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Title: The Epic of Saul

Author: William Cleaver Wilkinson

Release date: July 18, 2013 [eBook #43247]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EPIC OF SAUL ***

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE EPIC OF PAUL

A SEQUEL TO "THE EPIC OF SAUL"

The action of THE EPIC OF PAUL begins with that conspiracy formed at Jerusalem against the life of the apostle, which in the sequel led to a prolonged suspension of his free missionary career. It embraces the incidents of his removal from Jerusalem to Cæsarea, of his imprisonment at the latter place, of his journey to Rome for trial before Cæsar, and of his final martyrdom. The design of the poem as a whole is to present through conduct on Paul's part and through speech from him, a living portrait of the man that he was, together with a reflex of his most central and most characteristic teaching. Its descriptions are vivid, and it brings the reader's mind into close touch with the great spirit of Paul. It is a poem in which dignity, beauty, and power are commingled with a rare charm.

"Paul, the new man, retrieved from perished Saul,

Unequaled good and fair, from such unfair,

Such evil, orient miracle unguessed!—

Both what himself he was and what he taught—

This marvel in meet words to fashion forth

And make it live an image to the mind

Forever, blooming in celestial youth."—From the Proem.

AN APPRECIATIVE CRITICISM.

"Noble as was Dr. Wilkinson's 'Epic of Saul,' his 'Epic of Paul' is even nobler. The kingliness of its range; the majesty of its principal figure; the fascination of its subordinate figures; the subtlety of its characterizations; the pathos of its interviews; the intricate consistency of its plot; the conscientiousness of its exegesis and allusions; the splendor of its imaginations; the nobility of its ethics; the stateliness of its rhythm; the grandeur of its evolution—these are some of the characteristics which make 'The Epic of Paul' another necessary volume in the library of every clergyman, philosopher, and litterateur."

—REV. GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, D.D.

—————

8vo, Cloth, Gilt top, 722 pp. Price, $2.00, post-free.

Both books together, $3.00.

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, New York

THE EPIC OF SAUL

BY

WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON

AUTHOR OF "THE EPIC OF PAUL"

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1898

COPYRIGHT, 1891,

BY FUNK & WAGNALLS;

1898,

BY FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY.

[Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, Eng.]

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Book

I.

SAUL AND GAMALIEL,

5

Book

II.

SAUL AND THE SANHEDRIM,

37

Book

III.

SAUL AGAINST STEPHEN,

59

Book

IV.

STEPHEN AGAINST SAUL,

87

Book

V.

SAUL AND SHIMEI,

113

Book

VI.

SAUL AND RACHEL,

139

Book

VII.

STEPHEN AND RUTH,

159

Book

VIII.

STEPHEN MARTYR,

183

Book

IX.

RUTH AND RACHEL,

209

Book

X.

SAUL AT BETHANY,

235

Book

XI.

SAUL AND HIRANI,

265

Book

XII.

SAUL AND THE APOSTLES,

299

Book

XIII.

SAUL AND SERGIUS,

317

Book

XIV.

FOR DAMASCUS,

347

Book

XV.

SAUL AND JESUS,

371

THE EPIC OF SAUL.

Saul of Tarsus, brought up at Jerusalem a pupil of Gamaliel, the most celebrated Rabbi of his time, from setting out as eager but pacific controversialist in public dispute against the preachers of the Gospel, changes into a virulent, bloody persecutor of Christians, and ends by abruptly becoming himself a Christian and a teacher of Christianity. THE EPIC OF SAUL tells the story of this.

PROEM.

Saul saw the prophet face of Stephen shine

As it had been an angel's, but his heart

To the august theophany was blind—

Blinded by hatred of the fervent saint,

And hatred of the Lord who in him shone.

What blindfold hatred such could work of ill

In nature meant for utter nobleness,

Then, how the hatred could to love be turned,

The proud wrong will to lowly right be brought,

And Paul the "servant" spring from rebel Saul—

This, ye who love in man the good and fair,

And joy to hail retrieved the good and fair

From the unfair and evil, hearken all

And speed me with your wishes, while I sing.

BOOK I.

SAUL AND GAMALIEL.

Saul visits Gamaliel to submit a forming purpose conceived by him of entering into public dispute with the Christian preachers. Gamaliel disapproves; informing Saul that the Jewish rulers are about to apply against those preachers the penalties of the law. These men accordingly arrested and arraigned, the Sanhedrim hold a council on their case, at which Caiaphas advises accusing them to the Romans as seditious; Mattathias urges stoning them out of hand; Shimei recommends pursuing against them a policy of guile.

THE EPIC OF SAUL.

SAUL AND GAMALIEL.

Gamaliel sat at evening on his roof

And deeply mused the meaning of the law.

The holy city round about him lay

Magnificent, encircled with her hills.

Beyond the torrent Kedron, sunken deep

Within his winding valley, Olivet

Leaned long his shaded ridge against the east,

Distinct in every olive to the sun.

Nearer, amid the city, chief to see,

The glory of the temple of the Lord!

The seat was noble for a noble pile:

The summit of Moriah, levelled large,

Spread larger yet, outbuilt on masonry

Cyclopean, or more huge, pillar and arch

Fast-founded like the basis of a world.

A world of architecture rested there—

Temple, and court, and long-drawn colonnade

On terrace above terrace ranged around,

Cloister, and porch, and pendent gallery,

Height, depth, length, space, and splendor, without end,

Glittering its stones of lustre purest white,

And stately portals rich with gems and gold:

The setting sun now smote it that it blazed.

The sight was torment to Gamaliel's pride,

Torment with pleasure mixed, but torment more,

As there he sat upon his roof alone.

Tall, and erect in port, unbent his form

With all that weight of venerable years,

His head with almond-blossom glory-crowned,

And bosom overstreamed with silver beard,

Gamaliel stood before his countrymen

Their stay, their solace, and their ornament,

One upright pillar in a fallen state.

Fallen, for Rome had pushed her foaming wave

Of conquest far into the East, and laid

Judæa under deluge, quiet now,

But deep, of domination absolute—

A weight as of the sea upon her breast.

Jerusalem was glorious to behold,

Girdled with guardian mountains round about,

And sunlit with her temple in the midst.

Alas, but more her glory, more her shame!

For all her glory was the Roman's now,

The queen a vassal at a tyrant's feet,

She Cæsar serving who should serve but God.

And, worse disgrace than heathen servitude,

There recreant Jews were found, and more and more,

Who their hearts sold to their captivity,

And abjectly gave up the ancient hope

And promise, dawning-star of prophecy,

That yet to captive Israel should arise

Messiah, King of kings and Lord of lords,

To break the yoke from off His people's neck

And gift them with the empire of the earth—

This crown of Israel's hope gave up, to choose,

Instead, for captain and deliverer, one

Base-born, from Galilee, consorting friend

With publicans and sinners, hung at last

Convicted malefactor on the cross!

Such thoughts and tortures exercised the mind

Of grave Gamaliel on his roof that eve.

He felt the burden of his name and fame

Weigh heavy, his renown of sanctity,

With wisdom, rife so wide, and holy zeal.

His head declined upon his bosom, there

Amid the evening cool unheeded, he,

Gray reverend teacher of the law, sat mute,

Rapt over the writ parchment on his knees,

And read, or thought, or thought and read, and prayed.

The veil was on the old man's heart; he saw

Unseeing, for the sense from him was sealed.

In words like these his prayer and plaint he poured:

"Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Will

Jehovah cast us off forevermore?

We groan, O Lord, Thy people groan, beneath

The yoke of the oppressor. It is time,

Lo, bow Thy heavens and come avenging down!

Appear Thou for Thy people! Visit us!

Not only the uncircumcised are come,

And heathen, into Thine inheritance,

But of Thy chosen seed are risen up

False children unto Abraham, to vex

Our nation's peace and shame us to our foes.

The son of Joseph suffered his desert,

Accurséd, on the tree, pretender vile,

Who out of Nazareth came forth to claim

Messiahship, the gift of David's line,

And trailed a glorious banner in the dust,

The banner of the hope of Israel.

That day, too long expected, yet shall dawn

And true Messiah, girded on His thigh

His sword athirst for alien blood, shall ride

Conquering and to conquer over all

The necks of these His enemies and ours.

How long, Lord God of Sabaoth, how long?

For now that hated false Messiah's name

Is preached, the dead for re-arisen to life,

The crucified for glorified, to men,

And ICHABOD is written everywhere

On all that was the boast of Israel.

O Thou that overthrewest the harrying horde

Of Pharaoh whelmed beneath the entombing sea,

Rise, overwhelm Thine enemies, restore

The glory and the kingdom to Thine own!"

Gamaliel prayed, and knew not that his prayer

Found voice and smote at least an earthly ear.

"Amen!" Gamaliel started as he heard

The voice of Saul responding fervently.

Saul had been pupil to Gamaliel,

Loyal and loving, and he now was friend

Familiar, whom, as guest, unbidden oft

And unannounced, that famous Pharisee

Welcomed to share his most seclusive hours.

"My son!" "Rabboni!" mutually they said.

The younger to the elder now had come,

A thought to purpose quickening in his breast.

He too was Hebrew patriot, and he yearned

With anguish like his master's, yet at once

Sharper than his, and more accessible

To hope, as well his livelier youth became

And native blood more nimble in his veins—

Saul also, with Gamaliel, yearned and burned,

Beholding prone his country in the dust,

Under the grinding heel of Roman power—

And Messianic glory turned to shame!

Saul's first wish was to bring his brethren back

Stung to their pristine, proud, prophetic hope

Of a Messiah born to regal robes,

Swaying a sceptre, seated on a throne,

Crowned with a crown of myriad diadems,

Symbol of lordship that should myriad tribes

Mass in one mighty empire of mankind.

He felt the soul of eloquence astir

Within him, and he longed to be at war,

In words that flamed like lightning and that smote

Like thunder-stones, against those grovelling men

Who Israel taught to grovel at the feet

Of Galilæan Jesus crucified,

Accepted for the Christ, forsooth, of God!

Such wish, becoming purpose, Saul has brought

This evening to Gamaliel, with high hope,

Hope high, but vain, to disappointment doomed,

Of grateful gratulant words to hearten him,

Approving and applauding his desire,

Won from the wisest in Jerusalem.

Thus minded, Saul, blithe, eager, sanguine, bold,

With yet a grace of filial in his mien,

As toward a master had in love and fear,

Said:

"Teacher, what I came to learn from thee,

Already, having marked thy prayer, I know.

God hear thee out of Zion in thy prayer!

God bring to naught the counsels of His foes!

Now know I, and rejoice to know, that thou,

My teacher in the blessed law, wilt say,

'God speed thee, son,' in what I seek to do.

For, lo, I seek to serve the suffering cause

Of truth wounded and bleeding in the street.

Love of my country burns me as with flame

Imprisoned and living in my very bones—

My country, and my countrymen. This land

To me is lovely like a bride beloved—

Beloved the more, unutterably wronged!

Her trodden dust is dear to me. Not I,

As do my brethren on her bosom born,

Equably love her with composed and calm

Affection sweet. That homesick longing bred

With boyhood in Cilicia haunts me yet,

To heighten love with anguish, and more dear

Make the dear soil of this my fatherland.

A passion, not a fondness, is my love;

And for my countrymen to die, were sweet—

Such blind abandonment of love usurps

My being for my kinsmen in the flesh.

Would God I might in very deed pour out

This blood, no vain oblation, to redeem

My bondmen brethren and to purge this land!"

In speech no farther—though in passionate tears

The strong man vented still his else choked heart.

Gamaliel, with wise senior sympathy,

Sat silent, waiting till that burst were past.

Then gravely:

"Yea, my son, I know thy zeal,

And praise it. Such as thou, in number more,

Might somewhat; such as thou, alas, are few."

His master's praise Saul took as check and chill,

Uttered with that insinuated sense

Of sage discountenance to his youthful zeal.

He shrank, but braced himself, and gently said:

"But, father, not by many or by few

Is our God bound to working. Many or few

To Him is one. Nay, were there none save me,

Were I alone among my brethren, I,

Alone among my brethren, yet would dare."

Against the vernal aspiration warm

Of Saul's young blood and tropic temperament

Gamaliel's aged, wise, sententious phlegm,

And magisterial manner though benign,

Abode unmoved, inert, insensible;

Like an ice-Alp that freezes on its cheek

A breath of spring soft blowing from the south.

With viscid slow demur the old man spoke,

And downcast heavily shook his hoary head:

"To dare is cheap and common with our race,

We are few dastards; did not Judas dare?

And Theudas? But their daring came to naught.

Wisdom with daring, fortitude to wait,

We need, son Saul; the daring that must do,

And cannot wait, has wrought us sumless ill."

Damped, but remonstrant, Saul still plied his plea:

"And yet but now, 'How long,' I heard thee cry,

'How long, Lord God of Sabaoth, how long?'"

"Yea," said Gamaliel, "that I daily cry."

"Thy counsel and thy praying how agree?"

"Men I bid wait; wait not, I pray my God."

"Were this not well, O master calmly wise,

In trust that God will rouse him at my cry,

To rouse myself and strongly side with God?

I cannot rest in peace; I hear the woe

Denounced for such as safely sit at ease

In Zion. Let me do as well as pray."

Saul's rising zeal once more the master checked:

"Praying is doing, likewise waiting works;

But what, son Saul, is in thine heart to do?

I cherished better dreams, my son, for thee,

Than to behold thee leading to their doom

One helpless, hopeless, hapless company more,

Insurgent out of season against Rome,

Confederate sons of folly and of crime!"

Rebuke like this Saul brooked it ill to hear;

With filial sweet resentment he replied:

"And cherish other dreams, I pray thee, father!

No man-at-arms am I to challenge Rome;

Though not even Rome should daunt me, called of God

To front her with but pebble from the brook,

Like David, in her plenitude of power.

Rome rules us, and I grieve, but I rejoice:

I grieve that we are such as must be ruled,

And cannot rule ourselves; but I rejoice,

Since such we are, that we are ruled by Rome.

The strongest and the wisest is the best

To serve, if one must serve. Alas, my country!

Her face is in the dust because her heart

Grovels, and therefore on her neck the heel.

So, not to rid us of the Roman, I

Labor with this desire, but to erect

The dustward spirit of my countrymen.

This people knowing not the law are cursed!"

By instinct wise of policy unmeant,

Saul, in his last half-maledictory words

Of vehement passion edged with bitterness,

Had struck a chord that answered in the breast

Of the habitual teacher of the law.

"Yea," said Gamaliel, "now art thou true son

And utterest wisdom. Make them know the law.

With both my hands I bless thee speaking thus.

The law shall save them, if they know the law."

Saul knew it was Gamaliel's wont that spoke,

His life-long wont of reverence for the law

And trust in its omnipotence to serve

Whatever need befell his nation—this,

Rather than any fresh, fair-springing sense

Of hope in him auxiliar to his own.

Yet, in despair of better heartening now,

And self-impelled to ease his laboring mind,

He, fixed and faltering both, with courteous phrase

Premised of teachable assent sincere

To smooth somewhat thereto his doubtful way,

Frankly a hearing for his counsel sought:

"I ever heard thee, father, teaching that,

And I believe it wholly, mind and heart;

But something now I did not learn from thee,

Hearken, I pray, and weigh if it be wise."

But less like one who hearkened as to weigh

A counsel shown, Gamaliel now to Saul

Seemed, than like one who sat behind a shield

In opposition, a broad shield of brow

Immobile, placid, large circumference,

And orb of diamond proof, between them hung

There on the housetop still in dim twilight,

Ready to quench in darkness any ray

Of word or sign from him that should aspire

To reach an understanding guarded so—

Such to Saul seemed Gamaliel now, while yet,

Despite, repressed but irrepressible,

That strenuous strong spirit thus went on:

"Deeply I have desired to know my time

And not to waste my strength beating the air.

Are not men's needs other with other times?

No more perhaps in peaceful shelters now

Sacred to sacred studies, synagogue

Retirements, where our doctors of the law

Propose in turn their sage conclusions, heard

By questioning disciples—here perhaps

No more is truth most truly taught to men.

Some, it may be, might well go forth to stand

Even at the corners of the streets and cry.

Folly amain preaches to gaping crowds,

And shall not wisdom cry? My heart is hot,

Amid the multitude they make their prey,

To meet these false proclaimers to their face,

And stop their mouths, with Moses and with all

The prophets and the Psalms, from uttering lies."

Gamaliel heard, and like a lion stood,

That shakes his dewy mane from slumber roused;

The old man loomed in action nobly tall,

As thus, with weighty gesture, in a voice

Solid with will, he gently, sternly spoke:

"Nay, Saul, my son, thy zeal misguides thee now—

Thy zeal, and peradventure some conceit

Of wisdom wiser than thine elders. Thou,

Consenting thus to parley with the fool

According to his folly, like becomest.

This is a time to answer otherwise

Than with the wind of words against their words

Of wind, as equal against equal matched.

Those wresters of the law must feel the law

Smiting their mouths shut with the heavy hand.

With blows, not words, vain fools like these are taught.

Go thou thy way, to-morrow shalt thou see

Hap other far than that thou hast devised

Befall those evil men of Galilee.

Our chiefly prudent, watchful for our weal,

Will stop their mouths profane and make an end."

Saul chode his tongue to silence, but his heart

Set stern in resolution touched with pride,

As, after decent pause, he took farewell.

The master and the pupil parted thus,

And both were blind to that which was to be;

For both would change, but change in converse ways

Gamaliel gentle grow, and Saul grow hard.

That morrow, Peter with his brethren all,

Apostle preachers of the Gospel, felt

The heavy hand Gamaliel shadowed fall

Indeed upon them into dungeon thrown.

But thence by night the angel of the Lord,

Opening the doors, delivered them, and bade

Boldly into the temple take their way

And there preach Christ to all the worshippers.

With the first flush of morning, their swift feet

Shod with the sandals of obedience,

They hasten to fulfil the angelic word.

Meanwhile the Sanhedrim for counsel met

Concerning those their prisoners, and the state,

The vexed state, of the Hebrew commonwealth,

Sent pursuivants to fetch them from their cells

And station them in presence to be judged.

But those despatched to bring them came and said,

"We found, indeed, the prison safely shut

And all the keepers keeping watch and ward

Without before the doors; but entering in

To find our prisoners, prisoner found we none."

The captain of the temple, the high-priest,

And all that council mused in maze and doubt—

Gamaliel most, guessing the finger of God.

But now comes one who brings a fresh report,

"Behold," said he, "the men ye put in bond

Are standing in the temple teaching there."

Forthwith the captain of the temple goes,

His band attending, and, no violence shown—

For fear was on them of the people, lest

They stone them—leads the Galilæans in.

Robed venerably each in rich array

Of purple, and fine linen, glistering white

And broidered fair, their flowing garments fringed

With large expanse of border and with cords

Of blue adorned, broad their phylacteries,

The council of the seventy sat severe

Within their council-hall in solemn state.

A semi-orb they sat, or crescent-wise,

And in the midst, between the horns, were placed,

Under their beetling frown, the prisoners.

Awful these felt the presence of the place,

And, while the high-priest of their nation, throned

Middle and chief among the councillors,

Denouncing asked: "Did we not straitly bid

Forbear to teach in this accurséd name?

And, lo, ye fill Jerusalem with bruit,

And seek to bring on us this person's blood!"—

While thus, sternly, he spoke, those simple men

Felt the heart fail within them and the tongue

Cleave to the mouth's dry roof. He ceasing, back

Their spirit came, and Spirit not their own,

The Holy Ghost of God, flooded their souls,

As when into a bay the ocean pours.

Then Peter and his brethren boldly spoke:

"Fathers and brethren, hearken to our words:

God needs must we, rather than men, obey.

That Jesus whom ye crucified and slew,

Him did the Lord God of our sires raise up,

And at His own right hand exalt to be

Both prince and saviour, to bestow on us

Repentance and forgiveness of our sins.

Of these things all we stand here witnesses;

Nor we alone, for with us witnesseth

God's Spirit bestowed on whoso Him obeys."

Something not earthly in those prisoners' mien

A tone of more than human in their words,

A majesty, as of omnipotence

Patient within them, ready to break forth,

But patient still, to brook how much was need—

So much, no more!—this awed one watchful heart

Prepared amid that council now to heed;

Gamaliel inly pondered, 'Is it God?'

The clear simplicity, the perfect faith,

The steady, prompt obedience, the serene

Courage that dared, without defying, all

The terrors brandished by the Sanhedrim—

This spirit, strange in those despiséd men,

As with a soft and subtle atmosphere

Enfolding and suffusing him, subdued

The solid temper of his mind, the strong

Set of his resolution grim relaxed,

Undid the hard contortions of his nerves,

And supple made the will so firm before.

His steadfast poise of confidence perturbed,

Gamaliel trembled with uncertainty.

Otherwise Saul; he, merged in different thought,

Eluded quite that penetrative spell.

Unconscious of the Holy Ghost, he strove

Blindly against Him, like the rest, though not

Yet, like the rest, with zeal of violence

To do the prisoners harm or shed their blood;

With such zeal not, but with ambitious pride

Of wisdom unawares puffed up to show

His prowess in the Scriptures, and to earn

A high degree surpassing all his peers.

His fellow-councillors concerting how

To quench this propagandist fire in blood,

Saul said within his heart:

'Nay, nay, instead,

Might I but once these bold presumers face

Amid the idling crowds they feed with lies,

How, from the law itself, whereof, untaught

Therein, they prate, would I, in open test

Of argument, confute them to their teeth!

Their own ill-wielded weapons from their hands

Seen wrenched and turned against them, surely then

Not only would these brawlers cease, but all

Would laud and magnify the glorious Word

Of God, thus shown, well wielded, capable

Of wreaking its own vengeance on its foes.'

These twain such counsel in their secret breast

Held diverse, while that strife of words went on.

Not what, in present need, behooved to do—

A full and fell accord conjoined them there!—

Was doubt or question to the Sanhedrim;

But in what chosen way their chosen goal,

The doom of death for those accurséd men,

With safe sure speed, most prudently, to reach—

This doubt embroiled a vehement debate.

One argued thus his sentence and advice—

Caiaphas he, high-priest that lately was,

Reputed statesman politic and wise:

"We are a subject nation; government

Is for this present slipped from out our hands.

Chafe how we may, how will it otherwise,

Ours is a state of vassalage to Rome.

Death in our hearts and death upon our tongues,

Denounced amain against our enemies,

Is futile—thunder bare of thunderbolt.

We make ourselves a laughter—unless we

Warp toward our end with wisdom; who is weak

Well needs be wise, to win—wisdom is power.

To kill and keep alive, by process due

Of law, no longer appertains to us,

That right being forfeit to our conqueror; this

Must we not let our honorable pride,

Justly indignant, and our holy zeal

Incensed for God, bribe us to blink. But slave,

If wise, may make a foolish master serve.

Break we proud Rome to do our task for us.

True triumph, when we wield the tyrant power

Itself of domination over us

A weapon in our hands to work our will!

"I counsel that we seek and find firm ground

Of mortal accusation, before those

Who rule us, against these audacious men,

As teachers of seditious doctrine meant

To undermine allegiance, and at length

Prompt insurrection and a state of war.

Rome then will stamp our troublers out of life,

And we, well rid of them without annoy,

Besides shall safely reap from her the praise,

Ill-merited, of fealty to her right—

Praise that sometime hereafter may be gain

Of vantage, if sometime hereafter come

Fit season to fling off her hated yoke."

Such words of weight spoke Caiaphas, and ceased

Those words, not idle, fell as falls the steel

Smiting the flint; a sparkle keen of fire

Flew forth, found tinder ready, and flashed up

In instant flame. A patriot malcontent,

Fiercely, irreconcilably, a Jew,

Was Mattathias; Mattathias said:

"Yoke by whom hated? Surely not by him

Who tamely brooks to talk of earning praise

For loyalty from Rome! Nor more by those

Who patient sit to hear such counsel broached!

Nay, men my brethren, that I did not hear!

Sure, son of Abraham never have I heard

Own himself slave, and meekly speak of Rome,

As of a master! This I will not hear!

I could not hear it! Speech of such a strain

Were like a river of molten metal poured

Red-hot into my ear to quench the sense!

Stone-deaf am I to craven treachery

From one of my own fellow-councillors here!

I only heard my brother say, 'Let us

Arise and stand for God!' Lo, I arise

And stand, with him, with all! There is a law,

Ancient and unrepealed, wholesome and good,

To stone for blasphemy. Blasphemers these,

What wait we? We have hands, and there are stones,

Let us this instant forth and stone them, stone

Unto the death!"

The clenched hands, and the fierce

Menace of husky tones, half-choked, and teeth

Gnashing, and brow braided with swollen knots,

Were more than words to speak the murderous will.

The prisoners listened with suspended breath;

They deemed a dreadful doom indeed was nigh.

Instinctive instant fear, forestalling faith,

With sudden loud alarum startled them,

And for one moment violently shook,

In them, all save the basis of the soul—

One moment—then they sped themselves with prayer,

Ran to the shelter of the promises,

And were at peace! In that secure retreat

Withdrawn, the secret place of the Most High,

The angel of the Lord encamping round,

Composédly at leisure they looked out

And saw the wicked plot against the just,

Vainly, and gnash upon him with his teeth!

Within their hearts they knew his day would come.

The speaker still stood leaning imminent,

His posture instigation, while a hiss

Of hot adhesion ran increasing round—

But skipped Gamaliel, skipped the musing Saul

With one beside, scarce daring to be dumb—

When, in his place, slowly, by soft degrees,

With furtive look and gesture, to his feet

Stealing, half stood, half crouched, a speaker new.

This was one Shimei, an abject man,

Abject in spirit, though in wit not dull,

And capable of long malevolence

Fed on resentments such as abjects feel.

Saul listened, but Gamaliel bowed in prayer,

As Shimei thus, obliquely, sneering, spoke:

"Stoning is pleasant, doubtless, when, as now,

One's sense of righteousness is much engaged.

The reflex satisfaction to be had

From accurately casting a choice stone

To break the teeth of the ungodly, is

Superlative, perhaps the very highest

Relish attainable to mortals here.

The consciousness of sympathy with God

Always exhilarates delightfully;

But in particular if the sympathy

Be exercised in such a case as this,

Where the most glorious of God's attributes,

His justice, is involved. Borne far above

Pity, or any weakness of the sense,

You only feel a rapture of divine

Approval of the law you execute.

So subtly strong and sweet possesses you

The instinct to indulge your appetite

For righteousness, you might almost mistake

Your pleasure for the pleasure of revenge.

"But let revenge be for the heathen, who

Know not Jehovah and His law contemn.

Jehovah's chosen we, our sentiment

Purged of all personal bias of mere hate,

We simply wash our feet in wicked blood

With pleasure—pleasure naturally enhanced,

If we have spilled said wicked blood ourselves.

"Yea, stoning gratifies the pious mind

Profoundly—grant the stoning be by you;

By you, not to you; being stoned, I judge,

Is less satisfactory. On this point who doubt

Or differ, have their opportunity

To clear their minds by prompt experiment—

They need but act upon the last advice;

For—grant our gracious masters smiled and pleased

To let us play a prank of self-misrule,

This once, wilful, but harmless, in their view,

Which might even turn out comedy for them—

Yet, stoning these, we should ourselves get stoned,

With expedition—past all chance of doubt.

Our friend, the vehement adviser here,

Might peradventure go himself as blithe

To be stoned by the people, as to stone

These pestilent fellows—for the glory of God.

