ALL GOOD FUN
SIR,--Mr. Christopher Hollis is obviously right about the early Christians. The difference in moral outlook between Christianity and the higher pagan- ism has been overstressed. Euripides immortalised the character of. Hipporytus. His play has more native austerity than Racine's, even if Chateau- briand called the Phmdra of Racine 'une epouse chretienne; Then there is the sensitive purity of Julian the Apostate (who may, however, have been influenced by Christianity in spite of himself) and of a Hellenistic ruler whose touching story is told by Appian. Nor should we forget the Stoics. When the saintly Persius cries out against 'this sinful pampered flesh of ours'—Conington's rendering of hac scelerata pulpa—is he thinking only of gluttony?
St. Paul was more concerned with fighting the Encratite heresy than with promoting a Gneco- Oriental asceticism. Clement of Alexandria and Origen cherished ascetic ideals, but were careful not to prescribe them for everyone. Yet it must be admitted that St. Jerome, though an enlightened Biblical scholar and Erasmus's favourite Church Father, adopts in his moral diatribes a harsh, often repellent tone, recalling Juvenal. It is a matter .of temperament. H. J. Rose, not unsympathetically, describes Jerome as 'a strange and rather morbid character.' We find a nobler and more serenely Christian spirit in those two great gentlemen, St. Basil and St. Ambrose. St. Basil was indeed among the most liberal-minded of the Saints. I should like to think that in his heart he shared his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa's doubts about eternal punish- ment.
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