BY
WM. H. HOLCOMBE, M. D.,
Author of “Our Children in Heaven;” “The Sexes:
Here and Hereafter,” Etc., Etc.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania.

LIPPINCOTT’S PRESS,
PHILADELPHIA.

[pg 5]

CONTENTS.

[pg 9]

A STRANGE DISCOVERY
IN LIEU OF
A PREFACE.

Many years ago I was enjoying in the harbor of New York the charming hospitalities of the officers belonging to one of the finest vessels in the British Navy. The company was gay, cultivated and brilliant. Student and recluse as I then was, I was perhaps more delighted than any one present with the conversation of those practical and polished men of the world.

After supper I was attracted to a small group of earnest talkers, of whom the surgeon of the ship seemed to be the centre and oracle. He was speaking of exhumations a long time after death, of mummies and petrifactions and other curious transformations of the human body. He stated that he had examined some of the skeletons which had been dug out of the ruins of Herculaneum. The bones were almost perfect after the lapse of eighteen hundred years. The complete exclusion of air and water seemed to be the only thing necessary to an indefinite preservation.

The chaplain of the vessel endeavored to give the conversation an æsthetic and semi-religious turn by analyzing the feelings of mingled awe, melancholy and curiosity with which most men survey the remains of a human form—feelings [pg 10]always heightened by the antiquity of the relic, and by the dignity of the person who lived and loved and labored in it.

“The fundamental idea,” said he, “is a profound respect for the human body itself as the casket which has contained the spiritual jewel, the soul.”

“Yes,” remarked the surgeon; “nothing but the lapse of a people into cannibalism can obliterate that sentiment. When the Egyptian embalmers were ready for their work, a certain person came forward and made the necessary incisions for taking out the entrails. He immediately fled away, pursued by volleys of stones and curses from all the others. Hence also the dissections of the dead by medical students are conducted with the utmost secrecy and caution.”

“Schiller,” said I, “makes one of his heroes remark that the first time he plunged his sword into a living man, he felt a shudder creep over him as if he had desecrated the temple of God.”

“Besides the feeling of reverence,” continued the clergyman, “we have the awe which death naturally inspires, the melancholy excited by the vain and transitory nature of earthly things; and lastly, a tender and curious interest for the brother-soul which has tasted the sweetness of life and the bitterness of death, and passed onward to those hidden but grander experiences which await us all.”

“Those shocking Egyptian mummies,” said one of the officers, “are so disgusting that a strange horror is mingled with the gentler emotions you describe.”

“I experienced that feeling,” said another, “on reading an account of the exhumation of the remains, or rather the opening of the coffin, of King Charles I., two hundred years after he had been beheaded. It was increased, doubtless, by the idea of the separated head and body, and the strange and lifelike stare of the king’s eyes, which collapsed like soap-bubbles when they were exposed to the air.”

“There was something of the picturesque in that finding of a dead body by some little children who were playing in a grotto in France. It was seated on a stone bench and perfectly petrified, retaining, however, a sweet and placid expression of countenance. The man was an old hermit, who frequently retired into the deepest chamber of the grotto for religious contemplation.”

“Imagine yourself,” said I, “in the silence and shadows of Westminster Abbey, peering through some crevice in an old vault and getting a sight of the shrunken dust of Shakespeare.”

“Passing from imagination to fact,” said solemnly the old surgeon, “I have seen the body of a man lying upon the ground where it had lain undisturbed for eighteen hundred years.”

“Eighteen hundred years!” exclaimed several voices at once.

“Yes, eighteen hundred years; and I was the first person who set eyes upon him from the day of his death until I got into the cavern where he perished.”

“A romance! a romance!” cried the minister. “Come, doctor, be communicative and tell us all about it.”

“It is not a romance,” said the doctor, “but the facts were certainly very curious.

“When I was a young assistant surgeon, attached to the sloop-of-war Agamemnon, we were skirting leisurely the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and anchored one morning in sight of the ruins of the ancient city of Sidon and opposite the westernmost spurs of Lebanon, the Mont Blanc of Palestine.

“There is only one picture grander than a view of Mount Lebanon from the sea, and that is a view of the sea from Mount Lebanon. I enjoyed the former so keenly that I determined to obtain the latter also. We got up a party of [pg 12]genial and stout fellows to ascend one of the highest peaks, armed with pick-axes, to obtain geological specimens on our way.

“We had advanced but a short distance up one of the cliffs, when we started from the scanty undergrowth some little animal—a wolf or jackal or wild dog, all of which abound on Mount Lebanon. We all joined noisily in the chase, and soon ran the frightened creature into one of the deep crevices or fissures made in the earth by the tempestuous rains of that region. Our picks were immediately brought into play, and in a short time, to our very great astonishment, instead of digging the fugitive out of a little hole in the ground, we opened our way into what was evidently the rear or back part of a cave of considerable dimensions.

“Our party crawled in one after another, myself leading the way. The contents of the place arrested our attention so strongly that we forgot the object of our chase, which had buried itself in some holes or burrows at the side of the cavern. The floor was of a yellowish-white limestone, and all eyes were immediately directed, in the rather dim light, to the figure of a man outstretched upon it.

“Yes, it was a man whose entire body, clothing and all, had dissolved into one blended mass, and so long ago that it looked rather like a great bas-relief of the human form projecting from the lighter-colored floor.

“The shape of the head and of the long hair and beard was complete. One outstretched arm lay along the floor, and the fingers could be traced by little ridges separate from each other. The protuberances of all the bony parts showed that the skeleton still resisted the disintegrating process of decay.

“What an awful death he must have experienced! For there was not a single other object in the small space which remained of the cavern; not a stone which might have served [pg 13]for a seat or a table; not an earthen vessel which might have contained a draught of water.

“The fate of this unhappy being was evident. Whether he had lived in the cavern or whether he had taken refuge in it from some great storm, he had clearly rushed to the back part of it to escape some enormous landslide and caving in at the front, which had opened toward the sea. He had been buried alive! Having exhausted the little air that remained to him, stricken down by terror, despair and suffocation, he had rendered up his soul to the great Giver in silence, darkness and solitude.

“These facts were so obvious that we all lifted our hats before speaking a word; thus paying the tribute of human sympathy to a fellow-creature eighteen hundred years after he had ceased to need it.”

“How did you fix upon the date of his death?” asked the chaplain.

“You will see. A large cylindrical case of bronze was lying upon the breast of the dead man. He must have valued it highly, for he had clasped it to his bosom in the agonies of death. It was hermetically sealed with such ingenuity that we found considerable difficulty in breaking it open. It contained a parchment of great length, and rolled tightly around a little brass rod. The parchment was closely written in beautiful Greek characters. It was perfectly preserved. Two small gold coins fell out of the white dry sand with which the case had been filled. One of them bore the inscription of Tiberius Cæsar, and the other was stamped in the ninth year of the reign of the emperor Nero. Thus in the accidental grave of its author had his book been safely preserved amid all the mutations of the world.”

The old doctor stroked his gray beard in silence, and I exclaimed:

“Who do you suppose this unfortunate man to have been?”

“That was revealed in the manuscript, but unfortunately not one of our party could read Greek. I sent the case with its contents to an old uncle of my mother, who had a little curacy near Binghamton. He was a great Greek scholar, and devoted to his classical studies the little time he could spare from the game of whist. I had a good deal of curiosity on the subject, and wrote several times to my uncle from different parts of the world before he condescended to reply. His answer was in substance this: that the manuscript purported to be the autobiography of Eleazor or Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead; that it was probably the work of some heretic monk or crazy philosopher of the second or third century; that, interwoven with romantic incidents in this world and the other, it gave expression to many absurd and false doctrines; in fine, that it was not worth my reading, and that I had better devote myself dutifully to killing his Majesty’s enemies on the high seas, than to searching old caverns for apocryphal documents which impugned the sacred verities of the Apostolic Church.

“And so,” concluded the old surgeon, “I have never thought any more about it.”

“Your uncle was no doubt right in his conjectures and wise in his advice,” said the young chaplain. “The number and extent of the apocryphal impositions upon the early Christian Church are almost incredible.”

“Were you satisfied,” said I, “with your good uncle’s opinion?”

“I have always believed,” replied the doctor, evasively and with a roguish twinkle of his eye, “that if the manuscript had contained the Thirty-nine Articles by anticipation, my uncle would have pronounced it divinely inspired.”

“What became of it?” I inquired.

“Oh, it was sealed up again and sent to the nursery as a plaything for the children. It is probably still in the possession of one of my cousins.”

The strange story of the old surgeon made a profound impression upon me; for in spite of the incredulity of all the other listeners, I believed from the first that the dust of that cavern was the dust of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, and that the manuscript contained something of genuine value to the Church and the world.

The opinion of the old curate and the echo of the young chaplain did not weigh a feather in my estimation. Young as I was, I had acquired that rare faculty of thinking for myself. Besides, I had had learned enough of human nature to know that legal reforms are rarely suggested by lawyers; that doctors always make war on a system of medicine better than their own; and that priests instinctively repudiate anything which demands a re-examination of the fundamental doctrines of their theological systems.

I had an inextinguishable desire to possess that manuscript, and set myself earnestly about it. I cultivated the acquaintance of the genial old surgeon, and contrived to render myself useful to him on more than one occasion. When he sailed for England I extorted from him a promise that he would send me the manuscript of Lazarus which his orthodox uncle has so flippantly condemned.

A good many years passed away, and I heard nothing from him. At length came a package, and a letter from England couched in very handsome terms, a part of which ran thus:

“My beloved father on his deathbed made up the parcel which I now send you, and requested me to transmit it to you with the following message, which he made me write down as the words fell from his lips:

“ ‘Forgive your old acquaintance for neglecting until death [pg 16]the matters of the dead. Read what Lazarus says, while I go in person to verify or invalidate his story. I have lived passably well, and I die comparatively happy. Good-bye!’ ”

I drew a deep sigh to the memory of the old surgeon, and set immediately to work studying and translating the manuscript. I found that a difficult task. It was not written in very classical Greek, and besides, was full of Hebraisms, which sometimes obscured the sense. There were not only many obscure things, but many things irrelevant, and many which would be regarded as absurd and even childish in the present age.

It soon became clear that a literal translation of the manuscript would not be of any great interest to the general reader. I determined to take the astounding facts narrated, as a skeleton or framework around which to build up a story of my own. This book is therefore a modern romance founded upon ancient facts. The original might be called a prose poem. Indeed, much of it is in the poetical form; the description of Helena, for instance, in the eleventh chapter.

The key to the whole book is, that here are the views and experiences of a man who, by what we may call a supernatural accident, was led into states of thought two thousand years in advance of his contemporaries.

I present it to the public in a dress of the nineteenth century, hoping it will reverse the decision of the old curate, who understood Greek and whist better than he did the inappeasable hunger of the soul after the unknown, and perhaps, alas! the unknowable.

[pg 17]

In Both Worlds.

I.

CAST OUT.

A serene and happy old age may delight in recalling the glory and the dream of youth, of which it is the crown and the fulfillment; but the wretched and desolate, nearing the grave, revert seldom to the past things of a life they are eager to exchange for a better.

A solemn sense of duty to mankind impels me to be my own biographer.

My story is the most wonderful in the world: so wonderful that the men of the present age cannot comprehend or believe me. I am spiritually alone.

None before me have penetrated consciously into the invisible world: examined its structure and its people: and returned to his fellow-men, enriched and burdened with its awful secrets.

This have I done.

I am Lazarus of Bethany, whom Christ raised from the dead.

I have lived and died, and live again; and I await a second time the bitterness of death.

“Lazarus,” said they, “is asleep or dead. That is all.”

Ah! how little did they know!

When I returned from the spiritual world, I had more wisdom than all the ancients, than all the magi, than all the prophets. I could have enriched the Church of God with spiritual treasures. I could have given light to every mind and joy to every heart. I could have satisfied the hidden hunger and thirst of the human soul. I was not permitted to do it. They would have rejected my gold and my frankincense and my myrrh. They would have turned from my offerings of spiritual truth as a wild beast turns from a man when he offers it bread.

I have lived many ages too soon. I will write what I have seen and heard. The world of mind will grow with the coming centuries into the capacity of comprehending what I alone now comprehend. These premature utterances will then be understood.

I was born in the little village of Bethany, which sits upon the eastern slope of Mount Olivet, embowered all summer in leaves and fruit. There were four children in the family; and our mother died in giving birth to Mary, the youngest and most beautiful. Our father was a man of great wealth and high social position, and we were reared in the lap of luxury.

My earliest recollection is that of playing in a large, terraced garden with my brother and two little sisters. The garden was full of olive, pomegranate, orange and date [pg 19]trees, and adorned with a great many shrubs and flowers. It was cool, fragrant and shady, and we sported about the tomb of our mother, which was cut in the solid rock, as merry and innocent as the birds and butterflies which shared with us the peace and beauty of the summer day.

I was ten years of age when Samuel, my younger brother, was taken from us. It was the first real grief of my life. Although five years old when my mother died, I was too young to remember the incidents. The angels are so near us in our infancy, that the troubles of the world, which are afterward engraved in marble, are then only written in water.

Little Samuel died calling my name. Oh that I could have obeyed his call, and followed him into that bright and peaceful sphere in which I saw him long afterward, and in which I shall soon see him again!

Early on the day of his burial our father went into the chamber where lay his little white body covered all over with whiter flowers. He knelt beside it and wept bitterly. He seemed unconscious that his three little ones had followed him, and stood pale and trembling at the door. When we heard the voice of his weeping we crept forward to the feet of our little brother and wept also. Our father kissed us all tenderly, and controlling his emotions and steadying his voice, he repeated from memory the beautiful verses of Scripture which describe the grief and resignation of King David at the loss of his child.

The body of our little brother was deposited in a niche in the rock close to the dust of his mother. The garden was avoided as a playground for a long while. I was [pg 20]busy with my books, Martha with her dolls—both rendered thoughtful beyond our years. One day little Mary ventured into the garden alone, but presently came running back and buried her golden head in her sister’s lap in a shower of tears which needed no explanation. Who can read the little child’s heart? Perhaps some playmate bird had called to her: “Rosebud! rosebud! where is your brother?”

Then came the years of school and opening thought and expanding faculties, and the first appearance of affections and passions, no longer the dewdrops of the spring morning, but the beginnings of deep and swift currents in the course of life.

My sisters were remarkable women, differing in style and character; yet each a perfect picture of female loveliness!

Martha grew tall and firm and straight, with long black hair and black eyes, a brunette complexion and a finely-cut oval face. She was the impersonation of a pure and intelligent womanhood. She was active, observant and critical. She regulated her life by lofty principle as well as by noble impulse, and there was something about her that always impressed you with the idea that she was brave and strong as well as gentle and pure.

Mary was fragile in form, willowy and graceful in motion, soft and winning in manners. Her eyes were blue and sparkling with the tender dew of sentiment. The lily and the rose contended for supremacy on her face, and sunbeams nestled always in her hair. She was the impersonation of a loving and love-awakening womanhood. Her voice, her smile, her tear, expressed in the [pg 21]most extraordinary manner the sensitive emotions of her soul.

Mary was my lily; Martha my rose. Martha was my ruby; Mary my pearl. Martha was reason; Mary was sentiment. Martha was wisdom; Mary was love. Martha was faith looking fixedly at the stars; Mary was charity looking trustfully beyond them to God.

My father took a deep interest in the education and general training of his children. He provided us with the best teachers in every branch, but let nothing escape his own watchful supervision. It was greatly due to his intelligent care and the inspiring stimulus of his affection, that we attained a degree of mental and social development rarely witnessed in children of our age.

A dark cloud hung over this good and wise father and his happy little household.

His health had been gradually failing for a long time. He grew languid, lost appetite, and became slow in his gait and stiff in his motions. He abandoned his business in the city, and rarely went out of the house. He declined receiving visitors, until our home, which had been so gay and brilliant, became quite deserted and lonely. But his mental condition underwent a change altogether incommensurate with his physical symptoms. He became silent and melancholy, and so unlike his former patient and sweet self! He repulsed every attempt on our part to inquire into the nature or cause of his troubles. His mental faculties were also greatly weakened.

We could not comprehend the meaning of all this. We became very unhappy. We knew he was wealthy, honored and beloved—in possession of all that men covet for [pg 22]good or evil ends. The country was in a state of profound repose. It was incredible that the mere approach of sickness and death, could so change the character of a good and brave man.

My father was now frequently closeted with Caiaphas, a young priest of stately appearance and ingratiating manners. I became very anxious to learn the subject of these prolonged interviews. I once questioned Caiaphas at the gate about my father’s condition; but he evaded me adroitly. At last my curiosity, prompted by filial love, triumphed over my sense of propriety, and I crept to my father’s door one night, when he and Caiaphas were together, and applied my ear to the keyhole. For a long time the tones were too low for me to catch any meaning; but my father suddenly raised his voice in an excited manner—

“I assure you he is a thief and a robber, and addicted to magic. O Caiaphas! save my children and their property from this monster!”

I was terrified at these words, and slipped away in the darkness. There was the secret of my father’s grief. He expected to die very soon, and was anxious for the fate of his children when he was taken from them. I wept on my bed nearly all night at the idea of losing my good parent. But who was this monster he so much dreaded? That set me to thinking.

When a man died, his minor children and property passed under the guardianship of his next of kin. My father had no brothers in Judea, for his only brother had wandered off more than thirty years before. He was an eccentric character who forsook his religion and changed [pg 23]his name. Beyond that we knew nothing of him. Nor did my father even know where to find him.

His only sister was married to Magistus, a citizen of Bethany. She was a confirmed invalid and never seen. In the event of my father’s death we would fall to their care. Magistus then was this terrible monster, a thief and a magician. I was confirmed in this conclusion by the fact, that my father and Magistus had long been on bad terms; and my father was not the man to withdraw his friendship from a worthy person.

Magistus was a thin, sallow, ugly old man, with an immense hooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey. His black eyes were small, fierce and sly. He had a long dingy beard which he had twisted like a screw. Notwithstanding this sinister appearance, he had the reputation of being a good and wise man. People speak well of a rich man who seems always to retire modestly from the public eye. Magistus moreover was a great friend of the priesthood and a favorite with the priests.

I could not reveal to my sisters the approaching death of our father and the fears he had expressed about our legal guardian. I was astonished and somewhat relieved when he passed the warmest eulogy upon Caiaphas the next morning, and told us to look to him for comfort and to rely on him for help in the greatest emergencies. What astonished me still more was, that this reliable friend never visited my father again.

We were greatly distressed that no medical aid was called in. The suggestion was always repudiated with a strange earnestness. Whatever the disease was with which our father was afflicted, he was plainly growing worse and [pg 24]worse. At last he refused to quit his chamber, or to admit any one into it. He commanded a little food and water to be placed upon a table on the gallery underneath his window; and what was singular, he only took it in during the night when no one saw him. These things threw us into the saddest consternation. We began to fear that he was losing his reason. We were frantic with excitement. We determined to see him and nurse him. We knocked at his door and window and entreated him to show himself to his children.

At last he called out in a voice which showed he had been weeping:

“Calm yourselves, my children! and pray to God. A great evil has come upon us, which can be concealed but a little longer. My soul is overwhelmed with misery, but my heart beats for my children with the tenderest love. Ask me nothing at present; it is more than I can bear. If you love me and would obey me, keep away entirely from my chamber. Let no one come into the house—and least of all, your uncle Magistus.”

We were reassured of his love and his rationality by these words; but they filled us with a vague terror and overwhelmed us with sorrow. We had no one to appeal to, no one to consult. We were commanded to keep everybody away. Thus several weeks of fearful suspense rolled by. The neighbors began to inquire about my father. His seclusion became the wonder and talk of the village. The interrogations, always disagreeable, became absolutely impertinent. The mystery had excited suspicion.

Worse than all, Magistus became a regular visitor to [pg 25]the gate. He questioned the porter in the subtlest manner. He obtained from him the facts that my father had never received any medical attention, that he had concealed himself in his chamber, and had not been seen for weeks, even by his children. He evinced the liveliest satisfaction. “The apple will soon drop,” said he aloud to himself. All this was faithfully reported to us. Three little sparrows in a nest among the green leaves, could not have been in greater trepidation with an ugly bird of prey gazing at them from a neighboring branch.

The dénouement approached. We were whispering our sorrows together one day, seated by the little fountain in the inner courtyard of the house, upon which the door of our father’s chamber opened. Suddenly voices and footsteps were heard approaching. A moment after Magistus appeared, followed by a venerable-looking old priest and stately Roman centurion. My sisters clung to me in terror.

Without noticing us, the party rapped loudly on my father’s door, and commanded him to come forth. “In the name of the Mosaic law,” said the priest; “and by order of the Roman governor,” added the centurion. The words were repeated in a louder voice: the door slowly opened and my father stepped out, exclaiming, “Unclean! unclean!”

All fell back several paces.

“The scourge of God!” said the priest with deep solemnity.

“Damnable Eastern plague!” muttered the Roman soldier.

“Incurable! incurable!” exclaimed Magistus.

It was the leprosy!

That ghoul of diseases, which slowly devours a living victim, had made fearful ravages upon my poor father’s frame. His eyebrows and eyelashes were gone; his chin and ears were much swollen, and a pearl-white scaly ulcer deformed his forehead; his hands had a sickly and withered appearance.

We now understood the meaning of his strange conduct. The disease began first about the joints and the covered parts of his body. As soon as it broke out on the skin, the poor man had shut himself up to conceal his affliction and to avoid contaminating his family. Knowing himself stricken with a disgusting and incurable malady, which would exclude him from society and drive him away from his children, he bore the burden of his awful secret alone. Magistus had discovered his condition, and anxious to revenge himself upon virtues he could not imitate, and to get possession of the property, he laid the case before the authorities, and insisted that the law of separation should be executed upon his brother-in-law.

As the unhappy man stood in the doorway, he turned his eyes upon the pale faces of his terrified children, and, silently wringing his hands, looked upward to heaven. He was turning away, when all three of us sprang forward at once, and with cries which would have moved the coldest heart, fell at his feet and clung about his knees.

“Touch me not! my sweet children!” he exclaimed, in a hoarse and feeble voice. “Touch me not. It is all over! Caiaphas will befriend my orphans.”

He had not finished the words before several strange [pg 27]domestics, who had rushed in at a signal from Magistus, proceeded to drag us from the spot.

“Away with them!” said the hideous old man, fiercely. “Confine them in the farthest room. We want no young lepers—no more scourges of God.”

“If it were a scourge of God,” cried I, struggling to escape, “it would have been sent upon you and not upon my noble father.”

We were carried weeping out of the courtyard. Looking back to the door, we saw the unhappy man waving his last adieu to us with his poor, sickly, withered hands.

The Mosaic law against the unfortunate leper was cruelly severe; but the Roman power which occupied the country and feared the ravages of leprosy among the soldiery, added greatly to its force and to the stringency of its execution.

The leper was sentenced to a social and civil death far more terrible to a man of sensibility than the mere separation of soul and body. He was driven from the face of his fellow-men, and dwelt in caves and hollow trees and deserted ruins. No one was permitted to touch him, to approach him, or even to speak to him. He was compelled to cry out, Unclean! unclean! so as to warn every one of his dangerous proximity. He became literally the wild man of the woods and the mountains and the desert—the companion and sometimes the prey of wild beasts.

Those who had friends and money had little huts erected for them in remote but safe places, and were amply provided with food and even luxuries by servants who deposited the articles upon the ground at a considerable distance from their habitations.

Such was the fate of our good and generous father—the idol of our hearts and the model of all social and heroic virtues.

We spent the night in tears, and the next day in an agony of grief. I do not know who witnessed the dreadful ceremonies of the law. He was examined by the proper inspectors, and pronounced unclean and incurable. He was led into the great highway. The people stood afar off. The priest in a loud voice pronounced the curse of God upon him—the service of the dead over the living body. He cut him off from the congregation of Israel. The guards then drove him before them into some uninhabited place, and he disappeared from the sight of men.

He was always visible, however, to the hearts of his three little orphans. We followed his steps with filial vigilance. We saw him toiling along in the sand of the desert, and we shared his burden of heat and hunger and thirst. We saw him seated under a palm tree, or in the shadow of some great rock, and we felt the sorrows of his thoughts as if they were our own. We saw him kneeling by the brook, and we mingled our prayers with his. We saw him sleeping in his lonely hut, lighted only by the moon, and we were comforted by his dream of angels and heaven.

[pg 29]

II.

CLOUDS GATHERING.

We were now orphans, and of that kind most to be pitied, who have fallen into the hands of a cold and selfish step-uncle. He had a father’s power over us, without a father’s affection to regulate and sanctify it. There was no one to supervise his conduct toward us; no appeal from his baseness or cruelty, unless his acts were so flagrant and unconcealed as to call down the vengeance of the laws.

This uncle whom we so much dreaded and had so much reason to dread, wore at first a smooth and pleasing mask. He came every day to see us, and endeavored by as much civility and kindness as he could counterfeit, to soften our feelings and satisfy us with our condition. He professed the deepest sympathy for our poor father’s calamity. He regretted the severity of the Jewish and Roman laws on the subject of leprosy, but excused them as a necessary protection to society. He assured us that our father had a comfortable lodge on the border of the wilderness, and that servants were despatched every other day with fresh supplies of food and wine and water. This assurance brought tears to our eyes and comfort to our hearts.

When the storm of our grief had abated a little, we re[pg 30]quested to see our aunt; for we yearned for the presence and sympathy of woman. Magistus conducted us over to his residence which adjoined our own, but fronted upon another street. A high brick wall separated his garden from ours. He had a door cut in this wall so as to facilitate the passage from one house to another. His mansion was completely concealed from the public eye by a thick grove of trees which surrounded it. In the most retired chamber of this quiet and really beautiful place, we found Ulema, my father’s invalid sister.