But, then, more clearly how the glory of God

Would be subserved thereby, the rest of us,

Colder in heart perhaps, but certainly

Cooler in head, would wish to be advised,

Before we take our lives into our hands

To wreak the righteous judgment of the law

On favorites of a fierce and fickle mob

Whose palms, unless I much misread the signs,

Already itch for stones to throw at us,

While we sit here and talk of throwing stones

At whom they love and honor.

"Give them line

This wild Jerusalem mob, and they will change

Their mood. Remember how it chanced but late

With Jesus Nazarene. Hailed yesterday

Messiah, King of kings and Lord of lords,

Ovation of hosannas greeting him

From thousand times a thousand throats—to-day,

A malefactor hooted through the streets,

With 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' cried

In multitudinous chorus like one voice—

The mouths to-day and yesterday the same.

Their second tune indeed we set for them

And sang precentors—but how well they joined!

In due time pitch them the like tune again,

And doubt not they will sing it with full breath.

"Not that I hence advise to wait remiss;

My counsel is no less from sloth removed

Than hostile to crude, hasty violence.

Only, shun public note; with proper quest,

Ways may be found, ways pregnant too, that make

No noise. The nail that went so shrewdly through

Sisera's temples made no noise. It sped

Softly, but sped surely, and found the quick

Secret of life. Are there not Jaels yet?

You have guessed what I advise. The end you seek

Is holy; holy hold whatever means

Shall lead thereto. Let us commit this thing

To those the wisest found among us, few

Better than many, charging them to choose

Some suitable silent means of silencing

These praters, without stir or scandal made,

Likest the ways of nature, hint, perhaps,

Conveyed of overruling providence

At work through nature for revenging crime.

"For me, I seek no honor at your hands:

I do not court responsibility;

I am least wise among you; yet a trust

Imposed were duty sacred in mine eyes."

As, should along a living bosom warm

With youthful life-blood coursing joyously,

A deadly serpent, with protracted, cold

Belly incumbent, glide, beneath that touch

And creep the conscious flesh would creeping shrink,

And all the genial current in the veins

Curdle; so now, at Shimei's words, much more

At signs in him that spoke beyond his words,

The accent of the voice, the look, the port

Of figure, sinister suggestion couched

In action or grimace, there came a chill,

A shudder, of reaction and collapse

Over the council late with zeal aglow.

Even Mattathias, who, in attitude

Of menace, after Shimei arose,

Some space still stood—he, too, while Shimei

Was speaking, felt the evil spell and sank

Into his seat. With one accord they all,

When Shimei ceased, a gloomy silence kept.

Gamaliel did not lift his head, but groaned

Audibly now, though gently, in his prayer.

From such a source such sound made seem yet more

Ominous the spell which hushed that council-hall.

BOOK II.

SAUL AND THE SANHEDRIM.

The Sanhedrim still in session on the apostles' case, Saul speaks; first scornfully repudiating for himself Shimei's proposal of guile, and then impressively announcing his own purpose, now fully mature, to controvert the Christian preachers in open argument before the people. After a pause following Saul's speech, Gamaliel speaks in favor of letting the prisoners go free. Other councillors express their sentiments. A scourging of the utmost severity being proposed, Nicodemus, with bated breath, deprecates first a cruel infliction, and then any infliction at all. Release after scourging is finally resolved upon.

SAUL AND THE SANHEDRIM.

Dumb-struck and stirless long the Sanhedrim—

Instinctively abhorrent from the part

Of that base councillor—at last there rose

A new assessor in the midst to speak.

A young man he, who, in the general thought,

Wherever moving, round about him wore

A golden halo of uncertain hope

And prophecy of bright futures. Aspect clear

And pure; straight stature; foothold firm and free;

The bloom of youth just ripening to the hue

Of perfect manhood upon cheek and brow;

Lip mobile, but not lax—capacity

Expressed of exquisite emotion, will

Elastic and resilient, tempered true

To bend, not break, and ultimately strong;

Glances of lightning latent in the eye,

But lightning liable to be quenched in tears;

The pride of every Hebrew, such was Saul.

A stir of expectation broke the hush

Of that strange silence, ere his opening words:

"That I, the youngest of this order, thus

Should rise for speech—and that beloved gray head

Before me bowed, unready yet—might seem

Unseemly. But to speak after he speaks,

My own reveréd guide, the guide of all,

Would be, should I then speak to differ, more

Unseemly still. And what I have to say,

Being my thought, burns in me to be said,

Approve, condemn, who will; God bids me speak."

Gamaliel raised his head and looked at Saul.

Saul felt the look, and hardened his will, but not

His heart, to meet it. Turning so, he saw,

Not what he inly braced himself to bear,

Warning, rebuke, anger to overawe,

Reproach, appeal, dissuasion, pain confessed

At filial separation, grasp of will

At old authority elapsed—of these,

Naught; only a pathos of perplexity,

A broken, anguished, groping childlikeness,

Desire of any help, and hope of none—

Saul will hereafter understand it all;

He simply marks it now compassionately

In wonder, pausing not, and thus, with loth

Allusion to the last advice, proceeds:

"But other speech my lips refuse, until

I purge my conscience by protesting here,

For me, I spurn, scorn, hate, loathe utterly

The devil and devilish lies. I have no qualms

At blood, but I love truth, and qualms I own

At falsehood, practised in whatever name;

Damnable ever, then thrice damnable,

Damning a holy cause it feigns to serve!"

A flush of warm revival in the breasts

Of some that listened answered to such words.

But one there was, that vile adviser, felt

A gripe of mortal hatred at his heart.

He, by Gamaliel's eye not unobserved,

Behind a black malignant scowl which, like

That murk emission of the cuttle-fish,

Flushed from his heart his face to overspread

And hide his thought, sat fostering the wound

Of Saul's disdainful noble words—a wound

To rankle long in the obscene recess

Of that bad bosom, and therein to breed

At last an issue foul of fell revenge;

In purpose fell, though in fulfilment foiled.

But Saul, magnanimously heedless, deigned

Nor glance at him nor thought of consequence.

Elate with the elixir of his youth,

And buoyed with confidence exultant now

By the rebound of his beginning, buoyed

Besides with sympathy, he passed along,

Yet, master he, not mastered, of his mood,

Curbed strongly his strong passion and delight

Of power, and, calm with self-possessing will,

Force in him to have sped a thunderbolt

Stayed back from sudden waste, to be sent on

In fine diffusive throb—as farther thus:

"Enough of that; I did but purify

My soul with words. I feared some inward stain

From only listening, if I listened only,

And did not speak, when base was proffered me.

"Hear now what I propose. What I propose

Is not advice; advice I neither give

Nor ask. I do not ask it, for my heart

Is fixed; duress of conscience presses me,

With flesh and blood forbidding to confer.

I must do what I shall, in man's or devil's

Despite. I trust I speak not thus in pride.

Not therefore that the census of your yeas

Or nays may guide me, but that ye may weigh

What force my purpose now unfolded owns

To sway your present counsels, hear and judge.

"Ye know, and all Jerusalem, that Saul

Has counted nothing worthy to be prized

Beside the learning of the law of God.

For this, a boy, from yon Cilician lands

I came; for this, I have consumed my youth.

What envied gains of knowledge I have made,

Sitting a student at Gamaliel's feet,

Befits me not to vaunt; these, small or large,

Belong to God and to my nation, being mine

Only to use for Him and them. I see

Plainly how I must use my trust from God.

Wherefore are we assembled? Wherefore, save

Because these sciolists pervert the law,

Deceived perhaps, deceiving certainly?"

Scarce waved a careless hand in sign at them—

Toward the apostles, still in presence there,

Saul deigned not to divert his scornful eyes:

"Shame is it if I, knowing the law indeed,

Am less than match for these untutored minds,

Amid the flocking fools they lead astray,

To controvert their hateful heresies.

Herewith then I proclaim my ripe resolve

To undertake, against the preaching liars,

On their own terms, a warfare for the truth.

Let it be seen which cause, in open list,

Is stronger, truth from heaven or lie from hell!

"Brethren and fathers, as ye will, consult;

The youngest has his purpose thus divulged."

As when a palm diversely blown upon

In a strong tempest of opponent winds,

Now this way, and now that, obedient

To each prevailing present urgency,

Leans to all quarters of the firmament

By turns, but quickly, let a lull succeed,

Upright again, shows every leaf composed;

So now the council, long enough between

Opinion and opinion buffeted,

While Saul was speaking took a little ease,

No new advice proposed, to breathe again,

Steady itself, and come to equipoise.

Some thought that Saul had spoken proudly; some,

That pride became his worth; some held that he

Would make his vaunting good; some feared his plan

Savored of youth and rashness; others deemed

Public dispute mistaken precedent

Teeming with various mischief—sure to breed

Insufferable pretensions in the crowd,

So taught to count themselves fit arbiters

On Scriptural or traditional points of moot,

And, by close consequence, a serious breach

Endanger in their own authority;

Yet others felt, whatever fruit beside

Was borne of Saul's proposed experiment,

Two things at least were safe to reckon on—

In its own dignity, the Sanhedrim

Must needs incur immedicable hurt,

So plainly scandalous a spectacle

Exhibiting, a councillor enrolled

Of their own number stooping to debate

On equal terms with ignorant fishermen;

Then, on their side, those flattered fishermen,

Far from indulging proper gratitude

For being publicly confounded quite

At such illustrious hands, would be instead

Inflated out of measure, nigh to burst,

With added pride at complaisance so new

From their superiors, while the common herd

Would give them greater heed accordingly.

Such things diverse they thought, and silence kept,

Saul's colleagues in the Sanhedrim; they all

Together felt that Saul in any wise

Would go Saul's way; they therefore silence kept.

One man alone, by age and gravity,

And reverence his in ample revenue,

Was easy master of the Sanhedrim:

On him the council rested and revolved,

As on a fixéd centre and support.

And now 'Gamaliel! let us hear at last

Gamaliel's word' was suddenly the sole,

The simultaneous, silent thought to all.

The eyes of all concentred instantly

Upon Gamaliel found that saint esteemed

And sage already stirring as to rise.

Their readiness to hear, with his to speak,

Timed so in perfect reciprocity

And exquisite accord responsive, marked

That fleet meet moment for the orator,

Which, conscious half, but half unconscious, he,

Gamaliel, wielded by the Holy Ghost,

Was now to seize and use for God so well.

The hoary head, the mien of majesty,

The associative power of ancient fame,

His habit and tradition of command,

Their instinct, grown inveterate, to obey,

Always, wherever he arose to speak

Among his brethren, won Gamaliel heed.

But now, a certain gentle winsomeness,

Born of a certain wavering wistfulness,

Qualified so a new solemnity

Of manner, like a prophet's, felt in him,

That awe came on his hearers as from God.

Gamaliel first bade put the prisoners forth,

In keeping, out of audience, and then said:

"My brethren: Saul my brother—son no more

I name him, since he parts himself from me

In counsel—yet I love him not the less—"

A tremor of sensation fluttered through

The council, with these words, and at Saul's heart

Pausing, infixed, then healed, a subtle pang

Of sweet remorse and gracious tenderness—

"Yea, not the less for this love I my son,

My brother, while I honor him the more.

Yea, and not wholly does he part himself

From me; in deepest counsel we are one.

Saul seeks to honor God obeying Him,

The same seek I; are we not deeply one?

And ever I have taught obedience

To God as the prime thing and paramount;

Disciple therefore still to me, and son,

Is Saul, even in this act and article

Of his secession from his master's part;

Saul and Gamaliel both, and all of us,

I pray my God to save from self-deceit!

I shudder while I pray, 'Deliver me,

O Lord, deliver, from the secret sin

Of false supposed obedience masking pride!'

"Late, I was sure, as Saul is sure to-day.

I thought, and doubted not, we ought to do

Even what ye now are bent to bring to pass.

My way was not Saul's way, but rather yours;

To me it seemed plainly, as seems to you,

Wiser to save the body by some loss,

If loss were need, of limb. Unfalteringly,

The knife would I myself with mine own hand

Have wielded to cut off these members, judged

Unsound and harmful to the general health,

Forever from the congregation. Now,

I feel less sure, Gamaliel feels less sure.

I wish—brethren, I think I wish—to be

Obedient; though deceitful is the heart

Above all things and wicked desperately—

What man can know it?—yet I think I will

Obedience. That was a pure word—the mouth

However far from pure that uttered it—

'To God rather than men must we obey.'

Saul was true son of mine to turn from me

To God—if haply he to God indeed

Have turned from me, and not from me to Saul,

Not knowing! Might I also turn, even I,

Gamaliel from Gamaliel, unto God!

I dread to trust myself, lest I, myself

Obeying, misdeem myself obeying God.

"Hearken, my children. These accuséd men

Unlikely, most unlikely, choice of Heaven

To be His prophets, seemed, and seem, to me.

I look at them and find no prophet mien;

I listen and their Galilæan speech

Offends me; and far more the scandal is

To think what message they propound to us.

Their person and their message I reject—

Reject, or if reject not, not receive.

And yet, my brethren, yet, I counsel you,

Beware! What ye intend, accomplished once,

Were once for all accomplished, not to be

Undone forever. Ye consult to slay,

And find your purpose hard to come by. How,

If, having slain, to your repentance, ye

Consulted to bring back to life again?

Were that not harder yet? Wherefore take heed,

Ye men of Israel. Remember how,

A generation gone, Theudas arose,

Proud boaster and asserter of himself,

Who drew his hundreds to his standard; he

Was slain, and all his followers came to naught.

Some space thereafter, out of Galilee

Judas arose and mustered to his side

Many adherents; but he perished too,

And all that clave to him were far dispersed.

"This therefore as to these is my advice:

Refrain your hands from them; let them alone.

Know, if their deed and counsel be of men,

Its doom is certain, it will come to naught;

But if it be of God, strive how ye may,

Ye cannot overthrow it. Well take heed,

Lest haply ye be found to fight against

God. For myself, when close upon the heels

Of what was wrought mysterious in the escape

Of these our prisoners from that warded keep

Fast-barred, I heard their answer to our sharp

Inquest and blame, I felt as felt of old

That prophet chanting his majestic strain,

'The Lord is in His holy temple, let

The earth, let the whole earth, before Him keep

Silence.' My soul kept silence and still keeps.

And silence keep, all ye, before the Lord!

For the Lord cometh, lo, He cometh swift

To judge the earth! And who of us shall bide

The day of His approach? Not surely he

Then found in arms against God and His Christ!"

Gamaliel spoke and ceased; but, while he spoke,

His speaking was like silence audible,

Rather than sound of voice; and when he ceased,

His silence was as eloquence prolonged.

Awhile the council sat as in a trance,

Unable or unwilling to bestir

Themselves for speech or motion. But not all

Are capable of awe. Some present there,

Either through sad defect of nature proof,

Or through long worldly habit seared and sealed,

Against the access of heavenly influence,

Bode unaware of anything divine

Descended near them—carnal minds, immersed

In sense, from shocks of spirit insulate,

Calm, discomposure none from things unseen,

The faculty for such experience lost,

Pitiably self-possessed! and God Himself

So nigh to have possessed them!

These a space

Waited to let the power a little pass,

Wrought by Gamaliel on the council; then

With tentative preamble, one of them

Said that Gamaliel's words were words of weight,

Weight well derived from character like his—

Whereat the speaker paused, with crafty eye

Cast round from countenance to countenance,

To read how much he safely might detract,

By open difference or by sly demur,

From the just value and authority

Of mild Gamaliel's sentence. But small sign

Saw he to hearten him in hope of ebb

To the strong tide still standing at full flood

That set in favor of the prisoners.

He feebly closed with wish expressed—and wish

It was, not hope—of hope no grounds he saw—

That some means might be found to save the shocked

And staggering dignity—a dignity

Ancient and sacred—of the Sanhedrim

From sheer shipwreck.

Some slight responsive stir

Under such spur to pride emboldened one

To trust they should at least sharply rebuke

The prisoners, and take bond of word from them

Not further to disturb the city's peace.

Another following said, that had been tried

Already once, with what result accrued

Was plain to see. And now the Sanhedrim,

Through various such suggestion commonplace,

Relaxed somewhat from their late mood so tense,

Grew readier to approve his voice who said:

"The first offence we deemed condignly met

With reprimand from us, and interdict.

Those gentle means the prisoners once have scorned,

And to our face assure us they will scorn.

Now let such contumacious insolence

Toward just authority too meek, be met,

If not with death deserved, at least with stripes

So heavy they shall wish it had been death."

Such truculence renewed provoked a new

Reaction. This, that councillor less stern

Noted—who, with Gamaliel and with Saul,

Refrained, when all the others hissed applause

To Mattathias—noted, and with thrift

Converted into opportunity.

A wary spirit Nicodemus was,

With impulses toward good, but weak in will,

And selfish as the timid are. His heart

Was a divided empire in his breast,

Half firm for God, but half to self seduced.

His fellows trusted him accordingly;

Hate him they could not, but they did not love.

Some guessed him guilty of discipleship

To Jesus, secretly indulged through fear.

This their suspicion the suspect in turn

Suspected, and the uneasy consciousness

Made him more curious than his wont to move

By indirection toward his present aim.

What he wished was, to serve the prisoners

And not disserve himself—a double end,

Rendering his counsels double; but as such

Could speak, now Nicodemus rising spoke.

With sinuous slow approach winning his way

Devious whither he wished to go, like those

Creatures that backward facing forward creep

And seem retiring still while they advance,

So Nicodemus wound him toward his goal,

Well-chosen, as he said:

"Let us be wise;

Beyond our purpose were not well to go,

Were foolish. Cruelty is not, I trust,

Our spirit; God is just, but cruel not.

Let us, God's sons, be just indeed, like God,

But then, like God, also not cruel. Stripes

Are heavy, howsoever lightly laid

On freeborn men. The shame is punishment;

A wounded spirit who can bear? Through flesh

You smite the smarting spirit, every blow.

Remember too that lacerated flesh

Has lips to plead with, makes its mute appeal

To pity—eloquence incapable

Of being answered, charging cruelty;

Whereas the bleeding spirit, bleeding hid,

No cruelty imputes, reports no pain,

But, pith of self-respect clean gone from one,

Glazes the eye, dejects the countenance,

Changes the voice to hollow, takes the spring

Out of the step, and leaves the man a wretch

To suffer on an object of contempt

More than compassion—hopelessly bereft

Of power to captivate the public ear,

Which ever itches to be caught the prey

Of orator full-blooded, iron lungs,

Brass front, a lusty human animal.

Such make of men, through shame of public stripes,

Transformed to eunuchs—this, sure, were enough;

Nay, for our purpose, more than more would be.

And even so much as this, yea, lightest stripe,

Drawing a sequel such as I have said—

Brethren, for me, my soul revolts from it;

I feel it cruel, fear it impious.

Behooves we ponder well Gamaliel's word;

And, if to slay were haply against God

To be found fighting, why not, then, to scourge?"

"Such fine-spun sentiment," another now,

Concurring, though sarcastically, said,

"In pity of the victim of the scourge

For suffering inwardly endured through shame,

Supposes that your victim is endowed

With some small faculty for feeling shame,

Which in the present case asks evidence.

"Still, I too take the clement part, and say,

If only for Saul's sake, let these go free

Of any but the lightest punishment.

Saul will desire for foemen hearts as strong

As may be, to call out that strength in him

Which we well know, for their discomfiture.

Even thus, he may prefer some other foe

Than men disparaged by the brand of blows

Upon their backs, some fairer, fresher fame,

His gage of battle to take up, and be

By him immortalized through overthrow

Experienced, such as never yet was worse."

Divergent so in view or motive, they

Agreed at last to let the prisoners go

With stripes inflicted, and a charge severe

Imposed to speak in Jesus' name no more.

These so released departed thence with joy,

Rejoicing to have been accounted meet

For Jesus' sake to suffer shame. Nor ceased

Those faithful men to preach and teach as erst,

Both in the temple and from house to house,

Daily still sounding forth Jesus as Christ.

But Saul withdrew deep pondering in his mind

How he might best his plan divulged fulfill.

BOOK III.

SAUL AGAINST STEPHEN.

Stephen, as a Christian preacher of brilliant genius and of growing fame, is selected by Saul to be his antagonist in the controversy resolved upon by him. To a vast concourse of people assembled in expectation of hearing Stephen preach, Saul takes the opportunity to address an impassioned and elaborate appeal, with argument, against Stephen's doctrine. His hearers are powerfully affected; among them, he not knowing it, Saul's own beloved sister Rachel.

SAUL AGAINST STEPHEN.

Like a wise soldier on some task intent

Of moment and of hazard, who, at heart

Secure of prospering, yet no caution counts,

No pains, unworthy, but with wary feet

Explores his ground about him every rood,

All elements of chance forecalculates,

Draws to his part each doubtful circumstance;

Never too much provided, point by point

Equips himself superfluously strong,

That he prevailing may with might prevail,

And overcome with bounteous victory;

So Saul, firm in resolve and confident,

And inly stung with conscience and with zeal

Not to postpone his weighty work proposed,

Would not be hasty found, nor rash, to fail

Of any circumspection that his sure

Triumph might make more sure, or wider stretch

Its margin, certain to be wide.

Some days

After the council, he, with forecast sage

And prudence to prepare, refrained himself

From word or deed in public; while, at home,

Not moody, but not genial as his use,

His gracious use, was, self-absorbed, retired

In deep and absent muse, he nigh might seem

A stranger to his sister well-beloved,

Wont to be sharer of his inmost mind.

Inmost, save one reserve. He never yet

Had shown to any, scarce himself had seen,

The true deep master motive of his soul,

That fountain darkling in the depths of self

Whence into light all streams of being flowed.

Saul daily, nightly, waking, sleeping, dreamed

Of a new nation, his belovéd own,

Resurgent from the dust consummate fair,

And, for chief corner-stone, with shoutings reared

To station in the stately edifice—

Whom but himself? Who worthier than Saul?

This beckoning image bright of things to be—

Audacious-lovelier far than might be shown

To any, yea, than he himself dared look,

With his own eyes, steadfast and frank upon—

Was interblent so closely in his mind

With what should be the fortune and effect

Of his intended controversy nigh,

That, though his settled purpose to dispute

He had for public reasons publicly

Declared, he yet in private, of that strife,

Still future, everywhere to speak abstained,

Abiding even unto his sister dumb.

Rachel from Tarsus to Jerusalem

Had borne her brother company, her heart

One heart with his to cheer him toward the goal

Of his high purpose, which she knew, to be

Beyond his equals master in the law.

Alone they dwelt together, their abode

Between Gamaliel's and the synagogue

Of the Cilicians. Beautiful and bright

His home she made to him, with housewife ways

Neat-handed, and with fair companionship.

The sister, with that quick intelligence

The woman's, first divined, for secret cause

Of this her brother's travailing silentness,

That he some pregnant enterprise revolved;

Then, having, with the woman's wit, found means

To advise herself what enterprise it was,

She, with the woman's tact of sympathy,

In watchful quiet reverent of his mood,

Strove with him and strove for him, in her thought,

Her wish, her hope, her prayer; nor failed sometimes

A word to drop, unconsciously as seemed,

By lucky chance, that might perhaps convey

A timely help of apt suggestion wise

To Saul her brother for his purpose, he

All undisturbed to guess that aught was meant.

At home, abroad, reserved, Saul not the less

All places of men's frequence and resort

Still visited, and mixed with crowds to catch

The whisper of the people; active not,

But not supine, observing unobserved

As if alone amid the multitude.

The brave apostles of the Nazarene

He heard proclaim their master Lord and Christ,

And marked their method in the Scriptures; not

With open mind obedient toward the truth,

But ever only with shut heart and hard,

Intent on knowing how to contradict.

Meanwhile the novel doctrines spread, and found

New converts day by day, and day by day

Proclaimers new. Of these more eminent

Was none than Stephen, flaming prophet he,

Quenchless in spirit, full of faith and power.

Him oft Saul heard, to listening throngs that hung

Upon the herald's lips with eager ear,

The claim of Jesus to Messiahship

Assert, and from the psalms and prophets prove.

In guise a seraph rapt, with love aflame

And all aflame with knowledge, like the bush

That burned with God in Horeb unconsumed,

The fervent pure apostle Stephen stood,

In ardors from celestial altars caught

Kindling to incandescence—stood and forged,

With ringing blow on blow, his argument,

A vivid weapon edged and tempered so,

And in those hands so wielded, that its stroke

No mortal might abide and bide upright.

Stephen is such as Saul erelong will be

Risen from the baptism of the Holy Ghost!

Saul felt the breath of human power that blew

Round Stephen like a morning wind, he felt

The light that lifted and transfigured him

And glorified, that bright auroral ray

Of genius which forever makes the brow

It strikes on from its fountain far in God

Shine like the sunrise-smitten mountain peak—

Saul felt these things in Stephen by his tie

With Stephen in the fellowship of power;

Kindred to kindred answered and rejoiced.

But that in Stephen which was more and higher

Than Stephen at his native most and highest,

The inhabitation of the Holy Ghost—

This, Saul had yet no sense to apprehend.

The Spirit of God, only the Spirit of God

Can know; the natural man to Him is deaf

And blind. Saul, therefore, seeing did not see,

And hearing heard not. But no less his heart,

In seeing and in hearing Stephen speak,

Leapt up with recognition of a peer

In power to be his meet antagonist

And task him to his uttermost to foil.

Beyond Saul's uttermost it was to be,

That task! though this of Stephen not, but God.

Still goaded day by day with such desire

As nobler spirits know, to feel the strain

And wrestle of antagonistic thews

Tempting his might and stirring up his mind,

Saul felt, besides, the motion and ferment

And great dilation of a patriot soul,

Magnanimous, laboring for his country's cause.

He thought the doctrines of the Nazarene

Pernicious to the Jewish commonwealth,

Not less than was his person base, his life

Unseemly, and opprobrious his death.

He saw, or deemed he saw, in what was taught

From Jesus, only deep disparagement

Disloyally implied of everything

Nearest and dearest to the Hebrew heart.

The gospel was high treason in Saul's eyes;

Suppose it but established in success,

The temple then would be no more what erst

It was, the daily sacrifice would cease,

The holy places would with heathen feet

Be trodden and profaned, the middle wall

Of old partition between Jew and Greek

Would topple undermined, the ritual law

Of Moses would be obsolete and void,

Common would be the oracles of God,

To all divulged, peculiar once to Jews—

Of Jewish name and nation what were left?

Such thoughts, that seemed of liberal scope, were Saul's,

Commingled, he not knowing, with some thoughts,

Less noble, of his own aggrandizement.

It came at length to pass that on a day

The spacious temple-court is thronged with those

Come from all quarters to Jerusalem,

Or dwellers of the city, fain to hear

Once more the preacher suddenly so famed.

Present is Saul, but not as heretofore

To hearken only and observe; the hour

Has struck when his own voice he must uplift,

To make it heard abroad.

He dreamed it not,

But Rachel too was there, his sister. She

Had, from sure signs observed, aright surmised

That the ripe time to speak was come to Saul.

In her glad loyalty, she doubted not

That he, that day, would, out of a full mind,

Pressed overfull with affluence from the heart,

Pour forth a stream of generous eloquence—

Stream, nay, slope torrent, steep sheer cataract,

Of reason and of passion intermixed—

For such she proudly felt her brother's power—

Which down should rush upon his adversaries

And carry them away as with a flood,

Astonished, overwhelmed, and whirled afar;

Rescued at least the ruins of the state!

So glorying in her high vicarious hope

For Saul her brother, Rachel came that morn

Betimes and chose her out a safe recess

For easy audience, nigh, and yet retired,

Between the pillars of a stately porch,

Where she might see and not by him be seen.

Thence Rachel watched all eagerly; when now

The multitude, expecting Stephen, saw

A different man stand forth with beckoning hand

As if to speak. The act and attitude

Commanded audience, for a king of men

Stood there, and a great silence fell on all.

