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Title: The quenchless light
Author: Laut, Agnes C.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The quenchless light" ***
[Illustration: [page 75] THE PRINCESS STRUCK THE TREMBLING CREATURE A
BLOW ON ITS FLANK.]
_The_
QUENCHLESS LIGHT
BY
AGNES C. LAUT
[Illustration: LOGO]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1923, 1924, by The Pictorial Review Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOREWORD
How much is fact and how much is fiction in the narrative told here of
the early struggles against fearful odds in the lives of the Disciples?
And why could the life of each Disciple not be given in direct historic
record?
For readers to whom these questions present themselves, answer can be
given in few words.
The most cursory reading of the Gospels and Epistles makes self-evident
that the writers were very much more concerned with the message than the
messenger; and this was natural in an age when zealous partisans were
much more eager to rally round political and religious leaders than to
demonstrate the truth of the message in better living and good works and
pure beliefs. It is as if the early evangelists of the Faith were
determined to let the cause rest on its eternal truths rather than on
the merits or frailties of the human medium through whom the truths were
transmitted to humanity. It is as if the records seem to say—don’t
judge the message by the frail human vessel from whom you take it. Judge
it by its own effects.
Of the human events in the lives of all the Disciples and Apostles—the
former, the first followers of the Living Visible Christ; the latter,
evangelists, who later became followers—very little, almost nothing, is
told. One finds some of the early followers first with John, the
Baptist, on the Dead Sea at Jordan Ford; then with Christ in Galilee,
then after the Crucifixion, in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Babylonia, in
Rome, in the cities of the Roman Road in Asia Minor, in Greece, in
Thrace, in Macedonia. Connected narrative of their movements, there is
none except a few chapters in the Acts on Paul’s travels from Damascus
to Rome; and even in this, there are long gaps. Paul speaks of hopes to
go to Spain. Did he go? We do not know, for if he did, Luke his
historian, leaves no record of that trip. Peter writes a letter from
Babylonia. Was he in the region of the Euphrates; or was he in Rome,
writing in cypher because of the perils to the Faith from the time Rome
set up Emperor Worship in all the pagan temples? Again, we do not know;
for consecutive narrative from year to year, there is none; so that any
attempt to give a connected life of the leaders of early Christianity
would fall down from sheer lack of data; but the facts, which we possess
authenticated beyond controversy by contemporary sacred and profane
writers, and by recent and ancient archæological and linguistic research
covering from Egypt to Ethiopia, from Ephesus to Mesopotamia—throw so
much light on the early struggles of the New Faith that by taking what
the modern scenario writer would call—“the spot-lights” of their
activities—we can reconstruct the early lives of the leaders of the
purest Faith the world has ever known.
And now how much is fact and how much is fiction in these narratives?
Very little of the essential is fiction. The fiction is only the string
for the jewels of Truth. A semi-secular figure, who is absolutely
historic, has been chosen as the actor. The actor’s experiences are
taken from real life and actual fact. The reaction of the experiences on
the actor’s personality may be called imaginary; but they are such as
similar experiences would have been on you, or me to-day; and each
action is chosen to throw a flash light on some era in the Disciples’
and Apostles’ lives, which is known and proved and authenticated in
history, archæology and the documents now coming so richly to light,
owing to better mastery of ancient script. In this way, we can get a
picture of the heroes and heroines of the early days, who kept the Faith
for us. We can get a picture of them as living, struggling, heroic,
dauntless men and women, and not the shadowy figures of half myth, half
fairy stories, with which we have too often enveloped the keepers of the
ark of the covenant of the Faith.
I have referred to youth seeking light, where many of the old school
accuse them of thoughtlessly seeking only pleasure. I consider this a
libel on modern youth.
It is in the hope of showing the verity of the heroic lives in the early
days of the Faith, that I have planned these records. It is in the hope
of showing the keeping of that Faith as the supremely best vocation for
youth that I have tried to dig out the unknown, historic facts bringing
us the Faith and clothe them in flesh and blood. If the stories send
back with fresh eyes readers to the old records, their aim is fulfilled,
and all the errors, I pre-claim as my own. The truths, themselves, are
eternally old as they are eternally young.
A. C. L.
WASSAIC, HARLEM ROAD
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
STORIES OF THE APOSTLES’ LIVES IN THEIR DAUNTLESS
STRUGGLE TO ESTABLISH THE NEW FAITH IN A DYING WORLD
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD v
I. NEITHER BOND NOR FREE 1
II. ARDATH, THE FIELD OF FLOWERS 45
III. THE SWORD AND THE SUNBURST 77
IV. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 125
V. “AND THERE SHALL BE NO MORE DEATH” 174
APPENDIX
Foreword to Appendix 209
A. Concerning Paul’s Missionary Tours and Disputed Points 221
B. Old Documents and Modern Views on the Herod Family 242
C. The Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem and the Breaking Up 253
of the Roman Empire
D. The Disputes as to Thecla in Legend and History 264
E. Concerning the Early Gnostics and Apollos and Apollonius and 271
John
Finale 283
_BE GLAD_
_1_
_“Be glad! Be glad!” I sing!_
_The sun rolls round the ring_
_Of law! His beams outfling_
_Like birds of song on wing._
_2_
_Be glad the sun is bright—_
_Be glad the sun is light—_
_Be glad the law is right—_
_Tho’ truth we learn through pain—_
_Be glad the darkest night_
_Rolls round to light again._
_3_
_Our sin is but a sleep_
_Out from the vasty deep_
_Of Death’s eternal Keep_
_For God, to Whom we creep._
_4_
_Breast forward! Shout the cry_
_Of Joy, of Life, on high!_
_To sadness give the lie!_
_Ten-thousand spheres give voice_
_The rivers racing by—_
_The chorus join—Rejoice!_
_5_
_Mistake not carcass pains—_
_They are your growing gains_
_Of Soul on Self, ere wanes_
_The Sun; and through the lanes_
_Of the Far Golden West_
_You pass to your long rest,_
_O Warrior Soul; where shade_
_And dark by that sword blade_
_Of Light are cleft from you_
_And never more pursue:_
_The shadows cleft and reft_
_By Him_
_Who guards the Tree of Life_
_From snatching hands of strife_
_Elohim!_
_And you pass to your rest_
_In the all Golden West_
_Where Sun sinks never more_
_And Light far to the fore_
_Sings with ten-thousand spheres—_
_Give voice, Rejoice, Rejoice—_
_Again, I say, Rejoice!_
_A. C. L._
_The_
QUENCHLESS LIGHT
CHAPTER I
NEITHER BOND NOR FREE
The old Idumean soldier of the Prætorian Guard sat on the stone bench in
front of his prisoner’s hut on the canal road to Rome and listened to
the drunken songs coming from the bargemen at the place called the Three
Taverns.
It was a fair evening in spring. Frogs piped from the marshes. Oleander
and apricot bloom drugged the night with dreams. The sun hung over the
far sea in a warrior shield, and the dust from the chariot wheels
filtered the air with powdered gold.
The Spring Festival was over. The corn ships from Egypt had come in to
Naples on time for the free gifts to peasant and slave. All Rome seemed
out in holiday attire, on foot, on barge, on horseback, or in chariot,
either going home to the hill towns, or down to the villas by the sea.
The plodding peasants and slaves had their little bags of free corn and
goatskins of wine flung over their shoulders, and were followed by their
wives and their children as they turned off up to the hills, where their
bonfires were already aglow with flamy eyes in the blue shadows of the
mountains, for all-night revels.
On the canal and its paved road passed an endless procession of the
great and the rich. Litters, palanquins, chairs, with black Nubian
slaves between the poles, went surging past with the patter of the
runners’ bare feet on the pavement and the glimpse of painted face or
jeweled, pointed hand, when the breeze blew the silk curtains from the
latticed windows. Barges, with black-faced slaves chained to the iron
rowlocks and gayly clad men and women lolling on the ivory benches
beneath awnings and pennants of white, red and gold, went gliding down
the canal with a drip of water from the oars colored in the dusty air
like a rainbow. Then there would be the sharp ring of iron-shod hoofs
over the cobblestones—a centurion with his hundred horsemen riding in
rhythm as one man, their three-edged lances aslant, would gallop
seaward, followed by the whirl of gold-rimmed chariot wheels, when some
general or senator went flashing past to take his pastime for the night
down in his grand villa by the sea.
The old Idumean soldier of the Prætorian Guard glanced in the hut to see
that all was well with the prisoner inside, glanced toward the Three
Taverns, whence came louder songs and wilder revels, loosened his metal
headpiece, laid the helmet on the stone bench beside him, and, with
another glance up and down the thronged road, raised a bronze tankard of
wine and drained it to the lees. Smacking his lips, he set it down and
began eating some bread and cheese, when the revels in the Three Taverns
rose to the tumult of a noisy brawl. A figure darted out of the dense
road crowds, running like a deer, pursued by a rabble of drunken
bargemen armed with pikes.
The fugitive dashed along the stone parapet of the canal, looking wildly
to right and left, frantic for a way of escape. Then the figure dived
into the thronged road, as if the crowd would afford best hiding, in and
out among the plodding peasants, who scattered from the road in panic,
with the bargemen in full cry behind shouting, “Stop him!—stop
him!—slave!—slave!—runaway slave!”
The old Idumean guard had sprung up with sword in his right hand for a
slash at the flying figure, when a great hue and cry rent the confusion.
“Make way—make way—the Emperor!” and a centurion band galloped through
the dust, clearing the road with their long lances.
There was a flash of gold-rimmed chariot wheels with flying horses in a
blur. There was the figure of a youthful man with a bare head and shaved
face, holding the reins far out as charioteers drive; and Nero’s royal
equipage had passed in a smoke of dust with a great shout from the barge
travelers, who clapped their hands and rose and waved their flags. The
fleeing figure, the pursuing bargemen, and the drunken rabble had
melted; and a little form crumpled up in the doorway of the prison hut,
panting as if its lungs would burst.
The old Prætorian guard stood motionless, sword in hand.
The pursuing rabble had disappeared back to the drunken revels in the
Three Taverns.
The old Idumean drove his sword back in its scabbard with a clank.
Then he surveyed the figure lying prone at his feet.
A thin voice called softly from the dark of the prison hut: “Who is
there, my Julius? My eyes grow poor. I cannot see in this light. I
thought I heard some one running in distress.”
“Nothing—nothing—Master! ’Twas only that madman Emperor of ours passed
in his mad race with his proselyte Jewess Queen. You heard only the
knaves of the Three Taverns noisy in their cups.”
The crumpled figure had not looked up, but lay panting on its face. A
green-and-white turban, such as mountaineers wear, had fallen off. The
hair was gold as the golden light of the sunset and hung in unshorn
curls about the neck. There were the sky-blue jacket of the Asiatic
Greeks, the scarlet trousers and pointed red soft kid sandals of a page;
but the garments were torn as if snatched by the pack of human wolves.
The burly Idumean guard smiled till his teeth shone like ivory tusks
through his grizzled beard.
“No runaway this, but some grandam’s lackey,” he smiled. “Is it boy or
girl?”
He touched the prone, panting figure with his boot. The form did not
rise. It crouched upon its knees, and, with face hidden in hands, bowed
the head at the soldier’s feet.
An evil-faced old woman with bleared eyes and wiry, disarranged gray
hair came swaying drunkenly up from the Three Taverns and paused,
peering.
“Off out of this, harpy, snake of the dirt—sniff earth!” the soldier
clanked his scabbard against the metal of his leg greaves, “back to your
wine-shop den. I’ll question you later of this! We’ll have none of you
here—” and the leering woman vanished in the gathering dusk.
The soldier sat down on his stone bench.
“Up—boy or girl, whichever you are—help me unbuckle my breastplate and
greaves!”
The figure sprang up with the nimbleness of youth. The eyes were blue
with the terror of a frightened girl, the cheeks were burned with the
tan of a hillside grape, and the lips were fine and full as the caressed
lips of a child. The long, slim hands had slid off the metal breastplate
of the Prætorian, and were unbuckling the greaves of an outstretched
leg, when the soldier’s great hand closed on the slim wrist and twisted
the palm upward.
“No slave you! No callus here! No gyve marks on the wrists! You’ve never
worked among the galley slaves—my little runaway! Thighs too thin and
shoulders too slim for these foreign swine we bring to Rome in droves.
Where do you come from, young one?”
“From the mountains of Lebanon, my Lord Julius,” answered the downcast
face.
The Idumean gave a start. “How know you the Romans call me Julius?” he
sharply asked. “I’m an Idumean of Herod the Great’s Guard.”
“Because you were commander on the Alexandrian corn ship that carried
all the Jewish prisoners wrecked at Malta,” answered a trembling voice
in the falsetto between youth and man.
“You were not among the prisoners, young one—nor sailors either! I
recall them—to a man. I’ll test your truth. Mind your tongue! Describe
the ship, the passengers, the prisoners.”
“I took ship at Fair Havens, Crete. I came down from Phrygia. You
remember the Prophet, who was a prisoner from Cæsarea, wanted you to
tarry there for the winter?”
“By Jupiter, I do; and now I wish I had, for I’d be back in Idumea,
leading our General Vespasian’s cohorts if I hadn’t wrecked that
accursed corn ship, and not be cooling my heels here, waiting the trial
of these Jewish fanatics—what next? Describe what next—the ship?”
“The ship had a golden goose at the stern. It was full of Egyptian corn
to the rowers’ benches. She was deep as she was broad, and long as from
here to the Three Taverns—”
“Go on! You guess well and may lie better—all corn ships are the
same—”
“She had flaming pennants and huge iron anchors and two monstrous oars
as paddles that you used as rudders, and the pilot at the helm was a
bald-headed old man—”
“They all are—these Greeks—from wearing caps so tight. Any bargeman at
the Taverns could have told you that. Go on—”
“And she had only one little boat astern, that almost swamped in the
mountain waves; and when the northeaster struck her you were afraid of
being driven to Africa, and cut the great mainmast and threw her
overboard, and drifted for fourteen days, four hundred miles; and when
the hull sprang a leak and strained to split apart you frapped her round
and round with great cables and trussed her up as cooks tie up the legs
of a fowl! And when the soldiers would have sprung into the little boat,
you cut her adrift; and when you would have slain the prisoners to
prevent escape, and slain yourself to avoid punishment for the loss, it
was the Prophet, who is the prisoner in your hut there, stopped your
hand and foretold you not a soul would lose his life. Then you cast the
cargo overboard.
“No stars, no sun we saw for fourteen days, only the clouds and the
pelting rain, and fogs so thick a sword could cut them. When the
breakers and the surf roared ahead, you heaved and heaved and heaved the
lead, and knew we were driving straight ashore to wreck in the breakers,
and you cast four great iron anchors out astern to hold her back; but
they only combed the fine sand as a housekeeper’s knife cuts dough. The
shore of Malta Bay was soft as paste. The pumps you set to work; but she
settled on her prow, like a swine’s snout in mud, with her goose-beaked
stern, high in the crash of waves, breaking to splinters—”
“Stop!” cried the Idumean. “I’ll test your truth right there! The
bargemen of the Taverns might have told you all the rest. When the ship
broke and the sailors and the prisoners plunged over in the pelting dark
to swim for it, what said the Prophet, who is my prisoner, then?”
“When you could not look the wind in the eye, my Lord Julius, the
Prophet bade you be of good cheer and thanked his strange Judean God,
whom he called Christus, that he was reaching Rome.”
“By Jupiter, child,” cried the guard, with a crash of his sword on the
stone bench, “you have spoken truth! What next? Be careful how you
answer—your life hangs on it if you are slave! It is death to harbor a
runaway in Roman law—”
“I know not what next, my Lord Julius; for Publius, the Governor of
Malta, took all your shipwrecked crew in, and you tarried to come by the
_Castor and Pollux_ on to Neapolis (Naples) while I took secret passage
on a fishing vessel and reached Rome first.”
The Idumean then knew the youth spoke truth; but not all the truth—what
more? Here was a lad of noble birth and clad in a page’s garments,
caught and held and hounded by the harpies of the wine shops amid the
rascal loafers of the underworld—lost in the gutters of Rome for two
full years. Whose son was he and why was he here?
The old guard’s manner changed. Could he find the boy’s parents there
might be money in it—honest money—not the kidnapper’s ransom for which
the knavish criminals of the Three Taverns had tried to steal him; but
the old soldier knew he must proceed cautiously. No gain to frighten a
startled bird that had fallen in your hand; a gift of gold from the
gods. Good money from a good father somewhere back in Grecian Asia could
he but win the lad’s trust and get his story true, and save some royal
youth from those sharp-taloned hawks of the wine shops.
He bade the little stranger sit down on the bench.
“The wine in the tankard there I drained; but here’s bread and
cheese—eat! How does that compare with the bread and cheese of your
Lebanon herds?”
The lad ate ravenously. The guard went inside the hut and brought out
fresh wine.
“The cheese is not so white as our goat curds; but the bread is like
pearls after Rome’s slave fare.”
The old Idumean pricked up his ears. “Slave fare!” Then the boy had been
held by some one in Rome. The guard’s caution redoubled, to which he
added courtesy.
The spring frogs piped from the marshes. Last snatches of bird notes
came from the oleander and acacia groves in front of the villas on the
far side of the canal. A cooling breeze came down from the hills where
the festive bonfires now winked a flamy eye. Only a few barges glided
down the waters of the canal. The traffic of the paved road had quieted
to an occasional soldier-tread echoing iron on the stones, or the
barefoot patter of a hurrying furtive slave, or the loud laughter of
lewd women, and louder disputes of the bargemen in the lodging houses.
“What brought you here?” quietly asked the guard.
“To see the sights of Rome—”
“And I’ll warrant you’ve seen enough of them. Have you seen the
gladiators?”
“Their blood sickened me,” answered the lad. “The narrow streets choked
me. I could not breathe their yellow air after our Lebanon sunshine.
These marshes send up a yellow stench; and the lodging houses stank; and
your freedmen loafers are night demons! I’d give all Rome for one night
back in Daphne’s Gardens at Antioch, or down by the sea at Cæsarea. Your
iron-shod hoofs keep me from sleep. I’d give all Nero’s Empire to hear
the padded tread of our camels over the turfs where the caravans of
Damascus and Chaldea meet!”
The Idumean pondered that. He must, then, be the son of some Damascus or
Grecian merchant in Asia. Good money and plenty of it in those iron
chests!
“Know you the ‘Camel Song’ of the sand rovers of Arabia?” he asked.
In the starlight he saw tears spring to the long-lashed blue eyes.
Sweet to mine ears are the sounds
Of thy tinkling bells, O my camel!
“And, oh, how the singing sands made melody, my Lord, when the hot winds
drove them like sheets of snow!”
“Aye, that they do,” returned the old Idumean, “and I would I were where
I could hear them sing instead of cooling my heels in Rome waiting for
this crazy Prophet to get his head chopped! Much good that will do!” The
old man’s manner warmed to desert memories of his native land.
“I’ll befriend you. You can stay here. The Prophet needs some one to
care for him and cook his meals. He’s growing old. His sight is fading
fast. I’ve grown tired of nightly sleeping chained to the arm of a
prisoner you could not bribe to run away, while the Emperor takes his
pleasure and puts off the acquittal of a man Agrippa wrote was innocent,
all because his wife plays the convert to Jerusalem Jews to get a
revenue for protecting them, and hates this new sect of Jews that call
themselves Christians. You could not pay this prisoner to escape, though
fewer and fewer friends come to see him every day. They know the Empress
is their enemy and may work Nero to some fresh madness any day. If it
were not I value my own head, I’d sometimes believe him myself; but no
head of mine for these mad zealots! It takes the iron hand of a Herod to
beat out the flame of their sedition, and not the gentle pleading of
young Agrippa to bring them to their senses! When the Prophet gets his
pardon, if he is wise he’ll haste to Spain and never set foot in Rome or
Jerusalem again.”
A second draft of wine—for the mountain lad had not touched the fresh
tankard—had loosened the old soldier’s tongue. “I mind when I served
Herod’s son as a lad like you at Cæsarea and won my freedom in the great
gladiatorial combat in the theater, where the sands swam in blood to the
knees, with Agrippa the Great sitting clad in his mail of silver, before
the owl flew over and brought him ill-omens so that he fell down dead—”
“What?” interrupted the boy—“were you once a slave, too, my Lord
Julius?”
“Too,” noted the old Idumean. The softened manner hardened. Was he a
slave after all? “What did the harpies of the wine shops want of you? A
lad clad in Damascus silks would not touch these sows of Rome’s
gutters.”
The boy answered eagerly. “They said the Emperor would pass in his
chariot to-night; and the Empress Poppæa was to go down to the sea in
her ivory barge. They meant to strip me, throw me in the water, rescue
me, and offer me for sale as her barge passed—”
The old guard laughed so harshly that all his ivory teeth gleamed ugly
as a boar’s tusks. “And I’ll warrant if ever she saw your milk-white
mountain skin stripped, they would have made the sale at three times a
slave’s price. There is more in this—there is more in this. Why did you
leave your mountains of Lebanon?”
“I did not,” hotly protested the baited boy, becoming frightened at the
changed manner of the Idumean. “When Felix cleared the robbers out of
Galilee, I was held for ransom in their caves. They said we mountaineers
were robbers. We never were. We are shepherds; but I was caught in my
father’s caravan. He was the great sheik of the road from Damascus to
the East; and Felix gave me to young Agrippa for a toy, a plaything. I
was a page to the Princess Bernice when your prisoner Prophet in there
made his plea before Agrippa the Young to come to Rome and prove his
case; but when the Princess Bernice was sent to Cilicia to marry that
old man there, and still the evil tongues about her and her brother—”
Family Tree of the Herods
Herod-the Great-I
41 B.C. to 4 B.C. or 4 A.D.
married Mariamne and 4 other wives
+---------------------+------------+-------------------+
| | | |
Aristobulus Philip I. Herod II. (5 other lines
---------------------+ M. Herodias who married not historical)
put to Death 6 B.C. | left him 2nd time
| |
| | Herodias
| | banished 40 A.D.
| |
Herod III. Agrippa I. 37 to 40 A.D.
Bernice's 1^{st} +-----------------+---------------------+
husband (died in | | |
Caesarea of stroke | | |
--44 or 45 A.D.) | | |
| | |
Agrippa II. Bernice Drusilla
last of line married (1) Herod III. married Felix
perished in eruption " (2) Polemon |
of Vesuvius perished Vesuvius Agrippa III.
an infant
perished Vesuvius
Family Tree of Polemon, who married Bernice
and
Tryphaena, who adopted Thekla
(as indicated by Mommsen and Sir W^{m} Ramsay)
Marcus Antonius = Octavia
+---------------------------------------------------+
| |
Zenon of Laodicea +-------------+
| |
| Antonia = Nero Drusus
| +-------------+
| | |
Polemon-----------------+ Claudius |
| | 41-54 A.D. |
| | |Germanicus
Tryphaen b. 8 B.C. Polemon 17 A.D. |
| Caligula
Polemon of Pontus 37 A.D. 41 A.D.
37 A.D. to 72 A.D.
The boy paused in confusion, blushing red as a girl. The Idumean grasped
his wrist. “Go on—the truth—or I’ll have you torn limb from limb by
the tigers in the arena. What of that night monster, Bernice, with the
snaky Herod blood in her veins?”
The boy cried out with the pain of the viselike grasp. “The Princess
bade me not to fear to come to Rome, where she would come when she had
shaved her head and paid a vow in Jerusalem—”
“Where she is now, and all Rome laughing at the pretext,” the old
Idumean loosened his grasp. “Where she is now, to slip her old husband
and throw her net over Titus, our General Vespasian’s son. I’ll warrant
it will be a net of air she’ll weave; the spider maid will throw her
wiles on the next poor fly! Did the King Agrippa’s sister send you to
Rome? Have a care how you answer that!”
“No, my Lord Julius, the King, her brother Agrippa, handed me to a
Grecian merchant in Colossé; but with the gold his sister gave me I ran
away and took ship to Rome from Crete.”
A curious, terrible crafty change had come over the guard. No wild boar
of the desert was he now, but crafty hunter stalking human prey in
Rome’s underworld. “Young one—I have no love for these seditious
Judeans; but I’ll befriend you because I have given you a Roman’s
pledge. Here’s my right hand as pledge no Roman ever broke. Had I lost
my prisoners it would have cost my head; but when you go into the
Prophet there, see you do not bleat like one of your long-eared mountain
goats! Blastus, Herod’s old chamberlain, is friend of his; so is Manæn,
Herod’s foster-brother, and Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward! Keep
yourself out of sight in the inner room when strangers call; for some of
Cæsar’s household also come here, whether to spy or believe, how do I
know? But how did the knaves and body snatchers of the Three Taverns
snare you?”
“I was coming out to seek the young scribe Timothy—I saw him once and
helped him carry the Prophet in, when he was mobbed and stoned and left
for dead in Lystra—I thought he’d help me back to my people!”
The Idumean rose impatiently.
“That spider maid! The vixen with Herod’s snaky blood! Go inside! I’ll
lock the door! Prepare the Prophet his supper. I’ll to the Three Taverns
to ferret this. Remember if you try to run away—there is no escape from
Roman power in all the known world from Gaul to the Ganges; but I see
one rich way of escape to fortune for you, and money for me to make me
rich, if Bernice ever cast her eyes at you—might save young Titus, son
of our General, falling a victim to her wiles! Go in, I say, and keep
your tongue from blabbing—or I’ll cut it out with my dagger! Princess
Bernice! Titus’ mistress! By Jupiter, ’tis my lucky day at last and I’ll
make offerings to Fortune,” he muttered, striding off.
The heart of the frightened boy almost stopped. He seemed to have jumped
from danger close to death or torture. What had he told, or not told,
that made him, a friendless Grecian boy in Imperial Rome, of great money
value to the Idumean guard the minute Bernice’s name was mentioned? Why
had the rough soldier called the young princess a “night monster,” “a
spider maid,” “a vixen with snaky blood,” “a nymph” aiming a net at
Titus, the son of the Roman General in Asia? Why should a girl princess
not flee one old husband, married to silence evil tongues, and seek a
younger mate in the General’s son? Wise, wise as seer or prophet is the
intuition of youth; but stronger than the breastplate of Imperial Rome
the innocence of youth; for the boy had not told all the truth.
Something he held back for the love of the royal mistress, who had
befriended him. He had not told the Idumean captain that when he had
been handed over to the merchant of Colossé he had been sold by King
Agrippa because his young master was jealous of his sister’s affections
for a page; and when he had taken ship at Crete, dressed as a page, he
was a runaway slave, with Princess Bernice’s gold in a goatskin wallet
round his girdle, obeying her orders “to have no fear to go to Rome; she
would meet him there: to wait.”
To his youthful heart it seemed no evil thing that she should come to
Rome and marry Titus, Vespasian’s son, where he again could be her page.
He could not know that all Rome was now counting on General Vespasian to
save the Empire and become Emperor. He would not have had long to wait,
as destiny soon rolled the years to Vespasian’s triumphial entry into
Rome—if the harpy women of the wine shops on the water front had not
taken note of his beauty and set the bargemen on to kidnap him as bait
for higher game in Nero’s Palace, where ruled an evil woman, guided only
by her own wicked desires.
* * * * *
The boy heard the door clank as the Prætorian guard drew the chain
across outside and snapped the great twin locks with a key as long as a
man’s forearm. He heard the ring of the swift soldier tread as the
Idumean strode over the stones for the Three Taverns.
Then he turned. The room was dark but for a flickering peat fire on the
hearth and a little guttering olive oil wick in a stone or breccia lamp
on a rough board table. The floor was softened with sand and earth. The
window was high and latticed, but let a soft breeze in from the sea. A
little, stooped old man with a white beard and snow white hair and
skullcap such as doctors of the law wore, sat on a backless stool at the
table, writing on a scroll which he unwound from a roller as he wrote,
with his eyes so close to the papyrus that he did not see the boy’s form
against the dark of the door.
Except for the table and the backless stool there was no furniture in
the prison hut but two couches, close together near the door; and the
boy noticed that while the prisoner’s right hand wrote and wrote on
unheeding, his left arm, resting on the table, had a huge handcuff
attached to an iron chain which also lay on the table; and this was the
Prophet, whom he had helped the scribe Timothy carry in stoned for dead
at Lystra. This was the man, when the wreck broke up at Malta, who stood
in the pelting rain and the dark and bade the Lord Julius “be of good
cheer” and thanked his strange God “that now at last he could publish
the Glad News at Rome.”
The boy had not noticed the strange leader of the strange new sect in
the Judgment Hall at Cæsarea, because he had been too young, the toy and
plaything of the youthful King Agrippa and his younger sister, Bernice,
and he had noticed him still less at Lystra, some years before, because
he had been still younger and much too excited over the mob. There is a
discrepancy here in the boy’s story as picked out of the old records;
and yet the discrepancy proves its truth, for he could not have been
more than four or five. Yet he distinctly remembered coming in on one of
his father’s caravans for Damascus from the South, and seeing the
maddened mob, and running with all the camel drivers toward the gates of
the city, where he had picked up the insensible Prophet’s cap and helped
the young scribe Timothy to shuffle the almost lifeless form through the
doors into the house of Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s people, who were
Greek merchants.
On the ship wrecked between Crete and Malta, he recalled the prisoner of
two years ago well enough; but he had kept himself out of sight from
both prisoners and sailors all he could on that voyage, staying below
deck on plea of seasickness by day and coming up only in the wild
nights, when the high-rolling cape of his black cloak had hidden his
face; and he could dream his dreams of awakening youth, and the message
of hope his Princess’s black glance had thrown him when she slipped him
the wallet of gold pieces from her litter chair and bade him “haste to
Rome and wait there.”
Yet it had been no easy business for him “to haste to Rome,” for the
merchant of Colossé to whom Agrippa in a moment of jealous suspicion had
sold him had been an exacting master, and had set the new young slave to
keeping accounts in the great warerooms. It had only been his knowledge
of the Phrygian patois dialect, half Assyrian, half Greek, that had
induced the merchant to send him to the seacoast and the Isles of the
Sea to collect exchange on accounts. He had collected the accounts. Then
he had taken ship at Crete and run away without a qualm. Why should he
have qualms? Had he not been kidnapped by the robbers of Galilee and
held for ransom, and, when the robbers were routed out by Felix, given
as a slave—he, who came from the mountaineers who never had been
slaves—to young King Agrippa and the sister, Bernice?
After that, life had become a golden dream of awakening youth. Though
Bernice had been a wife to one Herod, and now was sent north to be wife
to another old man, after the custom of the Herods to strengthen their
thrones by marrying their daughters to powerful rulers, Bernice had been
almost as young as he—she was barely twenty. He had been set at first
to seeing that the Nubian slaves kept the royal baths at Cæsarea clean.
Then in a fit of suspicion over having any but black eunuchs, who were
mutes, attend the royal baths, Agrippa had sent him to keep the tracks
of the chariot races powdered with soft sand to fill the wheel ruts and
save the horses’ knees if a racer slipped on the swift course.
There he had gained the first glimpse of the Princess’s favor toward
himself. She had been driving with her royal young brother in one of the
trials for the chariot races. The snowy steeds of the young King’s
chariot were given precedence of all others, the Festus’s wild Arab
horses were champing the bits to pass, and the Roman had great ado to
hold them behind Agrippa. A dozen other prancing teams were surging
behind. She had worn a silver bangle round her brow to hold back her
hair. On her brow hung a jade-stone ornament from Arabia with the
swastika cross of luck beaded in gold. In the wild charge of the racers
the jade pendant had bounced from its setting in the sand. Leaping in
front of the other racers, the boy had rescued the emblem of good luck
from trampling; and all the people in the seats of the great hippodrome
had cheered his pluck. Fortune had come to him in the little jewel with
the odd cross.
When the charioteers came round the course again, King Agrippa himself
had stooped to receive the restored jewel; and the people had cheered
again; and when Agrippa and Bernice had gone up to Daphne’s Gardens at
Antioch, for the wild, lawless pleasures there, then had followed
another golden dream of awakening youth. The boy did not know, when he
had been with the royal lovers in Daphne’s Gardens, that only a few
miles away was the Prophet, with the Christians of Antioch; and here
they were, both thrown together in the evil snares of Rome.[1] Amid the
roses and the palms and the love temples and the fountains of the
gardens were artificial lakes, where plied boats with silken awnings
rowed by Naiads in silver-and-golden nets to the music of zither and
harp under the Moon Goddess.
[1] This is the only point in the boy’s story where there is any
discrepancy between his experiences as told by himself and the sacred
and profane writers of the period. It does not appear among the sacred
writers whether the corn ships carrying the Prophet at the various ports
of call delayed long enough for the prisoners to have gone in to
Antioch, as they did at all the other ports where Christians dwelt; but
in the profane writers of Rome and Greece at the period ’61 A.D. to ’68
A.D., are abundant proofs of all the youth’s adventures in Daphne’s
Gardens; and Bernice’s record became an infamy in Rome.
Here Agrippa and Bernice took their pleasure, and he, now the trusted
page, accompanied them, as steersman for the nymphs. He was clad in
silvered silks, the girl rowers in spangled nets, with naked limbs the
color of pink shells. He knew that five hundred bastinadoes on the soles
of his feet would be the punishment if ever he breathed a word of what
he saw on these nights; and he saw nothing; but dipped his steersman
paddle to the rhythm of the temple music, and watched the limpid water
ripple in drops of moonlit gold, and dreamed his dreams of awakening
youth, which are wiser than seers in their intuitions and stronger than
breastplates of bronze in their innocence. He knew nothing going on
around him because he saw nothing but Bernice’s eyes; and she was so far
beyond his reach, he saw no spider net in those black, fathomless eyes.
And then one day crashed down his house of dreams in catastrophe about
his youth. It had been a wild day of painted barges, of soothsayers, of
magicians, of story-tellers, of dwarfs, of buffoons, of libations to
Bacchus, and temple nymphs clad in golden gauze. The flesh of grown man
did not live that could pass that day unscathed; and the page, who had
been a mountain boy, knew naught of a goddess who could turn men to
swine. There had been an older man with King Agrippa and his sister that
day. The boy remembered afterward the older man had the face of one of
the satyrs, half man, half goat, of whom his mountain tribes told.
There had been frenzied dancing in the love temples and more libations
to Bacchus; but the mountaineers do not drink; and at the end of that
day, to quiet evil tongues, Princess Bernice had been affianced to the
King with the satyr face; and the star of the boy’s lamp had gone out in
utter blackness, with his heart cold lead, till, passing from the love
temple in her curtained, latticed litter, she had thrust out her hand to
him in the dark and given him the purse of gold and bade him haste to
Rome and meet her there, while she went to Jerusalem to pay a vow! He
did not know the nature of that vow, though all the fashion of Rome was
laughing over it, and poets made mock of it and actors in the theaters
extemporized lines on “Bernice’s locks” and do to this day.
He knew with the knowledge of youth she had shaved her head and taken
her vow to escape her elderly spouse; and now the rough Idumean guard
had said all Rome was laughing at the way the sly maid had gone to
Jerusalem but to throw her nymph net over Titus, son of Vespasian, who
might become Emperor after Nero.
And now he stood in the prison hut of Rome, with the wolf harpies of the
water-front wine shops outside, locked in by the Roman soldier, who knew
there was fortune to be grasped by restoring a slave, with the threat
ringing in his ears—“There is no escape from Roman power in all the
known world; keep your tongue from blabbing—or I’ll cut it out with my
dagger,” and the Lebanon boy had seen captives whose tongues had been
cut by daggers. He knew this was no idle threat; but he did not know it
was his boyish beauty that had cast the fatal net of danger round
himself.
* * * * *
The boy stood with his head hanging, behind the locked door of the
prison hut, like a fly caught in an evil spider web. He did not ascribe
the net flung round him by dark eyes seen through the lattice of a
palanquin to any spider maid; for he was still thinking with the
knowledge of youth rather than age. He only knew the spider net had
become strong chains binding him to the evil forces of the great
Imperial City of the world, and that he had been flung into that net by
a destiny uncontrolled by him except for the one act—when he had run
away from his merchant master at Colossé.
He was too deeply sunk in sudden despond and fear to notice the
flickering of the shadows from the lifted breccia-stone lamp held in the
Prophet’s hand, while the other hand shaded the old man’s defective
vision peering at the ragged figure against the back of the locked door.
All hope had flickered out for him with the turning of the double lock
by that great key the Idumean carried.
A voice spoke out of the dark, quiet, clear, and limpid as his own
mountain streams in Lebanon: “Child, come here! Why are you troubled?”
The boy raised his long-lashed blue eyes and looked across to see, not
the little withered wisp of a man he had remembered as the Prophet, but
a snow-white face illumined in an ethereal light and framed in an
aureole of snow white hair.
“The Lord Julius bade me prepare your supper.”
The Prophet did not press his question. “There are the corn bread and
the leben in the alcove,” he said, pointing to a dark corner of the
stone wall, “and in one jar you will find the drinking water and in the
other the fresh pulse.”
The boy laid the meal on the rough table without a word and took his
stand behind the Prophet’s stool. He was still dust spattered and torn
from his fall.
“Bring the couch to the table,” requested the Prophet.
Thinking the Master wished to eat reclining, after the manner of the
Judeans, the boy lifted the couch and placed it at the table.
“Join me,” gently urged the Prophet. “I remember when I was a lad in
Tarsus before I went down to study law in Jerusalem, we used to say of
the mountain men, when they had broken bread and salt with us, they
would be our friends forever, and never utter word, or think thought
against host or guest. A good rule, child.”
Tears sprang to the lad’s eyes; for what the Prophet had said was true,
and recalled all the stern tradition of the mountain tribes, who dwelt
in tents and roved the desert on camels.
“Let us bless God and give thanks,” said the Master, bowing his head;
and the boy understood neither the strange Deity to whom thanks were
given nor what there was for thanks in a prison hut.
It must have been the white hair or the white beard; for though the wick
was guttering lower in the breccia lamp, that luminous look seemed to
shine brighter and brighter round the figure of the Prophet. The boy
could see his hands like hands of snow in the gathering dusk of the hut;
and his brow shone with the radiance of the sun’s white flame at dawn.
“Why did you wish to see Timothy?” he asked, as though reading the lad’s
thought.
Thereat, the youth’s pent emotions of terror and despondency and fearful
unknown danger broke in floods of speech.
“And, oh, Master,” cried the boy, finishing the narrative that the
Idumean had forbidden him to tell, and holding back nothing but his love
for the Princess, “my Lord Julius says there is no escape from the power
of Rome from Gaul to the Ganges for a slave. Let me be your slave, oh,
Master! Master, buy me and save me! I’ll serve you as never Emperor was
served in thought and speech and act! I’ll serve you forever with no
brand on my palms or shoulders.” And the little mountaineer, who never
yet had bowed his head to earth as slave, fell at the old man’s knees
sobbing, and would have placed the Prophet’s foot on his neck.
“What was your merchant master’s name in Colossé?”
“The Lord Philemon; and oh, my Master, I’ll pay him back my price and
all the money I stole to run away to Rome. I’ll work my hands to the
bone! I’ll earn wages for my price by acting as runner between the poles
for the great Romans in the villas here. I’ll pay him back fourfold as
the law demands. Only let me stay—keep me from the wolves of Rome—keep
the Lord Julius from selling me to Nero’s Palace, or tearing out my
tongue for telling you, or flogging me five hundred bastinadoes on my
feet for running away, or betraying me for telling of Bernice’s
kindness. I know now what I should or should not tell, nor why—”
“Ah, those crafty foxes of the Herod brood! ’Twas what Christ called
them when they slew John for Salome’s dance. She was of the same brood
of vipers long ago; and the blood of a Herod runs true to color.”
The Prophet’s hands were over his eyes and he seemed to be thinking back
long, long years. The hearth fire guttered lower. The lamp wick had
burned almost to the edge of the oil, and still the Prophet’s face shone
with luminous radiance as of an inner white flame; and his hands looked
like ethereal hands through which flamed an inner fire of the spirit in
kindly deeds.
“Dear Master, let me be your slave—”
“Child, there are nor bond nor free in the Great Kingdom which I serve;
for neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor depths, nor any
other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
“Nor bond nor free?” cried the little mountaineer. “Is there a kingdom
in all the world where there are neither bond nor free?”
