United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She, too, was crowned with flowers, and these so dazzling that they might be the stars of heaven or the gems of Asia for what Chione could tell.
There was a pause in the conversation, or rather in her outpouring; each had bitter thoughts, and silently devoured them. At length, she began again:— “So the religion of Chione is a dream; now for four years I had hoped it was a reality. All things again are vanity; I had hoped there was something somewhere more than I could see; but there is nothing.
In Homer we may read that the loveliness of Briseis caused Achilles much sorrow; Ovid tells us that Chione was beautiful enough to inflame two gods, and that Antiope's beauty drew down from heaven the mighty Jove himself; and yet, was either of them formed and shaped more splendidly than she who sat so near me, frowning at what she had written, and petulantly biting her pen?
She would have said, “I believe what has been told me, as from heaven, by Chione, Agellius, and Cæcilius:” and it was clear she could say nothing else. What the three told her in common and in concord was at once the measure of her creed and the ground of her acceptance of it.
Here was He who spoke to her in her conscience; whose Voice she heard, whose Person she was seeking for. Here was He who kindled a warmth on the cheek of both Chione and Agellius. That image sank deep into her; she felt it to be a reality. She said to herself, “This is no poet’s dream; it is the delineation of a real individual.
It smiled upon her; it made promises to her; it opened eternal views to her; and it grew upon her convictions in clearness of perception, in congruity, and in persuasiveness. Moreover, the more she thought of Chione, of Agellius, and of Cæcilius the more surely did she discern that this teaching wrought in them a something which she had not.
He sends you by me a red rose for your love, a white lily for your chastity, purple violets to strew your grave, and green palms to flourish over it.’ Is this the reason why you give me flowers, Agellius, that I may rank with Chione? and is this their interpretation?”
“Callista,” he answered, “it is my heart’s most fervent wish, it is my mind’s vivid anticipation, that the day may come when you will receive such a crown, nay, a brighter one.” “And you are come, of course, to philosophize to me, and to put me in the way of dying like Chione,” she made answer. “I implore your pardon.
She now began to understand that strange, unearthly composure, which had struck her in Chione, Agellius, and Cæcilius; she understood that they were detached from the world, not because they had not the possession, nor the natural love of its gifts, but because they possessed a higher blessing already, which they loved above everything else.
Ye Gods! how have I been deceived! I thought every Christian was like Chione. I thought there could not be a cold Christian. Chione spoke as if a Christian’s first thoughts were goodwill to others; as if his state were of such blessedness, that his dearest heart’s wish was to bring others into it.
Word Of The Day