April 15

Take no thought for the morrow. Be of good cheer.

THE sword in the world, the right eye plucked out, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach which those images express, and of which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one side only of the nature of the divine missionary of the New Testament. Opposed to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is the image of the Good Shepherd—favourite sacred image of the primitive church—serene, blithe, and debonair, beyond the gentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; the daily food of whose spirit is the beatific vision of the kingdom of peace among men. And this latter side of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood, is the final achievement of that vein of bold and brilliant hopefulness in man, which had sustained him so far through his immense labour, his immense sorrows; and of which that peculiarly Greek gaiety, in the handling of life, is but one manifestation. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, of these two contrasted aspects of the character of Christ, have, in different ages and under the urgency of differing human needs, been at work also in his “mystical body.”

WALTER PATER, Marius the Epicurean.

THE SPIRIT OF JOY