“The Kingdom is here and now,” said the Prophet; and his brow shone with
the radiance of moonlight on the snowy peaks of Lebanon.
“But, sir,” cried the boy, “they held me slave, and they hold you in
bonds; for the King Agrippa told the Lord Julius—”
“Two bodies there are,” answered the Prophet gently, “one terrestrial
and one celestial—one that waxes old as a garment which we cast aside,
and one that grows younger with fuller life as the years nearer draw to
God; and neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature
than ourselves can place bonds upon that body. Like the air, which we do
not see, but in which we live and move and have our being, that
celestial body lives and moves and has its being in the love of God.
Child, rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice, that the Glad News has
come and the Kingdom is here—and now.”
* * * * *
When the Idumean returned, his mood seemed again gentler. He bade the
boy fasten the wrist gyves of the chain on the prisoner’s left arm to
his own right wrist, and to sleep on the floor, so that he as older man
would not be troubled in his sleep by the clank of the chain when he
tossed restlessly at night, as age is wont to do.
And when the boy wakened in the morning with the day-star shining
through the lattice of the high window, he found his new Master had
thrown over him, against the dank chill of the marshes at night, his own
black gabardine doctor’s cloak of Damascus velvet. While the Idumean and
the prisoner, chained up again at sunrise, took the air in parade before
the barracks of the Prætorian Guard, the youth swept out the hut floor
with a broom of brush and laid the breakfast on the rough board table.
Then the bonds were unlocked from the guard’s arms and the prisoner sat
down to write letters, or receive visitors, and the old Idumean again
posted himself on the stone bench in front of the hut.
When the lad came out, the Idumean bade him sit down on the bench to
talk. “The prisoner says he has arranged to take you for—by Jupiter—he
wouldn’t call you ‘slave’—a queer lot these followers of Christus—he
said he’d take you for his helper—he’d known your merchant master as a
friend in Colossé and would take you for a pledge of what that merchant
owed him. That’s good Roman law. You’re safe enough now. He said your
new name must be Onesimus—the Helpful One.”
“Why, that—is my very own name. How could he know?”
The Prætorian guard smiled. “He knows queer things in queer ways, this
prisoner. Rome is full of magicians and sorcerers and soothsayers,
mostly Greeks and Jews; but I never knew one could tell what he foretold
about the storm, nor hold from mutiny two hundred and seventy prisoners
swimming for freedom unchained in the open sea. What puzzles me is, when
he has this power, why doesn’t he use it to get himself his freedom
instead of wasting two full years here babbling of the Glad News—Glad
News—Glad News? News, indeed, ’twill be if Nero places all his tribe in
the arena to feed the wild beasts! Why doesn’t he use his power to build
himself a fortune, and buy a kingdom as Herod did, and rule all Jewry?
Then I’ll follow him myself; for Rome is breaking up.”
“What does he say when you ask him that?”
“Oh, folly about a Kingdom not made with hands; a Kingdom of the soul.
What’s a soul to Roman legions? Sometimes, like Festus, I incline to
think much learning hath made him mad—”
“I remember the very words—the very words he said at Cæsarea the day I
saved the jewel on the chariot course for Princess Bernice; and King
Agrippa said ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian’—you know the
way King Agrippa has, pretending to agree, to draw the adversary on—”
“And what said our Prophet to that?”
“He smiled that gentle, fearless way of his and said—‘I would thou wert
such as I am’; and all his prison chains rattled to the floor as he
threw up his arm when he said that; and the great ones on the judgment
seat broke out in laughter. King Agrippa laughed the merriest of all;
and the Princess whispered ‘The gods forbid.’ What does he teach? What
does he believe, Lord Julius?”
“How do I know?” answered the Idumean roughly. “It’s always Glad
News—Glad News—Glad News; Rejoice—Rejoice—Rejoice! By Jupiter, what
have the Jews had to rejoice about for a thousand years, till Rome came
and gave them good roads and theaters and forums and aqueducts, and held
the fierce sand rovers back, plundering their very Holy Temple with its
golden doors? I mind once hearing the soldiers talk of an Egyptian, I
think it was, who plundered their precious Temple before Herod rebuilt
it; and when he entered into their Holy of Holies, where never man trod,
and their own priests opened only once a year to take the gold angels
above the Altar, there wasn’t even the image of a little gold god—not a
thing in brass or silver like a god—only a queer blue cloud like a
flame from some of their magic fires—”
“A queer blue cloud like a flame?” repeated the boy. “Why, that’s the
way his face and hands look in the dark. What does he teach?”
“Listen when his visitors come, and you’ll learn soon enough if you can
make anything of their Greek doctrine and Jewish jargon—I can’t. I’m
Idumean—Roman—I believe in pikes and swords—in law and gold. One day
it’s ‘don’t be insipid’—‘don’t lose your salt’—‘never assume gloomy
looks’—‘don’t throw pearls to swine’—‘away with fear’—‘laugh at the
sting of death’—‘lead justice to victory’; or else he tells these Jews
of Rome they are ‘fatheads and dullwits and grosshearts,’ with which we
Romans agree; or else ‘the earth is an inn and death the eternal house
to which he has the key to another house of many mansions,’ or he quotes
that old Job legend of the Arabs, about ‘flesh renewed as a little
child’s’; but you should hear him when the young Timothy comes— ‘It’s
Timothy, son, beware the young widows.’ That’s what I call sense.
“It would be good advice to you next time a princess with black eyes
casts her net at a simpleton! He calls his Christus a Lamb of sacrifice
for sin. That’s queer; for I remember nearly forty years ago, when I was
your age, I helped to crucify that Christus. Still it’s not so different
from the Sacred Bull of Egypt by which the priests get revenue, or the
Sacred Lion of Chaldea, or Jupiter of our Sun Temples. Our kings all get
revenue by some religious trick hitched up to fear of some god—sun or
star or love of war! As I tell you, I’m a plain soldier. I can make
nothing of it. I’m for the power of Rome, the law of Rome, the wealth of
Rome; there is no power on earth can stand up against it.”
The boy sat pondering. He couldn’t forget that little blue flame above
the desecrated Altar of the plundered Temple, like the radiance of the
Prophet’s brow in the dark. Perhaps all eyes could not see that flame.
Perhaps that was what had blinded the Prophet. He’d ask him about that.
* * * * *
And so the summer ran to winter and the winter to spring again, when the
emptied corn ships went back to Greece and Egypt, laden with tin from
Britain and hides from Gaul and copper from Spain.
The boy saw and pondered much. He was known now among the Jews of Rome
as the adopted son of the prisoner. What passed between the boy and the
Prophet, only God knows. They were as loving father and more loving son.
The Prophet was restless when the boy was out of his sight; and the
boy’s eyes followed his master with the mute love of a child for a
saint. But fewer and fewer converts came to see the Prophet; for Nero’s
mood was darkening toward the new sect; and the believers were
scattering to the hills and to the Isles of the Sea before the storm
broke.
Only the gentle Greek physician called Luke kept coming; and one Mark, a
deacon, who talked much of a great leader, Peter; and the young scribe,
Timothy, grown more ethereal and frail as he added years, and a great
one, called Epaphroditus, who was friend of many great ones, but led no
sect for fear of his head. Once Epaphroditus came with a learned Jewish
scholar called Josephus, whose records may be read to this day.
And he and the Prophet talked long and bitterly of the law, of the Roman
rulers and armies in Judea. Like Epaphroditus, Josephus openly joined no
sect that was cold or indifferent to Rome; but his beliefs may be read
between the lines of all he wrote.
And once there came with Epaphroditus a strange huge man clad all in
white from Alexandria, followed by a caravan of camels that Roman rumor
said had traversed all the world. His name was Apollos; and he joined
the learning of the Persians to the learning of the Greeks; and had
prophesied all that the prisoner told; and his sayings, too, may be
found to this day both among the Egyptians and the Persians. The Prophet
and the huge man in white embraced like brothers; and all Rome went mad
with the sensations of a day over what they called the Magian. Rome was
more mad over his caravan of camels than about his doctrines.
Once the boy turned to his beloved patron: “Master,” he said, “when you
have power to save me, why do you not use your power to save yourself
and flee from the dangers of Rome?”
“Because he that saveth his life shall lose it.”
And that night, when he was writing a letter to Timothy, who was in
Greece, to come to Rome, the boy heard the Prophet dictate the words, “I
have fought a good fight—I have finished my course. I have kept the
faith.” Why, the boy wondered, does he say he has finished his course?
When Timothy came to Rome, the boy went in to his patron.
Again, the frogs were piping in the marshes. It was a fair evening in
spring. Again, the oleander and the acacia and the almond and the
apricot bloom drugged the night with dreams. Again, the sun hung over
the far sea in a warrior shield, and the dust from the chariot wheels
filtered the air with powdered gold. Again the Spring Festival was over
and all Rome seemed out-of-doors, afoot, on barge, on horseback, or in
chariot, either going home to the hill towns of the poor, or down to the
rich villas by the sea. Again, the bonfires burned on the hillsides with
flamy eye, and gold-wheeled chariots flashed over the canal road in a
smoke of dust. Again, the bargemen and sailors and slave rowers up from
the corn ships of Egypt on Naples Bay made the night ring with knavish
revels in the water-front wine shops; but though the sun sank as golden
on the waters and the stars came out as silver over the hills, the canal
was no longer the happy thoroughfare of gay throngs in spring under
colored silk awnings with Nubian slaves on the rowers’ ivory benches;
for a mute fear was settling over Rome as to what madness Nero would
next pursue; and the great senators and generals no longer thronged to
Rome. They had moved their families to their hillside estates and villas
by the sea. The army and the loafers and the idle freedmen and the
slaves openly ruled Rome. Nero could hold the loafers and the idle
freedmen and the slaves with gifts of free corn and wild Bacchanalian
festivals and gladiatorial combats and the baiting of captives taken in
war by wild beasts, but all Rome was asking who was strong enough to
rule the vast Imperial Army. What would Vespasian, busy in the wars of
Palestine, do when he came? What would Titus, over whom Bernice was
casting her spider net, do?
A pall rested over the gayly colored spring scenes of Rome. It was as if
Vesuvius rumbled and darkened long before the lava-flow buried the
beautiful villas in lakes of rock and fire.
So when Onesimus, the helper, had asked the prisoner Prophet why he did
not save himself by escaping from Rome, and had pondered that answer
about those who save life losing life, and those losing life saving it,
he came back in this spring evening and stood timidly before the
Prophet.
“My beloved Master, now that you have Timothy with you to write your
letters and the physician Luke to care for our body, would you miss me
if I went back to Colossé?”
“I would miss you as I would a beloved son begotten of mine own flesh,”
said the prisoner gently. “Have you not cast out fear of all that man
can do unto you? Why do you wish to go to Colossé instead of carrying
the glad tidings to your mountain people?”
“O Master,” Onesimus had fallen to his knees, with his face in the
Prophet’s hands, which he bathed in tears. “I fear not what all Rome can
do unto me; for I have joined that Kingdom not made with hands; but I
fear only the reproach of a good conscience and of my Lord of the Glad
Kingdom. I have saved enough of my earnings to pay back the merchant
Philemon fourfold the money I stole from him.[2] He bought me from King
Agrippa for a price. I would go back, his slave, till your King gives me
my freedom.”
[2] The value of a slave at this time was about eighteen dollars of
modern money, though much more was paid for beautiful girl captives and
young men who gave promise of becoming gladiators.
The Prophet’s hands lifted and rested on the boy’s hair. In the dark
they shone with the luminous light of the stars on snow. His lips were
moving—the boy heard him whisper— “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee;
the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”
That evening the Idumean of the Prætorian guards remained down at the
water front among the wine shops, and the Prophet wrote far into the
night. Onesimus would have written for him, for the prisoner’s eyes had
grown dimmer; but the Master said it was better this letter should be
written privately; and he wrote it on a wax tablet with an onyx stylus
to guide his failing sight. When he had finished he put the tablet in a
parchment case sealed with wax and bade the boy give it to the merchant
Philemon of Colossé. Then he embraced Onesimus and sent him to board the
barges that would go down the canal to the corn ships setting sail at
daybreak for Grecian Asia.
Here briefly is what he wrote. You will find it exactly and fully as he
wrote it in the oldest record of documentary history in the world—the
most widely circulated documents in the modern world and probably the
least thoroughly read of all books in the world. Space permits only the
briefest outline of the letter, the original of which any reader can
compare in any language known in the world. Some few phrases differ
according to the language, but the purport is the same in all; and the
story is meticulously true in every essential, though scholars and
schools still quarrel over some dates and two or three names. As far as
it is possible to figure these early dates, this letter was written
between 62 and 64 A.D.
“. . . to Philemon, our beloved and fellow worker, and to Apphia, our
gracious lady . . . I had great joy and comfort in your love, because
the hearts of God’s people have been and are, refreshed through you, my
brother. . . . Therefore, though I speak very freely, it is for love’s
sake I rather beg of you . . . I, the aged and prisoner . . . write to
entreat you on behalf of a child, whose father I have become in my
chains . . . I mean Onesimus, who was a bad bargain to you, but now,
true to his name, has become a helpful one to us both.
“I am sending him back to you in his person, and it is as if I sent my
own very heart . . . I wished to keep him with me that he might minister
to me in my old age and chains, but without your consent I would not;
for I wanted it of your free will. Receive him back no longer as a
slave, but as brother, dear to me, beloved, as a fellow worker for
Christ. If you still regard me as comrade, receive him as myself. If he
was ever dishonest, or is in your debt, charge me with the amount. Hold
me responsible for the debt on your books. I pledge my signature. I will
pay you in full. (I say nothing of the fact you owe me yourself the same
amount.)
“Yes, beloved, do me this favor for our Lord’s sake. Refresh my joy in
Christ. I write you in full confidence. I know you will do more than I
say, and provide accommodation for me; for I hope through your prayers I
shall be free to come. Greetings from my fellow prisoners, among whom
are Mark and Luke. May the graciousness of Christ be in the innermost
soul of every one of you. . . .”
And though they put the signatures to the letters first in those days,
which was a better thing than our custom of having to read through a
letter to know who wrote it, the name signed to that letter by a
half-blind little old man, ill, and so near death (Nero’s blade was
already whetted for the sacrifice), with a chain on his arm in a prison
hut, was
“PAUL.”
CHAPTER II
ARDATH, THE FIELD OF FLOWERS
Three women sat cooped in the great fortress of Machærus, east of the
Dead Sea, peeved that a war for world power had interfered with their
own personal plans and petty intrigues. The rose-tinted mountains of
Moab rose far to the east, tier on tier above the Desert, dyed in a
mystic fire of cloud and light that might have been the abode of gods
from eternity. North and south, you could have dropped a pebble from the
turret, where the women sat, down precipice sheer as a wall twenty-five
hundred feet. West, the clouds boiled a silver sea far below the Fort
bastion on the blue and green of deep translucent waters. These waters
are to-day known as the Dead Sea. At that time, they were called the
Asphaltis Sea owing to the pungent burnt odor of petroleum and sulphur,
that came up from their hot springs.
Safe as an eagle’s nest above the storm clouds perched the Fort on the
mountain height, where rulers’ wives and daughters were housed from
stress of war and raid, but angry as an eagle’s young were the strident
voices of these pampered favorites of harem and court, that the blood of
men flowing deep as the horses’ bridles over at the siege of Jerusalem,
should be keeping these caged birds from the garden of joy in life.
The elder women rose petulantly and stood at the deep casement of the
window in the open turret, where the breeze came up from the silver
clouds lying below on the Sea. By the uncertain feeling out of her hands
for the stone wall, it was apparent she was almost blind. Her hair lay
lustrous black on her brow, but here and there a silver line showed she
was past middle age, and the slight film across the pupils of her black
eyes betrayed the cataract obscuring light.
“A curse on these seditious Judeans,” she protested, tapping her
sandaled foot impatiently on the stone floor. “Rome gave them the best
government they have ever had—justice, safety, forums, aqueducts,
theaters, low taxes; and what have they returned to Rome for protection
from enemies east and west? Rebellion for seventy years! First Herod the
Great slew some brats in Bethlehem; and he must needs go mad with
jealousy and strangle his Jewess wife, and be haunted ever after by her
pale ghost in this accursed Fort! Then because I chose to love the
Second Herod instead of his brother Philip, to whom I was sold as child,
I must be taunted as a sinner of the streets by the little Hermit John;
and my Lord Herod must turn soft because he loved the ragged madman’s
‘rough honest ways.’ Honest? I call it insolence and would have torn his
tongue out if I could! What right have raving fanatics to pry open
private lives? I got him prisoned in the dungeon here for two full years
before I caught my Lord Herod in his cups and settled the Hermit’s mad
impudence with the headman’s sword. . . .”
The two other women, who were yet in the flush of first youth, rose and
joined the elder in the open window of the turret. One was short, with
crafty laughing eyes and full voluptuous inviting lips, and the air of
insolence in her beauty that could challenge life. The other was tall
and slender with eyes that dreamed, but what or how they dreamed no soul
outside her own deep thoughts could know.
“Then, Aunt,” pleaded the slenderer of the two, throwing an arm tenderly
around the blind woman, “with your mad Hermit dead, why rage and bruise
yourself against the past?”
“Little soft dreaming fool!” The blind woman petulantly threw the girl’s
arm from her waist. “Have you forgotten when my Lord Herod’s first
wife—that discarded rag of treachery, who could not hold the love I
won—went back to her father, the King of Arabia, and roused all the
tribes to attack us here, we lost? We lost, and I was blamed, and my
Lord was banished first to the barbarians of the Danube and then to the
savages of Spain, to whom I must go unless you can snare Titus, the
Emperor’s son, over in the siege of Jerusalem there. Only you can save
the last of Herod’s line—Bernice.”
The younger woman designated Bernice gazed deep in the silver clouds
boiling above the Dead Sea.
“Much chance I have to snare Titus shut up here away from the warriors
of Jerusalem; but if we Herod women must be played as pawns to win
kingdoms, let us play pawn for the biggest prize of all—Rome.”
The elder woman had placed her elbows on the casement of the window and
sank her face in her hands.
“If you were not such a little fool of dreams, Niece Bernice, you would
never have left Jerusalem. You would have stayed on in the Temple Herod
built, paying your vows, if you had to cling to the Altar horns! You
were wife of Herod Third; and who did more for the Judeans? Free feasts,
free games, you remember Cæsarea; and all because your Lord let the Jews
stone James, that zealot of the Nazarene, know you what the populace
says? They say their God, whom no one has even seen, slew your husband
in his coat of silver mail!”
“I thank their God for that,” absently answered the girl Bernice. “Herod
Third was too old. You chose your Herod. I was sold to mine.”
The other younger woman with the insolent inviting voluptuous lips
laughed.
“Because you had fallen in love with the little blue-eyed slave,
Onesimus, whom Felix and Festus rescued from the robber bands of
Galilee.”
“That slur sounds not well from you, Sister Drusilla! You, yourself,
married freed slave. Have you forgotten Felix was freed slave?” asked
the slenderer of the sisters.
Drusilla of the voluptuous lips laughed. “No, nor have I forgotten he is
the only one of all the Herod husbands who left his wife safe with
wealth in times of peril. He rose to be ruler under Rome. . . .”
“And drove the Jews to insurrection by his thefts and taxes to give you
wealth,” interrupted Bernice.
The older woman whirled on them with the fires of fury in her blind
eyes. “Peace to your sparrow chatter—fools—fools—fools! What do you
know of love, or constancy? You barter love and time for gain as
gamblers throw their dice. My Lord Herod and I bartered all for
love—and lost—and love as ever! And he is far among the savages of
Spain and I am caged here to wait the fortune of war at Jerusalem! And
time is short, and I grow old, and does his love grow cold? You read his
letter brought by the post this day, how he longs to hold me in his arms
once more! Nightly, I have prayed to Istarte and Venus and Astoreth for
my love to descend to him in far-off Spain down the beams of the
starlight, or moonlight, to hold him forever to me true! Instead of
answer to my prayers—what? This accursed Fort haunted by the spirits of
the dead! ’Twas here the spirit of Mariamne, whom Herod the Great
strangled, came haunting him till he went mad. ’Tis here where we are
shut up prisoners of the past, beating our weak women hands ’gainst the
fetters of fate, the ghosts of our past come haunting us! I tell you
fools that in the dark I can dream I am not blind, but when I pray for
my Lord’s love to come and wrap me in his arms, when it is dark and I
can forget I am blind—what comes? What comes? What comes? I say! I
could be a lioness to fight for my cubs, as all the Herod women ever
are; but when I pray for forgetfulness, what comes—I say?”
“Dear Aunt Herodias,” gently expostulated the younger Bernice. “These
are not wise words. Our weak hands only bruise when we batter fate.”
“Fool—your course is not yet run—dreaming of a blue-eyed slave, when
you should be in Jerusalem mending all our fortunes by marrying Titus,
the Emperor’s son!”
The two drew back from the violence of the elder woman standing in the
open-windowed turret.
“Herodias will be maniac unless we send her to her husband in Spain,”
whispered the sister Drusilla.
“Maniac,” repeated the blind woman in scorn. “So you would be, if
nightly when you prayed for love there came rolling over the stone floor
the bloody head of that wild Hermit beheaded in the cellar here. . . .
If I could tear these scales from my eyes and prove it is not true; but
can a blind lioness fight. . . .?”
“Let us go to the garden—we only anger her. She will rave to exhaustion
till she gets some sleep, and dreams she sees the head again,” murmured
Drusilla. “I could wish we were out of the haunted fortress here. It is
ill-fated! Do you go to Jerusalem and get the Emperor’s permission for
us to leave for Rome. . . .”
“I will do that, Sister Drusilla, but do not anger her by making light
of her mad love for Herod. No Herod woman dare grow afraid. Our past is
a black, back wall! Our future is blacker if Jerusalem falls and Judea
is ruled direct from Rome. Our brother Agrippa will be deposed. He is
last of our line. Everything hangs on winning Titus’ favor; and with the
road to Jericho blocked black by troops, it is easier to say ‘go to
Jerusalem’ than go! Unless a caravan comes this way from the East bound
for the Sea, which I can join disguised, how can we escape the Roman
guard set to watch the gates?”
They descended the stone stairs of the turret in thoughtful silence and
emerged in the great garden of the Fort. A broad walled parapet ran
round the edge of the sheer precipice on which the Fort was perched
above the cloudy Sea. Only one side gave exit, or approach—a narrow
causeway to the east with drop straight as a wall on either side,
leading out to the rose-tinted mountains of Moab, tier on tier above the
Desert dyed in a mystic fire of cloud and light.
An old Idumean guard sat in the shade under the arched gate to the
causeway. He took his helmet off and yawned drearily. His beard had
grizzled gray and his thatch of close-cropped curly hair had whitened
with age. As the two sisters approached walking along the wall of the
parapet and came under the shade of the arch, he rose stiffly and
saluted.
“How are the roads to Jerusalem, old Julius?” asked Drusilla, throwing
her purple silk cloak back over her shoulder so her bare arms shone
jeweled with bracelets.
“Blocked, blocked, Good Ladies,” returned the old Idumean wearily.
“Dreary task this, your Highness, guarding sibyls, who could bewitch all
Rome’s generals if they escaped down to Jerusalem.”
“What is the hammering we hear below the fog of clouds?” asked Bernice
trying to penetrate the import of his answer.
“Camel bells of some caravan coming up the causeway, or clanking of the
forges down at Jericho making war engines for the siege.”
“Are there many refugees in the caves between here and the Jordan,
Julius?” pressed Bernice.
“The Nazarenes are fleeing from Jerusalem to the Desert of Moab like
sheep harried by wolves; and robber bands are everywhere. I’ll warrant
those poor sheep will be fleeced of their wool before they reach the
caves of their Secret Lodges. Dangerous, Ladies, too dangerous for
princesses in royal robes to venture these roads when my head’s pledged
for their safety.”
“Why should a princess want to pass that way, old Julius?” smiled
Drusilla of the voluptuous lips.
“Because Titus, the Emperor’s son, is at the end of yon road.” He
pointed down the precipice path towards Jericho beyond the Jordan.
Drusilla laughed again. Bernice strolled through the arched gateway and
gazed past the rose-mist of light and clouds above the Desert mountains.
“Are there ghosts in the dungeons beneath the Fort, dear Julius?”
pressed Drusilla.
“None that I know but spears and swords to protect the women here if
Titus fail at Jerusalem,” answered the old Idumean, stretching his spear
across the open gate of the arch to the causeway across Princess
Bernice’s way.
The two Princesses turned and retraced their steps along the parapet.
The old Idumean sat down on the bench again with an evil smile that
showed all his yellow teeth like boar’s tusks.
“Witches! Enchantresses to turn men to swine! If I had my will, I’d
throw them all over the precipice into the Dead Sea.”
“You see, Drusilla! We are really prisoners at Rome’s orders, though
they pretend they are protecting us here,” said Bernice.
“What are prison walls to true love? Eat, drink and be merry; for
to-morrow we die,” laughed Drusilla. “Why are they holding us prisoners
here?”
“To grace Rome’s chariot wheels if they conquer Jerusalem,” Bernice
answered bitterly. “And if I go to Rome, I go not with chained hands
behind the chariots. I ride with Titus in the chariot under the
conquerors’ arch—”
“And I thank Jupiter,” insolently laughed Drusilla, “that my slave
husband Felix left enough gold to bribe freedom.”
They descended the stone steps from the parapet to the gardens. The
rose-and-silver mist still boiled above the green translucent depths of
the Dead Sea. It looked, so far below, a jewel in jade. An odor of roses
and oleander came from the sloping gardens. Far below they could see the
flat tiled roofs of the village outside the walls clinging to the
precipice like birds’ nests; and every roof was crowded with women and
children, to get the air.
“I hate women. If I had been a man, I would have been a warrior in the
thick of it at Jerusalem there,” said Drusilla. “Women are feeble and
helpless sheep. They either huddle in fright and go mad over the past
like Aunt Herodias up in the turret there, or—are eaten by the wolves.
If I knew where Felix camps among the barbarians, I’d throw my royal
estate to the winds and join him to-morrow.”
“I would not. I’d rule the wolf,” said Bernice thoughtfully.
Their purple silk cloaks brushed the snowy petals of the cyclamens
lining the garden paths. Bernice stooped and picked a field daisy.
“Heart of gold,” she said dreamily, “with vesture of white silk round
it, I’ll pluck your petals and—wish.” She plucked the white petals one
by one, throwing them on the ground.
“What does it say? Do you get your wish?” asked Drusilla.
Bernice’s fingers rested on the last slender white petal. She plucked it
and kissed it. “I get my wish,” she said.
The clank of an armed tread startled their daydream.
They turned. It was the old Idumean.
“Ladies, a camel caravan has just now come up the causeway from the
East. ’Twas their bells you heard! They ask permission to rest in our
khan during the heat of the day and go on to Jerusalem by night across
the Jordan.”
“Who are they?” demanded the Princess Drusilla imperiously.
“That was why I came to ask your permission, Princess! They are of the
new Christian band that gave such trouble to all the Herods. One is a
great figure of a man dressed in white with a flowing beard and train of
servants bound for the Isles of Greece. His name is Apollos. I saw him
in Rome, where he was held in honor, before Nero took the head of the
prophet, Paul! The other is a young presbyter, whatever that may be,
blue eyes, gold hair, who I could swear as slave served Paul in Rome.
His name has slipped my mind; but they came in great state with the
protection of Rome and ask lodgings in the Sun Temple till the heat of
day passes.”
“Onesimus,” exclaimed Bernice.
“Yes, as I mind now, Lady, that was his very name; but he has grown a
powerful man, fair as the angels of Gaul—but this Apollos as I
questioned him, seemed a follower of the mad Hermit, John Baptist,
’gainst whose ghost the Queen Herodias raves at night. If they did not
bear permission from Rome, I’d bid them pack to save trouble; but—” the
old Idumean scratched his thatch of whitening hair.
Drusilla laughed insolently.
“Bid them take quarters in the Temple of the Sun but avoid the Palace
here! Excuse us! Explain the Queen’s illness prevents our receiving them
with becoming honor! Send down the best of provisions and bid them enjoy
the full freedom of garden and baths after their journey. Begone—” she
peremptorily clapped her hands.
Drusilla turned with a cynical laugh to her sister.
“You get your wish, Sister! You can join their caravan and go to
Jerusalem and plead our case with Titus; but this must be kept from Aunt
Herodias. If this Apollos be a follower of the raving Hermit, John,
whose bloody head she sees every night in her dreams, she’ll be for a
potion of poison on him and ditch our plans deeper than the moat beneath
the walls. I’ll take care of the older man in the flowing white, ’spite
of his beard, if you’ll beguile the young one with the golden locks. Now
to the Temple of the Sun to make offerings to Istarte and Venus and
Astoreth and all the goddesses of love under the Evening Star! Herodias
cannot be moved while this madness is on her; but we can escape. You get
your wish, Sister.”
But Bernice had turned white as the cyclamen of snow which brushed the
royal purple of her silk vesture.
“Yes,” she repeated. “I get my wish! A curse upon it! Must Herod’s
daughters always, always be pawns in Rome’s royal game?”
“What matter, if we are winning pawns?” smiled the other. “Cheer up,
Sister! Throw away regret! Cast off fear! We can escape. Herodias has
lived her life and won, and lost, and sits like an old fool drooling
over her loss; but we are young yet! Let us eat, drink and be merry; for
to-morrow we die.”
“You said, yourself, but a moment ago, you thanked Jupiter your slave
husband Felix was the only one who had left a Herod daughter safe—”
Drusilla, like her aunt earlier in the afternoon, whirled upon her
sister. Laughter had left only craft in the deep black eyes, and on the
cruel voluptuous lips.
“Fool,” she said with a stab of scorn. “Do you hesitate because
Onesimus, your slave boy, has come back grown to man? Will your lure be
weaker, or stronger, now that he is grown with the strong wine of
manhood in his veins? If you, a Herod’s daughter, could hesitate now,
I’d stab you with my own hand the first time I found you asleep. Go to
Jerusalem! Win Titus! He will be Emperor, too, in time. Onesimus can
meet you in Rome. Bend fate to your will! Do not be bent and broken by
any fate. We go to the Temple gardens to-night.”
The old Idumean went clanking back to the gate under the arch,
stiff-legged as legs are wont to walk, that have been in armored greaves
for seventy years.
“A curse on this Herod brood,” he went, muttering. “These women have
thrown every Herod from his throne. If I had my will, I’d weight their
feet with stones and throw them over the precipice in the Dead Sea; and
I’d see these Nazarenes feed the lions as they fed the wild beasts in
Nero’s days. Disturbers! Disturbers! Trouble makers! Pilate, a suicide
stabbed by his own dagger! Procla, his wife, whining about the
crucifixion and bad dreams! Herod First a madman. Herod Two an exile
with his wife raving here over the Hermit’s bloody head! I’d like to
know didn’t she order his head off at one blow in this very Fort! Herod
Three falls dead in the theater of Cæsarea and his jade of a girl wife
here up to fresh tricks on Titus! Pah! A nice task for an old soldier
keeping guard of such harpies! I’d slash their lily-stem throats if I
had my way.”
* * * * *
The sun went down behind the rose-tinted mountains of Judea to the west.
Their peaks gleamed in blood and fire above the red and golden sands.
Bernice sat on an ivory bench in the gardens above the silver clouds
lying on the Dead Sea below. In her hand was a bunch of snowy cyclamens,
which she idly plucked. Before her stood the young presbyter, Onesimus,
clad like his master in flowing white, with black sandal straps braided
halfway to the knee, a sword hanging by a gold cord from his neck, his
hair as gold as the cord but cut short to the neck after the Greek
fashion, his deep blue eyes gazing at the Princess as he would read her
soul. Onesimus had grown to powerful manhood in these seven years since
he left Paul at Rome.
She sat silent, thinking, but what she thought, he could not follow.
There was a fifing of insects from the dry grasses, that bordered the
garden walks. As the sun set over the blue green lake and the orange
hills beyond, the clamor of war from the cañon below dulled and fell
like the subsiding waves of an angry sea. She turned her seal ring round
and round, and drew it from her finger as if to pass it to him. She
pressed it to her lips.
“Will this be amulet to keep you from all harm?” she mused.
The young presbyter trembled.
“My Unseen King will keep me from all harm,” he answered; “and I dare
not wear it till we are united for His Kingdom.”
“Look,” she said, “the Evening Star—Isis. The dewdrops are her tears.”
“’Twas the Star brought the Wise Men of the East,” he answered, “and
there shall be no more tears in His Kingdom.”
An awful loneliness and an awful loveliness seemed to envelop her
fragile form.
The young presbyter drew towards her as if to wrest her from her Dead
Sea hopes and take her to that Unseen Kingdom with violent hands.
“Where have you been with the great Apollos, these long long years, my
Onesimus?” she dreamily asked.
“To Babylonia and Assyria aiding the greatest apostle of all—Peter,” he
answered.
“He, who lied and denied his leader and cut the High Priest’s servant’s
ear off at the trial long years ago, as I have heard the Queen Herodias
tell?” she asked.
“Say rather, Princess, he who learned in sin his own weakness, and whose
great heart grew tender for all who fall in slippery places. He learned
not to trust his own strength even in love, but—God’s.”
She pondered that absently plucking the cyclamens; and her hands were
slender as the lily stems. The silver clouds rolled from below and the
translucent water lay a painted sea.
“What does your Master Apollos teach? How differs he from the others?”
“I’ll answer that as Paul answered years ago in Rome, when Ephesus and
Corinth wrote to know whether they should follow Paul, or Apollos. Paul
followed the Nazarene. Apollos professed John, the Baptist; and when the
followers would have wrangled one against another, and so missed the
news of the Glad Kingdom in strife, Paul wrote back—’twas but a few
years before Nero slew him—Paul plants; Apollos waters; God gives the
increase!”
“You speak as a gardener.”
“I am, dear Princess— We are all gardeners, gardeners in the field of
flowers which the Persians call ‘Ardath’—the Garden of God called
Paradise.”
“I like that. I can understand that better than an Unknown Kingdom not
made with hands! That Garden kind of Kingdom would be Glad News to me,
Onesimus! I could wander through that kind of Garden, forever, if I had
hold of your hand! Sit at my feet, dear playmate of the long ago, and
tell me of your Garden—no, sit by my side, I would hold your hand now!”
She drew him down to the ivory bench beside her. He flushed as deep as
the rose-tinted mountains in the setting sun.
“Now tell me of your Garden called Paradise, while I can feel your
thoughts flowing into mine through the palm of your hand. This is
Paradise enough for me.”
“Your hand, dear Princess, throbs too hard for the peace of that Garden.
It is a Garden where there is eternal light, nor suffering, nor care,
nor sorrow, nor dark, nor sleep to miss one hour of joy.”
“That, too, I like,” she said. “Let us not miss this hour of joy.”
“It is watered by the Rivers of Eternal Life. God’s thoughts are the
seeds. They bloom in human flowers. ’Tis ours to keep those human
flowers from running into poisonous weeds. The flowers of this your
earthly garden are fixed by roots, where they are planted, but the human
thought seeds have power of choice like wings to bear them where they
will to go; and I would that you would will to join our Unseen Garden,
not made with hands but thoughts—”
She drew his hand between her breasts and drank his eager gaze like one
athirst.
“See yonder above the Sea is Istarte, the Evening Star of love,
Onesimus! Will love dwell in our garden there as it shone in the Garden
of Daphne long ago, when first I read your dear blue eyes?”
“The God of Love is the Sun of that Garden, Princess,” he answered,
gently loosening her passionate grasp and placing in her emptied palm
the cyclamens she had let fall. “You bade me tell you of that Garden and
Apollos’ teaching. You know how the caves and grottos of the Jordan from
the Dead Sea to Damascus are filled with the Nazarenes, who have fled
from the siege of Jerusalem, which our Lord foretold. In all the cities
of Decapolis, Apollos preached in the Temples of the Sun. You know these
cities of the Greeks love and worship the Sun; but it was the Son of
God, Apollos preached, which John the Hermit foretold; and so when the
priests had sung the psalms, Apollos would sound out in his great
thunder voice like a silver trumpet: ‘Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates,
and let the King of Glory in! Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of
angel hosts, He is your King of Glory’; and when the multitude had
settled to listen, he would tell them of Ardath, the Garden of God in
Paradise, where God’s thoughts are seeds and bloom in human flowers.
Once, I mind, when a woman came weeping whose child had been slain in
the siege as she escaped, after she heard Apollos she left the Temple
rejoicing because her child had become a flower of light in the Garden
of God; and a lover, whose bride had been slain, went out, weeping no
more, because his bride was not dead, but waiting him in the Garden of
God; and a soldier mad with remorse that his cruelty had killed his wife
left all calmed because he had faith she, too, had gone to the Garden
and had sent him Apollos to teach the way.”
Bernice plucked the snowy cyclamens again from their stems. Her slim
hand trembled.
“Show me the way, Onesimus.”
Her voice was so low he had to bend across her slender figure to catch
the words.
“There is no other way but to repent, be baptized, leave off sin and
follow the Light of the Eternal Son.”
So absorbed were the lovers they did not see the tall white figure of
the great teacher Apollos approaching on the path, accompanied by the
Princess Drusilla.
“What is—this thing you call sin, my Onesimus? Is it sin for me to love
you as I do?”
“Sin is the shadow of self, shutting out the light of God.”
She pondered that. “And when I love you so you turn all life to rosy
mist, do I love self?” she asked.
“Sin is anything that holds us in the realm of shadows, away from God.
It may be crime that fetters us in blind dungeons without bars like the
Queen Herodias up there in the turret. It may be gayety. It may be
wealth. It may be fear. It may be love of flesh, or power. It may be
anxious want. It may be doubt; but it is always shadow of self.”
“And what is repentance? Would it cut me off from you?”
“No, but it would cut you off from planning to gain power by snaring the
Roman General yonder. Repentance is to cancel sin by sinning no more,
forsaking self and following Light.”
She threw her bare arms about his shoulder. “But if I gained Titus, the
Emperor’s son, I could have you too, Onesimus! You offer me a Shadow
Kingdom I cannot see or touch with hands. I aim at Rome.”
“You aim, beloved, at the image of clay and iron seen by the Prophet
Daniel; and even now the iron is falling from the clay and the image is
crumbling down. The other Kingdom is of gold and light and
eternity. . . .”
Two shadows fell athwart where they sat, and the Princess Bernice drew
back, while the young presbyter rose. Unutterable pain was on his
baffled face. Apollos in his flowing white garments cast a long giant
shadow between them. His back was towards the bench and so was the
figure of the Princess Drusilla. The towering Apostle with the white
hair and white beard had raised his shepherd’s crook and was pointing to
the rose-tinted peaks swimming in mystic fire of clouds and light; and
as he pointed his upraised staff and arms cast a shadow of the cross
between the young presbyter and the slim daughter of the last of the
Herods.
“Yonder,” he was saying in a voice so like a silver trumpet that
traditions have come in Crete to this day that when he spoke all the
silver bells of the temple service rang, “Yonder are the mountains of
the wilderness, where our Christ was tempted. First, He was tempted to
satisfy the hungry cravings of wearied and faint flesh. Then, He was
tempted to try out whether God was God enough to save Him from rash
slips; and then he was offered all the kingdoms of the earth and their
pageantry as in a dream. . . .”
“And why didn’t He accept the challenge as a Roman would?” asked the
Princess Drusilla in a cold, hard, calculating voice. “If He could have
proved His Kingdom instead of going to the Cross like a felon, I’ve
heard the Queen Herodias say all Judea would have risen and rallied to
Him and thrown off Rome. . . .”
“Because the power given Him of God was not for service of self, but to
lead men back to God. We may not make playthings of miracles for self,”
he said.
“So if the Queen Herodias will not acknowledge your God, you cannot cure
her madness?” demanded Drusilla.
“Remorse is not repentance,” answered the Sage; and the two figures
passed on down through the oleanders of the garden.
The rose-tinted misty mountains were wrapping them in shadow mantles of
purpling folds. A cold wind blew up from the waters, still and glassy as
a painted sea.
The young presbyter stood silent. Bernice shivered.
“How can you believe in your Unseen Kingdom, when your King was
crucified, and his followers are now scattered from Judea to these
caves?” she urged.
