obligation is to 
 undertake the education of your children, 
 whom you have hitherto sadly neglected. 
 Your duty towards them consists in mak- 
 ing them worthy servants of the common- 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 159 
 
 wealth. The commonwealth has conferred 
 upon you everything you possess, and now 
 it is your duty in return to give the common- 
 wealth worthy servants in the persons of 
 your children. Another obligation you are 
 under is to serve society. Failure has em- 
 bittered and disappointed you ; this, how- 
 ever, is but a passing accident. Nothing 
 worth having is ever acquired except at 
 the cost of efforts and struggles ; and it is 
 only the hard-won victory that brings the 
 joy of triumph. Leave it to your wife to 
 amuse herself with the idle gossip of Chris- 
 tian writers ; it is your duty to be a man 
 and to make men of your children. Begin 
 this w^ork with the consciousness that you 
 are performing your duty, and all your 
 doubts will vanish into air, for they are but 
 the symptoms and results of your morbid 
 state. Discharge your obligations to the 
 
l6o WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 commonwealth by faithfully serving it, 
 and by training up your children to serve it ; 
 make them independent, self-sacrificing, fit 
 and worthy to take your place, and, having 
 done so, test, if you will, the life that so 
 attracts you, but until then you have no 
 right to abandon your present work, and, if 
 you did forsake it, you would find nothing 
 but disappointment and suffering." 
 
{ I6I ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Whether it was the effect of the medicine 
 or of the conversation and advice, it is im- 
 possible to say, but Julius was soon restored 
 to his normal state of health again, and all 
 his former views of Christianity seemed to 
 him but as the ravings of a madman. 
 
 The physician after a short sojourn left 
 the city ; and a few days after his departure 
 Julius was on his feet again, busy following 
 his advice and inaugurating the new life 
 he had outlined for him. He engaged a 
 teacher for his children, but he reserved to 
 himself the chief control of their education; 
 ^11 the rest of his time he employed in the 
 
 h 
 
1 62 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 conduct of public affairs, in which his 
 success was marked and rapid, and in a 
 very short space of time he had acquired 
 immense influence in the city. 
 
 In this way a twelvemonth passed away, 
 during which he was never once troubled 
 by thoughts about the Christians. At the 
 end of the year he was appointed to judge 
 the Christians in their town, which was 
 not very far off. 
 
 A representative of the Roman emperor 
 had come to Celicia for the purpose of 
 stamping out Christianity. Julius had 
 heard of the measures put in force against 
 the Christians, but, not supposing that they 
 concerned the community in which Pam- 
 philius lived, he never thought of his friend 
 in connection with the matter. One day, 
 as he was walking across the public square 
 on his way to his tribunal, a shabbily 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 163 
 
 dressed old man, to all appearance a 
 • stranger, came hurrying up towards him. 
 This badly dressed man was Pamphilius. 
 Pamphilius drew near and accosted him. 
 '' How are you, friend," he said ; '' I have 
 a very urgent and important request to 
 make, but I do not know whether, during 
 this cruel persecution of the Christians, you 
 care to look upon me as a friend, or whether 
 you are afraid to lose your position by 
 having dealings with me." 
 
 ** I fear no man," answered Julius, *'and 
 that you may have no misgivings on the 
 subject, I would ask you to come along 
 with me to my house. I will even let my 
 work stand over, in order to have a chat 
 with you and to render you any service in 
 my power. Come along. Whose child is 
 that?" 
 
 ** That^s my son/* 
 
i64 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 '' But I need not have inquired. I 
 recognise your traits in his face. I also 
 recognise those blue eyes of his, and deem 
 it superfluous to ask who is your wife. It 
 cannot be any ore but that beautiful girl 
 whom I saw with you in Tarsus many 
 years ago. Those are her eyes." 
 
 '' Your guess is correct," answered Pam- 
 philius. ''Shortly after you and I last 
 parted, she became my wife." 
 
 The two friends entered Julius* house. 
 Julius called his wife, confided the boy to 
 her care, then ushered in Pamphilius to 
 his own luxurious apartment, which was 
 at a considerable distance from the other 
 rooms, remarking as they entered : '* Here 
 you can talk to your heart s content, and 
 nobody will ever be the wiser. You are 
 out of the hearing of all the world." 
 
 '' Oh, it is not afraid of being overheard 
 
WOR}^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 165 
 
 I am. Quite the reverse. Indeed, the 
 request I have to make is not that the 
 Christians who have been arrested and 
 marked out for death should not be exe- 
 cuted, but that permission should be ac- 
 corded them to make a public profession 
 of their faith." 
 
 And Pamphilius narrated how the Chris- 
 tians who had been deprived of their liberty 
 by the authorities had sent word of their 
 arrest from the prisons in which they were 
 confined to the members of their com- 
 munity. Then Cyril, the Elder, aware of 
 Pamphilius* friendly relations with Julius, 
 had commissioned him to come and make 
 that request for the condemned Christians. 
 
 The prisoners did not ask to be par- 
 doned. They held it to be their mission 
 in life to bear witness to the truth of 
 Christ's teachings. This testimony they 
 
1 66 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 could give by a long eighty years* life, or 
 by undergoing the pains of a cruel death. 
 It was quite immaterial to them in which 
 of these two ways they fulfilled the main 
 object of their existence ; physical death, 
 which in the long run was inevitable, had 
 no terrors for them, and it was quite as 
 welcome now as fifty years hence ; but they 
 were vehemently desirous that their lives 
 should prove beneficial to their fellows, and 
 to make sure of this, deputed Pamphilius 
 to ask as a boon that their trial and execu- 
 tion should take place in the presence of 
 the people. 
 