Some knew the face of the young Pharisee,

These whispered round his name; Saul's name and fame

To all were known, and, ere the speaker spoke,

Won him a deepening heed.

Rachel the hush

Felt with a secret sympathetic awe,

And for one breath her beating heart stood still;

It leapt again to hear her brother's voice

Pealing out bold in joyous sense of power.

That noble voice, redounding like a surge

Pushed by the tide, on swept before the wind,

And all the ocean shouldering at its back,

Which seeks out every inlet of the shore

To brim it flush and level from the brine—

Such Saul's voice swelled, as from a plenteous sea,

And, wave on wave of pure elastic tone,

Rejoicing ran through every gallery,

And every echoing endless colonnade,

And every far-retreating least recess

Of building round about that temple-court,

And filled the temple-court with silver sound—

As thus, with haughty summons, he began:

"Ye men of Israel, sojourners from far

Or dwellers in Jerusalem, give heed.

The lines are fallen to us in evil times:

Opinions run abroad perverse and strange,

Divergent from the faith our fathers held.

A day is come, brethren, and fallen on us—

On us, this living generation, big

With promise, or with threat, of mighty doom.

Which will ye have it? Threat, or promise, which?

Yours is the choosing—choose ye may, ye must.

"Abolish Moses, if ye will; destroy

The great traditions of your fathers; say

Abraham was naught, naught Isaac, Jacob, all

The patriarchs, heroes, martyrs, prophets, kings;

That Seed of Abraham naught, our nation's Hope,

Foretold to be an universal King;

Make one wide blank and void, an emptied page,

Of all the awful glories of our past—

Deliverance out of Egypt, miracle

On miracle wrought dreadfully for us

Against our foes, path cloven through the sea,

Jehovah in the pillar of cloud and fire,

And host of Pharaoh mightily overthrown;

The law proclaimed on Sinai amid sound

And light insufferable and angels nigh

Attending; manna in the wilderness;

The rock that lived and moved and followed them,

Our fathers, flowing water in the waste—

Obliterate at a stroke whatever sets

The seal of God upon you as His own,

And marks you different from the heathen round—

Shekinah fixed between the cherubim,

The vacant Holy of Holies filled with God,

The morning and the evening sacrifice,

Priest, altar, incense, choral hymn and psalm,

Confused melodious noise of instruments

Together sounding the high praise of God;

All this, with more I will not stay to tell,

This temple itself with its magnificence,

The hope of Him foreshown, the Messenger

Of that eternal covenant wherein

Your souls delight themselves, Who suddenly

One day shall come unto His temple—blot,

Expunge, erase, efface, consent to be

No more a people, mix and merge yourselves

With aliens, blood that in your veins flows pure

All the long way one stream continuous down

From Abraham called the friend of God—such blood

Adulterate in the idolatrous, corrupt

Pool of the Gentiles—men of Israel!

Or are ye men? and are ye Israel?

I stand in doubt of you—I stand in doubt

Of kinsmen mine supposed that bide to hear

Such things as seems that ye with pleasure hear!

"Say, know ye not they mean to take away

Your place and name? Are ye so blind? Or are

Ye only base poor creatures caring not

Though knowing well? Oft have ye seen the fat

Of lambs upon the flaming altar fume

One instant and in fume consume away;

So swiftly and so utterly shall pass,

In vapor of smoke, the glorious excellency,

The pomp, the pride, nay, but the being itself,

Of this our nation from beneath the sun,

Let once the hideous doctrine of a Christ

Condemned and crucified usurp the place

In Hebrew hearts of that undying hope

We cherish of Messiah yet to reign

In power and glory more than Solomon's,

From sunrise round to sunrise without end,

And tread the Gentiles underneath our feet."

Indignant patriot spirit in the breast

Of Rachel mixed itself with kindred pride

And gladness for her brother gleaming so

Before her in a kind of fulgurous scorn

Which made his hearers quail while they admired;

She could not stay a sudden gush of tears.

But Saul's voice now took on a winning change,

As, deprecating gently, thus he spoke:

"Forgive, my brethren, I have used hot words

Freely and frankly, as great love may speak.

But that I love you, trust you, hope of you

The best, the noblest, when once more you are

Yourselves, and feel the spirit of your past

Come back, I had not cared to speak at all.

I simply should have hung my head in shame,

Worn sackcloth, gone with ashes on my brow,

And sealed my hand upon my lips for you

Forever. Love does not despair, but hopes

Forever. And I love you far too well

To dream despair of you. Bethink yourselves,

My brethren! Me, as if I were the voice

Of your own ancient aspiration, hear.

Bear with me, let me chide, say not that love

Lured me to over-confidence of you.

"Be patient now, my brethren, while I go,

So briefly as I may, through argument

That well might ask the leisure of long hours,

To show from Scripture, from authority,

From reason and from nature too not less,

Why we should hold to our ancestral faith,

And not the low fanatic creed admit

Of such as preach for Christ one crucified.

Be patient—I myself must patient be,

Tutoring down my heart to let my tongue

Speak calmly, as in doubtful argument,

Where I am fixed and confident to scorn."

As when Gennesaret, in his circling hills,

By wing of wind down swooping suddenly

Is into tempest wrought that, to his depths

Astir, he rouses, and on high his waves

Uplifts like mountains snowy-capped with foam;

So, smitten with the vehement impact

And passion of Saul's rash, abrupt

Beginning, that mercurial multitude

Had answered with commotion such as seemed

Menace of instant act of violence:

But, as when haply there succeeds a lull

To tempest, then the waves of Galilee

Sink from their swelling and smooth down to plane

Yet deep will roll awhile from shore to shore

That long slow undulation following storm;

So, when, with wise self-recollection, Saul,

In mid-career of passionate appeal,

Stayed, and those gusts of stormy eloquence

Impetuous poured no longer on the sea

Of audience underneath him, but, instead,

Proposed a sober task of argument,

The surging throng surceased its turbulence,

And settled from commotion into calm;

Yet so as still to feel the rock and sway

Of central agitation at its heart,

While thus that master of its moods went on:

"What said Jehovah to the serpent vile

Which tempted Eve? Did he not speak of One,

Offspring to her seduced, Who should arise

To crush the offending head? No hint, I trow,

Of meekness and obedience unto death

Found there at least, death on the shameful tree,

Forsooth, to be the character and doom

Of that foretokened Champion of his kind,

That haughty Trampler upon Satan's head!

"To Abraham our father was of God

Foretold, 'In thee shall all the families

Of the earth be blessed.' What blessing, pray, could come

Abroad upon mankind through Abraham's seed,

Messiah, should Messiah, Abraham's seed,

Prove to be such as now is preached to you,

A shame, a jest, a byword, a reproach,

A hissing and a wagging of the head,

A gazing-stock and mark for tongues shot out—

Burlesque and travesty of our brave hopes

And of our vaunts, shown vain, rife everywhere

Among the nations, that erelong a prince

Should from the stem of Jesse spring, to sway

An universal sceptre through the world?

"Did God mock Abraham? Did He mean, perchance,

That all the families of the earth should find

Peculiar blessedness in triumphing

Over that puissant nation promised him,

His progeny, to match the stars of heaven

For multitude, and be as on the shore

The sands, innumerable? Was such the sense

Of promise and of prophecy? Behooves,

Then, we be glad and thankful, we, on whom

The fullness of the time now falls, to be

This blessing to the Gentiles. But ye halt,

Beloved. Slack and slow seem ye to greet

The honor fixed on you. Why, hearken! Ye,

Ye, out of all the generations, ye

Fallen on the times of Jesus crucified,

May count yourselves elect and called of God

To bless the Gentiles, in affording them

Unquenchable amusement to behold

Your wretched plight and broken pride! Now clap

Your hands, ye chosen! Let your mouth be filled

With laughter, and your tongue with singing filled!

"Nay, sons of Abraham, nay. No mocking words

Spake He who cannot lie, Lord God of truth

And grace. He meant that Abraham's race should reign

From sea to sea while sun and moon endure.

And ever a blessing true it is to men

To bend the neck beneath an equal yoke

Of ruler strong and wise and just to rule.

Then will at last the Gentiles blesséd be

In Abraham, when, from Abraham's loins derived

Through David, God's Anointed shall begin,

In David's city, His long government

Of the wide world, and every heathen name

Shall kiss the rod and own Messiah king.

"Our father Jacob, touched with prophecy,

Spake of a sceptre that should not depart

From Judah until Shiloh came, to Whom

The obedience of the peoples was to be;

A sceptre, symbol of authority

And rule, law-giving attribute, resort

Of subject nations speeding to a yoke—

Such ever everywhere in Holy Writ

The image and the character impressed

On God's Messiah, hope of Israel.

"What need I more? Wherefore to ears like yours,

Well used to hear them in the temple chants

Resounded with responsive voice to voice,

Rehearse those triumphs and antiphonies

Wherein Jehovah Father to His Son

Messiah speaks: 'Ask Thou of Me, and I

To Thee the heathen for inheritance

Will give, and for possession the extreme

Parts of the earth. Thou shalt with rod of iron

Break them, yea, shatter them shalt Thou in shards,

Like a clay vessel from the potters hand.

Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be ye

Instructed, judges of the earth. Kiss ye

The Son, lest He be angry, and His wrath,

Full soon to be enkindled, you devour.'

Tell me, which mood of prophecy is that,

The meek or the heroic? Craven he,

Or king, to whom Jehovah deigns such speech,

Concerning whom such counsel recommends?

"'Gird Thou upon Thy thigh Thy sword, O Thou

Most Mighty,'—so once more the psalmist, rapt

Prophetical as to a martial rage,

Breaks forth, Jehovah to Messiah speaking—

'Gird on Thy glory and Thy majesty;

And in Thy majesty ride prosperously,

And Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things.

Sharp in the heart of the king's enemies

Thine arrows are, whereby the peoples fall

Beneath Thee.' Such Messiah is, a man

Of war and captain of the host of God.

Nay, now it mounts to a deific strain,

The prophet exultation of the psalm:

'Thy throne, O God' it sings—advancing Him,

Messiah, to the unequalled dignity

And lonely glory of the ONE I AM,

Audacious figure—close on blasphemy,

Were it not God who speaks—to represent

The dazzling splendors of Messiahship.

"Let us erect our spirits from the dust,

My brethren, and, as sons of God, nay, gods

Pronounced—unless we grovel and below

Our birthright due, unfilial and unfit,

Sink self-depressed—let us, I pray you, rise,

Buoyed upward from within by sense of worth

Incapable to be extinguished, rise,

Found equal to the will of God for us,

And know the true Messiah when He comes.

Be sure that when He comes, His high degree

Will shine illustrious, like the sun in heaven,

Not feebly flicker for your fishermen

From Galilee to point it out to you

With their illiterate 'Lo, here!' 'Lo, there!'"

At this increasing burst of scorn from Saul,

Exultant like the pæan and the cry

That rises through the palpitating air

When storming warriors take the citadel,

Once more from Rachel's fixéd eyes the tears

Of sympathetic exultation flowed—

The sister with the brother, as in strife

Before the battle striving equally,

Now equally in triumph triumphing.

But Saul, his triumph, felt to be secure,

Securer still will make with new appeal:

"If so, as we have seen, the Scriptures trend,

Not less the current of tradition too—

No counter-current, eddy none—one stress,

Steady and full, from Adam down to you,

Runs strong the self-same way. Out of the past

What voice is heard in contradiction? None.

"Turn round and ask the present; you shall hear

One answer still the same from every mouth

Of scribe or master versed in Holy Writ.

Tradition and authority in this

Agree with Scripture, teaching to await

For our deliverer an anointed king.

What ruler of our people has believed

In Jesus, him of Nazareth, Joseph's son,

As Christ of God? If any, then some soul

Self-judged unworthy of his rulership,

Secret disciple, shunning to avow

His faith, and justly therefore counted naught—

Ruler in name, in nature rather slave.

"And now I bid you look within your breast

And answer, Does not your own heart rebel

Against the gospel of the Nazarene?

'Gospel,' forsooth! Has God, who made your heart,

Provided you for gospel what your heart

Rejects with loathing? Likely seems it, pray,

Becoming, fit, that He Who, on the mount

Of Sinai once the law promulging, there

Displayed His glory more than mortal eye

Could bear to look upon or ear to hear—

Who in the temple hid behind the veil

Shekinah blazed between the cherubim—

Nay, tell me, seems it tolerable even

To you, that your Jehovah God should choose,

Lover of splendor as He is, and power,

To represent Himself among mankind

Not merely naked of magnificence,

But outright squalid in the mean estate

And person of a carpenter, to die

At last apparent felon crucified?

Reason and nature outraged cry aloud,

'For shame! For shame!' at blasphemy like this."

A strange ungentle impulse moved the heart

Of Rachel to a mood like mutiny,

And almost she "For shame!" herself cried out

In echo to her brother's vehemence;

While murmur as of wind rousing to storm

Ran through the assembly at such words from Saul,

The passion of the speaker so prevailed

To stir responsive passion in their breasts.

This Saul perceiving said, in scornful pride,

Fallaciously foretasting triumph won:

"Ye men of Israel, gladly I perceive

Some embers of the ancient fire remain,

If smouldering, not extinguished, in your breasts.

I will not further chafe your noble rage.

You are, if I mistake not, now prepared

To hear more safely, if less patiently,

The eloquence I keep you from too long.

Let me bespeak for Stephen your best heed."

And Saul, as if in gesture of surcease,

A pace retiring, waved around his hand

Toward Stephen, opposite not far, the while

His nostril he dispread, and mobile lip

Curled, in the height of contumelious scorn;

And Rachel, where she stood, unconsciously,

The transport of her sympathy was such,

Repeated with her features what she saw.

BOOK IV.

STEPHEN AGAINST SAUL.

Stephen, following Saul, turns the tide of feeling overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. Saul, however, but he almost alone—for even his sister Rachel has been converted—stands out defiant against the manifest power of God. Shimei appears as an auditor watching with sinister motive the course of the controversy.

STEPHEN AGAINST SAUL.

The tumult grew a tempest when Saul ceased:

No single voice of mortal man might hope,

Though clear like clarion and like trumpet loud,

To live in that possessed demoniac sea

Of vast vociferation whelming all,

Or ride the surges of the wild uproar.

What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thy mad mind

So suddenly was soothed? Did 'Peace, be still!'

Dropping, an unction from the Holy One,

Softly as erst on stormy Galilee,

Wide overspread the summits of the waves

And sway their swelling down to glassy calm?

Stephen stood forth to speak, and all was still.

Before he spoke, already Rachel felt

A different power of silence there, and sense,

Within, other than sympathetic awe;

This felt she, though she knew it not, nor dreamed

It was the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven!

"Brethren"—so Stephen spoke, beyond his wont

Now, under awe of grave occasion, calmed

From God with power—"God's thoughts are not our thoughts,

Neither our ways His ways; for as the heavens

Are than the earth more high, so than our ways

More high are His, and His thoughts than our thoughts.

Our valued wisdom folly is to God

Full oft; then most, when folly seems to us

God's wisdom. Have ye yet to learn that God

Rejoices to confound the vain conceit

Of man? The Scriptures, then, search ye with eyes

Blinded so thick? It is Isaiah's word:

'Jehovah, yea, hath poured upon you all

The spirit of deep sleep, and hath your eyes,

Those prophets of the soul that might be, closed,

Also your heads, meant to be seers, hath veiled;

And vision all is now to you become

Even as the words of a shut book and sealed.

Therefore Jehovah saith, For that this people

Draw nigh to Me in worship with their mouth,

But have their heart removed from Me afar,

While all their fear of Me is empty form

Enjoined of men, and idly learned by rote—

Behold, a thing of wonder will I do

Among this people, wonder passing thought,

And perish shall the wisdom of their wise

And prudence of their prudent come to nought!'

"Brethren, that was man's wisdom which just now

Ye heard, and were well pleased to hear, from Saul.

Hearken again, and hear what God will speak."

At the first word that fell from Stephen's lips,

An overshadowing of the Holy Ghost

Hung like a heaven above the multitude;

With every word that followed, slow and full,

That awful cope seemed ever hovering down

Impendent nearer, as when, fold to fold,

Droops lower and lower a dark and thunderous sky.

The speaker used no arts of oratory;

Only a still small voice, not wholly his,

Nor wholly human, issuing from his lips,

Only a voice, but eloquence was shamed.

And Stephen thus his theme premised pursues:

"Rightly and wrongly, both at once, have ye

This day been taught of God's Messiah; King

He is, as Saul has said, but in a sense,

And with a highth and depth and length and breadth

And reach immense of meaning, that nor Saul,

Nor ye, nor any by the Holy Ghost

Untaught, have yet conceived. Not of this world

His kingdom is. The pageant and the pomp,

State visible, and splendor to the eye,

Are of this world that vanishes away,

And of the princes of this world that come

To naught. His glory whose the kingdom is

Whereof I speak, no eye hath seen, no eye

Can see. That vision is for naked soul.

"The lordship and authority which craves

Obeisance of the knee, the lip, the hand,

And the neck breaks to an unwelcome yoke,

But traitor leaves the hidden heart within,

Rebel the will insurgent, infidel

The mind, the critic reason dissident,

And violated conscience enemy—

Such rule is but the hollow show of rule,

A husk of vain pretence, the kernel gone.

"No earthly kingdom such, Messiah's is,

Of nations hating and yet serving Him—

Trampled into the dust beneath His feet,

And either cringing or else gnashing rage.

A kingdom here on earth of heaven to found,

From heaven to earth God's true Messiah comes;

A kingdom built of meek and lowly hearts

By Monarch meek and lowly to be ruled;

A world-wide kingdom and a time-long reign.

This kingdom new of heaven on earth commenced

Will gather Jew and Gentile both in one,

Whereso, of high or low, of rich or poor,

Heart ready to receive it shall be found,

In time or clime however hence afar.

For hear Him speak, the High and Lofty One

Who maketh His abode eternity:

'Lo, in the high and holy place dwell I,

Likewise with him of meek and contrite mind.'

"In those words were foreshown the things which are,

Brethren, and kingdom which we preach to you,

Messiah here indeed, His reign begun,

Invisible but glorious, on the earth.

He that hath ears to hear, lo, let him hear,

And hail the one right Ruler come at last;

Who rules not nations, masses of mankind

Only, with indiscriminate wide sway

Imperfect though to view magnificent,

By many an individual will unfelt;

But seeks His subjects singly, soul by soul,

And over each, through all within him, reigns.

Jew must with Gentile, heart by heart, submit

To own Messiah thus his Lord and King,

Throning Him sovereign in the realm of self,

The empire of a humble, contrite mind.

"No other rule is real than rule like this,

The true Messiah's rule, which well within

The flying scouts and outposts of the man,

Wins to the midmost seat and citadel

Of being, where the soul itself resides,

And tames the master captive to its thrall.

Then sings the soul unto herself and says,

'Bless thou, Jehovah, O my soul, and all

That is within me, bless His holy name!'

Filled is the hidden part with melody.

For joyfully the reason then consents,

The mind is full of light to see, and says

'Amen!' the will resolves the opposite

Of its old self, won by the heart, which, more

Than mere obedience, loves; conscience the while

Delightedly infusing all delight,

And Holy Spirit breathing benison.

"Such subjugation is a state of peace;

But peace, stagnation not, nor death. You live

And move and have your being evermore

Fresher and deeper, purer and more full,

Drawn in an ether and an element

Instinct and vivid with God. The appetites

Are subject servitors to will, the will

Hearkens to reason and regards its voice—

Reason which is the will of Him who reigns,

Your reason and His will insensibly

Blending to grow incorporate in one.

Such is the kingdom of the Christ of God.

You easily miss it—for it cometh not

With observation; you must look within

To find it—pray that you may find it so."

A mien of something more than majesty

In Stephen as he spoke, transfiguring him;

Conscious authority loftier than pride;

Deep calm which made intensity seem weak;

Slow weight more insupportable than speed;

Passion so pure that its effect was peace,

Beatifying his face; betokened power

Beneath him that supported him, behind

Him that impelled, above him and within

That steadied him immovable, supplied

As from a fountain of omnipotence;

An air breathed round him of prophetic rapt

Solemnity oppressive beyond words

And dread communication from the throne,

Moved near, of the Most High, which only not

Thundered and lightened, as from the touched top

Of Sinai once in witness of the law—

Such might, not Stephen's, wrought with Stephen there

And laid his hearers subject at his feet.

Saul saw the grasp secure that he had laid

Upon his brethren's minds and hearts—to hold,

He proudly, confidently deemed, against

Whatever counter force of eloquence—

This tenure his he saw relaxed, dissolved,

Evanishéd, as it had never been.

Perplexed, astonished, but impenetrable,

Though dashed and damped in spirit and in hope,

Angry he stood, recoiled upon himself.

But Rachel had a different history.

She felt her inmost conscience searched and known;

Sharper than any sword of double edge,

The Word of God through Stephen pierced her heart,

And there asunder clove her self and self.

She heeded Stephen's warning words; she looked

Within, she pressed her hand upon her heart

And prayed, "O God, my God, my fathers' God,

Thy kingdom—grant that I may find it here!"

So praying she listened while farther Stephen spoke:

"That such a Ruler should be such as He

Whom we proclaim, the Man of Nazareth,

The Carpenter, the Man of Calvary,

Affronts your reason, tempts to disbelief—

Doubtless; but all the more shown absolute

His sovereignty, transcendent, passing quite

Limit of precedent or parallel,

As nothing in Him outwardly appears

To soothe your pride in yielding to His claim.

Always the more offended pride rebels,

Is proved his triumph greater who subdues.

Deep is our human heart, and versatile

Exceedingly, ingenious past our ken,

Inventive of contrivances to save

Fond pride from hurt. But here is no escape;

Pride must be hurt and bleed, unsalved her wounds.

She may not conquer crouching, she must crouch

Conquered; nor only so, she must be glad

To be the conquered, not the conqueror;

Thus deeply must the heart abjure itself,

Thus deeply own the mastership of Christ.

Christ will not practise on your self-conceit

And lure you to obey illusively.

Obedience is not obedience

Save as, obeying, you love, loving, obey—

The chief of all obediences, love."

Such serene counter to his own superb

Disdain of Jesus wrought on Saul effect

Diverse from that meanwhile in Rachel wrought.

She yielded to exchange her standing-ground,

And ceased to hold her centre in herself.

Centred in God, she all things new beheld

Translated by the mighty parallax.

Open she threw the portals of her soul

And gave the keys up to her new-found King.

But Saul more stubbornly than ever clamped

His feet to keep them standing where they stood.

Haughty, erect, rebuffing—he alone—

He still stared on at Stephen, who Saul's scorn

Felt subtly like a fierce oppugnant force

Resistlessly attractive to his aim,

As, suddenly soon borne into a swift

Involuntary swerving of his speech—

Himself, with Saul, surprising—he went on:

"Such lord, requiring such obedience,

In Him of Nazareth, a man approved

Of God by many mighty works through Him

Among you done, this day I preach to you,

My brethren all—my brother Saul, to thee!"

Therewith full round on Saul the speaker turned;

That self-same instant, the seraphic sheen

Brightened to dazzling upon Stephen's face;

Saul standing there, transfixed to listen, blenched,

As if a lightning-flash had blinded him.

Then, prophet-wise, like Nathan come before

King David sinner, Stephen, his right hand

And fixed forefinger flickering forth at Saul,

An intense moment centred upon him,

Sole, the converging ardors of his speech—

As who, with lens of cunning convex, draws

Into one focus all the solar rays

Collected to engender burning heat.

Rachel, who saw Saul blench, and full well knew

What pangs on pangs his pride could force him bear—

He smiling blithely while he inly bled—

Watched, with a heart divided in sore pain

Between the sister's pity of his case

And sympathy against him for his sake,

As Stephen thus his speech to Saul addressed:

"Yea, to thee, Saul my brother, in thy flush

And prime of youth and youthful hope, thy joy,

Thy pride, of all-accomplished intellect,

And sense of self-sufficing righteousness—

To thee, thou pupil of Gamaliel, thee,

Thou Hebrew of the Hebrews, Pharisee,

Against the gust and fury of thy zeal,

And in the teeth of thy repellent scorn,

Jesus the crucified I preach thy lord.

Blindly with bitter hate thou ragest now

Against Him; but hereafter, and not long

Hereafter, thou, despite, shalt lie prostrate

Before Him and beneath Him in the dust,

Astonished with His glory sudden shown

Beyond thy power with open eye to see.

Lo, by the Holy Spirit bidden, I

This day plant pricks for thee to kick against.

Cruel shall be the torture in thy breast,

And unto cruel deeds thou didst not dream

The torture in thy breast will madden thee—

The anguish of a mind at strife with good,

A will self-blinded not to cease from sin.

Nevertheless at length I see thee mild—

Broken thy pride, thy wisdom brought to naught,

To thyself hateful thy self righteousness,

Worshipping at His feet whom late thou didst

Persecute in His members, persecute

In me. Lo, with an everlasting love

I long for thee, O Saul, and draw thee, love

Born of that love wherewith the Lord loved me

And gave Himself for me to bitter death."

Rachel her prayer and love and longing joins,

With tears, to Stephen's, for her brother, who,

Conscious of many eyes upon him fixed,

Far other thought, the while, and feeling, broods.

As captain, on the foremost imminent edge

Of battle, leading there a storming van

Of soldiers in some perilous attack,

Pregnant with fate to empire, if he feel

Pierce to a vital part within his frame

Wound of invisible missile from the foe,

Will hide his deadly hurt with mask of smile,

That he damp not his followers' gallant cheer;

Thus, though with motive other, chiefly pride,

Saul, rallying sharply from that first surprise,

Sternly shut up within his secret breast

A poignant pang conceived from Stephen's words,

Resentment fated to bear bitter fruit,

But melt at last in gracious shame and tears.

With fixéd look impassible, he gazed

At Stephen, while, in altered phase, that pure

Effulgence of apostleship burned on:

"Nor, brethren, let this word of mine become

Scandal before your feet to stumble you

Headlong to ruin—'gave Himself for me

To bitter death'—implying it the Christ's

To suffer death in sacrifice for sin.

This is that thing of wonder prophesied,

Confounding to the wisdom of the wise;

A suffering Saviour, a Messiah shamed,

Monarch arrayed in purple robes of scorn,

With diadem of thorns pressed on His brow,

And in His hand for sceptre thrust a reed—

The Lord of life and glory crucified!

"Dim saw perhaps our father Abraham this,

Through symbol and through prophecy contained

In smoking furnace and in blazing torch

Beheld, that evening, when the sun went down

And it was dark. The smoking furnace meant

The mystery of the Messiah's shame

To go before His glory typified

In the clear shining of the torch ablaze.

"Of the same mystery of agony

In sorrow, shame, and death, forerunning dark

The bright and brightening sequel without end

Of the Messiah's work, Isaiah spake,

When he foresaw His coming day from far.

The eagle vision of that seer was dimmed

With tears, like Jeremiah's, to behold

What he beheld—Messiah's visage so

Marred more than any man's, and so His form

More than befell the sons of men. He read,

Within the mirror of his prophecy,

Astonishment depicted in the eyes

Of many—in the eyes of which of you,

My brethren?—at a spectacle so strange.

The melancholy prophet saw a gloom

Of unbelief darken the world. 'What soul,'

Wails he, 'is found to credit our report?

To whom has been revealed Jehovah's arm

In such a wise outstretched to save?' Heart-sick

At what, too clearly for his peace, he sees,

Isaiah, turning from his vision, cries

In pain—consider, brethren, whether ye

Unwittingly fulfil what he portrays!—

'He was despised, rejected was of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted well

With grief; as one from whom men hide their face,

Despised was He, and we esteemed Him not.'