“Death is but a boat across another sullen Jordan to the Gardens of
God,” he said, “and His Followers are scattered that they may scatter
the seed for the Garden to spread here on earth. Already the scattered
seed reaches from Rome to Ganges.”
“Where does Apollos go now?” she asked.
“To become preacher in Crete.”
“And you?”
“To join John, beloved of Christ, at Ephesus.”
“And you leave?”
“In an hour to travel in the cool of the night.”
Far north, they could see to the snowy peaks of Hermon, where the sheet
lightning played. The clanking of forges plied in the valley below on
engines of war for the siege of Jerusalem, echoed like silver bells from
cavern and grotto. The pungent flower-drugged air had odor of temple
incense, and the breeze was as a cool hand laid on a fevered brow. The
shadows etched themselves clearer in the translucent depths of the
emerald Sea. The young presbyter’s lips were moving as in prayer.
Princess Bernice roused herself as if to throw off dreams.
“’Tis not I who tempt you, Onesimus, with flesh, or daring, or power.
’Tis you, who tempt me to abandon the last of the Herod line for a
shadow Kingdom. My brother, King Agrippa, the last of the Herods, is
with Titus besieging the rebellious Zealots of Jerusalem. I’ll get my
bodyguard, Julius, and join your caravan, and go with you.”
The young man’s face lighted up as a brow in sunrise.
* * * * *
Out under the arched gate they rode in the moon’s silvered dark, Apollos
in a litter on a camel, leading down the narrow precipitous causeway.
The Princess Bernice, too, rode a camel, but her form was swathed in
cloak; and the old Idumean rode before her on Arab horse, while the
young presbyter walked by her side. He carried his sword in his hand.
Down the narrow bridle path from the causeway led the road to the Jordan
and Jericho and Jerusalem, scarce broad enough for the beasts, steep and
winding as a circular stair. Once where the way narrowed so that those
on stirrups had to dismount and only the camels kept sure footing, the
Idumean dismounted and held back to give right of way to the Princess’
beast, before he turned his own horse and the young presbyter’s free to
let themselves down on their haunches.
“Well rid of her! Well rid of her!” grumbled the old man. “If she had
not been going off with you, I would not have let her go. Have you no
other Nazarene teachers can rid me of the other two? Had she attempted
to escape to Titus, the General’s son, I would have cut her throat.”
Down, down, the narrow winding way, the caravan descended, and where the
hot brooding malarial air of the Jordan smote them, the pebbly shaly
path turned to clay trampled to mire by the refugees fleeing the siege
for open desert and rocky cave. The current was dark and sullen and
flowed with the hurrying rage of human passion driving to the nemesis of
its own destiny. The heat was hideous and the din deafened thought.
At the ford of the sullen dark river, they paused to water their beasts,
and mounting his horse, the young presbyter rode abreast the Princess’
camel and signaled the Idumean to ride for her safety on the other side.
“So would I ride with you through the Gates of Death, my Princess,” he
whispered, leaning towards the white face in the muffled cloak. “’Twas
here Christ was baptized and tempted of Self and the Evil One, and
renounced all earthly power to save men for the Glad Kingdom. You, too,
another time in safer place shall join our ranks by the sacred rite of
baptism, my Bernice.”
But the white face answered never a word. She reached out her arm, where
she sat, and touched his brow with a hand cold as death. Then the
caravan plunged in the ford. The horses swam and scattered slightly,
heading downstream with the waves, but the camels kept footing and
floundered. As the beasts came panting up the far bank in a thicket of
willows and oleanders, the Idumean led to force the way, for the narrow
road past Jericho was packed with a slow-moving mass of fleeing women
and children and aged, escaping from the siege of the Holy City on Zion
Hill.
Apollos, the great master, rode back abreast the Princess, and the
presbyter, Onesimus, led her camel afoot.
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, know that the
desolation thereof is nigh,” Apollos said. “Let them which are in Judea
flee to the mountains. They shall fall by the edge of the sword. They
shall be led away captive into all nations. Jerusalem shall be trodden
down of the Gentiles. When these things begin to come, then look up, and
lift up your heads; for redemption draweth nigh. Know you Who spoke
those words, your Highness?”
But the Princess answered never a word; for her heart was cold with fear
of the sights she saw as in a shadow by the silver starlight. Where
Herod’s Pleasure Gardens had lain at Jericho, was such a press of
soldiers, they could not approach the city gates. The clank of the
forges for the engines of war had become as the rumble of thunder or
earthquake. Where she knew the Holy City must stand on Zion Hill, she
could discern only the blaze of towers and uptossing in midsky of
flaming javelin and torch to throw destruction inside the city walls;
and as the caravan advanced through the press of legion and cohort in
serried ranks of helmet and breastplate and spear, the narrow ascending
mountain road lay thick in a screen of smoke with a sickening odor of
burning she had not known could exist outside the purlieus of a nether
world.
The old Idumean came back and wheeled his horse beside her.
“We cannot get through the press though I break the pate of every head
under helmet,” he said. “We shall have to fork to the right for the
Damascus Road past the General’s tent.”
“What is the smell of burning?” she asked, leaning forward from the
muffle of her camel.
“The dead! They are burning the dead as they throw them out over the
walls in Gehenna Valley,” answered the old soldier; “and this road is
swimming in blood coming down the walls. The soldiers tell me it is
swimming in blood to the horses’ bridles beneath Olivet.”
“Fear nought, Princess,” called the young presbyter, remounting his
horse to guard the rear, “you are only escaping a world that plays all
men false”, and they pressed on, taking the road that forked north of
the city.
Daylight dim with fog and smoke and the dust of battle saw them on the
crest of the highway that led north from the Holy City towards either
Cæsarea on the Sea, or Damascus in the far snowy mountains.
They paused again to breathe their spent camels and horses.
Bernice signaled the young presbyter.
“I would have your Arab horse,” she said. “I cannot ride this beast. He
is spent.”
Onesimus helped her to dismount the panting camel and take place on his
own horse, fresh because he had ridden little. He felt the tremor of her
slender form as he helped her to saddle. Far as eye could see were tents
on the heights and plains: but the Holy City they could not see for the
fog of smoke and dust and mist.
One great yellow tent spacious enough to house a thousand men lay not a
hundred yards to the left of their road. Above it blew the eagle
pennants of Rome.
“On,” shouted the old Idumean, “we are safe here. That is the General’s
tent. They have paused because this is the Jewish Sabbath and they
parley for surrender. To-day will see their Holy City fall and ring to
our trumpets’ victory.”
The caravan moved slowly forward. Soldiers rose sleepily where they lay
on the ground and saluted the old Idumean. The camels moved through the
mist in grotesque ghosts. Myriad tents were myriad island peaks in the
lifting morning mist. Then the sun outburst over the rose-tinted
mountains of Moab in the east; and the trumpets blew in a million echoes
through glen and grotto.
Mountains and plains seemed to awaken with myriad soldier forms from
ground and tent. Their metal helmets gave back the morning light in
silvered fire. As the trumpets blew their silvery blasts amid the
echoing rocks, the young presbyter’s horse reared in panic terror. The
Idumean and the young presbyter sprang to snatch at the bridle. The
Princess threw out her arm and struck the trembling creature a blow on
its flank with the bridle rein. It bounded in mid-air and fled as on
winged feet straight for the tent of the sleeping Roman General.
The old Idumean came a-sprawl on the ground, rolled over and sprang up
with his helmet awry. The astounded young presbyter had retained his
seat on the wearied camel, but gazed after the fleeing form as one who
has received his death blow.
“A curse upon her and all her vixen foxy Herod brood,” raged the old
man, getting stiffly to his feet. “I might have known it was a trick
when she said she would go to the Grecian Isles with you.”
The caravan moved forward again. The old Idumean was galloping furious
as his Arab horse could leap in wild bounds towards the General’s tent.
Just as the sunlight burst in a shield of fire over the embattled hosts,
the young presbyter looked back.
The old Idumean had thrown himself from his horse and stood with drawn
lance across the door to the tent of the sleeping Roman General.
“And because Peter erred through love in a slippery place, it gave his
great heart tenderness for all who trust in flesh,” said Apollos. Then
he smiled gently at his young presbyter. “The old Idumean is closer to
truth though he fell hard and cursed as Peter, than this Princess,
blinder in the fetters of her own wiles than the Queen Herodias,
prisoner back in the Fort,” he said. “We all have to learn by errors,
Onesimus, but it makes the way longer; and he who follows truth by a
circling road, comes out where he began.”
CHAPTER III
THE SWORD AND THE SUNBURST
If a woman is forced by the chain of circumstances to barter her love
for power—is she justified in bartering herself to the highest bidder?
That was the thought that chased through the Princess Bernice’s brain in
a dizzy whirl, when she struck her horse, and bolted from the
missioner’s caravan to force herself on the notice of the Roman
Emperor’s son and make such bargain as she could with her own charms for
coin to save herself and her brother—the King—from ruin. Had she ever
known a day of freedom of choice from early girlhood, when she had been
sold to one old husband to steady a tottering throne, to opening
womanhood, when widowed, she had again been sold like a slave on the
shambles to another aged and repugnant spouse to win alliance to
strengthen that same insecure throne? And when she had fled from that
second aged buyer on plea of religious vow, her name had been dirt under
the feet of the very beggars on the street—a byword among the Jews and
a joke among the actors of the Roman theaters in all the known world. If
the world would hound her to lawlessness for refusing to bow to
legalized slavery, she would accept the challenge and bid for a power
that would put the world under her feet and reduce the dogs, who barked,
to lick her very hands.
“Dogs—dogs—dogs!”—she hated the whole scheme of life, that made of
her love and womanhood a pawn to lust and power. ’Twas all very well for
the Christian presbyter and the great revivalist to hurl anathemas at
her sin; but was the sin hers, which had forced her down in the
cesspools of lustful slime? If the world had made her sin, she would
take toll of the world for her sin and exact tribute that would
compensate her loss for the sin.
Rebel? Yes, she knew she was rebel; but who had turned her into rebel?
If she could not fight Rome, she would exact price from Rome, by beating
it at its own ruthless gamble for power. To be sure, the presbyter and
the revivalist had offered her refuge from Rome in a Shadowy Kingdom not
made with hands; but had the God of that Shadowy Kingdom reached down
miraculous hand and saved her from the price she had already paid? Could
all the tears of repentance and sorrow for that past—which was not her
fault—wipe out the memories that seared her soul a quivering red? The
great revivalist had warned it was she who was tempting the young Greek
convert of the New Faith. Tempting? She laughed; and struck her frantic
horse again with all the vicious strength in her woman arm. It was she,
who had been tempted by a type of love she had not dreamed could exist
in the world of men; and what could she give back for that type of
love—now? An assoiled thing with drugged memories, which all the waters
of Dead Sea hopes and useless tears could not wipe out. How easily she
could have drawn the young Greek convert’s lips to her own and drawn his
soul through those lips and held it enchained forever in enchanted
fetters he did not dream! She loved him too well to make of his life
what fate had made of hers.
She laughed now because she was forever past tears. She struck the horse
again and again because she would have made all living creatures suffer
a little of what she was suffering; and she could have screamed in such
a fury of incarnate demon exultation as the warrior women of the
barbarians screamed when they tortured fallen foe— She would have
laughed if the horse had stumbled and caused her death—that, at least,
would be going down with defiance in the very teeth of fate; but a
frantic horse on devil’s errand somehow does not stumble. It carries us
into the very pit of fate.
It was just as the mists of morning were rising that some of the
soldiers stirred uneasily in their sleep to the echo of the trumpets and
bugles sounding reveille and the sharp iron-shod pound of the two horses
ridden at furious pace over the flinty rocks. Some of them sat up
wearily. A few commanders sprang to their feet, sword in hand. Their
first thought was of fresh dispatches from Rome, or word of surrender
from the besieged Holy City. What they decried through the rising gauzy
mist was the figure of a woman leaping from her horse in front of the
commander’s tent, followed by a soldier throwing himself from his horse
across her way and thrusting his lance before the tent entrance. Not
thus had refugees escaping over the walls of the besieged city by rope
come to the Roman for permission to seek safety in the caves beyond the
Dead Sea.
The officers smiled in hard contempt. The soldiers laughed, an ugly
suggestive laugh. They laughed because they knew that while the war
lasted, if a goddess had come garbed as a woman, she would not be
received in that tent. They trusted, loved and idolized their commander
as they would a god, and already openly talked of Titus as the army’s
future Emperor, when the cares of Rome from Gaul to Ganges would have
worn out his father, Vespasian.
The Roman Legions lay encamped on valley and hill in front of Jerusalem.
Seven months now had they besieged the Holy City from Passover Week in
spring when a million Hebrews from every country in the known world had
come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the birth of their nation from the
bondage of slavery in Egypt. It was now the golden summer season, which
we know as the end of August and opening of September. Russet mist
shimmered on earth and sky. As the sun rose over the red mountain rims
of Moab far to the east of the Dead Sea, the gauzy clouds took to
themselves wings and rose to mid-heaven, white as the snow of Hermon in
the north, and joyous as the lark’s greeting to newborn day.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE REBUILT BY HEROD]
Seven long months the Roman Legions had beaten with their huge engines
of war against the three impregnable walls of the Holy City. Beleaguered
and assailants were both exhausted and had appointed this day a truce;
for it was the Jewish Sabbath. The besieged citizens would long since
have surrendered to Rome; for Rome had given them peace and prosperity
and security in their own Hebrew laws for a hundred years; but the mad
Zealot Robber Bands and Short Sword Ruffians, known as the Sicarii, who
had seized the city twenty-thousand strong Passover Week to plunder in
the name of Liberty from Roman yoke, when all the Temple Chests were
filled with gold tribute from Jews the world over, knew that surrender
meant death, and holding all the arms of the city, kept the gates of the
three unscalable walls locked against Roman entry or citizens’ escape.
Escape was possible only by leaping or dropping ropes from the high
walls. Women were held prisoners in the houses, as cattle for slaughter
are hemmed in shambles, to force the obedience of the men to the mad
Zealot Robber Bands. He who threw himself from the broad parapet of the
upper walls and missed death in the frantic leap, saw all his kin flung
forcibly over after him by the Zealots, into the bloody moat beneath the
southern precipice, where the slow burning fires of Gehenna had already
consumed more than six hundred thousand Jews.
But all was peace of parley this calm Sabbath morning.
Not a watcher appeared on the broad top of the walls from the Temple on
the east to the three Towers of Herod on the higher Zion to the west.
The world of fighters slept in the dead exhaustion of men who had lived
in armor day and night for seven months. The footmen of the Roman
Legions sprawled on the ground, helmets and face pieces still fastened,
metal armor still buckled to breast and thigh. The horsemen lay with
heads pillowed on saddles, their beasts stretched on the ground beside
them, bridle rein crooked in their elbows, shields thrown for protection
across their lower limbs. The huge battering rams, which the Romans had
hauled up to the walls and mounted on hurdles of trees and rocks and
sod, rested suspended in mid-air, the giant beams hanging over the wall
for first blow the next day, with rams’ heads of solid iron twisted and
torted from the smash of seven months’ ceaseless work. Where the cable,
that hauled back the beam coiled round a horizontal windlass, had been
tied to a stake driven in the ground, a hundred ropemen lay in a sleep
dead as death. The great catapaults, with jaws of a giant leviathan
gripping rocks for the toss over the walls, also hung silent and still
against the calm sky, with more cables fast to ground stages and more
fighters asleep with hands not a finger length from the ropes for the
call to fresh fight, when the trumpets should sound.
North of Jerusalem, far as eye could see on mountain and plain, was a
yellow tent city of Roman Legions grouped round one large marquee on the
central ridge, above which gleamed the ensigns of the Emperor’s son,
Titus, the gleaming eagle in brass on a lofty pole in front of the
commander’s quarters.
The woman and the soldier stood facing each other with blazing eyes
before the commander’s tent. The man did not speak. If Rome won, he
would not risk his head by letting her pass. If Rome failed, neither
would he risk his neck by offence to an imperious mistress, who was not
wont to be stopped in her will.
Their eyes blazed. Both breathed hard.
“Down with that lance.” The woman’s order was emphasized with a stamp.
She had tossed aside her black cloak, revealing royal purple below and
her right hand sought the pearl-handled dagger in the gold cord round
her waist.
“The Emperor sleeps, Princess,” the soldier gasped back. “One to win
favor, had best not disturb the tired conqueror unannounced.”
“Liar,” she said with the quick gleam of an angry comet, “drop your
spear.”
The tent curtain lifted. An unarmed man in royal vesture like her own
emerged as if dazed from sleep.
The Idumean’s lance went up with a flash in the sun, butt on ground,
point in air, held by hand as of an unseeing statue. The hair of the man
in the tent doorway curled unkempt and damp with night sweat on his
brow. He was unshaven and bent, unlike soldier mien, as if crushed with
burdens too heavy to be borne. He was still in the drowse of heavy
sleep.
“Bernice—Princess—Sister,” he ejaculated. “Are you ghost—or flesh? In
the name of all the gods of Rome, how came you—here?”
“Aye—how came her Highness here?” angrily repeated the old Idumean
guard. “And my life was sworn to hold the two Princesses and the Queen
Herodias safe in Machærus Fort beyond Jordan while the war lasts; but
she tricked me by tale of joining some Nazarene Christians going to the
Isles of Greece; and when the caravan passed this way up from the
Jordan, she broke from rank and wheeled her horse affrighted by the
morning trumpets straight for the General’s tent.”
“Silence—fellow,” ordered the man. “Who gave you leave to speak? Come
inside, my Sister!”
He lifted the tent flaps, and they passed in. There was not a soul
inside all the great tent but a Sabean slave laying out his master’s
armor for the day.
“My Brother—my King—Agrippa—last of the Herod line,” the woman opened
her arms; and they embraced with the passion of the Herod line, that
loved as it hated, with the hot blood of the torrid Arab strain.
“You may go,” the King ordered the man.
Left alone, he turned to the Princess.
“What means this—mad—adventure, Sister?”
“It means, dear Brother, that the Herod women will no longer endure to
be cooped like sheep to be eaten by wolves yonder in Machærus Fort!
Herod women are of the lion line, my King! They fight not in cornered
walls. They crouch and spring for the foe’s throat, and never wait for
any foe to strike first.”
“Dangerous words, if Rome overhears,” said he.
“Have you forgotten how, from the male side, we spring from the
unconquered Arab, and from the other side from Mariamne, daughter of the
greatest of the Hebrew high priests?” demanded the Princess. “Have you
forgotten when the Great Herod would have broken Mariamne to his
imperious will, she defied him; and when he slew her, she came back and
haunted him till she drove him mad in that same Machærus Fort? Have you
forgotten how the great Imperial Cæsar called Herod to Rome, and Herod
would not lower eye or knee in presence of Imperial Rome; and how for
his fearless courage he won respect of all the Senate in Rome and gained
the Kingdom of Judea, which our Royal House has held from that day to
this? When did Herods win a kingdom by cringing in fear? Not thus are
kingdoms won, Brother! Old Queen Herodias grows madder every day with
dreams of the Hermit John’s head slain in the dungeons there. Sister
Drusilla, who has ever been jealous of me being younger and your
favorite, swears she will join her husband Felix, whether he is in Rome,
or among the barbarians. Know you not if the Romans win here, the secret
Zealots and Sicarii Sword Ruffians in the Fort there on the Dead Sea
will rise and cut our throats for loyalty to Rome; and if the Romans
lose here, they will tear us to pieces with bloody hands and feed us to
the dogs beneath the city walls?”
The man’s head sank forward despairingly.
“You should have been King in my place, little lioness! Rome’s luxuries
in youth have softened my Herod daring. I am no longer wild Arab of the
desert willing to wade waist deep in blood to power. I crave no more
kingship, but rest and peace.”
“Then—confess it not,” scouted the Princess.
“But I do confess it. I am weary of fighting for a kingdom to do as Rome
bids! If Rome fails, we are lost. If Rome wins, all Judea will be
ravaged from Galilee to the Dead Sea, and every city put up on the
auction block to the highest soldier bidder, slave or free. Know you our
royal revenues all come from the tribute taxes of these cities? Only
Felix, the freed slave, sister Drusilla’s husband, had cunning to
foresee. We of the royal line have been blinded by our own ambition and
mistook a shadow kingdom for the real. We are only weak shadows of Rome.
As waves Rome’s arm of command, so jumps our obedient shadow. Rome is
crumbling like a colossal image of clay. Only Felix laid him away gold
enough in strong iron chests to buy a villa down on Naples Bay, where I
had planned to send Sister Drusilla to her husband; and the Queen
Herodias on to her lord in banishment in Spain.”
“And what did you plan to do with me?” asked the Princess, with the eye
of a harrier hawk on a weakling bird.
“Trust Titus’ mercy! You have ever been favorite with him. He likes your
wild daring; but dare not too much! We have been loyal to Rome. . . .”
“Mercy?” the Princess Bernice laughed. “Is that the Great Herod’s voice
I hear in the last of the Herod line? Do you also plan to march with
shackles on hands and balls on feet behind the conqueror’s car under the
Triumphal Arch at Rome?”
“Sister, dearest Princess, my lioness,” answered King Agrippa, caressing
his sister’s hands. “Have you forgotten how a year ago we stood on the
Bridge of Fate that runs from the temple roof across the middle lower
city to Herod’s palace on the west, to plead with the high priests to
stem this revolt against Rome; and the whole populace of Jerusalem took
up stones to kill us? Only the height of the bridge saved our lives.
Have you forgotten the shameful names they shouted at you—Rahab, they
called you—a Herod Princess—because you had left your ancient spouse
up in Cilicia and came down to pay your vows in Jerusalem—you, my Queen
sister, the daughter of the high priests back to Aaron? Have you
forgotten the insults they hurled at me, for defending you—my favorite
Sister—though never Herod did more for the Jews than I have done? What
would you if we trust not Titus’ gratitude?”
“Gratitude,” the Princess harshly laughed. “Gratitude, the sour-milk
diet of weakling fools and coward hopes.” She drew back from her brother
and screened her face by throwing her purple cloak over her shoulder as
she spoke. “What would I do? I’d do what every high priest’s woman has
had to do since Miriam, Aaron’s sister, beat the timbrels of victory on
the Red Sea. I’d rule the man! I’d ride with the conqueror in his car
beneath Rome’s Arch of Triumph! I’d turn a shadow kingdom into a real
earth power ruled with iron grip though it were fleshed in woman. They
call us—weak.” She laughed again.
“I’d send Drusilla with her dove-cooing love to her slave husband Felix
on Naples Bay. I’d send the old drooling Queen Herodias to her doting
failure of a spouse in Spain to waste their souls away in vain regrets;
but I’d strike, and I’d strike now, straight at Titus’ heart for the
throne of Rome. . . .”
“Not that—not that way, my Queen, my Sister,” her brother drew back in
horror. “Know you what names the populace call you, my royal Sister?”
“A curse on these barking dogs! What care I for the curs of the gutter?
He who fights curs, finds himself snarling in their gutter. We Herods
have given Judea security for a hundred years. What have they given us?
They have snapped hands that fed them royal bread, free. Let the Romans
conquer and throw every Judean over the walls to the fires of Gehenna,
or sell the seditious slaves to Egypt for the price of dogs. Think you,
beloved Brother, that I have not sacrificed love for power? I left the
only man that ever I loved in my life but you—my King, to break from
the caravan to the Isles of Greece, and come to Titus, here. Yes, the
Greek slave—Onesimus, from whom you parted me in the Gardens of Daphne
long ago, now grown to man majestic as a gladiator! He offered me the
shadow kingdom of his Christ, and my weak heart might have yielded to
that love had I not seen the Emperor’s tent here when the mist rose; but
I would not drop the real kingdom of Rome within our grasp for all
shadow kingdoms of all the prophets since time began. What have the
prophets done for us, Brother? Show me a kingdom I can grasp; and I’ll
close my clutch on what I feel. I grasp not rainbows, my Agrippa!”
King Agrippa sank to his cot with his face in his hands.
“If you ride with the Emperor in his chariot under the Triumphal Arch,
know you what Rome will say?”
“And what do I care what Rome says? Can Rome say worse than these
Judeans have shrieked as we rode through the streets? What care I what
Roman rabble bawls if I rule Rome? With the army in Titus’ strong hands,
the Senate will eat from our hands, whipped curs. Where is Titus? Take
me to him, Brother! We can save the last of Herod’s line.”
King Agrippa rose irresolute. The Princess had stung him to action; but
one, who must be stung to action, must be kicked on by prods in action.
“That I cannot, Sister Bernice, though you were Queen of Heaven.” King
Agrippa began pacing the tent. “We have a remnant of the Roman garrison
secure in the three great Towers of Herod, whence the Zealots and
Sicarii Sword Ruffians have been unable to drive them out—they are our
old loyal garrison of a year ago; and they have ample water in the roof
cistern, to hold out till we go in. That’s why our engines have avoided
throwing rocks at the west Towers. With them are three of the Nazarenes
who refused to be driven to revolt. Our spies tell us these Nazarenes
have rescued all the sacred scrolls from the Ruffians now in the Temple
to the east, and carried them for safe-keeping to Herod’s Towers by the
secret Aqueduct that runs from beneath the Temple to Herod’s Palace on
the west. You would be safe there; but I—cannot—take you there. The
Overhead Bridge from the Temple to the Palace has been smashed by the
great rocks we have been throwing over the walls, and the Aqueduct from
the Altar to the Palace is filled with rotting dead and plunder—the
rebel bands drove the high priests under, and cut their throats in the
Aqueduct, and the Temple floor now swims in blood. . . .”
“And think you, Brother, my feet are so dainty they would spurn to wade
in the blood of these dogs or trample the rotting bodies of high priests
to gain our end? Have you forgotten how Herod the Great had strangled,
beneath the baths of Machærus, his wife’s brother, who was High Priest,
to gain his end; and how when his best loved wife taunted him with
murder and turned from him in hate, though he loved her to madness, he
slew her, too, and stopped at naught to make his throne secure? I am
such a Herod daughter! Shall we let slip what he paid such price to
gain?”
The King’s brows knitted deep. Though scarce past mid-life, he bent with
the impotence of fate too powerful for him to master.
“Princess, I cannot risk the General’s anger if we disobey his orders.
There is truce to-day. It is the Jewish Sabbath. The Emperor is for
mercy and letting famine force surrender. We have the city hemmed on
every side. They must surrender or starve. But the army will not hear of
another day’s delay! It will hurt our Emperor’s prestige! We shall
marshal all our strength this day to show the Jews inside, there cannot
escape one living soul from our circle of fire and sword. If they
surrender not to-night, neither old nor young, nor man nor woman, shall
escape the sword; and when the sword is dulled of slaughter, all others
will be sold as slaves. The soldiers are now down in the burning moat
stealing coins from the dead to buy slaves at the price of a dog, and
not a man in rank dare break the truce on pain of death! The General and
his young lieutenant, Trajan, are in the turrets of Antonia’s Tower next
to the Temple. Titus has not left off to lead for one hour from Passover
Week. Till victory perches on his eagle, he does not know that woman
exists; and if he did, he’d bid his soldiers knock her on the head!”
“Pah!” she laughed. “You know not woman’s power on man.”
“But this is no man—Titus is iron, my Sister—I occupy his tent alone!
Not one night for seven months has he slept in his bed; or known rest;
or taken off his armor. He is soldier now, and not lover dangling on a
woman’s whim. He fights hand to hand with Jews. Last night we had mined
from Antonia’s Tower under the Holy of Holies, and if the Jews do not
surrender this eventide, we break through. The orders are to slay and
slay. The Jews suspect. They must have heard our pickaxes below the
Temple breaking a hole in the wall of the foundation. Their soldiers
crowd all the upper galleries of the Temple to pour down boiling pitch
and set fire if we enter. Our spies tell us even now these swine Zealots
lie in stupor drunk with the holy wine mixed with Roman blood all over
the sacred Temple floor. One, son of Lazarus of Bethany, escaped from
the walls by rope last night, and told us the rotting dead pile the
streets, and the living pace pale shadows faint from famine; and when
the Zealots broke into the houses of the prisoned women to search for
food one Jewess of Arabian Petra fed these ravening beasts her own child
boiled for flesh; and then laughed and told them, and stabbed herself to
death raving vengeance.”
Sister and brother paused and gazed desperately in each other’s eyes.
“There is no hope but to trust the Roman Emperor’s mercy,” repeated King
Agrippa.
“Rome’s mercy!” Princess Bernice laughed, and her voice was hard as
sword striking metal. “Sheep for hungry wolves! Would Herod the Great
have hesitated and whined ‘mercy, mercy,’ to wolves, as we pause now,
Brother of mine?”
“Herod the Great dealt not with Titus. He dealt with a cringing Senate.
This Titus is a man.”
“Then, if he is man, I—am—woman. Know you what that means? Take me to
Titus, though we wade in blood to our waists! Be not less than man,
yourself. Shall my power be less because he is man? Do you remember your
mad jealousy when we were younger? Do you think I’ll fail with him
because he is man? I have had two weak kings for husbands! Now I aim for
an Emperor.”
“Bernice—are you mad? Do you know the price you’ll have to pay?”
“Price? Fool!” she scouted. “Do I know the price I’ve paid to man since
I was a little child? This time, I’ll get paid for all I barter if I
have to cut his throat while he sleeps—”
“Woman—,” he threw his hand across her lips. “You risk both our lives
with your mad talk.”
She drew his hand from her lips and kissed it as she drew back.
“Who go in as spies, Brother?” she pressed.
“Who risks his life?”
“I’ll risk my life—if you will do as much,” she urged.
“You would not have the royal line of the Herods creep into their
kingdom spies?” he wavered; and in his wavering, she saw the triumph of
her old power and laughed.
“I would have the royal Herod line creep through the fires of Hades to
grasp a real kingdom instead of this shadow of Rome’s leavings,” she
answered. “Go to the Tower of Antonia and get Titus’ permission! Tell
him you have found a woman of the high priest caste who will go in as
spy. Tell him she will take refuge in Mariamne’s Palace of the Herod
Towers—to give her pass to the remnant of the Roman Garrison there!
Tell him she will throw over the walls each day from the dovecots of the
Queen’s Tower news of all that passes inside the walls.” She clapped her
hands. The old Idumean came stiffly in.
“Julius, follow King Agrippa up to Antonia’s Tower. Take your station
where the Roman sappers have mined the wall to the Temple. Bide there
till I send you word by page lad! Sharp your short sword as you wait and
get helmet that will meet your breastplate at the neck! Be sure to
protect your neck—you’ve only one! When the lad comes ask no question!
Leap through into the Temple and lift the pavement of the floor before
the Altar into the Aqueduct. Drop the lad through below! Then escape for
your life back through the hole in the wall! If you succeed, you shall
have free farm and pension all your life. If you fail, your tongue shall
be torn out!”
She smiled joyously as the old Idumean went out; and then she bade King
Agrippa get her the garments of his page boy.
Toward the tenth hour of the stone dial in front of the Imperial tent, a
page lad walked out following King Agrippa. He wore a cloak and his
turban cap came down over his ears to his very eyes.
All the terraced garden below the outer walls had been cut to the roots.
Palm and cactus and hedge and olive trees had gone to build the huge
hurdles on which the idle battering rams stood suspended in mid-air.
Just once the page paused and swayed as he followed the king going up to
Antonia Tower. ’Twas where the Romans had torn down the first and second
walls of the Holy City. On the angle of a projecting bastion on the
inner third wall, where those on the parapet above could see, swung the
rotting skeletons of five hundred Jews crucified hanging by their spiked
hands. Their loose garments blew to the wind and the ravens still
circled above the featureless blackening skulls. Where the battering
rams rested motionless above the parapets, bags filled with sand and
dripping inky pitch showed how the besieged had fought back by firing
the hurdles and engines of war. Rumor ran through the Roman camp how an
old blind follower of Herod the Great, let down by ropes to work he
could not see, had fired and burned the first hurdles. But for the
creaking of the ravens perched on the turrets of the towers and fighting
over the black skulls, the silence was of an awfulness that was stabbed
by every footfall. Once or twice the page saw gaunt figures on the wall
top appear like phantoms and toss naked dead over to the burning moats
below; and down in the burning moats could be seen ghoulish figures of
the Roman Army searching the dead for coin to buy slaves in victory. A
quick catch of breath broke from the page. King Agrippa looked sharply
back but did not pause. Javelins, darts, broken arrows, bent spears,
crumpled shields littered the dust where gardens had once terraced the
hills. The ground was hot beneath the page’s sandals as though seethed
in flame. By the Tower of Antonio in front of the Temple, trickles of
red clotted blood black with flies ran out under the demolished walls.
[Illustration: Map of Jerusalem]
Then, they had vaulted the clutter of crumbled stones in the lowest
story of Antonia’s Tower where its east wall joined the Temple. Where
the broken wall was plugged by plank and bag, a cohort of Romans stood
guard silent as stone. The King raised his right hand. The old Idumean
came forward so swathed in sheet of mail and leggings of chain greaves
he could scarce be recognized but for the stiffness of his aged legs. In
his right hand, he carried a long sword, in his left the short circular
dirk such as the Sicarii Sword Ruffians inside bore. Not a word was
uttered. The old soldier, disguised as Zealot, moved forward and pulled
some bagging from the hole in the wall. Head first, then right leg, he
stepped through the hole. With frantic look of appeal as a dumb brute
going to its doom might cast in affectionate farewell to a loved master,
the page glanced back at the pale face of King Agrippa. Then, he
followed the disguised soldier through the hole in the wall and the
Romans stuffed the bagging and plank back in place.
They were inside the sanctuary of the Holy Place.
The silence was of a tomb. Gone was the golden Altar. Gone were golden
cherubim and seraphim above the Altar of which the Psalmist sang. Gone
were the golden candlesticks in mystic sevens. Gone were the great
golden basins and the brass brazier in which the priests had burned
sacrifices for the people’s sins from the days of Solomon. Gone were the
cunningly wrought tapestries of Damascus and Babylon in woven gold and
blue and purple and scarlet, which veiled the Holy of Holies in mystic
purity from profane gaze. Ax and sword had hacked the sheathing of gold
and silver from the pillars to each side supporting the cloisters and
galleries. And where were the mystic treasure boxes between pillars, in
which the Jews hoarded the offerings of the faithful through the fateful
centuries? The Babylonians had rifled these treasures long centuries
ago; but they had left the treasure chests. So had Antiochus of the
North; but even he could not destroy these great iron boxes, though he
had offered swine upon that vanished altar; and when Herod the Great had
restored the Temple, these treasure chests had been left filled and
untouched for a hundred years. Again the page swayed as faint; for
sprawled on the pavement floor lay drunken Sicarii Ruffians in the dead
sleep of swinish debauch, with sword in one hand, the golden flagons and
cups of the altar service in the other, and they slept on a floor
thickening with human blood. A slight tremor ran through the Temple, as
of an earthquake from the Dead Sea; or was it that the senses of the
page swam at what he saw? The Temple pavement seemed to heave and sink.
The great Golden Gate to the east—ninety feet it was in height—swung
open as of unseen hands, flooding the horror with a burst of sunlight.
The page covered his face with his hand. Was this the crumbling kingdom
of reality for which one grasped, rejecting that other shadow kingdom
not made with hands, but made of rest and peace and light and love and
eternity?
Julius, the old Idumean, with one eye gleaming through his vizor on the
swinish forms asleep, and his long sword in his right hand, was prying
with the dirk in his left to hoist the stone that gave secret drop to
the dry Aqueduct below. The stone lifted as on hinges. The old Idumean
laid down his right-hand long sword, grasped the page by the neck,
signaled him to catch the edge of the black hole for the drop and was
still holding the trapdoor up, when either the tremor of the earthquake,
or the flood of sunburst from the Golden Gate, disturbed the sleepers.
“Down, you tricky she-vixen of hell,” the Idumean hissed, “and hang by
your hands, which I’ve trapped, till Rome rots.”
But Bernice, the Princess, had thrust up one arm in a sudden revulsion
at the drop in the under dark and caught the descending trap door with
the palm while she hung suspended by her right hand from the edge. The
noise had roused the sleepers. They were on him with a howl of tigerish
fiends. She saw him snatch at his long sword, miss it, leap back, strike
out with his short dirk sword. The iron-shod boot slipped on the bloody
floor. He fell with a crash of armor on stone. They sprang on his
outstretched arms, his mail-clad legs, his metal breastplate, hacking at
the chain thighs with their swords. Her last glimpse of the old Idumean
was of him shoving his chin down to meet the breastplate and save his
neck from their spears. Then a great broadsword crashed down. His metal
head piece went bounding over the floor with a gush of livid blood. Her
hand hold gave from the edge of the trap door. The stone slipped back to
its place in the floor, and she dropped to bottom in the dark of the
Aqueduct.
It was black as night. She paused to think which way was west. Which way
lay the Herod Palace? Had she turned as she swung on the edge of the
trapdoor—and dropped? Then back in her dim memories of all the glories
of the Herod line—was it memory or a throwback of the mad daring blood
in her own daring veins?—came half consciousness of how Herod the Great
in like case let down by baskets into robber caves of Galilee, black as
the night of this Aqueduct, had plunged on fearless in the dark, and
driven the cave robber bands over the precipice to a man. She boldly
advanced through the dark. By the feel of her feet, the stone footing
beneath was descending. That, she knew must be wrong; for the dry
Aqueduct was used to flush water from the Altar out east from the pools
at the Palace west. She turned. The Aqueduct ascended. That must be
right; for waters do not flow up; and it was the Palace pools that
flushed the Aqueduct to drain the Temple, and she fled through the dark
like a night demon. Was this the price she must pay for a kingdom of
which not one stone would be left upon another by sunrise if the Jews
did not surrender that very day to Rome? Fool! Judea was lost. It was at
Rome she aimed.
Her foot tripped. ’Twas but the plundered gold of the Temple chests, she
knew by the rattle of coin on stone; and she sped on through the dark.
Then an odor struck her in the face that is like no other odor on earth.
It was the odor of those long dead in damp. She swayed faint against the
circular arch of the Aqueduct and like a flash in the night came memory
of the tales of long ago—these were the high priests that Herodias’
lord had spurred to crucify the Christus of the Nazarenes. Her breath
came in gasps. Was she to perish here haunted forever by that Christian
cross, which the line of Herods had risked all to destroy in order to
perpetuate a crumbling kingdom? Her sandal touched a soft and naked
thing. She leaped over the tangled mass of unseen putrid flesh and ran
till her forward right hand touched bronze gate beneath the Towers of
Herod’s Palace.
Three raps she gave, and then four, in the mystic number of the Hebrew
seven. It was the Roman pass to deceive the Jews in their own mystic
number. No answering sound came back.
She rapped again, three—then four—louder and yet louder and could hear
her own muffled heart beats in the dark.
Had the old Idumean, whom she had tricked, perished trapping her in
revenge? Her heart beat till she thought her temples would burst; and
she saw as in colored fires the bloody head of the Hermit John, who had
taunted Herodias to madness; the ghostly wraith of Mariamne, Herod’s
murdered wife; the pale face of the Nazarene, James, whom her own Herod
husband had ordered stoned to death—then circles of fire went whirling
before her eyes and in the circles a fiery cross with the crucified
figure of that Son of Man—she screamed and beat on the bronze door with
her hands.
It seemed a century before seven faint taps sounded back from the other
side of the door.
She rapped again frantically, beating the door with her clenched fist
and screaming “’Tis I—Princess Bernice—open—open—open the doors! For
the love of God, open the doors.”
Then she sank to her knees, with the fiery circles whirling in her dying
consciousness, and in the midst of the circles ever the dangling figures
of crucified men on a wall. The bronze door creaked, and rasped, and
swung open. A Roman soldier, wan with hunger, stood in the dim light. He
fell back as if from a ghost and would have clashed the bronze door
shut; but she thrust the pass from Titus in his amazed hand and fainted
across the threshold at his feet.
Must a woman ever pass through the portals of hell to gain her end?