 JuHus was astonished at Pamphilius* 
 strange request, but promised to do every- 
 thing that depended on him to have it 
 granted. 
 
 " I have promised you my mediation," 
 Julius said, '*from a feehng of friendship 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 167 
 
 for yourself, and from a peculiar disposition 
 to kindliness which you always succeed in 
 awakening within me. At the same time, 
 I feel I ought to tell you that I consider 
 your tenets in the last degree extravagant 
 and mischievous. I have a right, I think, 
 to form a judgment upon the subject, 
 seeing that I speak from experience. It is 
 not long since I myself, in a moment of 
 utter dejection brought on by disappoint- 
 ment and disease, shared your views ; and 
 shared them so fully that I was again on 
 the point of giving up everything and join- 
 ing your sect. I know the pivot on which 
 all your errors turn, the corner-stone of 
 the whole system, for I have myself passed 
 through it ; it is self-love, faint-hearted- 
 ness and debility caused by disease. Yes, 
 Christianity is a creed for women, not for 
 men.*' 
 
i68 IVORJ^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 '^But why SO?" 
 
 '* Because, although, on the one hand, 
 you acknowledge that discord and the 
 numerous forms of violence it engenders 
 are inborn in human nature; you refuse, 
 on the other hand, to hold aloof from these 
 and their fruits, and to abandon them to 
 others who are of a different way of 
 thinking; and thus, without contributing 
 your share to the sum of human efforts, 
 you are not above reaping all the advan- 
 tages you can have from the organisation 
 of the world, which you know to be 
 founded on violence. Is this fair ? The 
 world has always existed through and by 
 means of its rulers. They take upon them- 
 selves the work and the responsibility of 
 governing ; they protect us from foreign 
 and domestic enemies. We subjects, in 
 return for this, pay our rulers deference 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 169 
 
 and homage, obey their commands, and, 
 when needful, assist them to serve the 
 State. But you Christians, instead of 
 putting your shoulders to the wheel, and 
 working for the common good as others do, 
 and so rising gradually higher and higher 
 in the obligation to treat others as your 
 superiors, seem to be able to consider 
 yourselves Csesar*s equals. Not satisfied 
 with this, you protest against tributes and 
 taxes, slavery, the law courts, executions, 
 and war — in a word, against all those in- 
 stitutions which bind men together and 
 keep them united. If people were to give 
 ear to your doctrines, society would very 
 quickly fall to pieces, and its members 
 return to their pristine savagery. Living 
 in a State, you preach the destruction of 
 the State — you, whose very existence is 
 dependent on that of the State. If the 
 
170 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 State did not exist, you and your bre- 
 thren would never have been heard of; 
 we should all be slaves of the Scyths 
 or of the first savage tribes who dis- 
 covered us. 
 
 *' You are like a tumour which destroys 
 the body and yet lives solely upon the 
 body. The living individual body struggles 
 with and annihilates the tumour, and we 
 act and cannot but act in precisely the 
 same way towards you. Hence, in spite 
 of my promise to assist you to realise your 
 wishes, I look upon your tenets as ex- 
 ceedingly pernicious and vile. Vile, be- 
 cause I hold that to gnaw the breast that 
 nourishes you is neither honourable nor 
 just, and this is what you are doing who 
 are willing to profit by the advantages 
 offered by the commonwealth and yet 
 refuse to move a finger in support of the 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 171 
 
 organisation by which it exists, and actually 
 endeavour to pull it to pieces/' 
 
 ** There would be much truth in what 
 you advance," replied Pamphilius, '' if our 
 life corresponded to your description of it. 
 But you have no actual experience of the 
 life we lead, and your notions of it are false 
 and misleading. 
 
 ** The means of livelihood which we 
 make use of are readily obtainable without 
 recurring to any form of violence what- 
 ever; and man is so constituted that so 
 long as he is in normal health he can 
 obtain by the work of his hands more than 
 he requires for the support of his life. 
 Living together in common we are able by 
 the work of our hands to maintain our 
 children and old folks, our sick and infirm. 
 
 ** You assert that your rulers protect 
 men from their foreign and domestic 
 
172 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 enemies. But we love our enemies, and 
 consequently have none. 
 
 ** You contend that we Christians arouse 
 in the breast of the slave a desire to be 
 Caesar. In truth we do to the contrary ; 
 by word and deed we preach patient 
 humility and work — work of what is con- 
 sidered the lowest kind — the work of the 
 common day labourer. 
 
 '' About affairs of State we know nothing, 
 understand nothing. We know but one 
 thing in that sphere, but that we know 
 thoroughly, beyond the possibility of 
 doubt — namely, that our happiness lies 
 there where the happiness of other people 
 is to be found, and it is there that we 
 always seek it. The happiness of all men 
 consists in their union, and their union 
 must be brought about, not by violence, 
 but by love. The violence of a highway- 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 173 
 
 man towards a wayfarer is, to our thinking, 
 neither more nor less abominable than the 
 violence employed by troops against their 
 prisoner, or by the judge against the con- 
 demned culprit, and it is impossible that 
 we should deliberately consent to have 
 hand or part in one or the other. Vio- 
 lence is reflected in us, but our share in 
 it consists not in actively applying it to 
 others, but in submitting to it without 
 protest." 
 
 " Yes/' interrupted Julius, ** but you only 
 seem to be martyrs and to be ever eager 
 to lay down your lives for the truth. In 
 reality truth is not on your side ; you are 
 proud madcaps, engaged in sapping the 
 foundations of social life. In words you 
 preach love, but it needs no very searching 
 analysis of the results that flow from that 
 love of yours to discover that it should be 
 
174 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 called by a very different name ; for the 
 results in question are savagery, retrogres- 
 sion to the primitive state of nature, 
 murders, robbery, violence of all kinds, &c., 
 which, according to your doctrines, must 
 not be opposed or checked in any way." 
 