She was a middle-aged woman of extreme thinness and pallor. Her face was waxen-colored and ghastly. There was a wild terrified expression about her black eyes, which was absolutely painful. She had evidently been a great sufferer in mind and body. She received us with a faint, sickly smile, and then her features assumed an expression of profound pity. We supposed this was on account of the loss of our father. We did not know the reasons which the poor woman had for pitying any one who came within the shadow of Magistus.

After the interchange of a few commonplaces, our uncle cut short the visit on the plea of Ulema’s feeble and nervous condition. This visit was repeated every Sabbath after the morning sacrifice. Magistus always accompanied us, and drew us away as quickly as possible. My aunt had always the same expressions of terror and pity. Thus our repeated interviews added nothing to our knowledge of her character. In vain we petitioned Magistus to let us live with our aunt, or to let us visit her oftener, or to let us stay longer.

Our own home was sadly changed. The furniture, the [pg 31]pictures, the statues, the fountain, the flowers, were all the same, but there was an air of silence and melancholy about the whole place, as if the inanimate objects had felt and shared the misfortunes of the orphan children. There was a different sphere around us, a different light upon us. The organizing and unitizing spirit was gone;—the good and wise father, who made all happy and cheerful about him, and held his little household together in the sweet bonds of perfect order and peace.

It was a cruel act of Magistus to substitute servants and creatures of his own for those who had been with us from our infancy. We were soon surrounded by strange faces, so that our father’s house began to appear to us, what it really was, a prison. The domestics of an establishment acquire in time a coloring from the kind of life within it, as insects are colored by the leaves and bark of the trees they inhabit. Ours were respectful, obedient and cheerful; these were cunning, insolent and dishonest.

The chief butler or head servant was, however, a good character, who plays a remarkable part in my story. He was an African about thirty years of age, very black and homely. He was a eunuch, and dumb. These disadvantages, which at first excited a feeling of repulsion, were atoned for by a singular kindness, deference and sympathy, which were displayed in his features and manners. The other servants held him in great awe; for he had been brought from Egypt about three years before by a magician, and was supposed to be gifted with supernatural power.

It was this advantage in command, as well as a certain kind of talent, industry and reliability, which induced [pg 32]Magistus to give him the supreme charge of both households. He had been with us but a few days, before he had quite won our hearts by his friendly attentions and evident sympathy for our distress. I, who had been made suspicious by my father’s opinion of our guardian, detected in the face of Ethopus (for that was his name) the same expression of pity which shone in the features of our sick aunt.

All this, however, he concealed from Magistus with the greatest care; for he was always cold and impassive toward us in the presence of his master. Unfortunately Ethopus was dumb. His communications at this time might have been of incalculable service to us. I endeavored to learn something of the habits and character of my uncle from the other servants, but on that subject they were as dumb as Ethopus; for whenever I approached it, they manifested signs of fear, and invariably put the finger on the lip.

I became dissatisfied with this secresy. I resolved to teach Ethopus to read and write, so that he might tell me his own story, and initiate me into the mysteries and dangers of my position. He comprehended my idea at once, and came to me secretly at hours when he knew Magistus was absent. He had made some little progress,—though the difficulties of the first steps were very great,—when one evening Magistus walked slyly in and surprised us at our studies. We had been betrayed by one of the servants, who all acted as spies on each other.

Magistus was in a towering passion. He beat Ethopus severely, notwithstanding my protestations that I alone was to blame—and drove him from the room.

Turning fiercely upon me, he exclaimed:

“Do you not know the crime, the danger of teaching that man to write?”

“Oh, uncle!” said I, “what harm is there in bestowing the light of knowledge upon a poor dumb slave?”

“He was made dumb to keep him from betraying secrets.”

“Horrible!” said I.

“Not my secrets,” he added, cautiously, “but his former master’s. If Simon Magus thought he could write, he would come all the way from Egypt to cut his heart out of his body.”

After that event, the sphere of Ethopus’ duty was changed, so that we rarely saw him.

Several weeks passed away, and we wondered why Caiaphas, from whom our father expected so much, did not come to see us. He was to aid and befriend us, and, as I hoped, to deliver us from the control of Magistus. He had evidently promised all that to our dear father. The priestly authorities, if properly applied to, surely would not permit the children of a good and devout man to continue under the influence of a thief and magician.

Caiaphas at last came. His visit was short: his manner constrained but polite. He sympathized briefly with our affliction; explained and defended the Mosaic laws against leprosy; eulogized our father in eloquent terms; and congratulated us on having such a worthy uncle, who would train us so carefully in the faith, and who would make our home so happy.

And this was the result of the secret interviews with my [pg 34]father, and of his solemn warnings against Magistus as a thief and a magician! I was puzzled and disappointed. I could not help saying:

“Did you know, O Caiaphas! that my father entertained a very different opinion of this good uncle?”

“Remember, my son,” said he, somewhat abashed, “that your father was very sick, and his mind greatly impaired. There was no foundation whatever for his unhappy suspicions. Obey your uncle like good children, and you will find him all I have represented him to be.” He then retired.

I was too young and ignorant of the ways and wiles of the world, to suspect that this priest had been all along in collusion with Magistus, and was to share with him in the plunder of the orphans of his friend.

The words of my father rang in my ear and continually haunted my mind: “He is a thief and robber, and addicted to magic.”

I asked my uncle one day, in a very quiet manner, his opinion of magic.

He looked at me severely and answered:

“What are the words of Moses on the subject? Listen: ‘A man or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death. They shall stone them with stones.’ ”

This did not convince me that my father was in error.

Months passed; and a gradual and saddening change was creeping over our life and its surroundings. I had detected no robbery, no magical practices; but I had no faith in my uncle. Cautious and reticent as he was, he could not conceal some of the ugly points of his charac[pg 35]ter. He was violent and cruel in his dealings with his slaves. He was addicted to falsehood, and in both opinion and practice was destitute of charity. His strict observance of the ceremonial law and his intense ritualism, could not conceal from me the fact that his heart was wholly untouched by the spiritualizing influences of true religion.

He ceased after a while to take us to see our aunt. Our teachers in various branches were not re-engaged, or were dismissed. Education came to a stand-still. Company was excluded from our house. His own was opened at night to suspicious characters. By bribing one of his servants one dark night, I obtained admission to his courtyard, and discovered, by muffled sounds of music and dancing, that a bacchanalian revelry was going on underground. He sometimes betrayed the next day, in his face and manner, the effect of these midnight orgies.

In the mean time my beautiful sisters pined, neglected and sorrowful. Magistus rarely visited them; and when he did, he was guilty of coarse familiarities which shocked and repelled them. I summoned courage, boy as I was, on one of these occasions to reproach him bitterly for these things; for neglecting our education, our dress, our manners, our comforts; and for falling himself into habits which would certainly lead to the ruin of us all. He stared at me insolently, and said that I had better get my father’s friend Caiaphas to revise his guardianship.

Like a man who sits helpless in a boat without oars, gliding down a swift current, and hears the far-off but inevitable cataract, I contemplated the dark future that [pg 36]awaited us. I grieved for my sisters more than for myself. We had just been mourning together one day over our sad fate, when Magistus came into the room. He had held a long private interview that morning with a strange man of gigantic size and very coarse manners, whose appearance, as he entered the guest-chamber, excited my gravest suspicions.

“You complain so bitterly,” said he, looking reproachfully at me, “of the general decay and ruin into which everything about here, animate and inanimate, is falling, that it is surprising you have not yet intimated your doubts about your father getting his proper supply of provisions.”

“Oh no, uncle!” said Mary, tenderly, “you could not forget so sacred a duty as that. Surely no one ever hinted such a thing. The thought of it would drive me mad.”

“I wish you to satisfy yourselves perfectly upon that point,” he continued, in the tone of a man who thought himself aggrieved. “A trusty servant is to convey to him a basket of things the day after to-morrow. Let Lazarus accompany him. Let his daughters send some little presents. His son can see him and even speak with him at a distance. He can see his lodging and satisfy himself that he is comfortably situated.”

“Without confessing, uncle,” said I, “that this visit is necessary for my faith in your attention to my father, I concede that it will give me very great pleasure.”

“How long will he be gone?” said Martha.

“Is there no danger?” said Mary.

“He will run no risk and will return the same [pg 37]night,” said Magistus, answering both questions in a breath.

This visit occupied our thoughts continually, and we delighted to imagine what joy it would give our poor father. I was out of bed before daylight that morning, impatient to start. I partook heartily of an extempore breakfast which Ethopus provided me. That personage to my surprise seemed sad and abstracted. I could say nothing to him, however, for Magistus was present. I kissed my sisters good-bye at the door of their room, for they too could not sleep for excitement. Magistus waved his adieu at the front door. I walked through the courtyard with Ethopus, who carried a covered basket on his arm.

We were near the gate, when Ethopus coming close to me slipped something into my hand. It was a long, thin, bright dagger. I concealed it immediately in my bosom.

“Ethopus thinks there will be danger,” said I, to myself.

I would perhaps have said something, but I observed the porter admitting a person through the gate, whose entrance at that hour in the morning caused me the greatest surprise.

It was a woman; and at the age of sixteen a woman occupies a great deal of the field of vision before the masculine eye. This woman was very young—not more than fifteen, although perfectly mature. She was very beautiful—so beautiful that everybody must have turned to look after her. Her eyes were large, soft and hazel; her hair brown and wavy; her cheeks blended roses and [pg 38]pearls: her mouth small and curved like a bow; her voice and smile perfectly bewitching—all that I took in at a glance: nor did it need the splendid ear-rings and brilliant necklace and scarlet robe she wore, to impress it very deeply on my mind.

She bade me good-morning with the sweetest smile imaginable, and with the affable, self-possessed manner of a woman much older than herself. Startled and abashed, I could do nothing but bow profoundly and hurry into the street where Ethopus had given the basket to the person who was to be my guide.

I made signs to Ethopus, by a kind of pantomime we had acquired, to keep a watchful eye on my sisters. He replied by an affirmative motion of the head and a deep sigh, which was evidently on my own account.

This woman was destined, under the leadings of Providence, to make a greater and more lasting impression on my soul than all others. And this was our first meeting: I a bashful boy; she a strange woman, too gaudily dressed, entering my father’s house at a strange hour. So two ships might pass each other on the Great Sea, merely exchanging signals of good-morning—ships destined long afterward to convoy each other beyond the Pillar of Hercules into the infinite unknown!

This woman was Mary Magdalen.

[pg 39]

III.

NIGHT BY THE DEAD SEA.

With my thoughts fluctuating between the extreme beauty of Mary Magdalen and the danger which Ethopus seemed to apprehend, I walked some distance without regarding my new companion.

When I did so, I was surprised and puzzled at his appearance. He was a young man of singularly handsome features, the only drawback being a nose which was a little too aquiline. His black hair curled in short ringlets close to his head, and his face was thoroughly bronzed by sun and tempest. His dress was rather that of some foreigner attached to an Assyrian or Egyptian caravan, than the coarse and simple clothing of a Hebrew servant. And then there was something bold and free in his bearing, which precluded the idea that he was a menial either in character or condition.

“Are you engaged in my uncle’s service?” said I.

He shifted the heavy basket from one arm to the other, and made no reply.

I repeated my question in a louder tone; but he did not seem to hear me, looking straight ahead at the road before him.

“This handsome fellow is both deaf and dumb,” said [pg 40]I to myself. “My uncle has a curious passion for silent people.”

Debarred the pleasure of conversation, I relapsed into reverie. I determined to make a use of this visit which my uncle little anticipated. I resolved to approach my father boldly, contagion or no contagion, and have an interview with him. I wanted to tell him of the neglected and unhappy condition of his children, of our increasing repugnance to Magistus, and of the indifference or treachery of Caiaphas. I wanted his advice. He could surely direct me to friends in the city, whose assistance might arrest our impending ruin.

Made happier by that resolution, as if it had already accomplished something, I let my mind revert back to the woman I saw at the gate, and a new cause of uneasiness arose as I reflected upon that accidental meeting. Boyish and inexperienced as I was, I discovered something in the dress and manner of the early visitor, which whispered to me that she was not a suitable companion for my sisters. She certainly was not a domestic. Who could she be? What could she want at our house just after daybreak? Perhaps she came to see Magistus on business. It was not the hour or the place for that. Perhaps she was one of the midnight revelers whom I heard singing and dancing in the basement story of my uncle’s secluded residence. That idea startled me more than all. I determined to get back home by rapid walking before nightfall, and explore this disquieting mystery.

We had passed over hill and dale through a highly-cultivated country, full of vineyards and gardens and orchards, full of sweet little villages and beautiful rural [pg 41]villas. This did not last long, and we turned in a south-easterly direction. The villages disappeared; the houses became more sparse and humble; the trees became more stunted and bare; the rocks larger and the road more difficult. At the point where the highway leads down the steep hills toward Jericho and the plain of the Jordan, my guide turned suddenly due south into a rough, barren and wild country, where there was no road at all.

The sounds of life faded behind us. Vegetation almost wholly disappeared. No animals were to be seen but a few goats far away browsing among the rocks. The birds seemed to refuse to accompany us further. The silence of the desert fell gradually upon us. This was the wilderness of Judea.

We were winding downward to the Salt Sea, that great watery waste, in whose silent deeps Sodom and Gomorrah lie buried; on whose shores stand bleak and desolate mountains full of sulphur springs; the gloom without the glory of nature; the home of wild beasts and lepers and robbers and demons; mountains fearful in their nakedness and solitude; evil genii guarding in stern silence the eternal sleep of the lost cities of the plain.

I grew uneasy and melancholy as we approached these famous and dangerous places. The taciturnity of my guide, together with an increasing shadow on his expressive face, magnified my apprehensions almost into fears. I felt my boyish weakness and inexperience by the side of this strong, rough, silent man of the wilderness, who now seemed to my excited imagination to have got into his native element, and to be a part of the lonely and supernatural region into which we had entered.

Our attention was suddenly drawn to a neighboring eminence by sounds of so strange a character, that it was impossible to say whether they were animal or human. Four lepers appeared in sight, almost naked, holding up their long, withered arms, and screeching out from their hoarse throats and swollen lips their hideous cry,

“Unclean! unclean!”

I trembled at this sad spectacle and gazed intently, expecting and afraid to recognize my poor father in the group. My guide suddenly laid his hand upon my shoulder, and we both stood still. He then set the basket upon the ground, made signals to the lepers to approach, and drew me away from the spot. A horrible chorus of guttural thanks came up from the leprous creatures, who awaited our departure before pouncing upon the acceptable present.

“Oh, sir!” said I, resisting my guide, and forgetting that he was deaf and dumb, “you have given my father’s food to those unhappy wretches! Where is my father? Oh, take me to him!”

He stopped and looked me full in the face.

“Oh yes!” I continued, in a supplicating tone; “that basket has food and wine for my poor father, the leper, and a bouquet and a letter from Martha, and a pair of sandals from little Mary—”

Overcome with emotion I burst into tears.

The guide drew a deep sigh; and when I looked up into his face it was radiant with a sweet and benevolent expression. He had either heard me or he comprehended intuitively the nature of my distress. He shook his head and made a deprecating gesture with his hand. He then [pg 43]drew me off strongly, but so gently that I was partially reassured, and walked meekly at his side, overwhelmed with surprise and sorrow.

After passing over several rough ridges we turned into a deep ravine. The guide made me go in front. The pathway down this narrow gorge, this cleft between two mountains, was rough and dangerous. There were deep holes or pits upon one side, and frightfully overhanging rocks upon the other. It was so dark and precipitous in some places that I could scarcely believe we were not descending into the bowels of the earth. We suddenly emerged from this monstrous fissure on a little mound made by the soil washed down from above, and found ourselves on the shore of the Dead Sea.

I had never seen such an expanse of water before, and was charmed with the sight. Away to the left was the plain of the Jordan and the sacred river of that name, invisible at a distance among its reeds and rushes. Opposite arose the reddish-brown mountain chain which borders the sea on the west. Far down to the right stretched a range of high hills of a bluish gray color. In front, and widening away to the south, lay the mighty surface of the sea, shining like a burnished mirror in the noon-day sun. A fine breeze was blowing; but there was only a faint ripple on the water, for its heavy salt waves can scarcely be stirred by the wind—like the soul of a wicked man, which cannot be moved by the Spirit of God.

I was recalled from that delicious reverie into which every one is transported by a view of the sea; for my guide pointed to a clump of stunted trees or rather large [pg 44]bushes near the beach. Half hidden by them was a tent of alternate white and red canvas, in front of which a large boat was drawn up on the sand. Two rough-looking fellows lay in the boat asleep. There was no human habitation anywhere about this lonely spot. These people belonged on the other side of the sea. They were ready for flight in a moment. They were wild, roving, secretive, fugitive. They were engaged in some unlawful business. I had fallen into the hands of robbers.

These disquieting thoughts passed through my mind as we approached the tent. Hearing our footsteps on the sand, the chief came out of it. He was tall and sinewy, a man of unusual weight and size. He was clad in a richly-embroidered crimson robe, with a splendid scimitar, jewel-hilted, at his side. A long beard, stained of a golden yellow by some vegetable dye, gave him a grotesque and never-to-be-forgotten appearance. All this barbaric ornament did not prevent me from recognizing the strange, coarse man who held the long interview with Magistus two days before. Then he was disguised; now his character was apparent.

We stood before him. My guide made a low obeisance and said in a clear voice:

“Barabbas! I have obeyed your orders!”

My astonishment on discovering that my robber-guide was neither deaf nor dumb, was turned into another channel when Barabbas exclaimed:

“Well done! Bind him tightly with the old Persian. If Beltrezzor’s ransom does not arrive by sunrise, we will make way with them both together.”

My uncle had betrayed me into the hands of the Ish[pg 45]maelite to be murdered. There could be no doubt that the atrocious assassin had taken every precaution to prevent escape or failure. Resistance was impossible. There were four men in sight, either one of whom could have overpowered me in a moment. My heart sank in despair when my guide led me behind the tent, and bound me securely to a little tree, without evincing the least remorse or care at his own part in this shameful and cowardly transaction.

I now surveyed my fellow-prisoner, who was tied to another tree close to me. His gray hair and beard showed that he had passed considerably beyond the meridian of life. He had a serene and rather handsome face, full of thought and benevolence. Young and inexperienced as I was, I perceived by a kind of intuition that my companion in distress was a cultivated and superior man. He wore a rich Eastern robe and a bright-colored turban. He was smoking a long pipe curiously carved and twisted. He surveyed me quietly and nodded kindly to me, evidently pitying my childish terror and despair.

“We shall be murdered to-morrow!” I gasped.

“I learned a proverb in India,” said the old man. “Brahma writes the destiny of every one on his skull. No man can read it”—and watching his smoke fade into air, he slowly continued, “and even the gods cannot avert it.”

I was astonished at his coolness; but his fatalism did not console me.

“To die—to die!—to leave my poor sisters unprotected and to see them no more—Oh, it is horrible!”

“Not to be,” said the Persian, in a voice of singular [pg 46]depth and sweetness, “not to be is better than to be; and not to have been is better than all.”

In spite of myself and my fears, the calm and almost spiritual halo which seemed to surround this strange old man, began to quiet my agitation and to divert my thoughts from my impending fate.

“Are you a philosopher?” said I.

“I think,” he replied; and drawing a long whiff from his pipe, he illustrated his remark by lapsing into a profound reverie.

I contemplated this serene philosopher a long time in silence, and made up my mind that he must have a good many beautiful things to think about as he sat there, bound and under sentence of death, smoking so placidly upon the arid shore of that dreadful sea.

When he indicated, by knocking the ashes from his pipe, that he had ascended from the ocean of dreams into which he had dived, I asked him how he had fallen into the power of these miscreants.

“Speak evil of no one, my son! Leave wicked names to the wicked. These gentlemen live upon the road and in the wilderness. They pay special attention to travelers, to caravans, and to small and remote villages. They cure some people of that chronic disease we call life, and they permit others to ransom themselves by large quantities of that evil thing we call money. They have set me down in the latter class, and I am awaiting a remittance from a friend in Jerusalem.”

“Suppose your friend is dead, or absent from the city, or cannot raise the sum required, or refuses to do it?”

He pointed to the sea, shrugging his shoulders, and exclaimed:

“What is written, is written.”

When it was quite dark my guide of the morning brought us a little food. The old Persian ate heartily, but I could barely taste it. The guide whispered in my ear, “Be silent and wakeful,” and departed.

“Now sleep, my son,” said my philosophic companion; “trust in God and sleep. Our angels and good genii befriend us most powerfully when asleep. When awake we scare them away by our villainous thoughts. Sleep.”

The whispered words of the guide had inspired me with a vague hope, and I preferred trusting to his advice rather than to the invisible guardians of our sleep. I was therefore silent and wakeful. The moon went down long before midnight.

The hours passed away slowly, slowly, marked only by the coming up of the white stars from behind the eastern hills; while the long minutes were told by the dead plash of the water against the beach.

There were feasting and drinking and singing in the tent of Barabbas. This was kept up until long after midnight. Then there was silence, and the loud snoring as of some one in a drunken sleep.

It became very dark. The voices of man and nature were hushed. The hours passed, and all things seemed to sleep except the stars which continued to climb the heavenly dome, and the sad, gray sea which pushed feebly against the desert beach, and myself cruelly orphaned and betrayed, thinking alternately of home and death.

“Death at sunrise!” I exclaimed, thinking aloud to myself.

“The sun has not risen,” whispered the Persian.

And Hope, the undying consoler within us, took courage at the words of the old man and at the slow-footed pace of the night; and thought it was long, long till the morning, and that the angel of Life might still come, and relieve from his awful watch the angel of Death.

An hour more of silence that could be felt, and of unutterable suspense—and a hand was laid softly upon my shoulder. The rope that bound me was disengaged, and my deliverer drew me stealthily along the beach, and away from the tent where Barabbas lay dreaming of plundered caravans and cruel uncles who enriched him for the murder of their nephews.

The guide did not speak until we stood on the mound at the mouth of the great ravine, where the Dead Sea first broke upon my sight.

“You are free,” he said. “You are a child, abused and betrayed. You shall not be murdered. Robber as I am, there is something in my heart which is touched by your sorrows. Go back to life, if not to happiness. God perhaps will deliver you from Magistus, as He has through me delivered you from Barabbas.”

“Come with me,” said I; “leave this wretched and dangerous life in the wilderness. Share our fate and fortune in Bethany.”

“Do not speak of it,” he answered; “it is impossible. Hasten on your journey, or all may be lost.”

“But,” said I, clinging to him, “Barabbas will kill you when he finds I have escaped.”

“No! I have contrived against that. I am cunning and I shall succeed.”

“The poor old Persian will be murdered!”

“No! He will be ransomed to-morrow. Away!” he continued excitedly; “a moment’s delay may be fatal. Away!”

“Stay!” said I, eagerly; “tell me the name of my benefactor, that I may repeat it in my prayers.”

“I have no name, no home. I am the Son of the Desert.”

He hurried softly away toward the tent, and I crept up the ravine in the darkness.

[pg 50]

IV.

IN THE WILDERNESS.

Afraid of the dark and fearful gorge, full of rocks and pitfalls and unseen dangers; afraid of the unpeopled desert which awaited me above; afraid of wild beasts, serpents, lepers and evil spirits; afraid of the silence and solitude of night by the Salt Sea; afraid of all things behind me and all before; I ascended cautiously and painfully the narrow path, if path it might be called, praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for protection.

I, who had never been out of my father’s house at that hour of the night in my life, thus found myself amid a complication of circumstances which might have appalled the stoutest heart.

I had ascended two-thirds of the way, when my keen ear caught upon the night-wind the subdued but rough voices of several persons who were descending the ravine. My heart stood still and I almost fainted with affright. Fortunately, I remembered that I had just passed, a little lower down, a large side-fissure or chink in the great rock wall of the ravine. I went back with the utmost speed and caution, and got safely concealed in the black crevice before the objects of my terror came along.

They were no doubt some of the party of Barabbas, who were returning with or without the ransom of the old Persian. They were talking of ransom with oaths and laughter as they passed. I held my breath in suspense; nor did my heart recover its natural beat until they had descended a good distance, and their voices floated faintly upward like the mutterings of lost souls in some horrible abyss.

I was now afraid to start again lest I should meet another detachment of the robbers. I waited a long time, listening intently. It suddenly occurred to me that when the robbers reached the tent of Barabbas, my escape would be discovered, and the swiftest runners despatched to overtake me. This thought brought the cold drops to my forehead; and I hurried breathless all the way up the ravine, actually thinking that I heard the footsteps of men behind me, and voices calling my name.

Escaped from the robbers, I fell into the arms of the desert. I could have extricated myself from the new danger if the sun had been shining. But the day rose dark and cloudy, and I could not tell whether I was going east or west, north or south. I failed to recognize any of the spots we had passed the day before. I walked rapidly up and down the bare hills, over the rough gullies and through the sandy hollows. After some hours of this exhausting travel, both mind and body being on the stretch, I was shocked on discovering that I had been moving in a circle, and was near the mouth of the ravine again.

I would have stretched myself upon some rock in despair; but my dangerous proximity to Barabbas and his men, revived my fears and gave supernatural strength to [pg 52]my body. I fled away as fast as I could over new hills and gullies and sandy bottoms. It must have been two or three hours after noon, when I reached a hill overlooking a deep, narrow valley, the dry bed of some nameless brook, which, in the rainy season, poured along over the sands its little tribute to the sea. Thoroughly exhausted with hunger, thirst, fatigue, loss of sleep, fear and despair, I lay down upon the hillside. Lost in the wilderness, thinking of the still worse conditions of my father and sisters, my misery was too deep for tears. A strange torpor crept over my senses, and I fell into that profound slumber in which the weary are strengthened and the sorrowful comforted.