She risked her mother’s life in gaining birth. She risked her own in
giving birth; and was this the end? Why was woman accursed? Was there no
redemptive power in all the long chain of circumstances to free her from
the power of that ancient curse for grasping at the Tree of Life? What
was life? ’Twas life she had snatched at and lo! a flaming sword of
fire—circles of fire and in the center ever the cross of a crucified
love. Then, in her delirium, Onesimus, her lover, was bending over her
in the Garden of Ardath, the Paradise of Flowers; and every flower was a
child’s soul; and through her veins ran a flame that did not burn but
was of the very essence of light; and at her feet lay no Dead Sea of
tears but ran with the laughing glad voice of many waters Rivers of
Life—and their vesture was of the light of the very sun. They did not
need to speak. They knew without words.
The flame was no longer fiery sword—it was golden light; and her lover
was trying to tell her that light was love, golden as the dawn over the
swimming mountains of Moab—over which they two seemed mounting in
chariots of fire—when an unseen hand, white as fuller’s earth, snatched
him from her—and she was falling—falling—falling—sinking with the
dead weight of her humanity straight to that Dead Sea of tears—the
laughter now was not the glad voice of many waters—it was the shrieking
mockery of the Roman world. She was marching with ball on feet and gyves
on wrists under the Triumphal Arch of Rome; and all Rome was pointing
fingers of scorn at the naked captive daughter of the Herod kings; and
the rabble dogs were snapping at the captive lines. She awakened with a
piercing scream.
Was she living or dead? She was past caring. Let Fate do its worst. She
looked up. Slowly she recognized one of the Palace chambers of
Mariamne’s Tower; but whether the chambers were real or dream, she did
not know. But seven months before, she and King Agrippa had fled from
the threats of the populace beneath the Overhead Bridge to this very
Tower. She had played in it as child, and wantoned in it as girl, and
plotted in it as woman. She had drunk wine of life in that very Tower;
and were these the lees of the wine, that at last would sting as a
serpent? She sat up on her couch. Beside her stood the pale Roman
soldier of the garrison and an aged Jewess. A mid-life man stood in the
chamber door. An aged and venerable figure looked over her shoulder. One
who seemed physician was pressing a brew to her lips.
“Who are these people?” she whispered faintly.
“Fear not, daughter,” gently answered the aged woman. “We are Nazarenes,
followers of the Christ. It is no poison that Luke, the physician, would
give you! He, too, is a follower of the Nazarene, though he is Greek. I
am the mother of Mark, who has ever dwelt in Jerusalem. The aged apostle
is Matthew, who used to gather taxes for the Romans.”
Then the instinct of fear, that haunted all the Herod blood and drove
that blood from crime to crime, came over her awakening consciousness in
a flood of memory; for had she not as girl stood on that Bridge between
Temple and Palace when her own Herod kin had urged the Jewish mob to
drag James, the crucified Christ’s kinsman, out to death by stone and
spear? How she had laughed at the rabble then, and clapped her hands to
see them hound the Nazarene preacher out from the Temple to his doom!
And now that rabble, if they knew she was here, would tear her to pieces
with bloody hands and throw her to the pavements for the dogs to lick
her blood. And then the instinct of craft, that ran in her Herod blood,
gave voice in question.
“Why do you call me daughter?” she whispered back.
And then she felt her hair which had fallen about her neck as she fled
through the Aqueduct.
“Because Matthew, here, recognized you as King Agrippa’s sister. What
word of the Roman Army? Will they win the last wall to-day? When we let
down the baskets for food last night, the Zealots threw pitch bags and
burned the ropes. We dare no longer venture out on the Palace parapet.
They shoot fire arrows. And not one of us will leave the others. Whether
we live, or whether we die, it is nothing, daughter! The Zealots may
slay the body. They cannot slay the soul. But what tempted you to come
through the Aqueduct, child? Is to-day the end?”
For answer, the silver trumpets blew from turret and tower, from hill
and plain, from cavern and grotto. The group rushed from the chamber for
the turret window.
“Bear my cot to the window,” she commanded, the old imperiousness of
Princess and daughter of high priests surging back in her reviving
consciousness.
Down sheer seventy feet from the turret window to the plain where the
Roman Legions had mustered, they gazed—first Titus, the Emperor’s son,
on a black stallion; then Trajan, his young officer, on a white horse;
then her brother, King Agrippa, on a low Arab fawn-colored steed, all in
trappings of brass with silver shields aslant the horses’ shoulders;
then the standard bearers with the Roman eagle in gold; then the
pikemen, clad in mail, with their long lances like fields of wheat; then
the horsemen in darker mail with lances aslant like knives moving in
rank; then the great engines of war that moved on wheels like erect
walls; then the Macedonian mercenaries on foot, six and seven rank deep
they wheeled and marched and countermarched; while one Josephus rode on
a white charger up to the walls shouting out: “Why would they die and
not surrender to the clemency of Rome?”
The cowed populace answered never a word, but the Zealots and swordsmen
swarmed to the broad tops of the walls with hoots of derision. Stones
rained down on the emissary for peace. They hissed his words with
shameless insults, and bade the Romans not draw back in cowardice
because this was Jewish Sabbath, but to come on and dare to try the
third strong wall. When the peace emissary would have shouted again,
those on the wall threw a naked dead body in his face.
The wild warrior blood of her Herod Arab ancestors surged through
Bernice’s veins. She knew then the urge that had driven her through the
Aqueduct. She could have leaped from the walls to join the Romans down
there fighting in carnival of blood had she been man. Why had she been
born woman—the tool—instead of man, the hand that wielded the tool?
She knew she was a rebel against Fate; but had not Herod the Great been
rebel, too, till he mastered Fate and made himself King? She tore her
purple girdle from her waist and waved it at the conquerors from the
turret window.
The Roman trumpets faded in fainter echo. The marchers and counter
marchers encircled the city in a ring of swords. Bernice from the Tower
saw that the hired Macedonian mercenaries had been thrust forward first.
She knew what that meant—these were the swordsmen of the world paid in
plunder—there would be no mercy. Those not slain would be sold as
slaves, the men for the mines, the women—for what? Was this the Kingdom
for which she grasped? A silence fell for a moment on the terrific
confused clamor within the city. A melancholy wail of woe came up from
the central valley between Temple and Palace, and some madman’s maniacal
scream resounded from the parapets to the Tower—“Woe—woe—woe is
Jerusalem! How is that great Babylon drunk with the blood of the
prophets fallen! Jerusalem shall fall this day! There shall not be left
one stone upon another.”
“Were not those the very words of our Lord, when you admired the beauty
of the Temple?” asked Mark. “Peter bade me to put that in his Gospel of
our Lord’s life.”
“So every disciple has related to me, and so I have written in His Life,
for the Greek churches of Asia,” answered the physician, Luke.
“And we thought he had come to set up earthly kingdom in this Temple,”
said the venerable Matthew. “And now we know it is a Kingdom not made
with hands for which all Time has prepared, and this earthly kingdom
shall vanish quite away for a New Heaven, and a New Earth. This is the
passing of the Old. These are the birth pangs to the New. Let us read
what the scrolls of the prophets have said.”
And the three Apostles withdrew to a circular brass table in the middle
of the Tower. On the brass table were carved the signs of the zodiac and
the time of day pointed by an arrow as the outer sun swung round; but
the Princess Bernice had no thought for what the scrolls of the prophets
might say. An ancient urge was in her blood, old as those stars from
which the astrologers had cast the horoscope of fate in the signs of the
Zodiac. Again Roman power with its cohorts in silver and its legions
with spears like fields of waving grain seemed a realer realm than a
shadow kingdom not made with hands adown long future ages. How could she
serve the Emperor to bind his gratitude to give her foothold on the
ladder up to this earthly Imperial Throne? She had said she would wade
through the blood of the living or trample the putrid dead; and she had
done both.
A lull fell like the silence between the crash of two monster ocean
billows. It was almost eventide, the end of the Jewish Sabbath, and the
mountains were folding them in purple mantles like royal kings at rest,
when the voices of the others in the room behind caught her ear. Luke,
the Greek doctor, was speaking and pointing to the signs of the zodiac.
“You thought He spoke of time when He spoke of eternity. Here is the
zodiac of Egypt and Chaldea. Here is their prophecy, when the star
brought the Persian magi to the Bethlehem manger.”
Bethlehem? She hated the very name of Bethlehem. Had not her Aunt
Herodias often told her the evil destiny of the Herods dated from the
massacre of infants there? Then she remembered that the door from the
hideous horrors of the Aqueduct had only opened when she called out in
the name of the Love of God. What was this new thing coming in the war
of worlds for power? But the pageantry of life blotted the answer to
that question, and she heard as in an unreal dream the reading of the
ancient scrolls.
“Here,” the doctor Luke was pointing to the zodiac, “here is the
Scorpion, that Lucifer who fell from heaven from vaunting pride and set
out to lead man astray to fill his kingdom. Here is Taurus the Bull,
worshiped by Egypt and Chaldea which Abraham fled. Here are the Sun
worshipers, when Israel burnt her sons upon the walls. Here is the
Virgin, Mother of a Child in flesh to reveal God in form to man. Here is
Pisces the Fisher, and when our Christians fled from Nero’s sword in
Rome they used the Fisher sign to know one another. Christ said, ‘I make
you fishers of men,’ and we knew not what he meant. The fall of
Jerusalem is the fulfilment of our age. After our age, when the sword
shall give place to sunburst comes the Age of Air and water and freedom
with much going to and fro beyond the Isles of the Sea to nations not
yet born.”
“Read from our own prophets and not from the astrologers of Chaldea and
Egypt,” requested the aged Matthew. “Why have these evils fallen on the
City of Zion?”
Mark, the youngest of the three, took up a cylinder of brass. From it he
drew a parchment scroll written in Hebrew and rolled round a rod. “Here,
Luke, you are a doctor of learning. You read the Hebrew. We Hebrews have
not spoken our tongue since captive days in Babylon.”
Luke took the scroll and went to the window to see the clearer in the
dimming light.
“Thus saith Jeremy,” he said, slowly translating in a patois of Aramaic
and tradesman Greek. “Behold—our—reproach—our inheritance is turned
to strangers—our house to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless. . . .
Servants have ruled over us. . . . There is none that doth deliver out
of their hand. . . . We get our bread by the peril of our lives because
of the sword . . . our skin is black because of the famine . . . they
ravish the women of Zion and the maids in the cities . . . princes are
hanged by their hands . . . the Mountain of Zion is desolate. . . .”
“That of this Age,” broke in Matthew. “We shall see the fulfilment of
that to-night; but what of the ages when the Time of the Sword has
passed? Read Ezekiel, Brother Luke—what says he of the nations of the
North beyond the Isles of the Sea? What says he of the Age of Freedom?
What says he of the Age of the Air when the Sword has given place to
Sunburst? What meant our Lord when He said greater miracles than He
worked should the world see before the end of Time? What signs will
foreshadow a New Heaven and a New Earth?”
Luke turned the spool of the scroll and ran his finger from right to
left— “Is this the Age of Air?” he asked, then he read:
“A whirlwind came out of the North, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding
itself, and a brightness . . . and out of the midst of the fire the
color of amber . . . and this was the likeness . . . a man . . . every
one had four wings . . . their feet were straight and sparkled like
burnished brass . . . the hands of men were under the wings on the four
sides . . . they had faces and wings . . . the wings were joined one to
another and turned not when they traveled . . . they went straight
forward with unmoving wings . . . the signs of the nation a lion, an ox,
and an eagle . . . two wings they had joined each to other on each side
. . . straight forward they went whither the spirit wished to go . . .
with burning coals of fires and lamps in front . . . up and down in the
air . . . up and down in the air . . . and their fire went forth as
lightning . . . but upon the earth they used wheels . . . there were
whirling rings in front . . . dreadful to see . . . but when the wings
were lifted the wheels were lifted . . . and in the firmament their
likeness was a terrible crystal . . . and the noise of the wings was the
rush of many waters . . . when they stood, they let down their
wings. . . .”
“What means that?” demanded Mark.
But the bent figure of the Apostle’s mother had risen with outstretched
hands and in her eye was the light of ancient prophetess. It was as if
she saw a Light with eyes of spirit, which eyes of flesh could not
see—adown long, long Ages mid races of beings not yet guessed, nor born
in thought. Her whole figure seemed aflame in vesture of unearthly
shining Light. Mystic was she, prophetess, seeress, with eyes boring
into the Far Future like stars piercing midnight dark. It was as if a
flash of lightning suddenly tore through the impenetrable veil of Life
concealed; as if an invisible Torch Bearer threw a flashlight on the Far
Future. “When the Age of the Sword shall pass for the Sunburst of the
Prince of Peace, there shall come dominion over the princes of the
powers of the air,” she slowly uttered, as one in trance of vision.
“Greater things than these shall ye do, and the Old Things are passing
away for the New; and Jerusalem must needs be destroyed to give
place. . . .”
A terrific crash drowned the words. The siege of the last wall had
begun.
The Palace rocked and vibrated with blows of the battering rams. Huge
stone blocks from the engines of war smashed down into the Eternal City
between Palace and Temple; and a fearful cry of throngs crushed as they
ran, rent the air. A great light flooded the darkening room of the Herod
Tower.
All dashed to the turret window. A flame leaped with the roar of livid
sea to very mid-heaven of the vaulted blue. The Temple was on fire. The
Romans were inside the last wall. Fiery swords, bucklers, battle axes,
javelins, arrows, flaming balls of naptha went tossing in mid-air as the
Zealots on the roof plunged in the flames, or flung themselves to death
in the burning moats from the walls. Jerusalem rained fire from the
defenders on the parapet. The roar of the seething torrents drove all
the city into the street and over the prostrate bodies rode the horsemen
slashing with spear and sword, sparing neither women nor children,
inflamed by the defiant insults to the proffered peace and insane with
the demon lust for blood and plunder, held back these weary months. The
Palace rocked again. Bernice leaned far out from the turret window. Just
as the afterglow of the mystic sunset colored the heights of the Holy
City, a mirage of chariots and troops struck the flaming clouds in
shadow—the destruction of a shadow kingdom of sword and power. Armies,
principalities and powers—seemed to be fighting in rolling billows of
flame. The Princess hid her face in her hands on the window casement.
Jerusalem had fallen.
It was as if all the evils of all past ages in all past cycles of time
crashed down in one vibrant shock that shook the world; as if the iron
bands of law and order and empire forged in the furnaces of that Ancient
of Days—had burst asunder; as though a great Tidal Wave from Eternity
had submerged another Atlantis and thrown up in the wreckage on the
Shores of Timeless Eternity another race, another age, another order.
The terrible cry, that ascended to Heaven, was the cry of a Dying World.
The Kingdom of the Herod line for which she had risked her life and
sacrificed her love was crumbling to dust and ashes under her eyes.
The Old had passed away for the New; and Fate had rejected her pawn.
Came the iron-shod trample of soldiers running up the stone stairs of
the Herod Tower, and King Agrippa broke into the room followed by Titus,
the emperor’s son, and Trajan, the youthful lieutenant, all faces
blackened with the smoke of battle.
“You are safe here, my Sister,” cried the last ruler of the Herod line.
“The fire cannot touch these Towers. All the city but these Herod Towers
will be laid flat as plain by morning.”
“And where,” demanded Titus, “is the Princess page, who risked her life
running through the Aqueduct this morning to do Rome service?” And Titus
was not such a figure as her dreams of power had painted. He was a
plain, short, thickset soldier, with keener eye for spear than woman’s
guiles.
Then she stood erect and proud as Herod the Great had stood before the
Roman Senate many long years ago. The daughter of high priest and King,
she would meet Fate face to face.
“Small chance I had to do Rome service, my Lord,” she said. “Your brave
legions captured the prize before I could add my woman help.”
“But when my soldiers guessed that the woman who had broken through the
ranks in the morning to enter my tent was the page boy first to enter
the hole in the wall to the Temple court, they swore they would take the
city to-night, or perish to a man. Think you my Romans would be less men
than a weak little Princess?” That word “weak” with its commiseration of
male strength for child woman smote her hopes in the face like an iron
gauntlet. She had played an ancient game with an ancient pawn—and lost,
as Eve lost in an ancient garden; and she knew now what brought defeat
to woman; and she knew now if she had answered the true urge of her
heart, how she could have turned defeat to victory and wielded greater
power with unseen hands than all Rome’s strength. Man could slay, but
only woman could give life.
“You were the wine to my men’s flagging courage, my little Princess,” he
said. “What reward do you claim?”
“My Lord,” she said, hiding her defeat in his chivalry, “when the
chariots enter the Triumphal Arch at Rome, the last of the Herod line
would not pace behind in captive chains. Let them perish rather. They
would ride with the conqueror.”
The conqueror did not answer at once. He was turning over that request
in his shrewd soldier mind. He smiled slowly as a man might smile at a
child playing with a sharp sword which he had snatched from its hand.
“And it was for that you risked your life, child?” He laughed; and then
his face saddened. He did not see the hidden appeal of the dark eyes
gazing into his, though the young Trajan laughed brusquely and King
Agrippa turned his reddening face away. “It is not mine to grant your
request. Rome glories not in the blood of any race. My father did not
covet the Imperial throne; nor do I. I covet only peace and rest. We
have chosen seven hundred of the fairest Jews to grace the triumph; and
they shall not walk in chains. They fought too well. They shall all ride
in the chariots of the pageants; but my father, the Emperor, and I shall
walk humbly on foot divested of all war harness and make thank offering
to the gods of peace rather than victory. Such humble rôle would suit
not you, my little Princess; but Rome never forgets even a will to
service. I’ll appoint your brother and sister Drusilla a royal villa
with dower by the sea at Naples; and there if the gods favor me, and my
young officers do not carry you off, I shall see you sometimes,
Princess.”
He strode quickly away.
The Princess and her brother Agrippa stood by the turret window.
Was it for this she had risked her life? She had reached Titus and
grasped the prize, and found it turn in her hands to Apples of Sodom and
the salt tears of the Dead Sea. She had thrown love to the discard and
was being told to play the wanton with underlings, whom her Herod pride
scorned. She, the daughter of high priests, back to Aaron, was to eat
the crumbs from Rome’s table, like the lapdogs, pets to be fondled,
abused, discarded—and then the grave! And for this, she had rejected
the children of love in the garden called Paradise; the wine of life
drawn from a lover’s lips; the laughing glad voice of many waters from
the River of Life; the golden light that was love—her spirit fell as it
had fallen in her delirious sleep; and she broke in a storm of weeping
in the arms of her weak brother, no longer King.
Less than ten years saw Titus ascend that Imperial throne for which he
cared nought; but the very year he ascended the throne came another
flood of flame in fiery river down Vesuvius mountain burying the fair
villas of Naples Bay, and beneath that flood of death, unknown and
unfound, perished the last of the Herod line.
CHAPTER IV
NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES
_The Dancing Girls from the Temples of Daphne_
Draw the upper horizontal line of a square and the lower vertical right
hand line! The two sides of this square represented the Great Roman Road
between East and West in the days following the Prophet, whom the Greeks
called “Christus—the Anointed” and the Hebrews called “Jesus or
Joshua—Salvation of God.”
All roads led to Rome. Along this highway like beads on a string were
the cities of the Ancient World—Jerusalem, the Holy City, at the foot
of the right hand side; Damascus, the oldest city of man, halfway up;
Antioch, at the angle turning westward, the playground and halfway
house, where merchant princes and conquering emperors paused in their
far journeyings from Asia to Europe to take their pleasure and spend
their fortunes, whether of plunder or traffic; then along the horizontal
line leading from desert to sea, Iconium and Philadelphia and Sardis;
then on the sea—Ephesus, whence one could sail to Athens or Rome, to
culture or power.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ROMAN ROAD]
When the summer sea lay in painted crystal, calm as glass, one could
come down from any of these cities, to fair harbors and take passage
forward on the great grain ships of Egypt or on little sailing vessels;
but when the equinoctial storms came in September, or when war filled
the great grain ships with troops, travelers were forced to follow the
caravan route, and the khans of all the cities were thronged with men of
every color and race under the sun. The poor camped in goatskin tents
outside the walls. They had nothing to lose from plunder. The rich
crowded the city plazas and inns and public khans in the throngs of a
great annual fair; and the merchants reaped their harvest in barter of
little silver images and amulets to protect from travelers’ perils, and
in the sports of theater and hippodrome, where the latest plays from
Athens and Rome were given; or lecturers from the Far East disputed
their mystic philosophies with the keen wits of Athens and the cynics of
Rome; or gladiators fought; or captives in war were thrown to the wild
beasts with a chance for life and freedom if they could vanquish tooth
and claw with naked hands.
We sometimes bewail our modern civilization. Go read of the nightly
entertainments in these cities of the Great Roman Road!
* * * * *
It was the evening of September 24, in Iconium. Lystra and Derbe lay
only a few hours south, and there, by the curious trick Fate has of
interweaving lives, was the little Phyrygian lad, Onesimus, with his
father’s Damascus caravans, beating southward for Damascus where he was
first captured by the robber bands of Galilee and began his life of
slavery, which took him first to Cæsarea, then to Rome, then seven years
later, back over this very road where he rescued victims from crime as
he had been rescued by Paul in Rome.
The city was thronged. Caravans returning from Ephesus had money to
spend. Travelers from the Asian Desert going on to Ephesus wandered
dazed amid the booths and shops, famed for their Tyrian purple damasks
and gold-thread curtains and rugs of goat hair silky as finest fur. The
plaza was a living mass of humanity clothed in brightest colors milling
in endless circlings round the musicians under the central trees, who
were paid by the city to give free entertainment to all visitors. The
balconies of houses overhanging the city square began to open shutters;
and dark eyes were seen above answering lovers’ signals below; but on
the sill of one deep casement sat a girl alone. A rabble had gathered
round a speaker in the city square. The speaker was short of stature,
with thighs that had been lamed in war or accident, but he was clad in
the black silk cloak of a man of distinction, and though his receding
hair showed premature care, his forehead reflected the white light of an
æsthetic; and as he declaimed, his eyes lighted up with a strange fire
of faith. Near the speaker lounged a richly dressed, stout, prosperous
Greek of the merchant class. He was not listening. He was watching with
amused cynicism the changing concentrated expression of the girl’s
intent face in the balcony above. The man twisted at the great emerald
signet ring on his little finger. He clanked the sword dangling in its
jeweled scabbard against the heel of his red morocco high boots. He
stuck his thumbs in the gold sash belting his sky-blue silk jacket. Then
he stroked his oiled curls projecting from the gold-and-blue turban cap.
The girl’s eyes never once glanced his way. They were riveted as on a
life and death messenger towards the little deformed orator round whom
larger crowds were now pressing.
The stout, middle-aged Greek dandy flushed angrily and stepped sharply
up to the house door below the balcony. He lifted the brass knocker and
rapped loudly. The knocker was a great Roman eagle. The door was opened
by a middle-aged woman, clad in rich purple silk, and he was led to an
inner court open to the sky in the middle of the house. A fountain
played in the center of the court, and over the railing of the stone
stairs leading to the chambers off the upper balcony clung vines and
blooming flowers scenting the night air.
“How now, my son, Thamyris?” smiled the middle-aged woman, showing teeth
white as pearls between painted lips, and shaking the black jeweled
pendants in her ears so they seemed part of the curls framing her ivory
face.
“Not son—yet,” answered the man irritably, “unless your daughter Thecla
has eyes for her lover rather than that Jewish babbler ranting in the
square there.”
“A pest on these wandering synagogue ranters, who upset our daughters’
beliefs in the old gods.” The woman’s smile was hard as marble. “She has
not moved from that window for three nights since the fellow strayed
into Iconium and began speaking in the square! I can do nothing with
her. I like not her silence, Thamyris! I would she stormed; but she sits
silent as stone—listening, listening to that babbler! Who is he? A girl
never knows herself till a man teaches her what love is. Can’t you get
rid of him?” And the hard laugh of the girl’s mother had a sinister
knowledge that was not of youth, as she shot a glance at the middle-aged
man, which he read without words. “I want my daughter married. She is
eighteen summers this night. She will marry as I bid her, or go to the
temple gods and take her fate. I will have no daughter of eighteen
summers betraying my years.”
The man laughed; but he laughed with angry red flush. He flung himself
down on the bench. “And yet, my Mother, eighteen summers wed to fifty
make not for peace to the man unless the maid come willingly. You
ask—who is he? I know not, except that he has changed his name from
Saul to Paul, follows the new sect of that Christus crucified in
Jerusalem and boasts he is a Roman citizen, else we could have him
crucified, too, for creating disorder by blaspheming against Greek gods.
All I know is—he is a fool. When he came here first and worked miracles
of healing, the people would have offered sacrifices to him as to a
god—he could have grown rich from the gifts of one caravan. I would
have pushed him, myself, for the profit in it, if he hadn’t played the
fool and backed away from the rabble’s worship and gifts; but when the
people were ready to crown him with garlands and make offerings of
beasts and jewels and gold, he had to cry out he was only a man and stop
them; and now the rabble are ready to stone him as a pious fraud. I
could leave him to the rabble but I fear the damage is done—he has
chilled Thecla’s love for me; and I’ll have no unwilling bride.”
“Can’t you get rid of him?” insistently repeated the mother.
“I’ll try. I can lodge a complaint and have him imprisoned for causing
disorder; but he is Roman citizen—more than that, I dare not do—”
“More than that I will do,” added the mother harshly. “Unless she gives
you your word this night, I turn her from my door into the streets.
There you can seize her and carry her to your own house, Thamyris; or
the city magistrate will seize her for wandering the streets without the
badge of a courtesan on her forehead and have her burned at the faggots.
Little headstrong fool! Does she think to change our Greek customs for a
puny whim? I have given her dower to make a princess rich; and you have
given her gifts of an empress; and she sits listening to that beggarly
babbler, whom no one knows, stone to her blood mother’s commands and
cold as a Venus in snow to her lover. Go to her! Plead not! Command! Do
as you will! My ears are deaf! A girl denying her lover in Iconium would
last long as a gazelle baited by hounds—Pah!”
The middle-aged, stout, heavy lover went bounding up the balcony steps
fast as his fat calves and stiff knees would carry him. He drew aside
the silk portières hanging across the daughter’s apartment and advanced
across the room a little breathless. The girl turned her head but did
not speak. Thereupon, something he had not reckoned smote his courage
cold. It was the love he had for the fair child in the window seat. He
could not touch her. He could not risk turning love to indifference, or
indifference to hate.
“How now, my little bride,” he said gallantly drawing something from his
gold sash, “here are some gifts I purchased to-day from the Damascus
caravans—emerald earrings set in Damascus gold wrought fine as a spider
web, and a little silver mirror from an Arab merchant, which shall show
your face fairer than Venus’ eyelids penciled for the dawn.”
He had meant to lay the gifts in her lap and take her thanks in an
embrace; but somehow he could only open the little cases and shove them
awkwardly along the stone window sill.
The girl’s long-lashed eyes filled with tears. She smiled sadly.
“My poor dear Thamyris,” she said gently.
“Not poor,” he interrupted harshly, “nor dear, either, unless I am dear
to you.”
“Dear Thamyris—if these gifts are to buy my love, I cannot take them. I
would be cheating you.”
He sat down on the window sill beside her.
“They are not gifts to buy your love. They are tokens of my love,” he
said, toying with the gold tassel of her sash.
“Then, if they are tokens of your love, I am cheating you, dear
Thamyris; for I cannot give you love in return.”
“I am no huckster,” he urged, flushing angrily. “They are the free gift
of a free Greek. I ask no love in return. I only ask that you become my
bride and let me teach you love.”
She mutely shook her head.
“Put them on,” he ordered abruptly. “Your mother has pledged you to me.
You are mine; but I will not claim you till you come willingly to my
arms.”
“Because you command me, I put them on. I must obey you as long as I
remain in my mother’s house.” She fastened the filigree clasps to her
ears and thrust the silver mirror in her sash.
The man sat in the window studying her. The rabble round the speaker in
the square below was growing noisier.
“Thecla,” asked the man abruptly. “Is it that you love some one else?”
The girl turned her full gaze upon him. Her eyes were deep blue. Her
lashes were long and black and curling. Her brows were arches penciled
fine as if done by an artist; and her whole face glowed with a radiance
as of sun dawn in spring. Her breathing quickened.
“Yes, Thamyris, I love some one else; but you can never understand.”
“Not this beggarly babbler, Paul, with the changing names and magic?” he
shouted.
“No,” she said. Her glance dropped. “Not Paul. That is why I said you
would never understand. It is Paul’s Master—the Christ—I love—”
The man broke in a loud impatient laugh. “Why, child, He’s dead! He was
crucified before you were born! You love a shadow—”
“He is not dead,” she answered simply. “That is why I said you would
never understand. He is the Christ of Love and Light and Life—”
“But will love for a myth, who was crucified by His own countrymen, keep
you from marrying a living man and lover? Does your Paul preacher down
there teach men and maids not to marry? That is blasphemy, my Thecla! It
proves the gods made a mistake in the way they made us.”
The man almost shouted his relief. He had risen and was pacing the
floor.
“No, love for the Christ would not keep me from marrying living man; and
Paul does not teach that. He teaches that the sin of sins is cheating
love; and that is what I would be doing if I married you, Thamyris, and
did not love you.”
The man came forward to the window and gazed down in the square.
“I’ll risk your not loving me,” he smiled.
“I will not,” she answered.
The man’s face darkened. He thrust his hands in his gold sash.
“Thecla, what is this new madness setting all the Greek cities of Asia
by the ears? I am reasonable. I would learn; but I am a man; and I am
flesh and blood. You are pledged to me. I can claim you. You say I can
never understand. Let us reason this out. Granted I can’t
understand—what does Paul teach, tell me that?”
“The Gospel of Youth and Gladness—” she began.
“I can’t claim Youth, but if you will marry me, I can Gladness!”
“And that the dead must bury their dead; and that you can’t put new wine
in old bottles,” she went on.
The man’s face flushed and darkened. “Go on,” he said, “you are apt
pupil for this deceiver! Try walking in the streets alone to-night and
I’ll warrant an old bottle would be good protection for new wine gone to
a girl’s head.”
“That money is the root of evil—”
“But very useful to spoiled brides,” he added bitterly.
“That children born of such union as you would force on me have teeth
set on edge because their fathers have eaten sour grapes; that we must
level up, not down; that the road to happiness is narrow as a razor; and
that if we find the great pearl called love, we must not cast it before
swine; and that is what I would be doing with your love—Thamyris—if I
took it and gave none in return. I would be the Circe of your pagan gods
turning your beautiful love into a thing for swine—”
In the growing dusk she could not see his face, but she felt the waves
of his deep anger.
“Once more and for the last time, I ask you—is it yes or no, Thecla?”
“Dear Thamyris,” she pleaded, rising and laying her hand on his arm, “it
must be no for your own sake.”
He flung her hand from his arm and strode heavily down the stairs of the
inner court. The mother rose from the stone bench by the fountain.
“Well?” she demanded.
The merchant drew his sword from his scabbard. “I must get this
arch-deceiver put away. I’ll have the impostor whipped from the city for
creating riots. He has turned her head,” and he flung through the street
doorway to the crowded city square.
Thecla heard what he said from where she sat sadly down on the stone
sill of the upper balcony. “He that loveth father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me. . . .” she repeated, “and he that taketh not his
cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me; and he that findeth
his life shall lose it; and he that loseth life for my sake should find
it”—and she saw as in a trance, the red flowers dancing above the
fountains of the city square, the snowy mountains like opal gems in the
moonlight encircling the little city, the lake with its myriad pleasure
boats alight with lanterns, where the mountain torrents fed the great
water pool of the city—when the trance was broken by a wild halloo in
the city square.
The little lame speaker was backing away from the menacing rabble now
milling round him with hisses of ridicule. Two rough fellows to rear had
picked up stones and hurled them. Rocks, rained down from a claque to
rear, pushed those forward into a riot. The preacher raised his arm to
screen his face. A rock had struck him. She saw the blood gush from his
face. He fell—then all was mingled in the confusion of the people
running for cover to the booths and shops, when a pound of iron-shod
hoofs came over the cobblestones. A Roman Legion swept into the square,
encircled the fallen form of the speaker, threw him across the saddle in
front of the captain, and wheeled towards the Roman prison on the far
side of the plaza. As the crowd came out again from the shops, she
caught a glimpse of Thamyris thrusting his sword back in its jeweled
scabbard glancing up towards her seat in the window. She drew back
sickened in soul and heavy-hearted.
“As though treachery would win love,” she said.
Her mother stood in the curtained entrance.
“Have you given Thamyris his answer?” the woman demanded harshly.
“I have,” answered the girl.
The woman clapped her hands for a servant. A black woman came
noiselessly in and lighted the brass chandelier with a long taper.
The girl stood as still and white as death under the light. The mother
read the answer in the white face, and her own face became white and
hard as stone.
“Then—go—from—this house,” she slowly pronounced, “and never darken
its doors again till you are wedded wife of Thamyris.”
The girl picked up her black cloak from the couch she was never to see
again, threw it over her shoulders and passed silently down the
courtyard stairs, and out to the night street.
The hard marble face of the mother broke in a harsh cunning laugh.
“And now—Thamyris,” was all she said.
The black woman withdrew with a shiver and followed her young mistress
down the stairs. As she heard the street door shut twice, the mother
laughed again.
The silence of midnight with a chill of the mountain snows fell on the
little city where East and West met on the Great Roman Road.
When the two cloaked women passed through the outer door to the darkened
and deserted square, they were followed by three silent figures—two of
them rude fellows, who had thrown the rocks at the speaker and fomented
the riot of the throngs listening forward, the third with a
blue-and-gold turban cap, a blue-silk jacket and a sword in his gold
sash.
“Follow,” the third ordered. “When they run for the dark lanes, seize
them. Clap your hands over their faces so they cannot scream! Do what
you like with the black woman—she is yours; but I am to rescue the
maid. See you hurt her not, but frighten her well, and when I strike at
you with my sword, take to your heels. Avoid the Roman watchman! This
must not be known! Come to my warerooms for your reward to-morrow.”
But the Roman watchman with brass lantern on arm was pacing the center
of the square, and to him the two women hastened. The three men
following stealthily in the shadows of the buildings round the square
saw them pause and speak to the Roman. There was parley of some kind.
The Roman soldier seemed to be hesitating! He had laughed loudly at
first. Now he was in doubt and hesitating. The woman with the white face
had thrown back her cloak, lifted her hands and was unfastening her
earrings. She placed them in the Roman’s hands. He had liftened his
brass lantern and was examining the proffered jewels. He lifted his
bugle and blew a shrill whistle. Half a dozen Roman soldiers came
running from the prison side of the city square.
The three spies dodged into a darkened lane between streets. When they
emerged on the city square again, stealthily glancing in all directions,
there was not a sign of Roman watchman, soldiers, women. Thamyris drew
his sword in a blind fury of balked passion.
“Clowns—blackguards,” he stamped. “You were too slow! We have lost
them,” and he struck in impotent rage at his terrified tools. They
obeyed his injunction of but a moment before and took to their heels
down the dark lanes.
The turnkey of the prison sat nodding over a tankard of wine in a little
room off the entrance from the square. A Roman watchman had roused him
and the two were examining, by the light of the soldier’s brass lantern,
a pair of emerald earrings set in Damascus filigree.
“Good jewels—not false—by Jupiter—ten years’ wages; and what do you
say she wants?”
“To see the wounded teacher rescued from the mob to-night; but she has
disobeyed her mother, refused to go to her affianced husband, and been
turned out in the streets as a courtesan. She refuses to wear a
courtesan’s red band round her brow; and by Iconium law, she will be
burned at the stake for that. These independent cities on the Roman Road
have their own laws.”
“What’s that to us? The jewels are good! Take her to the prisoner’s
cell; but he is a Roman citizen. He must not be harmed without trial.”
The watchman went back to the cloaked figures in the corridor. He led
them without a word down the long passageway lighted dimly by iron
candles with flaming pine knots. Before one cell tramped another Roman
soldier. The watchman spoke to the guard in a low voice. He came back to
the women.
“He says—what will you give him to let you in?”
Thecla drew a silver mirror from her girdle.
The watchman went back to the guard. Again, there was a conference under
the light of the pine faggot in the iron clamp against the stone wall.
The silver mirror was being examined. The watchman returned to the
women.
“He says after you have seen him—what will you do? We Romans interfere
not with Grecian laws in the independent cities. He does not want
trouble over this. What will you do afterwards?”
“Tell him,” answered the Grecian girl, “I shall deliver myself to the
Greek magistrate to-morrow morning to be burned in the hippodrome for
disobeying my mother, and refusing to marry the man to whom she sold
me.”
The guard heard the answer, put the great key in the cell lock and
pushed open the creaking door. The two women passed in and the door
locked behind them.
For a moment they could see nothing by the smoky light of the pine knot
in the iron clamp of the wall except the silver beam of the moonlight
breaking the dark through a casement window so deep you could only see
the night sky outside as through a long high tube. There was the sound
of breathing, and a man’s figure lay on a cot against the wall, with one
arm and one foot padlocked to a staple in the stones. His head was
pillowed on a folded black cloak and his forehead bound in a white
cloth, where the rocks of the rioters had struck him, but the moonlight
falling on his face and hands showed a curious luminous radiance and
white peace. At first the Greek girl thought he was dead and her knees
gave under her. Then, she heard his breathing and knew that he slept and
was dreaming happy dreams, as children dream in peace, for the white
face smiled in its sleep.
The Greek girl’s eyes closed and her lips moved in prayer. Yet she
hardly knew how or to whom to pray; for in the temples of Iconium there
were only statues of the goddess Venus, or Diana, or the Roman emperors;
and she had never before prayed to an Unknown, Invisible God. Her
serving woman fell to her knees and began to wail aloud, swaying her
body to and fro after the manner of the Blacks. When Thecla opened her
eyes from an almost inarticulate prayer, she saw the prisoner sitting up
on his cot.
“Child—how came—you here?”
She told him in a few words.
“Have you counted the cost?”
“No cost can be too great,” she said.
He smiled quietly as though he had not been mobbed and stoned by a
riotous rabble but a few hours before.
“True, child, no cost can be too great; for no one can leave father or
mother, or brother or sister to join the Glad Kingdom but the reward
shall be a hundredfold, both here and hereafter. The cost is but the
trifling price we pay to pass through the portals to the Unseen Kingdom,
whether here or hereafter; but why came you here?”
“To be baptized into that Kingdom before they whip you from the city
to-morrow.”
“Bid your serving woman bring me the jar of drinking water.”
She kneeled at his feet. He dipped his finger in the jar and marked the
sign of the Cross on her brow. “I baptize you in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit into the service of the Glad Kingdom both
here and hereafter, now and forever more,” he said. “Bid your woman hand
me the bread and the cup of wine. Quaff now the Loving Cup with me,
child!” He handed her a broken piece of bread. “In as oft as you do
this, you do it in remembrance of the Crucified One’s Last Supper with
His Loved Ones; but remember always, child—it is not the Doleful
Supper, which these children of the Adversary say; it is the Loving Cup
to commemorate His translation to the One and Only God.”
So in the darkened prison of Iconium between midnight and dawn, the
first woman martyr to the new faith was baptized into the Unseen Kingdom
and quaffed the Loving Cup to her Lord; and in the little modern city of
Konieh, a thousand legends of Thecla, some true, some fanciful, are told
among the mountain folk to this day. Sometimes, they have it, that the
faggots were kindled in the Iconium Theater and the wild beast
tournament held in Antioch; but each city marking the crumbling stones
of the Old Roman Road has its own legend.
Thecla rose from her knees.
“My Master,” she said, “how can I serve the Kingdom if I am to be burned
to-morrow?”
“That—I know not. God will lead you. If you are burned to-morrow,
’twill be but the fiery gate to the Unseen Kingdom and service there. If
you are not burned, God will lead you to service here. I shall be
whipped from the city at day dawn and go to Timothy, a child in years
like yourself, at Derbe and Lystra; but at Antioch is the Brotherhood,
where holy men and women plan our warfare against the Adversary—the
World, the Flesh and the Devil; but hard by Antioch are the Gardens of
Daphne, where many maids like you are forced to barter love for carnal
gain. Go to them, child! You have been rescued! Rescue them! How, I know
not. God will lead you and my prayers will follow you—a cloud of light
to fore—follow it—a screen of protection behind—look not back—but
press gladly forward to the high calling of a warrior for the Christ;
and the Lord bless you and keep you in the inmost sanctuary of His Grace
and Gladness! He shall renew your flesh as a little child’s and keep in
your heart an eternal youth, long as you drink of the Living Waters of
Life! Never repine! Never envy! Go forth rejoicing always! Rejoice,
rejoice, child, again I say rejoice! For our suffering is but as idle
passing dream, and we shall awaken to Eternal Day.”