 '' No ; that is not so," rejoined Pam- 
 philius ; ** and if you will only consider 
 carefully and impartially what results from 
 our teaching and our living you will see, 
 without my pointing it out, not only that 
 murders, violence, and robbery do not flow 
 from them, but that, on the contrary, 
 crimes of this nature cannot be success- 
 fully rooted out otherwise than by employ- 
 ing the means we advocate. Murder, rob- 
 bery, and every kind of evil existed in 
 the world long before Christianity appeared 
 there, and people grappled with them in 
 vain, employing those very means the 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 175 
 
 efficacy of which we deny. These ex- 
 pedients, which all consist in meeting- 
 violence with violence, do not, cannot 
 check crime, but they provoke it by arous- 
 ing in individuals feelings of anger and 
 bitterness. 
 
 " Just look at the mighty Roman Empire. 
 In no other country have such pains been 
 taken to apply the laws as in Rome. The 
 study and delicate adjustment of the legis- 
 lation to the varying wants of the people 
 have been raised to the rank of a special 
 science there. The laws are taught in the 
 schools, discussed in the Senate, reformed 
 and administered by the most gifted citi- 
 zens. Legal justice is regarded as one of 
 the noblest human achievements, and the 
 office of judge is held in the highest esteem. 
 And yet it is known to every one that there 
 is no city existing at the present moment 
 
176 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 throughout the length and breadth of God's 
 earth which has sunk so deeply in the ooze 
 of debauchery and crime as Rome. Call 
 to mind the history of Rome, and you will 
 be struck by the fact that the Roman 
 people were distinguished by many virtues 
 in remoter times, notwithstanding the cir- 
 cumstance that the laws then were neither 
 so numerous nor drawn up with such a care- 
 ful eye to the end in view as at the present ' 
 time. Nowadays, side by side with the 
 study, adjustment, and application of the 
 laws, we observe a steady deterioration in 
 the morals of the Roman people, the 
 number of crimes continues to increase, 
 and the species of criminal offences grow 
 more various and artificial every day. 
 
 '' To grapple successfully with crimes, or 
 with any description of evil, is possible only 
 by employing the means which Christianity 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. i^^ 
 
 place within our reach — viz., love ; the 
 Pagan weapons of vengeance, punishment, 
 violence are absurdly inefficacious. I am 
 sure that you yourself would like to see 
 people refraining from doing evil, not from 
 fear of punishment, but from a lack of 
 ^desire to do what is wrong. Surely you 
 would not wish mankind to resemble the' 
 wretches confined in prison, who abstain 
 from committing crime only because they 
 are continually watched and kept in order 
 by their gaolers. All the preventive and 
 remedial laws and punishments in the 
 world will not root out people s propensities 
 to do wrong and put a desire to do right 
 in Its place. The result can be accom- 
 plished only when you deal with the root 
 of the evil which you seek to eradicate ; 
 and the root lies inside the individual. 
 And to do this is our aim and object, 
 
 M 
 
178 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 whereas you confine yourself to the out- 
 ward manifestations of the evil. You can 
 never hope to reach its source, because 
 you do not seek for it ; you do not know 
 where it is hidden. 
 
 "The most common and prevalent crimes, 
 such as murder, robbery, theft, fraud, have 
 their source in men's desire to increase 
 their stock of this world's goods, or simply 
 to obtain the bare necessities of life, which 
 for one reason or another they cannot pro- 
 cure in any other way. Some of these 
 crimes are punished by the law, although 
 those which are the most complicated and 
 wide-reaching in their effects are committed 
 under the protecting wing of this same law 
 — such, for instance, as huge commercial 
 frauds, and the endless ways of stripping 
 the poor of their possessions which are con- 
 stantly practised by the rich. Those crimes 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 179 
 
 which are punished by the law are to a cer- 
 tain extent checked, or rather made more 
 difficult, and the criminals are driven, by 
 fear of incurring the penalty, to set to work 
 more prudently and cunningly than would be 
 otherwise necessary, devising new forms of 
 crime which the laws cannot punish. By 
 practising the teachings of the Christian 
 religion a man keeps clear, of all such crimes 
 as arise either from the scramble for riches or 
 from the unequal distribution of wealth, great 
 quantities of which are accumulated in the 
 hands of a few. We take away all motive 
 for crime, for robbery and murder, solely by 
 refusing to take for ourselves more than 
 what is strictly indispensable for the sup- 
 port of life, and by giving up to others all 
 our free labour ; thus it is that we never 
 tempt others by the sight of accumulated 
 wealth, for we rarely possess more than is 
 
i8o WOl^J^ WHILE VR HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 absolutely necessary for our day's support. 
 Hence, if a man who is driven to despair 
 by the pains of hunger, and is ready to 
 commit a crime in order to procure a crust 
 of bread, comes to us, he will find what 
 he is in search of, without having recourse 
 to crime or violence, inasmuch as we live 
 for the purpose of sharing our last morsel 
 of food, our last shred of clothes, with those 
 who are suffering from hunger and cold. 
 And the result is that one class of crimi- 
 nals avoids us altogether, while the others 
 come over to us, find salvation, abandon 
 their criminal life, and little by little 
 become useful workers, toiling like the 
 others for the common good of all man- 
 kind. 
 
