The Lost Word | Page 4

I
THE POVERTY OF HERMAS

"COME down, Hermas, come down! The night is past. It is time to be
stirring. Christ is born to-day. Peace be with you in His name. Make
haste and come down!"
A little group of young men were standing in a street of Antioch, in the
dusk of early morning, fifteen hundred years ago. It was a class of
candidates who had nearly finished their two years of training for the
Christian church. They had come to call their fellow-student Hermas
from his lodging.
Their voices rang out cheerily through the cool air. They were full of
that glad sense of life which the young feel when they awake and come
to rouse one who is still sleeping. There was a note of friendly triumph
in their call, as if they were exulting unconsciously in having begun the
adventure of the new day before their comrade.
But Hermas was not asleep. He had been waking for hours, and the
dark walls of his narrow lodging had been a prison to his restless heart.
A nameless sorrow and discontent had fallen upon him, and he could
find no escape from the heaviness of his own thoughts.
There is a sadness of youth into which the old cannot enter. It seems to
them unreal and causeless. But it is even more bitter and burdensome
than the sadness of age. There is a sting of resentment in it, a fever of
angry surprise that the world should so soon be a disappointment, and
life so early take on the look of a failure. It has little reason in it,
perhaps, but it has all the more weariness and gloom, because the man
who is oppressed by it feels dimly that it is an unnatural and an
unreasonable thing, that he should be separated from the joy of his
companions, and tired of living before he has fairly begun to live.
Hermas had fallen into the very depths of this strange self-pity. He was
out of tune with everything around him. He had been thinking, through
the dead, still night, of all that he had given up when he left the house
of his father, the wealthy pagan Demetrius, to join the company of the
Christians. Only two years ago he had been one of the richest young

men in Antioch. Now he was one of the poorest. And the worst of it
was that, though he had made the choice willingly and accepted the
sacrifice with a kind of enthusiasm, he was already dissatisfied with it.
The new life was no happier than the old. He was weary of vigils and
fasts, weary of studies and penances, weary of prayers and sermons. He
felt like a slave in a treadmill. He knew that he must go on. His honour,
his conscience, his sense of duty, bound him. He could not go back to
the old careless pagan life again; for something had happened within
him which made a return impossible. Doubtless he had found the true
religion, but he had found it only as a task and a burden; its joy and
peace had slipped away from him.
He felt disillusioned and robbed. He sat beside his hard little couch,
waiting without expectancy for the gray dawn of another empty day,
and hardly lifting his head at the shouts of his friends.
"Come down, Hermas, you sluggard! Come down! It is Christmas morn.
Awake and be glad with us!"
"I am coming," he answered listlessly; "only have patience a moment. I
have been awake since midnight, and waiting for the day."
"You hear him!" said his friends one to another. "How he puts us all to
shame! He is more watchful, more eager, than any of us. Our master,
John the Presbyter, does well to be proud of him. He is the best man in
our class. When he is baptized the church will get a strong member."
While they were talking the door opened and Hermas stepped out. He
was a figure to be remarked in any company--tall, broad-shouldered,
straight-hipped, with a head proudly poised on the firm column of the
neck, and short brown curls clustering over the square forehead. It was
the perpetual type of vigourous and intelligent young manhood, such as
may be found in every century among the throngs of ordinary men, as
if to show what the flower of the race should be. But the light in his
dark blue eyes was clouded and uncertain; his smooth cheeks were
leaner than they should have been at twenty; and there were downward
lines about his mouth which spoke of desires unsatisfied and ambitions

repressed. He joined his companions with brief greetings,--a nod to one,
a word to another,-- and they passed together down the steep