When I awoke, the setting sun, just freed from clouds, was shining in my face.

How life-giving, faith-giving, hope-giving is a sight of the sun, wrapping his mantle of softened glory about him, and descending trustfully to sleep in the kingdom of night, assured that Aurora will open duly her palace of pearl, and his golden chariot with its fiery steeds issue forth in the morning!

So does the Soul sink only to rise; sleep only to wake; die only to live: ever changing in state, ever the same in substance.

I was thus drawing new vigor from the rays of the sun, when a voice of heavenly sweetness broke upon my ear, a voice chanting this beautiful Scripture:

“As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,

So panteth my soul after thee, O God!

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:

When shall I come and appear before God?”

“Are there angels as well as demons in the desert?” said I, to myself.

A jutting brow of the hill concealed from me the source whence these sounds appeared to issue. I arose and advanced to explore the mystery. Rounding the intervening slope, I saw a young man seated upon a stone at the mouth of a large cavern. His quick eye detected me in a moment, and he advanced to meet me. He wore a single garment wrought of the finest camel’s hair, which was secured about his waist by a leathern girdle. Simple toilet! But when you looked at his fine head with its long black hair curling about his bare neck, and his beautiful oval face soft as a girl’s, full of all saintly thoughts and heavenly emotions, you knew that you were in the presence of one who was clad interiorly in fine linen and purple.

“Good sir,” said I, “behold an unhappy youth, who has just escaped death by robbers, and is lost in this terrible wilderness!”

“One must have lived long in the desert to find his way out of it such a dark day as this. It will be clear to-morrow, and I will pilot you into the great highway. Meantime you are welcome to my poor hospitalities—a cave for roof, a bed of skins, water to drink, wild honey and locusts to eat; that is all.”

“I gladly accept your offer; and were your proffered gifts still more humble, they would be sanctified by the light of brotherly love you throw upon them.”

I seated myself on the stone while he went into the cave and brought forth his simple food and drink, of which I partook heartily.

“To whom am I indebted for this kind reception?” I inquired, as I finished my meal.

“I am John,” he answered, “the son of Zacharias; and I dwell in the desert until the time of my showing unto Israel.”

A deep human groan from the interior of the cavern now startled me, and I sprang from my seat.

“What is that?” I exclaimed.

“My poor old patient has awakened. I must go and examine him.”

“He takes in the sick as well as the wandering,” said I to myself. “Surely the angels must protect him in some peculiar manner.”

John came forward again with an anxious countenance. “Alas!” said he, “the old man has rapidly changed. He fell into a soft slumber an hour ago, but he is now plainly dying. I knew he was very ill, for he has raved all day about his children and some magicians who wish to destroy them.”

At these words a fearful tremor seized me. I could not speak. I sprang past the young man, and in a moment was kneeling at the side of my father! I seized his withered hand and covered it with kisses.

“My father! my father! Do you not know your son, your only son?”

The young hermit looked on in tears.

The old man slowly opened his eyes and cast a bewildered look, first at me, and then at John.

“Yes—you are angels,” he said, “who have come to welcome my spirit into paradise.”

He breathed heavily. I sank down weeping. John [pg 55]came forward with a little basin of water. “There is no time to be lost,” said he in a low tone.

“Do you believe in God, and in Moses his lawgiver, and in the prophets his servants?”

“I do! I do!” said the old man, eagerly.

“Do you repent of your sins, and pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you?”

“I do! and God be merciful to a miserable sinner!”

“Then I baptize you with water, the emblem of purification,—and in the name of the Lord, the only God, into his spiritual Church and into the hope of immortal life.”

Thus saying, he sprinkled some water on the old man’s forehead. His own face shone with a meek and holy radiance. My father closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.

Suddenly he started, frowning, as if some great pain had changed the current of his thought.

“Tell my son to beware of his uncle. He is a magician.”

“Here is your son!” I exclaimed, eagerly; “here is your son! Oh, speak to me, my father!”

He did not notice my grief; but, pointing slowly to John the Baptist, he said, solemnly:

“Behold the prophet of God!”

He then looked fixedly upward; and as I followed his glance to the roof of the cave, his spirit passed away beyond the blue dome, beyond the stars and the sun, beyond the entire realm of nature, into the paradise of Moses and the prophets.

I spent the night in prayer and tears by my father’s dead body. Occasionally the young prophet broke in upon the stillness of the air with his silvery voice, chanting [pg 56]the sweet verses of Scripture. I was sorely tempted to rebel against the providence of God, which permitted such a good man as my father to be so cruelly dealt with. The presence, however, of the young prophet, was in itself a sermon, a blessing, a help to resignation. One could not be skeptical or even critical in his luminous atmosphere of peace and love. I reflected that there were many great mysteries which my youthful and inexperienced mind could not at present comprehend, and returning faith assuaged the grief it could not remove.

The next day about noon the young prophet offered a prayer over the corpse, and we consigned it to a humble grave dug by our own hands in a large cavern near by. I observed that there were four other graves in the same spot.

“Yes,” said John, meekly, “this is my little cemetery. Here I bury my dead in ground consecrated to the Lord. This was a robber who was wounded in a fray and left by his comrades. He dragged his bleeding limbs into the desert. I found him and bore him to my home. I preached to him the new gospel of repentance and faith, and he died in my arms weeping like a child over the sins of his youth. He who occupies that grave was a madman, who broke his chains, and drove every one from him with knives and stones until he met me in the wilderness. He followed me to my cave, and would sit contented at my feet hearing me sing or read or pray. Under that mound is a poor slave who fled, mutilated and frenzied, from a cruel master. I kissed the wounds I could not heal; and he died clasping my hands smilingly to his lips. And that last one is the grave of another [pg 57]poor leper like your father, forsaken even by his wretched companions—but not forsaken by the Lord, whose Word I obeyed when I tended him in his long illness.

“I call it consecrated ground,” he continued; “for these poor people are the children of God. The leper is cured of his leprosy; the slave is free; the madman is sane; the robber is forgiven.”

“What induces you,” said I, “to lead this strange, lonely life, so full of self-sacrifice, so full of terrors and dangers?”

“The Spirit of God!” he said, solemnly.

“Are you not afraid of the silence, the solitude, the darkness of the desert?”

He replied in the words of Scripture:

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?”

I felt awed in the presence of this young man, who was not more than ten years older than myself. I was better satisfied to leave my father’s ashes in his keeping, than if I had built above them the most splendid monument of Pentelican marble or Corinthian brass.

After a frugal meal we started for the public road. It was ten long miles to the nearest highway, and it was ten more from that to Bethany. We discoursed, as we walked along, about spiritual things; and although I did not understand half he said, he spoke with such eloquence and sincerity that he convinced me he had some great mission in the world. We parted a little before sunset with mutual embraces and blessings. I dropped some grateful and admiring tears as I gazed after the heavenly-minded her[pg 58]mit, picking his way with his long staff through the rough places, until he disappeared from sight over the brown, bare hill.

It was not until the comforting and sustaining power of his presence was withdrawn, that I recognized how exhausted and helpless and lonely I was. Fatigue, fear, excitement, sorrow, loss of sleep and inadequate nourishment, had considerably shattered my nerves; and now to appear suddenly in the presence of an uncle who thought he had murdered me, was a difficult and perhaps a dangerous task. I would gladly have turned in any other direction; but my sisters were in the power of the monster who had plotted my assassination. Nothing but a vague fear that those lovely women were in some trouble or distress, gave strength to my tired limbs and courage to my aching heart.

Night came on, and I had to advance more slowly. The full moon was shining halfway down the western sky, but a dark cloud had risen from the ashes of the sunset, and was advancing upward. It was important that I should make all the haste I could, before the light of the moon was obscured by that ascending blackness. To get out of the road might be to lose the whole night.

I moved so rapidly that I became exceedingly tired. If I sat down to rest, a mysterious fear impelled me to rise and press forward to Bethany. I have faith in those secret attractions, those silent monitors, those inexplicable warnings. A minute’s repose of muscle, a minute’s recuperation of breath, and I started again with renewed energy.

A wind came up behind the cloud and drove it furiously onward. It covered the moon and all was dark. I groped my way. I stumbled over obstacles. I advanced slowly. It was late, late in the night, when I entered the village of Bethany. No lights were visible; no sounds were heard. I traversed the streets alone. I passed my uncle’s residence, brimful of maledictions against its wicked proprietor. Soon my father’s house loomed up before me. I saw the long white wall in front of it, and the parapet of the house-top darkening above.

Suddenly a strong blast of wind stirred all the trees of the village. It sighed along the deserted streets and up into the sky. It lifted the lower edge of the cloud from the moon which shone out, low down, just above my father’s house, as it were with a sudden brilliancy.

It revealed to me two astonishing things.

One was a large, strange, gilded vehicle drawn by two powerful horses standing before the gate.

The other was the figure of a woman on the house-top, between me and the moon—a woman with flowing robes and disheveled hair, raising her arms wildly to heaven, while a man was approaching her in the attitude of striking.

It was my sister Martha!

With a cry of horror I sprang against the gate, which gave way before me.

[pg 60]

V.

THE BANQUET.

I am too deeply impressed with the vanity of our worldly affairs in comparison with the verities of the spiritual life, to employ my own time or engage a reader’s attention with a biography, however pleasing or romantic, unless there was a subtle connecting link, which I expect to reveal, between the facts narrated and those eternal truths which overshadow all others in importance.

I, alone of all mankind, have lived consciously in both worlds long enough to discover their relations to each other. What my fellow-men have seen only on the surface, I have examined interiorly. I have seen the secret springs of human pride, ambition, passion and folly. I have seen the souls of men as they appear in the sight of angels. And my instructions in that world were all based upon my experiences in this.

It is now necessary to drop for a while my personal narrative, and to go back and relate, from the evidence of others, what happened in Bethany during my absence.

My sisters had been left with our atrocious uncle, like two lambs under the guardianship of a wolf. One capable of assassinating his nephew, a mere youth, would not [pg 61]hesitate at any wickedness against his beautiful nieces. This man’s character was so cruel and wicked, that some explanation is needed of the singular maturity of diabolism to which he had attained.

Magistus had neither religion nor honor. Honor binds us in duty to our neighbor, as religion binds us both to God and the neighbor. It is a moon which shines brilliantly in the absence of the sun. The light of honor is also but the reflected light of religion. When both shine together, honor is absorbed and swallowed up in the more effulgent blaze of religion. The soul without religion or honor, is like the earth without sun or moon—cold, dark, desolate, hideous.

Such was the soul of Magistus.

Irreligion, like drunkenness, is sometimes inherited. The father of Magistus was a scoffer and sensualist. Fatal incubus of moral deformity descending from father to son! In this he was typical of the age. The hereditary pressure toward hell was so great, that a few more centuries of transmission would have brought the world into perfect sympathy with the lower regions. The advent of the Lord arrested that for a while.

Without religion or honor man is very close to hell. The veriest barbarian has some faint idea of natural religion, and some feeble impulse of natural honor, which distinguish him from the beasts and unite him to his kind. These are barriers against the influx of infernal life. He is ignorant of the devils within him, and the devils within him are ignorant of him. Wise and blessed provision! Were he brought into conscious rapport with his own attendant evil spirits, he would soon be one with them. [pg 62]Their life in hell and his life on earth would be animated by the same breath.

This had happened to Magistus.

Not that he was a barbarian. He was an educated, cultivated man, accustomed to the luxuries and full of the suavities of civilized life. Civilization and religion are not synonymous. Hell itself has a stupendous civilization. Magistus was a Pharisee by profession: a ritualist, and a strict observer of feast-days and ordinances and ceremonies. That, however, was not the man, but only his outer garment—his cloak. Supposed by the world to be virtuous and honest, this wealthy and reputable Pharisee was spiritually a whited sepulchre, full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

He was a spiritualist, a sorcerer, a necromancer, a magician. He at first sought and became familiar with these people, with their studies and arts, from natural curiosity. It was very pleasant to call up his dead father and various dead friends, and converse with them. It was agreeable to know that they were all happy, and advancing in various degrees toward the infinite divine perfection. They showed him wonderful things. They performed miracles in his sight greater than those which the magicians of Egypt performed before Pharaoh.

Then they told him that the Jewish Scriptures were not divinely inspired, but a medley of fables, passable poetry and childish philosophy. He had already suspected this; and he congratulated the spirits on possessing a critical genius so similar to his own. He finally acquired, from these supernatural instructors, a grand system of philoso[pg 63]phy, revealing the divinity of nature and the laws of progress.

Having become convinced that there are great and subtile powers emanating from the spiritual world, unknown to most men, he determined to avail himself of those powers for his own private ends. He became a secret pupil and disciple of magicians and wizards. He communicated with spirits and permitted them to take possession of him, soul and body, so that they spoke through his mouth and wrote through his hand and came at his call.

He learned all the tricks and spells of legerdemain, the arts and formulas and incantations of magic, and the rites and ceremonies of the black art in its broadest sense. He obtained means of seeing objects at any distance, of producing hallucinations or optical illusions, of personating the dead, of finding hidden treasures, of reading men’s thoughts, of sowing enmity between friends, of discovering secrets, and a thousand other astounding and almost incredible things.

The soul is not destroyed in a moment: it is the work of years. The evil spirits and demons with whom he was thus brought into contact, slowly poisoned the fountain-head of character; extinguished his reverence, his modesty, his respect for marriage; undermined his conscience; swept away all religious and even social and civil scruples; and fired and sustained all his evil propensities; so that, externally a faithful disciple of Moses, he was interiorly a devil, governed only by the love of self and the world.

This formidable hypocrite, the most of whose wealth [pg 64]had been obtained by secret frauds, and was not unstained with blood, had his dwelling in the centre of an immense area surrounded by lofty walls and concealed by a dense grove of trees. He received no visitors but those who came to him at night, and for no good purpose. He had the character of a recluse, devoted to sacrifice and prayer. He thus indulged his secret vices and carried on his diabolical incantations unsuspected. The dark shadows of his princely mansion enveloped a degree of Assyrian luxury scarcely exceeded by the Caprean court of the emperor Tiberius.

Caiaphas, the priest, was his best friend, who shared his private pleasures and maintained by constant applause his public reputation for sanctity and honor.

The influence of evil spirits who possess us is at first gentle and subtile, coinciding with our own inclination. Thinking to lead, we are led. When a man is chained so that he can no longer resist, they urge him headlong to a crisis. They fire his evil passions; they blind his perverted intellect; they inflate his pride and self-conceit; they make him scornful and regardless of others, impatient of all barriers to his self-gratification, and assure him of boundless immunity and protection. In this state of horrible fantasy and inflamed passion, he is ready to trample upon all laws human and divine.

To this fearful point in his spiritual life had Magistus arrived.

When my father was driven into the wilderness, Caiaphas and my uncle plotted together how to get speedy and sole possession of his great wealth. To get rid of or destroy his children was the first, and, indeed, the only [pg 65]thing necessary. But they resolved to allow some months to elapse—to let our misfortunes die out from the public memory, and even ourselves be quite forgotten. Hence the seclusion, the solitude, the systematic neglect to which we were subjected.

The plan was finally matured. The boy was to be decoyed into the wilderness and murdered by Barabbas. It was to be given out that he was a wild, incorrigible lad, who had run away from home and joined a band of robbers. After a few months a letter was to be received from Barabbas, whose fame as an outlaw was widespread, giving the particulars of his death in an attack of the party upon some caravan. This was to settle the matter for ever in the public mind.

It was more difficult to dispose of my sisters than of myself. A hundred schemes were suggested by the inventive villains, but all rejected or suspended. It was finally agreed to draw them out and test their characters, to make experiments upon them, to see what could be done with them. It was a delicate task; but Magistus had boldness and cruelty for anything, and Caiaphas was to back him incessantly with his private counsel and his public support. He had already begun his insidious work, by lamenting to sundry influential persons, with sanctimonious regrets, that the daughters of his old and dear friend exhibited so early a singular perverseness of character and disregard of their social and religious obligations. The result, he added, of that laxity of discipline and passion for individual liberty, which characterized the unhappy leper.

The first and best instrument of evil is always a woman. [pg 66]Mary Magdalen, left an orphan without relatives at a very early age, had fallen into the hands of a strolling showman, who taught her to sing and dance, accompanying herself on the timbrel. Her extraordinary beauty attracted attention in the streets of Jerusalem, and she soon passed into the possession of one of those connoisseurs who study the anatomy as well as the philosophy of art. She quickly disappeared from sight; and it was rumored that she had been sent to Ashkelon to serve in the gorgeous temple of Ashtoreth, the Venus of Assyria. She had gone one dark night no further than Bethany, and had buried her talents and her shame in the princely mansion of Magistus.

On the morning of my departure this serpent was introduced into the dove-cote. Magistus represented her as a distant relative whom he had invited to spend several weeks with his nieces, hoping that her gayety of spirits would lighten the constant gloom of his little charges. The children, dazzled by her great beauty and won by her free and affectionate manner, were delighted with their new companion. She entertained them with curious stories of what she had seen and heard, refraining from any allusion which might reveal her true life and character.

But the plot of the two arch-demons did not work as they had calculated. Indeed, it worked in a way quite opposite to their expectations. They had counted on the corrupting influence of a bold, fascinating woman on the gentle and unsophisticated thoughts and feelings of innocent girls. They had not counted, cunning and sagacious as they were, on the possible influence of the girls upon Mary Magdalen.

That influence was astonishing. When she felt the pure and innocent sphere which surrounded the lovely sisters, a change came over the subtle emissary of Magistus. She forgot the instructions of her masters. The memories of her old life seemed to die out, and the unseen angels of her better nature to wake into strange activity. Young herself, more sinned against than sinning, her pity was awakened for these young creatures against whom such wicked ones were conspiring.

She made them tell her all about their poor father, and wept with them at the story. She took them into the garden and played over the green knolls, and ran in the graveled walks, and gathered flowers, and sang little childish songs, as if she were a child again. She asked a thousand questions about our mother and little Samuel, and about the babyish sayings and doings of my little sisters and myself. She frequently exclaimed “Oh, I am so happy! This is the happiest day of my life! Oh that I could live for ever so!”

Pausing before the tomb of my mother, and looking at a little vase of fresh flowers which stood before it, she suddenly fell upon her knees, exclaiming wildly:

“O God! if I could have offered flowers, also, at the tomb of a mother, it might have been different!”

She burst into a flood of tears; and the sisters endeavored to console her—not knowing the true nature of her wound—by kissing her cheeks and mingling their tears with hers.

They were interrupted in these sweet offices of mutual sympathy, by the voice of a servant asking Mary Magdalen if she had forgotten that she had to prepare herself [pg 68]and her companions for the grand supper at the house of Magistus.

She arose from the ground, and slowly recovering her composure, led the astonished children through the gate in the garden wall toward the house of our uncle. On the way she told them that Magistus had prepared a handsome entertainment for herself and them, and as a charming surprise to their brother, who was expected to return with good news from the father just about the hour of the feast. They need not be frightened, for Caiaphas alone was to be present.

We had never entered any portion of our uncle’s great mansion except the small wing which contained the reception-room and the long passage which led to the private chamber of our invalid aunt. The three women now passed up a flight of marble steps into a portico leading into a vast hall, ornamented with statues and with vases filled with flowers. Hurrying through this hall, Mary lead them up another flight of stairs which had a gilded balustrade, into two exquisite bed-chambers which opened into each other.

The bedsteads were of carved ivory, exceedingly beautiful; the canopies, of blue silk fringed with gold; the coverlets, of fine linen and purple, curiously embroidered. The divans, the couches, the chairs, the tables, were all gems of graceful art. The floor was of polished cedar, with gilded moulding around the wall. The ceiling was a splendid stucco-work on which scenes were painted in brilliant colors; in one room, Actæon peeping from behind the trees at Diana and her nymphs in their crystal bath; and in the other, Venus beating her breast and [pg 69]tearing her hair at sight of the blood-stained thigh of Adonis.

The whole atmosphere was freighted with the most delicious and exhilarating perfumes. There were chests of drawers full of the richest female clothing, the fruit of the rarest material and the finest needlework. There were caskets lying open and revealing ear-rings and necklaces and bracelets of the most dazzling beauty. The sisters were overwhelmed with wonder and delight. They had never seen such things before; for our father, rich as he was, was plain, frugal and unostentatious in his tastes and habits.

“These are all ours,” said Mary Magdalen, “the gifts of our good uncle who delights to make us happy. Come, let us dress for the supper.”

Domestics came at her call, and the ladies were attired in robes of the greatest magnificence. Their hair was dressed in the most graceful manner, sparkling with alternate flowers and gems. “All this is for Lazarus,” said the sisters to each other, as they followed Mary Magdalen, blushing at themselves, down into the supper-room in a deep basement almost under ground.

The supper-room was as gorgeously furnished as the bed-chambers. The table was placed on a raised platform at one end of the room, leaving a great space for which our bewildered visitors could not imagine the use. The ceiling had a splendid painting of Aurora driving the chariot of the sun, attended by the Muses and the flying Hours. The walls were adorned with solid upright mirrors of polished brass. In every niche and corner was some exquisite marble, some nude figure from the Grecian [pg 70]mythology; the most beautiful of which was Leda caressing the swan, concealing within its white form the passionate soul of Jove.

Caiaphas and Magistus reclined upon silken couches at a table which was loaded with savory viands and vessels of gold and silver containing delicious wines, and ornamented with brilliant vases of fruits and flowers. The scene was lighted by hundreds of wax candles of as many colors as the rainbow.

As soon as the women were handed to their places at the table, Martha exclaimed:

“And why could not poor aunt Ulema be brought down to enjoy this charming feast?”

And Mary added:

“And Lazarus, where is he?”

Ulema and Lazarus were the last persons in the world whom the host would have invited to his banquet. He paid no attention to Martha’s question. To Mary’s he replied by drawing a parchment from his bosom.

“Listen!” said he; “a letter from Lazarus!”

The faces of the young girls grew anxious.

“Dear Uncle:

“Excuse me for spending the night with my father. He is better, happy and well provided. But I have many things to say to him, and my visit has given him so much pleasure. I know I must submit on my return to the law of purification, which will separate me many days from my sweet sisters. Take them to your own house and make them happy. I will return to-morrow.

“Your loving nephew,

“Lazarus.”

Magistus looked up: the sisters were weeping.

“I was half angry at first,” he said, “at this strange disobedience. On reflection, I am satisfied. It confers immense happiness on both father and son; and their consultations may be of great service to you all. And, besides, it gives me such a good opportunity to become better acquainted with my charming nieces.”

He passed the manuscript to my sisters, who inspected it closely. It was my handwriting without doubt. The reader need not be told that it was a base forgery; for at that very moment my poor father was ill in the cave of John the Baptist, and I was bound in expectation of death on the shore of the Salt Sea.

My sisters appeared to resume their composure and the feast proceeded, although they partook very lightly of its delicacies. Musicians came in, and the harp, the timbrel, the flute, the cymbals, the drum, and the silver bugle enlivened the entertainment. Caiaphas and Magistus grew warm and witty and convivial over their wine, which they pressed in vain upon the timid girls. Even Mary Magdalen merely sipped it in deference to both parties.

What a delicate thermometer is the heart of a young girl! Without thinking, how innocent! Without reasoning, how wise! A thoughtful shadow crept over Martha’s face. Mary sank into a deep reverie, from which the playful sallies of the rest could not arouse her. These young girls were thinking, and their thoughts ran in the same channel.

The sudden change of Magistus from indifference to suavity; this gorgeous and secluded feast; Lazarus and [pg 72]his father away off in the wilderness; their poor aunt shut up in her sick chamber; this strange woman who wept so bitterly in the garden: these pagan pictures and statues so revolting to their chaste religious instincts: the lights; the music; the noisy laughter of these usually sedate men; all these things overwhelmed them with sudden apprehensions and vague terror. Each divined the feelings of the other by some secret sympathy; and bursting into tears at the same moment, they both rose from their seats.

“Stay!” exclaimed Magistus, nourishing his wine-cup and maddened by its contents—“Stay! you lose the cream and essence of the feast. I will show you now how the dancing-girls of Babylon intoxicate the king of Assyria.”

At these words they fled from the room.

“Follow them,” said Caiaphas to Mary Magdalen, “and quiet their apprehensions.”

“Put your babies to bed,” roared Magistus, “and come back yourself.”

I will not describe the new parties who were introduced to the feast, nor how it degenerated into a revel, and the revel into an orgy. Mary Magdalen did not return to the supper-room; and long after midnight the drunken master of the house was borne off to a sleep from which he ought never to have awakened, and to dreams of conquests which he never achieved.

The shadow of other spheres more powerful than his own, was already approaching to thwart his plans and change his destiny!

An hour after all was quiet, a strange sound was made at the back gate in the wall nearest the lodging-rooms of the domestics of the establishment. It was a double [pg 73]sound; the first part of it being a loud and peculiar whistle, the last part a powerful and startling hiss or rattle. The first sound seemed to summon some one to appear; the second, to threaten him if he did not obey. The first was a call; the second a menace.

There was one person on the premises, and only one, who knew the full meaning of that strange summons. He trembled on his couch when he heard it. Great drops of sweat came out on his forehead as he listened. He strove to rise as if to obey it, but fell back as if paralyzed with fear. The call was twice repeated with a weird ferocity in its tone; and the black eunuch, Ethopus, staggered from his chamber and groped his way into the open air and to the gate. He opened it softly with a private key, and stepped into the street. Do not men, like moths, fly sometimes stupidly into the candle of danger?