 ** Another category of crime consists of 
 those offences which are provoked by the 
 play of unbridled passions — of vengeance, 
 
WOI^K WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. i8i 
 
 for instance, jealous, carnal love, anger, 
 hatred. Criminal acts of this species are 
 never prevented by laws. The individual 
 about to commit them is in a state of animal 
 irresponsibility, perfect freedom from all 
 moral restraints ; and thus blinded and 
 swayed by his passion, he is utterly incapable 
 of gauging the effects or weighing the results 
 of his actions. An obstacle only serves to 
 fan the flame of his passion. Laws, there- 
 fore, are perfectly useless as instruments for 
 suppressing such crimes. Our method of 
 meeting them is efficacious. We believe 
 that man will never attain the satisfaction 
 and the aim of life by ministering to his 
 passions, or anywhere except within him- 
 self, in his own soul. We endeavour, there- 
 fore, to tame and curb our passions by a 
 life of labour and of love, developing 
 thereby in a corresponding degree the force 
 
1 82 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 and suppleness of the spiritual principle 
 within us ; and in proportion as our number 
 becomes larger, and our faith penetrates 
 farther and deeper among men, will the 
 number of such crimes become less. 
 
 ** Finally, there is still another class of 
 crimes which have their root in a sincere 
 desire to help one's fellow-creatures. The 
 desire to alleviate the sufferings of an 
 entire people, for instance, impels some 
 
 ' men — conspirators, they are called — to kill 
 a tyrant, in the belief that they are thereby 
 benefiting the majority. The source of 
 such crimes is a mistaken conviction that 
 evil may be perpetrated, in order that good 
 may follow. Now, crimes of this descrip- 
 tion are not only not prevented or their 
 number lessened by the promulgation and 
 application of legal pains and penalties, but 
 
 ' they are positively provoked thereby. The 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 183 
 
 persons who commit offences of this kind, 
 although grievously mistaken in their 
 hopes and beHefs, are impelled to act as 
 they do by a noble motive — a desire to do 
 good to others. Most of these men, if 
 sincere, are ready to lay down all they 
 have and are for the attainment of their 
 end, and they quail before no dangers or 
 difficulties. Hence, fear of punishment is 
 powerless to restrain or cause them to 
 hesitate. On the contrary, dangers infuse 
 new life and spirit into them, their suffer- 
 ings raise them to the dignity of martyrs, 
 earn for them the sympathy of most men 
 and stimulate many others to go and do 
 likewise. This is confirmed by the history 
 of any, of every people. 
 
 " We Christians believe that the evil will 
 not cease entirely until all men get to' 
 understand the gravity of the misfortunes 
 
1 84 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 It causes to themselves and to others. We 
 also know that a brotherhood cannot be 
 founded until every one of us is himself a 
 brother; that a brotherhood cannot be 
 organised without brethren. Therefore 
 we Christians^ although we clearly perceive 
 the error of such conspirators, cannot but 
 appreciate their sincerity and self-denial, 
 and we draw near them and meet them on 
 the common ground of the positive good 
 which it must be admitted they possess. 
 
 '' In us they recognise not foes, but people 
 quite as sincere and as eagerly bent on 
 doing good as they are themselves, and 
 many of them come over to us, after 
 having acquired the conviction that a quiet 
 life of toil and unceasing solicitude for the 
 welfare of others is incomparably more 
 beneficial to mankind and a more difficult 
 achievement than their momentary feats of 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 185 
 
 prowess which are stained by the blood of 
 human Hfe needlessly sacrificed. And 
 those conspirators who in this belief join 
 our body, are always found among the 
 most active and vigorous members of our 
 community, both in body and in spirit. 
 
 '* You have now data enough, Julius, to 
 decide for yourself who it is that grapples 
 more successfully with all kinds of crime 
 and contributes more efficaciously to sup- 
 press it — we Christians, who preach and 
 demonstrate the joy and delight of a 
 spiritual life, from which no evil can arise — 
 we whose aims are example and love ; or 
 your rulers and judges, who pass sentences 
 according to the letter of a dead law, and 
 finish by rescuing their victims or lashing 
 them into fury and driving them to the 
 uttermost extreme of hatred.'* 
 
 '*As long as I keep listening to you," 
 
1 86 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 replied Julius, *' I certainly seem to get the 
 impression that your point of view is the 
 correct one. But will you explain to me, 
 Pamphilius, how it is that people persecute 
 you, hunt you down, kill you ? How, in a 
 word, your doctrine of love can beget such 
 discord and strife ? " 
 
 **The source of this seeming anomaly 
 is not in us, it is outside us. I alluded a 
 few moments ago to a class of crimes which 
 are condemned as crimes both by the State 
 and by us. These crimes consist of a 
 form of violence which transgresses the 
 laws established for the time being in any 
 State. But besides and above these laws, 
 people recognise other laws which are 
 eternal, common to all mankind, engraved 
 in the hearts of all human beings. We 
 Christians obey these divine universal 
 laws, and discern in the words and life of 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 187 
 
 our teacher their fittest, clearest, and fullest 
 expression. This is why we have come to 
 condemn as a crime every form of violence 
 which transgresses any one of Christ's com- 
 mandments, in all of which we see the ex- 
 pression of God's law. We admit that in 
 order to remove, when possible, all pretext 
 for the manifestation of ill-will against us, 
 we are bound to observe the civil laws of 
 the country in which we reside. But 
 higher than all else we place the law of 
 God, which guides our conscience and our 
 reason, and we can therefore obey only 
 such laws of the State as are not opposed 
 to those of God. Let Caesar have what 
 is his of right ; but to God we must render 
 all that is God's. The crimes which we 
 are intent on avoiding and suppressing are 
 not merely transgressions against the laws 
 of the States in which we were born and 
 
1 88 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 must live, but first and foremost every 
 species of violation of God's will which is 
 a law common to the whole human race. 
 Hence our struggle with crime is more 
 comprehensive and more profound than 
 yours, w^hich is carried on by the State. 
 