"Now our own gospel hear Isaiah preach,

The good news that such sufferings borne by Him,

Messiah, were for you, for us, for all:

'Surely our griefs they were Messiah bore,

He carried sorrows that were due to us.

Yet we, alas, of Him as stricken thought,

Smitten of God, and for affliction marked!'

"Would God, my brethren, ye who hear these things,

This day, were minded as the prophet was

Who thus from God reported them to you!

He but foresaw them, and he saw them; ye

Saw them, and did not see! And yet, even yet,

Look back, as forward he; lo, touch your eyes

With eyesalve that ye be not blind, but see!

See, with Isaiah, how Messiah was

'Wounded for your transgressions, bruised so sore

For your iniquities, how chastisement

On Him was laid that peace should bring to you,

How stripes whereby He bled to you were health.'

"Meekly and thankfully Isaiah sinks

Himself, one drop, into the human sea,

And says 'we,' 'our,' and 'us'—do ye the same.

O brethren, if this day ye hear His voice,

A whisper only in your ear from heaven,

I pray you, harden not your heart. Confess

Your fault, and say with your own prophet, 'We,

All we, like sheep, have gone astray, astray,

And God on Him hath laid the sin of all.'"

At such expostulation and appeal

Ineffable, found hidden in the words

Of prophecy, Rachel her heart felt fail

Into a pathos of repentance sweet

With love and soft sense of forgiveness, bought

For her at cost so dear!—and she dissolved

In sobs and tears of sorrow exquisite,

Better than joy, and uncontrollable.

The mastership of Jesus now to her

Merged in the sweetness of His saviorship;

The duty of obedience to a Lord

All taken up, transfigured, glorified,

In the transcendent privilege of love.

Never such grief in joy, such joy in grief,

Was hers before—for self was wholly slain

And her whole life grew love unutterable.

Yet longed she, with a hope that half was pain,

For Saul, while Stephen brokenly went on:

"O ye to whom for the last time I speak,

My heart is large for you, it breaks for you,

And melts to tears within me while I plead.

I pray you, I beseech you, in Christ's stead,

Be reconciled to God. Hearken this once

And answer, Were it set your task, in choice

Few words to frame the image and the lot

Of Jesus whom ye slew, how otherwise

More fitly could ye do it than was done

Aforetime by Isaiah when he wrote

Prophetically thus of Christ to be:

'Oppressed He was, yet He abased Himself

And opened not His mouth; even as a lamb

Led to the slaughter, as a sheep before

Her shearers speechless, so He opened not

His mouth. His grave they with the wicked made,

And with the rich they laid Him in His death.'

Say, brethren, was not Jesus very Christ?

"But, that ye err not, Messianic woe

Is not the end; a glorious change succeeds.

Isaiah chanted it in sequel glad

And contrast of the sorrow-laden strain

That mourned Messiah's sufferings; hear the song:

'When thou, Jehovah, shalt His soul have made

An offering for sin, Messiah then

The endless issue of His pain shall see;

Still on and on He shall His days prolong,

And in His hand the pleasure of the Lord

Shall prosper; of the travail of His soul

He shall see fruit and shall be satisfied.'

So, with rejoicing too serenely full

For exultation, sang Isaiah then

Of Messianic glory following shame.

"And now, concerning Jesus whom ye slew,

Know, brethren, that He burst the bands of death,

Which could not hold the Lord of life in thrall.

Know that He, having risen, rose again,

Ascending far above all height, and led

Captive captivity; attended so

With retinue of deliverance numberless,

He entered heaven a Conqueror and a King;

Before Him lifted up their heads the gates,

The everlasting doors admitted Him.

There sits He now associate by the side

Of His Almighty Father, Lord of all.

For to Him every knee shall bow, in heaven,

On earth, and every tongue confess that He,

Jesus, is Lord; Jehovah wills it so.

"Fall, brethren, I adjure you, haste to fall

Betimes upon this stone and bruise your pride;

Wait but too long, this stone will fall on you:

Not then your pride, but you, not bruised will be,

But ground to undistinguishable dust."

So Stephen spoke; and ceased, as loth to cease.

The moments of his speaking had been like

A slow and dreadful imminence of storm.

With those august and awful opening words

Of his, which were not his, but God's, it was

As when an altered elemental mood

Usurps the atmosphere; the winds are laid,

Clouds gather, mass to mass, anon perchance

Roll back, disclosing spaces of clear sky,

But close again, deeper and darker, full

Of thunder, silent yet, of lightning, leashed

From leaping forth, but watchful for its prey.

Such had been Stephen's speaking, boded storm;

His ceasing was the tempest burst at last—

A silent tempest, silent and unseen,

Rending the elements of the world of soul!

Meanwhile the angels in attendance there,

Watching with eyes that see the invisible

Things of the spirit of man within his breast,

The posture and behavior of the mind,

Had seen exhibited amidst that late

Motionless multitude of souls suspense

With supernatural awe, a spectacle

Of consternation and precipitate flight

To covert, such as sometimes is beheld

In nature, when a mighty tempest lowers,

And man, beast, bird, each conscious living thing,

Shuddering, hies to hiding from the wrack.

With wild inaudible outcry heard in heaven,

That shattered congregation, soul by soul,

Each soul its several way, fled, to find shroud

From spiritual tempest hurtling on the head,

Intolerably, hailstones and coals of fire.

But one excepted spirit stood aloof,

Scorning to join the fellowship of flight.

Like a tall pine by whirlwind lonely left

Upon his mountain, forest abject round,

This man dared lift, though sole, a helmless brow

Of stubborn hardihood to take the storm.

Others, dismayed, might flee to refuge; Saul,

Not undismayed, fronted the wrath of God.

Shimei alone there neither stood nor fell;

By habit grovelling, on his belly prone,

Already prostrate he had thither come.

Incapable of awe from good inspired,

He, abject, but without humility,

Ever, by force of reptile nature, crawled;

And now had crawled, as, dusty demon's-heart

And vitreous eye of basilisk, he still—

With equal, though with different, enmity,

Devising death for Stephen in his mind,

And studying slow prolonged revenge for Saul—

Watched all, whatever chanced to either there;

But most, malignantly delighted, watched

Deepen the settled shadow on Saul's face

Cast from the darkness of his inner mood.

BOOK V.

SAUL AND SHIMEI.

Saul, sullen, gloomy, and chagrined, over his discomfiture recently experienced, is visited, in his self-imposed seclusion at home, by Shimei, who, always by nature antipathetic to Saul, hates him virulently now for the affront from him received publicly in the late council. Shimei exasperates Saul with sneering, pretended sympathy for him over his defeat at Stephen's hands; at the same time disclosing the plot he has himself concocted, involving subornation of perjury, with alleged connivance on the part of the Sanhedrim in general, for the stoning of Stephen. Shimei gone, Saul, in the open court of his dwelling, sits solitary, brooding in the depths of dejection over the fallen state of his fortunes.

SAUL AND SHIMEI.

As if one, from some poise of prospect high,

Should overlook below a plain outspread

And see a bright embattled host, in close

Array of antique chivalry, supposed

Invincible, advancing, panoplied,

Horseman and horse, in steel, and with delight

Of battle pricked to speed, he—while that host,

Swift, like one man, across the field of war,

With pennons gay astream upon the wind,

And arms and armor flashing in the sun,

Moved to the sound of martial music brave—

Might ask, "What strength set counter could withstand

The multiplied momentum of such blow?"

And yet, as, let a rock-built citadel

Upspring before them in their conquering way,

And, through embrasures in the frowning wall,

Let enginery of carnage new and strange,

Vomiting smoke and flame from hellish mouths—

Let cannon, with their noise like thunder, belch,

Volleying, their bolts like thunderbolts amain

Among those gallant columns, then would be

Amazement seen, and ruinous overthrow;

So, late, to Saul's superbly confident

Assay of onset all seemed nigh to yield,

Till that the wisdom of the Holy Ghost,

Through Stephen speaking, made the utmost might

Of eloquence ridiculous and vain,

So was the duel all unequal, joined

By Saul with Stephen on that fateful day.

Though not ill matched the champions' native force

And spirit, and not far from even their skill,

Equipment disparate of weaponry—

Human against Divine, infinite odds!—

Made the conclusion of the strife foregone.

Had mortal prowess against prowess been

Between those twain the naked issue tried,

Saul, with his sanguine dash of onset, might

Perchance have won the day—through sheer surprise

Of sudden and impetuous movement swift

Beyond the other's readiness to oppose

An instantaneous rally of quick thought

And lightning-like alertness of stanch will

Mustering and mastering his collected might.

But the event and fortune of that hour

Resolved no doubt which combatant excelled

In wit or will or strength or exercise.

Stephen was fortressed round impregnably,

Saul stood in open field obvious to wound;

Saul wielded weapons of the present world,

Celestial weapons furnished Stephen—nay,

Weapon himself, the Almighty wielded him.

Saul knew himself defeated, overwhelmed.

By how much he had purposed in his heart,

And buoyantly expected, beyond doubt

Or possible peradventure, to prevail,

More than prevail, triumph, abound, redound,

And overflow, with ample surplusage

Of prosperous fortune far transcending all

Public conjecture of his hoped success;

By so much now he found himself instead

Buried beneath discomfiture immense

And boundless inundation of defeat.

For multitudes of new believers won

To Stephen's side from Saul's thronged to the Way,

Storming the kingdom of heaven with violence.

It was a nation hastening to be born,

Like Israel out of Egypt, in a day.

As Israel out of Egypt were baptized

To Moses in the cloud and in the sea,

So Israel out of Israel Saul now saw

Baptized obedient into Jesus' name.

Dissolving round about him seemed to Saul

The earth itself with its inhabitants,

And, to bear up the pillars of it, he

A broken reed that could not stand alone!

But, while thus worsted Saul forlornly felt

Himself, he by whom worsted missed to know.

His challenge was to Stephen; how should he

Guess that in Stephen God would answer him?

Unconsciously with God at enmity,

But with God's servant Stephen consciously,

Saul chafed and raged in proud and blindfold hate;

Half yet, the while, despising too himself,

Detected hating thus, by his own heart

Detected hating, his antagonist,

For the sole blame of visiting on him

The fortune he had purposed to inflict.

Saul in such mood of rancor and remorse

Commingled—both unhappy sentiments

Still mutually exasperating each

The other—Shimei came to him.

Now Saul

And Shimei were two opposites intense

In nature, never toward each other drawn,

But violently ever sent asunder;

Yet chiefly by repulsion lodged in Saul,

Spurning off Shimei, as the good the evil;

For Saul instinctively was noble, frank,

And true, as Shimei instinctively

Was false, profound in guile, to base inclined.

But strangely, since that council wherein Saul

Fulmined his shame on Shimei's proffer vile,

Shimei had felt the other's scorn of him

A force importunate to tempt him nigh—

Perverse attraction in repulsion found!—

As evil ever struggles toward the good,

Not to be leavened with virtue issuing thence,

But leaven instead to likeness with itself.

So Shimei came to Saul, as knowing Saul

Spurned him avaunt with loathing; in degree

Attracted as he was intensely spurned.

He fain would feast his malice on the pride,

Seen writhing, fain would make it writhe the more,

Of Saul in his discomfiture.

With mien

Demure of hypocritic sympathy,

The nauseating vehicle of sneer,

Malignly studied to exacerbate

The galled and angry feeling in Saul's mind,

He thus addressed that haughty Pharisee:

"The outcome of your effort, brother Saul,

To vindicate the cause of truth and God—

And therewithal justly advance somewhat

Your individual profit and esteem

As rising bulwark of the Jewish state,

Whereby so much the better you might hope

Hereafter to promote the general weal—

This spirited attempt, I say, of yours

Has in its issue disappointed you,

You, and your friends no less, who, all of us,

Together with yourself, refused to dream

Aught but the most felicitous event

To enterprise with so much stateliness

Of dignity impressively announced

By you, and show of lofty confidence.

By the way, Saul, the grand air suits your style

Astonishingly well; I should advise

Your cultivation of it. Why, at times,

When you display that absolutely frank

And unaffected lack of modesty

Which marks you, really, now, the effect on me,

Even me, is almost irresistible;

I find myself well-nigh imposed upon

To call it an effect of majesty.

"But, to sustain the impression, Saul, it needs,

Quite needs, that you somehow contrive to shun

These awkward misadventures; the grand air

Is less impressive in a man well known

To have made a bad miscarriage, such as yours.

For in fact you—with sincere pain I say it—

But served to Stephen as a sort of foil

To set his talent off and heighten it.

You must yourself feel this to be the case;

For never since that windy Pentecost

In which we thought we saw the top and turn

To this delirium of delusion touched,

Never, I say, till now were seen so many

New perverts to the Nazarene as seems

You two, between you, you and Stephen, Saul,

Managed, that memorable day, to make.

It is a pity, and I grieve with you.

Still, Saul, let us consider that your case,

Undoubtedly unfortunate, presents

This one alleviating circumstance,

At least, that your defeat demonstrates past

Gainsaying what an arduous attempt

Yours was, and thereby glorifies the more

That admirable headiness of yours

Which egged you on to venture unadvised.

For my own part, I like prodigiously

To see your young man overflow with spirit;

Age will bring wisdom fast enough; but spirit,

Like yours, Saul, comes, when come it does at all,

Born with the man. Never regret that you

Dared nobly; rather hug yourself for that

With pride; pride greater, since, through proof, aware

You really dared more nobly than you knew.

"Some increment too of wisdom you have won

From your experience; not to be despised,

Though ornament rather of age than youth.

I may presume you now less indisposed

Than late you were, to reinforce, support,

And supplement mere obstinacy—fine,

Of course, as I have said, yet attribute

Common to man with beast—by counsel ripe

And scheme of well-considered policy,

Adapted to secure your end with ease.

Economy of effort well befits

Man, the express image and counterpart

Of God, who always works with parsimony,

Compassing greatest ends with smallest means,

To waste no particle of omnipotence.

"Count now that you have rendered plain enough

What single-eyed, straightforward stubbornness

Can, and cannot, effect in this behalf;

So much is gained; now be our conscience clear

To cast about and find some other means,

Than mere main strength in public controversy,

Of dealing with these raw recalcitrants.

They lacked the grace to be discomfited

In honorable combat fairly joined,

Let them now look to it how much their gross

Effrontery in overthrowing you

Shall profit them at last. I have a scheme"—

"Your scheme,"—so, from the depths of his chagrin

And anguish at the contact of the man,

Spoke Saul, unwilling longer to endure

The friction and abrasion of his words—

"Your scheme, whatever it may be, cannot

Concern my knowing; nothing you should plan

Were likely to conciliate in me

Either my judgment, or my taste, or please

My sense of what becoming is and right.

I pray you spare yourself the pains to unfold

Further to me your thought; your work were waste."

But Shimei, naught abashed, nay, rather more

Set on, imagining that he touched in Saul

The quick of suffering sensibility

Replied:

"Yea, brother Saul, I did not fail

In our late session to observe what you

Hinted of your unreadiness to accord

Your valuable support to my advice,

Advanced on that occasion loyally

However far outrunning what the most

Were then prepared frankly to act upon.

We weaker, Saul, who may not hope to be

Athletes like you, whose sole resource must lie

In studying more profoundly than the rest,

Are liable to be misunderstood

Not seldom, when, through meditation deep

And painful, we arrive to see somewhat

Beyond the common, and propound advice

Startling, because some stages in advance

Of the conclusions less laborious minds

Reach and stop at contented—for a while,

But which mere halting-places on the road

Prove in the end, and not the final goal.

You probably remember, when I told

The council that some good judicious guile

Was what was needed, not one voice spoke up

To second my suggestion. Very well,

The lagging rear of wisdom has since then

Moved bravely up to step with me, and now

We walk along abreast harmoniously

Upon the very road I pointed out;

'Guile' is the word with all the Sanhedrim.

"But stay, you may perhaps not be apprised

Exactly of the current state of things—

You have kept yourself, you know, a bit retired

These few days past, a natural thing to do,

Under the circumstances, all admit—

Well, we have made some progress; I myself,

To imitate your lack of modesty

And don the egotistic, I myself

Have not been idle; all in fact is now

Adjusted on a plan of compromise,

My own invention, everybody pleased.

We shall dispose of Stephen for you, Saul:

Council; Stephen arrested and arraigned;

Production of effective testimony;

A hearing of the accused; commotion raised,

While he is speaking, to help on his zeal;

Then, at the proper point, some heated phrase

Of his let slip, a sudden rush of all

Upon him with a cry of 'Blasphemy!'—

Impulse of passionate enthusiasm,

You know, premeditated with much care—

And he is stoned; which makes an end of him.

Such is the outline; not precisely what

I could have wished, a little too much noise,

The Mattathias tinge in it too strong—

Still, everything considered, fairly good.

The moment favors; for the very fume

And fury of the popular caprice

Has put it out of breath; nay, for the nonce,

The wind sits, such at least my hope is, veered

And shifted points enough about to bear

A touch of generous violence from us;

Then, as for those our rulers, they connive.

"You see I have been open to admit

Ideas the very opposite of my own.

I am not one to haggle for a point

Simply because it happened to be mine.

The end, the end, is what we seek; the means

Signifies nothing to the wise. 'Let us

Be wise,' as our friend Nicodemus said,

That day, with so much gnomic wisdom couched

In affable cohortative, as who

Should say encouragingly, 'Go to, good friends,

Let us be gods'; wisdom and godship come,

As everybody knows, with equal ease

Indifferently, through simple conative,

'Let us,' and so forth, and the thing is done."

This voluble and festive cynicism,

Taking fresh head again and yet again,

At intervals, to flow an endless stream,

From Shimei's mouth, of bitter pleasantry;

His vulgarly-presumed familiar airs

And leer of mutual understanding, felt

Rather than seen, upon his countenance;

The gurgling glee of self-complacency

That purred, one long susurrus, through his talk;

The insufferable assumption tacitly

Implied that human virtue was a jest

At which the wise between themselves might grin

Nor hide their grin with a decorous veil;

These things in his unwelcome guest, traits all

Inseparably adhering to the man,

Or fibre of his nature, Saul recoiled

From, and revolted at, habitually:

They rendered Shimei's very neighborhood

An insupportable disgust to him.

Still did some fascination Shimei owned,

Perhaps a show of wit in mockery,

Playing upon a momentary mood

Of uncharacteristic helplessness in Saul

(A humor too of wilfulness and spite

Against himself displacent with himself

That made him hold his sore and quivering pride

Hard to the goad that hurt it) keep him mute,

If listless, while thus Shimei streamed on:

"Well, as I said, friend Saul, I had no pride

To carry an opinion of my own;

The scheme I brooded was a compromise.

I plume myself upon a certain skill

I have, knack I should call it, in this line.

I like a pretty piece of joinery

In plot, such match of motley odds and ends

As tickles you with sense of happy hit,

And here you have it. See, I take a bit

Of magisterial statesmanship to start

With—go to Rome, as Caiaphas advised,

Though not quite on his errand; Rome agrees

To wink, while we indulge ourselves in what

To us will be self-rule resumed, to her,

A spasm of our Judæan savagery.

Thus is the way made eligibly clear

For brother Mattathias with those stones

He raves about on all occasions—rubbed

Smooth, they must be, as David's from the brook,

With constant wear in Mattathias' hands!

Was it not grim to hear him talk that day?

His dream of Maccabæan blood aboil

Within his veins has been too much for him,

Made him a monomaniac on this point;

He sees before him visionary stones,

Imponderable stones torment his hands;

Give him his chance, have him at last let fly

A real stone, a hard one, at somebody,

Who knows? it might bring Mattathias round.

Stephen at any rate shall be his man,

His corpus vile, as our masters say—

Fair game of turn and turn about for him,

Dog, to have handled you so roughly, Saul!

Trick of Beelzebub, no manner of doubt.

"But here I loiter, while you burn of course

To hear what figure you yourself may cut

In my brave patchwork scheme of compromise.

I modestly adjoin myself to Saul,

And so we two go in together, paired—

A little of your logic let into

A little of my guile, and a fine fit."

Shimei had counted for a master stroke

Of disagreeable humor sure to tell

On Saul, the piecing of himself on him

In plan, conscious of Saul's antipathy.

But Shimei still misapprehended Saul,

Lacking the standard in himself wherewith

To measure or assay the sentiment

Of such as Saul for such as Shimei.

Saul simply and serenely so despised

Shimei, that nothing he should do or say

Could change Saul's sentiment to more, or less,

Or other, than it constantly abode,

The absolute zero of indifference.

Half absently, through fits of alien thought,

And half with unconfessed concern to know

What passed among his fellow-councillors

Abroad, a little curious too withal

Wondering how any artifice of fraud

Could Saul with Shimei combine, to make

Such twain seem partners of one policy—

So minded, Saul gave ear, while Shimei thus

The acrid juices of his humor spilled:

"Here is the method of the joinery.

You know you put it strongly that the end

Of that pretended gospel which they preach,

Would be to overturn the Jewish state,

Abolishing Moses, and extinguishing

The glory of the temple, and all that—

Really sonorous rhetoric it was,

That passage, Saul, and it deserved to win;

But who can win against Beelzebub?

Logic turned rhetoric is my idea

Of eloquence, and my idea you

Realized; but Stephen, without eloquence,

Bore off from you the fruit of eloquence:

Never mind, Saul, it was Beelzebub.

Let rhetoric now go back to logic; you

Demonstrated so inexpugnably

The necessary inference contained

In Stephen's doctrine, hardly were it guile—

Though doubtless you will call it such, you have

Your sublimated notions on these points—

To say outright that Stephen taught the things

You proved implicit in the things he taught;

At all events, guile or no guile—in fact,

Guile and no guile it is, if closely scanned—

Here is the scheme:—We find some blunderheads,

Who, primed with method for their blundering,

Will misremember and transfer from you

To Stephen what you stated on this point.

These worthies then shall roundly testify

Before our honorable body met

To give the fellow his fair hearing ere

His sentence—said fair hearing not of course

Eventually to affect said sentence due—

Shall, I say, swear that they distinctly heard

Stephen set forth that Jesus Nazarene

Was going to destroy this place and change

The customs Moses gave us; bring about

In brief precisely what, with so much force,

You showed would surely happen"—

"Shimei"—

Saul interrupted Shimei again,

Surprised into expression by the shock

To hear himself mixed up in any way,

Of indirection even, in fraud like this—

"Shimei, I thought that nothing you could say

Would further tempt me into speech to you;

But you have broken my bond of self-restraint.

Suborning perjury! That well accords

With what you slanted at in council once,

And what I trusted I had then and there

Made clear my scorn of. Shimei, hear—I set

My heel upon this thing and once for all

Grind it into the dust."

"In figure, of course,"

Promptly leered Shimei, interrupting Saul;

"The thing goes forward just the same; you set

It under foot—in your rhetorical way;

I, in my practical way, set it on foot;

No mutual interference, each well pleased.

"But, seriously, Saul, you overwork

The idea of conscience. What is conscience? Mere

Self-will assuming virtuous airs. A term

Cajoles you into making it a point

Of moral obligation to be stiff.

Limber up, Saul, and be adjustable.

Capacity of taking several points

Of view at will is good. For instance, now,

Probably Stephen may, at various times,

Himself have stated quite explicitly

What your rhetorical logic showed to be

Inextricably held as inference

In his harangues. Take it so, Saul, if so

Render your conscience easier; I myself

Highly enjoy my easy conscience. Still,

Nothing could be more natural than that some,

Hearers non-critical, you know, should mix

What you said with what Stephen said, and so

Quite honestly swear falsely—to the gain

Of truth. And to whose loss? Stephen's, perhaps,

But other's, none. So, salve your conscience, Saul—

Which somehow you must learn, and soon, to do;

Unless you mean to play obstructionist,

Instead of coadjutor, in the work

You, with good motive, but with scurvy luck,

Set about doing late so lustily.

Conscience itself is to be sacrificed,

At need, to serve the cause of righteousness.

What is it but egregious egotism

To obtrude, forsooth, a point of conscience, when

You jeopard general interests thereby?

One's conscience is a private matter; let

Your conscience wince a little, if need be,

In order that the public good be served.

That is true generosity. 'Let us

Be just,' said Nicodemus; good, say I,

But in this matter of our consciences,

Let us go further and be generous."

As one who turns a stopcock and arrests

A flow of water that need never cease,

So Shimei left off speaking, not less full

Of matter than at first that might be speech.

With indescribable smirk, and cynic sneer

Conveyed, sirocco breath of blight to faith

In virtue and in good, he went away,

Cheering himself that he had somewhat chilled

Within the breast of that young Pharisee

The ardor of conviction, and of hope

Fed by conviction,—but still more that he

Had probed and hurt the festering wounds of pride.

Saul's first relief to be alone again,

Rid of that nauseous presence, presently

Was followed by depression and relapse

From his instinctive tension to resist

The unnerving spell of Shimei's influence.

Saul found that in the teeth of his contempt

For Shimei, absolute in measure, nay,

By reason of that contempt, he had conceived

Shame and chagrin beyond his strength to bear.

That Shimei, such as Shimei, should have dared

To visit Saul, and drill and drill his ears,

With indefatigable screw of tongue

Sinking a shaft through which to drench and drown

His soul with spew from out a source so vile—

This argued fall indeed for him from what

He lately was, from what he hoped to be,

Far more, in popular repute. The sting

That Shimei purposed subtly to infix,

With that malicious irony and taunt

Recurrent, the intentional affront,

All of it, failed, blunted and turned in point

Against the safe impenetrable mail

Of Saul's contempt for Shimei. But that

Which Shimei meant not, nor dreamed, but was,

Went through and through Saul's double panoply,

Found permeable now, of pride and scorn,

And wilted him with self-disparagement.

He marvelled at himself how he had not,

At first forthputting of that impudence,

Stormed the wretch dumb, with hurricane outburst

Of passionate scorn; a quick revulsion then,

And Saul was chafing that he had so far

Grace of rebuff vouchsafed, and honest heat,

To creature lacking natural sense to feel

Repudiation. Comfort none he found,

No refuge from the persecuting though

Of his own fall. He tried to brace himself

With thinking, "If I failed, I failed at least

Not for myself, but God; I strove for God."

But, ceaselessly, the image of himself,

Humiliated, swam between to blur

His vision of God. He could not cease to see

Saul ever, in the mirror of his mind,

And ever Stephen shadowing Saul's fair fame.

BOOK VI.

SAUL AND RACHEL.

To Saul, wrapt in his gloomy contemplations, Rachel unobtrusively presents herself. Conversation ensues between them, and Saul confides to his sister his own most secret purposes and hopes, dashed now so cruelly. The fact, however, at length comes out that Rachel was herself converted to Christianity as a result of Stephen's reply to Saul. Saul instantly hereon experiences a violent revulsion of feeling. He breaks away from Rachel, spurning her, and breathing out threatening and slaughter against the Christian church.

SAUL AND RACHEL.

Saul thus forlorn, a voice smote on his ear,

Voice other than of Shimei, clear and sweet;

The very sound was balsam to his pain.

Rachel's the voice was, who, with deep distaste,

As jealous for her brother, had perceived

The entering in to Saul of his late guest

Ill-favored, and through all his stay had still,

Impatiently awaiting, wished him sped.

He now some moments gone, she issued forth

From out her curtained chamber glimpsing gay

Behind her, through the hangings, as she passed,

With color—stuff of scarlet, linen fine

Embroidered, weft of purple tapestry,

Her handiwork—and sending after her

Sweet scent of herb and flower, her husbandry—

Forth issued, and across the inner court

Open to heaven—small close of paradise,

A tall palm by a fountain, bloomy shrubs,

And vines that clad with green the enclosing walls—

Stepped lightly to Saul's side. Saul sat beneath

A tent-cloth canopy outspread, his own

Tent-making skill—the high noon of the sun

To fend, if place perchance one then might wish

In which free air to breathe safe from the heat—

There sat relapsed, deep brooding gloomy thoughts,

When now his sister pausing stood by him.

