Hrothbert The Redcap

"Every ancient ceremony has its own inner logic and efficacy. The only fault I find with Julian is that he was in too great a hurry. He wanted everything restored at once. We were to return to the age of Augustus in a matter of months. Given years, I am sure he could have reestablished the old religions. The people hunger for them. The Christians do not offer enough, though I must say they are outrageously bold in the way they adapt our most sacred rituals and festivals to their own ends. A clear sign that their religion is a false one, improvised by man in time, rather than born naturally of eternity. From the beginning, the Christians tried to allay man’s fear of death. Yet they have still not found a way to release that element in each of us which demands communion with the One. Our mysteries accomplish this, which is why they are the envy of the Christians and the enduring object of their spite. Now I am perfectly willing to grant that the Christian way is one way to knowing. But it is not the only way, as they declare. If it were, why would they be so eager to borrow from us? What most disturbs me is their curious hopelessness about this life, and the undue emphasis they put on the next. Of course eternity is larger than the brief span of a man’s life, but to live entirely within the idea of eternity is limiting to the spirit and makes man wretched in his day-to-day existence, since his eye must always be fixed not on this lovely world but on that dark door through which he must one day pass. The Christians are almost as death-minded as the original Egyptians, and I have yet to meet one, even my old pupil and beloved friend Basil, who has ever got from his faith that sense of joy and release, of oneness with creation and delight in what has been created, that a man receives when he has gone through those days and nights at Eleusis. It is the meagreness of Christian feeling that disconcerts me, their rejection of this world in favour of a next which is—to be tactful—not entirely certain. Finally, one must oppose them because of their intellectual arrogance, which seems to me often like madness. We are told that there is only one way, one revelation: theirs. Nowhere in their tirades and warnings can one find the modesty or wisdom of a Plato, or that pristine world of flesh and spirit Homer sang of. From the beginning, curses and complaints have been the Christian style, inherited from the Jews, whose human and intellectual discipline is as admirable as their continuing bitterness is limiting and blighting. I see nothing good ever coming of this religious system no matter how much it absorbs our ancient customs and puts to use for its own ends Hellenic wit and logic. Yet I have no doubt now that the Christians will prevail. Julian was our last hope, and he went too soon. Something large and harmful has now come into the life of this old world. One recalls, stoically, the injunction of Sophocles: “And ever shall this law hold good, nothing that is vast enters into the life of mortals without a curse.” It is also significant that this death cult should take hold just as the barbarians are gathering on our borders. It is fitting that if our world is to fall—and I am certain that it will—the heirs of those who had originally created this beautiful civilization and made great art should at the end be art-less and worship a dead man and disdain this life for an unknown eternity behind the dark door." -From Gore Vidal’s "Julian" (Priscus’s commentary)