 ** How this recognition by us of God's 
 will as the highest law, shocks and incenses 
 those who give the first place to a private 
 law — to the legislative measures of a State, 
 for instance, or, as is often the case, who 
 raise a custom of their class to the dignity 
 of a law. These individuals, unwilling or 
 unable to become men in the true sense 
 of the word, in the sense in which Christ 
 said that truth would make us free men, 
 are satisfied with the position of subjects 
 of this or that State or members of this or 
 that society, and they are naturally ani- 
 mated by feelings of enmity for those who 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 189 
 
 see and proclaim that man has a much 
 higher destiny, a far nobler mission. Un- 
 able to discern, reluctant to admit, this 
 higher destiny for themselves, they refuse 
 to acknowledo^e it for others. Concern- 
 ing them Christ said : * Woe unto you, 
 lawyers! for ye have taken away the key 
 of knowledge : ye entered not in your- 
 selves, and them that were entering in 
 you hindered.' They are the originators of 
 that persecution against us which puzzles 
 you. 
 
 *'We ourselves entertain feelings of enmity 
 for no man — not even for those who thus 
 pursue and persecute us, and our manner 
 of life inflicts no harm or loss on any one. 
 If people are incensed against us, if they 
 foster feelings of hatred towards us, the 
 only possible reason is that our life is a 
 constant rebuke to them, a condemnation 
 
190 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 of their conduct, founded as it is upon 
 violence. To put an end to that enmity, 
 the cause of which does not lie with us, is 
 beyond our power, for we cannot cease to 
 comprehend the truth which we have 
 already coipiprehended, we cannot live 
 aofainst our conscience and our reason. 
 Concerning that same hostility to us, which 
 our faith arouses in others, our teacher 
 said : ' Think not that I am come to bring 
 peace ; I came not to send peace, but a 
 sword/ Christ felt the effects of this 
 hatred on his own person, and he warned 
 us, his followers, many times, that we too 
 should experience it. * Me,' he said once, 
 *the world hateth, because I testify of it, 
 that the works thereof are evil. If ye 
 were of the world, the world would love 
 his own ; but because ye are not of the 
 world, but I have chosen you out of the 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 191 
 
 world, therefore the world hateth you ; 
 and time will come when he who kills you 
 will think that he doeth God service.' But, 
 strengthened by Christ's example, we, like 
 him, do not fear those that kill the body, 
 for they can do nothing more. Illumined 
 by the rays of truth, we live in its light, 
 and our life knows not death. Physical 
 suffering and death no man can escape. A 
 time will come when our executioners will 
 also suffer in body and die, and it is horri- 
 ble to think how the unfortunate, helpless 
 creatures will be tortured at the sight of 
 death, which will strip them of all that they 
 acquired at the cost of such arduous labour 
 continued throughout their lifetime. Thanks 
 to God that we are guaranteed against the 
 most frightful of all suffering ; for the happi- 
 ness for which we yearn consists not in 
 immunity from bodily pain and death, but 
 
192 IVO^I^ WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 
 
 in the preservation and development of 
 equanimity in all the vicissitudes of life ; in 
 the consoling conviction that whatever 
 happens to us independently of our own 
 will, is unavoidable, and for our ultimate 
 good ; and, above all, in the knowledge that 
 we are true to our conscience and our 
 reason — those noble lights bestowed upon 
 man by the source of truth. And thus we 
 suffer nothing from those who hate and 
 persecute us. It is not we, but they, who 
 smart from the stings of that enmity, that 
 hatred which, like a snake in their bosom, 
 they nurture in their hearts. * And this is 
 their condemnation, that light is come into 
 the world, and men love darkness rather 
 than light, because their deeds are evil.' 
 There is nothing to perplex or trouble us 
 in all that ; for truth will do its work. The 
 sheep hear the voice of their shepherd, and 
 
WOliK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 193 
 
 they follow him, because they know his 
 voice. 
 
 *' And Christ's flock will not perish, but 
 will grow and thrive, attracting ever new 
 sheep from all parts of the world ; for the 
 wind bloweth where it llsteth, and thou 
 hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
 tell whence it cometh, and whither it 
 goeth," 
 
( 194 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 While he was still speaking, Pamphilius' 
 little son rushed into the apartment, and 
 hugged and clasped his father. In spite of 
 all the coaxing and caresses he had run 
 away from Julius' wife, and now took 
 shelter in his father s embrace. 
 
 Pamphilius sighed, fondled his boy, rose 
 up and was about to depart; but Julius 
 detained him, requested him to continue 
 the conversation and stay for dinner. 
 
 *' I am astonished, I confess," said Julius, 
 *'that you should be married and have 
 children. It is a mystery to me how you 
 Christians can bring up your children, in 
 
rVOJ^Iv WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 195 
 
 spite of the absence of property ; how 
 Christian mothers can attain peace of mind, 
 knowing, as they do, how precarious is the 
 future of their offspring, and how powerless 
 they are to put their children beyond the 
 reach of want." 
 
 ''In what respect are our children worse 
 off than yours ? " asked Pamphilius. 
 
 ''In this respect, that they have no 
 slaves to look after them, no property of 
 any kind to fall back upon. My wife is 
 very favourably disposed to Christianity, in 
 fact, at one time, she was firmly bent on 
 abandoning her present life and becoming 
 a Christian. That was several years ago 
 — I, too, was then resolved to accompany 
 her. But what frightened her more than 
 anything else was the precariousness of the 
 position of Christian children, the want to 
 which they are exposed. And I must say, 
 
196 tVO/^Jir WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGH7. 
 