A lovely vision! Moving, or at rest,

Ever a rapture Rachel seemed of grace

Which but that moment that felicity

Of posture or of gesture had attained,

By accident, yet kept it, through all change,

Inalienably hers, by right divine

Of inward rhythm that swayed her heart in tune.

The sister had, with love's observance, watched

Some days the phases of her brother's mood,

Biding her time to speak; and now she spoke.

"Brother," she murmured softly, "thou art sad.

Thy brow is written over like a scroll

With lines of trouble that I try to read.

Unbind thy heart, I pray, to me, who grieve

To see thee grieve, and fain at least would share

Such brother's sorrow as I may not soothe."

This suave appeal of sister's sympathy

Won upon Saul to wean him from himself—

A moment, and that moment he partook

Comfort of love, nepenthe to his pain,

While thus he answered Rachel:

"Nay, but thou,

My sister, thou thyself art to me rest

And solace. Sit thee down, I pray, beside

Thy brother. But to have thee nigh as now

Refreshes like the dew. I bathe my heart

In thee as in a fountain. Ask me not

To ease its aching otherwise than so.

Pillow me on thy love and let me rest

In silence from the sound of my own voice.

I hate myself, Rachel."

"But I love thee,

My own dear, noble brother," Rachel said;

"I love thee, and I will not let thee hate

Thyself. Brother and sister should be one

In love and hate. Hate what I hate, and what

I love, love thou—that is true brotherhood."

"Safe law of brotherhood indeed for me,

With thee for sister, Rachel," Saul replied,

With fondness and self-pity, as he kissed

The pure young brow upturned toward him; "but me,

Thou dost not know me as I know myself."

"O nay, but better, brother," Rachel said;

"Right hate is good, as good as love. So, hate,

But not thyself, Saul. Shall I tell thee one

To hate? I hate him, and I counsel thee,

Hate, Saul, that evil man I saw but now

Steal from his too long privilege at thine ear."

"Him, Rachel," Saul replied, "I cannot hate;

Hatred is made impossible by scorn."

"Thou scornest him," she said, "but not too much

To have been disturbed by him. The cloudy brow,

So unlike my brother—I have brought it back,

I see, dear Saul, by only mentioning him.

Hate him well, Saul, and be at peace again.

To hate is safer, better, than to scorn.

We scorn with pride, we must with conscience hate,

Such hating as I mean. Thou art too proud, Saul."

Saul answered, "For my pride I hate myself."

But she: "Were it not wiselier done to hate

One's pride, than for one's pride to hate one's self?

Whoever hates himself for his own pride

Still keeps the pride for which he hates himself.

Hate and abjure thy pride, and love thyself."

"Easy to say, O Rachel, hard to do,"

Sighed Saul,—"at least for such as I, who am

Too proud, too proud! Thou seest that after all

Thou and myself know Saul alike, too proud,

Albeit the too proud man we treat unlike,

Thou loving and I hating him."

"O Saul,"

Thus spoke she, gazing steadfastly at him,

But sudden-starting tears swam in her eyes,

"O Saul, Saul, Saul, my brother, whence is this?

Thou wert not wont to talk thus. Changed art thou

Since when I heard thee speak in that dispute

With Stephen—"

"Thou heard'st me?" asked Saul.

"Yea, Saul,"

Rachel replied, "I heard both thee and him."

(Saul proudly hid an answering hurt of pride.)

"I heard thee, brother, and was proud for thee;

I never knew more masterful high speech

Fall from thy lips. My heart leaped up for joy

To listen. When those men of Israel

Shouted, I shouted with them, silently,

Louder than all. God heard the secret noise,

Like thunder, of the beating of my heart

In sister's pride for brother's victory.

I crowned thee, I anointed thee my king,

So glorious wast thou in thy conquering might!

And that effulgent pride upon thy brow!"

"But when," said Saul, forestalling ruefully

The expected and the dreaded change and fall

From such a chanted pæan to his praise—

"But when"—

"But when, O Saul," she said, "when he,

Stephen, stood forth to answer thee, there was—

Didst thou not feel it?—"

"Sister, yea, I felt,

More than my sister even could feel, that I

Was baffled, put to shame."

"Nay, nay," she said;

"Not that, O Saul, dear Saul, it was not that."

"What, then? For I felt nothing else," said Saul;

"That feeling filled me, as sometimes the sound

And stir of whirlwind fill the firmament.

My mind was one mad vortex swallowing up

All other thought than this, 'Saul, thou art shamed!'"

"Why, Saul," cried she, "what canst thou mean? Thou shamed?

How shamed?"

"Rachel, I lost, and Stephen won."

"What didst thou lose?" said Rachel, wonderingly;

"And what did Stephen win, that also thou

Won'st not? I cannot understand thee, Saul."

Such crystal clearness of simplicity

Became a mirror, wherein gazing, Saul

Beheld himself a double-minded man.

How should he deal with questioner like this?

"Why, Rachel, canst thou then not understand,"

He said, "how I should wish to conquer?"

"Yea,"

Said she, "for truth's sake, Saul. And still, if truth

Conquered, though not by thee, thou wouldst be glad,

Wouldst thou not, Saul? Here sad I see thee now,

As if truth's cause were fallen—which could not be,

Since truth is God's—and yet thou sayest not that,

But, 'Saul is shamed!' and, 'Saul has lost!' Not truth,

But Saul. I cannot understand. Thou hadst

Perhaps, unknown to me, some other end

Than only truth, which also thou wouldst gain?"

It was his sister's single-heartedness

That helped her see so true and aim so fair.

Saul was too noble not to meet her trust

In him with trust in her as absolute.

"Rachel," he said, his reverence almost awe,

"Never did burnished metal give me back

Myself more truly, outer face and form,

Than the pure tranquil mirror of thy soul

Shows me the image of my inner self.

The truth I see by thee is justly thine,

And thou likewise shalt see it all in all.

"The law of God was ever my delight,

As thou knowest, sister, who hast seen me pore

Daily from boyhood on the sacred scroll

Of Scripture, eager to transfer it whole

Unto the living tablets of my heart.

And I have sought, how earnestly thou knowest

To make my life a copy of the law.

No jot or tittle of it was too small

For me to heed with scruple and obey.

With all my heart was I a Pharisee,

Born such, bred such, and such by deep belief.

"But more, my sister. Musing on the world,

I saw one nation among nations, one

Alone, no fellow, worshipper of God,

The True, the Only, and by Him elect

To be His people and receive His law;

That nation was my nation. My heart burned,

Beholding in the visions of my head,

The glory that should be, and was not, ours.

Think of it, sister, God Himself our King,

And bondmen we of the uncircumcised!

I brooded on the shame and mystery

With anguish in the silences of night.

I saw the image of a mighty state

Loom possible before me. Her august

And beautiful proportions, builded tall

And noble, rested on foundation-stones

Of sapphire, and in colors fair they rose;

Her pinnacles were rubies, and her gates

Carbuncles—I beheld Jerusalem,

The city of Isaiah's prophecy;

Her borders round about were pleasant stones.

She sat the queen and empress of the earth;

The tributary nations, of their store,

Poured wealth into her lap, and vassal kings

Hasted in long procession to her feet.

The throne and majesty of God in her

Held capital seat, or his vicegerent Christ

Reigned with reflected splendor scarce less bright.

Such, sister, was the dream in which I lived,

Dream call it, but it is the will of God,

More solid than the pillared firmament.

"Was it a fault of foolish pride in me,

Did I aspire audaciously, to hope

That I, by doing and by daring much,

Beyond my equals, might beyond them share

Fulfilments such as these? I heard a voice

Saying, 'Prepare the Lord His way.' I thought

The Lord was near, and what I could, I would

Do to make wide and smooth and straight His way

Before Him, ere He came. I trusted Him

That, when He came, He in His hands would bring

Large recompense for servants faithful found,

And not forget even Saul, should haply Saul

Not utterly in vain prove to have striven,

Removing from the path of His approach

The stone of stumbling.

"Sister, these are thoughts

Such as men have, but cherish secretly,

Even from themselves, and never speak aloud

To any; I have now not spoken these

To thee; thou hast but heard a few heart-beats

Rendered articulate breath by grace of right

Thine own to know the truth, who hast the truth

Revealed to me.

"O other conscience mine,

Wherein have I gone wrong? I felt the power,

Asleep within me, stirring half awake,

To take possession of the minds of men

And sway their wills; the world was not too wide

To be the empire I could rule aright,

As chiefest minister, were such His will,

Of God's Messiah. Some one needs must sit

At His right hand to hear and execute

His pleasure—why not Saul? Who worthier?

But now, alas! less worthy who, or who

Less likely? I am fallen, am shamed—past hope,

Past hope! I who aspired to greatest things

Am to least things by proof unequal found!

How shall I not hate Stephen, who has wrought

On me this great despite—besides what he

Wrought on the suffering cause of truth divine?"

Rachel's heart heaved, but in what words to speak

She did not find. Saul into his dark mood

Retired, and sat in silence for a while.

Returning, then, for torture of himself,

To that which Rachel brokenly began

To say, and left unsaid, Saul asked of her:

"What was it, sister, thou beganst to tell,

When, not thy brother, but thy brother's spleen,

Broke thy words off with interruption rude?

Something it seemed of how, at Stephen's words,

A change fell on thee, from thy first applause

Of me—"

"O Saul! A chasm of difference,"

So to her brother, Rachel sad burst forth,

"Yawns betwixt thee and me this day, how wide,

How wide! I feel the bond of sisterhood,

Stretching across, not strained to break—for that

Shall never, never be, in any world,

O brother, truest, noblest, best beloved!—

But strained to draw thee to me where I am

From where thou art, far off, albeit so near!"

"A tragic riddle which I fail to read,

Rachel," said Saul, perplexed; "solve thou it me."

"Brother, I fear I cannot," Rachel said;

"But loyally I will try. When Stephen stood

To answer thee that day, a power not he

Oppressed my spirit with a sense of weight,

Gentle but insupportable, which grew

Instantly greater and greater, until it seemed

Ready to crush, unless I yielded; Saul,

I yielded, and that weight became as might

Which passed to underneath me and upbore."

"Rachel, be simpler," Saul severely said;

"My soul refuses to be teased with words.

Meanest thou this, that Stephen mastered thee?"

"Nay, Saul, my brother," meekly Rachel said,

Meekly and firmly; "Stephen not, but God.

No man could master me away from Saul.

Proudly I was thy vassal sister, Saul,

Until God summoned me with voice that I

Might not resist; God's vassal am I now,

But sister still to thee, and loyal, Saul,

Beyond all measure of that loyalty

I held before, which made me proud of thee,

And glad of thee, and spurred me on to praise

My brother as the paragon of men.

O Saul—"

"Nay, Rachel," Saul said, with a tone

Repressive more than the repressive words,

"I will not hear thee further in this vein.

Thou art a woman, and I must not blame

Thy weakness; sister too to me thou art,

And I will not misdoubt thy love; but thou

Hast added the last drop of bitterness

To the crowned cup of grief and shame poured out

For me to drink. Go, Rachel, muse on this:

A brother leaned an aching, aching heart

Upon a sister's bosom to be eased,

And that one pillow out of all the world

To me, that trusted downy softness, hid

The cruelest subtle unsuspected thorn.

Saul's sister a disciple and a dupe

Of those that preach the son of Joseph, Christ!

And this, forsooth, the fruit that was to be

Of Saul's aspiring trust to strike the stroke

That in one day should crush the wretched creed!

Rachel, methinks thou mightst have spared me this!

But nay, my sister, better is it so.

Haply no barb less keen had stung me back

To my old self and made me Saul again—

The weakling that I was, to pule and weep,

As if the cause were lost and all were lost!

I thank thee, sister, thou hast done me good,

Like medicine—like bitter medicine!

Tell me true, Rachel, thou didst feign me this,

To rouse me from my late unmanly swoon.

That is past now; I rise refreshed and strong,

I see my path before me, stretching straight,

I enter it to tread it to the end.

Doubt not but I shall feel the wholesome hurt

Of the shrewd spur my sister, with wise heart

Of hardness, plunged full deep into my side

Betimes, when I was drooping nigh to sink.

Peace to thee, sister, cheer thee with this thought,

'I saved my brother from the last disgrace

By a disgrace next to the last—it was

A hard way, but the only, and it sped!'"

Such cruel irony from her brother cut

The tender heart of Rachel like a knife.

But more for Saul she grieved than for herself;

She knew that naught but anguish of chagrin

The sharpest could have tortured out from him,

So noble and so gentle, any taunt.

From sheer compassion of his misery,

She wept, and said:

"O Saul, Saul, Saul—"

But he:

"Rachel, no more; already deep enough,

I judge, for present use, the iron has gone;

I shall not falter; thou mayst safely spare

To drive it deeper now—it rankles home.

And surely, if hereafter I should feel,

At some weak woman's moment, any touch

Of foolish tenderness to make me pause

Relaxing and relenting from my course—

A sad course, Rachel, traced in blood and tears!—

Should ever such a softness steal on me,

Surely I should but need remember thee,

Thou younger playmate of my boyhood! thee,

Mirror, that was, of saintly sisterhood!

Loveliest among the daughters of thy race

Once, to thy brother! fountain flowing free

Of gladness, never sadness, unto him!—

Never of sadness until now, but now—

O Rachel, Rachel, sister, changed this day

From all thou wert to what I will not name—

Surely I shall but need bring back this hour,

And let the image of my sister pass—

O broken image of all loveliness,

Distained and broken!—pass before my eyes,

As here I see her, separate from me

Forever, and outcast from God—that thought,

That image, shall make brass the heart of Saul,

And his nerve iron, to smite and smite again,

Until no wily Stephen shall remain

For any silly Rachel to obey!"

Fierce so outbreathing threat and slaughter, Saul

In bitterness of spirit broke away.

BOOK VII.

STEPHEN AND RUTH.

Rachel in dismay soliloquizes. She at length resolves on conveying to Stephen, through Ruth, his wife, a warning of his danger. Ruth, not a Christian, expostulates with her husband, attempting to dissuade him from his course—a course certain, she says, to end fatally for him. After a gentle, long, anguished effort on his part to bring Ruth to sympathy with himself in his Christian faith, Stephen parts from her with presentiment that it is never to return. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, he takes his way from Bethany, where his home is, to Jerusalem. His friends. Martha and Mary, with their brother Lazarus, see him going, and follow.

STEPHEN AND RUTH.

Rudely thus parted from his sister, Saul

Straightway sought certain of his synagogue—

The synagogue of the Cilicians—men

Less alien from himself than Shimei was

In spirit, while compatriot too by birth

As was not Shimei, an Asian he—

And these made privy to his changed resolve.

They, glad of such adhesion, opened free

Their counsel to him, telling, with grimace

Added, and shrug of shoulder, to attest

Their scorn of Shimei, Shimei's scheme, which they

Sourly, as from compulsion, now took up.

Saul, swallowing a great throe of innermost

Revolt that well-nigh mastered him, subscribed

Himself, by silence, partner of their deed.

Rachel, spurned from him by her brother, sat

Moveless a while, the image of dismay,

Her two ears caves of roaring sound, her mind

A whirling void of sheer astonishment.

When presently the storm a little calmed

Within her, and she knew herself once more,

She cleared her thought by settling it in words—

Words which through fluent mood and mood changed swift

From passionate soliloquy to prayer,

And from prayer back to soft soliloquy:

"My brother shall not excommunicate

His sister! While I love him he is mine,

And I shall not be 'separate' from him

'Forever'—let him hate me as he will,

Who hates himself, and otherwise amiss

Hates liberally. Why did I let him go?

I should have held him, should have told him I

Am of one blood with him, as high as he

In spirit; though a 'woman,' not to be

Put down; he gave me right, with speech like that,

To equal him in stinging word for word.

I could have done it. Woman am I? Yea,

And Deborah was a woman, Miriam too.

I feel my blood a-tingle in my veins

With lust to have him back, and make him know

The lion with the lamb lies down in me

Together; and I showed him but the lamb!

The lion rouses late, occasion gone!

Did he cow me? So tamely I endured

His contumely! Anger none till now,

Nor shame not to be angry at such speech

From him; but now—anger with burning shame

Turns inward and incenses me like fire.

I scorn myself for that, reed-like, my head

I bowed before the tempest of his scorn,

When blast for blast I should have blown him back

His tempest."

Rachel's indignation so

Like a sea wrought and was tempestuous.

But the recoil of her own violent speech

First gave her pause, then pierced her with remorse.

Daily, from when she, hearing Stephen speak,

Heard God through Stephen speaking, and obeyed,

Rachel, first having in baptism testified

Her death to sin, her birth to righteousness—

Never her absent brother dreaming it—

Gladsome had broken bread of fellowship

With the disciples of the Lord, and learned,

Both from their lips and from their lives beheld,

Deep lessons in the lore of Jesus, apt

By the tuition of the Holy Ghost.

The better spirit, for a moment lost,

So lately made her own, came back to her.

Sadly she mused, recalling her hot words

Of passion:

"'Tempest'? Tempest sure just now

Hummed in me. 'Scorn myself'? What word was that?

Rachel forsooth forbade Saul saying, 'I hate

Myself'—and scorn herself does she, yea, here

Sit impotently brooding scorn for scorn

To rival him? Surely I missed my way.

'Scorn,' 'hate,' one spirit both these speak, such scorn

Such hate, in him, in me. One spirit both,

And that the spirit of this world, not His,

Not Christ's, no spirit of Thine, O Crucified,

Thou meek and lowly holy Lamb of God!

Forgive, forgive me, from Thy cross of shame

And passion, O Thou suffering Son of God!

Once prayedst Thou thence for those that murdered Thee,

'Father, forgive them, for they know not what

They do.' I knew not what I did when so

I crucified Thee afresh through shameful pride.

My heart breaks with my sorrow for my sin,

A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord,

Thou never wilt despise.

"And now yet more

My heart breaks with forgiveness poured on me.

O sweet and blessed flood, pour on me still!

Deliciously I tremble and rejoice.

To be thus broken is bliss more to me

Than to be whole. I love to lie dissolved,

Dissolving, under this soft fall of peace

Distilled like dew from out Thy bleeding heart!

Lo, here I wholly, wholly, wholly yield

To Thee, O Christ, am fluid utterly,

To take whatever shape Thee best may please.

Remake me after Thine own image, Lord!

"I pray Thee for my brother. Suffer not

That he act out his purposed madness. Save,

O save him from that dreadful sin he means

Against Thee and against Thy holy cause.

I cannot bear it, that my brother rage

Against Thee like the heathen. Thou art strong,

O Christ! I pray Thee—Thee I pray, O Christ,

Thee only, for none other can—meet Thou

And master Saul! His sister pleads with Thee;

I plead for his sake, he being dear to me,

But more for Thine own name and glory's sake,

And for Thy suffering cause!

I thank Thee, Lord,

With joyful tears, I thank Thee, gracious Lord,

That Thou restrainedst me dumb with silence then

When Saul spake evil of me—for Thy sake.

Through Thee, Who, when reviled, reviledst not

Again, through Thee, through Thee, I, also I,

Proud foolish Rachel, then refrained from words!

No taunt retorted, no reproach, no blame,

Stung him from me to sin; I thank Thee, Lord,

For that!

"Now is there naught that I may do?

May I not warn that prophet Stephen? Saul

Wildly foreshadowed harm himself might wreak

On him; and what meant Shimei's visit here?

Mischief, no doubt of that; collusion strange,

Incredible, impossible, such twain,

That Shimei and my brother! I will go

And talk with Stephen's wife, her, what I can,

Without disloyalty to Saul, stir up

To fear for Stephen's safety; he need not,

Surely, dauntless high prophet of the Lord

Although he be, still ready-girt to die,

Rush blindfold into danger unforewarned."

So to the house of Stephen Rachel went

With haste, and there, in darkened words to Ruth,

Perturbed her woman's breast with vague alarms:

'Her husband must of stratagem beware,

And even of violence, aimed against his life.'

Stephen, by Ruth his wife, of all advised,

Armed him his heart to face what must befall.

Ruth shook him to the centre of his soul

With storms of wife's complaints and love and tears:

"Nay, Stephen, many a time, bear witness thou,

My heart before she came misgave me sore;

But now, since Rachel's words, no peace I find

Concerning thee, in this thy wilful way

Wherein thou goest—whither, I know not, whence,

Too well I know, for from a home thou goest

Once happy, ere this madness came on thee!"

Sharply so Stephen's wife upbraided him.

Gravely and gently he admonished her:

"Name it not madness, woman, lest thereby

Thou sin that sin against the Holy Ghost.

No madness is it when the soul of man

Is sovereignly usurped by the Most High

To be the organ of Almighty Will.

I yield myself, nay, Ruth, I join myself,

To God—no blind unsharing instrument,

But joyful partner of His purposes."

Solemnly chided so, Ruth quick replied:

"And what if of His purposes one be

To let thee plunge, as headstrong, so headlong,

Thy way to bloody death, thou stiff-necked man?

Thou hearest what Rachel brings us, doubtful hint

Indeed, but therefore in itself to me

Only more fearful; and how fearful joined

To what thyself confessest thou of late,

With thine own ears, hast, from the public mouth,

Heard—instigated whisper, Shimei's brew,

Accusing thee of treason to the hope

Of Israel, and purpose to destroy

The temple, and the customs do away

Which Moses left us! Stephen, all these signs

Singly, much more together, point one way—

They threaten death to thee, if thou persist

To preach things hateful to the wise and good."

Ruth intermitted, and her husband said:

"The danger, Ruth, I know, but I must not,

For danger, slack obedience to my Lord."

Then Ruth said:

"But I only ask that thou

Now, for a little, prudently abide

In hiding till this storm be overpast."

He, with a glance of irony, replied:

"And always run to covert at the first

Bluster of opposition? Yea, to some

That is permitted; but to other some,

Whereof am I, only to stand foursquare

And take the buffet of whatever storm.

And the best prudence is obeying, Ruth."

High answered Stephen thus, but Ruth rejoined:

"Stephen, thou ever wert a stubborn will,

And overweening of the wisdom thine,

Hard-hearted and unloving never yet,

Never, till now. How canst thou bide thus calm,

And I, thine erst loved wife, beheld by thee

So tossed with tempest and not comforted?"

Wherewith self-pity broke her words to sobs:

She fell on Stephen's neck and wept aloud.

With both his arms he folded her about,

While his heart, hugely swelling in his breast,

Forced to his eye the slow, large, rounding tear.

It was as if a cloud that wished to rain

Strongly held back its drooping weight of shower.

His melting voice at last he fixed in words:

"What meanest thou to weep and break my heart,

O thou, mine own, most loving and most loved

Of women? Flesh cries out to flesh in me

Against the purpose of my spirit set

To crucify the flesh with its desires!"

Ruth caught her sobs and held them while she spoke:

"Flesh of thy flesh am I; thou slayest me

In slaying thyself; I will not have it so.

Not ready yet am I to die in thee;

And thee God surely needs alive, not dead:

The dead cannot praise God nor serve His cause.

Who will so preach that gospel that thou lovest

When thou art gone? Who then will silence Saul?

I tell thee, Stephen, this is Satan's guile—

To get thee slain—and overmatch mightst thou

The arch-deceiver, easily, if thou wouldst,

So easily—only live."

Conclusive seemed

Her argument to Ruth and stanched her tears.

She gently disengaged the fond embrace

That held her to her husband's heart, and, drawn

A little backward from his face her face,

She smiled on him like sunshine after rain.

Smiling pathetically back, he kissed,

With kisses that she felt like sacraments,

Then, and forever after till she died,

His wife's brow beautiful with hope, and said:

"Ruth, thou hast said; it is, be sure, his guile,

Satan's, whereby I presently shall die;

If so to die indeed be mine, who feel

Too young still, and too strong, too full of hope,

Too full of—shall I name it, Ruth?—too full

Of God Himself, the Holy Ghost, to die!

For He within me lives such life and power,

Death seems impossible, all weakness seems

Far off, an alien thing, and not for me;

I am immortal and omnipotent.

That, Ruth, is when I stand to speak for God,

Preaching to men the gospel of His Son.

"But when, as now, I sit with thee and talk,

Or when my children cluster round my knees,

And I hear husband, father, from fond lips

Pressed to these lips so oft, and with such joy,

When all the dearness that is meant by home,

And all the drawing lodged in kindred blood,

And all that sense, unutterably deep,

Of oneness, soul in soul, with those we love—

O Ruth!—but, Ruth, our tears commingled flow,

'Tis our hearts flow together in those tears!

O wife and life, when all that I have said,

And that far more which never tongue could say,

Surges upon me, surge on surge of thought

And feeling, like an overflowing flood,

Belovéd, then, how weak I am, how frail,

How low and like to die! I lean toward thee,

As if the oak should lean upon his vine."

Ruth took his word from him and made reply:

"So lean on me, my love, and be at rest;

Lean, and make proof how vines at need are strong.

In me no faltering purpose weakens will.

Thou speakest of flesh within thee crying out

To flesh against the spirit—warfare strange

Of elements that dwell in me at one.

My nature moves straightforward all one way.

Rebellion none, no mutiny, I find

Only resolve to thwart thy mad resolve,

Thy half resolve, say rather, half and mad—

So proved by these compunctious visitings

Thou hast, these gracious sweet remorses wise,

Relentings toward thy children and toward me;

Divine presages, Stephen, scorn them not,

Sent to forewarn thee ere it be too late!

"Bethink thee, Stephen, when didst thou before,

Ever, thus will and straight unwill, thus halt,

Thus parley with thyself, thus stand in doubt

Like a reed shaken with the wind, as now

I see thee here? Thou art not like thyself;

Not like that Stephen, ready, combative,

Thy stature still elastically tall

To tower and overtop and overfrown

Whatever front of menace challenged thee.

By thy changed state, I pray thee, be advised.

God teaches thee hereby. He does not wish

Thy will with thy desire to be at war.

Give up thy heady will, and let desire,

Divinely wise, the wisdom of the heart,

Guide thee; her ways are ways of pleasantness,

And all her paths are peace."

Again well pleased

With her own argument, Ruth tearful smiled

A smile that, tenfold tender through those tears,

Was argument to Stephen more than words.

From deep within he heaved a sigh and said:

"Oh! Woman! Woman! Ruth, thou teachest me

How Adam could, by Eve's enticement drawn,

Be even beguiled to die. And now, to live,

Not die, my Eve entices me. O Ruth,

I feel, I feel, doubt not but that I feel,

The sweet, the subtly sweet, dissolving spell

Of wish infused by thee, with thee to live,

With thee and for thee, nay, in thee, as thou

In me—this twain one life, how dear, how dear!

O wife, what is there that I could not bear

And dare of hard and high, wert thou, with smiles

And tears and love, for Christ but eloquent,

As all too well I feel thee eloquent

For our sweet selves?"

Ruth's heart sank, but she said:

"O Stephen, for our children!" Then she threw

Her head upon his bosom, there in tears,

With passionate sobs and throbs, poured out her heart.

He mightily a mighty swell that yearned

To be a storm within him, ruled, and said:

"Nay, Ruth, but we forget. Life beyond life

Remains to us and to our children. We,

Forgetfully, desire and hope and fear

As if death bounded all. A little while

And Christ will come again. Then they that sleep

In Him will wake to Him, and they that still

Wake when He comes, but love Him, will, with those

Late sleeping in Him now awake, ascend

To meet the Lord descending, in the air:

Thenceforward all that love Him, loved of Him,

Will be forever with Him where He is,

Beholding there His glory. Blessed state!