A remarkable vehicle, drawn by two great black horses and driven by a hideous black servant, stood in the street. It was showily gilded, and had several little doors and windows in it. It resembled the chariots on which mountebanks and jugglers perambulated the country, but was of larger size and more tastefully constructed.

Ethopus paid no attention to this equipage. Right before him stood an object capable of inspiring him with the deepest horror. It was a tall figure with a huge yellow serpent coiled about his neck and body, and a leopard standing quietly at his side. The leopard growled and the serpent hissed as the black man approached their master.

“Be quiet, Moloch!” he said to the leopard. “Hush, [pg 74]Beelzebub,” he whispered to the snake. “This is a friend and fellow-servant.”

The poor black prostrated himself in the dust before this mysterious night-visitor and his bestial attendants. He signified his total submission by raising the man’s foot and placing it on his head as he groveled on the ground. When he released it, he kissed it with the most abject servility. His abasement was extreme.

“That is right, Ethopus!” said his master, “that is right. I rejoice to find you in such a becoming frame of mind. Conduct me promptly to the secret chamber of magic. Then return to my servant and give him suitable accommodations. Inform Magistus of my arrival early in the morning. I have come on a grand errand to this village of Bethany.”

Ethopus obeyed these orders without noise. All was at length silent. Perhaps all slept: the drunken proprietor, the wicked priest, the remorseful Magdalen, the frightened eunuch, the strange guest, and Mary and Martha locked in each other’s arms, their beautiful faces bathed in tears, and their sweet souls dreaming that their angel-mother was watching them from heaven.

[pg 75]

VI.

THE CHAMBER OF MAGIC.

There are few sights more touching than that of a man struck speechless in the course of disease, yet retaining his mental faculties. Death perhaps approaches; weighty business presses on his mind; solemn secrets demand revelation; confessions of soul struggle for utterance. He makes inarticulate sounds, incomprehensible gestures. He writhes; he moans with the burden of thoughts he cannot express. His eyes speak and plead with a mute eloquence. His ideas play upon his countenance like lambent lightning, but die away, voiceless, indefinite, unrevealed.

Such was the state of Ethopus, the dumb eunuch, the day after the treacherous banquet. There was a great solitude about the house; for Magistus, Caiaphas, and Simon Magus the magician, made an early and prolonged visit to Jerusalem. Mary Magdalen took the sisters over the beautiful and extensive grounds, and paid another visit to the tomb of our mother, carrying some exquisite flowers in her own hand as a little offering to the maternal shade. Ethopus flitted about here and there in a state of unaccountable excitement. He followed the sisters all day at a respectful distance; and when his duties called him [pg 76]off imperatively, he went precipitately about everything until he could assure himself again that they were free and out of danger.

“Ethopus has something extraordinary on his mind,” said Martha, to herself; but she did not communicate her observation to her timorous and sensitive sister.

The case was evidently this: Ethopus had discovered the plot of Magistus against us all, and he felt certain that the arrival of the magician boded no good. He was struggling between his disinterested affection for us and his intense fear of his wicked masters. He felt his own weakness, increased by his inability to speak; and he was laboring to devise some plan by which the sisters could be brought to share his knowledge, and to concert measures of escape from some impending catastrophe.

He seemed to divine that Martha was more thoughtful, courageous and trustworthy than her sister. It was late in the afternoon when he made her a signal, seen by herself alone, to follow him. She understood his meaning, and contrived to withdraw without exciting the suspicion of her companions. Ethopus conducted her to the chamber of Ulema. Scarcely giving her time to exchange kisses with her aunt, he pushed her into a little recess in the wall which was concealed by a hanging curtain. Between the folds of this, Martha could peep cautiously into the room. In a few moments Magistus entered.

He seemed hurried and flustered, and had a dark frown upon his brow.

“No message from Barabbas to-day. Something has gone wrong. Put this woman to sleep immediately.”

Ethopus adjusted a large mirror of polished metal on [pg 77]a table. Ulema arose from her couch without speaking a word, and seated herself in a chair about four feet in front of the mirror and gazed steadfastly into it. Magistus stood a little one side, and made rapid passes with his hands and arms from her head to her feet, nearly touching her body. His black eyes were fixed fiercely upon her face, and his heavy breathing could be heard by Martha at every pass he made.

There was silence for several minutes, during which Ulema gazed steadfastly into the mirror. Martha could not help doing the same; and she gazed at the mirror until a strange, tingling, bewildered sensation began to creep over her frame, and she averted her eyes to escape its magical fascination.

The victim of this singular experiment now became rigid, and made a convulsive sound as if in a severe spasm. Martha was terribly frightened; but her aunt suddenly became relaxed with a profound sigh. Magistus took a long needle and passed it through the skin of her hand. She did not flinch. He then put something which seemed to be a lock of hair into her palm, and closed the fingers tightly upon it.

“Follow this person,” said he, “wherever he is, and tell me what you see.”

The woman began, after a long pause:

“I am in a great wilderness of bare hills full of rocks and sand. The sense of solitude is terrible. It is cloudy but windy—and the sun will soon shine in the west.”

“But the youth?—the youth?” cried Magistus, impatiently.

“Wait a moment. The youth? I must find him. [pg 78]Bless me! how he has wandered! how many circles! Ah! there he is! I see him stretched at full length upon the ground.”

“That is good!” said Magistus eagerly; “that is good. He lies dead upon the ground. Go on.”

“He is not dead,” said the oracle slowly; “his heart still beats: he sleeps.”

“Not dead?” screeched the old man, “what say you, not dead? Is he not wounded? Is he not stabbed? Is he not bleeding?” he continued in the highest excitement.

“No!” said the woman calmly; “he is not dead, he sleeps.”

“Do you see no gashes upon his body?”

“No, I see only a bright new dagger.”

“Furies!” exclaimed Magistus; “he has escaped me. I have been deceived.”

Turning suddenly upon the woman, he seized her by the throat:

“Do you tell me the truth?”

“I tell you what I see. I fabricate nothing. I am now attracted around the hill. Ah! I see a young man with the face of an angel coming forth from a cave. He sings. Oh how sweetly he sings!”

“Angels and devils!” roared Magistus; “you have seen or reported falsely.”

With that he seemed overwhelmed by a paroxysm of rage, and began beating the poor woman violently about the head and arms with a black rod he took from the table. She made no resistance, and did not seem to feel the blows. Ethopus raised his hands deprecatingly, and [pg 79]Martha was about to cry out from her place of concealment, when a low, fierce growl, from underneath the floor apparently, startled all of them but Ulema, who heard it not.

Simon Magus was feeding his leopard.

“The Master has returned,” said my uncle, “I will consult him immediately. He may deliver me from this difficulty.”

He left the room. Ethopus made rapid passes from her knees upward, and Ulema awoke. She rubbed her hands and eyes, looked wonderingly around her and exclaimed:

“I have had a long, painful sleep, and I must have seen sad things. Did I give him satisfaction?”

Ethopus shook his head sadly.

“Alas!” said she, with a distressed and puzzled air, “when will this cruel imprisonment cease, and this strange life of visions which I never remember?”

Martha now came forward and threw herself weeping upon the neck of her aunt. For a long time these sorrowful women exchanged those kisses and tears which are consolations. They then unburdened their hearts to each other. By questioning Ethopus and interpreting his pantomimic answers as well as they could, they learned that some secret dangers surrounded them, and that Ethopus wished Martha to spend the night in the chamber of her aunt. Martha thought it best to rejoin Mary immediately, and explain to her that Ulema was quite indisposed, and get her to sleep with Mary Magdalen, and permit the older sister to comfort and nurse the invalid. All of which was easily accomplished.

Ulema had been confined for years in that little room by her husband as the subject and victim of his magical art. She was a clairvoyant of extraordinary power; and when put asleep by the shining mirror and the waving hands, she would follow any clue given her, and the greatest physical obstacles seemed only penetrable shadows in the path of her mysterious vision.

She was thus employed by her husband to advance the schemes of his unscrupulous spirit. She was made to read the thoughts of others, so that Magistus became possessed of any man’s or any woman’s secret life whenever he chose. He obtained information in this manner which enabled him to make lucrative transactions in business, to plot in the dark against whomsoever he pleased, to destroy the peace of families, and to acquire a reputation for superior and almost miraculous wisdom.

She had long ceased to be anything but a mere tool in her husband’s hands. She was locked up and taken care of as any other valuable instrument would have been. She was visited and inspected only when her services were required. Love, sympathy, interchange of sentiments, all this had ceased. She received nothing from him but contempt and threats. She lived within hearing of his midnight revels. She bore the ravages of these things in her pale and tearful face, with its sad and terrified expression.

Ethopus came softly into the room about midnight, and after many gestures expressive of the supreme necessity of caution and silence, he conducted the two women on tip-toe through a narrow passage. Near the end of this he paused, and pressing on a secret spring, he discovered [pg 81]a sliding panel in the wall. This opened and admitted them into a large, empty room. This room was only for the ventilation of a more interior and secluded apartment. A series of movable slats effected the communication between the two chambers. The light streaming through the shutters showed that the inner room was occupied. Looking down through the apertures, with very little danger of being discovered, the women beheld, six or eight feet before them, the floor of the secret chamber of magic.

Ethopus left them as stealthily as a cat, after placing them in the best position to see and hear what was going on in the den of sorcery. He pressed Martha’s hand to his heart before he departed. Perhaps he wished to show how deeply he felt for them; perhaps also to intimate how deeply he suffered. Perhaps he asked for help as well as sympathy. The poor, dumb African would not only save them, if possible, from their subtle enemies, but would enlist the knowledge and power of a superior race, to effect his own deliverance from the crushing thraldom they had imposed upon him.

A thousand or two thousand years hence, magic as a science and an art will have ceased to exist. Generations unborn will enjoy the leafage and fruit of that sacred tree of Christianity, whose little seed we have seen planted in the dark ground. The hells now opened will be closed; the superstitions now triumphant will be a myth; the languages now living will be dead; the arts now flourishing will have perished; the civilization now dominant will be a historic shadow. Those who find this manuscript and give it to the world, will not be able to comprehend the [pg 82]meaning, or to believe the truth, of the strange things I am going to relate—and yet they are true.

Magic, which pervades to a greater or less extent all nations, and in some shape influences all individuals, had its origin in the corruption and perversion of the sacred truths of religion. It is the life of all false systems, the voice of their oracles, the inspiration of their prophets, the power of their mighty men. It was the medium by which evil spirits took possession of their victims. It is the falsity which antagonizes truth; the darkness opposite to light; the hell arrayed against heaven. To be under magical influence, is to be assaulted, betrayed, possessed, governed, by demons.

Simon Magus, who believed himself attended by Moloch and Beelzebub, two princes of hell, under the respective forms of a leopard and a serpent, was the most remarkable sorcerer in the time of Christ. He was a Samaritan by birth, but had spent his youth in Egypt, where he became addicted to the black art, and thoroughly conversant with all its mysteries. He was supposed by most men to be an Egyptian, and he took no pains to correct the mistake.

He was a man of unquestionable genius and boundless ambition. He was of majestic presence, bending weaker spirits easily to his will. He was brave to desperation, and eloquent as if he had been fed in his youth by the bees of Attica. He was the secret chief and leader of thousands of persons addicted to magic in different countries. His word was regarded as law; his power as irresistible; his wisdom as inscrutable.

Magicians generally resorted to remote caves and de[pg 83]serted ruins for their rites and incantations. Many of the most splendid temples, however, of the pagan religions, had private chambers devoted to their use. So also did the palaces of many kings, and the princely mansions of wealthy and powerful men. The magicians of Jerusalem and its neighborhood had a secret council-room in the quiet house of Magistus, in which they held their infernal conclave at every visit of the Master.

The two women peeped cautiously into this chamber of mystery. The floor and the ceiling were both covered with black cloth, the latter having a great many stars flaming upon it in imitation of night. Through them a vast comet trailed its fiery form. The walls were painted with figures of the most disgusting objects which creep on the earth, or fly in the air, or swim in the sea. Some of these figures had the heads of men and women: others had the heads of monsters attached to naked bodies in the human shape.

On a raised platform of black marble, and in a great arm-chair covered with crimson silk, sat Simon Magus, wearing a white robe of dazzling lustre, a leopard skin loosely thrown over his shoulders, and a gilt crown surmounted by an eagle with outspread wings. He wore also a massive gold chain around his neck, from which was suspended a little sapphire image, which was supposed to guide the Egyptian priest to the truth, as the breast-plate of precious stones did the Jew.

The short black hair of Simon Magus curled close to his head, and he had no beard after the fashion of his adopted country. His forehead was white as pearl and both wide and lofty. His eyes were large and brilliant. [pg 84]His whole face was illumined by the grand fires of intellect and passion. His expression was too proud to be pleasing, too fierce to be beautiful. He was a man to strengthen the heart of his friends, and to make his enemies tremble.

A large black table was before him, brilliantly painted with the signs of the zodiac. In the centre of it stood an image or idol made of black stone or ebony, having the head of a man, the breast and fore-feet of a lion, and the hind quarters of a goat. The serpent was coiled on the platform at his right hand; the leopard crouched at his left. A splendid globe of crystal hung from the ceiling constituting a lamp, burning perfumed oil and shedding a rose-colored light over the scene.

In this mystic and formidable presence stood twelve or fifteen men with bowed heads, down-hanging hands, and attitudes of the deepest humility. The women recognized only the faces of Magistus and Caiaphas. The former stood nearest to the table. Simon was addressing them in terms of reproachful eloquence:

“You have made no progress in our sublime mysteries during the past year. You have acquired no new powers over the spiritual world. You have not even given me information of the least importance. Alas! you are devoid of genuine ambition, without which whoever deals with spirits becomes a slave and not a master.”

His voice became more sonorous and his eye more scornful as he warmed with his subject:

“Your tastes, your character, your life, are low and vulgar and sensual. You employ the powers of magic for paltry and contemptible ends. To obtain reputation [pg 85]for cunning and foresight; to get good bargains out of your neighbors; to cheat some widow out of her property; to find stolen or buried treasure and appropriate it to yourselves; to pry into the secrets of men’s bed-rooms and store-rooms and kitchens; to seduce silly maidens; to create trouble between husbands and wives; to inflict all kinds of petty and scurvy revenges upon your enemies,—that is all you do with our venerable and awful art. The grander destiny which awaits us all by the development and centralization of our powers, your vulgar passions do not permit you to see or to appreciate.

“My example has been almost in vain. My spirit of self-sacrifice in achieving my lofty ends, is a mystery to your sluggish and ignoble souls. I have endured hunger and thirst and wakefulness and nakedness and heat and cold and solitude and plagues and wounds for mastery in the great path I have chosen. I have traversed the world from the frozen seas to the chasms of torrid heat. I have contended with wild beasts and with their guardians, the great spirits, by land and water. I have conquered the serpent and the leopard. The vulture lights on my shoulder like a sparrow; the lion crouches at my feet like a dog. Arch-demons come at my bidding, and hundreds of lesser spirits swarm at the signal of my curse.”

He became violently excited; his eyeballs glared around in frenzy, and he continued in a fierce whisper:

“It would freeze your cowardly souls only to hear the spells, the incantations, the blasphemies I employed; the watchings, the tortures, the combats, I endured, before I brought Moloch and Beelzebub into subjection to my will. [pg 86]See there, how I have burned their names into my flesh with pencils of iron heated to whiteness!”

He turned back the sleeves of his robe from his white arms, and held them out. Upon one arm in great red letters was the word Moloch, on the other the word Beelzebub.

“It was dreadful! dreadful!—but henceforth they are mine.”

The serpent writhed and protruded his tongue. The leopard showed his white teeth, but dropped his yellow head between his paws.

“I have told you,” he continued, scornfully, “what constitutes your ambition. Now I will tell you mine. To me belongs the glory of having organized magic and associated magicians. I found them a horde of wandering hunters; I shall make them an invisible phalanx of soldiers. I have more than two thousand magicians, in seven different countries, who obey me as one man. By concerted action we have obtained the secret history, the hidden life of all the governors, consuls, warriors, kings and great men throughout that vast region. I am maturing my plans to get them all under my sovereign control. Other conquerors operate from without, by sword and spear and catapult. I conquer from within, by hope and fear and lust and passion and terror. Unseen, unsuspected, unknown, with legions of invisible soldiers, I shall get possession of all their treasures, all their palaces, all their thrones!

“Do you not see it?” he exclaimed, wildly, starting to his feet. “The lever which truly moves the world lies always on the spiritual side of our life. I advance from [pg 87]the right quarter to my designs. I shall subdue the souls and bodies of men. I shall possess myself of all they possess. I shall become emperor of Rome—yea, monarch of the world. Further still:—I shall advance from realm to realm, from sphere to sphere in the spiritual universe, marshaling around me my hosts of conquering spirits. I shall pronounce the Unspeakable Name. My own name shall become Unspeakable!”

While the magician’s imagination soared away in this flight of boundless ambition, his form dilated; a fierce red flush came over his face; his eye, fired with a baleful brilliancy; and the maniac stood forth the very impersonation of that Self-Love which is the moving and controlling genius of hell.

His hearers trembled at his words and manner.

He sunk back into his chair and leaned his brow upon his hand. No one disturbed his reverie. All were spellbound by the speaker’s enthusiasm. After several minutes he raised his head and continued in a subdued tone:

“But, alas! my friends! this glorious dream is far from accomplishment. If we had only to conquer the race of men, the difficulties would not be insuperable. But our fiercest fight is on the spiritual side. All are contending for the same prizes—power and glory. When we have beaten back the shining ones whom they call angels, our combat begins with each other; for each demands all for himself.

“Yet I despair not”—he added, after another pause and with a certain sadness in his manner—“I despair not of realizing my inexpressible dream. I have come [pg 88]into possession lately of an ancient and wonder-working formula, whereby I hope to take many steps forward. Listen!

“I discovered by secret means only to be acquired in Egypt, that in a certain wild spot of the Lybian desert one of the oldest and greatest cities of the world was buried in the sand; a city so old that it has no historical record; a people inconceivably wicked, in comparison with whom the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were children sporting in the golden dawn of innocence. This city and these people had been overwhelmed by the same Power which buried the cities of the plain in the Salt Sea.

“I found this spot. By the aid of spiritual powers I burrowed my way into their buried palaces and temples. I exhumed their remains. I made food and drink of their ashes. The spirits who accompanied me fled away, and I was left alone. I blended my being with that of the lost people. I became a skeleton among skeletons, a shade among shades. I conquered. I drew voices out of the silence, forms out of the darkness, life out of death. I summoned with difficulty and danger the ruling spirits of the perished race. I mastered their master. I made him my slave. I compelled him to disgorge the secrets of the wilderness and the grave. I have enriched myself with treasures of knowledge and power, of which no man even dreams.”

Intense excitement pervaded his listeners—fear of the man and stupefaction at his words.

“I will show you,” he continued—“by a strange art I have acquired, I will show you this new demon who is [pg 89]also one of the oldest. I have summoned this antediluvian monster to-night. He stands before me face to face, like man to man. You cannot hear his voice nor see his shape; but you shall feel his presence and mark his shadow on the wall.”

He now let down a large white curtain against the wall, to the top of which it had been rolled like a great map. He resumed his seat and drew forth a curious cup from a drawer in the table. It had words and figures engraven upon it. He gazed intently into the cup, and pronounced some words in an unknown tongue.

A moment of awful silence ensued, every one gazing steadfastly at the curtain and hearing the beating of his own heart. Suddenly a strange, benumbing, paralyzing sensation invaded the nerves of all present. It was the approaching sphere of the antediluvian spirit.

“See!” said the magician hoarsely, “See! He comes!”

And sure enough! Like the shadow of a man which the moon makes when it is going down, there crept a shadow up over the curtain; dim, wavering, misshapen, which slowly settled into distincter form, and stood with bended head and sweeping beard, with tottering knee and outstretched arms, like a very old man of gigantic size begging alms.

All shuddered at the presence of this terrific spirit, more than Saul at the rising of Samuel in the cave of the witch of Endor.

“From this most ancient arch-demon of our art,” continued Simon, pointing to the shadow, “I have ex[pg 90]torted a method of incantation which promises more power and glory than all the combined rites and amulets in the world. He will confirm what I say.”

The shadow slowly turned its old and hideous face toward the audience and made an affirmative motion with its head. It then passed away from the curtain like the shadow of a cloud creeping over a field of grain. All breathed more freely.

“This formula will procure me a liquid of such potent magnetic virtue, that a single drop of it put into a glass of wine will bind the woman who drinks it, entirely and for ever, soul and body, to the man who administers it. She will surrender friends, home, name, fame, everything to his wishes.

“Miserable sensualists that you are,” he exclaimed, raising his voice and confronting his cowering audience, “the use for which you would chiefly value this inestimable secret has no attractions for me. My spirit looks upward, not downward. I scorn pleasure. I love glory and power. Through woman I shall conquer man. Woman herself shall be the agent of transferring all that husbands, lovers, brothers, sons, friends possess, to the great magician who shall be a god in her eyes.”

“Glorious ambition!” exclaimed Caiaphas.

“When I have achieved the conquest of the world,” said the earnest madman, “I will resign the women to you, as a conqueror throws the treasures of a sacked city to the soldiers who have won him a crown.”

“And the liquid?” inquired Magistus—“how is it to be obtained?”

“That brought me hither from my subterranean palace in Egypt, where I was initiated into the sacred mysteries by Isis herself.”

All ears paid him the strictest attention.

“I must obtain the body of a young girl and convey it to the buried city of the sands, where Ja-bol-he-moth, whom you saw just now, will assist me in the magical rites. We must take her alive. I have made every preparation. I have a vehicle specially constructed for concealment. That will convey us to Joppa whence I have just come. From there to Alexandria by a vessel which awaits me. Thence to the Lybian desert.”

“And the young woman?” asked Caiaphas.

“She must be pure as the snow nearest heaven: innocent as the babe tended by angels: beautiful as Aurora when she treads the golden pavement with her feet of pearl: loving as the heart of Spring when she gives her life to the earth: holy as the spirit of prayer which breathed from the lyre of King David.”

“And what would you do with this peerless maiden?” said some one in the group.

“Are you acquainted with the processes and powers of magic, and do you ask such a question? Do you know the virtues of the dust of a dove’s heart? of the ashes of a viper’s tongue? of the pulverized bones of a babe’s head? of the blood of a living man? Can you not imagine what subtile forces we may extract from the essences of a virgin body?”

“Has your oracle directed you where to find this wonderful woman?” asked Magistus.

“My presence here is a warrant that it has. That [pg 92]woman is a Jewess, of the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest child, born at the death of her mother.”

These were the last words heard by either Ulema or Martha. These affrighted women had been the silent witnesses and auditors of the extraordinary scene I have described. With increasing amazement and terror they found themselves unable to stand, and they sank softly upon the floor. When the object of Simon’s visit to Bethany began to reveal itself, they trembled with intense fear. When the horrible idea took distinct shape in her mind, Martha had almost burst into a wild shriek of agony. The shriek was with great difficulty suppressed. The terror and agony were borne in upon the young soul, and she fell into a long and fearful swoon which seemed death itself.

After a long, long time, when all was still and dark, Ethopus approached as softly as he had departed. He aroused Ulema from her trance of grief, and the two bore the unreviving form of Martha back to the chamber. She was laid upon the bed; and as Ethopus passed out of the door, Ulema saw him by the dim light of the stars lifting his face and hands earnestly to heaven.

[pg 93]

VII.

SAVED.

After Martha came out of her swoon, the night was spent in consultation between the two women as to the surest method of averting the catastrophe which impended. It was determined that the sisters should escape from the house early in the morning, and appeal for help to some worthy and influential residents of Bethany, friends of my father. They were so sure of obtaining succor and deliverance, that they became quite cheerful as the sunlight broke above the hills.

Magistus suddenly entered the room, and their hearts sank within them as they noticed the silent ferocity of his countenance. Without saying a word he clasped iron rings upon their ankles and wrists, and chained them securely to the bed-posts. Their tears, cries, inquiries, supplications, were all in vain. He took no notice of them whatever, and locked and bolted the door behind them, leaving them bound and in despair.

A different but equally painful scene occurred in the chamber of Mary Magdalen. Mary, my sister, had just awakened with a deep sigh, and began narrating an ominous dream which had disturbed her night’s rest, when a loud knock was heard at the door, and a strange voice commanded them to dress and come forth immediately. [pg 94]They sprang up in great trepidation and obeyed the order. On opening the door they turned back into the room with a loud shriek.

Simon Magus stood before them with his serpent and leopard. He had these creatures about him almost constantly. It was to keep them in good training, for his personal protection, to excite wonder, to inspire awe, and to enforce his authority. They were admirable adjuvants to his pretensions and power. Every one quailed before them.

He assured the women that his pets should not hurt them, if they followed him in silence, turning neither to the right nor to the left. There was no alternative but to obey. He conducted them to our father’s residence through the gardens and the gate in the garden wall. He had given every point a recent inspection. He passed into the inner courtyard, and led them down a flight of steps to a room in the cellar used by two of the domestics as a bed-chamber. Here he locked and bolted them in and retired.

Thus were the sisters secured without the possibility of communication or escape. The conspirators took every possible precaution. No one was permitted to leave the grounds, or to come in during the day. Magistus or Simon kept the black eunuch continually in sight. Whether his agitated and anxious manner betrayed him, or whether the magician really read his thoughts, his masters suspected that Ethopus meditated a revolt against the snares which had fascinated the leopard and the serpent. He was closely watched.