 I could not but agree with her. That was 
 when I was ill and confined to my bed. I 
 was then thoroughly disgusted with the life 
 I had been leading, and had taken the 
 resolution to forsake it once for all and join 
 your community. But the apprehensions 
 of my wife on the one hand, and the argu- 
 ments of the physician who attended me 
 and brought me round on the other hand, 
 impressed me with the conviction that the 
 life of a Christian — at least as you under- 
 stand and practise it — is possible and bene- 
 ficial only when those who embrace it are 
 unmarried ; but that persons with families, 
 mothers with children, are utterly unsuited 
 for it and should never think of trvinof it. 
 Furthermore, that the upshot of the life 
 you approve and lead, will be the cessation 
 of all human life — that is to say, the extinc- 
 tion of the race. This is a fact which there 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 197 
 
 IS no getting over. And under such circum- 
 stances, I was, I confess, rather surprised 
 to see you appear with a child by your 
 side." 
 
 '* And not one only, I may add ; for I 
 left at home a child in arms and a girl of 
 three years." 
 
 *' Well, will you explain how it is done ? 
 Do what I will, I positively cannot under- 
 stand it. A few years ago I was, as I 
 remarked, on the point of forswearing my 
 worldly life, and embracing Christianity. 
 But I was the father of children, and I felt 
 that, however distasteful the fact might be 
 to me, it still remained a fact that I had no 
 right to sacrifice my children ; and, recog- 
 nising this, I stayed on leading my old life 
 for their sakes, in order to bring them up 
 in the same conditions as those in which I 
 was educated myself." 
 
198 IVOKK' WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 '' It is very odd," said Pamphilius, '' that 
 you should reason so. From the same 
 facts we draw opposite conclusions. We 
 say, if grown-up people live in a worldly 
 manner, this is to a certain extent excus- 
 able, because they are spoiled already. 
 But children ? That is horrible ! To live 
 with them in the world, and expose them 
 continually to its temptations and dangers ! 
 'Woe unto the world because of offences ! 
 for it must needs be that offences come ; 
 but woe to that man by whom the offence 
 Cometh ! ' These are the words of our 
 Master ; and I make use of them for that 
 reason, and because they are the expression 
 of the truth, and not merely for the purpose 
 of objecting ; for it is really a fact that the 
 necessity of living as we live results mainly 
 from the circumstances that there are chil- 
 dren in our midst, tender beings of whom 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 199 
 
 it has been said : * Except ye become as 
 little children, ye shall not enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven.' " 
 
 ** But how can a Christian family contrive 
 to get along without definite means of sub- 
 sistence ? " 
 
 '* Means of subsistence, according to our 
 belief, are of one kind, and only one kind : 
 work for the benefit of others inspired by 
 love. Your means of livelihood, on the 
 contrary, are violence, which can vanish as 
 wealth vanishes, and then nothing remains 
 but the labour and love of men. We start 
 with the idea that we should hold fast by 
 that which is the foundation — the basis of 
 everything else — increasing itwhen possible. 
 And when this is done, the family lives, 
 and even thrives. No," continued Pam- 
 philius, '' if I entertained any doubts about 
 •the truth of Christ's teaching, and if I hesi- 
 
200 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 tated about putting them into practice, my 
 doubts and hesitations would instantly dis- 
 appear the moment I pictured to myself 
 the sad fate of the children who are brouo^ht 
 up in Paganism, amid the surroundings and 
 associations in which you grew up and are 
 now educating your children. No matter 
 what strenuous efforts we, a small band of 
 individuals, make to render life comfortable 
 and pleasant by means of palaces, slaves, 
 and the imported products of foreign climes, 
 the lives of the great mass of the people 
 will remain what they were, what they 
 must be. The only provision for these 
 lives remains the love of mankind and 
 earnest toil. We are desirous of freeing 
 ourselves and our friends from the pressure 
 of these conditions, and we get other people 
 to work for us, not voluntarily, out of love, 
 but by employing violence ; and, strange to 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 201 
 
 say, the better we seem to provide for our- 
 selves, the more we are depriving ourselves 
 of the only true, natural, and enduring pro- 
 vision — love. The greater the power of 
 the ruler, the less he is loved. The same 
 thing holds good of that other provision — 
 work. The more a man shirks work, and 
 accustoms himself to luxury, the less capa- 
 ble he becomes of working, and the more 
 he consequently deprives himself of the 
 true and eternal provision. And these 
 conditions in which people place their chil- 
 dren they term making provision for them ! 
 To test my statement, take your son and 
 mine, and send them to find a road, to 
 transmit an order, or to transact any im- 
 portant business, and note which of them 
 acquits himself more satisfactorily ; or pro- 
 pose to confide them to a master to be 
 educated, and see which of tbem will be 
 
202 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 the more willingly received. No, never 
 ao^ain utter those terrible words that a 
 Christian life is possible only for those who 
 are childless. On the contrary, one might 
 rather say that to lead the life of a Pagan 
 is excusable only in those who are without 
 children. But woe to him who offendeth 
 any of these little ones." 
 
 Julius remained silent. 
 
 ** Yes," he said, after a considerable 
 pause, ''it may be that you are right ; but 
 their education is already begun, the very 
 best masters are teaching them. Let them 
 learn all that we know ; that can surely do 
 them no harm. There is plenty of time 
 yet, both for them and for me. They will 
 be at liberty to embrace your faith, when 
 they are in the flower of their age and in 
 the full enjoyment of all their faculties — if 
 they feel so disposed. As for me, I can 
 
WORIC WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 203 
 
 do so when I have provided for my 
 children, set them standing on their own 
 feet, so to say, and have thus become 
 free." 
 