No tears, no fears, no hearts that break, no hearts

That will not break, although they ache the more,

Perhaps, God knows, not breaking—naught of these,

And naught of any ill, but only peace,

Joy, love, security of peace and joy

And love, and fellowship in peace and joy

And love, forever, perfect, more and more,

With vision beatific still of Him

Who washed us in His blood and made us kings

And priests to God. Ruth, here is hope indeed

For us that will not make ashamed."

But Ruth

Unhearing heard and was not comforted.

She raised her head from Stephen's breast, with act

As if to part herself in hope from him,

And, with regard made almost alien, said:

"Hug thou thy hope, thy hope is not for me.

He could not save himself, thy Christ, but died

As the fool dieth—and as die wilt thou,

If thou despise my counsel! Stephen, I

Would rather take my lot a little less,

Less large, less perfect, and less durable,

Than that thou figurest in thy fantasy,

So I might have it something different

From that, real, substantial, palpable

To sense, something whereof one could be sure.

I am no visionary. Take, say I,

With thanks the good God gives us now and here;

Not spurn His bounty back into His face,

And reach out emptied hands of wanton greed

To grasp at more He has not offered us.

We have no right to throw our life away!—

In hope of life hereafter, only ours

Then when with patience our appointed time—

'All' our appointed time, Stephen—we wait,

Till our change come."

Ruth's chill repellent tone,

Her mask of manner hard, could not deceive

Her husband, who, through such disguise with pain

Put on, well recognized a new device

Of wife's love, versatile as resolute,

Constraining tenderness to play severe.

Yet not the less for that, more rather, he

Felt at her words a dull weight of despair

Oppress his spirit; he could only pray,

In silent sorrow not to be expressed,

"O Holy Ghost of God, pity and save!"

A hundred times so praying for his wife,

In anguished iteration o'er and o'er,

Stephen not speaking sat, and speechless she.

At last, as if one bound with green withes rose

Rending the withes to rise, rose Stephen, sweat

Of supreme agony victorious

At dreadful cost dewing his brow; he took

His wife's hand solemnly and tenderly,

His port majestical compelling awe,

And, with tense speech, in tones that strangely mixed

The husband with the prophet, slowly said:

"Farewell, Ruth, for the hour is fully come

That I must hence. The burden of the Lord

Is instant and oppresses me. I go,

Whither I know not, but He knows, to bear

Witness once more to His most worthy name.

I thought that I should never preach again

His gospel in those temple courts, but now

Perhaps He wills even that; whatever be

His purpose, unforeshown, I welcome it.

"Lo, Ruth, this is the last time, for full well

I know I never shall come back to thee!

Come thou to me, I charge thee that, and bring

Our children to their father. Always think

Hereafter, 'He, that last time, charged me that!'

I think my God in this has heard my prayer,

And I go hence in comfort of some hope.

Our children! Oh! My children! God in heaven,

Have mercy! How a father pitieth

His children, think of that, and pity me!

A father lays them on a Father's heart;

Father, I charge Thee, by Thy father's-heart,

Not one be plucked from out His Father's hand!

Lord Christ, see Thou to this, in session there

Forever, interceding for Thine own!

"Ruth, give their father's blessing to our babes;

I trust that they will cheer their mother well,

When I am gone, and cheer thee to the end.

Their sweet unconscious voices now I hear

In laugh and prattle of pathetic glee!

I fain would see their faces once again,

Kiss them once more, and take a last caress!

But nay, I spare myself one pang; sweet babes,

They are too young to know! But by and by,

When they are older and will understand,

Then tell them thou what I now cannot, say,

'Your father loved you, loves you, and will love

Forever—that was his last word to me

For you.' So, Ruth, farewell!"

With first his hands,

Both, placed in solemn blessing on her head,

She kneeling by his knees, forth from his house

Therewith went Stephen all as in a trance.

With open eyes that saw not, yet with steps

Guided—how, he well knew, but whither not—

In simple rapt obedience, he his way

Took absently like one that walks in sleep.

Stephen his home had fixed in Bethany—

Sequestered hamlet on the slope behind

The Mount of Olives from Jerusalem.

Mary and Martha, here, and Lazarus,

He knew and loved; and with them oft, their guest,

Held converse sweet of what He said and did,

And was, the Friend Who wept when Lazarus died,

The Lord of life through Whom he lived again:

But Ruth, self-sundered from this fellowship,

Abode apart, or only with them bound

In bonds of kindly common neighborhood.

These marked when Stephen, marking not, passed by,

That day, steps toward the holy city bent,

And to each other said: 'He goes once more

Bound in the spirit to Jerusalem

To preach the gospel of the grace of God.

Behold the lit look on the forward face!

Behold the gait half-buoyed as if with wings!

It is like Jesus hastening to His cross!

Lo, let us follow!' and they followed him.

But he went ever onward, slacking not

His steps, nor heeding when the brow he reached

Of Olivet and thence, across the deep

Ravine of Kedron worn with rushing floods,

Before him and beneath him saw outspread

The city of David with its palaces.

BOOK VIII.

STEPHEN MARTYR.

As Stephen approaches the temple, he is suddenly arrested and brought before the Sanhedrim. There making his defence, he is interrupted with hostile demonstrations, instigated by Shimei. On this, he bursts out with noble indignation, which furnishes the desired occasion for a cry against him of "Blasphemy!" from all, and for a violent hurrying forth of the prisoner without the walls to be stoned. A file of Roman soldiers confronts and stays the tumultuous crowd; but, after parley conducted by Shimei with the centurion, their leader, the rout is suffered to proceed. Meantime, however, a little company of sympathizing Christians, including Rachel with the three from Bethany, have gathered round Stephen and listened to cheerful, tranquillizing words from him. After the stoning, these friends carry the body of Stephen for laving to the pool of Siloam, whence by moonlight up Olivet to Bethany. Here they lay it in a room of Martha and Mary's house until morning.

STEPHEN MARTYR.

The sun of Syrian afternoon, declined

Half-way betwixt the zenith and the west,

Burned blinding in the cloudless blue of heaven

And fired a conflagration in the copes

Of beaten gold hung over the august

House of Jehovah, whither Stephen now

Tended unconsciously with wonted feet.

That spectacle of splendor he, agaze

With holden unbeholding eyes, saw not,

Or, as but with his heart beholding, saw

Only as goal of his obedience due.

Down the abrupt declivity with speed,

The westward-slanting slope of Olivet,

Descending by a path stony and steep—

The same whereon full often to and fro

Had fared the Blessed Feet, between the dust

And din and fever of Jerusalem,

And the sweet purity and peace, the cool,

The quiet, of that home in Bethany,

His refuge!—so descending, Stephen passed

On his right hand Gethsemane, that moved

Muse of the Master's agony for men,

Crossed Kedron, and thence upward pressing gained

Gate Susan, whence the temple nigh in view.

'Perhaps,' thought he, 'perhaps, once more, against

My expectation, I am thither brought

To preach as when I answered Saul that day.

The Lord will show me, in full time, alike

What I must speak, and when, and where.'

So wrapt

In welcome of the will unknown of God,

And full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,

Stephen with no amazement was afraid

When, suddenly and rudely, in the street,

A band in service of the Sanhedrim

Set on him, and, by their authority,

Seized him and brought him prisoner accused

Of blasphemy before their council, there

To be examined for his words and deeds.

Captive in body, he in soul was free,

Exulting in that glorious liberty,

The sense of sonship to Almighty God.

False witnesses, by Shimei suborned,

And well their lesson taught by Shimei,

Stood forth, who, to the teeth of Stephen, swore:

"This person never ceases speaking words

Against this holy place and Moses' law;

We heard him say that Jesus Nazarene

Is going to destroy this place, and change

The customs Moses handed down to us."

All the assessors in the Sanhedrim,

Fastening their eyes on Stephen, saw his face,

As it had been an angel's, kindling shine.

Saul marked it, and remembered how that day

The lightning of that face had blinded him!

The high priest now, accosting Stephen, asked,

"Are these things so?" and Stephen thus replied:

"Brethren and fathers, hearken to my words.

With ears that tingle to the echoes yet,

Perchance, of that high passionate harangue

Which late from Saul ye heard concerning wounds

Intended to this Jewish commonwealth,

Ye now have heard forsooth again from these—

How temple, law, and well-belovéd ways

Bequeathed us by our fathers from of old

Are threatened in the message that I preach.

"But, brethren, he mistakes who deems that God

Is to one place, one race, one time, one clime,

One mode of showing forth Himself, shut up.

Consider through what phases manifold

Has passed already heretofore God's way

With men; thence learn how lightly reckons God

Of place or method.

"Unto Abraham first

Before he came to Charan, while he yet

Dwelt in the land between the rivers, God

Appeared. Nor in a place thus holy made,

And glorious, by theophany, was he,

Our father, suffered to abide. 'Arise,'

Jehovah said, 'and get thee hence and come

Into the land which I will show thee.' Then

To Charan that obedient pilgrim passed.

Nor there found he a settled rest. Again

He journeyed and in Canaan, this fair land

Wherein ye dwell, a sojourner became;

For here God gave him no inheritance,

Promising only that in after times

That childless father's children here should dwell.

"Meanwhile another change, and now what seems

A long postponement of the purposed grace.

Four hundred years should Abraham's seed sojourn

As strangers in an alien land where they

Should suffer bondage and an evil lot:

Delivered thence with judgment on their foes,

They then should hither come and here serve God.

"Yet when the ripeness of the time was full,

And Moses offered to deliver them,

Our fathers doubted and refused his hand:

But Moses notwithstanding led them out.

And that same Moses prophesied of One

To follow him as Prophet Whom must all

Obey. Yet Moses, mouth of God to men,

Obeyed our fathers not, but, in their hearts

Gone back to Egypt, spurned him far aloof

From them. Then followed that apostasy

To idols, by Jehovah God chastised,

On those offending, with captivity

Which beyond Babylon carried them away.

"Albeit Jehovah gave to Moses such

Honor as never yet to man was given,

Still much that Moses wrought was cast aside.

That tabernacle, made by him express

As God Himself had shown him in the mount,

And so inwove with Hebrew history,

God suffered this to pass, and in its place

Preferred the temple built by Solomon.

"Yet not in houses built with human hands

Dwells the Most High; as, by His prophet, God

Says, 'On the heaven sit I as on a throne,

And the earth make a footstool for My feet.'

'What house will ye build Me,' the Lord inquires,

'Or what shall be the place of Mine abode?'"

So far a loth penurious decent heed

The council had grudged out to Stephen; here

The scowl of curious incredulity,

Wherewith they listened while as yet in doubt

Whither might tend his drift of argument,

Changed to a frown of deadly hate, as they

Conclusion from his use of Scripture drew

That Stephen glanced at overthrow indeed

Meant for the temple. Instantly, alert

To seize occasion, Shimei the sig

Gave to prepared conspirators, who now

Obediently framed a menace grim

Of gesture to denounce the speaker's aim;

And all the council, as one man, astir

With insurrection, frowned a vehement

Refusal to receive the word of God.

Stephen beheld their aspect, and his soul,

Dilating to a seraph's measure, filled

With sudden prophet's zeal aflame for God.

He forged his indignation into words

Which, like bolts kindling, now he launched at them.

He said:

"Stiff-necked ye, and uncircumcised

In heart and ears! Always do ye resist

The Holy Ghost; as did your fathers, so

Do ye. Which of the prophets did they not,

Your fathers, persecute? Who showed before

The coming of the Just One, those they slew;

And of Him now have ye betrayers been

And murderers. Ye who the law, received

At angels' disposition, have not kept!"

Cut to the heart at this, those councillors

Gnashed with their teeth on Stephen.

But that sight

Stephen, his eyes rapt elsewhere, did not see.

Full of the Holy Ghost, his face he raised,

Gazing with sense undazzled into heaven,

And saw the glory of God, and Jesus there,

Not sitting, as at ease, but, as in act

To help, standing, on the right hand of God.

He testified that vision thus to men:

"Opened see I the heavens and standing there

The Son of Man on the right hand of God."

Thereat a loud acclaim of hatred forth

Burst in one voice from all the Sanhedrim.

Full come was Shimei's opportunity.

As started Mattathias to his feet

In honest wrath instinctive, Shimei too

Rose, counterfeiting wrath, sign understood

By his complotters, who now likewise rose

In simultaneous second and support,

Setting the council in a wild turmoil.

They stopped their ears, and all together ran

On Stephen with tumultuary rage

To thrust him forth without the city walls.

The rush of such commotion through the streets,

A torrent madness raging on its way,

Raging and roaring, every moment more,

Roused a wide wind of rumor and surmise

Troubling the air of all Jerusalem.

Tremor of this reached Rachel's jealous sense,

On edge—she knowing that the Sanhedrim

Would that day summon Stephen to its bar—

To fear the worst for Stephen and for Saul.

But Ruth, her home more distant, she at home

Urged by importunate cares which for her wrought

Some present respite from the strain and pain

Of that farewell with Stephen—vexing thought!

Too certain to return insistently,

In waking and in sleeping vision, soon,

At night upon her bed, unbidden guest,

And haunt her bosom with sad memories,

And vague, unhappy, beckoning shapes of fears!—

Ruth, so precluded, nothing knew of all.

Rachel, with other women of the Way

Like-minded with herself, pathetic group!

Drew timorous nigh the ragged rushing rim

Of that confusion pouring toward the gate

Which northward opened on Damascus road.

The self-same path it was whereby had walked

A little while before, bearing His cross,

The Saviour of mankind toward Calvary.

Stephen remembered, and, remembering, went

Both meekly more, and more triumphantly,

To suffer like his Lord without the gate.

He said within himself, 'I follow Him;

I feel His footprints underneath my feet.'

Those women watched the martyr every step,

And with hands waved signalled him sympathy.

Such helpless help was help the more to him—

Who had no need, but gave them back again

Their sympathy in looks of strength and cheer

Which bade them too be faithful unto death,

As they saw him that day. The peace of God,

Lodged in his heart—a trust from Christ, Whose word

Was, "Peace I leave with you, My peace to you

I give; not as the world gives give I you:

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let

It be afraid"—that peace steadfast he bore

Amid the tumult round him, the one thing

Not shaken in a shaken universe,

Like the earth's axle sleeping and the earth

Whirling from centre to circumference!

Not yet the rout had reached the city gate,

When, lo! a sudden halt, a sudden hush,

Arrested and becalmed the multitude.

A file of Roman soldiers from the fort,

With swift, straight, sure lock-step, steel-clad, that clanged,

Flowed like a rill of flowing mercury,

Heavy yet nimble, through a street that crossed

The course of that mad progress, and, athwart

Its head abutting, stayed; the clang of pause

Rang sharper than the clang of the advance.

The leader, a centurion, sternly spoke:

"What means this uproar? Seek ye to provoke

Your rulers? Love ye, then, your yoke so well

Ye fain would feel it heavier on your necks?

Sedition into insurrection grows

Full easily, and this sedition seems.

Speak, who can tell, and say, What would ye?"

Prompt,

Then, Shimei, of the foremost, stepping forth

Said;

"This is no sedition as might seem;

A crushing of sedition rather. We,

The Sanhedrim"—wherewith a smirk and bow

From Shimei, with wave of hand swept round

Upon his colleagues in their sorry plight

Dishevelled, seemed, in sneering cynic sort,

To introduce them with mock dignity—

"We Sanhedrim this fellow caught employed

In stirring up sedition, and our zeal

For peace and order under Roman rule

Inflamed us, following our forefathers' way,

To visit death on him without the gate.

We beg you will allow us to proceed

And put to proof of act our loyalty"—

Hot breath, half hiss, from Mattathias here—

"This script perhaps will help determine you."

And Shimei handed up a tablet writ.

The Roman read:

"Let this disorder pass;

It may be useful. Watch it well."

The seal

Once more with care examined, parley had

With Shimei, whose crafty answers meet

Each wary scruple of the officer,

And sign is given to let the rout proceed.

Meantime a different scene has quietly

Been passing unperceived. That company

Of ministering women Rachel found,

Salomé, and the Marys, blessed name!

With others who had followed and bewailed

When Jesus suffered—these, joined now by those

From Bethany, with Lazarus, prevailed

To edge their way ungrudged through the close ranks

Of idle gazers round not undisposed

Themselves to sympathize, until they stood

Nigh Stephen, and in undertones could speak

With him, and hear his words.

"Weep not for me,"

He said, "ye blesséd! I am well content.

I think how short the way is, not how sharp,

To Jesus where just now I saw Him. There

He stood in heaven on the right hand of God.

He seemed to lean toward me with arms outstretched

As if at once to take me to Himself!

I spring toward Him with joy unutterable.

I shall not feel the pain, which will but speed

Me thither. He hath overcome the world.

Be of good cheer, belovéd, ye who wait

A little longer to behold His face.

For you too He hath overcome the world.

Be strong, be faithful, be obedient,

A little while—and we shall meet again

Safe, happy, in the New Jerusalem,

Forever and forever with the Lord.

"But Ruth, my wife, yet unbelieving—care

For her and for my children! God will give

All to our prayers. And Husband He will be

To her, and Father to the fatherless."

Rachel to Lazarus whispered:

"Tell him I,

Rachel, Saul's sister, would do something. Ask

What I may do for Ruth, to testify

A sister's sorrow for a brother's fault.

And let him not think hardly, not too hardly,

Of Saul who wrongs him so!"

And Lazarus

Told Stephen, who, with look benign addressed

To Rachel, said:

"Thou, Rachel, thou thyself,

No other, shalt to Ruth my wife convey

Her husband's very last farewell; good-night

Call it, and bid her meet me there to say

Good-morning. Comfort her with words. To Saul

Say—when the time comes he will hear, not now—

That all is well, is wholly well. I go—

And that is well—perhaps in part through him,

Which seems not well, but is, by grace of Christ,

Who thus, in part through me—and surely that

Likewise is well—erelong will make of Saul,

In Stephen's room, a more than Stephen both

To preach and suffer for His name. This hope

Be thine, Rachel, and God be with thee, child!"

Martha, her hand as ready as her heart,

Had other cheer provided than of words.

'The willing spirit, if the flesh be weak,

May faint,' she thought, 'and angels strengthening Him

Brought Jesus succor in Gethsemane.

May I not be his angel, Stephen's, now,

And his flesh brace to bear his agony?'

She said to Stephen:

"I have brought thee here

A cake of barley and a honeycomb.

I pray thee eat and cheer therewith thy heart."

"God bless thee, Martha, for thy loving thought!"

Said Stephen; and he took the food from her

And ate it, giving thanks before them all.

And all with him gave thanks, for nothing else

Could so have cheered them in their sad estate

As thus to see their friend at such an hour

Cheering himself with food, his appetite

Not troubled by least trouble of the mind,

And he approved superior to his lot,

Not by a strain of high heroic pride,

Not by access of transient ecstasy,

But simply by the sober confidence,

Well-grounded, of the soul enduring all

As seeing Him Who is invisible.

Besides, had any deemed that Martha erred,

Inopportunely ministering to the flesh,

When spirit unsupported by the flesh

As well had conquered, and more gloriously,

Haply, too, letting this their thought escape,

Unmeant, in look or gesture, to her pain—

Such might, in Stephen's gracious act, have heard

As if a silent echo of those words—

Ineffably persuasive sweet reproof

At once and soft assuagement of unease—

"Why trouble ye the woman? She hath wrought

A good work for Me."

But the Sanhedrim,

Permitted by the Roman to resume

Their way with Stephen, now to him once more

Their notice turned. Within their heart enraged,

First, to have met with such a check, and then,

Scarce less, so to have had the check removed—

Both this and that their sense of bondage chafed—

Ill brooked it they to see what now they saw,

Their prisoner in calm converse with his friends.

"Begone!" to these they cried. "For shame to show

Untimely softness thus to whom ye see

Your rulers judge worthy of death. Begone!"

One churl among those councillors was found,

When Stephen gently bade his friends give way,

Even for his own sake, who could least endure

To see them suffer roughness, most unmeet

For such as they—one graceless churl was found

To raise his hand at Stephen speaking so

And smite him on the mouth. A wail at this

Broke from those women, and their hair they tore

In passion of compassion and of wrath

Holy as love. But Stephen was most meek,

And only in a shadowed look expressed

Pain at such painful sympathy with pain.

This seen by those, they soon responsively

Resumed composure like his own, and walked,

Following, molested not, at small remove

From the belovéd martyr, cheering him,

And cheered, with sense of some society.

So, on, with going less precipitate,

And less vociferous rage, but not less fell,

Moved the infatuate multitude, repressed

And maddened, both at once, to feel themselves

Only by sufferance masters of the fate

Of Stephen, and their very footsteps timed

To regular and slow behind those few

Austere, impassive, automatic men

Armed, who, though few they might be, yet meant Rome.

Arrived at length at the accurséd spot,

They stay. The ground about was strewn with stones,

Rejected fragments from the quarry cleft,

Flakes from the mason's chisel, interspersed

Dilapidations from the city walls

Twice overthrown and razed, or missiles thence

Once by defenders on assailants hurled.

They stay, and, Stephen stationed in the midst

Where, first, a circle of spectators round

Was ordered in disorderly array,

Prepare to act their dreadful blasphemy.

Within, opposed to Stephen, Saul stood, pale,

Blanched with resolve, anguished, and tremulous,

But in nerve shaken, not in will, to take

His part. Saul's part was only to consent.

Perhaps the eyes, the beautiful sad eyes,

Of Rachel, dark and liquid ever, now

Unfathomably deep with unshed tears—

Perhaps such eyes, his sister's, fixed on him,

He seeing not because he would not see,

Wrought yet some holy spell that charmed him back

Insensibly from part more active there.

But his consent Saul testified with sign

Open to all to see, and understood.

He held the outer robes thrown off of those

Who, disencumbered so, might, with main strength,

And aim made sure, the better speed to fling

At that meek heavenly man the murderous stone.

Those witnesses malign who had forsworn

Stephen to this, were first to cast at him

The stone to slay. There Stephen stood, his face,

His glory-smitten face, upturned to heaven,

And his arms thither raised as if to meet

The down-stretched arms of Jesus from on high.

It was a sight both beautiful to see

And piteous. The angels might have wept,

Who saw it, but that they more deeply saw,

And saw the pity in the beauty lost,

Like a few drops of water on a fire

That only serve to feed the flames more bright.

At the first shower of stones at him with cry

Of self-exciting execration flung,

Stephen, with answering cry, as if of one

Running to refuge and to sanctuary,

Betook him to the covert of the Wings

That trembled with desire to be outstretched

Once over doomed Jerusalem unfain,

And, "Jesus, Lord, receive my spirit!" said.

That his friends heard and echoing said "Amen!"

But they the flying stones saw not, nor saw

Alight the flying stones upon their friend;

For they too turned their faces upward all,

And, gazing unimaginable depths

Beyond the seen, beheld the glory there,

Wherein the scandal and the mystery

Of visible things vanished, like shadows plunged

In the exceeding brightness of the sun,

Or were transformed to make the glory more,

Like discords conquered heightening harmony.

With the next flight of stones, unwatched likewise,

Stephen, raised far above the fierce effect,

Stinging or stunning, of the cruel blows,

Spoke heavenward once again, not for himself

Petitioning now, but pleading for his foes.

His foes already had prevailed to bring

The martyr to his knees, and, on his knees,

With loud last voice from lips inviolate yet—

As if that angel chant at Bethlehem

Still sounded, "Peace on earth, good will to men,"

Or that diviner tone from Calvary,

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do"—

One ransomed pure and perfect human note

Threading the dissonant noise with melody—

He prayed, "Lord Jesus, lay not Thou this sin

To their account." Therewith he fell asleep.

That holy prayer exhaled his breath away,

And on his breath exhaled to heaven in prayer

His spirit thither aspired and was with Christ.

As Stephen fell asleep, the sun went down;

But over Olivet the great full moon

Rose brightening. 'So,' thought Stephen's friends of him,

'His life has been extinguished to our eyes,

Only elsewhere to shine, but while we wait

For the new day to dawn that lingers, lo,

His memory instead shall give us light,

Not splendid like the sun, yet like the moon

Lovely!'

Thus comforting themselves, they saw

The murderers of their friend above his corse

Build roughly of the stones that smote him dead

A kind of cairn in mockery of a tomb.

Melted away meanwhile the multitude

In silence, and, soon after, all were gone

Save the true lovers of the man. Then these

Gathered together round the accurséd spot,

Now hallowed, where he stood to suffer, where

He prayed, and where he fell, and whence he rose

Deathless, leaving the sacred body there,

Dead, desolate of the spirit, but still dear,

Most dear to them. And so, with many tears

Fast falling that nigh blinded them, they took

From off the body, one by one, the stones—

Almost as if they loved them, with such care!—

Until his face, his fair disfeatured face,

And his form marred and broken, open lay

To the mild moon that seemed to sympathize,

And touched and softened all with healing beams.

"Let us bear hence the sacred clay," they said,

"And wash it from the pool of Siloam."

Then Lazarus, with three fellow-helpers more—

Nathanael, Israelite indeed, was there,

Joseph of Arimathæa too had come,

Later, and Nicodemus, by nightfall,

These were the chosen four, with Lazarus—

Making a litter of their robes, took up

The noble form that lately Stephen wore,

And gently carried it to Siloam.

With soft lustration there at loving hands,

The dust and blood were wholly washed away;

The hair and beard then decently arranged,

With skill that hid the wounds on cheek or brow,

The eyelids closed on eyes that saw no more,

The scarce cold palms folded upon the breast,

Stephen it seemed indeed just fallen asleep.

Then they were glad that Ruth would see him so,

So peaceful and so beautiful asleep,

Expecting soon to waken satisfied!

"To-morrow will be time enough," they said,

"To tell Ruth—let her sleep to-night." But Ruth

Slept not, or if she slept, slept but to dream

Of Stephen and his last hands on her head.

Under the balmy moon, up Olivet

To Bethany they bore the holy dust,

And there, beneath the roof that sheltered oft

The Man who had not where to rest His head,

They laid the body down to dreamless sleep;

And slept themselves until the morrow morn.

BOOK IX.

RUTH AND RACHEL.

Very early in the morning, Rachel, charged with this office by Stephen, breaks to Ruth the news of her husband's death. The two then go together to the place where the body of Stephen is laid. There, Ruth, kneeling in prayer beside her martyred husband, repentantly accepts his Lord for hers, becoming a Christian. Rachel, having hastily visited her home, to find Saul gone thence with purpose not to return, leaves the house in her maid's care and goes back to Ruth, to whom, being requested to do so, she tells the story of Stephen's stoning. Then the funeral of Stephen takes place, with a memorial discourse pronounced, and an elegy recited, at the tomb.

RUTH AND RACHEL.

The morrow morn broke fair in Bethany,

And Ruth rose early from unquiet sleep;

Rachel likewise, who slept in Mary's house.

The sun had not yet risen, but in the west

The moon hung whitening opposite the dawn,

When Ruth, her children left asleep, went forth

To feel the freshness of the morning air

Without, and water from the village well

To draw, both for the slaking of her thirst

And for the cooling of her brow that burned

And of her throbbing temples. At the well

Rachel she met who earlier still was forth

On the like errand. The two women hailed

And kissed each other. Ruth to Rachel then

Said: "Thou art not, I trow, this morning come

Hither the long way from Jerusalem?"

"Nay, Ruth," said Rachel, "here the yesternight

With Mary and Martha I abode a guest."