* * * * *
All Iconium was agog. As far as it is possible to set down definite
dates in this era, it was about 46 A.D.
First, an impostor, who followed the Christus of the Jews, had been
whipped from the city at day dawn for contempt towards the gods of Rome
and Greece. The mob had given over pursuing when he fell senseless
outside the walls of the city. Then, an overland caravan from Rome had
come along the road headed for Antioch; and in the caravan was the
famous and rich lady Trefina, cousin of the Emperor of Rome, bound to
spend the winter season in the pleasure gardens of Daphne; and the
merchant princes of Iconium were planning a great fête to entertain
these visitors and unlock their fat purses. It was bruited about that a
Greek girl, a convert to the Christian disturber, was to be thrown to
the wild beasts in the theater that night. Some said her crime was
sacrilege. Others said she was a woman of the streets, who refused to
wear the red cord that was badge of her calling, and had bribed the
guards of the prison to go in and corrupt the very prisoners under the
magistrate’s nose. Others again averred she had refused to obey her
mother and run away from the husband, who had bought her. And all
Iconium, high and low, was agog to see the great fête in the theater
that night for the Lady Trefina, cousin of the Emperor, who had but lost
her daughter and was in such dejection that the citizens were determined
to win her favor by an exhibition that would dispel her weariness of all
living.
Again the fat Greek merchant, Thamyris, knocked on the door of the house
in the city square; and again the middle-aged woman opened the door and
drew him hurriedly in.
The man threw himself on the stone bench with a groan.
“You have heard the magistrate’s sentence for to-night?” he asked; and
the tears streamed down his cheeks. “I have tried to see her all day. I
have offered an emperor’s ransom to save her; but the coming of the Lady
Trefina from Rome has fixed the Roman Commander in his purpose and he
will not budge. They blame my slaves for fomenting the riot last night.
They despise us Greeks! They will tear us to pieces with bloody hands
and throw us to the beasts if we but stir to save her. My slaves have
betrayed me! They say I have been caught in my own trick—” the merchant
broke in heavy heart-shattering sobs.
The mother stood surveying him with unutterable hard scorn.
“Unmanly fool!” she taunted. “I thank the gods you are to be no son of
mine! Why did you not seize her and force her to your will, when she
passed through the door as we planned? Blunderer! Bungler! To let a wisp
of a maid slip through your fumble fingers like a jewel to mud! Not thus
did my Lord win me! He stole me from the hills of Phrygia, and broke me
to his will; and if I were a man, would I pause for this little fool’s
tears?”
“Aye; and you poisoned your Lord for a night’s pastime, and took his
fortune and would sell your daughter to me to play wanton again for
another rich husband! Think you I would love Thecla if she had been such
as you?” and the wretched man broke again into terrible sobbing.
For a second, the incarnate fury standing above the unguarded man could
not speak; and when she spoke, it was in the hiss of a serpent about to
strike.
“Say you—that—to me?” she demanded. “Know you not I could denounce you
to the Romans to-night as the corrupter of my daughter and the cause of
all this riot to gain your ends? Say—you—that—to me? Take back what
you said—fool!”
“Say—that—to you!” The man sprang to his feet and seized her by the
throat. “Yes—that—and that—and that,” he stabbed her at each word,
flung her on the tessellated pavement, and not pausing to see whether
she were living or dead, dashed through the doorway to the street and
ran through the deserted city for the theater, where all Iconium had
thronged. He did not notice his sky-blue jacket was spattered with
blood. He had flung his bloody dagger from him as he ran. He was a
madman. He knew not whether the roar he heard were in his own bursting
brain, or from the tier on tier of stone seats in the open theater,
where all Iconium was stamping their impatience and shouting for the
performance to begin. He tossed the guard at the gate a gold coin; and
the Roman laughed.
“He was the maid’s lover,” said the Roman; and Thamyris vaulted the
stone stairs to the highest seat, where he could see both audience and
arena. The trumpets were blowing. Riders on horses with ribbons and
tassels were prancing round the arena. The great lady Trefina from Rome
was entering the royal box, for pipes and bugles and trumpets blew a
blast; and the drums beat for the stone doors to lift and admit the wild
beasts to the sanded circle below the spectators. First came a lioness
lashing her tail from side to side; but the spectators hissed.
“Too full-fed,” the Greek merchant heard a Roman soldier behind him
saying. “If we had known the Lady Trefina was to be here to-night, we
could have starved the beast so she’d fight. I’d say—let in her cubs!
Stab one of her cubs, and she’ll liven up!”
Then the fanfare of trumpets and pipes blew again to drown the shrieks
of the victim—a door on the opposite side of the arena lifted and a
horseman rode in with a naked girl across his saddle pummel. He spurred
his horse to a frantic gallop five times around the arena. The audience
rose and cheered to the echo. The Lady Trefina in the royal enclosure
was seen to sink back and drop her veil at the sight of the
entertainment that had been provided in her honor; but the horseman
having speeded round and round the arena now approached the dazed
lioness, reached over, and, with his long whip, struck the crouching
creature a stinging cut, and dropped the naked form across his saddle
pummel not a stone’s throw from the enraged beast. The trumpets blew
till the echo rang amid the temple columns encircling the arena, and the
spectators went mad in a blood lust of shouts.
The fall had loosened the victim’s hair. It fell in great black coils
almost to her feet, and beneath her hair could be seen her nude form
pink as a shell or sun dawn. A terrible silence fell. The spectators
held their breath. The trumpets had silenced to be ready for a blast to
drown any cry of anguish. The naked Greek girl had lighted agile as a
bird on her feet, and she moved not so much as a hair’s breadth from the
crouching lioness now snarling and lashing head and tail from side to
side. Her flesh looked fresh as a little child’s.
“Little fool! Why doesn’t she fight, or run!” demanded the Roman beside
Thamyris. The Greek merchant sank heavily where he sat and hid his face
in his hands. He wanted to shout her name, but had the coward’s
protective presence of mind to know a shout would raise uproar and
enrage the lioness. She was perishing and he, the real murderer, was
watching her perish. Sweat of anguish stood out on his body in hot drops
as of blood. What was it she had said—the sin of sins was cheating
love?
The silence in the vast audience had grown so tense he could hear the
snarl of the lioness, the lash of its tail on the sand, the breathing of
the audience as if spellbound and cowed. He peered through his hands.
“She is an enchantress and ought to be burned,” muttered a Jewish
priest. “Paul hath bewitched the maid.”
The lioness had crouched but it had not sprung. It was advancing with
its red angry eyes on the motionless, naked form. The girl did not move.
The beast paused. The girl stretched out her hand. The lioness ceased
lashing its tail angrily and tossing its head from side to side. It was
creeping on her as a cat creeps on a bird. She stooped and all her hair
fell about and hid her nakedness. The great cat came on but it did not
strike nor spring. Its eyes were on the Greek girl’s, and the girl’s
eyes were on its eyes. It raised its head. She did not move her
outstretched hand. It sniffed her hand and dropped its head to her feet.
She slowly stooped and laid her hand on its head.
Again the silence stretched so tense that a shuffle of feet and whispers
brought angry looks from neighbors on the seats. Slowly, gently, with
the caress of a mother for her young, the Greek girl was stroking the
head of the beast between its ears. It stooped and licked her feet and
lay down as if in the presence of a friend recognized, where it had
expected foe. On bended knee, the girl stooped, caressing the beast.
The Lady Trefina in the royal enclosure had lifted her veil and was
leaning forward. The commandant was seen to lean across to her, and she
rose and threw a laurel wreath into the arena. The horseman came
spurring back and snatched the girl to his saddle. Other horsemen came
galloping with long lances and drove the now terrified lioness back
through the stone portal. All Iconium rose to its feet on the stone
benches and shouted salvos of frantic applause; but the cries were
mingled. Some shouted, “Saved—Saved!” others hissed and shouted back
“More—More.”
Blood lust felt that it had somehow been cheated of its full glut.
In the center of the arena stood a tall flagpole with the Roman eagle in
brass on the tip. The horseman with the naked girl now circled this in
frantic gallops. Reining his horse so suddenly that it reared on its
haunches, he now leaped off with the girl in his arms. He placed the
laurel wreath on her forehead. With such a broad belt as men use to
girth chariot teams, he now strapped the victim by the waist to the
pole. Iconium knew what was coming and began to roar in an earthquake of
applause. Never did this Greek city on the Great Roman Road fail of
entertainment for royal visitors. After all, the quick victory of the
girl over the beast was not to cheat their lust for horrors. Black
slaves were piling faggots and straw about the pole. Others were
emptying great vats of water in a lake about the pile to prevent the
fire leaping across the sands to the seats.
Thamyris sank from the upper bench, where he sat, a crumpled heap of
blood-spattered blue silk with gold sash, to the stone space behind the
next tier.
“Dead,” said the Roman standing behind him. “These Greeks are all soft
at pith. Would Roman die of love for a mistress?”
The fanfare of trumpets was blowing again to drown cries of anguish; and
in the crash of drum and bugle and trumpet, another crash was not
heeded. The opal peaks no longer swam in silver moonlight. A black
squall was coming down from the mountains and the commandant was seen
signaling the attendants to hasten.
Oil was poured on the faggots and straw, and a torch held to the far
edge near the pools of water. The flame shot up, illumining the dark
bloodthirsty faces, tier on tier of seats to mid-heaven. Again the crash
of trumpets! The white figure of the victim was seen to raise her hands
as if to Heaven and whether from the flame or the lightning of the
gathering storm, her face shone radiant and fearless as dawn. Clouds of
dust and sand blew through the arena in a tornado. Neighbor could not
see neighbor on the stone seats and all the assembly began drawing
cloaks over heads to protect them from the stifle of dust till the gust
had passed. There was a terrible and sudden lull, when sand and rain
came down in a deluge. Then the lightning bolts came—came in forks, and
spears, and javelins of dazzling blinding light.
There was a reverberating crash that rocked the templed columns of the
theater as though they had been reeds in a wind. Women rose with
screams. Men dashed up in panic. Was the earthquake feared more in the
cities of the Roman Road than vengeance of God or man? A sharp
ricocheting splintering as of the theater falling, and the lightning
struck—struck the brass-tipped pole in the middle of the arena and the
deluge burst from mid-heaven in rods of rain—torrential rains in a
hurricane of wind and lightning. The pole fell. Some one shouted that
the Lady Trefina had fainted. The Roman, who had stood above Thamyris’
dead body, saw an attendant run across the arena through the flashes of
lurid lightning, snatch an unconscious white prone figure from the pile
of quenched faggots, and dash to the royal enclosure of the Lady Trefina
with the naked Greek girl over his shoulder.
The rest was lost in the darkness and the deluge of rain.
When Iconium awakened to cloudless skies the next morning, the city of
the Roman Road was again agog with gossip. Had the Greek maid perished
of the lightning stroke, or the fire? Had any one seen her body? No one
knew. The great fête had ended in fiasco, and the commandant was in
testy mood not to be questioned. Certainly one rumor proved
true—Thamyris was dead; but whether he had died of grief for the loss
of his promised bride, or been stabbed in a brawl on the upper tier of
seats, newsmongers did not know; for his body had been found all
blood-spattered from blue jacket to silken breeches. Thecla’s mother
could not be seen; for she was ill abed of heartbreak. And certainly,
the Lady Trefina from Rome had departed at day dawn ill pleased with the
fête; for she had not waited for the caravan. She had gone ahead at
break of day in a litter chair with no attendant but the Roman
Commander, a Greek page boy, who looked like a girl, mounted on a fleet
horse, and an old colored woman bent astride over a mule, hanging to the
saddle pummel as though she were frightened out of her wits.
* * * * *
The record of Thecla must now jump forward some twenty years.
The Roman Road on two sides of a square from Ephesus east to Antioch and
from Antioch south to Jerusalem to this day has legends of what happened
to her in these years. Some said she had escaped with the Lady Trefina
dressed as a page boy. Others said she had joined Paul and Timothy at
Derbe and Lystra. Others knew she had lived hidden in caves between
Antioch and Daphne Gardens. About all that is authentic that can be
gathered of this period is that the Lady Trefina adopted her in place of
the dead daughter and left her a substantial fortune. Paul had gone to
Rome, where Nero had beheaded him when he could not crucify a Roman
citizen. Peter had come up from Babylon to take Paul’s place in Rome,
hurrying over the same Roman Road from the Desert of the East and had
been crucified in Rome, because he was not a Roman citizen. Nero,
himself, had suicided. From Antioch to Damascus and Jerusalem, the Roman
Road was now yearly packed with Imperial troops, for Titus, the Emperor
Vespasian’s son, had taken the Holy City, and, except for the Herod
Towers on the west, left not a stone standing of the Jewish capital. The
Christian Sect, though hated by the Jews, had been driven by the war
from Antioch to Ephesus, where they gathered strength each day; and in
an era of universal persecution and massacre, Thecla was forgotten. She
was now only one of countless martyrs to a despised faith; and the faith
suffered less on the Roman Road than in the Imperial City or Judea,
because these Greek trade cities of Asia Minor had been granted
independent laws, provided they kept fealty to Rome. The only danger to
them was the Emperor worship, which Rome had set up in every Greek
temple—statues of Roman conquerors, side by side with Greek deities for
worship and homage to unify the Empire. Some philosophers declared
openly this was the worship of the Beast foretold in prophecy of Greek
sibyl and Hebrew seer. Others said the name in whispers and bided their
time for Rome’s fall from a pinnacle of intoxicated power.
Again it was the month of September. Grapes hung heavy on the vineyards
lining the road. The olive groves alone shone brilliant green in the
drought. The cactus hedges stood withered and gaunt, like ragged ghosts
flinging wild arms out in the blue haze of late summer. On the broad
Roman Road the dust was a yellow curse to man and beast, but at dusk and
dawn it was a crimson glory against an amber skyline.
Two travelers coming up from Jerusalem to Antioch had been driven off
their course by the press of troops going back to Rome after the fall of
Jerusalem. One was mounted on a huge, grizzled camel in trappings of
silver, with tassels and buckles of brass in the Roman eagle; but he was
no Roman. He was a Greek Hebrew, clad all in white, with a sword to the
gold cord round his neck, and he wore the long flowing white beard of
philosopher, or doctor of the laws. The other rode a jaded horse and was
a younger man, near the thirties or forties in age, pure Greek, with
blue eyes and golden curled hair cut short to his neck. He, too, was
clad in white cloak with sword scabbard hanging from the gold cord round
his neck; and a pack of sumptuary mules and camels in charge of servants
followed behind with tents and baggage. Failing to make way through the
press of Roman legions on the road to Damascus, the travelers had
skirted off to the left down by the sea path; but there, too, their
progress was impeded by the departing troops. At Cæsarea, they could get
quarters in neither khan nor inn, and had to camp outside the city wall.
When they sought to take ship for Ephesus, they found decks and holds
crammed, yes, crammed with the returning victorious legions; and the
plunder every man carried was a king’s ransom. There were priceless
Damascus hangings woven in gold thread taken from the Temple. Some of
the soldiers had cast off their hot metal armor and swathed themselves
in these gorgeous curtains and tapestries, and reeled sodden drunk from
the stone quay back and forward to the taverns. Others carried plunder
of gold coin and gold ornaments rifled from the houses of the destroyed
city openly in pouches round their waist, and could be seen in the port
streets dicing their gold away at a cheaper rate than a pound of gold
for a grain of wheat, or an ounce of silver for a roll of goat’s cheese;
and as it was the wine press season in Palestine and the new wine was
heady and raw, the intoxicated soldiers drank more freely of the wine
than the water, which had been poisoned by the bodies of the dead thrown
into wells and pools. Men could be seen draining a deep tankard at one
quaff, then throwing away the gold or silver cup, which came from the
Temple, and stretching themselves out to sleep off their debauch, by
roadside or in city gutter.
The two travelers stood on the broad breakwater, that ran out in a
circle to the sea, and watched the captive Hebrews embarking for Rome.
There were seven hundred, all over seventeen in years and under
thirty—in the prime of manhood’s beauty, to grace the Triumph in the
Imperial City. All other captives, men, women, children, were being sold
into slavery to the Arabs and Egyptians for less than the price of a
dog. A few thousand older than thirty were being kept for the
gladiatorial combats that nightly entertained the Roman Legions in the
hippodrome. Some women and aged men—it is recorded about two
thousand—who could not bring a price as slaves—were being reserved to
be thrown to the wild beasts between the acts of the gladiatorial
fights.
The two Greek travelers stood watching the embarkation from the quay.
Suddenly there was a great outcry of “Make way—make way—for King
Agrippa”; and the last of the Herod line—a man in middle age—passed
down the gangway, bent, broken, and gray of hair on his brow. He was
accompanied by the Princess Bernice in litter chair or palanquin, but
little did her pale face show the regal pride of the Herods, who had
ruled Judea for a century. She lay back in her chair indifferent to the
remarks of the gaping loungers, weary of life, with the cold hardness in
her dark-ringed black eyes of one who has lost the prize and slain all
hope in her soul.
The young Greek onlooker gave a start forward. The older bearded man
laid a hand on his arm.
“Let the dead bury their dead—my Onesimus! If souls refuse rebirth into
a new life and will remain in their own dungeons, they can but die! New
wine in new bottles, son; for the new wine has burst the old bottles in
the glad wine of a new life for the ages to come.”
It was impossible to get passage by sea to Ephesus; so the next morning,
they resumed their journey along the sea road toward Antioch. It is
unnecessary to trace the progress forward of that journey. Every
stopping place was sacred to the past and to the future for all
time—Tyre and Sidon and Carmel, whose glories had departed with
memories of Elijah and Jonah and Solomon and Christ; then Seleucia, the
port leading through mountain pass to Antioch; but here, while war had
not left desolation, so many of the Roman officers had come up to pass
the winter in rest and pleasure that the Greek travelers were again
forced to camp outside the city walls and send their beasts and servants
into one of the public khans, where they would have shelter when the
autumn rains broke.
The desert and mountain clans had done as they are doing to-day and have
done since time began—as the snows and rains of the upper mountains
began to fall, they had driven their herds down to the plains to pasture
for the winter or find sale to the Roman buyers. A yellow tent city of
woven camels’ hair dotted the plains outside the city walls of white
marble and gray stone.
Having left guard at their tent, the two Greek travelers entered the
city gates to search for an evening meal at one of the public inns. They
found themselves seated at table in the courtyard of an inn near the
city gate, much frequented by the sheiks of the hill and desert tribes
with the herds outside.
Motley rude fellows sat cheek by jowl with Arab sheiks and heads of
mountain clans and the rough riff-raff element that lives by its wits in
every great city.
The younger man had set down his tankard of goats’ milk and turned to
his aged companion: “My Apollos,” he said, “why was I directed to leave
Babylonia and to come on to Ephesus? I had taken up the work of Peter
when he went to Rome.”
His aged bearded companion gazed absently, as if far back and far
forward.
“You have Peter’s Epistles to the Greek Churches of Asia?” he asked.
“I have had them copied for all the Greek Churches of Asia.”
“Recall you where he admonished—‘Love the brotherhood—fear God—honor
the King—for the time for me to lay aside my body is now rapidly
drawing near?’ He foreknew his own translation to the Upper Kingdom.
Matthew and Luke and Mark have gone to Egypt. Thomas has passed to the
beyond in Persia. John, only, is left among the Greeks and he is
banished to Patmos. I have been forbidden Rome since Paul’s death and
must to Crete. On you must fall the joy of directing the Greek cities of
the Roman Road. You must be bishop of Ephesus—”
“I—bishop? I am not even an elder. Have you forgotten all Grecian Asia
knows I was a runaway slave?”
“Nay, Onesimus—I have not forgotten; and because of what the gracious
help of God has done for you, would I see you bishop to encourage other
youth to join our warfare. We are a brotherhood militant, and who but
youth for fighting ranks! New wine in old bottles bursts the worn
goatskins. New wine of life for new age, son, old heads for guidance and
wisdom; but ours is the good news of youth and gladness; and when our
bodies wax old as a garment, we must lay them off and move on to eternal
youth in invisible realms.”
There was a clink of wine jars from the adjoining table. A rough band of
mountain bandits had come in and were drinking heavily with some Antioch
merchants. A lewd oath followed by loud laugh came from the drunken
group.
“She has ruined half the physicians of Antioch by her magic healing! She
has interfered with the sale of silver images of Diana and Venus by our
silversmiths; and now with her religious house in the grottos and caves
for the dancing girls of Daphne Gardens and half Rome here for winter
pleasure, what is to become of our maids for the Love Temples?”
“How old is she?” asked a bearded fellow, who seemed to be leader of the
bandit group.
“Old—that’s it—that’s her hold on these dancing girls! She keeps
eternally young with her magic and has lured away half our daughters
with her lies of a Christ, who can never die, and a love that is cheated
of a young girl’s dreams. I am a silversmith—I know what I say—we have
not sold one image this year, where we used to sell ten thousand.” The
silversmith stroked his beard and displayed the bracelets and rings of
his trade on his fat hand.
“And the Lady Trefina left her great store of Roman gold, you say?”
asked the bandit eagerly. “Does she keep that gold in her caves?”
“Not she, she is too crafty. That’s safe with the money changers here
and supports her schools for girls. Besides, it buys protection from the
Roman captain here. He, who harms her, would be impaled on the Roman
wall here for the hawks to pick his skull—”
“But my band of wild boars could destroy a woman without harming her.”
It was then the bandit leader repeated the lewd oath that had first
startled the two Greek Christians.
“But ply my young men with wine enough to-night, and we’ll prove her a
courtesan breaking the law without the red cord about her brow, which
the law enacts. Once prove on oath we’ve spent a night in her cave—the
laws of Antioch will do the rest. The Roman guard here would drive them
out like swine and throw them to the wild beasts in the hippodrome. We’d
have our dancing girls back in Daphne Gardens and no more of this folly
of heifers thinking they lead the herd.”
The heads of the group went together over the wine tankards of the table
in lowered tone with ugly laugh on the part of the mountain bandits and
oily smile from the Antioch merchants. The bandit chief rose. He
whistled. Half a dozen young fellows from the mountain clans with long
swords in sashes and dirks in slings dangling from the right wrist
appeared in the portal of the patio as if by magic. The chief signaled
them to join the table, and more wine and yet more wine was ordered, as
old and young heads went together in undertones above the center of the
table.
The two Greek Christians rose and passed out from the patio of the inn.
“Who is this woman teacher of the Christian faith they mean to attack
to-night?” demanded the aged man, Apollos. “Said I not the new wine was
bursting the old bottles—the spiritual is defeating the carnal, and we
need youth in fighting rank to keep the faith clean as a Damascus sword?
Who is this woman?”
“I know not, Apollos, unless one Thecla, a convert of Paul’s twenty
years ago in Iconium, when I was youth and captured by these same
bandits. She was said to have escaped to the caves near Antioch, where
she set up schools for the maids, who run away from the Love Temples of
Daphne Gardens. She toils so secretly few know how or where she dwells,
except that a great Roman lady left her fortune enough to buy protection
of Rome—”
“There is vile work afoot to-night, Onesimus. We must call the Roman
guard and hasten up to protect her caves till they come. Do you instruct
our tent men, while I see the Roman captain.”
* * * * *
Up and up over circling trail they rode the rough mountain pass that led
between the sea and Antioch. Larch, oak, fir and pine forest closed
behind them darkening as they pushed their panting horses up the steep
ascent. Mountain torrents rushed down to right and left in the sibilant
hush of night slacking the thaw of upper snows. Narrower and narrower
led the pass till the riders could have tossed a biscuit from side to
side of the precipices closing in cañon cleft. Above tree line, the
clouds enfolded them in a silken gauze cool as wind on hot face; and
above the cloud line, they rode in a world of silver moonlight, with
black shadows of the rock walls etched in ink and the howl of hyena and
jackal reëchoing through the caves. The stars were lanterns hung in a
lucent blue that seemed but a hand reach away from the two silent
riders. Once, as they passed the dark mouth of a grotto in the rock wall
washed by the tumbling cascade of waters over the precipice, they heard
the roar of a lion that set all the mountains in echo. The precipices on
either side of the pass now came together in overhanging arch not a
lance length apart and, as they passed under the shadow, a mountain
cataract leaped down—rainbow colored in the mist of moonlight, but the
path seemed to be ending in a blind wall.
“She chose her hiding place well,” said Apollos.
“She would need to,” answered Onesimus.
“Where is her religious house?” asked the aged man, as they breathed
their horses.
Onesimus was no longer presbyter and prospective bishop. He was mountain
boy again as he had been twenty years ago before the bandits had
captured him, and his eyes were searching the face of the rock cleft
where only a silver bar showed open space, as an eagle might scout for
its hidden nest. An eagle did at that very moment utter shrill warning
of human intrusion.
“That,” answered Onesimus, “must be her sentry of danger; for she was
mountain born as I am; and we always chose camp near an eagle’s nest for
warning.”
The eagle uttered its woeful cry again to fore, and they passed through
the arch. The rock walls here were pitted with grottos as they are to
this day; and we, who smile at the early Christians adopting monastic
life to flee the world, the flesh and the devil in these early ages,
should remember that it was often life in the grottos, or death by wild
beasts in the hippodrome. In one place the silvered mossed rock seemed
to have been stoned up in front. Past this place, tumbled another
cataract. Dwellers in the grottos always chose sites with good drinking
water inside. Onesimus pointed ahead, drew his sword and moved forward.
To the side where the cataract gushed out was a door of long slabs so
narrow a man must enter sideways. Onesimus knocked on the door. A wicket
in the logs opened; and we, who laugh at wickets in the doors of
monastic houses, would do well to recall how and why such wickets were
first used. They were used to save the lives of those who kept the faith
for us. A woman’s face appeared in the wicket. It was a face in its late
thirties, but it was a face that would always be young; for it had not a
line of care or envy. Was it the moonlight; or was it a trick of
Onesimus’ own memories of Paul long ago in the prison hut of Rome; for
the face wore the radiance that artists have vainly tried to portray in
halo?
“We are disciples of Paul,” he said in Greek.
The woman flung the door open and drew them in.
The grotto was empty but for a taper beneath a wooden cross, but at the
far end was a cleft in the rock—the real end of the pass leading to
grottos deeper in the mountain.
“And He shall hide His own in a cleft in the rock,” said Apollos. “Go
you within and tell the Lady Thecla why we are here. Keep your sword
drawn at the cleft in the rock. If they break past my guard, strike as
they go through yon crack in the wall. I would open the wicket when the
rioters come.”
There is no record of what the drunken rioters said, when the wicket
opened on a white bearded face instead of woman’s; but when they would
have smashed the door and forced entrance, Apollos drew a sword with
blade fine as Damascus razor and inquired calmly in tones too soft to be
safe what he might do for them. How could he serve them best? They
paused at that and fell back under the arch to confer. Came a thunder of
iron hoofs echoing in rip-rap over the stone road and the drunken crew
turned to flee pursuit of Roman guard; but flee—where? This road ended
in the blind wall of a stoned up cavern. They dashed back for hiding in
the caves lower down. There were echoes, oaths, clash of swords on metal
armor, neigh and scream of terrified horses; and a Roman centurion
galloped to the door.
“What did you do with your trapped beasts? Have you taken them
prisoners?” demanded Apollos.
“We took no prisoners. Not one escaped. We drove them over the
precipice. Yon eagle will have full crop for her nestlings to-morrow;
and that lion below will not roar so loud in hunger.”
And so Thecla lived to the great age of ninety years and her memory is
kept sacred on September 24, to this day. Without dancing girls for the
Love Temples of Daphne Gardens, all the beauty and lure of the place
failed to hold the wintering pleasure seekers of Antioch. The very
winter that Onesimus passed over the Roman Road to become Bishop of
Ephesus, the great Love Temples of Venus were destroyed by fire. The
Christians said they had been struck by lightning as a manifestation of
God’s vengeance for the attempt on the Thecla Community, even as
lightning had once before delivered her from the Adversary. The
merchants of Antioch, who yearly spent a hundred thousand talents to
draw the pleasure seekers from Rome to winter in Daphne Gardens, said
the Christians had set them on fire; but the lure of Daphne Gardens fell
off from that year. To this day, you can find signs of the Cross and
inscriptions by the early Christians in the grottos and caverns, between
Antioch and the sea; but of Daphne Gardens, hardly enough remains to
mark the site, did we not know it was ten miles in circumference, and
five miles from the four hundred crumbling marble towers of Antioch. War
and plunder broke the power of Antioch; and what war and plunder could
not destroy, the earthquake threw down; but the Faith kept holy in the
grotto is reënacted to-day wherever “the new wine bursts the old
bottles” and the Loving Cup goes round to commemorate Him who first
broke women’s fetters.
CHAPTER V
“AND THERE SHALL BE NO MORE DEATH”
The Bishop of Ephesus sat dreaming in the garden between his church and
his house.
It was the glad season now known as Easter, some fifty years after the
death and ascension of our Lord. The sunshine of the Ægean Sea was a
luminous glory that clothed all the world of spring in garments of pure
light. The city square swam in a transparent gold that dazzled the eye.
Across the square, the aërial arches between the columns of the Great
Temple to Diana gave glimpses of a sea that was by turns turquoise blue
and emerald green, with a fret of snowy waves whose mermaid hair danced
rainbows in the sunlight. Between the arcades of the Temple columns, the
Bishop could catch hints of the surrounding circle of snowy mountains;
and they, too, swam opal jewels in a mirage of morning light. The years
had touched Onesimus lightly. He was stouter, stronger, more robust; but
few silver hairs intermingled with his gold curls, though an austere
strength now stamped face and figure, as of a man, whose shoulders had
grown the broader for their load. But the gladness of the day brought
back memories of his youth, this morning.
What wonder—he mused—the Greeks’ frieze across the top of the Temple
columns represented their huntress Deity as driving the wild horses of
the waves with the wind in their tossing manes out to the pasture
grounds of the ocean deeps? The Bishop dreaming in the garden between
his little Christian church and his house smiled; for though he was
Christian, he was also Greek; and never the sun came over the snowy
mountains in spring but he felt the wild lure of the huntress, Diana,
with her silver horn winding through the woods and caves, leading youth
captive in pursuit of the fleet-foot rainbow hours.
Something there was in the glad spring day of the beginning of time,
“when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted
for joy.”
So sitting in the garden across the city square from the vast marble
Temple to Diana, he could not but smile gently to himself. Spite of
statue in silver like a spire to sky, and domes that vied in beauty the
opals of the snowy peaks, and friezes that were the glory of Grecian art
for two hundred years—not so many worshipers came from the seas and
hills to the Great Diana’s Temple. Especially, not so many worshipers
came to the Temple now that the Roman conqueror persisted in setting up
images of the Emperors to be worshiped equal with Diana. That very year,
vestal virgins had suffered death for refusing to offer incense to the
figure of the Roman Emperor—“Beast worship” it was now called among the
Greeks; and after the martyrdom of these vestals, the young Christian
Bishop reflected, his own little church had been crowded with new
adherents to the new faith.
The three vestal virgins had been accused of breaking their girdle vows;
but Onesimus knew the real cause of their death had been—they had
laughed at the Goddess Roma set up beside the Great Diana; and when the
Great Diana had failed to protect them, faith in her power had fallen
off. The people knew the Temple was a cheat to barter gain for sacrifice
and hold allegiance to Rome.
Books of Black Magic to the value of more than £2,000 had been burned at
Ephesus after Paul’s labors there; and what Paul had preached, Apollos
had confirmed, speaking from the very shrine of Diana, herself. Truly
what Paul “had planted, Apollos had watered, and God had given the
increase.” He thought of Ephesus, the third greatest city in the known
world, with its theater holding fifty thousand pleasure seekers, where
his little old half-blind, deformed Master, Paul, with the lion heart
and sword of the spirit had conquered the Prince of the Powers of the
Air—whether Black or White Magic, Onesimus did not know. He only knew
the Invisible King had conquered.
Aquila and Priscilla had won Apollos, the Gnostic, to Christ, and had
accompanied Paul to Ephesus; and when Paul had left Ephesus to go on to
Rome, it was Apollos who had driven the Christ message home; so that now
Ephesus, rather than Antioch, was the rallying point for the followers
in Asia. The fall of Jerusalem had dispersed all followers there to the
deserts of Asia and Egypt. The incursions of the victorious Roman Army
had driven the Jews from Antioch. At Ephesus must be the final stand of
the followers for the Christ against pagan god and Jewish legalism and
the Black Magic of the sorcerers, now a scourge over all the world.
Was Apollos an Apostate, “a wandering star,” as Peter and the others had
feared? Certainly, he had failed to come to the rescue of Paul, in
Corinth and Rome, when Paul’s need had been sore; but then, he had
defied the pagan gods in their own temples, while Paul always spoke from
Jewish synagogue, or from market place; and John had reported the
Master’s words—that those not against Him, were for Him; and Apollos
had one message and Paul another; and both led like Jacob’s ladder to
God.
Fewer and fewer animals from the mountain herds went to the Temple as
sacrifices; and the trade in little silver images of Diana had fallen
away so that the silversmiths had removed their booths from the Temple
columns. The space, where the silversmiths’ booths used to stand, now
was taken up with aged and infant ragged beggars, imploring alms from
the worshipers by day and by night, huddling to sleep behind the shelter
of the columns. He could see these poor shipwrecks of port life this
morning, shaking off their drowsiness and tatters to begin another dull
round of another dull day; and yet—and yet—the legend of Diana’s
silver hunting horn winding divine music through the mountain passes to
the sea was in the young Greek Bishop’s very soul.
The perfume of the morning flowers had no drugged night bloom. It was
clean, dew-washed, elusive as light. Dewdrops still lay on the lips of
the purple iris, the white narcissus, the voluptuous flaunting tulips.
Spider webs spun with diamonds of light and dew hung in the acacia and
oleander hedges. The great Easter lilies lifted royal spears of gold and
cups of nectar to greet the rising sun—easterly always pointed the
spears and cups to the sun god; and on the stone edge of the garden
fountain, a bird with a dash of sapphire blue and ruby red on his throat
was caroling love notes to burst his little palpitating heart.
The Bishop closed his eyes in a prayer that was an inarticulate gloria
to the gladness of Life, and it was to the Glad Kingdom of Life in
Newness that he had dedicated his life long ago, when he had rushed as a
boy from pursuit of the kidnappers of Rome right into the prison hut of
Paul, the Apostle of Christ, who had opened the doors of that Glad
Kingdom. A bird’s wing almost brushed the Bishop’s face. He opened his
eyes to one of those common tragedies of garden life, seen every day if
we have eyes that see. Some insect of an early butterfly sort had come
out of winter chrysalis pale, faint, trembling with the effect of
casting off the dead body of its winter shell of skin, and was fanning
moist wings dry in the morning sun, when the little feathered songster
with a dart past the Bishop’s face, snatched away the dead shell body,
while the pale nymph rose in giddy circles in the dazzling light.
The Bishop Onesimus gave a start. The nymph didn’t seem to realize that
it had died to one form of life and risen to another. It had thrown
aside what the Greeks called its “coat of skin” just as the beggars
yonder under the Temple arches were folding up their night rags and
coming out in the sun on the city square.
The little drama of the garden had enacted his very prayer; for what was
the bird singing but a gloria to glad new life? And what was the nymph
doing but casting off the body of death for rebirth to new life? And was
not this the very thought that had been puzzling him this morning of the
ascension of his Lord on what we to-day call Easter?
He had been reading John, the Beloved’s, last message to the Christian
Churches of the Great Roman Road with warnings against the Beast Worship
and foreflashes of things to come down the long ages. Of all the first
messengers of the Glad News, John only, the disciple of Christ, and
Apollos, the disciple of John the Baptist, remained on earth. Paul,
beheaded in Rome! Peter, crucified in Rome! Matthew, Mark, Luke lost to
history in Egypt! James martyred in Jerusalem! Thomas buried in the Far
East! Philip disappeared in Ethiopia!
All were what the world called—Dead!
Almost twenty years had passed since the Fall of the Holy City, when he
and Apollos coming from Jordan Ford had passed through Antioch and
rescued Thecla in the mountain caves.
Yet here was John’s letter from banishment on Patmos Island, his last
message to the Seven Christian Churches of the Great Roman Road,
declaring “there shall be no more death,” and here was Paul’s letter to
the Corinthians sent forward to be read to his own flock in Ephesus,
declaring death was but a change of garment, an awakening from shadowy
dreaming sleep to an effulgent intensest reality of life!
The Bishop strode back to his cloister. As he passed from his garden, he
noticed the ragged horde of beggars coming out from the night shelter of
Diana’s Temple to range themselves in posture of mendicants whining for
alms across the city square. There was a child—a little ragged Greek
with no clothing but a torn belted shirt, with tousled head, bare of
feet, not more than eight years old, with a baby in a sling on his back.
The baby’s eyes had been blinded and one arm broken—to arouse pity
among passers-by. Onesimus had noticed these children before; and it
made his mountain blood boil, for had not his Lord said—“Let little
children come unto me?” And had not the prophets predicted: “A little
child shall lead them?” And did this look as if the Shepherd of little
children were protecting them; as if the spirit of the child were
leading men back to God? It was as if a cloud of doubt suddenly obscured
the gladness of the Easter morning. For a moment, he watched the byplay
on the city square—the little Greek had stolen a flower from some city
hedge. A tall angular spare woman clad all in black had come out of the
Diana Temple from an all-night vigil. The child beggar was running along
with the blind baby on his back wobbling its head from side to side,
trying to sell her the stolen flower for a farthing. He made a clutch at
the tall woman’s skirts to try and force her attention. She turned on
him with imperious gesture and snatched her skirt from his hand so
roughly that the little beggar with the baby on his back fell face down
on the Temple steps; then something seemed to clutch at the heart
strings of the woman’s own memories; for she paused, turned back and
from the wallet in her pocket girdle, threw the child a handful of coins
that flashed bronze and gold in the sun. It was as if the cloud of
sadness that had obscured the gladness of the Easter morning had
vanished like mist in sun.
* * * * *
Onesimus entered the cloister off the side of his little Christian
church. He was tall, thin and athletic from his active life and
inheritance of mountain blood. Religion was to him not the old-age
anodyne to jaded physical sensations dying of the fungus that kills a
fly in frost. It was the essence compounded of more Life and more Light.
“Growing old in the Kingdom is growing young,” he smiled. “What have we
to fear from old wives’ fables of the dark?” and he flung himself in a
stone chair below the cloister window and took up the letter of John to
the Seven Churches of the Great Roman Road.
Progress had been rapid since he was a slave lad in Rome and Paul wrote
on clay and wax tablets. Progress is always swift when we look back, but
slow as a snail when we look forward; for John’s letters were on skin
parchment.
The light came from the side of his church across from his cloister. He
had to bend and strain his vision to decipher the penmanship of the aged
disciple and it stabbed him to the quick, that message to his own little
church at Ephesus—an oasis of faith in a pagan desert of whirling
doubts—a message from his Unseen Lord through the hand of John: “I know
your works, your toil, your patience . . . you have never grown weary
. . . yet you no longer love Me as you did at first.”
Could that be true?
Did the Church no longer love Her Lord as at first?
Had she grown cold with habit? Or was it fear of death being the end-all
that had chilled the fire of their first zeal? They had expected the
King to return in a blaze of glory; and here was John’s message pointing
to the glory as Kingdom Unseen, where spirits must clothe them in
garments of light, where the building stones of the many mansions would
be precious jewels of beautiful deeds, where the leaves from the Tree of
Life would be for the healing of all nations—all nations, not just Jew
and Greek—and where forgiveness would be a cup of forgetfulness to
begin Life afresh in the Kingdom of Gladness.
Was it Doubt that had chilled love in Ephesus? For when he had come to
that line—“And there shall be no more Death”—hadn’t he paused,
staggered in belief, because he knew that all the apostles but Apollos
and John were dead? At that very line had he not heard in memory the
winding music of the huntress’ horn, when Diana’s horses came champing
down the mountains to plunge in the pastures of the sea? If Death were
end-all, better ride the wild horses of joy down to the eternal sea!