The situation of this poor fellow was very touching. [pg 95]His dark face was an index of a darkened soul, not by evil but by the absence of light. Under his homely exterior was a brave and generous heart. He was born and reared in a barbaric land, full of strange beasts and birds and stranger men, where Nature herself is wild and savage. He had been the victim of incredible oppression and cruelty. It is wonderful that the last spark of human feeling had not been trodden out from his spirit.

It spoke well for the native richness of the soil when good seed sprang up so luxuriantly as soon as planted. From the day he became acquainted with my sisters and myself, a new life had dawned upon him. Friendly voices, gentle words, kindly looks, sympathizing deeds, were food and drink to his amiable and child-like nature. His soul grew and expanded under them as flowers under dew and sunlight. Sincere attachment to us and hatred of our common enemies took possession of the whole man. He was ready for any labor, any danger, any sacrifice in our behalf.

Imagine the mental tortures of this humble and voiceless friend, when he saw the terrible fate which was impending over us, and found himself so helpless to avert it or to assist us!

Thus passed away the long, dreary, gloomy day—the day of my father’s funeral. It was spent by my sisters in prayer and tears and unavailing struggles to escape or to make themselves heard. Mary Magdalen identified herself thoroughly with the gentle and innocent child with whom she was imprisoned. She taxed her ingenuity to the utmost to give her consolation and hope; and when invention failed, she resorted to tears.

“Do you ever pray to God?” said little Mary.

“To which God?” asked Mary Magdalen.

“Which God? There is but one God!”

“Magistus has the statues of a dozen gods and goddesses in his house; and he says that all of them answer prayer when they are presented with splendid gifts.”

“Jehovah, the only God,” said the child with sweet solemnity, “heareth the prayer of the humble and contrite heart. He heareth the poor and needy, and lifteth up all who are cast down.”

“How beautiful!” exclaimed Mary Magdalen with a deep sigh; and she fell into a profound reverie with downcast eyes, while a solitary tear, the first pearl of genuine repentance, trickled down her cheek.

About nightfall Simon Magus unlocked the door and called Mary Magdalen out of the room. He closed the door behind her, so that Mary could not hear what he said. He put into her hands two cups of different patterns containing milk.

“This one,” said he, “you will give to the child; this you will drink yourself. Be careful and not forget. Your life depends upon it. If you fail to obey me, I will feed your body piecemeal to my leopard.”

Terror-stricken as well by his manner as his words, she took the cups mechanically from his hands and passed into the room. He carefully locked the door again.

Bewildered by this new blow, she took her seat in silence, a cup in each hand. She strove to collect her thoughts. Poison to Mary or death to herself! That was the alternative. Her nature was impulsive and pas[pg 97]sionate. She reached her conclusions quickly, and she acted upon them instantaneously.

“What is my wretched life worth in comparison with hers?” was the silent language of her heart, “What attraction has life for me, poor, guilty, forlorn, forsaken thing?” She drank from the cup intended for Mary.

“What is the matter,” said my sister, who had noticed her singular abstraction and agitation. “What are you drinking?”

“Only some milk. I was so frightened by that terrible man that I forgot what I was doing. Excuse me for drinking first. Here is a cup for you.”

The unsuspecting child drank it eagerly, having passed the whole day suffering from both hunger and thirst. Taken after fasting, poisons act quickly. It was not long before Mary Magdalen began to have strange swimmings in the head and benumbing sensations along the course of all her nerves. She felt sure that her death was approaching.

“Mary,” said the brave girl, “when you are delivered from these dangers and your brother comes home and I go away, will you remember me sometimes?”

“You will not go away.”

“Oh yes. I shall go away, far, far away.”

“You shall live with us always,” said Mary.

“I cannot! I cannot! When I am gone, and they tell you evil and cruel things of me, will you think of me kindly and love me still?”

“I will not believe them.”

“But if you should believe them, would you love me still? I cannot live without your love.”

“I will love you for ever,” said Mary, throwing her arms around her neck. “Why do you speak so sadly? You frighten me. What is the matter?”

“I am sleepy, so sleepy,” said Mary Magdalen, stretching herself on the couch.

Mary knelt at her side, chafing her hands, with some vague foreboding rising on her mind.

“Oh do not go to sleep so early. Do not leave me alone in the dark. Talk to me.”

“Mary,” said the stupefied woman slowly and with difficulty, “does Jehovah who accepts the offering of a contrite heart, ever receive into his heaven a very great sinner?”

“Certainly, certainly!” said the child.

“Then pray for me.”

No words, no shaking, no supplications, no frantic screams could arouse her again; and Mary beat her bosom and tore her hair in the extremity of grief at the side of her inanimate friend.

About an hour before midnight four men stood in the inner courtyard of my father’s house. Caiaphas and Simon Magus were engaged in earnest conversation. Magistus turned to the black mute whom he had compelled to accompany him everywhere, and said:

“I shall go half a day’s journey with Simon. We will start now in ten minutes. Haste to the stables where his chariot and servant are in waiting. Drive quietly around to the front gate of this house. Here is the key to Ulema’s chamber. After we have gone, not before, give those women some food.”

Ethopus departed. He left the gate in the garden wall [pg 99]open. He hurried to Ulema’s room. He released the astonished women. He drew them out upon the gallery. He pointed eagerly to the garden gate and over to my father’s house. It was all he could do. He was wild with excitement, and the gestures of the dumb man were those of despair. He then ran toward the stables.

The women started on their dangerous journey, not knowing what was to be done. They hurried along the flowery walks in the greatest trepidation. On ascending our terraced garden, Ulema, weak, sick and overwhelmed with emotion, fainted and fell. Martha tried in vain to revive her. Time was flying. Faint screams now issued from the house. Mary was being abducted! She started up and without thinking,—for thought would have paralyzed her efforts,—rushed to the rescue alone.

The miscreants had descended into the cellar. Great was their astonishment to find Mary Magdalen in a profound stupor and the little Mary weeping at her side.

“This delays us,” said Simon, with great vexation. “That traitorous woman has taken the opiate herself. It will be necessary to bind and gag the little one. No sounds must issue from the chariot, no suspicions be excited.”

It was during this terrible process of binding and gagging that the screams were made which Martha heard in the garden. It was effected; and the three men were bearing the silent and muffled body through the courtyard, when Martha rushed toward them with a loud shriek of supplication.

“Silence!” thundered Simon, “would you betray us?” And uncoiling his great serpent from his neck [pg 100](the leopard was locked up in the chariot), he threw it toward her. “Strike her!” he said, in a hissing tone. The serpent, as if acting intelligently, made an immense coil of its body and raised its head threateningly toward Martha. She fled in terror up the stairway leading to the flat top of the house.

“Pursue her!” said Simon to Caiaphas—“pursue her and keep her silent with your dagger until we have escaped.”

Caiaphas bounded after her. She turned and faced him on the house-top. He threatened to plunge the dagger into her heart if she made a sound. She backed before him to the parapet. It was at that moment when the moon, suddenly emerging from the cloud, revealed to me, as I was approaching my father’s house, the two figures; my sister raising her arms wildly to heaven, and the wicked priest threatening to strike.

At that moment I entered the courtyard and confronted Magistus and Simon, who were bearing my sister toward the gate. I drew the dagger Ethopus had given me, and plunged it into the side of Magistus who was nearest to me. He sank upon the ground with his burden, uttering a deep groan. Simon rushed upon me and in a moment we were engaged in a deadly struggle. He was a man of astonishing strength. He threw me at last upon the ground and had nearly wrested my dagger from me, when Ethopus who had been concealed behind the gate sprang to my assistance. He dragged the magician back by the shoulders, and at the same instant there was a loud scream from Martha on the parapet, and the sound of voices and footsteps at the gate. Two persons rushed [pg 101]in to our aid; and Simon suddenly springing from us all, escaped into the street, and in a second the wheels of his chariot rattled away with the utmost rapidity.

Caiaphas, seeing that his party was vanquished, fled away through the garden to the house of Magistus. Martha hurried down and rejoined her friends below. Ethopus brought lights as quickly as possible, although I had already recognized in the new-comers the good old Persian whom Barabbas held prisoner, and my late deliverer who had styled himself the Son of the Desert.

Mary was released from her wrappages and threw herself alternately into the arms of brother and sister. Ethopus enjoyed this scene with gestures of frantic delight. The happy party was suddenly startled by the groans of the wounded man, who had dragged himself away and was leaning against the wall of the house, bleeding profusely.

We laid him on the floor of the reception-room, and the Son of the Desert, who was an adept in such matters, stanched the blood and bandaged his hurt, pronouncing it severe but not mortal. When Magistus opened his eyes and saw the old Persian bending over him, he stared at him with amazement, and stammered forth:

“Surely this is my renegade brother-in-law, who has renounced the name and religion of his fathers and calls himself Beltrezzor.”

He was right. Beltrezzor was our uncle, our father’s only brother, our next of kin, our legal guardian!

This recognition gave us all the greatest delight. After mutual congratulations we hastened to recover poor Ulema from her trance, and to convey her and her wounded [pg 102]husband to their own home. Mary Magdalen was brought up into an airy, upper room, and every effort was made to rouse her from her comatose state; but in vain. A good nurse was placed at her bedside charged to render her every attention.

The Son of the Desert spent the night under our roof, and proceeded the next morning to Jerusalem with Beltrezzor. He refused to appear at the table with the women and declined all the rewards and presents which our gratitude induced us to offer.

It seems that Beltrezzor’s friend had sent one-half of the ransom by the robbers who passed me going down the ravine, promising the other half in two days after, on the delivery of Beltrezzor himself at Jerusalem. Barabbas had entrusted the Son of the Desert with that mission. The old man had been slow in his movements, and night with its black cloud had overtaken them before reaching the highway. Reflecting that the trumpets of the Roman soldiery had sounded the evening tattoo, Beltrezzor had luckily suggested that they should turn aside into Bethany, where he had a brother whom he had not seen for thirty years. They came close behind my own weary footsteps, and I have told the result.

The second day after these surprising events, Mary Magdalen disappeared suddenly to our great regret, leaving no clue by which she could be traced. She awoke from her artificial sleep about daylight, and the nurse supplied her with food, and told her the wonderful things which had happened. She went away, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the nurse.

“Tell them,” said she, “that I rejoice at their good [pg 103]fortune, and that I love them so much that I lift the shadow of my presence from the sunshine of their peace.”

Poor Magdalen!

My new and real uncle, Beltrezzor, had a bargain to make with Magistus and his young friend, the hypocrite Caiaphas. It was easily affected. We were in possession of facts which would have exposed them both to public infamy, and have cut short the ambitious career of the talented priest.

Silence on our part was purchased at the following price:

Beltrezzor was a pagan, and objections might be raised in the Jewish Sanhedrim to his taking possession of a Jewish estate and the charge of Jewish orphans. Magistus and Caiaphas were to obviate these objections, and to secure him the legal guardianship.

Ethopus was to be declared a freedman.

Beltrezzor, my sisters and myself were to be permitted to visit Ulema every Sabbath so long as she lived.

In addition to his liberty, Beltrezzor presented Ethopus with a precious stone of considerable value, upon which was engraved a mystic name. This gem had great reputation in the magical fraternity for releasing its possessor from the spell of the most powerful enchantment. Whether some change really came over his spirit, or whether his imagination did the work, Ethopus acted as if some great burden had been lifted from his soul. He entered at once into our service, and his gratitude seemed only equaled by his humility.

Beltrezzor took possession of my father’s estate, and to [pg 104]our great joy determined to reside at Bethany during our minority. Under his judicious and liberal management everything soon blossomed like the rose. He adorned our residence with all the chaste and beautiful treasures of architecture and art. He surrounded my charming sisters with every luxury that the most cultivated fancy could suggest. He devoted himself especially to our education, and our house became the favorite resort of all that was most learned and brilliant in Jewish society.

Thus several years passed happily away, overshadowed by no cloud. If a tear ever came into our eyes, it was consecrated to the memory of our dear father, and to the reflection that he had perished so sadly in the wilderness, without knowing the good fortune which was in store for his children.

[pg 105]

VIII.

BREAD ON THE WATERS.

The impression made upon our minds by these extraordinary events was ineffaceable. After three days and nights of perilous adventure and suffering, from a youth I became a man. From little girls, my sisters became women. There was ever afterward about us a pensiveness, a gravity of manner, a too early maturity of thought, which excited the pity of those who had known us during our father’s life, when a happy childhood broke forth into smiles and pleasures, like a genial spring blossoming out into perfumes and flowers.

Our six months of domestic life under the management of Magistus, with its gloom, its neglect, its suspicions, its want of love and liberty, stood in painful contrast with the merry sports, the delightful peace and the religious sunshine of our father’s household. It was night compared with day. But the unmasking of the characters of Caiaphas and Magistus was a rude shock to our tender spirits. We had revealed to us at one view the utmost depths of human depravity. We had stood consciously amid the hideous and revolting spheres of hypocrisy, sensuality, robbery and murder. There was a leprosy of the soul as well as of the body; there were wild beasts of [pg 106]the spirit; there was a wilderness of the mind; there was a death masquerading in the garments of life; and we had seen them all. We had looked into hell.

This early and deep insight into the fearful connection between evil spirits and wicked men, and their combined influence over the world, was in one sense salutary. The recoil from the bottomless abyss into which we had peeped, produced a rapid and unusual development of the moral nature. In my sisters it took a religious, in myself a philosophical turn.

Those young girls, constitutionally pious and full of gratitude to God, sought renewed strength and comfort in the exercises of faith and religious duty. They devoted themselves to prayer and the study of the Scriptures. With the womanly nature of the vine, which must cling to something of firmer texture and stronger growth, they attached themselves trustingly to the priests and scribes and doctors of the law, with a natural and pardonable feeling. But they avoided Caiaphas.

I do not remember that I ever felt any decided respect or love for the religious institutions of my country. I was born, I suppose, with the element of veneration for the past left out of my mental organization. I never could understand why men look back to the infancy and childhood of the race for the oracles of wisdom. It is rather the business of each century to scrutinize rigidly the inheritance it has received from the preceding century, and to reject everything which is worthless, unphilosophical and immature.

I was largely indebted to my father for my progressive temperament. He despised pretension and ceremony. [pg 107]He conformed his life rather to the spirit than to the letter of the law. His understanding sturdily revolted against the mysterious and improbable. We were not trained after the strict manner of the Pharisees, but with that freedom of action which does not crush the individuality of the child. The reformer, the innovator, the man of new ideas and life, is seldom born of the narrow-minded literalist and bigot of an old system. The father is generally an intermediate link between the old and the new; adhering loosely to the old himself, and prophesying, inarticulately perhaps, the emancipation of his son from the thraldom of the past.

When we get rid of the conventionalisms of an old and perishing system, we become peculiarly open and sensitive to the grand intuitions of natural religion. The gorgeous ceremonies of the temple made little impression even on my boyish fancy: they were tiresome and disgusting to my riper years. But I melted into tender admiration at the thought of John the Baptist, praying and toiling in the wilderness, unseen of men, trusting in God, and receiving to his loving bosom and care, the leper, the robber and the lost ones of the world.

One of the teachers provided me by my excellent uncle Beltrezzor, was a Greek; and the study of that wonderful language and literature led me still farther away from the influence of Judaism, corrupted and failing as it was. I was not slow to assert that the poetry of Æschylus and Homer charmed me more than that of David and Isaiah; and that the philosophy of Plato exceeded in value all the learning of the Scribes.

My heretical opinions, candidly avowed on proper [pg 108]occasions, but never obtruded, had a gradual effect in breaking the spell of enthusiasm which bound my sisters to the priesthood and the ritual. But the examples and conversations of Beltrezzor had a still greater influence in lifting their minds out of that narrow and exclusive circle of thought, in which the typical Jew is born, lives and dies.

Beltrezzor was a man of most beautiful and lovely character. Simple in his own tastes and dress, frugal in his own habits, but generous and even lavish to others; cheerful and polite; active and industrious; truthful and unselfish; full of liberal opinions and tender sympathies; he charmed all who knew him by the purity and nobleness of his mind and the suavity of his manners. One of the most opulent and honored men in his adopted country, and an inveterate traveler by habit, he had quietly settled down in the little village of Bethany to consecrate several years of his life to our education and happiness.

Yet the model man, the like of whom we had never seen in Priest or Scribe, was in our eyes a renegade and a pagan. He had abandoned the doctrines and precepts of Moses for those of Zoroaster. His religion, which appeared so sweetly in his life, was a puzzle to us, for we expected to discover its quality in its outward observances. The following manifestations of the religious spirit were all we ever detected: He sometimes looked from his window at the rising sun, and muttered something like a prayer with bowed head. He always spoke of Fire with a strange reverence, and said it was synonymous with Power and Beauty. He kissed his hand to the first star [pg 109]he saw in the evening. On the last day of every year, he had fruits, flowers, wine and rice brought into his chamber, as offerings to the spirits of his departed friends, who, he believed, visited him on that occasion.

Behold the simple ceremonial upon which was based so much goodness of heart and so much wisdom of thought!

“Who was Zoroaster?” asked Martha one day of her uncle.

“Zoroaster, my child, was the friend and companion of Abraham. They lived together in Haran until the Great Being, Ormuzd, the King of Light, called Jehovah by the Jews, summoned them both to leave their country and fill a sacred mission. Zoroaster went to the east and Abraham to the west. Zoroaster like Moses received the book of God on the top of a burning mountain, and gave laws to the people.”

“What kind of laws, uncle?”

“The essential moral teachings are as much like those of Moses as twin sisters are like each other.”

“Then you do not worship idols?”

“No—we detest them.”

“You do not worship any of the gods of the pagan nations?”

“No, my child! There is but one God, Ormuzd, King of Light. All religions come from him. Some are purer and more perfect than others. All true prophets and priests are his servants. False priests and magicians are in league with evil spirits. They are children of Ahrimanes.”

“If there is such fundamental identity, why then, [pg 110]uncle, do you prefer the religion of Zoroaster to that of Moses?”

“Because its ritual is more simple, beautiful and sublime; because its doctrines are more rational and philosophical; because the people who believe it and live it, are more liberal and loving and enlightened than the Jews; because it brings the soul nearer to the Power and Beauty of the sun.”

“Uncle,” said Mary, affectionately kissing his hand, “are all the worshipers of Ormuzd as good and pure and sweet-tempered as you are?”

The old man blushed: “The teachings of Zoroaster tend to make men far purer and better than I.”

The sisters sank into a deep reverie. They had a glimpse of that great world of moral light and beauty, which lay entirely outside of the limits of the Jewish faith. They gazed on it with wonder.

“But, uncle,” said Martha, “in the great day of judgment will not the unbelievers be sentenced to eternal punishment?”

“In the last day, my child, all the metals in the world will melt with heat, and all human souls, living and dead, will pass in judgment through the fiery element. To the good it will feel like a fragrant bath of warm milk; to the evil it will be a torrent of burning lava. It will consume, however, nothing but the wicked lusts of the heart. Evil will thus be destroyed; and all men, freely forgiven by Ormuzd, will unite in a universal chorus of love and praise.”

The sphere of our uncle’s life and character taught us charity for even renegades and pagans; and the beauty [pg 111]and rationality of his singular doctrines made me suspect that truth had temples elsewhere than in Judea. I became fairly emancipated from the Jewish Church, and looked for the regeneration of mankind to the ennobling and purifying influence of knowledge, which, I believed, would finally illumine the world with its waves of rosy light. Beautiful and illusive dream!

My sisters, disgusted as they soon became, with the fanatics, hypocrites and impostors who thronged the temple, were not ready to cut loose from the faith of Moses or the ceremonies of the law. They deplored the corruptions and deadness of the Church. They shrank from the ritualists who had no religion, and from the devotees who had no love in their hearts. They sought consolation by looking eagerly for the Messiah, who was to restore the sceptre to Israel and rekindle the embers of faith and piety in the church.

Martha and Mary pondered upon all they had ever heard or read on this wonderful subject. Born of a virgin, “the Prince of Peace, the Mighty Counselor, the Everlasting Father,” was coming in the flesh? They delighted to search the Scriptures for traces and predictions of his birth, his appearance and his mission. They loved to walk in the grove of olives which crowned the mount in rear of our house, whence they could see the marble colonnades of the temple and its vast roof all fretted with golden spikes, while they conversed arm in arm on their favorite theme.

Thus were we being secretly prepared by the experiences and circumstances of our life, for the reception of the new and strange religion of Christ. The thought[pg 112]ful analysis of the past history of any human life, will reveal here and there the movings of the finger of God. We do not see the divine providence as an event approaches, but only after it has transpired. Jehovah showed his back, not his face to Moses.

Some may be surprised at the idea that certain minds were prepared for the reception of the Christian religion by processes directed by divine providence. They suppose that every one who saw the miracles and heard the words of Christ, could have believed in him and followed him if he had chosen. It is a mistake. There were many noble and pious Jews, to whose minds the words and miracles of Christ had no weight whatever; who rejected him unhesitatingly as a dreamer or an impostor. They were not prepared to receive him.

There have been several revelations or dispensations of Divine Truth; and there will unquestionably be more. The new revelation is seldom or never received by the adherents of the old. The force of the decaying system is first broken by schism. After schism comes a spirit of free inquiry, and skepticism is developed. The old foundations are broken up; new ideas, new influences, new life start forth. Then comes the possibility of a renewed development, a reconsideration of principles, the evolution of higher and more spiritual truth.

This fact was illustrated in the early days of Christianity. The first disciples were not the leading spirits and great lights of the old dispensation, who regarded themselves as the special guardians of religious truth. That class misunderstood Christ and rejected him. The men and women who forsook all and followed him had no [pg 113]special reverence for the Jewish law and its ceremonies. Singularly enough, they were not persons of strong religious convictions, however holy their life became after receiving the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. They had outlived or spiritually outgrown the Jewish dispensation. They cared little or nothing for the opinions of priest or scribe. They stood aloof from the Jewish ceremonial with skeptical indifference, waiting for Providence to give them something radically new. They knew Christ by intuition; their spirits had been organically prepared for his reception.

Christ rejected the Jewish Church long before it rejected him. He neglected its ceremonies; he violated its laws; he disregarded its superstitions; he ignored its magnates; he chose his associates from the publicans and sinners of civil life, and his disciples from the publicans and sinners of the moral world. If he ever comes again, the same phenomena will recur; for the Divine laws repeat themselves, like the return of comets and the revolutions of the sun.

I was acquainted with most of the persons who organized the infant Church of Christ. There were within my knowledge but two exceptions to the general law, that those who acknowledged the Messiah first and most cordially, were outside of the orthodox pale. Thomas Didymus was a rigid Pharisee and ritualist. He believed nothing which he could not see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands. He was the least spiritual of all the disciples.

Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was a man of ardent imagination, intense faith and great genius. His mind, [pg 114]however, was cast in the antiquated mould; and he was a stickler for orthodox observances. No logic or rhetoric, however eloquent and convincing, could ever have shaken him from his Pharisaic attachments. The miraculous interposition of heaven was necessary to turn him from the service of the Jewish Sanhedrim.

Not without influence also in preparing us for the new era, was the character of John the Hermit, afterward known as John the Baptist. For several years we paid two annual visits to the tomb of our father, and to the cave of the extraordinary young man who had befriended him in his last illness. One of these visits was made when the angel of spring had touched the snow-wreaths of winter with her silver wand and turned them into flowers. The other was made when the forests of autumn clothed themselves in their festal robes of crimson and gold, to celebrate the approach of death with its prophecy of resurrection.

We chose one beautiful and cloudless morning, and making an early start, mounted upon sure-footed mules, and well provided against those demons of the desert—hunger and thirst—we crept slowly along over the brown hills and through the desolate hollows. Ethopus and two or three more stout domestics always attended us as a bodyguard. We made a picturesque party, encamping in the mouth of the sacred cavern, startling the silence of the wilderness with happy voices, and breaking its wild solitudes with the enchanting presence of beauty and love.

John always received us with a graceful suavity, which seemed strange in one so unaccustomed to society. We [pg 115]first paid our visit to our father’s grave, and offered our tribute of tears to the ashes and memory of the beloved. The prophet would improve the occasion to our spiritual advantage, by repeating with simple eloquence many appropriate verses of Scripture. We then returned to the cavern and conversed with the heavenly-minded recluse, startling the echoes of his lonely hermitage with incidents of life and travel and society, and with scraps of history, biography, poetry and philosophy, brought from the gay and busy circle in which we moved.

The prophet bore a quiet share in our animated talk, and partook sparingly of our ample repast. He was full of childlike earnestness and credulity, easily excited to smiles, easily moved to tears. The sphere of his thoughts and feelings was as different from that of the priests and scribes, as though he had been an angel descended from heaven,—full of love and wisdom, without creed, without doctrine, without forms, without ceremonies,—to mock with his sublime perfection the puny ritualist who imagined no religion possible without them all.

The young prophet seemed to enjoy these semi-annual disturbances of his thoughtful solitude. He always accompanied us on our return as far as the great highway. He was so fully convinced that he was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God, that we did not strive to allure him back to the haunts of men. I regarded him as a gentle and amiable fanatic. Martha pronounced him to be a young man of great promise, destined no doubt to be a prophet or leader in the Church. Mary’s criticism was limited to noting the extraordinary sweetness of his voice and the softness of his hazel eyes. Once also a tear [pg 116]trickled down her cheeks, when we spoke of his lonely days and nights in his self-inflicted solitude.