 *' When you have known the truth, 
 you will be free," answered Pamphilius. 
 '* Christ confers perfect liberty at once : 
 the world's teaching will never bestow it. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 And Pamphilius, with his son, departed. 
 
 The trial of the prisoners took place 
 in the presence of the people, and Julius 
 saw Pamphilius and noticed how he, along 
 with the other Christians, assisted in re- 
 moving the bodies of the martyrs. He 
 noticed that, but fear of offending his 
 superiors kept him from approaching his 
 friend or inviting him to his house. 
 
( 2C4 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Twelve years more passed away. Julius 
 wife died. His time was filled up with the 
 cares and worry inseparable from public 
 life, and in the pursuit of power which 
 now became his for a passing moment, and 
 now slipped away from his grasp. His 
 wealth was immense, and he still went on 
 increasing it. 
 
 His sons had meanwhile grown toman's 
 estate, and were leading — especially the 
 second one — a life of luxury and extrava- 
 gance. This young man had made consider- 
 able holes in the vessel in which his father s 
 riches were stored up, and they leaked out 
 
tVORk^ WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. ^05 
 
 with greater rapidity than they were poured 
 in. A struggle was carried on between 
 Julius and his sons, which was in all respects 
 identical with that which had been waged 
 years before by himself and his father. It 
 was characterised by the same traits : bit- 
 terness, jealousy, hatred. Moreover, about 
 this time a new viceroy had been appointed, 
 who deprived Julius of all the marks of 
 Imperial favour. Julius was forsaken in 
 consequence by his former flatterers, and 
 was now in expectation of being banished. 
 He repaired to Rome in order to offer 
 explanations with a view to recover his 
 lost position, but he was not received, 
 and was commanded to return home. 
 
 On his arrival in Tarsus he found his 
 son banqueting with several dissolute 
 young men in his house. In Cilicia a 
 rumour had been circulated to the effect 
 
2o6 WORK WHILE YE HA PE THE LIGHT, 
 
 that Julius was dead, and his son was joy- 
 fully celebrating his father's death. At 
 sight of this Julius, losing all control over 
 his passion, felled his son to the ground, 
 left him for dead, and withdrew to the 
 apartment of his late wife. In his wife^s 
 room he found a scroll containing the 
 Gospel, and read therein the words : 
 *' Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 
 '' Yes/' exclaimed Julius to himself, 
 '' He has been long calling me. I did not 
 believe Him ; was disobedient and wicked, 
 and the yoke I bore was heavy, the burden 
 I carried was evil.*' 
 
 And for a long time Julius remained 
 sitting with the manuscript spread out 
 before him on his knees, meditating upon 
 his past life, and calling to mind what Pam- 
 philius on various occasions had told him. 
 
WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 207 
 
 At length he arose and went to his son, 
 whom he found on his feet, and he was 
 overjoyed to think that he had inflicted no 
 serious harm by the blow. 
 
 Without addressing a word to his son 
 Julius left the house, walked into the street, 
 and took the road that led to the Christian 
 community. 
 
 He journeyed on the whole day, and 
 when evening came he stopped at a 
 villager's house, where he intended to pass 
 the night. In the room into which he 
 entered there was a man stretched out on 
 a couch. The noise of footsteps disturbed 
 him, and he raised himself up. 
 
 Julius recognised the physician. 
 
 ** No," exclaimed Julius, ''never again 
 shall you dissuade me from carrying out 
 my resolve. This is the third time that I 
 am bound for the same destination, and I 
 
2o8 PrOJ^r WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 know that there, and there only, I shall 
 find peace of mind/' 
 
 ** Where ?" asked the physician. 
 
 ** Among the Christians." 
 
 " Yes ; you may possibly find peace of 
 mind there, but you will certainly not be 
 doing your duty. You lack fortitude, m^y* 
 friend ; misfortunes subdue you. True 
 philosophers never act thus. Disasters 
 and reverses are but the fire that tries the 
 gold. You have passed through the 
 crucible ; and now that your services, 
 which might prove inestimable, are most 
 urgently needed, you are sneaking away. 
 It is now that you should test others and 
 yourself. You have acquired true wisdom, 
 and it is your duty to make use of it for 
 the good of the commonwealth. What 
 would become of the citizens and the State 
 if those who have obtained a thorough 
 
PVOJ^/C WHiLk YE HA VE THM LIGHT. 209 
 
 knowledge of men, their passions, motives, 
 and the conditions of their life, instead of 
 giving the benefit of their knowledge and 
 experience to the State, were to bury them 
 out of sight and seek repose and tran- 
 quillity for themselves ? Your wisdom has 
 been gained in society, and it is your 
 duty to allow society to reap the benefits 
 of it." 
 
 ** But I possess no wisdom. I am a 
 bundle of errors. True, they are ancient, 
 but then antiquity does not transform 
 errors into wisdom ; age and putridity, no 
 matter what proportions they may reach, 
 never change water into wine/* 
 
 And having said this, Julius caught up 
 his mantle, quitted the room and the house, 
 and without resting anywhere continued 
 his journey* 
 
 The next evening, as the long shadows 
 
 o 
 
210 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT. 
 
 had just deepened into darkness, he reached 
 the town of the Christians. He received 
 a very cordial welcome, notwithstanding 
 that it was not known that he was the 
 personal friend of Pamphilius, whom they 
 all loved and revered. 
 
 At table Pamphilius perceived his friend, 
 and with an affable smile ran up to him 
 and pressed him in his embrace. 
 