Was it Doubt that had chilled Love?
Onesimus sprang from his stone chair.
He would settle it once and for all. John, the Beloved, was on Patmos
Isle; Apollos of John Baptist’s band on Crete—but a few hours’ sail in
a spanking breeze from Ephesus. He would go and ask them if Death itself
were slain, robbed of its victory, deadened of its pain.
Was it true “there was to be no more Death?” If true, Onesimus wanted to
shout the glad news from the housetops. The very stones should cry out
in joy, the leaves clap hands in rhythmic dance, and all the feathered
songsters give voice in a gloria chant. Joy would be the voice of God in
many laughing waters; and the human body would no longer be dogged by
shadow, when Death, the spy, with skeleton face in the dark, was slain!
But as the young Bishop sprang up, a shadow fell athwart the morning
light streaming in beams of gold across his church into his cloister. It
was the shadow of the woman clad all in black; the woman he had noticed
coming out from all-night vigil in the Temple of Diana and tossing the
gold and bronze coins to the beggar child, whom her rough jerk had
thrown down the marble steps. She stood in the shadow of the gold light
gazing at him. She was not young. He knew by her hair and fair skin that
like himself, she was Greek; but there was something almost sibylline in
her tense silence. Her skin was pale as white wax. Her lips were parted
and painted, showing teeth white as pearls; and in her great dark eyes
were both the insolence and unfathomable sadness of a woman fleeing in
vain from the skeleton clutch of age and catching in vain at the rainbow
hours of youth. She was measuring the strength of an almost feline
cunning against the strength of his clarity before she spoke; and there
was that in her, which could bait cunning with flesh and set a man
guessing of her past. She was richly clad and decked in jewels, from the
pearls in her hair to the jade in the clasp of her sandals.
She smiled a slow smile with her lips, which had no reflex of joy in her
eyes, than which is no sadder smile on earth—’twas like a mask on a
death face.
“I wish you good morrow, Sirrah,” she said.
“Not—‘Sirrah,’” quietly answered the Bishop Onesimus in a silent rebuke
to familiar approach, “nor much need to wish good morning when God gives
free such day as this.”
She winced but did not retreat.
“How should I address you?” she asked smiling faintly.
“In sincerity and truth, as I shall answer you, Lady. If you speak truth
to a liar, it conceals you best, for he takes all truth for lie. If you
speak lie to a liar, it accomplishes nothing; for he regards all words
as lies.”
She winced this time and glanced away.
“I wait for you to invite me to be seated,” she said.
“The empty chair has already invited you, Lady.” He waited.
She seated herself, but had lost her air of insolence and no longer
baited her dark eyes with a flicker of dare to a man’s guess of her
past. Into them had come the terrible pleading of a dumb brute for
respite from unseen foe.
“What can I do for you, Lady?” asked the young Bishop.
Into her face came the wan wistful smile of a gambler’s last cast of the
dice. Her glance fell. She leaned forward across the table.
“I am not mad. Do not think me mad. You ask what can you do for me? I
have both heard and seen your miracles from faith. Years ago, when I was
a widow in Iconium, I saw your leader, Paul, work such miracles, but
when I sent a magician out to bribe him to tell the secret of his
tricks, I could learn nothing. Then he bewitched my only daughter, and
she deserted her affianced husband, and joined the Christian sect and
has kept house for what she calls her holy women in the hills on the
Roman Road for over twenty years. I am an old woman, but she is”—the
woman stammered—“she is eternally young. She wears a youth and radiance
that grow with growing years, while I—I flee a skeleton called age that
clutches me as I run; but she sits quiet while the death’s head of age
slips past, leaving her all untouched. You ask me what can you do for
me? I prayed all night in Diana’s Temple. I offered incense enough to
redeem ten slaves. I am not mad. Do not think me mad. I would pay any
price. Here is the gold. I gave a ragged beggar child gold enough to
make his parents rich, but to be told which way you lived. I would buy
from you your secret of eternal youth. How do you cheat age and death?
Why are you happier as you grow older?”
The astounded Bishop fell back with a gasp. It was as if a dark shadow
made of self in withered flesh had cast itself athwart the translucent
gladness of the spring morning, and would hold the rainbow in its dead
and greedy hands.
“Are you the Mother who cast her daughter out to the dogs of the
midnight streets in Iconium years ago, because she would not marry the
man to whom you sold her? Are you the Mother of Thecla, whom Paul
converted?” he demanded.
The woman did not answer. She cowered like a dumb brute from a blow.
“God’s mercy is long enough to reach down and pardon the meanest,” he
went on. “God wills not that anything He has created should perish, but
even now, you think only of self; and self is the demon that locks you
in your dungeon. When I saw you fling the beggar child down the stone
steps and then relent and throw the coins after him, I thought it was
repentance of your own hard heart; but now I know ’twas but another
offering made to the god of self to find another temple where your
prayer might be answered when you had failed with Diana. Even now, you
think not of the fate that your cruelty brought on your daughter! You
think only of saving yourself from skeleton age and death! Self is the
vampire that sucks life and youth and radiance to dry shell. Cast self
out and let the waters of life in. When you have pondered that, come
back for admission to the Kingdom of Gladness; and your own daughter
Thecla can open the door and give you the secret.”
He strode from the cloister in the towering rage of a man who has seen a
daughter thrown to the wild beasts by the selfishness of a mother. The
woman’s body rocked with paroxysm of self-pity in the stone chair of the
cloister.
* * * * *
The woman and her selfish request that would have made out of miracles a
slave to self passed from the Bishop’s mind like a cloud that darkens
our path for a moment, then vanishes, leaving not the shadow of a
substance. His quest was a shining light that eclipsed every other
impression from his being. Before they could pass beyond his reach, he
would go to his aged master, Apollos in Crete, and to John, the Beloved,
in Patmos, and ask them in verity if that message in the letter to the
Seven Churches of the Roman Road was to be taken in spiritual parable,
or in letter truth—that there was to be no more Death. If the Kingdom
were here and now, then like the insect nymph on the fountain stone,
Death was but the change of a worn out fleshy garment for a vesture of
light. Being still in his prime, Onesimus, the Bishop, did not realize
that his quest was the self-same search as that of the aged woman, bent
and broken under sin at the end of the road where there is no turning.
All he realized was that if the Christ’s ascension meant no more Death,
then this springtime anniversary marked a gladness of earth and air and
sea, that created a New Heaven and a New Earth.
As the Bishop stood at the prow watching the carved eagle’s head
noiselessly cut the calm seas between Ephesus and Crete, his soul was
wrapped in the deep calm of the beauty of the night. The silver moon
above hung silver in the water below. Only a cat’s-paw of wind was in
the canvas. The rowers below plied their oars as one man, keeping time
to some old rhythmic chant that was like the croon of the wind. The
Christian Bishop was Greek and the hypnotic rune carried his racial
memories back—back—back to the minstrelsy of hill clan and seaman, to
myths of the Isles of Greece—Minotaur—Bull-God—to whom the maidens
were offered; Mammon—God of Gold—to whom the youths were offered; and
raids over the mountain and sea to steal the victims.
To Onesimus, standing musing, the real world had become a dream world,
when a sailor at the prowl spoke to him in Greek:
“Know you this coin, Master? Is it gold or bronze?”
The seaman was clad only in trunks and loose shirt, with bare feet and
bare head. He had a capstan bar over his left shoulder, but between the
forefinger and thumb of his right hand he held a rudely minted coin with
roughly stamped insignia, which glittered yellow in the moonlight.
“It is gold. It is a very old coin. How did you come by it?”
Onesimus had taken the coin and was turning it over and over in his
hand.
The seaman’s apple cheeks and gray beard curled in a smile. “My son, he
sleeps under the steps of the Temple. Some rich merchant wife from the
Roman Road spends the night, night after night, praying to Diana in the
Temple. Diana does not give her what she asks; so then she comes out
angry in the morning and asks the way to the Temple of your new God, and
my son, he show her the way, and she throw him a handful of coin. I
think, my master, she make mistake. All the rest was bronze. My son, he
said she had a hard stiff face—you know its value, Master?”
Onesimus had handed back the coin. He was hardly hearing the seaman’s
words. He was thinking of the scene in the morning, when he had doubted
the value of a child to the Kingdom; and now he knew that the beggar
child with the maimed baby on its back had led Thecla’s mother to the
door of the Kingdom, and he had clashed the door in her face because of
past sin.
“Know you its value, Master?” repeated the seaman. “Will it buy my
freedom and my daughter’s, too? She is a slave girl in the Temples of
Crete and is wasting of a consumption. I would take her back to a good
woman in the hills off the Roman Road—a Grecian woman called Thecla.
Know you her?”
Onesimus came awake to pressing duties, like a dreamer out of selfish
trance.
“Yes, its value is three times the value of a slave; and I will now give
you six times its value in Roman coin to countervail my sin of this very
morning.” He had opened the leather wallet in his sash and was counting
six coins out for the seaman’s one, when a thought arrested him.
“Who mutilated the infant on your beggar-boy’s back? Is this girl child
also yours?”
“Nay, my Master,” the Greek seaman’s countenance saddened. “I sink not
so low. The little child is daughter of the Roman guard at Patmos; but I
am slave seaman for debt; and the witch, the fortune teller, at the
Temple steps, who keeps my son and forces him to beg, she it was who
maimed the infant. She feeds the children who are leased, and forces
them to earn bread. The infant was only a female and will be knocked on
the head; so the witch blinded her and broke her arm—”
Gone were the Bishop’s dreams of a world of Light and Life and Love!
Gone were his memories of Diana and her hunting horn winding divine
music through the caves and grottoes of the Isles of Greece. He was down
to earth with his feet on the ground, a warrior again for righteousness
in a world of crime. What mattered the coward fear of Death? His duty as
a soldier of His Lord was to fight for right in Life, and let Death take
care of itself, as the nymph insect that morning had discarded its coat
of skin to the winds.
He added another coin to the six he was counting out to the seaman.
“See you redeem the infant as well, and take them all to the hospice of
the woman Thecla in the mountains,” he commanded. “I will stand bail for
your good citizenship when you get your pass of freedom from the Roman
Governor.”
When the cusps of the mountains of Crete were sighted, and the great
canvas came clattering down, and the ship warped up to the quay, the
burly seaman—no longer slave but free—came to Onesimus with a capstan
bar over his shoulder.
“You will need me, Master,” he said. “There are riots in Crete. One
Apollos proclaims the downfall of the old Temples. They threaten to kill
him to-night if he break in on the service. For me, I see not why they
should kill him. He is old—they say he is a hundred years—he will die
anyway; and he preaches— ‘There is no Death.’” The big seaman exploded
in a bluff laugh through his beard that was like the burst of a squall
through a mountain pass; and the two went shouldering up through the
dock rabble towards the temple.
“They say,” went on the seaman with the new-found tongue of a slave
suddenly free, “this Apollos kept silent for five whole years in the
Lodges of India. Silent—not a word—only signs; but he learned their
magic and can fight the demons of air. ’Twas he gave my girl in the
Temple a cup of forgetfulness and bade her seek healing with the Greek
woman, Thecla, in the mountain caves off the Roman Road. He preaches
Gladness like you, Master, and always Light—Light—Light—a path up to
the dwellings of the gods,” the seaman laughed again. He was not sure
whether his garrulous babble were passing through the Bishop’s outer
ear.
“What does he teach?” asked Onesimus, curious to learn a slave’s views
of the Glad News.
“If we have no wants, we’ll seek few possessions,” continued the seaman.
“The winds are spirits—light is a garment—prayers are the smell of
flowers—incense is their seed—and he speaks only in the Temple at
night because he says men will remember his words in their sleep—”
“Why, then, should the Temple priests threaten to kill him?” asked the
Bishop.
The seaman paused in his march, shouldering through the crowds. He
evidently could not do two things at once—walk and talk.
“How do I know, my Master?” The burly fellow thought. “He is rich. He
needs no money. He tells the people to give no money to the priests—”
“Go on,” ordered the Bishop.
The seaman lowered the capstan bar from his shoulder and began poking a
pass through the throngs. So great was the press at the main entrance to
the Temple that the seaman turned aside and wedged a way through the
flanking crowd into the darkened cloisters down each side of the vast
edifice to the Sun. The Temple was roofless. On the main central floor
knelt thousands in worship. Censer lights hung on chains across the
front of the altar and beneath the lights chanted the priests in
full-chested chorus, old as time, to the moon and sun deities, while the
voice of the vestal virgins and the boy choristers rose shrill and clear
from the galleries above the cloisters.
“Go redeem your daughter in the galleries from the priests while I find
the Apostle Apollos,” directed Onesimus, “then meet me at the ship!”
But to find the Apostle Apollos was no easy matter in this dim light
clouded with incense and mist blowing in from the sea. The sailor went
clambering the stone stairs to the upper galleries, while Onesimus
picked his way past the prostrate worshipers towards the altar, where
Apollos would be likely to appear if he dared to try to speak after the
singing. Then, he caught sight of the venerable Apostle.
There was no mistaking that aged and beautiful figure—dressed in pure
white, with cork sandals, with hair and beard as white as washed silk,
and brow as lineless and radiant as the snowy mountain peaks—standing
calmly against one of the Temple pillars to the side of the high
smoke-clouded altar; but when Onesimus would have pressed forward to
him, he found the way through the last cloister stopped by a half-dozen
bloodhounds tied to the Temple columns to prevent the rescue of Apollos
by his followers; and one glance told Onesimus that Apollos stood so
motionless because he was bound by ankles and wrists to the upright
column.
“Bah,” said a bearded Roman guard clad in armor to his eyes, who was
standing behind the leashed bloodhounds, “he saved others; let him save
himself! He raised others from death by his magic tricks. Now he’s dead
man himself under this wolf pack if he budge a hair, where he stands.
Give me the leashes. I’ll let the line out to close on him, when the
singing stops,” and suiting the act to the word, the Roman took the
leash ends of the bloodhounds and gave them line to creep up within
touch of the bound man if he but stirred a hair’s breadth.
Onesimus moved up cautiously behind the Roman. He had the short dirk in
his belt that all Greeks wore, and from the gold cord round his neck
hung the usual traveler’s sword.
He was of two minds—whether to trip the Roman guard and snatch the
bloodhounds’ leash, or jump forward in the gathering cloud of mist and
incense, cut Apollos’ bonds and himself divert the attack of the
bloodhounds—when he noticed something with his keen mountaineer eye
that the Roman guard did not see. Apollos’ wrists and ankles had been
bound to the pillar by deer thongs. The hounds had sniffed forward and
were licking at the deer thongs; and through the dark, Apollos’ gleaming
black eyes were boring to Onesimus’ very soul with unspoken message.
They forbade word or move for his rescue. They seemed to redirect the
younger man’s glance back to the bloodhounds. The blood hounds were
licking the deer thongs and the raw hide was stretching as it always
stretches when wet, and Apollos had let it slip down over his hands from
his wrists to the floor, where the dogs, in growling and snarling to
snatch at it, had bitten through the thongs binding his ankles.
The Apostle did not move by a hair’s breadth. His brow was radiant with
a glowing light and his hair shone like fuller’s white.
The cymbals clashed. The silver trumpets blew. The lines of chanting
priests had seized bells to ring in rhythm and fans to send up the
clouds of incense. And there was heard the hunting horn of Diana coming
down from the fleecy meadows of mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and
mares in the ocean deeps—the vestal virgins’ high clear soprano gave
back refrain to the chant of the priests—when a blast of wind from the
tidal waves of Diana’s stallions and mares champing out to sea, blew
through the Temple pillars, sending the clouds of incense and mist back
over the worshipers.
Onesimus saw Apollos leap from the pillar to the altar stairs; and when
the Roman guard would have unleashed the hounds to tear him down, an
unseen foot tripped the soldier to his face on the tessellated floor of
the Temple, and the hounds were upon the fellow in a savage attack that
called the attention of the priests. Taking quick advantage of the
diversion and the back-blown cloud of sea mist and incense smoke,
Onesimus with a bound followed his Master, who had passed swiftly to the
stairs behind the altar, that led both to the vestal virgins’ galleries
above and to the famous underground labyrinths of Crete.
“Follow me not, beloved! Farewell,” Apollos had turned. “Escape back to
the ship with your seaman and his daughter! Take them to Thecla in the
caves! Seek me not! Farewell for a little time—”
Again the cymbals clashed. Again the silver trumpets blew. Again the
bells rang in rhythm to the chant of the priests and refrain of vestals.
Again the fans sent back the cloud of incense above the altar. Again was
heard Diana’s hunting horn coming down from the fleecy meadows of
mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and mares in the ocean deeps; but of
Apollos was nought to be seen.
“Bah,” said a Roman guard standing near the astounded Bishop of Ephesus,
“’twas but a trick of levitation, which all these Eastern magic fellows
play. The fellow has lifted himself up by his sandal straps and
disappeared through the clouds of smoke, as he did when he was tried
before our Emperor Domitian for tearing a boy’s entrails out. Wasn’t I
there? Didn’t I see him? Didn’t he defy our Emperor to his face? They
could prove nothing against the scoundrel—he wraps himself in his cloak
like this”—the guard imitated a man hiding his face in his cape— “I
see him plain as I see you, we all see him, the Emperor was about to
have him seized and burned as all these Greeks and Jewish sorcerers
ought to be burned—and there, as we look, the knave disappears from our
very eyes and reappears down in a cave among his followers by the sea,
where he takes ship and flees for Asia again. If I’d been Emperor, I’d
have had him seized where found and burned on the spot. ’Tis only a
trick of levitation—holding the breath, mumbling a hocus-pocus, and up
they go—”
“Simpler than that, Friend Roman,” responded a Greek priest of the
Temple, whose head was shaved like a billiard ball and whose face wore
the baffled look of one stunned by anger and fear. “There are thirty
thousand secret chambers in the old Minos Temples ’neath the Island
here, where all the Black Magic books of old have been hidden for a
thousand years. The knave must have known the secret passage to these
hidden underground caves, where ’tis like he hides now with all his
followers and rocks this Isle. ’Tis known the Isle always rocks in the
spring and autumn storms—and the old Greeks say ’tis from the Black
Magic of the Masters in the Caves. The man wrought Black Magic against
our Goddess. He ought to have been burned.”
“I notice,” said another, “that he had no shadow. These demons have no
shadow—’tis how we Greeks know demons in human form; and he always wore
a ring with a mystic stone got from the Magicians of India to protect
him.”
“A plague on these cursed Gnostics and Essenes and Nazarenes,” gritted a
Jew, joining the amazed group. “They are turning the whole world upside
down. Feed them to the beasts, I say, as they did in the mad Nero’s
day.”
* * * * *
Onesimus came out to the star-silvered night, dazed and dumb. Was there
“no more Death”? He could not answer. He stood by the rocky coast of the
calm painted sea with the Greek freed seaman and his daughter rescued
from the Temple service. Snow was falling in a white mantle on the upper
peaks of the opaline mountains. Was it “the Angel of the Snows” of which
Apollos and Enoch taught? Hoar frost seemed to be lining the upper
forested evergreens in the glint of jewels. Was it the Angel of the Hoar
Frost? Mist was rising from the sea to meet the mist from the mountains
in ghostly curtains. Was it the Spirit of the Mist wrapping its vesture
around the departed Apostle? And the winds began to chant a mystic rune
where the sea and rock met in the white fret of the night tide. Was it
the Angel of the Winds, which, Apollos had taught, come out to gather
earth thoughts for the weal or woe of earth?
The Bishop of Ephesus fell to his knees and spent the rest of the night
on the shore in prayer.
And so the Bishop on his way home to Ephesus, accompanied by the slave
seaman freed and the daughter redeemed from Temple service in Crete on
their voyage to Thecla’s hospice on the Roman Road—paused at Patmos,
the rocky desert isle, where John, the Beloved, lived in banishment and
dreamed.
The vessel beached at dawn and while the sailors took on a fresh cargo
of fish, Onesimus asked the way to the hut of John, the exile.
The Roman guard was father of the infant girl, whom the Greek sorceress
at Ephesus had leased and maimed to beg; and when the soldier heard from
the seaman of the coin which would ransom six slaves redeeming his
little daughter, the guard told Onesimus how John’s banishment had been
revoked and the aged Disciple had gone to Ephesus by the previous day’s
boat.
“Yonder,” said the Roman guard, “is his prison hut; and yonder, where
you hear the roaring seas, is his Vision Cave—there is the voice of
many waters there—go not too far in—the maids of spray and rainbow
hair”—and the man laughed awkwardly at his own superstition.
The little white stone hut stood on the wave-fretted rocks facing the
burst of sunrise over the green isles of Greece in the blue morning sea.
While the sailors loaded freight, the Bishop wandered up to the prison
hut of the last of the Disciples. It was such a prison hut as Paul had
occupied at Rome—but in a quieter cleaner haven, where the dawn came
over sea and peak in a Jacob’s Ladder to sleeping and waking dreams, up
and down which the Angels might pass from Heaven to men’s souls. Blue
and primrose were the skies above. Emerald and white were the seas
below. Yellow and gold were the spears of the sun, and opal were the
peaks of far mountains swimming between heaven and earth.
The cave was a haven for a seer to dream or commune with God for the
wind played the harp in the gaunt trees growing from the bare rocks; and
the voice of many waters sounded day and night without ceasing, where
wave fret beat in the hollow resounding caverns of rock and landlocked
inlet; and the trickle of receding tides through the fine sands was as
the tinkling of myriad little bells.
Onesimus drew from his traveler’s case a parchment; and here is what he
read, as in a trance between life and death:
“And the sea gave up the dead, which were in it . . . and death and the
grave delivered up the dead, which were in them; and they were judged
every man according to their works . . . and I saw a new heaven and a
new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away
. . . and I heard a great voice out of the heavens saying— Behold, the
tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them and be their
God . . . and shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall
be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain; for the former things are passed away. . . . Behold I make
all things new. . . . Write; for these words are true and faithful . . .
I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life
freely . . . and there shall be no night . . . for the Lord God giveth
light . . . and the Spirit and the bride say—come; And let him that
heareth say come! And let him that is athirst come! And whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely. . . .” When he had finished
reading, the Bishop was no longer in trance. He was in ecstasy. It was
as if the golden light of day dawn had photographed the last message of
the Last Disciple in letters of celestial fire across the firmament of
heaven and earth to all time in a rainbow of eternal hope.
What matter whether his resurrection were a physical body, a soul body,
a spiritual body? Paul, himself, had said, when wrapped away in vision
to a Third Heaven not made of hands, that he knew not whether he was in
“terrestrial” or “celestial” body. Onesimus now knew that neither matter
nor spirit could perish—but only change, and He who had created both
would govern what form they must take in the New Heaven and the New
Earth; and Christ would give that cup of forgetfulness of sin from the
Book of Remembrance, which the pagan Greeks promised from drink of their
sacred spring. Then suddenly, as if in a glimpse of cosmic
consciousness, he knew the veil was very thin—thinner in every cycle of
ages—as the Old crashed down, the New grew up in its place—till the
New became a New Heaven and a New Earth, a New Heaven on Earth; and he
heard the voice of many waters, “not only as the rite of baptism for the
turning from sin,” but as a river of living waters flowing from the
throne of God, to carry mankind to the destiny of the Sons of God. He
knew the crucifixion of his Master had marked the end of a cycle, and
all His followers were the Torch Bearers of the Glad News to future
ages.
The ship anchored at Ephesus too late for the Bishop to get carriage up
from the water front to the city square. As far as one can judge from
the configuration of sands and ruins, the distance was six or seven
miles. Accompanied by the Greek seaman, and the redeemed Temple vestal,
he walked the distance from tide water to city square, where his own
little church and dwelling stood across from the Great Temple to Diana
Artemis. Opposite the pagan Temple, the three left him to rouse the
little beggar boy, who commonly slept under the marble steps. The
Bishop’s intention was to prepare a cloister for these travelers on the
way to Thecla’s hospice to sleep; then snatch a few moments of sleep,
himself, before presenting himself at his own home where the aged John
would be housed and resting.
The silver colossus of the Goddess stood an unearthly wraith in the pale
dawn of the city square. The morning mist came in a long ghostly beam
across his own church into the cloisters on the garden side. Some bird
awakened in the garden and stabbed the morning silence with a threnody
of unutterable beauty. The fountain in the garden fell with the tinkle
of tiny bells as though the flowers rang out their morning hymn, besides
which was no sound but the padded footfall of his own sandals across the
misty church.
He stooped, steadying his hand on a stone bench and loosed the sandals
from his own feet, nor quite knew why he had done it, when a spear of
sunlight struck through the beam of mist aslant his church; and there on
the cot in his own prayer cell lay the figure of the aged Disciple,
John, in a deep sleep motionless and peaceful as death.
Then Onesimus started back in an amaze that was neither fear nor horror.
It was as if his own doubts lay before him slain; for the figure of the
woman, clad all in black, was on her knees, bent over the feet of the
Disciple, sobbing. The air was heavy with the spring hyacinth odor for
the dead, and the weeping woman was breaking and pouring an alabaster
jar of perfumed ointment over the feet of the Beloved and wiping them
with her fallen hair. As she caught glimpse of the Bishop standing in
the half dark of the cell arch, she rose and whispered—
“He is not dead. He only sleeps. There is no Death.”
It was Thecla’s mother.
“He hath but changed his vesture of flesh for vesture of Light,” said
the Bishop softly. “He hath gone to the New Heaven and the New Earth of
his Vision. He is not far away. He has fallen asleep to awaken in the
Garden of God.”
So “fell asleep” John, the last of the Disciples.
When the Bishop and the woman rose from prayer, the freed Greek seaman,
and the redeemed Temple maid and the two beggar children stood in the
cloister arch, waiting to be directed to the Thecla hospice of the Roman
Road.
The Bishop placed his hands on the heads of the beggar children.
“Suffer little children to come unto Him and forbid them not,” he said,
“for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven, for our youth shall lead the
whole redeemed world.”
FOREWORD TO APPENDIX
As a child and later a student, I recall intensely disliking Paul. I
wasn’t quite sure he was a “crazy fanatic and self-hypnotized epileptic
and self-deceived, unconscious fakir,” which I have heard teachers of
youth in our colleges call him; terrible views for a child to hold about
a saintly character—I only set them down to show how wrong teaching can
color our version of the Bible—but I regarded him as fanatical, narrow,
crabbed, sour, domineering, eager to dragoon men into believing as he
did, whether by fear of Hell-fire, which seemed to me a cowardly
fire-insurance policy against retribution or by sheer force of will, I
had not decided. I distinctly disliked saints, whose milk of human
kindness had turned sour. Later, years later, when I came back to read
his life in the sacred records, as I would read with unprejudiced eyes
in the search for facts which we carry to the reading of an ordinary
life, I was amazed and staggered to find he was a small man, frail of
body, short-sighted, suffering some physical ailment from the
persecutions to which he had been subjected, fearless as a lion where
the faith was concerned, humble and simple as a child in other matters,
generous in money matters—see the loan to Philemon—so independent that
while he collected funds for famine in Jerusalem, he would never touch
those funds himself, but supported himself by the making of tents, for
which there was great demand owing to caravan travel being universal,
and so great of heart that his tenderness extended to a little slave
boy, who came to him in Rome and who ultimately became the youngest
bishop in the Christian Church in the third largest city of the Roman
Empire.
About this time I began reading the Bible as I would any other book, or
a newspaper editorial, critically but shorn of early beliefs and
prejudices. I read ignoring chapter divisions and verse divisions, which
too often have provided controversialists with bullets for
sharp-shooting in ambush by wresting sentences from context and meaning,
and using them as “the Devil quotes Scripture” for his own purposes; and
I can conceive of nothing that will restore belief quicker than to read
the Bible as a historical record of the birth and growth of a great
redemptive force for humanity—using redemption as a force in
present-day life, not in a far-away, vague shadowy Kingdom of the
Hereafter.
About this time, too, I realized what one of the greatest American
theologians has frankly admitted—that the worst foes of Christianity
are not its enemies but “the friends in its own house,” and those foes
are sometimes medieval inheritances of superstitious interpretations, of
which we are unconscious; scraps of misapplied, ignorant Sunday-School
teaching. In fact, I have often wondered, if secular teaching were given
with as colossal ignorance of historic data as sacred teaching is given,
how many pupils could pass even a primary examination? How much would be
known of applied science, or even our own secular historic development?
For instance, how many Bible teachers know that Christ and John and Paul
all quote from the Book of Enoch, which is variously dated as from 200
to 120 B.C.? How many know that “the camel and the eye of a needle” was
an Arab expression used to this day? How many know that many of the
expressions precious to the whole world were quoted by the writers from
ancient masters sacred and secular—such as the reference to
“principalities and powers” separating us from the love of God? How many
realize that “oil out of the flinty rock” was not a metaphor, but a
fact—such a fact, that modern drillers for petroleum have found oil in
that very spot? How many know that the fiery furnace recorded in the
book of Daniel to destroy the three young Hebrews is corroborated by
references in the Maccabees and other ancient books to naphtha waters
which burned with a flame to consume all towards whom the wind blew, but
which had a funneling air center inside, which left the furnace harmless
in the middle? How many know that tiles and statuary dug out of the
ruins of Babylon show a man lying unharmed under a lion in the lion’s
den of the king’s royal gardens? We ridicule the story of Jonah and the
whale; yet from the belly of a stuffed sacred alligator in Egypt amid
scraps of waste paper were taken precious lost records of the sayings of
Christ.
The Bible is not much longer than seven short novels. The most of people
read seven novels in a year. The ordinary modern magazine has the same
number of words as a short novel. A great many people read a magazine
from cover to cover once a week. If the Bible were read in the same free
spirit, unclouded by inherited prejudice or taint of “creeds,” the
return to belief among youth would be a thing to astound the world.
Why isn’t it so read?
To quote the theologian—because “the literalists” insist that in the
reading, youth shall read into the context what they dictate rather than
what youth finds of everyday usable livable truths; and to-day, youth
will not be dragooned. He is going to follow the light of truth as he
finds the light of truth and proves the truth. He isn’t going to accept
one set of opinions on Sunday, which he finds won’t work out in everyday
life on Monday. Christianity has to be a workable scheme for every day
in the week, or youth is going to leave the church pews empty and crowd
to “the movies,” to the theater, to the anarchist lectures, to the wild
abandon of joy in the rhythmic emotional dance; and—youth is right.
With unfettered feet and wings of dawn to its soul, it faces always the
new day. It never looks backwards. It rejoices in Life; and Christianity
must be put in terms of youth, or preach to emptier and emptier pews.
Paul never ceased reiterating “Rejoice—rejoice and again I
say—rejoice.” Too often we have clothed a glad and glorious message in
habiliments of age and woe, which are really the consciousness of past
sins and failures. The Communion is not a Doleful Supper commemorating a
death. It is a Loving Cup commemorating a wonderful and glad new birth.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not to-morrow. It is now; or else it is never.
And yet, let us not blame the Middle Age interpretations shadowy with
crime and sorrow. In a carnival of lust and crime and rapine and sword,
the Middle Age Church preserved and conserved for humanity, like an
oasis of the spirit in a desert of materialism, all that has helped
humanity most, and this in spite of the fact it foolishly punished
astronomers, who proved the earth round and burned men who differed by a
hair’s breadth from its “credo.” While it was guilty of these tragical
mistakes of obeying the letter rather than the spirit—as the Pharisees
who crucified Christ, had done before it—the Middle Age Church kept the
faith for us, inspired and conserved art, science, letters, in a
wilderness of barbarism. Who encouraged almost sublime architecture? Who
produced paintings that have never been equaled to this day? Where did
Roger Bacon work out his great, though concealed, truths of science? In
the safety, though it was the imprisonment, of a friar’s cell. Roger
Bacon (1214-1294), the friar at Oxford, wrote these words. Were they
clairvoyant foresight, or the superior knowledge of a scientist from
facts? “Ships will go without rowers and with only a single man to guide
them. Carriages without horses will travel with incredible speed.
Machines for flying can be made in which a man sits. Machines will raise
infinitely great weights. Bridges will span rivers without supports.”
His superior knowledge was ascribed by his superiors to Black Magic; but
Pope Clement IV supported him and ordered his knowledge set forth in
books, of which he wrote three in eighteen months without secretary; but
his own immediate superiors ascribed his marvelous knowledge to
communications from the Devil, and had him imprisoned for fourteen
years. After seven hundred years, the light of that cell comes out to
the world: yet, the men who suppressed him thought they were protecting
God’s word from assault. It can only be added that the history of
ignorance repeats itself with surprising persistence. The good men of
his day were simply trying to tie truth down to the dead line of their
own ignorance. With a charity and a clarity infinite as the love of God,
let us be careful we do not do the same thing.
Rather than condemn the mistakes of the Middle Age Church from whose
darkened and superstitious interpretations we yet suffer, let us beware
we do not repeat their mistakes by shutting out the new light of history
and archæology and science, where we should welcome it.
Christianity does not need to apologize for itself, or beg the question.
When it does that, he who excuses accuses. When it does that, it is off
the carpet in the modern world. It can stand on the solid foundation of
its own truth. If that foundation cracks, it will fall as the Holy City
fell before a New Order. Rather than repel attack, we should welcome it.
Attack is the storm wind that strengthens the hold of the roots on the
eternal rocks. It is the wind that causes the corn stalk to put out guy
ropes above its roots to hold fast to sure foundation. I love to read
attacks on Christian truth if they are sincere and not cheap, cynical,
ignorant sneers, which never get anywhere. They force examination of the
certainty of the facts beneath our faith.
To take but one example of what muddy thinking has done to stir up
shallow waters to make them look deep—consider the furious and foolish
controversy in the modern church over “miracles.” “We believe in
miracles,” shouts one section of the Church, “and if you don’t, we’ll
see that you are put out of the church and prove that you are damned.”
“We don’t believe in miracles and we defy you to put us out of the
church; or we’ll pull down the pillars of youth like Samson as we go
out,” shouts back the other section; and neither stops to ask in simple
clarity:
What is a miracle?
Is it God breaking, or intervening to prevent, the effect of His own
laws?
We have no such phenomena in natural life, and shy back from answering
that question in as bold terms as it is asked.
Or is it the working of a higher law overruling and annulling a lower
law? There are cases of that in nature, as when the effect of a warm and
constant ocean current is annulled by a cold wind from the north; but in
this case, neither law is abrogated. We are getting the effects of each;
but the effect of one is stronger than the other. That might be the
meaning of “a miracle”; but the explanation is so obscure and the
workings so complex and in the unknown, that if that be the conception
of “miracle” we had better not split the church over it. We are dealing
with too many unknown quantities to postulate with mathematical
certainty what we do know and what we don’t of fact, or to exclude from
fellowship on the grounds of what is unknown.
Or is a miracle a superior knowledge of all laws and the use of that
knowledge to get certain effects, such as the knowledge of Roger Bacon,
who was seven hundred years in advance of his time? If that be
“miracle,” the controversy vanishes in thin air.
A century ago, if any man had told us we could see through a man’s flesh
and count his ribs and the joints in his backbone, we would have called
him an unconscious fakir, or a conscious liar. Yet X-rays have worked
that “miracle.”
Fifty years ago, if any one had told us we could go round the world
under the sea like Jonah in the whale’s belly, we would have answered
him in the language of Missouri, “Show me.” Yet the submarine has worked
that “miracle.”
Twenty-five years ago, if any one had predicted we would course the
skies in winged chariots of which you can read a description in the
First Chapter of Ezekiel, we would have told him a comic legend about
Darius Green and his flying machine. Yet the aeroplane has worked that
“miracle.”
Ten years ago, if some one had told us soberly and expecting belief that
he could talk without wire or letter from New York with a friend in
Honolulu, we would have had him examined for his sanity. Yet wireless
has worked that “miracle.”
The impossibility of yesterday is the wonder of to-day and the
commonplace of to-morrow. The laws of the X-ray, of under-sea navigation
in submarine, of air travel in aeroplane, of wireless communication,
existed just as much and the same in the days of Christ as they exist
to-day; but men did not know those laws and did not know how to use
them. “Greater works than these shall ye do,” said the Master. We didn’t
believe Him, though we thought we did; and we witness the fulfillment of
the prophecy. We are heirs to the fulfillment of the prophecy by the
greatest Master in foresight the world has ever known, by One who did
more to set the human soul free of the shackles of ignorance and
prejudice than any other leader of all humanity.
He, who postulates to-day on what is, or is not, miraculous, simply
writes himself down an ignorant muddy-brained thinker, stirring up
shallow waters to make them look deep. The “literalist” in this case
simply tries to bind youth down to “old wives’ fables” and to nursery
beliefs. He tries to level Christian truth down to the dead line of the
most ignorant.
And so of nearly all the disputes in the Christian Church—“the
resurrection,” “the descent into Hell,” “the Immaculate Conception,”
“the letter inerrancy of the Scriptures.” Ask definitely what the
controversialist means by his own terms, and whether agnostic or
fundamentalist, instead of answering you, he backs against the wall of
his “rightness” and hurls thunder bolts of damnation and excommunication
from fellowship at you; and Youth still goes on its way in laughter and
gladness; and I thank God that it does. It would be terrible if
Christianity ever became as static and dead as the faith of the
Pharisee, who crucified Christ because He would not conform to the
letter of the law instead of the spirit.
We should remember the simple words, “He will not wrangle.” All
Christianity asks is—“prove all things.” If they don’t prove up, don’t
take them.
Not long ago, a friend had an experience that illustrates this. For
twenty years, she had practically never read the Bible. She had been
taught the Bible wrong and when the Bob Ingersoll era came on,
ridiculing these vulnerable teachings, she had quit reading the Bible.
As a professor, who teaches teachers in the largest teachers’
institution in America, once said to me: “Really I envy you your naïve
beliefs! I envy any one who can believe that old stuff”; she had
discarded the Bible as a book of myths and fairy tales. She said once “I
can’t read it. I simply can’t read it. I read into it the old impossible
prejudices and creeds I was taught when I was a girl; and now I know
they are not true.” To overcome that mental habit of reading into the
Bible what isn’t in it, I suggested Weymouth’s translation in modern
phraseology with strictest adherence to linguistic scholarship. We miss
some of the old and beautiful phrases in this translation, but we get a
translation free of the old controversial doubtful implied
interpretations. She began re-reading the Bible as she would any other
authentic historic record. In her enthusiasm, she carried her new
treasure to a devout elderly saintly friend of the old school. The
friend sat up in horror. How dare any one suggest there could be any
improvement in the translation of the Bible. The good friend was
evidently in devout and blissful self-righteous ignorance of the sources
of the Bible. She evidently did not know that the Tindale Bible of 1555
was improved in the King James Version of 1611, and the King James
Version was improved in the 1888 version; and there are still phrases
and words which linguistic research is improving. And recall that, in
old texts from which the Bible is taken, some of the old manuscripts did
not use the vowel but left the vowel to be guessed. The good friend—and
she was sincere—mistook the pebbles and the small rocks of the trail up
the slopes of light for the main foundation and the light ahead; and
promptly began hurling those rocks and pebbles at a true seeker after
light.
It was a case of a saint’s shadow darkening a seeker’s trail.
APPENDIX A
CONCERNING PAUL’S MISSIONARY TOURS
AND DISPUTED POINTS
“The Christian religion takes its stand upon the ground of history,”
says Malden in his _Problems of the New Testament_; “but there is now a
feeling abroad that the authority of the New Testament has been severely
shaken by recent studies, if it is not in danger of being destroyed
outright.”
Fifteen years ago, such a statement would have been acknowledged as
voicing general sentiment, not to be denied; and the liberal wing of
scholars would have regarded the statement as grounds for relegating the
New Testament in history to the junk heap of picturesque myths, in which
there was, of course, some dim reflex of events that had happened, but
so embroidered by superstition as to be utterly untrustworthy as a basis
for belief founded on facts; while the literalists would have regarded
the same general sentiment as grounds for blind belief, for dogmas to
embody their blind belief, to which all Christians must subscribe, or be
cast out. Indeed, the most excited and least informed of the literalists
would have gone even farther as late as 1922—they would have passed
laws prohibiting free speech, free thought, the teaching of any brand of
belief but their own. The panic reiteration of dogma was a sad evidence
of lack of faith in the truth beneath their own beliefs.