It was in the third year after Beltrezzor’s return, that, on approaching the cave of the hermit we saw a poor, emaciated creature, the skeleton, the shadow, of a man, seated on the stone at its mouth. It was long before we could recognize in this pitiable object, my generous deliverer, the Son of the Desert. On feeling the premonitory symptoms of a dangerous fever, he had left his band, which was then prowling about the Jordan, and had come to the cave of the young hermit.

“You nursed my wounded friend. Take care also of me. I am sick in soul and body. You are the only good man in the world. You alone make me believe in God.”

These were the words with which he threw himself down upon the pallet of skins. Long weeks of illness had passed away—and he was restored, standing now on the border of life like a phantom flitting from the tomb. His great, sad, earnest eyes seemed to say that he neither cared to live nor was afraid to die.

We took a deep interest in this forlorn robber, who seemed to act, think and feel so little like a robber. This proud, handsome man, without name, without friends, was an enigma to us. He had sternly declined all reward for his eminent services to us, and we felt under painful obligations to him. When we bade him adieu with ardent wishes for his speedy restoration, Martha, with great dignity and self-possession, took a ring from her finger and deliberately placed it upon his.

“Do not forget us,” said she. “Our fates may part us, [pg 117]but the invisible binds. On this ring is engraven the name of an angel. I give you my guardian-spirit as your own. May he lead you into peace.”

He bowed his head low upon her hand; and when he raised it, there were tears in his eyes.

I noticed after a while that these visits to the desert had a singular effect upon Mary. For some time preceding them, there was an exhilaration of spirits, a flush of expectation, a vivacity of manner, which added a new lustre to her charms, a new glow to her beauty. During the visit, however, she was timid, reticent and abstracted: and afterward for weeks there was an unusual quietness of demeanor, as well as a tearfulness of the eye and a pallor of the cheek.

“Lazarus,” said Martha to me one day, “had we not better bring our father’s remains to Bethany and bury them with our mother’s? It would spare us these long trips to the desert.”

Keen-sighted, motherly sister! But I—who had not then met with Helena and knew nothing of love—I answered:

“Oh no! these visits to John are the most delightful events of the year.”

On the fourth spring of these visits Mary took down a little flower-pot with a rose in it for John.

“I bring you a gem,” said she, “of nature’s light—a lamp, a star, to illumine the darkness of the desert.”

That evening when returning, Mary and John fell behind the rest of us, and when I turned to look after them, he was pointing out to her some rare beauty of the clouds about the setting sun; and her face, turned full upon him, [pg 118]was all aglow with a radiance not reflected from terrestrial skies.

The fall visit was looked forward to with unusual pleasure. It was a glorious day. Why was it that the desert seemed more solitary than usual? As we approached the cavern, the silence was appalling. There were no recent footprints on the sands. The spiders had spun their webs across the mouth of the cave. It was utterly deserted. John had gone. He had taken away his pallet of skins, his earthen vessels for food and drink, his sandals, his long staff. The flower-pot lay upon the ground with the little rose-bush in it, long withered and dead.

The sisters burst into tears; and Martha kissed the little one most tenderly on the cheek.

The Spirit of God, which impels men to the great missions of the world, drives them away from the bloom of nature and from the gardens of the soul,—away into the wilderness, where, tempted of devils and sustained by angels, they gather strength for the doom and glory which await them!

Our father’s remains were brought to Bethany. Mary’s cheek grew paler. The dew of tenderness trembled always in her eye. She searched the Scriptures all day long for the coming Messiah. At night she dreamed—

Ah! what?

Of the withered rose-leaves in the deserted cavern.

[pg 119]

IX.

SACRIFICE.

My uncle summoned me one day into his presence, and told me that he wished me to enlarge my education by travel.

“You must visit Egypt, Greece and Italy,” said he, “the typical centres of the world, and converse with the master-spirits in art, science and philosophy. I have made arrangements to keep you amply supplied with money at Alexandria, Athens and Rome, and with letters to agreeable and influential people.

“This will consume three years of your life; and if you are wise and prudent, they will be pleasantly and profitably spent. When you return I will surrender your father’s estate into your hands, and make a handsome settlement upon your sisters from my own means. I am growing old and shall need but little for the rest of my pilgrimage.”

“Then,” he continued to my surprise and sorrow, “then I shall go back to the great East—nearer to the sun—to die.”

“Go back to the East?” I exclaimed with trepidation. “Why so? Your old age requires the presence of loving friends and relatives. What can we—made your children by your kindness—what can we do without you?”

“Ah! my child, the grass soon grows in the footprints of man. We are easily forgotten. I shall be loved like one dead. I am weary of this Judean air; of this corrupt and discordant society; of these Roman trumpets and banners. I want peace and repose. I long to see once more the sacred fire burning upon the altars. After twenty years of life in Persia, one cannot be satisfied with the Mosaic sacrifices and the olive groves of Bethany.”

Knowing my uncle’s firmness of resolution, and how long he had restrained his natural restlessness for our benefit, I hung my head in mournful silence.

“Well, well!” said he in a cheerful voice, “we have time enough to talk about the whole matter. Get ready now for the scenes which fill the heart of a thinking man with supreme delight.”

This plan of perfecting my education by travel, by coming in contact with idolatrous people and studying heathen philosophies, excited the fears of my good sisters, so contrary was it to the custom of the Jews. They regarded it, indeed, as almost a crime. My uncle, however, was grandly cosmopolitan in all his sentiments, and he had imbued my own mind with his enlightened charity.

Ethopus accompanied me as my body-servant. We had taught the dumb African to read and write after he was released from the bondage of Magistus and Simon. He acquired these accomplishments in a moderate degree with great celerity, so that our anticipations of rapid mental progress were sadly disappointed by the result. When he reached the intellectual development of a white [pg 121]child at twelve years, his onward march was arrested. No study, no assiduity could advance him a step farther. He was organically a child. His thoughts, his feelings, his opinions, his manners were all child-like; and so they remained.

Such is the general result of my observation and study of the African species. Susceptible as they are of a beautiful and indefinite moral culture, the development of their intellectual faculties is limited by the thick scull, the small brain, the black skin which they have inherited as a national curse. May it be different in the future! I have received nothing but kindness at their hands, and I feel nothing but kindness for them in my heart.

We learned from Ethopus, through the medium of writing, that he had been stolen by a party of marauding soldiers from his quiet and happy home in Abyssinia, where his father was a petty prince. He had been sold to some magicians in Egypt, who made him a slave, a football, a victim of cruel and unnatural experiments. He had been fed upon toads and serpents and creeping things. The blood of various animals had been injected into his veins. The operation of poisons was studied upon his body. Degradation and terror were imprinted upon his soul. He had been deprived of his manhood and his speech, to bring him into total subjection to his diabolical tyrants.

When I told him that I should go first into Egypt, he trembled; for the memory of Simon and his own early life troubled his mind. I could scarcely have induced him to accompany me at all, had it not been for the [pg 122]beautiful gem which my uncle Beltrezzor had given him. In its prophylactic powers against magic and magicians he enjoyed implicit faith. He had hitherto carried it always in his pocket. He now bound it over his heart, carefully secured in a leathern bag. He then declared himself ready for the journey. Less fortunate than he, I had nothing wherewith to fortify myself against evil spirits and the dangers of land and sea, but the consolations of Zoroaster’s religion and scraps of the Platonic philosophy.

I had only one misgiving on leaving my sisters in the care of such an old man as our excellent uncle. The wicked Magistus was still living in the same house, separated from us only by a stone wall. He guarded my aunt in the same cruel seclusion, and no doubt kept himself informed by her clairvoyant powers of everything going on in our house as well as in others. He had never made any advances toward us, and there was no communication between us. I knew, however, that a fierce desire for revenge rankled in his heart; and his power was now greater than ever, since he had become a prominent member of the Sanhedrim, and his friend Caiaphas had been appointed high-priest of the temple.

I spent about a year in exploring the wonders of Egypt, and had reached Alexandria for a reluctant departure from that land of fascinations, when a letter was delivered at my door by some one who disappeared as soon as he gave it to the servant. This occasioned me some surprise, and I opened it immediately. On a little piece of parchment which fell out as I did so, I found these words:

“The original bearer of this letter was killed in a skirmish with our troop. I find it contains something which you will be interested to know. I therefore transmit it to you at some risk. Do not forget the unforgetting

“Son of the Desert.”

The epistle was from my sister Martha. It ran as follows:

“A wonderful thing has occurred, my dear brother, since I last wrote. John, the young hermit of the desert, whom we have mourned as lost or dead, has appeared on the banks of the Jordan, baptizing the multitudes and preaching repentance and the remission of sins. He claims to be the forerunner of the Messiah, announcing the speedy approach of the King of kings. Crowds are flocking to him from all Judea and Galilee, and even from distant regions. His eloquence is so astonishing that many who go out of curiosity or sport, are stricken to the heart and receive his baptism.

“Mary and I have listened to the preaching of this inspired friend, and are convinced of its truth and power. We have been baptized also, confessing our sins, and vowing a life of repentance and good works. I assure you, my dear brother! when the prophet laid his hand on our heads, blessing us in the name of the Messiah, our minds were filled with a heavenly ecstasy, and we could scarcely refrain from shouting aloud for joy.

“When I came up out of the water, the first face I saw was that of our strange friend who calls himself the Son of the Desert. He was standing with many others on the bank near the prophet, and gazing earnestly at his seraphic [pg 124]countenance. When his eyes met mine, he looked down as softly as a young girl, and quickly withdrew from the crowd.

“My heart warms toward this poor, outcast stranger, who befriended you so nobly, and who leads, I fear, such an evil life. Is it not strange that the noble instincts, which he certainly possesses, do not cause him to revolt against his base surroundings? His name is continually in my prayers. Oh that he also would be baptized of John, forsake the troublous ways of the world, and receive the sweet delicious peace of the new life!

“Mary is so happy again! A new rose has come to her cheek, a new buoyancy to her step, a new beauty to her smile.

“Our good uncle accompanied us to the Jordan, although he despises crowds and excitements. His criticism on the preaching and baptism of John shows how thoroughly pagan are all his conceptions. He said he was a young man of splendid enthusiasm, who would have been a disciple of Zoroaster if he had studied the philosophy of fire instead of that of water.

“Perhaps the shining of this new star will guide you sooner home to our eyes and hearts. You linger in that old, frightful, sand-beleagured magic-stricken Egypt, when this herald of the Messiah, Aurora prophesying the sun, is filling Judea with Divine light! Hasten with love, soon, very soon, to your loving sisters.”

I was still meditating on this letter when Ethopus rushed into my chamber with a face full of alarm. I soon learned from his expressive pantomime that he had [pg 125]seen Simon Magus in one of the public squares, exhibiting some magical tricks to a great crowd.

“Did he recognize you?” said I, anxiously.

The African shook his head hopefully.

“Then we will take ship for Athens to-morrow. Get everything ready for the voyage.”

Ethopus seemed delighted at these words, and proceeded with the greatest alacrity to execute my orders; not, however, until he had so disguised himself that I positively did not know him when he appeared before me. He was then so long absent on my errands that I became apprehensive for his safety. He suddenly entered the room with an expression of countenance which puzzled my practiced wit to decipher. It was the wildest joy strangely mingled with sadness. He found it impossible to convey his ideas by pantomime. The scene was ludicrous as well as pathetic. After several frantic and fruitless efforts, he seized a burnt coal from the hearth and scribbled on the white wall in great sprawling characters:

“I have found my brother!”

and making signs for me to follow him, he darted from the room.

We passed rapidly through the streets, Ethopus looking suspiciously about him all the while, until we reached a grand bazaar, where thousands of articles were exposed for sale. We forced our way through crowds of merchants, each crying his wares; through buyers and sellers and idlers of every description, chattering and chaffering in all the languages of the world. We came presently to some little rooms or stalls where a great many slaves on [pg 126]sale were exposed, almost naked. Ethopus pointed triumphantly to a tall young African of handsome and even noble features, and falling upon his neck, they wept together.

“They are brothers,” said the trader. “Their meeting was both amusing and affecting. This dumb fellow recognized the other first, and fell upon his face, shoulders and hands with frantic kisses. The younger one, not comprehending such a useless outburst of affection, resented it as an intrusion, and would have belabored his brother soundly, had he not been so heavily ironed. The older one was in despair, but suddenly bethought himself of taking off a lot of false hair and beard, and baring his neck and bosom for inspection. The recognition was then soon effected, and they laughed and wept alternately in each other’s arms.”

“He is a slave?” said I.

“Yes—and a most unruly one. He was captured in the late war with the Abyssinians, and although very young, they say he was a superb soldier. I can well believe it. He has already passed through several hands, and was quickly got rid of by them all, on account of his fierce and dangerous character.”

I studied the young man’s physiognomy carefully, but could discover no trace of ferocity about the features. He seemed to be about twenty years of age, and had a manly and dignified bearing as he stood there manacled and exposed to the public gaze. I read his secret at once. He was a brave and high-spirited youth, accustomed to freedom, war, and perhaps to the exercise of [pg 127]power; and he did not submit to his chains as quietly as his owners desired.

The slave-dealer must have divined the admiration with which I regarded him, for he added with a quiet sneer:

“His braveries are at an end now, for he has been bought for Drusus Hortensius.”

“And who is Hortensius?”

“Have you lived in the desert, that you never heard of Hortensius? Hortensius is the richest man in the world at present, and the greatest epicure in Rome. He imitates Lucullus, at least in pride and luxury. He makes suppers for his friends, of incalculable magnificence. His demand for nightingales’ tongues has silenced half the bird-music in the world.”

“Is Hortensius in the city?”

“In the city? No! He lives in Rome, which, he complains, is altogether too small for him. He has an agent in Alexandria, who has a standing order to send him about fifty refractory and incorrigible slaves every year.”

“What does he want them for?”

“Want them for?” laughed the dealer. “Well, you must know that Hortensius has the greatest and rarest fish-ponds in the world. They are miracles of beauty. Hortensius is fond of fish as well as of nightingales’ tongues. But common fish do not tempt his august appetite. Lucullus discovered, in the course of his epicurean studies, that fish fed upon human flesh have a remarkably fine flavor; and moreover that these aquatic cannibals have a special relish for the African species of the genus homo.”

“Wretch!” I muttered.

“Therefore,” continued the trader, without noticing my indignation, “Hortensius, imitating Lucullus, has a negro slave cut into small pieces and thrown into his fish-ponds every week. His children are taken out by their nurses to witness this choice method of refining the pleasures of the table.”

Anthony, for so they had re-named the brother of Ethopus, had picked up a good deal of Latin, in which language the dealer was speaking. He had listened intently and had caught the horrible meaning of his words. The disdainful and defiant look of the young soldier, contemplating the fate which awaited him, was a study for an artist.

“How can I save him from this cruel bondage, from this hideous death?”

“He was purchased yesterday and will be called for to-day, as the ship sails this evening.”

“Will you cancel that bargain and sell him to me?” said I eagerly.

“Yes—for a grand consideration.”

I reflected that I had drawn my last funds from my uncle’s Egyptian agent. Still, I might possibly borrow largely from him and wait a remittance. I named what I considered a liberal price. The trader coldly shook his head. I added a third more to it, determined to sacrifice a year’s travel in order to save Anthony from the fish-ponds of the luxurious Roman. The trader declined without hesitation. I could make no greater offer without consultation with my uncle, and that was impossible. My countenance fell in despair.

The brothers had watched our conversation with intense [pg 129]interest; and although they did not comprehend its full meaning, they saw that I had made a great effort to redeem Anthony and had failed. The face of Ethopus was full of grief, that of Anthony of sad resignation. Ethopus suddenly sprang up smiling, as if some great idea had illumined his mind. He tore open his robe, and producing a little bag from his bosom, he took out the precious stone which my uncle Beltrezzor had given him. He extended the brilliant gem to the trader with one hand and pointed to Anthony with the other.

“Oh do not take that,” I exclaimed. “This poor fellow values that stone more than life itself. Nothing but the most intense affection could prompt him to such a sacrifice. He believes that stone has delivered him from the bondage of a terrible magician, and wears it over his heart as a protecting genius. Accept my offer instead, which is of greater money value than his gem.”

This speech had a singular effect. The slave-dealer had no generosity, but boundless superstition. He either had an intense fear of magic himself, or he was in collusion with magicians. He immediately acceded to Ethopus’ offer, struck the chains from Anthony’s arms and feet, and put the price of his slave smilingly into his pocket.

“I will replace him with that old fellow there, who would smoke his pipe as he is now doing if we were burying him alive. The agent of Hortensius counts heads and never looks into faces.”

Anthony comprehended that an exorbitant price had been paid for his liberty, involving some great sacrifice on the part of Ethopus and he insisted on resuming his fet[pg 130]ters, until I assured them both that the stone with such magical properties should be replaced by one similar, as soon as I could communicate with Beltrezzor.

Ethopus was now in a state of feverish anxiety to get aboard the Athenian vessel. The addition of Anthony to our company seemed to increase his fears and his sense of responsibility. I conveyed my baggage and my two servants to the ship, and put them in charge of the captain, while I returned into the city to finish my business and to make a few purchases.

When I reached the vessel again, Ethopus had disappeared! Anthony was in great distress, and the captain and sailors were highly excited. The story they told was a curious one. A tall, wild-looking man, fantastically dressed, came and sat down on the shore near the planks of the ship. Busily engaged in carrying on the small freight which crowds in just before a vessel leaves, the sailors paid no attention to him.

This man was heard to make some very curious sounds, a kind of double whistle, a signal which he repeated at intervals with increasing vehemence and impatience. Ethopus then came slowly out of the vessel, reeling and groping like one blind or drunk. He advanced slowly toward the stranger and knelt at his feet. The poor fellow suddenly started up with a great shriek and endeavored to escape. Several of the sailors rushed forward to rescue him from the man who had seized him and was dragging him off. The magician, for such he was, drew a huge yellow serpent from his robe, and flourished it like a whip at his assailants. Some of the sailors declared also that a jet of blue flame darted from his bosom. Cer[pg 131]tain it is that by some magical trick he so terrified them that they fell back in awe, and he escaped with his victim through the crowd which was gathering.

Poor Anthony, who had never seen a ship before, was walking about the vessel in childlike wonder while this terrible abduction was taking place. I was in the deepest distress. I took Anthony and the baggage back to my quarters. I remained a fortnight in Alexandria instituting the most thorough search after our lost friend. It was all in vain. I sailed at last for Athens with a heavy, heavy heart, and a new servant, leaving the poor dumb eunuch in the clutches of Simon Magus.

[pg 132]

X.

AT ATHENS.

I lived at Athens a year, studying the philosophy and poetry of the Greeks. I longed to see my beautiful sisters and my good old uncle; but I cannot disguise the fact that I was greatly fascinated with Grecian life and manners. I frequently wished that I had been born a Greek and not a Jew, and that I could spend my days in sight of the marble-crowned Acropolis and the blue Ægean Sea.

I taught Anthony to read and write, hoping that he would prove to be of superior mental calibre to his brother. But the result was the same. He surprised me at first by his brightness and afterward by his stupidity. He was more impetuous than Ethopus, and braver; but then his spirit had not been broken and subdued by contact with the magicians of Egypt, those subterranean devils who defied the assaults of reason against their pretensions and the vigilance of government against their crimes. Ceasing to be a good soldier and incapable of becoming a philosopher, he proved an invaluable servant.

The letters from my sisters, who wrote alternately, were full of tenderness and piety. They continued to give glowing accounts of the power and progress of the [pg 133]teaching of John the Baptist. Martha quoted all the passages in the prophets alluding to the forerunner of the Messiah, and Mary dwelt upon the influence of his doctrines and baptism upon the hearts and lives of the people. Mary perceived intuitively that the only valuable thing in a religion is the life which it induces one to lead. One day I received a letter from this enthusiastic young girl, which indicated that some great spiritual ferment was working in the land of Judea:

“Dearest Lazarus:

“The hunger and thirst of our souls will soon be satisfied. I have seen him with my own eyes—him, the Son of God, the Messiah. Oh what grace! what wisdom! what goodness! what power!

“Do not think I am dreaming! Some time ago John baptized a young man, whom he pronounced by heavenly vision to be the Messiah, or as he styled him, the Lamb of God. This mysterious person disappeared from sight. It was rumored that he had retired into the wilderness, to undergo some terrible combat with the powers of hell, preparatory to his great mission upon earth. Our hearts have been watching eagerly for his reappearance.

“After a while we heard that a great prophet had arisen in Galilee, who had astonished all men by the wonderful spirituality of his preaching. He had also exhibited miraculous power by turning water into wine at a marriage-feast in Cana. Perhaps this Jesus of Nazareth was the promised deliverer! But how could the ignoble names of Nazareth and Galilee be connected with the Prince of the house of David?

“Not long afterward a strange incident occurred in the temple. The miracle-worker of Cana appeared, and assuming extraordinary authority, as if the temple were his own house, he drove out all the traders and money-changers and idlers who have so long desecrated the holy place by the connivance of the corrupt and wicked priests. They would no doubt have destroyed him in their anger; but the people, and indeed the better class of Pharisees also, applauded the courageous act of the man, who dared, single-handed, to vindicate the holiness of the Lord’s house, and to scourge the profaners out of the sacred precincts.

“I was pondering over this incident, when our good and kind friend Nicodemus came in, and told us he had witnessed the scene himself, and that this Jesus of Nazareth was the same person whom he saw baptized by John in Jordan, at the time when John bare witness that he saw the Spirit of God descending upon him in the shape of a dove.

“Was not this cleansing of the temple prophetic of his spiritual cleansing of the Church, as well as of the purification of those little temples and churches, our own hearts?

“The good Nicodemus, who inquires into everything quickly, but into nothing thoroughly, paid Jesus a visit at night and drew him into conversation. He was astonished and puzzled at the new ideas of this spiritual teacher. Now, my dear brother, do not laugh at me when I assure you, that what seemed so unintelligible to a learned ruler in Israel, was a sun-burst of truth and beauty to the heart of your poor little sister Mary.

“How strange it is that I can see clearly what seems hidden from the eyes of those so much more capable than myself!

“Jesus said to Nicodemus:

“ ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’

“How stupid it was in the good old doctor to stumble at this sublime sentence, and to ask:

“ ‘How can a man be born again when he is old?’

“And the reply of Jesus, how beautiful!—

“ ‘Verily I say unto you, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

“ ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’

“I understand it, Lazarus; I see, feel, know, comprehend the whole mystery. It may be the flower comprehends the sun better than the philosopher.

“We were born of water through the baptism of John. By the repentance and obedience taught by him, we are washed of the uncleanness and sensuality of our old life and enter upon the sweetness and purity of the new. Jesus will baptize us with the Spirit of divine love, as John did with the spirit of divine truth; and we shall be new creatures, born again as it were, into a spiritual kingdom of light and peace.

“The Sabbath after my interview with Nicodemus, I started with Martha to the temple, hoping to see Jesus with my own eyes. And I saw him, Lazarus, not only with my eyes, but with my heart and soul. We had reached the pool of Bethesda by the sheep-market, and [pg 136]were looking at the crowd of feeble and paralytic people, who were waiting for the periodical moving of the water, when a murmur arose: ‘The prophet, the prophet of Nazareth!’ I looked and saw Jesus standing in one of the porches on the first step that leads down into the water.

“The moment I saw his face I believed. My heart beat audibly within me. A divine ardor burned in my soul. A faith, strong as the mountains or the ocean, took possession of my whole being. My impulse was to rush forward, fall at his feet and proclaim him the Messiah to the assembled multitude. Martha held me back and said: ‘Listen! he speaks!’

“Yes—he spoke; and I heard that voice I had so often heard in my dreams, dreaming of the restoration of Israel!

“He spoke to the oldest, the feeblest, the most forlorn-looking person in the crowd:

“ ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ he said, in a voice of infinite tenderness and beauty.

“Strangely enough, before the sick man answered, the same question entered into my own soul. I felt a deadly, paralytic sensation throughout my spiritual frame, and I knew that I needed to be made whole even more than the poor creature on the steps. The Divine question was put to the sick man, to me, to the Church, to the whole world. It was infinite. While I was ejaculating internally, ‘Yes, Lord! yes! entirely whole,’ the paralytic replied:

“ ‘I have no one, sir, when the water is troubled to put me into the pool, but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.’

“Poor, old, helpless, friendless creature! Others had relatives or friends who assisted them to descend into the restorative waters; and day after day the selfish ones had pushed aside the weak, slow, pallid wretch. But the great Friend had come!

“Jesus, stretching forth his hand over the prostrate form, with a majesty indescribable, exclaimed:

“ ‘Rise, take up thy bed and walk.’

“And the paralytic arose amid the exclamations and plaudits of the crowd, which pressed about them until he and Jesus were concealed from our sight.

“I have seen the Messiah several times since that miracle. He was walking the streets with several fishermen of Galilee, whom they say he has chosen to be his apostles. The greatest takes up the least to connect all the intermediates with himself. The group is always followed at a distance by a woman clad in deep mourning, and wearing a thick black veil. She never approaches near enough to speak or be spoken to. No man knows where she lodges or how she lives; but the first dawn of light always reveals her dark figure opposite the house in which Jesus has slept.

“Who can she be? says every one to himself and to others. Whoever she is, her humility and devotion are very touching; and the Power which can work miracles no doubt reads her heart and is leading her to himself.

“Martha is profoundly impressed and greatly bewildered by the miracles and character of Jesus; but she cannot yet believe that he is the veritable Messiah predicted by the prophets. She thinks the Messiah must be a great [pg 138]Prince, who will restore the power of David and the glory of Solomon to the Jewish nation, and make our temple the temple of the whole world. Our hearts, I think, our purified hearts, are the temples in which he is to reign!