 ** Here I am at last," exclaimed Julius. 
 *' Tell me what I am to do ; I will obey 
 you. 
 
 '' Don't worry about that," replied Pam- 
 philius; ''let us go together." And 
 Pamphilius led Julius irto the house that 
 was prepared for strangers and wayfarers, 
 pointed to the couch there, and said : *' You 
 will find out yourself in what way you may 
 be useful to others, as soon as you have 
 looked around you and grown accustomed 
 
WOKJC WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 211 
 
 to our mode of life. But in order that you 
 may make a profitable use of your present 
 leisure, I will tell you what you might do 
 to-morrow ; in our gardens the brethren 
 are busy gathering in the vintage; go 
 and give them what assistance you can. 
 You will easily find your place among 
 them.'* 
 
 Julius went to the vineyards next morn- 
 ing. The first was a young plantation 
 with rich clusters of grapes hanging down 
 on every side. The young people were 
 gathering them in and carrying them 
 away. All the work was portioned out 
 among them, and Julius went from one 
 to another anxious to discover something 
 to do, but he found no place for himself 
 there. 
 
 He penetrated further, and came into a 
 somewhat older plantation, where the crop 
 
212 WORIC WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 
 
 was considerably less. But here, too, he 
 failed to get an occupation ; the brethren 
 were busy working in pairs, and required 
 no additional hands. He continued his 
 search, however, and soon found himself 
 in a very old vineyard. It was empty. 
 The vine-stocks were warped and crooked, 
 and, as it seemed to Julius, wholly devoid 
 of fruit. 
 
 " So this is what my life is," he exclaimed 
 to himself, as he looked around. *' Had I 
 come hither at the first call, my life would 
 have been as the fruits of the first vineyard. 
 Had I come at the second call, it would 
 have been like those of the older planta- 
 tion ; but now my life is as these useless, 
 weakly old vine-stocks, fit only to be thrown 
 into the fire." 
 
 And Julius was terrified at what he had 
 done, at the thought of the punishment 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT, 213 
 
 that awaited him for having wantonly 
 squandered his whole life. 
 
 And he became very sad, and said aloud : 
 '*I am now fit for nothing; there is now 
 no v;ork that I can do." And he did not 
 rise up from his place, but wept bitterly 
 over the criminal loss of that which he 
 knew he could never more bring back. 
 
 Suddenly he heard the voice of an old 
 man calling out to him. "Work, dear 
 brother/' said the voice. 
 
 Looking round, Julius beheld a very old 
 man with snow-white hair, doubled up with 
 age, whose tottering feet scarcely bore up 
 the weight of his body. He stood beside 
 a vine, and was gathering the rare sweet 
 grapes that grew here and there upon it. 
 Julius went up to him. 
 
 *'Work, dear brother,'' he said; "work 
 is sweet." And he taught him how to 
 
214 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 look for the very few clusters that were 
 still on the stalks. 
 
 Julius set to work to do as he had been 
 told, and having found some bunches of 
 grapes, took them to the old man and put 
 them in his basket. 
 
 And the old man said to him, ** Look ! 
 In what are these bunches inferior to those 
 they are gathering in the other planta- 
 tions ? Work while ye have the light, 
 said our Teacher. It is the will of Him 
 that sent me, that whosoever seeth the 
 Son and believeth in Him, has life ever- 
 , lasting, and I will raise him up on the last 
 day. For God did not send His Son into 
 the world to judge the world, but that the 
 world should be saved through Him. He 
 who believes in Him will not be judged, 
 and he who does not believe is judged 
 already, because he did not believe in the 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHl . 215 
 
 only begotten Son of God. The judgment 
 consists in this, that the light came into 
 the world, but men loved darkness better 
 than the light, because their deeds are 
 evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth 
 the light, neither cometh to the light, lest 
 his deeds should be reproved. But he 
 that doeth truth cometh to the light, that 
 his deeds may be made manifest, that they 
 are wrought in God. 
 
 ** You are disheartened and downcast, 
 because you have not done more than 
 you have actually accomplished. Do not 
 grieve, my son, for we are all children 
 of God, and His servants. We are all 
 soldiers of His army. Do you think that 
 He has no servants but yourself? And 
 suppose you had devoted yourself to His 
 service in the vigour of your strength, do 
 you imagine that you would have accom- 
 
2i6 WORK' WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 plished all that He required, that you 
 would have done for your fellow-men all 
 that is necessary, in order to bring about 
 His kingdom upon earth ? You say that 
 you would have accomplished twice as 
 much as you can now perform, ten times as 
 much, a hundred times as much. If you 
 realised a myriad times more than all man 
 kind combined, what would all this amount 
 to in the work of God ? To nothing. 
 The work of God, like God himself, has 
 no limits, no end. God's work is within 
 you. Approach it, and become not a work- 
 man, but a son, and you will be a co-partner 
 of God, who is infinite, and a sharer in His 
 work. With God there is neither little nor 
 great ; and in life there is neither little nor 
 great; there is only straight or crooked. 
 Enter on the straight road in life, and you 
 
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. 217 
 
 will be with God, and your work will be 
 neither great nor little ; it will be God's 
 work. Remember that there is more joy 
 in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
 than over ninety and nine just persons. 
 The world's ways, and all that you have 
 neglected to do, have shown you your sin. 
 And having seen your sin, you have re- 
 pented. And having repented, you have 
 found the right road. And now that you 
 are on the right road, go forwards with 
 God, think no more of the past, of little 
 and of great. All living men are equal 
 before God. There is one God and one 
 life." 
 
 And Julius grew calm and composed 
 again— obtaining the peace of mind he had 
 yearned for, and he manfully set himself to 
 live and to work to the utmost of his power 
 
2i8 WORK WHILE YE HA VE THE LIGHT, 
 
 for the good of his fellow-men. And he 
 lived thus joyfully twenty years, his soul 
 too full to allow him to perceive the slow 
 approach of ph}sical death. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO, 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
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