Truth needs no bludgeon of civil law or religious threat of exclusion.
All it needs is to be put forth with its proofs. He who seeks to
establish his own beliefs by disproving some one else’s—is wasting
precious time. Truth needs only that its torch be held high aloft
lighting the way, and humanity will follow; and the dark illusion called
error will vanish as darkness always disperses before light.
But with the War has come a subtle change. The change of front is
something deeper than a complete collapse of the scheme on which our
civilization seemed founded. It is a something deeper than the fear of
death that took such awful toll in the War. It is deeper than a panic
stampede from the impasse of our own former conclusions.
It is a determination to get at basic truths and with them rebuild a
better civilization. Even if we have to proceed slowly step by step as
up a steep trail of rolling stones to higher outlook, we are determined
to eliminate error and get at truth, on which we’ll found our faith for
the morrow.
The War only hastened a tendency that had been ripening for half a
century. It opened doors long closed in the East to linguistic scholars,
to archæologist’s spade, to such purely secular scientific expeditions
as the American expedition to the deserts of Tartary and Mongolia to
find if the original home of mankind and prehistoric life were really in
Asia.
Men and women back from the horrors of War somehow vaguely realized that
dogmatic religion had not prevented a hideous throwback of civilization
to the practices of barbarism. They discovered with horror civilization
was only skin deep; and while some came back with hopeless fears that
science, in submarine and aeroplane and poisonous gases and armaments of
long-range devilish powers undreamed as possible, seemed to have created
a monster that would devour civilization, like the destruction of the
fabled Atlantis, others came back with a deeper insight. While science
had created the monsters of destruction, it had also discovered the
angels of mercy in surgery, in aeroplane, in wireless, that seemed
almost to rend the veil into the unseen.
So humanity came back from the War seeking foundations for belief in
truth facts—sifting error from truth, proving all things, and holding
fast only to what it could prove and use; and neither science nor
religion asks any other criterion—“Try it; if it works, take it: if it
doesn’t, don’t”; and the latest scholarship declares bluntly
Christianity takes its stand on the ground of history.
The story of Onesimus will be found in outline in the letter to
Philemon. Though Rome had neither Titus’ Triumphant Arch, nor
Vespasian’s magnificent colosseum, when Paul was prisoner in the hut
near the Three Taverns, one can reconstruct from Josephus and from the
Roman historians of the period the character of the Rome in which the
young Phrygian slave found himself enmeshed, and how Paul lived with the
radiance of a quenchless diamond amid the cesspool slime of a great
imperial city in the first stages of its moral decay. How great and
hideous was that moral decay could not be told in a book going through
the mails. Hints of it can be found in Philostratus’ _Apollonius_
(Oxford, 1912). The references to Nero need no proof. They are
well-known history; and if space permitted, the letters, true or false,
of Paul and Seneca could be given. These letters can be found in the
Apocryphal Books of the New Testament, on which Malden (Oxford), Turner
(Oxford), Sir William Ramsay and Bishop Lightfoot have given the latest
best views. At first, my impression was Onesimus might have been a
colored slave like the Apostle later known as “Niger,” but on looking up
the past history of the Phrygian mountain clans, it was easy to see how
the constant raids of robber bands from upper Galilee to kidnap the
mountain boys and girls and sell them as slaves in the cities of the
Roman Road, might have produced a character like Onesimus, and that he
was pure Greek. To this day, the Druse descendants of these mountain
clans have resisted all enslavement. If captured and reduced to
servitude, they become fanatic demons of crime. If left free, they
preserve a peculiarly pure form of Christian belief, though primitive
and superstitious. Felix’s part in clearing out the robber bands of
Galilee is also history and can be found fully given in Josephus though
too often when he rescued the kidnapped victims, it was to resell them
to enrich himself. The jealousy between the sisters—Drusilla and
Bernice—is also given in Josephus. The fact that Felix, who had once
been slave himself, rose to marry the royal and proud line of the Herods
attests a character of peculiar force. The scene in the Cæsarean
Judgment Hall will be found given in the _Acts_, and still more fully in
Josephus. Of later authorities on Paul, besides Malden and Lightfoot,
are Robinson of Cambridge, Rendell Harris in his volumes of 1893 and
1911, Parry of Cambridge, 1920, Smith, 1919, and Kersopp Lake in 1916.
Students wishing to trace back these modern authorities to the ancients
and nearer contemporaries of Paul will find the references in these
volumes leading them back to Clement and Ignatius and Iræneus and hosts
of others. The name of Paul’s custodian on the ship wrecked en route to
Rome is variously spelled, but I have followed the spelling of the
_Acts_. The same name is again found in the fall of the Holy City.
Church historians have been very severe on Bernice, who became a
character famous or infamous—as you will—in Titus’ day in Rome. Her
angling to ensnare the Emperor, who was a young general at the time,
became a joke in the Roman theaters, but would judgments be so severe, I
wonder, if censors looked up the age at which this child was married to
her first husband, and then to silence evil gossip about the affection
between herself and her brother, was married to a second aged husband
whom she at once left? She could not have been more than seventeen or
eighteen, when married to the second husband. All the Herods notoriously
married off their daughters and sisters to strengthen their own insecure
thrones. Women were a pawn for empire; and I, for one, would hate to
cast a stone at a girl of eighteen, who when she found herself a pawn
between lust and power, if she had to pawn herself, aimed at the highest
bidder. The name of Bernice’s second husband from whom she fled—Polemo
or Polemon—should be noted carefully; for it comes again in the story
of Thecla. The royal Roman lady, a relative of the Emperor, was either
wife or daughter of this ancient satyr, and her sympathy for Thecla may
have arisen from her own similar experiences. _Apollonius’ Life_ gives
the brand of the man’s vices. Young Agrippa, the last of the Herod line,
while too weak to master circumstances and rule with the iron ruthless
hand of Herod the Great, was undoubtedly the most decent of all the evil
Herods, and his character as portrayed by Josephus, hardly bears out the
evil insinuations of the Jews, who mobbed and would have murdered both
him and his sister. Paul’s opinion of the young man, we get in the
_Acts_, and Agrippa’s reaction to that appeal does not bear out proof of
a degenerate youth. “Almost,” says the boyish prince, he could not have
been much over twenty, “you would make me a Christian.” All that is
merely hinted here of the Daphne Gardens is mild compared to the truth
that can be found in any Roman record of the day. The lure of the Daphne
Gardens drew many Romans to spend the winter at Antioch, with fatal
results to the morale of officers and governors; and after the fall of
Jerusalem compelled the change of the headquarters of the Christian
church from Antioch to Ephesus. The best testimony to the influence of
the new faith in counteracting the evil of those Gardens is found in the
charges and countercharges when the temples were destroyed, that the
Christians had burned them. It was not with earthly fires they had
burned them but with the divine fires of the faith.
In one secular account of the return of the Roman troops after the sack
of Jerusalem will be found mention of a shipwreck almost similar to that
which overtook Paul on his journey to Rome; and in early Grecian
statuary and pottery will be found ships “trussed” or “frapped” by ropes
to keep the timbers from going to pieces just as recorded in the _Acts_.
Lucian’s history describes the corn ships of the period; and Josephus’
account of a wreck is an exact parallel of Paul’s experiences, except
that Josephus’ ship carried six hundred passengers. “Corn,” it need
hardly be told here, was not our modern corn but such grains as wheat
and barley. Palestine is now known to have been the original area of the
first wheat cultivated in the world.
One very pointed question occurs here. Where Josephus refers to Christ,
his words are: “_Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it
is lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works . . .
he was the Christ . . . and when Pilate . . . had condemned him to the
cross . . . he appeared alive again the third day. . . ._”[3]
[3] By some scholars, this paragraph is regarded as a forgery.
And he hints that the destruction of Jerusalem was divine chastisement
for the murder of James, the disciple. His words are: “The brother of
Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James . . . he (Herod)
delivered to be stoned.” Luke’s account of this in the _Acts_ is: “Herod
the king stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the church; and
killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.” The two accounts do
not seem to agree, but recall all men wore swords in these days, even
the disciples—see the cutting of Malchus’ servant’s ear—and in a
rabble stoning a man to death both accounts may be true. That being
Josephus’ belief, why did he not refer more frankly to Christ as the
Messiah of Jewish expectation? That has been a puzzling question that
has cast discredit on Josephus as historian of the Roman era. Yet it
would not cast discredit on him if one paused to examine the
circumstances under which his history was written. He had been a
Pharisee of the Pharisees, in the best sense, and a Zealot of the
Zealots for the defence of Hebrew rights; but when he saw that Judea had
not a chance on earth against Roman power—that Rome could give order
and law where the Hebrews, themselves, could not, like Isaiah before
him, he counseled coöperation with the strong power rather than the
opposition that would inevitably end in national extinction. In the
siege of Jerusalem, like Agrippa, he went over to the Roman side against
the lawless robber bands, who held and plundered the Holy City. He did
everything in his power to save the city from total destruction by
imploring its surrender till he was stoned away by the fighters on the
walls. When the Holy City was conquered and totally destroyed but for
the Herod Towers on the west, he was taken to Rome and given quarters in
the royal palace, and wrote his record of the Roman era in Palestine for
Titus and Vespasian, as their guest and pensioner. As historian in an
era when emperor worship was being set up by Rome throughout the Empire,
he could hardly issue an official history under Roman approval that
acknowledged Pilate, the Roman governor, had crucified, at the behest of
the Jews, the unacknowledged Messiah. We wish for his own sake he had
frankly given record of the Christ, whose career he must have known in
detail in a land not much larger than Vermont, or say, about a hundred
and seventy-five miles long by sixty broad, which was the area of the
Jewish Palestine in his day. He gives full record of all the High
Priests and the Sanhedrim to the cutting of their throats in the
Aqueduct twenty-five years after Christ’s death. He was in and about
Jerusalem during the most of Christ’s life. Familiar with every foot of
Palestine, that life he must have known; but he is silent because he was
the pensioner of the government that had consented to Christ’s death.
That Paul and Josephus and Apollos must have known one another is
self-evident. Each was a great student of the law and of philosophy.
Each was familiar with the studies of the great philosophies of
Alexandria. Paul quotes from them continually. Paul and Josephus had
both studied in Jerusalem. Paul and Apollos had both spent their boyhood
in Tarsus. Apollos seems to have been the richest of the three, and a
traveled gnostic. Josephus was soldier till he laid down arms in
Jerusalem to become historian in Rome, and he was a liberal Pharisee.
Paul was fanatical student of the Hebrew law till he became follower of
Christ. That Paul was tentmaker did not place a social chasm between him
and the other two; for every Hebrew boy had to learn a trade to forefend
against want in perilous times.
Solely because it would require a library of books to give the
corroborative data of Paul’s life in Rome and in Cæsarea, the data
bearing on Onesimus’s story must here be condensed to notes for
reference.
The Spring Festival in the Roman Empire occurred at almost the same
period of the year as the Jewish Passover and the Christian crucifixion;
so that the tortures inflicted on Christ and the later Christian martyrs
at this period were really to glut the lust for blood that was part of
the old pagan worship. Free gifts for charity to the mob had degenerated
into a bribe to the populace in place of justice. Rome was no longer
Roman. It was a composite of the known world. Though Rome gave her
Empire good laws and stable government, as Apollonius, the sage, pointed
out to the General, Vespasian, she could not ensure the execution of
those laws for two reasons: if she appointed local governors or kings,
like the Herods, to hold loyalty, she could not prevent them exacting
extortionate taxes for their own wealth; if she appointed Roman
governors like Pilate, they could not speak the languages of the
far-flung provinces and had to depend on underlings of native birth, who
perverted Roman justice. The Roman Empire was falling to pieces from
over-extension. Democracy was degenerating to mobocracy and mobocracy to
the tyranny of the Army.
Would the old Idumean guard have been executed for the loss of his
prisoner in the shipwreck? He most certainly would; for Rome was as
ruthless to her own, as to her provincials.
The object in kidnapping a beautiful slave can be found in the four
lives that have been written of Apollonius. We sometimes despair of the
world because religion seems to have done so little to change men. The
despair is the voice of unbelief. Read the old records. The tortures of
Thecla were mild compared to the martyrdom of many a Christian in the
pleasure gardens of Nero, where the victims were dipped in oil and then
tied to stakes, as torches, in ridicule of the claim that they were the
torch bearers of light and glad news.
Rome standing for irresistible brute power, was ever jealous of the
cultured Greeks; and the Greeks returned scorn for scorn—which would
explain why Onesimus, a Greek runaway, was friendless in Rome.
By the time of Paul’s first imprisonment, 63-64 A.D., Nero’s madness was
acknowledged in Rome. The great fire, of which Paul and Seneca
corresponded, took place in 64 A.D., but Rome, rolling in wealth and
luxury, did not want to upset prosperity by destroying good times; and
only after Nero’s suicide and three years of turbulence, when the Army
loomed as a terrible menace, was Vespasian, the strong general, called
to become Emperor.
Regarding the Three Taverns, all through the Empire at this time, the
keepers of the wine shops were women; and in the East, they were called
Rahabs—a name with evil import to us to-day; but all the Rahabs were
not harpies—as witness the Rahab of Jericho in Joshua’s day.
Fuller details of the equinoctial gales at Crete will be given on the
chapter on Apollos and John.
In Malta, or Melita, is St. Paul’s Bay, to this day commemorating the
site of his landing and shipwreck, just as Lud gave London its name, and
the myth of Lud points back to a personality behind the myth.
The songs of the Arabs are the same to-day as in Paul’s time and can be
found in Newman’s _Babylon and Nineveh_.
The whole story of the gladiatorial combat in Cæsarea, to which old
Julius refers, will be found in Josephus. Both sides fought till the
arena swam in blood to the ankles, and of one side not a man was left
alive. Other victor slaves were given their freedom.
Felix, like Herod the Great, tried to clean out the robber bands from
the caves of Galilee; but Felix was charged with selling the rescued
victims as slaves to accumulate a fortune for himself, though he had,
himself, been slave. This can all be found in Josephus with the full
story of the Herod family and their perplexing intermarriages and
repudiations of marriages. Bernice’s flight from her old husband was by
pretense a religious vow, but openly in the theater of Rome, she was
twitted with taking the vow to escape her spouse.
THE FAMILY OF HEROD THE GREAT
Herod the Great
|
| d. 4 B.C. (married five times,
| had ten children, including)
+------------+-----------+-----+-----------+----------+-------+-----
| | | | | |
Aristobulus Alexander Herod Philip Archelaus | Philip
| m. (1) Herodias King of Judaea | Tetrach of
| banished to Spain 4 B.C. | Ituræa
| who divorced him deposed A.D. 6 | m. Salome
| |
| (2) Salome |
| Herod Antipas
| Tetrarch of Galilee
| m. (2) Herodias
+-----------------------+----------------------+
| | |
Herod Agrippa I Herodias Herod
d. A.D. 44 m. (1) Herod Philip King of Chalcis
(Acts 12) (2) Herod Antipas
m. Bernice 1st
+-------------------+-------------------+
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Herod Agrippa II Bernice Drusilla
(Acts 26) m. Polemon 2nd m. Felix (Acts 24)
Titus, Vespasian’s son, not yet thirty, will be more fully described in
the chapter on the fall of Jerusalem. Keep him distinct in your mind
from Titus, the Greek evangelist of Crete, who became Bishop.
Philemon, the merchant of Colossé, Paul’s friend, was converted to the
new faith in Corinth or Athens.
Who were “the friends in Cæsar’s household” of whom Paul wrote? Bishop
Lightfoot shows of the forty-three Christianized Jews and Greeks, who
met Paul when he reached Rome, and whose names may be found in the
letter to the Romans; many were in Roman governmental positions of
trust. Their names can be found scattered through the _Acts_ and the
apostolic letters to Rome and Asia.
There seems almost no reason to doubt that the great Epaphroditus, the
Greek lover of learning, to whom Josephus dedicated his volume, was the
same benevolent Greek of Philippi who supplied Paul with money for his
needs in Rome, and who carried Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and who
seems to have been under surveillance with Paul in Rome; for in Rome,
even if his eyesight would have permitted Paul to follow his mechanical
means of supporting himself by tentmaking, there was not the same demand
as in the East for tents for desert travel, or in Greece for maritime
sailcloth. Aquila and Priscilla, who came later in the Apollos story,
like Paul, were tentmakers. Paul’s knowledge of seafaring was gained as
sailcloth maker.
Always when religious faith wanes, necromancy, clairvoyance, sorcery
thrive. The Old World with its dying faiths both Roman and Grecian, was
now overrun with sorcerers of every description, practising
wonder-working and miracles by methods variously known as Black Magic
and White Magic. The knowledge of the methods underlying these powers
was undoubtedly drawn from India and Persia. Some workers were good and
some were bad. Some miracles were fraudulent and some were undoubtedly
genuine—using the word “miracle” in the sense of wonder-working; only
the Christians, the Essenes, the Gnostics, the Nazarenes refused to work
these wonders for profit. For some reason or other, probably because
they had lost faith in God, and learned magic from the Persians and the
Babylonians, the Jews had become great sorcerers in Paul’s day. More
will be given of this in the chapter on Apollos. It is given also in the
Acts.
The reference of Onesimus to the luminous look, or radiance round Paul
in the half dark, and the old Idumean’s legend of Antioch’s invading
soldiers finding nothing in the Holy of Holies of the Temple between the
Cherubim and Seraphim but a little thin blue flame, would have been
laughed out of any court of evidence by science ten years ago. Not so
to-day. The study of wireless waves is opening the door to the
wonder-world of these waves.
The caution to Timothy as the old soldier put it, “to beware the
widows,” and Paul’s somewhat severe injunctions regarding women to the
churches of Ephesus and Corinth arose from great trouble from the
activities of two women called Euodias and Syntyche, of whom nothing
more is known than that they were quarreling in the church of Clement at
Philippi, who wrote some of the finest and most universally accepted
Epistles, which are _not_ in the New Testament. Clement will be quoted
later. He was Bishop of Rome about the time John “fell asleep.” Turner,
one of the most critical of the higher critics, in his studies on _Early
Church History_, explains why Clement’s _Letters_ are not in our New
Testament. They were not disinterred from Alexandria till 1628, when
they were sent in a present to Charles I, which was seventeen years
after the _King James Version_ came out. Any one who wants to follow up
how desperately dissatisfied the King James translators felt with their
work, should read the _Journals of Evelyn_, a most devout churchman, on
his conversation with the survivors among the translators. Such letters
as Clement’s should be in supplementary readers in every Sunday School
and Church in the land.
While Paul seems to have been prisoner in Rome for certainly two years,
and before coming to Rome, prisoner in Cæsarea for at least as long, he
was not without friends in both places. Philip’s four daughters, who
were prophetesses or teachers, resided in Cæsarea; and Paul seems to
have had great latitude in seeing his friends. This was because he was
not only a Jew but a Roman citizen.
The tendency of modern scholarship is to regard Luke, the physician, as
“the man from Macedonia,” who begged for help. The Greek scholar is
supposed to have accompanied Paul as medical helper.
When Onesimus left Rome carrying the personal letter to Philemon, in 64
A.D. or thereabouts, he also carried along with one Tychicus the
circular letter to the Colossians. These facts can be found in the
postscript to the Epistles, which ought rather to be called simply
Letters with advice for the guidance of the Christians.
In the _Philemon Letter_, I have followed the Weymouth translation,
rather than the _King James Version_, or the _Revised Version_. In fact,
I had read Philemon in the old versions many times before I saw its
beauty. Then one day, I happened to read it in Spanish, and the old
message in a new language of peculiarly graphic imagery shocked me into
a visualization of the picture—the old fighter down and out in chains
awaiting death, the slave running to him for safety, and the crippled
prisoner pleading for, not his own, but the boy’s freedom. Then, I
hunted up the best modern translation I could get—which was Weymouth’s;
and the picture struck me as one of the most pathetic and beautiful
recorded in the _New Testament_. No longer I saw Paul as the hunter of
heretics, the fanatical convert, the tireless preacher of a new creed,
but as a little old man in chains waiting for the headsman’s axe and
writing to Timothy: “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my
departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith.” This was before his second trial. Then
there follow the sad brave lines, “Demas hath forsaken me . . . only
Luke is with me . . . At my first answer no man stood with me, but all
men forsook me . . . the Lord stood with me and strengthened me . . . I
was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” In other words, they could
not throw Paul to the wild beasts because he claimed his Roman
citizenship; so they slew him with the headsman’s axe.
How do we know Onesimus was a mere boy, when with Paul in Rome? This
question will be answered fully in the chapter on John and Apollos.
Suffice to say, Rome had such a surplus of slaves from conquest—there
were more than 30,000 Jews enslaved after the fall of Jerusalem in 70
A.D.—that only those between the ages of eighteen and thirty were
considered of the slightest monetary value. Past thirty, they had either
won their freedom in war, in gladiatorial combat, by purchase, or had
been “worked out” and relegated to the mines, or the farm plantations,
or the galley ships, to die. Onesimus would not have been worth passage
money back to Philemon, if he had been old. The value of a slave had
fallen to $18 of modern money at this time. Human life was the cheapest
and least sacred thing in the world market. Slavery was the dry rot
eating away the underpinnings of the Roman Empire; for while, of a
population of a million and a half in Rome at this time, a tenth of the
people rolled in a luxury undreamed before or since, that tenth lived by
sapping the life blood of the slave hordes, who numbered in Rome alone,
almost a million of the populace.
The theater and judgment hall at Cæsarea, where Paul pleaded his case
before the young Herod rulers, are fully described in Josephus, or in
such modern works as have already been mentioned, or in Dr. Taylor’s
_Paul_ (1881). The city, itself, was reputed to have a population of
200,000; but it was detested by the Jews and chiefly peopled by Greeks,
Phœnicians, Romans, and the riff-raff of Rome’s Asiatic world. Jerusalem
was to the Jew the Holy City but Cæsarea was the city of the conqueror.
Here were held the carnivals, the free feasts, the races where the
chariot wheels wore grooves in the stones, the gladiatorial combats, the
torture of prisoners, the wild-beast combats, and all the hippodrome
exhibitions by which Rome tried to hold the populace loyal. Josephus
gives a description of the Herod here who had caused the death of James,
the great scene in the judgment hall, when the Herod, who was Bernice’s
first husband, appeared in coat of silver mail; how the owl flying in
was observed as an omen of ill; and the King fell in a fit of apoplexy
either from overeating or intestinal troubles.
By the time Paul and Peter perished in Rome, more than nine Christian
bishops had been tortured in the public forums and relegated as broken
wrecks to the mines. All these details will be found in the authorities
already quoted.
APPENDIX B
OLD DOCUMENTS AND MODERN VIEWS
ON THE HEROD FAMILY
The many disputed points preceding the fall of the Holy City do not
enter into this story; but as many students may care to follow up the
history for themselves, the facts of the case with the pros and cons may
be set forth.
Was the Apollos of Paul’s letters the same as Apollonius the great sage
of Asia Minor, variously known as a reformer, a gnostic, a mystic, but
refusing to ally himself with any government or any church? The early
Fathers’ antagonism to the Gnostics was so bitter that a record of it
would fill many volumes.
The New Testament references to Apollos may be counted on one hand. We
hear of him first in the _Acts_, date about 54 A.D., “And a certain Jew
named Apollos born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the
scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the
Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spoke and taught diligently
the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began
to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom when Aquila and Priscilla had
heard, they took him unto them and expounded unto him the way of God
more perfectly. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the
brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; who, when he was
come, helped them much which had believed through grace: for he mightily
convinced the Jews and that publicly, shewing by the scriptures that
Jesus was Christ. And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth,
Paul, having passed through the upper coasts, came to Ephesus.” These
words are written by Luke.
We next find Paul writing to the Corinthians from Philippi about 59
A.D., “Every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of
Cephas; and I of Christ. . . . For while one saith, I am of Paul and
another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who
is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed? . . . I have planted,
Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. . . . Therefore let no man
glory in men . . . whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas . . . and these
things . . . I have transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes.
. . . As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come
unto you with the brethren; but his will was not to come at this time;
but he will come when he shall have convenient time.” Then in a letter
to Titus, now Bishop of Crete, about 65 A.D., Paul begs Titus to bring
“Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing
be wanting unto them.” Titus, it should be added, was a Greek.
This is practically all that is said of Apollos, Paul’s coworker, in the
_New Testament_, except that in one of the early Luke manuscripts on the
_Acts_, Apollos is given as Apollonius; see Turner’s _Early Church
History_.
In Ignatius’ letter to the Magnesians, there is a reference to
Apollonius as a presbyter in the Asiatic Greek Church.
Many authorities, among them Luther, considered that this Apollos wrote
the _Hebrews_.
As to Apollonius, the Gnostic and Sage of Cappadocia, he shunned fame
and the populace to such an extent, though a temple was built and named
after him by a collateral descendant of the same family as rescued
Thecla, no authentic life of Apollonius was written till many years
after his activities had ceased. It is his misfortune that the legends
of his life and letters, which had passed into the hands of the Emperor
Hadrian, were handled by a supercilious court hanger-on, a Greek writer,
who knew nothing of the Gnostics and less of the Christians, and would
have considered either beneath his notice if he had known. Apollonius’
biographer was Philostratus; and though there are constant references to
him in early writings as a reformer, a revivalist, a miracle or
magic-worker, no other authoritative life of him has been given than
Philostratus’, drawn from notes compiled by Damis, Apollonius’
secretary. He seemed to have aroused as violent controversies in his
lifetime as since his death. His learning and piety, no one disputed.
His purity of life was known from India to Rome. He was born rich and
deeded his property over to his brother and his poor relatives. Yet so
great was the veneration of the populace and royalty for him, wherever
he went he lacked naught and traveled in great estate. He was born at
Tyana sometime just before or after the birth of Christ; but like Paul
born at Tarsus, he might still have been a Grecian Jew; and having
studied in Egypt, when young, his birthplace might easily have been
confused as Alexandria. By one class he was regarded as “a sorcerer,” “a
quack,” “a bonesetter in religion”; by another class, as a
miracle-worker and great revivalist; but we must not forget that the
Greeks first called Paul “a beggarly babbler.” He had the gift of
clairvoyance or prophecy, and foretold the famine mentioned in the
_Acts_, the murder of Domitian, and many other events of the period. In
his public addresses, he quoted repeatedly the language of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, John, and Paul—in fact, nine such phrases can be picked out
of Philostratus’ _Life of Apollonius_—to my mind one of the most
striking being where he speaks of “seeing through a glass darkly”—which
his enemies called the superstition of crystal gazing. Origen thought
him a sorcerer. Eusebius called him a philosopher, and in legend he
became in Greek-Asia a sort of St. George, or St. Patrick. He was known
to have been in Ephesus, Corinth and Crete from 60 to 65 A.D. Like Paul,
he had studied in Tarsus. At sixteen, he became a vegetarian or
wandering evangelist, like the Essenes. He undoubtedly possessed the
power of healing and refused all gifts for it. At Daphne Gardens, he
incurred enmity by calling the men “brute beasts.” His lodging was
always in the temples. He seemed to prefer to preach in the pagan
temples, either because he would be sure of a large audience, or secure
from interruption, or to find people whose spirits were blindly reaching
for God. He studied in Egypt, Ethiopia, India and Persia.
Of translations of his life there have been many, Berwick’s one of the
earliest English, Phillimore’s, Mead’s and Flinders Petrie’s, the best
of the latest. Phillimore’s is bitter towards other translators. Mead’s
would, of course, be biased as both Gnostic and Theosophic; but Flinders
Petrie’s can hardly be accused of any bias but scholarship. Thanks to
Flinders Petrie, the details of Apollonius’ life are now known more
fully than any other Apostle except Paul. There are still differences as
to certain dates, but roughly, I think the following dates are accepted
by the majority of scholars. Please compare with Paul’s letters.
Born 4 or 6 B.C.
Tarsus 11 A.D. as a student.
16 to 21 A.D. under the discipline of speechless silence traveling
through Asia Minor and the East.
23 to 43 A.D. teaching, preaching, studying in Antioch.
43 to 45 A.D. India and Persia.
45 to 46 A.D. Crete, Sparta, Athens, Corinth.
46 to 59 A.D. unknown.
59 to 65 A.D. Corinth, Ephesus, Crete, Greek Asia.
66 to 68 A.D. Greece, Rome, Spain, Africa, Sicily.
69 A.D. Egypt and Alexandria and Phœnicia and Antioch and the East.
83 A.D. Ephesus and Crete.
Somewhere here he suffered trial for disrespect to Emperors; a most
dramatic story as given by Phillimore.
83 to 96 A.D. preaching and teaching in Ephesus and Crete.
When he had reached the age of a century, he disappeared in Crete as
told in a later chapter.
Where Paul went out for the Gentiles to call sinners to repentance, and
Peter seems to have gone among the dispersed Jews of the Euphrates and
Rome, Apollos went forth to call “the righteous” to repentance; and from
the records of the times, the call to the sod-bound “righteous” seemed
as badly needed as the call to the sinners.
Now whether Apollos were Apollonius, I do not know. They lived in the
period in the same places. For fiction purposes to throw the flashlight
on the conditions under which the Apostles labored, it does not matter;
but granted he may have been, isn’t there a dilemma in having him East
of the Dead Sea, on his way back from the Far East?
Didn’t Apollonius, according to the legendary life of him, come back
from India by the Red Sea to Egypt? Didn’t he meet Vespasian in
Alexandria; and wasn’t he sent by Vespasian on an errand to Tarsus,
North of Palestine? How then, would he go East of the Dead Sea towards
Damascus? Fiction could brush these questions aside as immaterial in a
story; but it does not need to. From 66 to 70, every port in Egypt,
Palestine and Grecian Asia was packed with the Roman Armies hurrying to
crush Jerusalem. Christians had already hurried east of the Jordan and
Dead Sea to hide in the caves of the desert as Christ had warned them to
do, when he foretold the destruction of the Holy City. Travelers from
the Far East to Grecian Asia had to follow the Damascus Road; for they
could not safely venture in the war zone of the Coast and Jerusalem.
How do we know Peter was in Babylonia? Because he says so in one of his
letters. Critics say the Babylonia he mentions is really Rome. I leave
that dispute wide open. There is no proof Paul and Peter were together
in Rome, when the former was executed. Paul’s death is given variously
as between 67 and 69 A.D. Note John’s references in the _Apocalypse_ to
“the two witnesses” in the other world! If Peter hastened from the
Euphrates to take up the work of Paul’s dispersed followers in Rome—and
there is no proof of Peter being elsewhere in these years—he must have
hastened for Rome almost contemporaneous with the revolt that ended in
the overthrow of Jerusalem; for his death by crucifixion took place soon
after Paul’s. Onesimus’ trip to Peter in the East is, of course, pure
fiction, for Peter’s first round-robin letter to the churches of Asia
was sent by Silvanus, a friend of Paul; and very few details are known
of the second letter. They are dated 60 to 66 A.D. The Vatican books in
this period are invaluable to all students of early Christianity. They
reject ruthlessly all fabulous stories. See “Pope’s Aids to the Bible,”
Vol. II; and Fouard’s “St. Peter.”
How do I infer that in the siege of Jerusalem the Herod women were sent
for safety to the Herod Fort east of the Dead Sea instead of west?
First, because the Herod Fort on the west side of the Dead Sea was in
the hands of the rabble zealots and bandits, and was therefore against
Rome and the Herods. It was one of the first forts to be reduced after
Jerusalem. Second, because the Herod Fort east of the Dead Sea was
always an arsenal of defence against revolt and against the invasion of
Arab and Idumean from the east. Here, the Herods had their family
country place in distinction from the Palace in Jerusalem and from the
public buildings in Cæsarea on the sea. Here, Herod the Great
entertained Cleopatra and spurned her blandishments. Here, the Herods
retired with their families for family conference and often for the most
terrible crimes known in family history. It was a secret fort. Here were
the sulphur baths. Near Jericho were their pleasure gardens. Here, it is
now almost universally agreed, John Baptist was imprisoned and executed;
and Herod the Great passed the hideous days preceding his hideous death.
I can’t prove it was where they were kept for safety during the siege of
Jerusalem; but it does not seem to me there was any other place where
they could have been safely kept; for Cæsarea was in wild disorder.
Bernice had gone down to Jerusalem from her old spouse in Syria to lay
her plans for Titus, the Roman general; but as far as we know until the
end, she was not in the siege. Agrippa was with the Roman forces
throughout. Herodias’ madness and remorse can be found in her banished
husband’s letters. The final fate of the last of the Herods beneath
Vesuvius’ eruption can be found in Josephus.
Letters from Pilate to Herod, from Herod to Pilate, give the data as to
Herodias’ blindness. In these letters, Herodias’ daughter is referred to
as a younger Herodias, not as Salome. Therefore I left Salome out of
these stories. The fiction woven about Salome’s name in modern
literature seems to me the most perfect example of sensualizing and
degrading biblical records that could be devised. The most cursory
glance at the Herod family tree show she must have been little more than
a baby at the time of the Baptist’s death—certainly under eight or ten.
When you consider the colossal pyramid of unclean modern literature and
music built on Salome’s name, it isn’t much of a testimony to the modern
heart being much cleaner than the Herod heart which we condemn.
The superstition of the flower foretelling the lovers’ fate, which has
come down to our own day in the petals of the field daisy, dates back to
the very lotus flower worship of India and Egypt.
The legendary “Ardath, the Field of Flowers” is, of course, from the
Persian and will be found in the _Book of Esdras_. In fact, to
understand this whole era, no student should fail to read _Esdras_ and
_Enoch_, which are parallel in writing and sentiment to _Daniel_ and
_Revelation_. Pilate’s fate and letters will be found in the _Apocryphal
New Testament_.
Malden thinks from Paul’s letters to the people of Thessaly 54 A.D.
that, up to the assault on Jerusalem in 69-70, many of the Christians
still looked for Christ’s second coming in glory and majesty and power;
but in the letter to Cornith, when Paul had drawn his immortal picture
of “the celestial body,” it is evident the Christians knew they were
working for and in an Invisible Kingdom such as Onesimus described.
Malden gives the correct chronology in which the books of the New
Testament were written; so that one can follow the fuller and higher and
closer outlook the workers were attaining of their own mission.
Details on the trails down to the Jordan at this time can be found in
Josephus, or Thomson’s famous _Land and the Book_. There is a full
description of Machærus Fort in Thomson also.
It is interesting to note that the Roman Consul, who befriended Paul at
Corinth in the days of his work with Apollos, was Junius Galleo, a
relative of Seneca’s, which seems to bear out that Paul and Seneca knew
each other in Rome. In this period before Paul’s death, Burrhus, Nero’s
handy man, was sent again and again on messages from the Jews of Cæsarea
and Ephesus to Rome.
Where was Mariamne, Herod the Great’s proud wife, murdered by him? Her
tomb has recently been discovered near Jerusalem; but it was in the Fort
east of the Dead Sea that Herod went mad with remorse over his crime
against her.
APPENDIX C
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALL OF
JERUSALEM AND THE BREAKING UP
OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The fall of Jerusalem was of deeper, subtler significance than the
surrender of any one of the countless cities which were subject to Rome.
Rome had passed through a few years of terrible turbulence after Nero’s
suicide in 68. When Vespasian, the steady-headed general with the Army’s
strength and loyalty behind him, surged to the crest of the turbulence
as Emperor in 69, Rome realized in order to stabilize her entire Empire,
she must crush rebellion or revolution wherever found. If one city like
Jerusalem, or one little province like Judea not much larger than
Vermont or New Hampshire, could defy Roman power, all the Eastern
provinces would flame in revolt; and there were certain considerations
that particularly embittered the Romans towards the Jews. From at least
thirty or forty years before the birth of Christ, the Jews of Jerusalem
had been granted special privileges by the Roman Senate. They were
allowed freely to exercise their own peculiar religious rites. Their
huge temple revenues from Jews in every part of the world were left
untouched by Rome. Though a head tax had been imposed from the days of
the census in Christ’s boyhood—supposed not to have exceeded from fifty
to sixty cents of modern money—the Jews paid no other tributary taxes
to Rome. Certain seaport towns, from the borders of Egypt in the south
to Asia Minor on the north, seemed to have paid some sort of municipal
tax in excise, which went to the members of the local rulers like the
Herod family as a personal revenue or bride’s dowry; and yet all local
rulers amassed colossal fortunes. How did they do it? By the perversion
of justice. While the Jews had their own courts dominated by high
priests, these court decisions were subject to appeal to Rome; and as
evident in the case of Paul and Felix and Festus at Cæsarea, a bribe
could buy freedom or friendship. Paul could have had his liberty if he
had paid a bribe. He would not and was held for two years. Then, while
the Roman generals cleaned out the robber bands and kidnappers of the
desert and Galilee and Dead Sea caves, they too often, like Felix, sold
both defeated brigands and brigand prisoners as slaves for immediate
profit.
Now the Roman in religion was all things to all men. He set up the
goddess Roma in the temples with the features of whatever emperor
happened to be ruling, not because he believed his own ruler a god, but
because he saw that the great diversity of gods in the East split the
Empire up into warring factions; and Rome aimed to unify her Empire by
religion, and doubtless winked cynically at neglect to worship the
goddess Roma, as long as no disrespect was offered the statue; but
statue, image, picture, painting—all were abhorrent to the Jew, who
regarded all outside the pale of the chosen people as cursed by God; so
the Jews abominated the conqueror Romans; and the Romans despised the
Jews as bigots, fanatics, stiff-necked factionists.
What added gall to bitterness with the Jews was that, from the time of
the captivity in Babylon and Persia, from five to seven centuries before
Christ, they had not known a national, safe, stable government of their
own. There were more Jews in Egypt and Asia Minor than in Palestine.
Faction had followed faction; revolution had followed revolution till
the Chosen People were the prey to any conqueror from Egypt to Persia;
and so there grew up the hope of a Redeemer, a Messiah, a royal son of
the line of David, to throw off the conqueror’s yoke and lead them to
victory. Such a Messiah, the prophets and the scrolls of the prophets
foretold. A Sadducee might be a bigoted sceptical materialist, but when
he heard the scrolls of the seers of 500 to 700 B.C. read, predicting
exactly what had happened to Babylonia and Assyria and Persia and
Greece, the agnostic Sadducee was not prepared to deny there might be a
Messiah. Somehow, in the modern mind, the Pharisee is held in lower
esteem than the Sadducee. The Pharisee was a gentle and, it might be,
attudinizing self-conscious poseur; but he was a scholar, and he was
liberal, and he was a gentleman. The Sadducee was a hard, ignorant,
materialistic bigot. He swore by Moses, but denied a future life and set
himself to grasp all the good things of this life within reach, and had
at the time of Christ’s death captured the best sinecures among the
offices of the high priests and council of seventy. He hated the Roman
with a bigoted, materialistic hatred, though he played politics with him
for his own job. The disappointment of both Sadducees and Pharisees at a
poor Nazarene named Jesus, calling himself the Messiah and gaining an
enormous following, flamed into delirious fanatic frenzy; and just then
rose the Zealots and Sicarii (short sword fighters) shouting “freedom at
any cost” and rallying all Jews in the Passover of spring—when more
than two million pilgrims visited the Holy City—to rise and throw off
the Roman yoke. The city gates were shut. The citizens inside had no
choice but to join the rebels, or let themselves down by ropes from the
walls at night and flee for the desert; but many citizens, knowing the
power of Rome and having all their means invested in Jerusalem, tried to
compromise. They were plundered, tortured, murdered. Women and children
were held for ransom, or hostages for the loyalty of the waverers; and
the rebellion that had flamed up in the name of “freedom” presently ran
lawless riot under an ægis better named “folly”; and for seven months
the Holy City was ruled by brute-beast crime and anarchy. If the
Sadducees and the Pharisees had intrigued with the rebellion at first,
they were now trapped in their own intrigue, for they saw their temple
chests rifled of the revenues of almost a century, the gold sheathing
ripped from the great pillars and colonnades, the holy wine brought from
vault and cellar and poured out, mingled with human blood, in a deluge
of frenzied debauch that lasted from spring till autumn—seven long
months. Famine only rendered the conditions more desperate. If the
Zealots surrendered now, they knew they would be put to the sword and
lose the loot hidden in the secret aqueduct under the Temple; so they
fought with the maniacal frenzy of cornered beasts. The Pharisees and
Sadducees of the Sanhedrim would now have surrendered to Rome; but the
Zealots pursued them into the Holy of Holies and either stabbed them
there and threw their bodies in the aqueduct below, or pursued them into
the very aqueduct, where they were slain.