"How fresh the wind is," Ruth said, "hither blown

From off the western sea! Us, underneath

The crest of Olivet, it lights upon

Descending, broken, like a breath from heaven.

What a delicious balm!"

"About my brow,"

Said Rachel, "gratefully I feel the air,

Attempered so, soft flowing, as if one

That loved me like a mother gently stroked

My temples to undo a band of pain

Bound round them."

"And, in sooth," the other said,

Now looking narrowly at Rachel's face,

"Thou seemest sad of favor, Rachel. Thou,

Thou too, so young, hast then thy cause to grieve!

It is a sad world and a weary. But—

Forgive me if such quick instinctive fears

Be selfish, I am wife and mother—aught

Of evil tidings bringest thou me? Spare not

To speak. Thou wilt but answer to the dreams

I had this night, portending nameless ill.

Stephen—I fear for him. He yesterday

Left me beyond his wont oppressed in spirit,

And has not since returned. Strange—yet not strange;

Sometimes the livelong night he spends in prayer

Alone upon the top of Olivet

Or in the shadows of Gethsemane."

"Ruth," Rachel said, "the Angel of the Lord

Round His belovéd, like the mountains round

Jerusalem, encampeth ever; he

Of God's belovéd is, and guarded well!"

But Ruth scarce listened; she insisting said:

"Perhaps of Stephen some report thou bringest,

Hint doubtless of new danger threatening him!"

"Nay, Ruth, no longer danger threatens now

Thy husband; that is past, and he is safe."

"Thank God," said Ruth; "but stay, I dare not yet

Thank God. Tell me, have then our rulers ceased

To frown on Stephen preaching Jesus Christ?

Or Stephen, will he cease and preach no more?

This cannot be, for Stephen is such stuff

As never yet did bend to mortal beck;

And that—our rulers surely have not changed

Thus suddenly their mind. Thou art deceived,

They have deceived thee—Stephen is not safe;

It is their guile to make us think him safe,

He off his guard will fall an easier prey

Into their hands. Rachel, it was not kind,

Not faithful in thee so to be deceived.

More love had made thee more suspicious. I

Suspect forever everybody; thee

Now I suspect. Thou keepest something back,

Or haply palterest with a double sense.

Rachel, I charge thee, I adjure thee, speak

And tell me all. Stephen is dead! Say that—

Is dead! Thou meantest that by, 'He is safe.'

They have stoned him, stoned my husband, stoned the man

That was the truest Hebrew of them all!"

Though by her words Ruth challenged frank reply,

Yet by her tones and by her eager looks

She deprecated more what she invoked.

This Rachel saw, and answered not a word.

Then Ruth gainsaid what Rachel would not say:

"They have not done it, could not do it, he—

Rachel, it is not true, unsay it, quick,

It was a cruel jest to tease me so,

Thou art not a wife, thou art not a mother, else

Thou never hadst conceived so ill a jest!"

Rachel was tortured, but she could not speak,

And Ruth, secure in sense of respite yet,

Went on invoking what she would not hear:

"Why art thou silent? Speak, and keep not back

The truth, whatever it may be; there's naught

So soothing and so healing as the truth.

But I will not believe that he is dead.

Thou didst not know my husband. Dead! dead! dead!

I tell thee, Rachel, that is something past

Imagining dreadful, hopeless. To be dead

Is—not to love, and not to speak to those

Who loved and love thee, not to hear them speak,

Saying they loved and love thee and lament

They ever gave thee cause of grief and now

Are different and would die a thousand deaths

To have been different then when thou couldst know—

Death, Rachel,—but of death what canst thou learn,

For thou art but a child and never wast,

Never, to such a husband such a wife—

To vex the noblest heart that ever broke!"

Rachel at first had listened with dismay,

And nothing found to answer to Ruth's words,

Whose words indeed flowed on and made no pause

For answer, as if she in truest truth

Sought not the answer that she seemed to seek,

Would fain postpone it rather, or avert.

But when at length the utterance of Ruth's thought

From converse passed into soliloquy

And the deep secret of her soul revealed,

Then Rachel caught a welcome gleam of hope.

A sign of grace she saw or seemed to see

At work for Ruth within her heart of grief,

Transmuting human sorrow to divine

Repentance, and for pain preparing peace.

"Let us go in together," Rachel said,

For they by this were nigh to Ruth's abode,

"Let us go in where we may be withdrawn

From note of such as here might mark our speech

Or action; I have word from him to thee."

Then they went in, and Ruth bestirred herself

To make a cheer of welcome for her guest.

That momentary truce to troubled thought

For Ruth, and interspace of quietness

From her own words which could not choose but flow

With helpless importunity till then,

Gave Rachel needed chance to speak. She said:

"O Ruth, thy husband fell asleep last night,

And slept a sweeter sleep than thine or mine,

A deep sweet sleep, a happy sleep, a blest.

Thou wouldst not wake him thence for worlds on worlds.

He felt before he slept that he should sleep,

And me, whom God our Father let be nigh,

Stephen bade bear a last good-night to thee.

He did not think the night was very long

Before him for his sleeping, and his wish

Was thou shouldst meet him presently to say

Good-morning. This was his true message, Ruth."

The ineffably serene steadfast regard

Of Rachel's eyes, that, out of liquid depths

Unsounded, looked angelic love and truth,

With pity mingled, equal measure—tears

Orbing them large, shot through and through with light

Of heavenly hope for Ruth—but, more than all

A subtly sweet insinuating tone,

Most musical, of softness in the voice,

That gently wound into the listener's heart—

These, with what else, who knows? of help from Heaven,

Wrought a bright miracle of change in Ruth.

She had been hard and dry, a desert rock;

The rock was smitten now with Moses' rod.

Ruth gushed in gracious tears, she veiled herself

With weeping, as sometimes a precipice

Veils itself dim with mist of cataract.

And Rachel wept with Ruth, until Ruth said:

"But where is Stephen, Rachel? It might be

They, meaning death, yet did not compass death.

Such things have been; haste, let us go and see.

Monstrous it were, if he should need me—I

The while here sitting weeping idle tears!"

"Come," Rachel said, and took her by the hand.

So hand in hand they went to Mary's house,

The elder guided as the younger led,

And neither speaking, stilled with solemn thought.

Mary and Martha met the twain, with mute,

Subdued, affectionate greeting, at the door,

And, understanding without word their wish,

Straight led them inward, with a quietude

Of gesture that spoke peace and peace infused,

To the place where in quietude reposed

That slumberer late so violently lulled

To this so placid sleep. The room was flushed

With hue of gold in hangings round the walls

And rugs of russet muffling deep the floor,

That made a kind of inner light diffused,

Like sunshine without sun and shadowless.

A golden-curtained window opened east,

And east the upturned face of Stephen looked,

Lying there motionless in that fast sleep—

So lying that, had he his eyelids raised,

He without moving might have seen the morn.

The rest, with one accord not entering, stood

About the door without, silent, and saw

While the wife sole went to the husband's side.

That instant, lo, from out the breaking dawn

A level sunbeam through the curtain slipped

And touched the fair translucent face with light.

Ruth marked it and she testified and said,

Falling upon her knees beside the couch:

"I take it as a token, Lord, from Thee;

Even so send Thou Thy light into my heart!

Lo, by the side of him made beautiful

In death, of whom I was unworthy, here

I give myself—alas, that it should be

Too late for him to have known it!—to his Lord.

I trust to be forgiven for my sin!

I thank Thee that I was not weight enough

Upon him to prevail against Thy might

Within him and prevent this sacrifice—

Accomplished all without my help, nay, all

In spite of my resistance! O my God,

How hast Thou humbled me! To have had no part,

Wife with her husband to have borne no part—

Save hindering what she could!—when such a deed

Of martyrdom for Christ was possible!

Behold, O Lord, thus late I take my part!

This now is also mine, as well as his,

This sacrifice. I have offered him to Thee!

And if my share be heavier even than his—

To live bereaved more grievous martyrdom

Than to have died—this too is my desert,

Accept the witness of my widowhood!"

Ruth ceased, but rose not from her knees, still fixed

In posture as if grown a pillar of prayer.

Then those three women came and knelt with her

Beside her dead, a silent fellowship

Of sympathy in sacrifice; but soon

Rachel and Mary, one on either side

Of Ruth, borne by the self-same impulse each,

Each at the self-same instant borne, unto

The self-same beautiful appeal, pure love's

Pure touch, stole softly each a hand in hers.

Each plighting hand so proffered Ruth upraised

Slowly and solemnly as with a kind

Of consecrating gesture to her lips,

And kissing seemed to seal a sacrament.

Then she arose, and all arose with her,

When Martha, not forgotten, likewise shared,

She too, with Ruth the kiss of sisterhood.

So, never a word between them spoken, all

Went backward and withdrew, Ruth last, who saw

That sunshine glorifying Stephen's brow,

And bore it thence, Shekinah in her heart.

Her countenance thus illumined from within,

The mother to her orphan children went,

And moved, a light, about her household ways.

She knew that others would with holy heed

Prepare that holy dust for burial.

But Rachel was more comfortless than Ruth.

Rest in her spirit found she none—until,

First having broken fast, but sparingly,

She hastened with winged footsteps to her home.

There her maid told her Saul went early forth

Leaving this message for his sister: "Here

Bide, if thou wilt; this house be still thy home.

But I go hence, whither I cannot tell,

Nor yet for how long absence; to what end—

Thou knowest. Cheer thee well!" The little maid

Looked rueful and perplexed, but nothing asked,

As nothing Rachel told her, save to say:

"Quick, bring thine elder sister, thou and she

Shall keep the house together for a time.

I also go, my little maid"—wherewith

Her little maid, now weeping, Rachel kissed—

"I also go, but weep not, I shall come

Again, I trust, in happier times. Farewell!"

Then Rachel straight to Ruth's abode returned.

"Glad am I thou hast come once more," said Ruth,

"For I have wished to ask thee many things.

How came his dreadful chance of martyrdom

On Stephen? I can bear to hear it all,

Since all is done and past and—'He is safe,'

As thou saidst, Rachel!"

Tenderly Ruth smiled,

With tears behind her smiles that did not fall.

Then Rachel said:

"I cannot tell thee all

As having all beheld, but this I heard,

That Stephen gave a noble testimony

Before the council who had cited him;

That there his face shone like an angel's, God

Himself so swearing for His servant, while

Against him swore false witnesses suborned

By Shimei; that his enemies could not bear

The fierceness of the love with which in wrath

He burned for God against their wickedness,

And so they rushed upon him violently

And thrust him forth without the city walls.

But God beheld their threatening, and He sent

His Romans to withstand them for a while.

Then we that loved and honored him drew nigh,

And would have spoken words of cheer to him,

But he—O Ruth, thou shouldst have seen him then!

I never can describe to thee how fair

Thy husband was to look upon, while he,

As steadfast as a star and as serene,

And not less lovely-luminous to our eyes,

Stood there amid the angry Sanhedrim

And to us spake such heavenly words of cheer!

He spake of thee, Ruth, and I think God gave

His spirit comfort in good hope for thee.

For, 'God will give all to our prayers,' said he,

And added, 'Husband He will be to her,

And Father to the fatherless.'"

Thereat

Ruth's tears as from a fresh-oped fountain flowed,

And eased her aching heart, too full before

Of love, remorseful love, for perfect peace.

Rachel with Ruth wept tears of sympathy;

But with the sweet and wholesome in her tears

Mixed salt and bitter, for she thought of Saul.

Ruth at length ceased to weep and yearning said:

"And then those Romans let them work their will!"

"On Stephen's body, yea, Ruth," Rachel said,

"But on his spirit they could have no power."

"The stones," said Ruth—

"The stones, Ruth," Rachel said,

"God gave His angels charge concerning them—

So verily I believe—and strictly bade,

'Lo, let these slay, but see ye that they do

No harm unto My prophet.' So the stones,

They slew, but hurt not. God translated him;

He rose triumphant in meek majesty.

I should have told thee, Ruth, that while he stood

Before the council, he looked up and saw

Jesus in heaven on the right hand of God—

There standing; this he testified to all.

It was as if his faithful Lord had risen

To side with Stephen in his agony.

So, when they stoned him, Stephen upward spoke,

'Lord Jesus, take my spirit'; then once more,

'Lord, lay not Thou this sin unto their charge.'

This he said kneeling and so fell asleep."

The two some space sat musing silently;

Then Ruth:

"I feel that thou hast told me all

Most truly, Rachel, as most tenderly.

Thus, then, God giveth His belovéd sleep,

Thus also! And He doeth all things well!

Amen!"

Silence once more, that seemed surcharged

With deepening inarticulate amen

From both, and Ruth, regarding Rachel, said:

"Even so! But, Rachel, us not yet doth God

Will thus to sleep. Still, otherwise to sleep—

For His belovéd are not also we?—

May be God's gift to us. Thou surely needest,

Body and spirit, rest."

And Rachel said:

"The words of Stephen leap unto my lips

For answering thee; and these were Stephen's words:

'God bless thee, Martha, for thy loving thought!'

And this makes me remember that one thing

Done yesterday I missed to tell thee of.

For Martha, faithful heart, forecasting well,

Brought food for Stephen that might hearten him

To bear whatever he had need to bear,

A cake of barley and a honeycomb.

'God bless thee, Martha, for thy loving thought!'

Said Stephen, and so took the food from her,

And ate it giving thanks before us all.

He ate it with such look of appetite,

It cheered us with a sense of freedom his

From any discomposure of the mind.

O Ruth, in His pavilion God did hide

Thy husband, and his soul had perfect peace!"

"Was it not done like Martha?" Ruth replied;

"And done like Stephen too. For courtesy

Bloomed like a flower to grace his daily life.

I used to wonder at it—and I now

Wonder I did not see where such a flower,

Where, and where only, such a flower could find

Rooting to flourish in a world like this!

He always told me that the heart of Christ

Nourished what good in him, or beautiful,

I found—or fancied, as he smiled and said.

But I—Oh, holden heart!—I did not see.

And now it is too late, too late, for him

To have known! It may be that he knows it, yea,

But now to know it is not wholly such

As to have known it then, to have known it then!

Alas, there is not any chance of hope

Behind us, Rachel; hope is all before.

Let us look onward; we in hope were saved,

So Stephen used to say, and, 'I go hence

In comfort of some hope,' were his last words,

Or of his last, to me—concerning me,

Spoken with a sad cheerfulness that now

Breaks me with such a surge of memory!

But this is endless, let it here have end.

Come, Rachel, see, the sun rides high, come thou,

And I will bring thee to a quiet room,

Safe from the sun, where thou shalt rest a while."

So Rachel followed Ruth, not ill content

To be alone for thought if not for sleep.

Her will was not to sleep; but weariness,

With youth and health, was stronger, and she slept.

Already, when she woke, the sun halfway

From his high noon had down the western slope

Of sky descended, and she hearkening heard

A rumorous noise without upon the ways,

The stir of movement, steps of many feet,

With sound, muffled, of many voices nigh,

That startled her from sweet forgetfulness

To sudden sad remembrance of the things

That had been, and that were, and were to be.

Instinctive up she sprang, for, "Lo," she said,

"They gather unto Stephen's funeral;

Behooves that I be ready with all speed."

Therewith upon her knees she sank and prayed

A prayer for Ruth and for Ruth's little ones,

Widowed and orphaned by so dear a death,

And for herself—and for her brother Saul!

Then her heart swelled to a capacious wish,

And, anguished in one swift vicarious throe

Of great desire for help and grace divine,

She embraced the total church of Jesus Christ—

Of such a guide, of such a stay, bereaved!

Then Rachel, with the Everlasting Arms

Invisibly, nigh visibly, around

Her to sustain her steps, came forth, as one

That meekly walks leaning on her beloved,

And begged of Ruth that she might sister be

To her, that day, and thenceforth ever, mourn

As sister with her in the eyes of all.

"For I am lonely," Rachel said, "O Ruth,

As thou art; lonely let us be, we twain,

Together, widows both, and mix our tears.

For also I am widow, as thou art,

Yet not as thou—since me a heavier stroke

Makes widow, who have never been a wife!"

Ruth answered, though she did not understand,

And kissed her friend in plight of sisterhood.

So they two, clad alike from out Ruth's store

Of raiment, clad in sad attire alike,

As sisters walked together side by side—

Ruth's children with them, grieved, not knowing why—

To where, from Mary's house and Martha's borne,

With grievous lamentation, by good men

Devout, the flower and choice of Israel,

Was laid the sacred dust of Stephen down

And sealed within a rock-hewn sepulchre.

Joseph of Arimathæa, he who sought

And gained from Pilate leave to take away

The body of Jesus crucified, had sent

To Bethany, betimes, before the hour

Of burial, rich spices, a great weight,

Aloes and myrrh, with linen pure and fine,

To wrap the body of Stephen for his tomb.

Mary, the mother of the Lord, with John

Beloved of Jesus, loving her as son,

Came to that feast of sorrow bringing tears,

To Ruth medicinal more than any, wept

By one who had so learned to weep. So there

With sackcloth worn and ashes on the head,

They wailed aloud, that Hebrew company,

Women and men, they beat the breast, they rent

Their raiment, until one stood forth who said:

"Enough already has to grief been given.

Us it befits not here, for Stephen dead,

To mourn as mourn others who have no hope.

He was a burning and a shining light,

And we a season in his beams were glad.

Glory to God who kindled him for us!

Glory to God who hath from us withdrawn

His shining, and now hides him in Himself!

We thought we could not spare him, but God knew.

Let all be as God wills Who knows. Amen!"

"Amen!" they solemnly responded all,

And he who spake these things went on and said:

"The Lord anointed Stephen with the oil

Of gladness in the gift of speech above

His fellows. How he flamed insufferably,

In words that leapt out of his mouth, like swords

Out of their sheaths, enkindled to devour

The wicked! When he spoke, flew seraphim

And bore from off the altar living coals

Of God which, laid upon his lips, purged them

To utter those pure words that purified.

What zeal, what wisdom, what fixed faith, what power!

He stood our bulwark, he advanced our sword,

And single seemed an insupportable host.

Yet this puissant soldier of the truth,

To disobedience so implacable,

How gentle and how placable he was

To all obedience! He was like his Lord,

That Lion of the tribe of Judah, named

Also the Lamb of God. No words had he

Save words of vivid flame, sudden and swift

And deadly like the lightning, for God's foes;

But for the little flock of Jesus, balm

His speech—into those lips such grace was poured!

"Nor less in him for mighty work than word

The Holy Ghost a fountain was of power.

From him or through him what a plenteous stream

Flowed like the river of God in miracle!

Signs, wonders, gifts of healing, heavenly powers,

Innumerable flocked about his hand,

Like doves unto their windows flying home,

Waiting there eager to perform his will.

"A prophet of the elder time, reborn

Into the spirit of this latter age,

Was Stephen. Thanking God for him, let us

Together and steadfastly pray that He

Who made the great Elijah live again

In John the Baptist, give us Stephen back

In resurrection from his tomb with power.

Thus shall we pray as himself prophesied—

For Stephen, you remember, glanced at this

In prophecy; unless not prophecy

It were, but only generous hope, with wish

To comfort Rachel, when he spake to her

Of grace to come upon her brother yet—

We shall so seek what seems it he foresaw,

If we ask Jesus to make captive Saul!"

That speaker ceased, and then a prophetess

Among the women there took up a wail,

Which triumphed into gladness as it grew:

"Is fallen, is fallen, a prince in Israel!

Woe, while it yet was day, his sun went down!

Daughters of Judah, mourn for Stephen slain!

"Mourn for a candle of the Lord put out,

A torch of noble witness quenched in blood;

Wear sackcloth of thick darkness and bewail!

"Repent, O daughters of Jerusalem,

Repent, forsake your wickedness of woe;

Look up, look up, the quenched torch burns a star!

"Is risen, is risen; behold, at the right hand

On high sits he of his ascended Lord;

Rejoice, rejoice, for Stephen could not die!

"Comfort ye Ruth; thrice among women she

Lives blesséd, who, from wife to him, became,

Widowed, partaker of his martyrdom!

"Hosanna to the Son of David, Who,

Beheld of Stephen standing in the heavens,

Received His servant's spirit to Himself!

"The Resurrection and the Life is He;

He will not leave this body in its tomb;

Stephen and we shall meet Him in the air.

"Descending with the sound that wakes the dead,

Ten thousand of His saints attending Him,

He comes! He comes! Even so, Lord Jesus, come!

"Salvation, worship, blessing, glory, power,

Forever and forever unto God,

Our God; He never will forsake His own."

Uplifted high in heart, they went away.

BOOK X.

SAUL AT BETHANY.

At the funeral service for Stephen, Shimei was a skulking attendant. He catches at a mention there overheard by him of the name of Saul in connection with that of Stephen, to plot an instigated persecuting visit on Saul's part to Bethany; Shimei hoping that Saul will thus encounter his own sister identified as a Christian. Saul takes a band of men and makes the visit. He finds his intended victims all together at the house of Ruth condoling with her—Rachel indeed among them. After sharp inward conflict, and much effort put forth without success to make his victims abjure their faith, Saul finally takes them to prison. But Rachel, she vainly entreating to share her companions' fate, he leaves behind. She takes upon herself the charge of Ruth's children in their own home, where Saul, month after month, secretly sends to her supply of every need.

SAUL AT BETHANY.

Among the sons of God, when these one day

Came to present themselves before the Lord,

Satan came also; and so Shimei,

Amid the throng that mourned at Stephen's death,

Intruded. With smooth face of sanctimony,

Skulking to be unseen or heeded not,

He hovered furtive on the outer edge

Of audience, when those words of praise were said

To hearten—eye and ear alert to mark

All that befell. His thought was, 'Here perhaps

I shall learn something to the true behoof

And profit of our cause—right aim secure

For the next blow of vengeance to be struck.'

The name of Saul mysteriously conjoined

With Rachel's, in abhorrent prophecy

As seemed—this, Shimei caught at eagerly

And said, 'Aha!'

Then, as the throng dispersed

All to their several homes, straight Shimei

Went to seek Saul. Him found that spy malign

With the chief priests in council, plotting deep

To hunt the sect of Jesus to the death.

These had armed Saul with writ and warrant sealed

Empowering him to enter where he would,

House after house, and whomsoever found,

Man be it or woman, guilty of belief

In Jesus as Messiah, such to seize

And drag to prison.

Instantly conceived

Shimei a subtle snare to enmesh the feet

Of Saul. The proud young zealot Pharisee

Should be set on to visit first in search

Those homes of Bethany; where, unadvised

Perhaps, so Shimei guessed, the brother might,

To his dismay, find his own sister one

With the disciples of the Nazarene.

Then to make prisoner his own flesh and blood,

Or openly spare Rachel for kin's sake—

This, scandal against scandal doubtful weighed,

Would be the hard alternative to Saul.

"Belovéd brother Saul," so Shimei spoke,

"I mourned at Stephen's funeral to-day.

Not loud, you know, but deep, my mourning was;

Not loud, for I am modest, and my wish

Was less to be seen than to see; but deep,

For there was cause, to one that loved you, Saul,

To be sincerely sad on your behalf.

Incredible it seems, they spoke your name,

Not, as might honor it, with hate and dread,

But very ambiguously, to say the least.

In fact, I fear you may be compromised,

Unless you take prompt measures in the matter.

Hark you, a certain orator stood up

Who, after praising Stephen to his worth,

Distinctly hinted Saul was looked upon

As hopeful future pervert to their cause

Predestined to fill Stephen's vacant room.

The fellow founded on some prophecy

Which, as I gathered, Stephen had put forth.

Now this preposterous notion, with such folk,

Is far more like to prosper, and thus be

Noised undesirably, than you might guess,

As a report injurious to your name.

You will be tainted with disloyalty,

In general esteem—to our great loss.

"What I propose is that you strike a stroke

So sudden and so ringing and so aimed

As shall decisively and neatly nip

This precious piece of prophecy in the bud,

And put you out of reach of calumny.

You have your warrant and commission; good,

Use them at once, sleep not upon them; now,

This very night—for domiciliary work

Like what you purpose, night is the best time,

Birds to their nests, you know, at night come home—

This very night, take you a trusty band

And make a bold foray at Bethany.

There Stephen lived, and there a hotbed yet

Thrives of this pestilent heresy. No place

Fitter than the abode and vicinage

Of your late overmatch in controversy

To make first theatre of the exploits

You aim at in this different field—field where,

With odds so in your favor, you should win.

Easier far, given the right support, to drag

To dungeon and to death a hundred men

Or praying women, all as tame as sheep,

Than one impracticable fellow like

That Stephen manage in fair controversy!

"You have my best kind hopes and all good men's.

Ask for the house that harbored Stephen's corpse

And whence the funeral issued—quarry there

You cannot fail to find. The widow too

Of Stephen, I watched her, and what I saw

Makes me misdoubt her Hebrew orthodoxy.

Sound her—an ounce of thorough work done now,

Unquestionably thorough, will be worth

A hundred weight of paltering by and by.

Despise the fear that now and then a man

May call you cruel; the worst cruelty,

As you and I well know, is ill-timed softness.

This thing must be stamped out; it is a plague,

It creeps from house to house, no house is safe.

Your house, Saul, mine—that sister fair of yours,

Yes, treat the thought with scorn, but some fine day,

Why not? Saul wakes to find his sister lost."

How far unconsciously, Saul could not guess,

But Shimei, in that last home thrust of his,

Either by pure fortuity, or else

With malice the most exquisitely wise,

Had hit the quivering quick of Saul's sore pride.

Saul winced visibly, and Shimei, satisfied,

Left him alone the prey of his own thoughts.

Saul's thoughts were visions rather; first, he saw

His sister as in that farewell with her

Bowed beautiful beneath a brother's scorn,

Like a meek flower broken with tempest; then,

Stephen he saw, his face with God in him

Afire, before the council; next, that face

Toward heaven upturned, he, far within the veil

Agaze, beholding there the glory of God;

Once more, the martyr lifting holy hands

On high, with his last breath praying for those

That slew him, praying also then for Saul!

Rachel the while—she rather felt than seen—

With tears that did not gather, but that made

Her deep eyes deeper than the soundless sea,

Looking at him. Swift then the vision changed,

And he saw Stephen in the temple court

Turn suddenly round on Saul his blinding face

To threaten him with promise that, one day,

He, Saul himself, should grovel in the dust

Before the feet of Jesus crucified!

Those visions were as when the lightning-flash,

By night, fast following lightning-flash, reveals,

One instant and no more, the world, but prints

Its image on the eye intensely bright.

The final vision wrought a fierce revolt

In Saul from that relenting which, before,

The earlier visions almost made him feel.

As with a mortal gripe, his vise-like will

Clutched at his heart and held it fast and hard.

Scorning to be diverted from his path

Because, forsooth, the meddling Shimei

Pointed it out to him offensively,

Saul moved at once to go to Bethany.

Seven servitors he chose, strong men whom use

Had, hand and heart, seasoned to such employ—

With these a guide—and started on his way.

Again the moon shone, as the yesternight,

And flooded heaven and earth with glory mild.

But her mild glory now was a rebuke

To human passion, not a balm to pain.

With swords and staves armed, as that night came they

Who looked for Jesus in Gethsemane—

The needless lamps and torches in their hands

With flare and smoke affronting the moonlight—

They marched, those seven, following the guide with Saul.

At first these chattered lightly as they walked,

But soon the stern, stark, wordless mood of Saul,

And his grim purpose in his pace expressed,

Urgent and swift, taxing their utmost strength

To follow and not fall behind, quite quelled

The social spirit in all, and on all went

In sullen silence like their chief. Like him,

Insensibly each moment more and more,

While thought and feeling they shut strictly up

Within them from all vent in speech, they these

Changed to brute instinct of vindictiveness;

Insensibly, like him, with every step

Of vehement ongoing, vehement

Propulsion gathered they in mind and will

To reach and grapple with their task. So on

And up with speed they pressed toward Bethany.

