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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Clement of Alexandria
But, you say, it is not reasonable to overthrow a way of life handed down to us from our forefathers. Why then do we not continue to use our first food, milk, to which, as you will admit, our nurses accustomed us from birth? Why do we increase or diminish our family property, and not keep it for ever at the same value as when we received it? Why do we no longer sputter into our parents' bosoms, nor still behave in other respects as we did when infants in our mothers' arms, making ourselves objects of laughter? Did we not rather correct ourselves, even if we did not happen to have good attendants for this purpose? Again, in voyages by sea, deviations from the usual course may bring loss and danger, but yet they are attended by a certain charm. So, in life itself, shall we not abandon the old way, which is wicked, full of passion, and without God? And shall we not, even at the risk of displeasing our fathers bend our course towards the truth and seek after Him who is our real Father, thrusting away custom as some deadly drug? This is assuredly the noblest of all the tasks we have in hand, namely, to prove to you that it was from madness and from this thrice miserable custom that hatred of godliness sprang. For such a boon, the greatest that God has ever bestowed upon the race of men, could never have been hated or rejected, had you not been clean carried away by custom, and so had stopped your ears against us. Like stubborn horses that refuse to obey the reins, and take the bit between their teeth, you fled from our arguments. You yearned to shake yourselves free from us, the charioteers of your life; yet all the while you were being carried along by your folly towards the precipices of destruction, and supposed the holy Word of God to be accursed. Accordingly the recompense of your choice attends upon you, in the words of Sophocles,
and you do not know that this is true above all else, that the good and god fearing, since they have honored that which is good, shall meet with a reward that is good; while the wicked, on the other hand, shall meet with punishment corresponding to their deeds: and torment hangs over the head of the prince of evil. At least, the prophet Zechariah threatens him: "He that hath chosen Jerusalem take vengeance upon thee! Behold, is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" What a strange longing, then, is this for a self-chosen death which still presses upon men? Why have they fled to this death-bearing brand, with which they shall be burnt up, when they might live a noble life according to God, not according to custom? For God grants life; but wicked custom inflicts unavailing repentance together with punishment after we depart from this world. And "by suffering even a fool will learn" that daemon-worship leads to destruction, and the fear of God to salvation. Let any of you look at those who minister in the idol temples. He will find them ruffians with filthy hair, in squalid and tattered garments, complete strangers to baths, with claws for nails like wild beasts; many are also deprived of their virility. They are an actual proof that the precincts of the idols are so many tombs or prisons. These men seem to me to mourn for the gods, not to worship them, and their condition provokes pity rather than piety. When you see sights like this, do you still remain blind and refuse to look up to the Master of all and Lord of the universe? Will you not fly from the prisons on earth, and escape to the pity which comes from heaven? For God of His great love still keeps hold of man; just as, when a nestling falls from the nest, the mother bird flutters above, and if perchance a serpent gapes for it,
Now God is a Father, and seeks His creature. He remedies the falling away, drives off the reptile, restores the nestling to strength again, and urges it to fly back to the nest. Once more, dogs who have lost their way discover their master's tracks by the senses of smell, and horses who have thrown their rider obey a single whistle from their own master; "the ox," it is written, "knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, but Israel doth not know Me." What then does the Lord do? He bears no grudge; He still pities, still requires repentance of us. I would ask you, whether you do not think it is absurd that you men who are God's last creation, who have received your soul from Him, and are entirely His, should serve another master; aye, and more than that, should pay homage to the tyrant instead of to the rightful kind, to the wicked one instead of to the good? For, in the name of truth, what man in his senses forsakes that which is good to keep company with evil? Who is there that flees from God to live with daemons? Who is pleased with slavery, when he might be a son of God? Or who hastens to a region of darkness, when he might be a citizen of heaven; when it is in his power to till the fields of paradise, and traverse the spaces of heaven, when he can partake of the pure and life-giving spring, treading the air in the track of that bright cloud, like Elijah, with his eyes fixed on the rain that brings salvation? But there are some who, after the manner of worms, wallow in marshes and mud, which are the streams of pleasure, and feed on profitless and senseless delights. These are swinish men; for swine, says one, "take pleasure in mud" more than in pure water; and they "are greedy for offal," according to Democritus. Let us not then, let us not be made slaves, nor become swinish, but as true "children of the light," direct our gaze steadily upward towards the light, lest the Lord prove us bastards as the sun does the eagles. Let us therefore repent, and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from senselessness to sense, from intemperance to temperance, from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God.
Excerpted from Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation to the Greeks, by G.W. Butterworth |
The One Who Knows God, by Clement of Alexandria
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