“Our dear, good, pagan uncle smiles quietly at my enthusiastic faith, and encourages Martha’s doubts by telling us of great and good magi in Persia, who performed greater miracles than those of Moses.

“Ah, Lazarus! How can you linger away off in those beautiful and wicked cities of Greece, buried in spiritual darkness, and studying their foolish or insane philosophies, when the Source of all light has risen, and the Fountain of all truth has been opened in your own country! Oh hasten to your home in our hearts and see these great things for yourself. If you cannot share my faith, you will at least receive and reciprocate my love.

“Ever your Mary.”

If these strange things had occurred soon after my father’s death, when the spirit of religious inquiry was strong, and when I loved to search the Scriptures with my sisters, I would have been deeply, intensely interested in them. But the hardest thing in the world is to make a devotee out of a man who thinks himself a philosopher.

My uncle had not converted me to the doctrines of Zoroaster, but he had convinced me that Zoroaster, Moses, and all the great leaders of religious thought derived their inspiration from the same source. I came tacitly to believe that no special Messiah was coming to [pg 139]the Jews, any more than to the Persians or Egyptians or Romans, all of whom needed deliverance from mountains of sin and wildernesses of error, quite as much as the Hebrew nation which constituted so small a fraction of the human race.

Moreover the influence of travel, and especially my free and happy life at Athens, had quite denationalized me. I was no longer a Jew.

I had breathed the mystic and magical air of Egypt, and had peeped into one of the very cradles of the human race; where I found everything so strange and so unlike what I had been taught by our childish Hebrew traditions.

I had trodden all the glorious and beautiful grounds hallowed in the immortal history and songs of Greece. I no longer wondered at the host of gods and goddesses which were conjured from the misty deeps of antiquity, to guard a nature so prolific and fair, and a people so perfect in form and so gifted in spirit.

The traditions of Greece, the poetry, the eloquence, the music, the philosophy, the art, and the divine architecture, which seemed a combination of them all, had so impressed and transformed my mind, that I looked back to my narrow circle of life and thought in Judea, as a man looks back upon the school-room and play-ground of his childhood.

After these things, it was impossible for me to believe that the Jews were the favored people of God, and that the descendants of the patriarchs were to govern the world. It was as easy to believe that the sun rose in Jericho and set in Joppa.

Therefore I smiled at my sister’s pious enthusiasm, and said to myself:

This Jesus of Nazareth is some estimable Jew, full of philanthropy and zeal, possessed perhaps of extraordinary healing powers. With these he will so astonish the poor ignorant Hebrews, that they will call him a prophet of God, or even invest him with divine honors. In Athens he would be simply a philosopher or a physician, more or less profound and brilliant. His pretensions would be scrutinized by a thinking public, and he would receive applause in proportion to his merit and capacity.

There was, I must confess, another reason why I did not turn my face toward Judea; why the prophecies and their fulfillment had ceased to interest me; and why even my charming sisters were occasionally forgotten. While studying the theologies of the nations and poring over the ethereal pantheism of Greece, I met that wonderful divinity who flies ever with his golden shafts between the earth and the sun, and I became the devotee of a new religion.

I had seen the most beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world, and—

And what?

I loved!

[pg 141]

XI.

HELENA.

In the school of philosophy where the doctrines of Socrates and Plato were taught with an eloquence equal to their own, I met a young Greek resident of the city by the name of Demetrius. He was the son of Calisthenes, a very wealthy merchant, who, contrary to the usual custom, attempted to rival in his private residence the magnificent art which was bestowed only on the public works. He was ambitious that his only son should enjoy more than mercantile honors, and arrive at greater distinction than that which wealth alone could bestow.

As usual in such cases, his paternal aspirations were doomed to disappointment. Nine-tenths of the genius of the world comes from that great middle class which knows neither riches nor poverty. The possession of great wealth is generally a hinderance to intellectual or spiritual advancement. Demetrius was a handsome, amiable fellow, of mediocre talent, slothful by nature and indulgence, and more ambitious of social success than of a front place in the class of philosophy.

I know not how it happened, but he had attached himself more strongly to me than I to him. I attained the [pg 142]entrée of his father’s house by a lucky accident. While we were rowing in the harbor one day, our little vessel was capsized, and it was only by my desperate exertions in his behalf that Demetrius was saved from drowning. Gratitude did more for the deliverer than friendship had done for the fellow-student: it opened the doors of the princely mansion, and showed me the household gods.

I was rejoiced at this, for I had heard one of my companions say:

“Helena, the sister of Demetrius, is the most wonderful creature in the world.”

I verified the truth of his remark. It was indeed the echo of the popular lip. Helena was an institution of Athens, sought, seen and admired like its other wonders and beauties. No language can convey any adequate description of this cunning masterpiece of nature. There was no statue in all the rich collections of Grecian art, which excelled the matchless symmetry of her form or the perfect beauty of her features. She was the poet’s dream of perfection, embodied in the delicate tissues of a splendid womanhood.

A neck and bust of immaculate beauty were surmounted by a head, every attitude of which was a study for artists and lovers. Her hair was a cloud of dark, brown waves faintly dashed with gold. Her broad imperial brow was pure as the silver surface of some cloudless dawn. Her soft, hazel eyes were radiant centres of inexpressible light and power. Her cheeks, nose, mouth and chin were miracles of shape, warmth and color. Her shell-tinted ears were hung with pearls less beautiful than themselves; and a necklace of golden beads made [pg 143]conspicuous a throat which it could not beautify. Her hands and fingers were so lucid, delicate and expressive, that they might be called features also, revealing in part the movements of her mind.

Poor artist that I am, I throw my pencil down in disgust. I cannot reproduce Helena to your eyes as she appeared to me.

To see this woman, for a young enthusiastic spirit, with his celestial dream pressing downward for realization, was to love her. The shaft of love flies from one eye to another; from the eye to the heart; from the heart to the brain; from the brain to the soul. I looked, I loved. I was smitten to the soul by that malady which has no cure but the cause which inflicts it.

Helena had not only an irresistible sweetness of voice and grace of manner, but she had a singular directness of attack, concentrating all her charms upon you at once; so that few men ever left her presence without feeling that she had absorbed and taken from them some portion of their life, which they could only recover by returning into the enchanted atmosphere which surrounded her beautiful person.

Thus bewildered by her beauty and bewitched by her fascinations, I lost my life when away from her, and found it again, enhanced and glorified, when I approached her footstool. I was attracted to her continually; and if I tore myself away, and climbed the mountain-top, or walked by the sea-shore, she became the inspiring genius of my solitary rambles; and the beauties of nature were only beautiful, because in some inexplicable manner they seemed akin to, or associated with her.

Thus, day after day, week after week passed by, and philosophy became as dry as dust, and my companions silly and unprofitable; and Egypt became a myth and Judea a dream; while the past was forgotten and the future uncared for, except in connection with her. Solitude became sweet, and reverie ecstatic, and the language of poetry the voice of common life. I created for myself an ideal world, romantic, ethereal, felicitous; for the greatest magician that ever lived is Love.

I was sometimes, however, sunk into the fathomless abyss of despair. I met in the splendid halls of Calisthenes so many distinguished and wealthy and powerful men; so many soldiers and statesmen; so many philosophers, artists and poets; all many degrees superior to myself, and all paying the same homage to the idol I worshiped, that my envy and jealousy were being continually excited; and I frequently shrank within myself, taciturn and melancholy, contemplating the awful distance which intervened between my feeble pretensions and the transcendent object of my admiration.

Then Helena, observing my silence and grief, would single me out from the crowd with a peculiar sweetness; would bestow a smile which seemed meant only for me; would drop a sentence of pearl which I felt that I alone comprehended; would solicit my early return in a manner so special and impressive, that I was fired with new hope and endowed with new life; spurned the dull earth beneath me, and was ready, like the daring boy of Apollo, to drive the chariot of the sun.

“Let no one ever despair,” I would thus fondly say to myself, “of conquering a woman by love. Concen[pg 145]trate the passion of your soul upon her, like the rays of a burning glass, and sooner or later, you will melt her heart. The best philter to excite love is love itself. If you would ignite, you must burn.”

With all this magnificent exterior, with the blended adornments of nature and art, this Helena was altogether unworthy of the pure and simple love I lavished upon her. She studied men as the angler studies the character, habits and locality of fish; solely to allure and capture them. She had the thoughtful brow and the words of wisdom for one class; the smile of the cupid and the laugh of the bacchante for another. She had an armory full of weapons; the tear of sympathy, the corruscations of wit, the meekness of modesty, the humility of religion, the splendor of dress, the ornament and even the exposure of person. Everything about her was the highest art in a garb of the sweetest nature.

She hesitated at nothing which would secure her a conquest. She was unhappy unless many were kneeling at her shrine. She lived upon the breath of adulation, the music of her own praises, the incense of delirious love. She wished to absorb everything; she gave nothing in return. She demanded for herself affection, thought, worship, life. She returned only smiles, hopes, dreams, shadows. She was a beautiful demon of selfishness. There were fascination, magic, spiritual death in her sphere; but the soul died listening to invisible music and dreaming of heaven.

This adoration of men and envy of women was more to be pitied than admired. She had a mother whose influence was a dark shadow cast upon her life. Neither [pg 146]beautiful nor gifted herself, she had determined that the gifts and beauty of her child should be turned to the utmost account. She had planted a wild ambition in her girlish spirit, as one plants a rose in a garden. She had nourished it and watered it carefully, until she brought it to baneful perfection. Her own evil nature was transfused into the child.

She taught her that power, wealth, fashion, glory, were the true objects of rational pursuit. She cultivated her vanity, her petulance, her imperiousness. She basked in the sunshine of her beauty and power. Fatal parasite! she drew from the virgin tree upon which she fastened, the sustenance she could not herself extract from the earth and air. The too pliant pupil accepted and improved all the lessons of the teacher; and behold the result!

Of the true character of Helena I knew nothing at the time. That discovery was the result of subsequent information and experience. Nothing occurred in those blissful days to break the spell of the enchantress. I did, indeed, once or twice notice the contrast between this Athenian goddess and my pure and sweet sisters. I did once or twice wonder that Sappho and Horace should be her favorite poets, and Aspasia her model of female character. But these shadowy doubts, like the faint threat of clouds which sometimes appear in the clearest heaven, soon passed away.

Helena, petted and spoiled, set all the regulations of fashion and propriety at defiance. She did as she pleased, and every one was pleased with what she did. Not every one; for she was the terror of rigid mothers and the [pg 147]scandal of prudish maidens. She walked unveiled in the streets. She made herself conspicuous at the theatre and the racing-grounds. She visited artists in their studios and poets in their chambers. She received very questionable visitors at very unseasonable hours. Her dressing-room even opened its doors to favorite lovers, or to those of whom she wished to make a convenience. All this was done so boldly, so gracefully, so naïvely, that no one dared to express a hint against her virtue.

She admitted me to her presence on a very familiar footing. One evening I called to see her, when she was dressing for a grand supper, and the servant ushered me into her boudoir. She was one bright blaze of jewels and beauty. The dressing-maid was giving the last caressing touches to her hair. She was scrutinizing the work in a metallic mirror with an ivory handle, which she held like a fan.

“Come! my Judean!” she said, casting upon me one of her most bewitching glances—“come and put this ring into my ear.”

This captivating service I rendered with trembling hands and palpitating heart. The dressing-maid smiled at my awkwardness and trepidation. Helena never looked more resplendent. I felt helplessly bound to the chariot-wheels of her destiny.

The waiting-girl left the room, and falling at the feet of the unimpassioned beauty, I stammered forth my passion.

“Helena! do you know that I love you?”

She was contemplating her chin in the mirror, and replied without looking at me:

“Of course you do. Everybody does.”

“But, Helena! I cannot live without loving you.”

“That is charming. Love me then and live.”

“Helena!” said I, sternly, “you mock me. You allure me as if I were a man; and then you treat me as if I were a boy. You invite me; you evade me; you tantalize me. Can you not love me?”

“Let me see,” said she, looking up at the Judgment of Paris beautifully frescoed on the ceiling; “let me see: I love wisdom, riches, power and glory. When you are wise as Socrates, rich as Crœsus, eloquent as Cicero, and powerful as Cæsar, I will love you and give myself to you.”

“Your combination is impossible,” said I, proudly, biting my lip with failing heart and unconcealed vexation.

Her face suddenly became radiant with a yielding, tender and beautiful expression, and I added:—

“But if it existed, Helena, you would be worthy of it.”

“To love such as yours,” she said, sweetly, pressing my hands, “all things are possible. We have been dreaming in the boudoir; let us converse in the parlor.”

She led the way and overwhelmed me with such civilities that I forgot the past which had wounded me, and had golden glimpses of that magical future which was to console and bless me. Such is the dream-land of love!

My sisters continued to write the most glowing letters, full of piety and tender affection. Their rehearsal of miracles and parables, and of voices from heaven, their enthusiasm, their faith, their zeal, all fell as dull and cold upon my ear as the monotonous songs of an old nurse.

[pg 149]

XII.

THE HALL OF APOLLO.

I was awakened from my delicious dream by Demetrius, who importuned me to accompany him to Rome, whither he had been despatched by his father on business of extreme importance. This reminded me that a visit to Rome was an essential part of my uncle’s educational programme. I had abandoned philosophy for love, and love cares nothing for thought, except as one mode of expressing the sentiments. My education, therefore, was at a stand-still. I hesitated and shuddered at the idea of leaving the charmed circle in which I stood entranced. I would, perhaps, have neither gratified my friend nor obeyed my uncle, had not Helena carelessly dropped the remark, that no student could truly regard his course of instruction completed until he had visited Rome. To acquire this title to perfection in the eyes of Helena, I endured the pangs of parting and the miseries of absence; became a compliant friend and an obedient nephew. I went to Rome.

Rome did not impress me so favorably as Athens. I was fond of art, but cared little for glory. The efforts of man to reproduce the beauties of Nature excited my admiration; his labors to immortalize himself and his deeds excited my contempt. The art of Rome was imported; [pg 150]her glory was self-acquired. I had soon seen all that I cared to see of the imperial city, which Augustus had found of brick and left of marble.

Demetrius had letters to some of the most powerful and influential men in Rome, so that we were soon introduced into the best society there. It was not long before we received an invitation to one of the splendid suppers of Hortensius, the richest man and the greatest epicure in the world. I remembered the conversation of the slave-dealer at Alexandria. I mentally resolved, as we drove through the magnificent arch of his palace gate, that, although I might taste of the nightingales of Hortensius, I certainly would take none of his fish.

“Beware of the fish-ponds,” said I, laughingly, to Anthony, who accompanied us as footman.

This palace of Hortensius was an affair of Babylonian magnificence. Everything about it was of colossal proportions. It was said to have as many chambers as there were days in the year. Hortensius had twelve bed-rooms for himself, each named after one of the months, and gorgeously furnished in a manner to represent the month after which it was named. There were seven banqueting-halls named after gods and goddesses—the dreams rather than the creations of art. This grand structure was burned during the fire in the reign of Nero, and its splendors, no longer to be found anywhere on earth, are already regarded as fabulous.

We supped in the Hall of Apollo.

The company was altogether male, which I did not regret; for I did not wish to see or speak to a woman in [pg 151]the world but Helena or my sisters. It was composed of the magnates, the great stars of Roman society—soldiers, statesmen, senators, governors, etc.—the least of them immeasurably above the two young plebeian students, who, dumbfounded at all they saw, could not but experience a painful sense of their own insignificance.

On my right hand, however, at the table, was a noble and sedate Roman, Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea. He had visited Rome to consult the emperor and the senate about the affairs of his province, and was on the eve of returning. He seemed pleased when he learned that my home was in the neighborhood of Jerusalem; and with great tact and urbanity drew me out of my abstracted mood, dissipated my bashfulness, and engaged me in an animated conversation.

The Hall of Apollo was a miracle of beauty. Its area was immense; its shape, circular. Supported by twenty-four golden columns, the ceiling rose to a vast height, as a blue dome painted to represent the visible heavens. The sun blazing up through masses of dense and crimson clouds; the intensely clear cerulean ether above; the horizon all around pierced by mountain peaks, overhung by rolling vapors of purple and gold, produced an illusion of astonishing power and magnificence.

Every object in the room, the pictures, the statuary, the bass-reliefs upon the columns, the carvings upon the couches and the gorgeous table, and even the engravings and embossings upon the splendid vases and vessels which adorned it, were all descriptive or symbolical of Apollo, his attributes and achievements. The wonder of the hall, however, was a golden chandelier of incredible size, con[pg 152]taining a thousand rose-colored tapers, which lighted the scene with a brilliancy rivaling the day.

I will not attempt to describe the feast, having no particular fondness for epicurism. The bill of fare exceeded anything I had ever imagined. There was service after service, dessert after dessert, wine after wine, seemingly without end. The meat-courses, lasting about three hours, were presented by handsome boys of every nationality, clad in beautiful livery. The after-courses, of sweets and luxuries, were brought on by female servants, lovely in person and graceful in manner, revealing by their dress or otherwise every charm of the human body.

When the company was well filled and duly flushed by the delicious wines, the whole western wall of the apartment, by some hidden and admirable mechanism, suddenly opened or changed like a dissolving view, and revealed an interior apartment a little above the level of ours, which looked like a beautiful garden adorned and lighted in a style of Oriental magnificence.

The shrubbery and flowers of this garden were the concentrated beauties of the floral world in all regions, cultivated here by art, and offering an incense of perfume to these Roman rulers, who aspired to conquer not only man but nature. Ivory statues of gods and goddesses, of nymphs and fawns and satyrs, added greatly to the beauty of the scene. But when a dozen dancing-girls alighted as it were from heaven upon this miraculous stage, and whirled among these statues and flowers, less perfect and beautiful than themselves, the fascination, to those who regarded such enchantments, was complete.

“More music! more wine!” cried Hortensius from his purple couch a little elevated above the rest—“the feast of thought ends always in the feast of love.”

The banquet progressed with continued variations of stimulus and entertainment. The guests were regaled by invisible music, repeatedly changed, and representing the airs and styles of every nation which had bowed its head to the Roman conqueror. The wine fell fast into golden goblets from vases composed of precious gems. The day dawned. The noise and excitement increased: the conversation degenerated into a babble, and the feast into a debauch; when a most extraordinary incident occurred, changing my uncle’s programme and perhaps my whole fate in the twinkling of an eye.

A great clamor was heard outside of the door nearest Hortensius. Loud and angry voices, the rapid tread of many feet, curses, groans, shrieks, indicated the approach of some dreadful storm. It was a thunderbolt in a clear sky. All sprang to their feet and advanced toward the sounds, when the door was burst open with violence, and my servant Anthony rushed in, foaming at the mouth, bleeding profusely from several wounds and flourishing an immense knife over his head.

“I will kill him if I die for it!” he shouted, glaring fiercely on the brilliant crowd before him, and endeavoring to single out the object of his hate.

“What does all this mean, Anthony?” I exclaimed, leaping forward and seizing him by the throat.

“I have saved him from the fish-pond,” he answered sternly, pointing to the naked form of a poor negro, whom the domestics had at last succeeded in hurling to [pg 154]the floor, and who had followed Anthony, defending him from his pursuers.

“And why did you not fly? madman!” I exclaimed, “why did you come here?”

“Oh! death was inevitable,” he answered, in a tone of desperation, “and I determined first to kill the vile despot, the author of these cruelties.”

“Slave! barbarian!” echoed from all parts of the hall.

“Slave I am: barbarian I may be!” shouted Anthony defiantly; “but in my country they do not feed fishes with men.”

The crowd had stood back a little while we were speaking: but now there was a sudden rush upon us in front and rear. I was pushed forcibly aside, and Anthony was borne down, disarmed and bound with his fellow-prisoner, whose rescue had caused this great excitement.

“Throw the old one to the fishes immediately,” cried Hortensius in a loud and cruel tone. “Bind this young villain by the pond and guard him till I come. I will cut him up, strip by strip, with my own hands.”

A murmur of approbation ran through the assembly. Thrusting the bystanders away, I confronted Hortensius face to face.

“O most noble Roman,” I exclaimed, “pardon something in this poor man to the spirit of liberty. He was born free, a prince in his little realm; and like you, he has been a brave soldier. Misfortune in war, not crime, has enslaved him. He is honest, faithful and noble. It was a fierce and glorious love of his own race which has fired him to this rash deed. His sublime self-sacrifice, his desperate courage surely deserve a better [pg 155]fate at the hands of a Roman and a soldier. Spare him and forgive him!”

It would be difficult to describe the fierce and haughty stare which Hortensius and his noble guests fixed upon me during this little speech. They wondered at my folly, my stupidity, my audacity. To plead for a black slave who had drawn his knife against a Roman senator! To accord the spirit of liberty to such vermin of the earth! To speak of them as brave, faithful, noble, glorious, sublime! They were stupefied at the novelty and heresy of such ideas. I was certainly either a fool or a madman.

Hortensius, lowering his voice and infusing into it a little suavity,—for he suddenly remembered that I was his guest,—exclaimed:

“The proper discipline of my palace, young man, demands the immediate death of this would-be assassin. I will replace your servant with a better.”

“That is beyond your power,” I replied impetuously; “your whole household would not replace him. I am indebted to his brother for my sister’s life and honor. I am bound to this man’s flesh and blood as if they were my own. I cannot, I will not desert him in his extremity.”

There were loud exclamations of surprise, contempt and disapproval. Many, however, were silent, touched perhaps by a latent magnanimity.

“What will you do?” exclaimed a haughty old Roman in a most provoking tone.

“Do?” said I rashly, striking my hand upon the hilt of my dagger, “do?—I will defend him: I will die with him.”

This caused a great uproar in the assembly. Loud cries of

“Away with him! out with him!”

“Insult a Roman senator!”

“Abettor of slaves and assassins!”

“Insurrectionist! Madman! Idiot!”

“Down with the base Judean!”

resounded through the splendid Hall of Apollo. My friend Demetrius, who had hitherto stood near me, now slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Having defied the supreme power of the place, I would probably have shared the fate of the wretched Ethiopian, had not assistance come to me from an unexpected quarter.

Pontius Pilate stepped between Hortensius and myself, and waving his hand with great dignity and grace, requested silence.

“Pardon, dear friends and most noble senators! pardon the wine which has made this rash youth forget both reason and duty. He is a subject of mine, being a native and resident of my province. I claim jurisdiction over him, and will punish him as he deserves. He is from this moment a prisoner in charge of my retinue. He shall be carried back to his native village, disarmed, bound and disgraced, so that all Judean youths may know what folly it is to insult a Roman senator.”

There was a strong murmur of approbation throughout the assembly, and Hortensius nodded approval.

Pilate continued:

“I would not say a word to save this African from the death he so richly merits, were it not for one dark suspicion which crosses my mind and which will not permit [pg 157]me to be silent. I suspect this infuriate wretch to be a madman; and the insane, you know, are under the protection of the gods and, sacred from the fangs of the law. Permit me to convey this slave also in irons to Judea. I will have his case carefully studied by my own physician. If the gods have smitten him in their wisdom, let him go free as our laws direct. If he exhibits enough reason to be held responsible, I will have him driven into the dreadful desert beyond the Salt Sea, and sentence him to a perpetual exile in its awful solitudes. If he is ever discovered west of the river Jordan, his punishment shall be death, without question or delay.”

Whether this proposition struck the hearers as remarkable, or what was more likely, the social and civil weight of Pontius Pilate bore down their opposition and silenced their scruples, Hortensius acceded to it and all seemed satisfied. After drinking again to the health of Hortensius, the company dispersed. I soon found myself a prisoner bound for Judea, deserted by Demetrius, exiled from Helena, full of sadness and dark forebodings, with the educational tour projected by my good uncle brought to a sudden and ignominious conclusion.

The only comfort I experienced during the long and melancholy voyage was the thought that I had saved the life of my high-spirited Anthony, whom I was not permitted to see, and whose daring conduct I more admired the more I thought of it.

I was struck also with the wonderful tact, courtesy and kindness of Pontius Pilate. I would gladly have thanked him for his services; but I was kept in strict confinement, and heard and saw nothing of the sedate [pg 158]governor. On our arrival at Jerusalem, I was unbound and taken privately before him.

“You are now free,” he said. “I admire you too much to inflict any further punishment upon you for your incredible rashness. You cannot help being brave, but you can compel yourself to be prudent. Go, sir! When you get into trouble again, let me hear from you and I will befriend you, if possible.”

“And my servant?” said I, hoping to intercede for Anthony.

“He has been driven into the desert.”

An hour afterward I was trudging up the Mount of Olives, thinking of what a joyous surprise I was about to give to some dear little souls in Bethany.

[pg 159]

XIII.

MY FIRST DEATH.

How beautiful was my old home, embowered in trees and perfumed with flowers! How charming were my lovely sisters, twin-stars of the social heaven, dropping sweet influence on all who received their tender light! How peaceful and pure was the self-sacrificing old age of Beltrezzor, over whose pagan heart, so full of simple love and wisdom, the most orthodox angels kept kindly watch!

A great sadness rested upon our little household, on account of the recent murder of John the Baptist by the cruel Herod, at the instigation of a still more cruel woman. That pure and good man had been cast into prison about the time that Christ began his ministry, and the morning star paled on the approach of the blazing Sun. He had ever been remembered with peculiar tenderness and gratitude; and heaven became dearer to us by receiving into its fold the gentle hermit of the wilderness.

My sisters had grown lovelier. On Martha’s clear brow the sweet maturity of thought was imprinted. Mingled with the light of love on Mary’s face was a touching sadness, of which none but Martha and I suspected the [pg 160]meaning. These women, so pure, so cultivated, so beautiful, were abstracted from the entire world. Sought by many lovers, they had discarded the very thought of love. They were wedded in heart to the heavenly bridegroom.