Keep in mind the configuration of the Holy City at this time—the Herod
Palaces to the west, the great Temple to the east, the whole city like
an eagle’s nest on the flat top of a lofty rock. Between the Temple and
the Palaces lay the main body of the cramped, crowded city
thoroughfares. This central city lay in a slight depression. Between the
Temple east and the Palaces west ran an overhead bridge. Below ran a
very large underground aqueduct, which supplied water to the Temple. The
water supplies came from pools and cisterns used at the Palaces and were
sluiced on during the great yearly sacrifices through the aqueduct to
run under the Temple and carry off the refuse to the precipice to the
east or south of the Temple. When the sacrifices were over, the water
was turned off the aqueduct and presumably used for the Royal Palace
enclosures.
The best description of ancient Jerusalem is in Josephus covering
hundreds of pages; of modern Jerusalem is in Thomson’s _Land and Book_;
but until the transfer of control of the Holy City from Turkish power,
it has been impossible to examine the underground passages beneath the
city of which there are many, or the lines of the old Herod walls.
Within fifty years of Christ’s death, the site of the Temple was plowed
and a shrine set up to a pagan Venus.
Whichever way the war befell, the Herod regime was doomed. By rebellion,
the Jews had forfeited their privileges. There could be no royal
revenues for the Herods through local governments. If the Zealots had
triumphed, then Roman protection would no longer hold the Herod throne
secure; and the Herods were hated by the populace.
Up to the final truce portrayed in the story of the fall of the Holy
City, Titus, the commanding Roman general, had exercised great clemency
and forbearance. He had permitted refugees from the beleaguered city to
pass through his lines untouched, to the desert beyond Jordan. He had
sent emissary after emissary to the more intelligent section of rulers
to advise them to save themselves by surrender; but each peace mission
had met with treachery and insult. Twice in sorties of semipeace
messengers, Titus had been cut off from his own soldiers and almost
slain; so it was necessary to call to the aid of the regular Roman Army,
the Macedonian Mercenaries; and from that moment, Jerusalem was doomed,
for the Mercenaries were paid in plunder.
Titus was at this time not yet Emperor; but among the Jewish writers,
all rulers from Rome are referred to as Cæsar, or Emperor, or King. The
Herods were really only deputies; but they were always called Kings.
Titus was still a very young man and his leading general, Trajan, could
not have been very much past his early twenties. In the most
scandal-loving age Rome ever knew, very little has come down in history
against Vespasian and his son Titus. Both men were essentially soldiers
and cared little for the empty noise of triumph and kingship, though to
keep the populace loyal Titus erected the Great Arch, under which more
than 30,000 Jewish captives passed and on one side of which the Jewish
Tables of the Law were represented. Vespasian and Titus built the Temple
of Peace to celebrate the victory; but if you read Josephus carefully,
it will be found this was more in concession to mob politics than to
glory in triumph. It was to impress the seething East with fear of
Rome’s power.
The attempt of the Nazarenes and the scribes to save the sacred scrolls
is history, not fiction. Many old Hebrew scrolls mentioned in the Old
Testament were lost forever at this time. There were the _Book of the
Covenant_, the _Book of the Law_, the _Book of the Wars_, _Acts of
David_, _Samuel the Seer_, the _Book of Gad_, David’s _Seer_—and seven
other volumes not embodied by Ezra in Scripture, but known to the Jews.
Among the lost scrolls there is a story told of the _Book of Jasher_ of
which an 1840 translation lies before me. This book is mentioned in the
David wars, and several forgeries of _Jasher_ appeared. It is said the
genuine _Jasher_ was brought from Jerusalem by Titus. When his officers
went to plunder the city, one _Sidrus_ found in a secret wall chamber in
an ancient scribe’s house, a library of books among which sat the old
scribe reading. Somehow, _Jasher_ was carried by the Army officers to
Seville and in 1613 it was printed in Venice.
That many old scrolls were carried to Spain either by the dispersed
Jews, or by the Roman Army, there is no doubt; for after the expulsion
of the Moors from Granada centuries later, thousands of such Hebrew
volumes were burned in mistake for pagan Arabic. Intolerance and fanatic
ignorance are dangerous weapons, whether ancient or modern.
As to the interpretation given to the Zodiac and to the prophecies by
the Nazarenes in the Herod Tower the night of the fall of the Holy
City—this is fiction; and had to be, for Gnostics, Essenes, Nazarenes,
Sadducees, Pharisees, Theosophists, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Hindoo
scholars all disagreed violently on what the signs of the Zodiac
portended, or how the events proclaimed by the seers of old should be
fulfilled. There isn’t any doubt at all that the prophecy of Jeremiah
was being fulfilled literally before the very eyes of the watchers in
the Herod Towers; but when you come to the winged chariots with wheels
in Ezekiel—where the Eastern mystic would see the wheels as symbols of
planetary chains, the western literalist would see a modern aeroplane
coursing the clouds.
On one thing Eastern mystics and Western literalists would agree—the
fall of Jerusalem marked the crash of the Old and the birth of the New.
One Order had died. A New Order was born; and the old seeress voiced the
expectation which is so rife even to-day that the sword will yet give
place to the plowshare; that humanity shall pass to and is working
towards a more spiritual sphere, where we may have what the scientists
call a sixth cosmic sense and command the powers of water and air.
Wireless waves give us the first inkling of this power.
The statement that “Israel burnt her children on the walls” to the Fire
God is not fiction. It is true. It is to be found in the Bible; and
within the last ten years jars have been dug up in Palestine where the
bodies of cremated infants were so offered.
Space does not permit going into the mystic sign of a virgin in the
Zodiac. We have only to remember the Zodiac came from the Far East; and
so did the Persian magi to Christ’s manger. Another point worth noting;
the Apostles, now grown aged, knew the Messiah’s kingdom was not to be
an earthly kingship. They learned this very slowly, but the fall of the
Holy City must have clenched forever the convictions.
There is another very interesting point here, which will be discussed
more fully in the last chapter. The cry of the maniac on the walls is
not fiction. It is fact. It will be found in Josephus. It is almost the
very wording of the cries of despair in John’s _Apocalypse_. In John’s
Vision are two references to the Temple as still standing; and this
brings up the question, was the _Apocalypse_ written long before John’s
death and not somewhere round 90 A.D.?
Please note—there were bad earth tremors all over the world from 66 to
68, 69, 70 and 79, from Vesuvius to the Dead Sea. It was the last great
eruption that took the lives of the three Herod descendants on Naples
Bay; just as it was doubtless one of the earlier tremors that threw the
great Temple door to the east open during the siege. This door was
opened only once a year at the Passover.
There was a record that though Matthew passed through Cæsarea, where
Philip’s prophet daughters dwelt, and through Jerusalem on to Egypt, a
copy of his Gospel in Hebrew was first found in Cæsarea. This is
discussed fully in the volumes already named on the apostolic days.
Was “the son of one Lazarus of Bethany,” the son of Christ’s friend? The
dates would seem to prove the possibility. On the other hand, though
Bethany was a very small village, the name Lazarus was a very common
one. The story of this escape from the city is found in Josephus.
That Herodias’ husband had been banished from Palestine to the Danube
and from the Danube to Spain will be found in the _Herod Letters_
already quoted.
The location of the Antonia Tower was exactly as given in the story—a
bastioned high Tower ascended by circular steps inside, with the east
wall joining the roof and upper galleries of the Temple, the west side
of the Tower running along the parapet of the North Jerusalem Wall to
the Herod Towers of the Palaces on the west side of the city.
APPENDIX D
THE DISPUTES AS TO THECLA IN
LEGEND AND HISTORY
Concerning the story of Paul and Thecla, there are fortunately very few
controversial questions that cannot be answered definitely and simply.
Was there ever any real Thecla?
If so, how much of her story is legend, and how much history?
And of the known history, how closely have the facts been followed in
the story?
Many of the Paul and Thecla legends must be ascribed to folklore of the
Roman Road, much of it wildly exaggerated; but beneath the legends is
the fact of some young woman martyr converted by him in Iconium, Derbe
or Lystra, escaping the ordeal of wild beasts and fire, whether in
Antioch or Iconium, and leaving a tradition of having retired to the
caves, where she established one of the first monastic houses among the
Greeks, and drew away the Daphne dancing girls from sensual pagan rites
of the Temples to such an extent that the merchants of Antioch were so
maddened at the fall off in trade of sacrificial beasts, images and
incense to pleasure seekers and winterers from Rome that they plotted
against the lives of the Christian refugees hiding in the mountain
caves.
How much of her story is legend, and how much history?
Tertullian says her story, as given in the _Apocryphal_ New Testament,
was forged by a writer of Asia. Yet Eusebius, Gregory and a dozen others
before the fourth century refer to Thecla as having been a genuine
character, whom legend had obscured and magnified as mist hides and
exaggerates real figures in real life. Basil of Seleucia wrote her life
in verse. Another Scholastic reports how an emperor had visions of her.
The original version of her life on which this story is written is now
in a Greek manuscript in the Bodleian Library and was regarded by Middle
Age biblical students as largely legendary, but a picture of the status
of woman in the first century in Greek Asia. The references to the names
of Paul’s associates and the apostates from the faith are the same as in
the _Acts_, but whether Thecla is to be regarded as “the half wit,” who
followed Paul, or one of “the honorable women” won to the faith, it is
impossible to tell. It is disappointing here to have to record that
while the Catholic, Armenian and secular writers acknowledge Thecla as a
fact, the great Presbyterian divines nearly all ignore her, though they
quote in full the descriptions of Paul, from the life of Thecla. This
strikes me as not exactly according to the rules of good sport. If the
Thecla account of Paul is true, why isn’t the account of Thecla true? It
is interesting to add there is a biblical manuscript in the British
Museum, presented to Charles I, 1628, said to have been copied by
Thecla, the Martyr. It includes the Epistles of St. Clement. The Vatican
“Aid to Bible Students” wisely rejects the fables of Thecla’s Life; but
all scholars accept the fact there was a Thecla, Martyr.
Iconium itself, or Konieh of to-day, was a city of 30,000 people, noted
for its wool and leather, carpet and tent industries. It was a sort of
halfway house for the Greeks from the Isles of the Sea and the desert
travelers of Persia and Babylonia. The church where Paul preached at
Iconium has been found by modern archæologists.
What do modern scholars such as Ramsay and Turner say of Thecla?
I quote from Turner’s review of Ramsay’s _Church in the Roman Empire
before A.D. 170_: “The Acts of Paul and Thecla do not . . . come to us
. . . in the best of company . . . and contain all the marks which
characterize this whole class of forgeries.” He then refers to mistakes
in the place names of the Bodleian copy and the belittling of marriage
which betrays the author of this manuscript as a Gnostic or Essene; “and
yet . . . the details have probability . . . and it is doubtful . . .
how far it is possible to disentangle the original matter from . . .
recasts.” It was on Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts XIII, 51). He
was following the Roman Road of Augustus and branched to Iconium. He is
described as “small, bald and bow-legged, with close-meeting eyebrows
and long nose, but graceful, gracious and radiant.” Ramsay accepts this
description of Paul in the Thecla legends. At Iconium, his host was the
Onesiphorus, mentioned in his letters, and he was pestered by the
frantic jealousy of the Demas and Hermogenes, also mentioned in his
letters. Paul was accused of causing friction between man and woman; and
he was scourged and expelled from the city. There follows the story much
as I have given it here, with long details and repetitions and
embellishments left out. When Nero used the bodies of Christians as
torches for his pleasure gardens and a Herod daughter had to flee from
an old satyr, whom her dowry had bought—it is a pretty sound inference
without any legendary exaggeration that a young girl, who joined the
despised Christians and refused to marry her lover, would be treated
without mercy in an age so sensual that sex had become an untellable
part of religious worship.
And now we come to one of the proofs that Thecla was more than legend.
The _grande dame_ who adopted her is variously named Trifina, Trefina,
Tryphæna of the house of Polemon (date of reign 37 B.C. to 63 A.D.). It
was to one of the Kings of the house that Bernice was the second time
married and from whom she fled to Jerusalem. He was a converted pagan to
the Jewish faith, probably to get Bernice’s dowry. The Herod daughters
were half Arab, but they were also half of the Jewish high-priest blood;
and union with what one historian calls “these half-breed brutes” proved
too strong for even Herod blood. Trefina was daughter of a Polemon from
44 A.D. to 63 A.D. This Polemon’s wife had been a first cousin to the
Emperor Claudius and ruled over Pontus jointly with her son till about
40 A.D., when she retired. Her daughter had died, and the query is—was
her son the man who married Bernice; or had Trefina’s husband discarded
her and married Bernice? Her son was reigning at the time she passed
through Iconium. Her dead daughter’s name is given as Falconilla, the
same as in the legend of Thecla. To know the type of the vice of this
house one must read Apollonius’ _Life_.
Practically the verdict of Ramsay and Turner on Thecla is, “the _Acts of
Thecla_ . . . expand the hints of St. Luke and throw a welcome light on
the social conditions.” Luke refers to “many women” attending Paul’s
services in the house of Onesiphorus. In other words, Thecla was a
personality, but her real history is lost in legend.
Of the legend, how closely have the facts been followed in this story?
Modern decency would not permit all the details of the insults to
Thecla, so these are shortened in the story here. She was exposed not
only in the arena of Iconium but in the arena of Antioch for repulsing
the lewd advances of the city magistrate, who in one of the fêtes
represented the god Roma and proceeded to claim her as a vestal virgin.
All these details have been omitted or shortened in the story, and her
experiences have been centered at Iconium.
For the rest, the story conforms to the facts of the age. The Greeks
were the rich trader class despised by the soldierly Romans. Men were
addicted to effeminacy, jealousy, self-adornment; and the Greek matrons
chased their daughters into early marriages to avoid having evidence of
age in their family. Paul was called a “Jewish babbler” here as he was
in Greece. Girls who would neither marry nor become temple vestals were
thrust in the streets as courtesans. The red cord of the courtesan
marked the difference between the temple virgins consecrated to the god
and the temple girl kept as a bait for lust and revenue, of which one
Aphrodite Temple had a colossal revenue. Gnostics will deny that the
names of “the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost” were used in baptism
before the fourth century. I refuse to discuss the controversy—it is
nonessential to the true picture of conditions set forth in the story.
There is one interesting minor point for the argumentative to worry
over. Paul refers again and again to the man with shaved hair, the woman
with unshaved and covered head, both references really advising the
Christian away from the temple vices which becurled men and women with
short red-corded hair symbolized. There is a reference to Paul taking a
vow, himself, that carried him to Jerusalem. (Acts xviii, 18). He had
his head shaved. Now, the Thecla legend describes Paul as “bald,” like a
man who, Roman fashion, had always worn his hair short. Yet the most of
the pictures of Paul and the other early saints represent them with hair
like a thatch, beards like Druids, and expressions about as cheerful as
an inverted tablespoon, though their evangel was called “the Glad News,”
and the keynote of Paul’s life was—“Rejoice.”
APPENDIX E
CONCERNING THE EARLY GNOSTICS AND
APOLLOS AND APOLLONIUS AND JOHN
With the bitter and raging disputes, regarding the writing of the
_Apocalypse_; whether John followed the Gnostics or the Gnostics
followed John; whether John was the son of Zebedee, whose mother once
pleaded that he might sit at the right hand of Christ throned in his
earthly kingdom, or whether this John was a younger man; whether the
Gospel was written before or after the _Apocalypse_; whether the “Beast”
symbolized a dragon of approaching universal anarchy, or Rome’s brute
power, or the goddess Roma in the Temple; whether Onesimus, the runaway
slave, was Onesimus, the young bishop of Ephesus; whether the passing of
Apollos is legend or fact; why a man like Apollos, of whom the
contemporary literature of the day is full of references, was so
completely ignored by all the early writers of the church except three
or four, the last story of this volume as fiction has nothing to do.
The object has been to shun controversy as a smoke screen concealing
facts under prejudice and ignorance, and use the story only to throw a
flashlight on early conditions; but for students, who wish to come to
their own conclusions and not have other people’s conclusions rammed
down their throats, a few references will be given, which can be
followed up.
First, it was self-evident to all the Christian communities by the last
quarter of the first century A.D.—in which the story is timed—that
Christ had not come to set up a glorified earth kingship. Rather, he had
come to transmute the earth kingdom into a régime so in harmony with His
own Unseen Kingdom that it would transmute the world into a New Heaven
and a New Earth. This was the Christian’s job, first in getting himself
cleansed of sin, second in working for humanity, and it was now apparent
it was a long job stretching down the centuries; so the writings of
John, instead of being “close ups” as the movies would put it, are
telescopic flashes back to the night of time and creation and telescopic
flashes forward to the eternity of soul and universe; and the pivot of
the telescope is the little flash between past and future called “now”;
and the eye looking through the telescope to past and future is John’s.
Here are a few historic facts as guide posts.
The fall of Jerusalem had driven the Christians from Antioch to Ephesus,
for reasons already given—Antioch was overrun with the Army. While
Ephesus was not a great commercial center like Corinth, it was the third
city of the civilized world as a center of learning, worship, culture,
wealth. Rome ranked first. Athens came next, Ephesus and Alexandria
next.
From the time the goddess Roma was set up, the temples began to be
deserted; and this infuriated Rome, who hoped to see the new deity unify
her crumbling empire in a new cohesion. The Nero persecutions of 64 to
68, which had been the diversion of a cruel madman, now became the set
policy of the Empire under Domitian, and ran a terrible course from 81
to 96 A.D. The Christians were dispersed, but they were not immune.
Again and again we find that Demetrius, the silversmith, who gave Paul
such trouble as related in the _Acts_, called to confer in Rome as to
the restoration of the old religions. See the _Life of Apollonius_. The
falling away from the temples not only alarmed the Empire, but
dislocated trade. It hurt the silversmith’s trade from Ephesus to
Damascus and cut off an enormous yearly market for the cattle and sheep
of sacrifice. The pocket nerve was touched; and the cruelty of an acute
anger was mingled with the most diabolical obscene falsehoods to destroy
the new Christian cult.
Nothing disloyal could be proved against John; so his banishment to
Patmos was revoked. Frightful volcanic fires could be seen from Patmos
during John’s stay there, and the whole Mediterranean rang with the
horror of the Vesuvius eruption. We may find tinges of this in his
_Apocalypse_. See Peters’ _Bible and Spade_, Beckwith’s _Apocalypse_,
Turner’s _Early Church History_, Malden’s _New Testament_, and the other
authorities mentioned in former supplementary chapters. Irenæus says
John settled and lived in Ephesus till the reign of Trajan. He is
supposed to have come back from Patmos to Ephesus and helped in a
training school for Christian workers there. Ephesus was the very center
of Platonic and Gnostic learning at this time; and the Gnostic beliefs
of the “Logos” or “Word” run all through John’s writings. There is a
curious difference in John’s attitude to Rome in the Gospel and in the
_Apocalypse_. The former seems to counsel rendering to Cæsar the things
that are Cæsar’s; in the latter, the Seven Hilled City is a Beast. Why?
The only answer is a guess that hardly needs to be given. The martyrdom
of the Christians had begun. Clement refers to the recall of John from
Patmos after Domitian’s death. Nor could anything disloyal be proved
against Apollonius. Though he openly said that he detested “tyrants,” no
king need put that cap on unless it fitted; but as he frequented the
temples and ignored the goddess Roma, he was considered dangerous and so
was tried on the charge of having torn a boy’s entrails out for the
purposes of divination. The charge was ridiculous and could not be
proved, and Apollonius came back to Ephesus and frequented Crete, where
Titus, the Greek and youthful Christian, had become Christian bishop by
65 A.D. The fact that the young Titus would work in the Christian Church
and the aged Apollonius in the pagan temples may explain the hostility
or silence of some of the church fathers to the Eastern Sage. This seems
to me a more rational explanation than the Theosophists’ charge that the
Christians were jealous of Apollonius as a rival in the eyes of the
populace to Christ. Apollonius is never spoken of as “a rival to
Christ.” He is spoken of as a worker of miracles, which could not be
denied, and as a clairvoyant “see-er” of events which came to pass, like
the reign of Vespasian, the deterioration of Domitian and the
assassination of the tyrant. If Apollos be Apollonius—and I decline to
give even an opinion on that dispute, in spite of dates, abbreviations
and events pointing to only one “Apollos” sage in this era—Paul settled
the matter when he said one “planted” and the other “watered” and “God
gave the increase.” The rivalry was rather between Paul and Apollos—and
it was a rivalry of fanatic followers, not leaders. Let us not blame the
followers too harshly. Paul had made it his life work that Christianity
should not be an off-shoot of Judaism but an all-embracing world
religion. Apollos still preached in the pagan temples and the Christians
may have feared dilutions of the pure truths with such errors as the
fleshy Nicolatians, whom John denounced; if the flesh was only a
garment, then it didn’t matter much what sins stained the garment—you
could lay it off. Therefore liberty ran riot in the libertine and
visions ran to medium frenzies. Some of these trance frenzies were of
such a nature as cannot be told. In one, the initiate to the mysteries
was placed naked and drugged under a high altar, on which was slain a
bull. The aspirant to enter the mysteries had to open his mouth and
drink of the hot blood as it poured down on him—an almost parallel
ceremony with the Ancient Aztecs, where the blood was human.
To revert to the historic facts on Ephesus—it was a dream city of
inexpressible beauty, basking in a wonderful sunlight between mountain
and sea, with white alabaster colonnades—one hundred and twenty columns
there were across the face of the Diana Temple, which was over four
hundred feet long and two hundred broad—at the entrance to the Temple,
to the great hippodrome reported to seat 50,000 people, to the public
square park in the heart of the city, to the baths, to the circus, to
the fountains. The city occupied an area of five by three miles. Coming
out of the Mediterranean, ships ascended the dredged Cayster River, to a
square basin landlocked and surrounded by a magnificent stone parapet.
On one side were the wharfs and docks; on the other the broad steps up
to Diana’s Temple. The city proper, with its public park, faced the end
of the basin of the sea through more magnificent elaborate colonnades.
In fact, it might be said there was neither an ungraceful nor inartistic
architectural line in all Ephesus. The city might have been dedicated
and consecrated to beauty. The Diana goddess was not the huntress as
told in the story. The huntress had been degraded first into an Eastern
Astarte presiding over the productive powers of the earth, and finally
still farther degraded to the sensuous rites, which at this time were
running a sort of delirious frenzied riot in the world. Cressets of
naphtha petroleum oils, and asbestos soap or oils may be used to explain
much of the apparent magic of altar fires that never went out and
priests who could handle flame without harm; and all the magic was
concentrated on the materialistic aim of obtaining revenues from the
enormous traffic that passed through Ephesus to and from Asia to Rome;
and the great Diana festivals were at Ephesus in spring. Earthquake and
war demolished ancient Ephesus. The Diana statue was carried off to
France. The stones of the beautiful Ionic columns went to build churches
in Sienna and Rome. The ruins of Ephesus by 1888, when the
archæologist’s spade had been busy, were a melancholy epic in crumbling
stone.
Half a century ago, the legends of underground chambers in Crete were
regarded as myths. To-day, we know those myths were founded on historic
fact and the spade has dug up ancient Crete culture. Phillimore
ridicules Flinders Petrie for accepting the story of the earthquake and
storms on the night of Apollonius’ passing from human ken in the Temple
at Cydonia, Crete. Yet there is not a sailor of the Mediterranean, who
does not know the superstition of all Cretans at the time of the spring
and fall equinoctial gales. The Island trembles and vibrates to the
storms. Cretans say to this day—and there are 300,000 of them believe
it—that Crete was created by a volcanic blow-up—a remnant of the
submerged Atlantis—and is very delicately balanced on subterranean
rocks. When the gales come, it trembles on this balance. Knossus marks
the ruins of the Palace of Minos of 3000 B.C. Greek hermits still
frequent the mountains of the Island and live the tranquil life of the
ancient contemplative Gnostic.
Of Patmos, little is to be said except that it is not so large as the
length and breadth of New York City, and was a very short run by sail
from Ephesus, ships usually pausing to and from Crete. In the story,
Onesimus paused on his way back. The ecstasy of the _Revelation_ on
Patmos would to-day be called “a glimpse of cosmic consciousness”; and
there is no use going into the dispute whether the vision covered only
the few months John was exile on Patmos, or a series of years beginning
at the fall of the Holy City and extending down to the reign of
Domitian, when persecution compelled the Christians to use cypher in
many of their communications; and “the Beast” may have been symbolized
with emperor worship, or the impending anarchy.
The story takes for granted that Onesimus, the runaway slave, was
Onesimus, the young bishop. This is a disputed point. I don’t care to
take up the dispute. It is nonessential to the aim of the story; but if
the question of his age be asked it is easily answered. If Onesimus were
a young man of twenty with Paul in Rome in 64 to 68, then by 86 to 96
A.D., when John is supposed “to have fallen asleep in Ephesus,” he would
still be a young man in his forties to preside over the destinies of
Christianity at the very pivotal point in Grecian Asia.
For those who like to worry disputes out as a dog worries a cat, or a
cat worries a mouse, the references of the early fathers to Onesimus may
be quoted:
In Ignatius’ _Letters to the Ephesians_, which Archbishop Usher of
Oxford, 1644 (see _Evelyn’s Journals_), issued, and later scholars
regarded as authentic letters, though corrupted in texts—when Ignatius
himself was on his way to martyrdom in Rome, are found the words—“I
received, therefore, in the name of God, your whole multitude in
Onesimus . . . who, according to the flesh is your bishop . . . whom I
beseech you . . . that you strive to be like unto him . . . and blessed
be God . . . you are worthy . . . enjoy such an excellent bishop.” Then
he goes on to speak of “Burrhus,” who was a handy man for Nero in the
days Onesimus was in Rome, and Paul and Luke wrote of “friends in
Cæsar’s household.” Again, he couples the names of Onesimus and Burrhus
in the seventh verse of the first chapter. Again, he congratulates them
on their Bishop in Chapter II, who commends their “good order” to
Ignatius on his way to Rome in bonds. In his letter to the Magnesians he
refers to Onesimus and Apollonius as working together and begs them not
to use their “bishop too familiarly, owing to his youth.” Though “to
appearance young, he must be obeyed, because he presides in the place of
God.” In his letter from Smyrna to the Trallians, he refers to the faith
having got inside the Palace at Rome; and his letter to the
Philadelphians is written by “Burrhus sent from Ephesus”; and Ignatius
of Antioch, to quote Turner of Oxford, “was a trusted and responsible
leader.” The martyrdom of Ignatius is no longer placed as late as 107
A.D., so the discrepancy in dates here is still unsettled. (See Bishop
Lightfoot.) To show how widely and wildly scholars vary in their dates,
take your New Testament, note the dates of the letters at the heads of
the Epistles, and compare to these dates given in Turner—Peter visits
Rome 42 A.D. (See date 60 to 66 A.D. of Peter’s letters from Babylon.)
Peter and Paul martyred in Rome 57 or 58 A.D. (Note the dates of Paul’s
Epistles from 59 to 64 A.D.) Suicide Nero, 67 or 68 A.D. (Yet Paul’s
second trial was towards the end of Nero’s life.) Death Domitian 95 or
96. (Note date of Apollonius’ prediction in Ephesus.) I give these wide
variations in authorities solely to show how picayune and childish and
nonessential to the picture as a whole are the minor points over which
scholars have wrangled; while youth grew bored and slipped away from
teachers, who wrangled instead of teaching.
All these references are not proofs, but they throw the burden of
disproof on those who call Paul’s servant a “bell hop” and declare the
Onesimus of Ephesus another Greek. Onesimus was the carrier of Paul’s
letter to the Ephesians; and Apollos was the great Gnostic leader in
Ephesus at this time.
The passing of Apollonius in Crete is too long a story to be repeated
here. I have followed Flinders Petrie, though those who want to jump
into the controversy over Apollonius would do well to read Phillimore’s
acrid comments and the Theosophists’ who are a modern and divided
edition of the ancient Gnostics. The Theosophists say Apollonius is the
riddle of riddles of the first century. “No one knows where he came from
or where he went.” By Empire and Church, “every means were used to sweep
his memory from men’s minds,” because he would conform to neither Empire
nor Church. Whether he died in Crete, or Ephesus, about 96 A.D., the
modern Gnostics do not say. He remained always the aristocrat, the
scorner of all outward show of piety or power. The churches of Asia
actually prayed to Apollonius after his death, so one sees another
reason why the church discouraged his cult, just as Paul had to stop
Asiatic Greeks from worshiping him. He was lecturing in Ephesus at the
time Domitian was murdered in Rome—and suddenly stopped in the middle
of his lectures and described the far-off crime in the Imperial City,
crying out to the assassins to strike home to the tyrant’s heart. Then
he described the wild joy in the Roman city streets over the news of
Domitian’s death. A descendant of Trefina’s of the Thecla legend built
him a fane in Asia Minor. In those days, they called it a Temple to a
new god, Apollonius. In our day, we would probably call it a memorial
church.
With these hints, any one feeling it a personal mission to settle the
disputes on which the flashlight has been cast by the five stories of
the apostolic ages—can do the settling for his own conscience and let
his fellow readers do the same.
The day has passed when youth will be bludgeoned into belief. It wants
facts, or as close as it can get to facts—then it will do its own
believing or disbelieving; and as Malden says, Christianity takes its
stand on the ground of historic truth. Let us get the flashlight on the
essential truths.
FINALE
At a time when our own modern world seems to be passing through a welter
similar to the apostolic ages, it may not be amiss to close by quoting
from Bishop Solomon at Lake Van, Armenia, who officiated between the
Tigris and Euphrates about 1222 A.D. His _Book of the Bee_, translated
by Wallis Budge, the great orientalist, in 1886 (Oxford), reflects many
of the ancient church traditions among the religious communities founded
by the Apostles.
The old scholar gives his work the name of _the Bee_ because the bee
culls its pure honey from all flowers; and so he attempts to cull the
best from the old records of the early church.
He begins with the creation as told in Genesis and interprets that
record partly as a mystic race record according to the Gnostics and
Theosophists, and partly as a record of fact; but he sets down both
interpretations side by side, and forces no conclusions. You get the
sense that the old scholar knows he is dealing with an epic; but whether
that epic is a myth reflecting a fact on the clouds, or a fact obscured
by myth—you must decide for yourself; for “Know, O brother,” he says,
“where there is true love, there is no fear; and where there is freedom
of speech, there is no dread . . . on subjects beyond the capacity of
our simple understanding . . . do not enquire too closely into the
divine words.”
And the advice is as good for our day as for his own.
The first thirty chapters have an amazing similarity to _Genesis_, the
_Book of Enoch_, the _Book of Jasher_, _Revelation_; and should be read
parallel with _Ezekiel_ and _Daniel_. They carry the human mind back to
the very dawn of time.
It is where the record comes down to apostolic days that it throws a
flashlight on the historic personages in the fiction of this volume.
I make no comment but set down in brief the old writer’s contributions
to historic data.
He says that Mary, the Mother of the Messiah, was brought up among the
Temple virgins. The Salome, who was the midwife at Christ’s birth,
resembles the Salome of the Gnostics’ _Pistis Sophia_. Whether the star
followed by the Magi were a star of vision, or a constellation of the
Zodiac—he does not know. He does not think the massacre of the infants
followed immediately after the visit to the manger, but within two
years. The legends of the Magi’s gifts are given very fully. He says it
was the father of Nathaniel who saved John the Baptist’s life, when
Zechariah was murdered before the altar of the Temple. This refers to
Christ’s recognition of Nathaniel later with Philip. He says Christ met
Lazarus first in Egypt, when Lazarus befriended the exiles, Joseph and
Mary. The Herodias episode is given very fully as recorded in Chapter II
here. Machærus is given as the place of John’s imprisonment and murder.
Abgar, King of Edessa, who wrote letters to Christ, finally bought
Christ’s woven seamless garment over which the soldiers cast dice.
Joseph of Arimathea, he calls a Senator. He says Mary died between her
fifty-eighth and sixty-first year. He gives very fully the ten occasions
on which Christ was seen in vision or in body—the last time by Stephen
and Paul. The upper chamber of the Last Supper had been prepared by
Lazarus to whom it belonged, by Simon the Cyrenian, who helped to carry
the cross, by Joseph, the Senator, and by Nicodemus.
His notes on the Apostles are invaluable. Peter preached in Antioch and
in Rome, where Nero crucified him, head downwards. Andrew, his brother,
went to the wild Scythians of the North. John, the son of Zebedee, the
hero of the fifth story in this volume—over whom the higher critics
have waged such bootless battle—preached in Ephesus, was exiled to
Patmos, came back to Ephesus, built a church and taught there with
Ignatius, till he “fell asleep.” John Second, a young disciple of John
the Apostle, became Bishop of Ephesus and wrote the _Revelation_ as told
him word for word by John, the friend of Christ. This brings up a
dispute hoary with age. Was the youth beloved of Christ, the first John
or the second? I cannot answer that question. The dispute as to the
death of James is unconsciously explained by the author of the _Book of
the Bee_. James was cast down from a pinnacle of the Temple. The rabble
that pursued, slew him with sword and stone. He was slain by order of
Herod, Bernice’s first husband. Philip left his prophetess daughters in
Cæsarea and worked in Phrygia, Onesimus’ home country. Thomas went from
Jerusalem to Persia and India, where he was stabbed to death for
baptizing the daughter of a great ruler. No modern scholar needs to be
told there are remnants of Thomas’ early followers yet in India. Matthew
found refuge from the Jews in Tyre and Sidon and Antioch. The _Book of
the Bee_ says nothing of his mission to Egypt. Bartholomew worked in
Armenia; Jude in Laodicea, the city of wealth and apathy; Simon Zelotes,
inward from Aleppo; James, son of Alphæus, in Tadmor—Palmyra, the
glorious; Matthias, successor to Judas, in Sicily.
In Rome, Paul sought the Gentiles; Peter, the dispersed Jews. There are
disputes here, I don’t care to go into. I have already touched on them.
Peter gave his record to Mark; Paul, his to Luke—which jibes remarkably
with the verdict of higher critics.
Luke had been the physician, who attended Lazarus—a not improbable
thing if Lazarus were in Egypt as Luke’s writings are full of reference
to the Greek culture of Alexandria, Egypt. Mark is given as a stepson of
Peter; and Rhoda was his sister. Zacchæus, the publican, was slain,
while preaching. Joseph, the Senator, transferred his labors to the ten
Greek cities of Decapolis. Nicodemus and his brother, Gamaliel, the
great philosophers, became open professors of the faith. Nathaniel was
stoned to death. Simon, son of Cleopas, became a bishop in Jerusalem.
Cephas (Peter) taught in Baalbec—the wonder of the Old World; Barnabas
in Italy; Titus in Crete; Justus in Cæsarea; Hermas, the shepherd, in
Antioch; and others of the seventy dispersed to all parts of the known
world.
Of Onesimus, the _Book of the Bee_ says “his legs were broken in Rome.”
Whether this was when he fled for protection to Paul—in which case, the
story is much more dramatic and illustrative of the beauty of Paul’s
character than I have given—or after his return from distributing
Paul’s letters to the Greeks of Asia—the record does not say. It is
probably this reference that gave rise to the young Onesimus, who became
bishop, being distinct from the young Onesimus, whom Paul sent back to
Asia Minor. The record does not say he suffered martyrdom in
Rome—simply that “his legs were broken.” Apollos, the _Book of the Bee_
says, was “burnt with fire.” I have no comment to make on that. If
Apollos were Apollonius, his fate could be ascribed to death by fire;
but if Apollos were not Apollonius, then the lack of all reference to
Apollonius, so famous from Rome to India, by a writer of the legends of
the apostolic days, is very remarkable; for Apollonius had a temple
named after him in Asia Minor and had been a great figure in his day in
Babylonia. Timothy taught and died in Ephesus. Candace’s Eunuch
established missions in Ethiopia. The foster brother of Herod is called
Manæl, not Manæn.
The names of those followers, who fell away in persecution, are much as
given in Paul’s letters and early church history—Judas, Simon, Levi,
Hymenæus, Demas—of the riots in Asia Minor. The _Book of the Bee_ says
Philip had three daughters, who were see-ers, or prophetesses; _the
Acts_ say four. The _Book of the Bee_ says each of the Twelve and of the
Seventy jotted down memories of Christ, but to avoid confusion, confided
their memories—the Twelve to Matthew and John; the Seventy to Luke and
Mark—and this, too, sustains the shots in the dark of the higher
critics.
The child, of whom Christ said, “except ye become as children,” the
_Book of the Bee_ says, grew up to be Ignatius. The children on whom
Christ laid his hands were Timothy and Titus. The Marys of the Gospel
were—Mary, the Mother of the Messiah; Mary, the mother of Cleopas;
Mary, the wife of Peter and mother of Mark; Mary, the sister of Lazarus.
Was Mary, the sinner, the Mary of Magdala out of whom were cast the
demons? The _Book of the Bee_ says frankly the early church did not
know. They know she was healed and became a holy woman. Thecla, the
_Book of the Bee_ refers to as “the Blessed”; so that I cannot regard
the legend as a fiction.
I cannot close better than to quote the prophecies of the old sage of
1200 A.D. Keep in mind exactly what has happened in Asia Minor between
1914 and 1924, and then decide for yourself whether all see-ers are
“self-hypnotized fakirs,” or “deluded epileptics having fits”—which I
have heard them called by teachers of youth. At all events, give this
old seer the same fair hearing you do to the prophecies of Roger Bacon,
the friar, who was almost contemporary, imprisoned in another part of
the world for predicting what science would accomplish; and when you
have done that fairly and squarely, lay the book down and ask yourself
what you believe. As the prophecies cover nearly twenty pages, I
condense: “the children of Ishmael will go forth from this wilderness
. . . and the fat ones of the kingdom of the Greeks . . . shall be
destroyed by Ishmael, the wild ass of the desert . . . it shall be a
merciless chastisement . . . for the sin of the Christians . . . mad
with drunkenness, anger, shameless lasciviousness . . . hence God will
deliver them over to the impurity of the Barbarians.” There follows just
what happened in the late War, the murder of men, the pollution of
women, the death of the children, the robbery of all property, the sale
into slavery of harem and desert bandit, the oppression of the poor.
“They will mock at those who frame laws. The little shall be esteemed as
the great, the despised as the honorable, from sea to sea, from east to
west, from north to south . . . hungering and thirsting and torture in
bonds . . . infants torn from their mothers’ bosoms . . . priests and
deacons slain . . . clothes for their horses out of holy vestments . . .
cattle in the churches . . . famine . . . dead bodies without any to
bury them . . . while the tyrants shall boast—‘the Christians have
neither a God, nor a deliverer.’” There follows the victory of the
Greeks and a terrible slaughter. “Egypt ravaged, Arabia burnt, Hebron
laid waste.” . . . Then shall follow “a great peace . . . joy on earth
. . . churches reopened . . . great cities rebuilt . . . for the gates
of the North” shall be opened. Twenty-two kingdoms shall come through
the gates of the North. In the plains of Joppa, the great battle will be
fought. The leader of destruction will fight there and be overthrown by
a leader of the cross from the land of Ethiopia. The leader of
destruction will delude many with “phantoms.” Hosts of the Indians will
ally themselves with him. Then will come a second Elijah (or Elias) and
lead to the great victory of the cross.
There follows the passing of the Old Order like a garment discarded for
the New when a light shall burst over humanity with the effulgent
radiance of the very heavens; when those, who are asleep shall awake
clothed in light, eternally young; when each shall treasure his eternal
light and fire in his own spirit; when the only grief shall be the grief
for transgression of laws man can never break, but which break man; when
the love of God shall extend to the meanest and poorest of all
creatures; when justice will exact “to the uttermost farthing” of
repentance for sin; when those barred from light will be those only who
persist in barring light from their spirit.
* * * * *
Here, let us close the old seer’s prophecy, be it trance or dream; for
his hope is the hope of all humanity with all its creeds for all time,
now as then.
THE END
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Transcriber’s Notes
Minor changes have been made silently to spelling and punctuation to
achieve consistency.
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