They had heard but once from our old friend, the Son of the Desert. A strange servant, no doubt a disguised robber, brought back the ring with a note from the wanderer, saying that he was unworthy to wear it; that it afflicted him with sorrowful dreams and burned into his soul like iron. Martha herself fortunately met him at the gate, and would not permit him to depart without an answer, as he was instructed to do. She sent back the ring with her love and Mary’s to the savior of their brother, with the solemn assurance that the ring had a great blessing for him concealed within its curse.

I soon discovered that my sisters had but one idea, one study, one passion. Their individuality was lost in their perpetual concentration of soul upon one object. That object was Jesus Christ. They no longer spoke of him as the prophet of Nazareth. Martha had at last discovered with her eyes what Mary had seen with her heart. He was the Son of God: He was the Messiah. With subdued voices and reverent gestures they called him the Lord.

All this was very strange to me, fresh from beautiful and romantic Greece, where altars were erected to a thousand gods: fresh from the schools of philosophy, where the only deity taught was a spiritual essence, infinite, inconceivable, unfathomable. I listened, however, with interest to the recital of miracles which were certainly astounding; to parables which were replete with [pg 161]spiritual wisdom; and to discourses—for my sisters treasured all his words by heart and repeated them to me—which were radiant with a certain divine light and beauty.

I was ready to concede that this man must be the greatest philosopher of the age.

This was the opinion of our good uncle, who, however, took no trouble to see or hear the worker of such great miracles. He said there was nothing new under the sun; that all things repeated themselves over and over again; that all wisdom had been spoken and every miracle performed ages and ages ago. The Son of God was in his mind synonymous with a disciple of the Sun.

Beltrezzor was sorry that I did not remain a year at Rome, for he said the practical atmosphere of that city would have moderated and utilized the ideality I had drawn from Athens. He was greatly pleased, however, with my conduct at the supper of Hortensius.

“The man who sees any reason,” he would say, “why Hortensius should be more wealthy, more powerful, more respected, more glorious than Anthony, has not incorporated into his soul the first ray of the divine principle of fire, and is altogether ignorant of the power and beauty of the sun.”

A few weeks after my return, Beltrezzor transferred the whole of my father’s estate, improved and augmented, into my hands. No reasonings, no entreaties could induce him to abandon or even to defer his long-contemplated journey to the extreme East. A strange, sad home-sickness had apparently seized him; and he waited with a childish impatience for the arrival of the caravan from Egypt which was to escort him to Assyria.

It came at length; and our adieus were long and bitter. We were bound to him not only by a pious gratitude for his rich gifts and his unvarying kindness, but by a genuine love of his sweet, sincere and noble nature. We wept at the thought of the dear old man going away into that far-off, marvelous Orient, without a wife or child to comfort his declining years. My sisters also seemed overwhelmed with grief, that one so good and so beloved had rejected to the last, with a quiet, polite incredulity, all the evidences of the divine mission of Jesus.

The old man’s parting words to me, as he leaned from his camel, whispering in my ear, were these:

“Beware, my son, of the spirit of fanaticism which has fallen upon your good sisters. I bequeath you this verse from one of the sacred books in Persia. It is my last and best gift to you. Do not forget it:—

“ ‘It is more truly pious to sow the ground with diligence, than to say ten thousand prayers in idleness.’

“Adieu!”

A few days after my uncle’s departure, we were invited to dine at the house of a worthy Pharisee, Simon by name, who was touched at heart with a secret admiration of Jesus. Preoccupied as I was with thoughts of Helena, and caring nothing about spiritual things, I would not have accompanied my sisters but at their earnest solicitation. They had been assured that Jesus would be present, and they were anxious for me to behold the object of their love and worship.

He came, and saluted us all with a charming grace and sweetness of manner. His face was handsome, thoughtful and benevolent, but did not strike you as ma[pg 163]jestic or sublime. There was a winning sociality in his conversation, which you did not expect from his serene and rather pensive countenance. He was quiet and modest in his demeanor; and instead of leading the thoughts of the company, he spoke less than any one present.

Reflecting, by the light of later and grander experiences, upon the first impressions made on me by this mysterious man, I am convinced that not only his face, his expressions, his words, but his whole life was comparatively a sealed book to the people who saw him in the flesh. They saw only the outside, the husk, the fleshly, not the heavenly part of him. They were ignorant of the sublimities, the infinities concealed within. Whoever sees only the physical and not at the same time the spiritual side of anything, sees little. The flowers, the gems, the clouds, all beautiful objects, on the spiritual side are full of sacred mysteries. Ignorant of these little things, how could the men of that day comprehend the Christ?

What a different banquet from that of Hortensius! A plain room, opening directly on the street; a plain table; a plain company. At Rome we had a wild ambition, aspiring to universal empire, and imitating even in its luxuries all the splendors of heaven and earth. Here were simple tastes, frugal habits, civic industry, neighborly love. There the presiding genius was the demon of pride; here it was the Divine Man.

The feast was nearly over, when a woman, closely concealing her face in a black veil, glided softly into the room and stood behind Jesus. This would not have [pg 164]attracted special attention, for people were coming in and going out all the time; but I remembered Mary’s account of the mysterious woman who always followed Jesus and his disciples at a distance. I therefore watched the movements of this person with considerable interest.

She bent low over the feet of Jesus as he reclined on his couch, and I observed that she was weeping. She seemed deeply agitated. Suddenly she let down the great mass of dark brown hair from her head, and began wiping the feet of the Lord. Washing his feet with her tears and wiping them with the hair of her head! What touching humility! What contrition!

Then she anointed his feet with a precious ointment which she drew from her bosom.

My thoughts were concentrated on that kneeling figure. I entered so deeply into what I imagined to be her feelings and sorrows, I was so attracted by what must have been a secret spiritual affinity with her own soul, that I heard almost nothing of the conversation which ensued between Jesus and Simon, and which is recorded by the apostle Luke who was himself present.

When the divine voice pronounced the verdict, “Thy sins are forgiven;” a strange and bewildering sense of delight came over me, as if I myself had been the sinner who sought and found the pardon of sin. I was contemplating in amazement this reverberation, as it were, of the woman’s sentiments in my own spirit, when Jesus said, “Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace;” and the woman turned slowly around and walked sobbing out of the door.

Scarcely knowing what I did, I quietly withdrew from my place at the table and followed her. Suddenly, in some ecstasy of religious feeling, she threw her arms wildly toward the sky, the veil was lifted for a moment, and I recognized the beautiful, sorrowing and purified features of Mary Magdalen!

The spell which overpowered me was instantly withdrawn, and I returned to my seat. No psychology I had ever been taught, threw any light on this singular phenomenon; and it remained a mystery until solved by that special light of the spiritual world which I alone of all men have enjoyed.

After that the mysterious preacher and miracle-worker was a frequent visitor at our house in Bethany. I came no nearer to him than at first: I understood him no better. He was a good, wise, wonderful man; beyond that I could not penetrate. I became intimate with all his disciples; and I loved to dispute with them on theological subjects, and to puzzle their uncultivated brains with my philosophical doubts and quibbles. But in the presence of their master I had nothing to say. I stood abashed and silenced by some secret power which I could not explain. I never thought, however, of acknowledging him as the Messiah, or the Son of God.

The reason was, that my heart and mind were too closely riveted to nature and the things of sense, to rise to the conception and love of spiritual things.

While the faces of my sisters were growing more and more radiant and serene from the spiritual life which was deepening in their souls, mine became pale and haggard from the burden of concealed longings and the vigils of a [pg 166]burning but unfed hope. I had written and rewritten to Helena, but received no answer. I would have returned to Athens; but the fear of leaving my tender and helpless sisters so near to such a subtle enemy as Magistus, and Beltrezzor away off in Persia, detained me unwillingly at Bethany.

Absence extinguishes a feeble love; but intensifies a great one. I brooded in solitude. I took interest in nothing. Conversation was irksome. Religion and philosophy were alike neglected. I experienced that apathy which a great desolation of heart produces, and which men attribute to moroseness or stupidity. I was feeding with the intense hunger of love upon my treasured memories of Helena; devouring every word she had spoken, every look, every tone, every changing form, every shifting light of her miraculous beauty.

My love for Helena, for reasons which I did not then comprehend, was not of a soothing, ennobling, purifying type. It was a disquieting, paralyzing, corroding passion. The sphere of this woman, wholly incapable of the heavenly duties of wife and mother, did not lead me, encouraged and strengthened, into the sweet and useful activities of life. Like an evil spirit rather, it drove me into the wilderness; tempted me with stones which were not bread; and haunted me with wild dreams and insane ambitions.

Thus many weeks passed away, and the fever of my soul had so worn and wasted me that my sisters became seriously alarmed at my condition, not knowing the cause; for I had never divulged my pagan goddess to these pious little ones.

One day I was suddenly lifted out of the cavern of despair into the serenest sunlight of hope. I received a message from Helena that she was traveling with her father to the most noted places in Asia, and would spend a few days in Jerusalem; that she was the guest of Alastor, a wealthy Greek merchant of the city, and that her visit would be devoid of genuine pleasure unless she could see once more her esteemed friend, who had saved the life of her brother.

Now occurred a most curious mental phenomenon. The sudden reaction of joy in the feeble and excited state of my nervous system, overpowered my brain. I became the victim of an absurd, grotesque illusion. I leaped at once from the abyss of self-abasement to the maddest height of presumption. I transferred my entire experiences of heart and mind to Helena. She, I imagined, was pining with unconquerable passion for me. She was wasted and worn by unrevealed, unrequited love. She had suffered and faded in silence until longer concealment was death. Her father had brought her under cover of travel really to meet me again, to draw me once more to her feet, to obtain my confessions, and to receive new hope and life from my words. I was filled with an unspeakable tenderness, with a generous compassion. I would fly to her; I would console her; I would make her life and happiness secure by giving her my own.

Busied with these mad fancies, and muttering them to myself as I went along, I hurried to the house of Alastor. Ushered into the presence of Helena, I was surprised and abashed by the serene and smiling expression of her coun[pg 168]tenance, and her splendid physique, upon which neither time nor love had yet written the faintest trace of ravage. She received me without the least embarrassment in the gay and sparkling manner of a cold and polished queen of society. I saw in a moment that I was not loved, that she had never thought of me, that my hopes were dreams, my passion a madness. I read my doom in the charming suavity of my reception.

Disappointed, chilled, bewildered, heartsick, miserable, I maintained a broken conversation for a little while, until Helena, perceiving with her woman’s wit, something, and perhaps all of my secret, broke off the interview.

“You are sick,” said she tenderly, “you are feverish, you are in pain. You should not have come until to-morrow.”

“Go home now,” she continued, taking my hand kindly in hers, “go home and be cared for. When you get better you must come again, and we will talk of Athens and art, of poetry and love; and of all the beautiful things that ravish the hearts of men and women.”

I do not remember what I said, or how I parted from her. On the portico I met a man going in, whose presence sent a strange shudder through my frame. My diseased nerves were very sensitive. He was a person of handsome face, imposing appearance and gracious address. He began speaking to me, but suddenly stopped and fixed his great, black, lustrous eyes fiercely on me. My first impulse was to resent this conduct as an insult; but I quickly perceived that my mind was becoming con[pg 169]fused, bewildered, fascinated by his gaze, and I averted my face with a great effort and hurried down the steps.

I did not dare to look back. At the foot of the stairs I ran heedlessly against our old relative and enemy, Magistus, whom I had not seen since my return from Rome. Seizing him by the shoulders I gasped,

“Who is this man on the portico?”

“Simon Magus,” said he, with a coarse laugh,—“Simon Magus, the prince of Egyptian magic, and he has evidently cast the evil eye upon you. Woe to you!”

I fled precipitately through the streets. When I reached home I was in a burning fever. At night I was in a raging delirium. It was a brain fever of malignant type. My mad and grotesque illusion about Helena was really the beginning of my illness. Days and nights of alternate excitement and stupor passed away; days and nights of physical torture and mental suffering. My sweet sisters watched and wept and prayed by my side.

Horrible fantasies besieged my fevered imagination. I thought that Mary was under the magician’s knife, and that he would accept no substitute for her bleeding heart but that of Helena. I opened my eyes and started with horror; for Mary was seated by my side, with the heart, as I supposed, torn out of her bosom. Then again, Hortensius was cutting up the beautiful body of Helena for his fish-ponds, while the Egyptian held me fascinated by his terrible eye, so that I could not stir for her help.

I grew worse and the end approached. I had not realized my condition: I had neither fear nor hope: I had no thought of death or of Jesus. At last, however, when I was dying, I heard my sisters calling frantically [pg 170]on his name. The name must have touched some silver chord of memory. The sweet, benevolent face appeared before me, Mary Magdalen in her dark robe kneeling behind. The tender words, “Thy sins are forgiven,” echoed in my ears. Mary and Martha seemed to me like two shining angels floating up into heaven. A sudden halo blazed around the head of Jesus. I reached out my arms to him with wonder and delight, fell back and expired with a smile upon my lips.

Yes! I was dead: and, wonder of wonders! I live again, to describe my sensations, and to inform my fellow-men what I saw and heard behind the veil which separates the two worlds—that veil which is so thin and yet seems so impenetrable.

[pg 171]

XIV.

MY SPIRITUAL BODY.

Our sleep is an awakening: our death is a birth; our burial a resurrection.

The slumber of a babe upon its mother’s breast, drawing from her bodily warmth the secret magnetism of life, is a picture of the true state of every human soul, leaning unconsciously upon the bosom of God at the moment when bereaved friends are exclaiming,

“He is dead! he is dead!”

They called me dead. My sisters and their companions rent their garments and covered their heads with ashes. Unconscious of their grief, I passed beyond the shadows of this world, beyond these voices and sorrows, into the pure light of a spiritual realm.

Dead, indeed! I lived most when I seemed to live least. Death is nothing but a name for a change of condition.

The first thing I remember on returning to consciousness, was a soft strain of distant and ravishing music. I could not open my eyes, nor did I care to do so. It was perfect bliss to lie there in sweet repose, and listen to those heavenly sounds which came nearer and nearer. [pg 172]I have been asked if there was music in heaven. Why, the least motion of the air there is musical. Music is to the ear what light is to the eye; and the sounds of heaven are as sweet as its colors are beautiful.

I next became aware of presences about me. How can I describe the new sense which informed me of their nearness! I did not see or feel or hear them. I perceived them, intuitively as it were, by a holy atmosphere of love and purity and beauty which came with them. So the flowers, without senses like our own, when the dark and chilly night is over, must feel the tremulous waves of light gladdening around them.

These invisible, inaudible attendants were engaged in some office of love about me. What it was I did not understand; but I felt as if my body was being drawn out of something, as a hand is withdrawn from a glove,—although no one seemed to touch me. I entered into a state of exalted and blissful sensations, totally new to me, and quite incomprehensible to men still lingering in the flesh. My affections seemed to be concentrated or detained upon pure, tender, lovely and holy things, so that nothing painful or doubtful or sorrowful should stain the shining mirror of the soul.

I do not know how long this exquisite state of happiness lasted. It must have been rounded off with a delicious sleep; for it seemed itself like a sweet and mysterious dream, when I discovered that I was wider awake than before, and surrounded by a different though still delightful and purifying sphere of impressions.

From the presences about me I seemed to absorb the power of thinking and remembering distinctly. I [pg 173]could not open my eyes, but I seemed to be contemplating a luminous atmosphere, an infinite variety of splendid and dazzling colors, a whole universe of light. The ecstasy of Joy with which, bewildered and fascinated, I studied this inexpressible chaos of light, is beyond my power of description. In the midst of it I felt that two persons were near me, one at my head and one at my feet. One of them seemed to bend over me, and to be reading my face as one reads a book. He then said to the other in a gentle voice:

“It is good. His last thoughts were about the Lord.”

I pondered these words and asked myself whether I was dead or dreaming or in a trance.

My invisible friend then passed his hands several times gently over my face. He next drew a fine film from my eyelids and breathed upon my forehead. I instantly recovered my sight and looked around me. There were two men before me with beautiful and noble faces, and clad in robes of shining linen. I could not remove my eyes from them, there was something so inexpressibly tender and brotherly in their looks and motions.

“You are in the world of spirits, my brother,” said one of them with ineffable sweetness. “Be not afraid, but rejoice! The world of spirits is the vast realm betwixt earth and heaven into which all men come when they are first raised from the dead.”

“Raised from the dead?” said I, in extreme bewilderment.

“Yes—you have been raised from the dead. You have left the earth upon which you were born; you have left your natural body, which your friends will bury in [pg 174]the ground; you are now in a spiritual body and a spiritual state of existence.”

I looked at myself and looked around me.

“I cannot understand it,” said I, sorely puzzled. “You are certainly strangers to me, and you look so unlike any of the men I have ever seen, that I can readily believe you are angels. Nor do I see my beloved sisters, Martha and Mary, who, I know, would not leave my bedside for a moment. But this body is the same body I have always had; this is the room in which I have been sick so long; and looking out of that window, I see the Mount of Olives and the familiar sky of Judea. Explain how this can be.”

They looked at each other smiling, and one of them replied:

“The last impressions made upon the mind linger a while after death; so that the transition from natural to spiritual life may not be too sudden, and the sensation of personal identity may be fully preserved. This will change to you presently. We do not see the room that you see, nor the Mount of Olives, nor the Judean sky. These will all vanish from your sight after a little, and you will find yourself differently clad and moving about among novel and beautiful scenes.”

“But,”—said I, incredulously,—“but this body of flesh and blood, in which I live, move and think, how came it here?”

“That body of flesh and blood you have left behind you. The soul is a spiritual substance organized in the shape of its natural body. The natural body resembles the spiritual as a glove resembles the hand contained with[pg 175]in it. You have dropped the glove. You see the naked hand.”

“Our mission,” he continued, “is now ended, and another takes our place. We assist in the resurrection.”

They made a motion of departure, but I seized one of them by the hand.

“Oh stay!” said I, “do not go. Your words interest me beyond measure. I would learn more of the heavenly life. Pardon my incredulity, pity my ignorance.”

“One approaches,” said he, “who is much nearer and dearer to you than we. Relatives delight to render to relatives these charming offices of comfort and instruction. He comes!”

“Who?” I exclaimed, eagerly.

“Your father!”

I looked in the direction indicated by the angel’s face. Out of the darkness—which appeared to me and not to the angels, for it proceeded from my own mind and not from theirs—out of the darkness slowly loomed up a human figure. It brightened as it advanced. Then there stood before me a young man of radiant beauty, clad in a tissue of shining purple. His face was full of eager expectation, sparkling with love and joy.

While I was gazing at this form, which seemed to me a beautiful apparition, the other angels disappeared.

“My son! my son!” exclaimed the shining visitor in a voice of touching sweetness, and which seemed in some way remotely familiar. “Do you not know me?”

I was silent and troubled, for there was not the faintest [pg 176]resemblance between the splendid being who stood before me and the poor father I had buried in the wilderness.

“I am permitted for your sake,” said he, “to return back into the mental states of my earth-life and to resume its forms. This is one of the wonders of the spiritual world, but one which you will frequently see and soon understand. Look steadfastly at the changes I shall undergo, and you will believe.”

The light about him began to fade. The purple tissue darkened; his face grew pale; the lustre passed from his hair. His features gradually changed, becoming less and less beautiful, less and less youthful. Wrinkles appeared; his cheeks became haggard; his eyes sunken and sad; his head bowed and bare; his beard gray. Unsightly scars came upon his forehead; and when he held up his withered hands, from which two or three fingers had dropped, I knew the poor old leper whom the cruel law had driven into the wilderness.

“My father! my father!” I exclaimed, weeping at the sight which recalled so vividly the sorrows long buried in the soul, “I am satisfied. Return again into the beauty and glory of your heavenly youth. Let us forget the past. Let me see you as you are!”

His figure then underwent exactly the reverse series of changes; and when his angelic form was restored, I fell upon his neck and wept tears of joy.

I inquired into the philosophy of the astounding metamorphoses I had witnessed. I was taught that spiritual things—states of our affections and thoughts—are not so perishable as natural things; that they are stored away [pg 177]and preserved; and that they can be recalled and reproduced with a fac-simile of all the surrounding concomitants and phenomena. A spirit can be made to return into any state of his past life, when he will repeat his conduct to the least word and motion and incident. Thus nothing can be concealed; the entire past can be re-enacted; truth discovered and judgment given.

It was in accordance with this great spiritual law of changing forms corresponding with the changing states of the soul, that the disciples beheld Jesus from such different stand-points. If Thomas Didymus could have entered into the spiritual state of the three disciples on the mount, he would not have seen the Christ showing the wound in his side and the print of the nails, but he would have beheld him radiant—in his transfigured glory. It was the varying stand-points or mental states of the disciples, which give us such different manifestations of the Unchangeable.

I was not, however, thinking of these things at that moment. I was contemplating the youth and beauty of my father’s spiritual body.

“I was told,” said I, “that the spiritual body was a fac-simile of the natural body. How comes it that yours is so totally different?”

“When I first rose from the dead,” he replied, “I seemed to myself to be in the same leprous body that I had in the wilderness; and like all men I found some difficulty in realizing the fact that I was living in a different world. The spiritual body or external form of the soul, changes rapidly according to the changes of its internal form, which is composed of affections and thoughts. [pg 178]In proportion as these are purified from the evil and false things imbibed during the natural life, the body is freed from its imperfections, its feebleness and its want of symmetry.”

“And why do you look so young?” I inquired.

“Time,” said he, “does not belong to the spiritual world. We have no computations here by months and years; no revolution of suns and planets, which produce day and night and the changing seasons of the world. Our external surroundings, what you would call our visible nature, are the immediate outgrowth of our own spiritual states. The exterior changes continually with the interior. All in heaven are therefore young and beautiful, because their soul-life is good and pure, and is fitly represented by youth and beauty.”

My father then questioned me about the dear ones I had left behind. He manifested the deepest and tenderest sympathy in all that had happened to us since his departure from the world. He had heard of us frequently from new-comers into the world of spirits. We do not cease to love our earthly friends after death. But in the heavenly life there is such a thorough, soul-satisfying trust in the wise and merciful guidance of Divine Providence, that fears, doubts and anxieties about our absent loved ones, are utterly impossible.

“And my mother?” I inquired in turn,—“my mother and my little brother Samuel, where are they?”

“In heaven,” said he, “where you shall see them, but not now. You will undergo sundry preparations of state, inexplicable to you at present, by which you will be fitted for the ascent into their resplendent abodes.”

The angel who assisted in my resurrection was right. The objects which surrounded me at my death, and which lingered a while on my mental vision, had faded away. I found myself in a strange but beautiful world, the forms of which were similar to ours, but the laws which governed their appearance and disappearance very different.

I must confess that I was supremely astonished to find myself living, feeling, thinking, precisely as I did before my death. My mind indeed seemed more active, more penetrating than ever. My body had a buoyancy, a strength, a healthfulness pervading it, which were accompanied by a sense of intense pleasure. But it still seemed the same body in which I had previously lived; and I could scarcely comprehend my father when he told me that my sisters and friends were making preparations to bury my earthly form.

“Oh that I could look down upon them,” said I, “could speak to them, could show them my true self, and lift their souls out of the fearful shadow of the tomb! Why is it not granted us to cheer the hearts and illumine the minds of those who are sorrowing so vainly over our cold dust?”

“They would not believe you, my son, if it were permitted. They would call your manifestation to them a vision, a hallucination, a dream. They are in such bondage to sensuous appearances, and to reasonings based upon them, that nothing but death will break their chains. It will take generations, ages, centuries, cycles of natural time to render higher thought on that subject possible. New civilizations, new churches, new revelations must [pg 180]arise before mankind can be delivered from this terrible darkness.”

“And that natural body,” said I, “laid in the grave, and food for worms, is not to rise again?”

“Why should it?” said my father. “Who wants it? What use could it subserve? Are we not in spiritual bodies clothed with all beauty and perfection? Are we not in a spiritual world vastly more beautiful and happy than the natural? Why should we return into nature? into a natural body? into an envelope of flesh and blood, however purified and etherealized?”

These ideas struck me as extremely rational and beautiful. Having passed the lowest round of the ladder of being, why should we reverse the laws of development and descend back to it again? Impossible! The natural body was only a vehicle of natural life with its thoughts and emotions. Spiritual thoughts and emotions demand a spiritual body, a spiritual world. Let those who choose, wed themselves to the grave and the worm and the dust and the darkness, and speak of their friends as sleeping in the cold ground, and satisfy their hungry souls with the hope of a material resurrection. But their ideas are far, very far from the truth; and the minds of men will some day be emancipated from such gross naturalism.

“Imagine,” said my father, “the consternation of the good spirits, who are happy in heaven, at the thought that they must leave it, divest themselves of their beautiful spiritual bodies, and return to the natural world with all its painful limitations of time and space, resuming their old cast-off material bodies, which had been long since resolved into dust and forgotten!”

The thought is monstrous! monstrous! And yet the poor blinded people in the natural world dwell upon it as if there were some special consolation, some glorious promise in it. Incomprehensible freaks of the human spirit! He who preaches a material resurrection, has made but one feeble step beyond the infidel who preaches none at all.

“Men still in the flesh,” said my father, “do not know that our spiritual world inhabited by spiritual bodies fulfills all the imperative demands of the soul for a perfect and final resting-place. We have here life and form, organization and objects, weight and substance, sounds and colors all more beautiful and wonderful than those in the natural world. All these things, invisible, intangible, inaudible to men, are as real and solid to our senses as the earth was to you when you were a man upon it.