At Bethany, meanwhile, the flock in fold

Abode the coming of those prowler wolves—

Unweeting, in sad sense of safety lulled.

The sisters, with the brother Lazarus,

Had to Ruth's house at eve repaired; they there

With Rachel sat together, in the court

Under the open sky, and spake with Ruth,

Or spake for Ruth to hear, comforting her.

"'I am the Resurrection and the Life'"—

Thus Martha—"how the very words to me

Were spirit of life, were resurrection power,

So spoken, from such lips, at such a time,

When Lazarus lay sleeping in that swoon

Which we call death! I did not need to wait

Until my brother should indeed again

Arise, obedient, at His word, to feel

The utterer of that saying was the Christ."

"But when He wept, when Jesus with us wept,"

Said Mary, "I felt solace in His tears

Such that almost I would have always grieved,

To be always so comforted." A pause,

Then eyes on Lazarus turned, and he: "From where

I was—but where I was, although I seem

Well to remember, yet could not I tell

In any words, or show by any signs,

However I might try—I heard His voice

Say, 'Lazarus, come forth.' Those round me heard,

I thought they heard, with me, that potent voice,

And they were not surprised, as was not I,

Seeming to know it and to understand.

That voice goes everywhere and is obeyed,

To all the perfect law of liberty,

And I obeyed as naturally as I breathe;

And I am here, in witness of His power,

Whose power is universal through all worlds."

"His power is great," said Ruth, "and wide His sway,

Yet seems His grace the sovereign of His power."

"Yea," Rachel said, "for doth not power in Him

Bend to the yoke and service of His grace?"

"We easily err," said Lazarus, "seeking here

To comprehend the incomprehensible.

All difference is in us, for all in Him

One and the same is; power is grace and grace

Is power, in Him, nay, power and grace is He.

And He is ours and we are His, and one

Are we with Him and in Him one likewise

Each with the other, all." "How blest!" they said,

"And the whole family in heaven and earth

Are one, and Stephen is with us or we

With him, and heaven is here or here is heaven!"

A little while in silence and deep muse,

And, by the Holy Spirit, fellowship

With the Almighty Father and His Son.

Then, "Lo, let us join hands," they said, "and sing

That psalm which breathes of unity like this."

With braided tones, in unison they sang:

'Behold, how good it is for brethren here,

'How pleasant, thus in unity to dwell

'Together! It is like that costly chrism

'Upon the head which overflowing ran

'Down Aaron's beard and down his garment's folds,

'Abundant as the dew of Hermon drops,

'Distilled, upon the heights of Sion where

'Jehovah fixed the blessing, life, even life

'Forevermore.'

"A sweet strain and a rich,"

Said Lazarus; "David touched it to his harp,

Taught by the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless,

Something it lacks to fill the measure up

To that deep sense of oneness which we feel

In Jesus, since He came, since Jesus came

And spake, then went, but came again, in us

Forever to abide. Cannot we sing

Some words of His, as tunable, more deep?

Such words He spake in a celestial rhythm

That night before He sought Gethsemane.

They sat as in the Holy of holies with Him,

And John leaned on His bosom where He sat.

I have heard John rehearse the heavenly words

Until at length I too have them by heart."

Then Lazarus gave them sentences, which all

Chanted in simple measure low and sweet:

'Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe

'In God, also in Me believe. Within

'My Father's house there many mansions are.

'I should have told you, had it not been so,

'Because I go to fit a place for you.

'And if I go and fit for you a place,

'I shall return and take you to Myself,

'That where I am there ye may also be.'

Was it a premonition, or did grief

Surge up through peace and joy to claim its own?

Said Lazarus: "Yet He told us, 'In the world

Ye will have tribulation, though in Me

Ye shall have peace.' With tribulation, peace!"

His closing words they took from Lazarus' lips,

"With tribulation, peace!" and of them made

A musical refrain half sad, half glad,

Or wholly glad in sadness, which they sang.

When ever were there cadences more sweet,

More sweet or more pathetic? Thrice sang they

Those words together; but, at the fourth time,

Just in that breath between the rise and fall,

Before from 'tribulation' they touched 'peace'—

A shock as of a mace struck on the door,

Which yielded, and abrupt there strode in—Saul!

Saul was alone; his men he left without.

The band had first the sisters' dwelling sought,

To find the inmates gone—fled, as Saul guessed.

Without delay, they came to Ruth's abode,

Fiercer from disappointment Saul. But though

Ruthless he came, he now, arrested there,

Ruthful a moment stood at gaze. He saw

Four women and one man in simple sort

Sitting together in communion still.

They did not look like culprits, nay, a light

Purer than purest moonlight seemed to shine

From out their faces underneath the moon.

It was a feast of comfort that they kept,

Those four, with Ruth the widowed—this Saul saw,

And his heart thawed to pity and sheer shame.

He would have turned and left them, but—his men

Without! The chief priests and the Sanhedrim!

And Shimei! And Saul, with all Saul owed

To Saul's fair fame, his conscience, and his God!

This all was in an instant, while he yet

Only the group and not the persons saw

Who made the group, and so before he knew

His sister in her sombre different garb

Disguised and in the half light of the moon.

As Rachel now he fully recognized,

Dismay almost unmanned him once again.

Then anger to dismay succeeding made

His brother's heart in him against her burn

The hotter that it was a brother's heart.

Speechless he hung, because he could not speak

For anger; but when she, adventuring, drew

Near him and said, "Brother, I pray thee let

Me speak with thee apart a moment," then

The vials of his speech he broke on her:

"'Brother'! Thou shalt not 'brother' me. Thou hast

No brother more, no sister I. Once, yea—

But that is long ago, and she is dead,

My sister, and in her name will I hear

No woman speak henceforth. Thou hast missed thy mark

In that appeal. Better hadst thou bode dumb.

Go, woman! Thither! Sit thee with thine own!"

Saul, with his finger pointing to her seat,

Just left, in added scorn, spurned her from him.

Then Lazarus spoke: "With me do what thou wilt;

But these are women, let me stand for them."

"Stand for thyself," said Saul, "and answer me.

Thou art called Lazarus, I trow?" "Thou hast said,"

Lazarus replied. "Well, friend, with thee," said Saul,

"I have to speak. Disciple art thou, then,

Of Jesus Nazarene, late crucified?"

"Of Jesus," full confessing, Lazarus said,

"Of Jesus, whom, not knowing what they did,

Men crucified, but whom God glorified,

Raising Him from the dead and seating Him

At the right hand of glory in the heavens—

Of Him I am disciple. Bless His name!"

"Thou art young to utter blasphemy," said Saul;

"Sure unadvisedly thou hast spoken this.

Unsay it instantly, and swear it false,

Or, by the warrant of the Sanhedrim,

Thou goest with me to prison, perhaps to death,

The way of Stephen and all heretics!"

"Thou speakest idly," Lazarus said to Saul;

"Prison and death no terrors have for me.

The Lord I serve is Lord of life and death."

"Yea, I have heard," said Saul to Lazarus,

"Thou boastest to have been from death itself

Called back to life by whom thou namest Christ.

Let him, once more, call thee from out the tomb

To which I shall consign thee—if he can.

Saul then perhaps will his disciple be!

Poor fool, fanatic, what shall I call thee?

Persist not in this folly. Be a Jew,

A Jew indeed, nor fling thy life away.

Anathema be Jesus!' say but that,

Thou, Lazarus, and all the rest, with thee,

And I go hence taking the sword away,

The sword of just authority, undrawn,

Asleep within its scabbard, ye all safe,

All Jews indeed, and I given back again

A sister, Rachel mine, won from the dead!

'Anathema be Jesus!' say those words."

Saul ceased, awaiting what those five would do.

They did not look at one another; all,

As with one will to all—their eyes upraised,

And their hands clasped in ecstasy of awe—

Together "Alleluia Jesus!" said.

On Saul a power like lightning fallen from heaven

Fell, at that adoration from their lips.

A moment he stood stupefied, and then,

With a great wrench of scornful will, he freed

Himself and summoned his retainers in.

These entered rudely, but abashed they hung,

And wondering saw their master half abashed,

Before that little company clothed on

With virtue like a dreadful panoply.

Half with the air of one subdued, or one

Feeling he acts by sufferance not by power,

Saul bids bind all—save Rachel—and forthwith

Lead them to prison.

"Also me, bind me,"

So Rachel to the men said eagerly,

And offered her fair wrists. They looked at Saul,

But Saul vouchsafed to them nor word nor sign.

Still, 'No,' they gathered from that cold aspect

In him which seemed to say, 'That which I bid,

Do, further, naught.' Rachel to Saul himself

Beseechingly then turned and said: "O Saul,

Full well I know thou doest this, constrained

By conscience. Then by conscience be constrained

To let thy men bind also me, who am

As guilty as these are and with them should share

One lot."

"I did not come here to be taught

My duty," Saul said, "least of all by thee.

And least of all from thee will I abide

To be adjured as by my conscience. Once

I had a sister, she was conscience to me,

But, as I told thee, that was long ago,

And she is dead, my sister!"

Sadness mixed,

Unmeant, resisted, irresistible,

With Saul's enforced hardheartedness, which broke

His tone to pathos, and, despite himself

With those last words he burst in tears. He shook

In shudders of strong agony, while all

Wondered, but Rachel did not wonder, she

Knew far too well her brother, far too well

Knew their joint past, the two pasts they had had

Together, long and happy one, and one

So brief, so bitter,—and she pitied Saul.

She pitied him, but strongly did not weep—

Though afterward, alone, remembering,

She wept as if her eyes were fountains of tears—

With him now Rachel would not weep, for she

Knew far too well her brother, that he scorned

Himself for weeping those hot tears, and would

Be vexed to see tears wept in sympathy

As if with will he let his mood relent.

So Rachel held her pity hard shut up

Within her heart, which ached the more denied

Its wished-for vent in tears, and Saul soon curbed

His passion and in other passion veiled.

"Haste, there!" he said, sharp turning on his men,

"The night flies, while ye loiter."

Now the men

Already had bound Lazarus. He, ere yet

The shameful needless bonds upon the wrists

Of those four gentle women were made fast,

Said: "Saul, what evil have these women done

That they deserve roughness like this? I go

Willingly with thee, albeit innocent,

For I a man am and can well endure

Bonds, stripes, dungeon, or death, having such hope

Within me as makes all afflictions light,

Whatever they may be, compared with that

Eternal weight of glory nigh at hand.

Like hope have also these, and they will bear,

Doubtless, supported, whatsoever ill

Unmerited thou choosest to inflict.

But wilt thou choose to inflict indignity

And pain on such as these?"

"I do not choose,"

Said Saul; "I without choosing do, not what

I would, but what I must. I too wear chains,

Am bond of conscience, heavier chains wear I

Than these light manacles that bind the hands

But leave the heart free and one's will one's own.

Chained am I and driven. Conscience drives me on,

Both will and heart in me under the lash

Cower, and I here as but a galley-slave

Do what my conscience bids, joyless, and fierce

From lack of joy, more miserable far,

Binding, than ye are bound, with your fool's joy

Of windy hope! For me, I only know

That, in whatever way, this thing accursed,

This craze to think that man the Christ, must be

Curbed, checked, stopped, crushed, brought to an utter end,

Forever. All the future of our race

Hangs on it. Woman, tempted, fell, she first,

In Eden, whence is all our woe, and now

Women it seems are the peculiar prey

Of this new trick of devilish subtlety;

And, as of old, woman deceived becomes

Deceiver, and through her the mischief spreads

Ungovernably. So women, too—the cause

In part of the disease—must in part pay

The price of cure. For remedy this is,

Not punishment. Ye for the general health

Suffer—for your own health not less, if ye

Yield wisely, and not foolishly resist.

Yield wisely now, and let me hence depart

Cheered to have healed a little here the hurt

With which the daughter of God's people bleeds!"

How little prospered this his new appeal,

Saul learned, when Ruth, as not having heard even, said:

"At least let me, if I indeed must leave

My children double orphans so, let me

Now go and see them in their helpless sleep,

And take a farewell of them with my eyes.

But who will care for them when I am gone?

I cannot, will not, go away from them.

Nay, ye may bind me, ye may slay me, drag

Me hence may ye, alive or dead, but make

Me go with my own feet away from them,

My children, in their innocent infancy,

And leave them to pine motherless, forlorn,

And perish in their innocent infancy—

That is beyond your strength—I will not go—

A mother may defy the Sanhedrim!"

Ruth spoke dry-eyed, with holy mother's wrath,

Sublime in her indignant eloquence.

Saul, not unmoved, although inexorable,

Said: "Woman, as thy wish is, thou shalt go

Freely to see thy children. May the sight

Dispose thee to a better mind! Come back

Ready to say, 'For their sake, I renounce

My folly, I will be true Jewish mother

To them, so let me stay,'—and thou shalt stay.

Ruth going, Rachel thought, 'Shall I too go

With her, that I may help her bear to part

From her dear babes?' Quickly resolved behind

To tarry, she, Ruth gone, went up to Saul,

And said: "I pray thee, Saul, let Rachel go

Instead of Ruth to prison. Let Ruth bide

To nurse her children. I will take her place

Gladly in her captivity, and be

A surety for her. Young and strong am I,

And I will be a firm good surety, Saul,

Not fleeing and not complaining, always there,—

And if, hereafter ever, it should seem

Needful to have Ruth come herself to prison,

Why, she will still be here, under thy hand,

As now, so then, to be hence thither led.

Be kind, and have me bound straightway, before

Ruth comes again, that she be left no choice

But to let Rachel have her wilful way,

Perceiving that I have my bonds on me

To go to prison with her, if not without,

While much I wish to go without her—wish,

And, by thy kind permission, have the power.

Dost thou not think, Saul"—wherewith Rachel smiled

On Saul a starlight smile, which made him feel

How high she was above him in her sphere

Unconsciously—"Dost thou not think that I

Will make as good a prisoner as Ruth?"

Had she not smiled that smile, Saul might have thought,

'Infatuated child!' and thought aloud.

But that bright smile of almost humor sad

Showed him how sanely her true self she was,

And he was baffled, sudden-smitten dumb.

He could not answer her; much less could he

Bid bind those slender wrists with manacles

And send his sister to imprisonment!

So there Saul stood before her, marble-mute.

Not long—for Ruth soon now came back, more calm,

She having prayed beside her sleeping babes,

And trusted them again to the Most High

As Father, and from the Most High received

Grace to bear graciously her testimony,

Even by imprisonment, and children reft,

For Stephen's Lord and hers. The others marked

Ruth's placid changed demeanor, and gave thanks

Silent to God who thus their prayer had heard.

"I go," she said to Saul, "for Jesus' sake

Wherever thou mayst lead. My babes I trust,

As Stephen trusted them before he suffered,

Unto the Father of the fatherless.

Lo, I am ready—bind me—for His sake!"

Never so ruefully had those hard men

Bound any hands for prison as they bound hers;

And scarcely Saul found steady voice to say:

"Thy children shall be cared for tenderly,

Till thou return to them in sounder mind;

The fathers of our tribes will see to this."

Then Rachel said, and saying it wept at last:

"They would not bind me, Ruth, to take thy place,

Though I entreated them while thou wert gone.

I shall be left, unworthy to be left,

If ye, beloved, are worthy to be taken!

But, Ruth, if thou wilt let me, I shall stay

And myself be a mother to thy babes,

Nurturing them most lovingly, alike

For thine, their father's, and their own sweet sakes.

And I will daily bring thee word of them,

Treasuring for thee each little syllable

They lisp from day to day of loving speech

Concerning father or mother gone away.

They shall not lack whatever I can give

Of mother's tendance, so as yet to feel

That I am not their mother, only one

Less wise, less good, less loving, and less fair

Than she, who for their mother's sake loves them!

All this, I trust, will not last very long,

This motherlessness for them, this childlessness

For thee—thou wilt come back—but, O Ruth, pray"—

Thus Rachel softly for Ruth sole to hear—

"For surely now thou understandest well,

Too well! what then I meant when once I told thee,

'I too am widow as thou art, yet not

As thou, since me stroke heavier has bereaved!'—

O Ruth, pray thou and never cease to pray

For Saul, my brother!"

So they went away,

And, lodged in prison, those four captives sang,

A silent melody making in their hearts,

"With tribulation, peace!" until they slept.

But Rachel having followed at remove

Behind them, saw where they were put in hold,

Then, hedged about meanwhile with purity,

With convoy doubtless too of angels hedged,

Gladly on such an errand earthward come,

Invisible bright legion hovering round!—

Safely returned to sleep in Stephen's house.

There she abode, and thence, an angel she!

Went daily to and fro between Ruth's house

And Ruth in prison, bearing messages,

Refections often bearing, food or drink,

Her own housewifely skill and instinct nice,

With other comforts portable, sometimes,

Pillow or cushion, rug or robe or shawl,

Such as might serve to cheer the homesick heart

In any there imprisoned, with sweet sense

At least of loving thought from one for those

In bonds, as herself with them bound; the while

That for the orphaned children she made home.

Nor ever failed to Rachel full supply

Of all whatever need there was to her.

Month after month, her cruse was brim with oil,

With meal her measure, large replenishment.

God put it in the heart of Saul to send,

Diverted like an irrigating rill

Full all its season from the affluent Nile,

A secret stream of various providence

For Rachel and for Rachel's fosterlings

Fed from the fountain of his patrimony.

BOOK XI.

SAUL AND HIRANI.

Saul, ill-content with his own prosperity in persecution, retires gloomily, late at night, to his desolated home. He vainly tries to sleep, and, rising very early, goes to consult Gamaliel. Returning, he encounters Shimei, who, with gibes, instigates a further act of persecution on Saul's part, cunningly contriving it to make refusal impossible. Saul attempting the arrest proposed by Shimei meets with opposition, which the latter has secretly inspired. The persecutor in consequence narrowly escapes violent death, being rescued at the critical moment by Shimei; who himself, with a band of servitors, makes the arrest unsuccessfully attempted by Saul alone. The man arrested confesses Jesus before the Sanhedrim, constant against every inducement to deny his Lord. He is scourged, at the instance of Shimei, and finally, at the instance of Mattathias, stoned; Saul in both cases giving his vote against the man.

SAUL AND HIRANI.

With large prosperity and little joy,

Thus the first stage of that 'straight path' foreseen

By him to Rachel, 'traced in blood and tears,'

Saul had accomplished, and the night was late;

He parted from his men and was alone.

Alone and moody, by the westering moon,

His face downcast turned absently toward what

Late was his home, home longer not to him,

With footstep slow suspended by sad thought—

Which had no goal, but ever round and round

On one fixed centre hopelessly revolved—

Saul paced the still streets of Jerusalem,

Like a soul seeking rest and finding none.

Before the door at length he finds himself

Of his own house forsaken yesterday.

For an uncertain absence, but for long

As he supposed, Saul thence that morn had fled

In haste and bitterness. He could not bear

To think of meeting Rachel day by day,

And that great gulf impassable between

Her and himself yawning! he hands imbrued

Perhaps in blood of those she counted dear

But he most hateful counted bringing home,

Her innocent white hands to touch, and feel

The difference! Therefore he fled because

'Rachel,' thought he, 'must bide, and bide we twain

Cannot.' But now Rachel was gone, and Saul,

Alone and lonely, sojourner might be

Where brother and sister late had shared a home.

He enters noiselessly, and unperceived

Steals to his chamber; there upon his couch

To restless thought, he, not to rest, lies down.

Restless and fruitless, save that, morning yet

Pearl-white, untinted with that ruddy flush

Of color in the east before the sun,

Saul rose, and, after joyless orisons,

Went to Gamaliel's house, sure him to find

Already on his roof to greet the dawn.

"In anguish sore and sore perplexity

Of spirit, master," Saul said, "lo, I come

To thee, not knowing whither else to go,

For solace, and the solving of my doubt."

"Welcome thou comest ever, even or morn,"

Gamaliel said; "but what disquiets thee?

When in the council last I heard thee speak,

Thou wert all firmness, as one wholly clear

In purpose, and thou hadst that glad aspect,

Though serious, which befits the mind resolved.

Whence, Saul, the change in thee?"

"Thou knowest," said Saul

"How prospered my attempt, ventured upon

Without thy counsel, in that issue joined

With Stephen."

"Yea, my son," Gamaliel said;

"But I, meantime, after my counsel given

Dissuading thee, had learned myself to feel

How failed the hand of brute authority

Against this strange faith of the Nazarene.

Thine undertaking I less disapproved

After our hearing of the Galilæans.

Something perceived in them, or through them felt,

Disturbed me with a strange solicitude,

Which the ill fortune of thine own assay

Did not relieve. But thou, thou still wert clear,

Wert thou not, Saul? Thine action did not halt;

Promptly in Stephen's stoning thou took'st part."

"I acted promptly, that I might be clear

In thought," said Saul; "this, rather than because

I was so clear. My halting urged me on.

Yet now, O master mine, I might perhaps

Be clear, but that my coadjutorship

Offends me so, torments me with such doubt.

In the right way how can I be, and be

In the same way with Shimei? My soul

Sickens at him, at all his words and ways

Sickens, and still he dogs me every step,

Clings to me like my shadow, whispers me

Over my shoulder, pointing me out my way,

Until I hardly can do that which else

Freely I should, because he bids me do it!"

"Yea, Saul, my son, trust thou thine instinct there,"

Gravely Gamaliel said, with slow reserve

That warned how more than he would say was meant;

"Our brother Shimei is a dark man,

Whose public zeal is edged with private spite;

Him well, son Saul, it thee behooves beware.

Since when thou scornedst him in those high words

Before the council, Shimei hates thee, Saul,

And hate like his is sleepless till revenge.

Ill for a cause that must be served by him!

But some are tools, and others ministers,

Of God, Who works His holy will with all!"

Unwarned by warning, but in conscience pricked,

And following his own tyrannous thought, Saul spoke:

"Those infamous false witnesses of his—

Say, master, did I on my conscience take

The guilt of their suborning, when consent

I gave to Stephen's death thereby procured?

My conscience like a scorpion stings me on,

But whether a good conscience before God

It be, or rather a conscience violated,

Which I must quiet by not heeding it,

And by confusing it with din of deeds

Forever doing—this I cannot well

Resolve me, and—but, nay, for that were false,

I do not wish thou shouldst resolve me it.

Forgive me, and farewell! But pray for Saul!"

Therewith, and pausing not, like one distraught,

Or one goaded, and wildly seeking fast

Enough before the goad to fly, which flies

Only the faster, following, for his speed,

And pricks the harder—so Saul broke away

And left Gamaliel on his roof alone

Astonished.

Swiftly now, yet with a haste

As of one wishing to leave far behind

Some spot abhorred, much more than as of one

Eager a goal before him to attain,

Say rather as of one insanely fierce

Somewhither, anywhither, from himself

Pursuing hard himself, to fly, Saul flew

Back toward his dwelling. At the door arrived,

He well-nigh stumbled—for his hasting feet

Against some shapeless heap struck that alive

Seemed, for it moved, and from the threshold, where

He in a kind of ambush crouching lay,

Slowly into the semblance of a man,

Under Saul's eyes down bent, upgrew—Shimei!

'Sin coucheth at the door!' thought Saul; he thought

Half of himself, as half of Shimei,

For, 'If thou doest not well, thou Saul!' thought he,

Then, "Reptile! How beneath my heel should I

His serpent head have bruised!" hissed hotly out

Between his set teeth, and perused the man.

Half under breath this, then to him aloud:

"What art thou? Imp of hell spawned hither new

Up from the pit? Avaunt! I loathe thee hence!"

"Nay, brother Saul," grinned Shimei, therefore pleased

Thus spurned to be, because the spurning was

With anguish of disgust to him who spurned,

Malevolently yet storing reserve

Of hatred and revenge therefor, to be

Afterward feasted when the time should come,

"Nay, brother Saul, you look with eyesight dazed

From undersleeping, and from rash surprise

At this encounter. I am Shimei,

Your special coadjutor tried and true.

I am a little early, I confess—

Or late, which shall I call it? early and late—

Like moral good and evil, Saul—ofttimes

Change places with your point of view—become

The one the other, as you look at them.

"You see I hardly slept myself this night,

Thinking of you, and pleasuring my mind

With fancies of the odd coincidences

That might be happening you at Bethany.

I got prompt information how it all

Fell out, and hastened hither to advise

With you. Upon your sleep, already much

Cut short, I would not thoughtlessly break in,

And so I dropped me at your threshold here,

To wait a proper hour for seeing you,

And yet not let you pass out hence unseen.

I must have fallen asleep, and, brother Saul

Be sure I was no less surprised than you,

When you just now came on me unaware.

Ha! ha! How naturally you mistook your friend

For something not so pleasant from the pit

Vomited suddenly up under your feet!

Another might have taken it amiss

To be so little courteously greeted,

But I—why, give and take, say I, in joke,

You have bravely evened up the score between us!"

"I do not bandy jokes with such as you,

Suborner of false witnesses!" gnashed Saul.

Saul's look, his tone, had withered any man

Save Shimei, who grew blithe in sultry heats

Of human scorn as in his element.

So Shimei flourished lustier hearing Saul

Despise him with the question further asked:

"What is there common between you and me?"

"Oh! Ah!" sneered Shimei; "I had thought you dazed

In eyesight only, but distempered mind

You show now, taking this high strain with me.

'What common 'twixt us?' Yea, yea, very good!

'Suborner of false witnesses'—hence base,

Shimei, but very, very virtuous, Saul,

Who, with much flourish of disdain, his hands,

His lily hands, washes, for all to see,

Quite white and fair of all complicity

With 'lies,' 'devilish lies,' 'lies damnable,'

You know, and so forth, and in due course then,

His moral indignation unabated,

Takes profit of said lies to make away

With Stephen, through more weighty argument

In stones found than conveniently to hand

Came when he crossed words with that heretic!"

The mordant sneer corrosive of such speech

Ate through the thin mail of Saul's scornful pride,

And bit him in his wincing sense of truth.

Against these thrusts in no wise could he fence,

Having the foothold lost whereon he stood

Firm in the conscience of integrity.

Unbidden would those words of Stephen, "Pricks

To kick against!" returning come to him

In memory, while ever, with each return,

Fiercer waxed Saul's resistance, fiercer wound

Infixing in his secret-suffering mind—

As should the bullock battle with the goads

Behind him, shrinking flesh on sharpened steel.

So now his wild heart Saul pressed sternly up

Against the cruel points of Shimei's jeer,

And suffered them in silence.

Shimei

Felt his own triumph, and at feline ease

Leisurely played with his proud captive. "Saul,"

He added, "you and I are men too wise

To waste strength here in mutual blame. Forgive

Me that I was so far led on to speak

As if retorting word for word unkind.

I should have made allowance for your state,

Devoid of that just self-complacency

So needful to a happy health of mind.

Now you and I at bottom are such twins,

We ought to understand each other well;

It is a shame that this has not been so.

Here we are one in aim, and unity

In aim—what deeper unity than that

Joins ever man and man? Let us strike hands

Together, since our hearts beat unison."

Not less revolted at these words was Saul,

More, rather, that he knew how insincere

They were, how hollow, as how void of truth,

Spoken in pure malicious irony.

The sense of difference his from Shimei,

Browbeaten in him, badgered, stunned, ashamed,

Could not rejoice in thought, in speech far less,

Against that flourished claim of unity.

He stood silent, ignobly helpless, while

Maliciously his pastime further took

With him his captor, who then, sated, said:

"Well, Saul, I shall excuse it to a mind

In you disordered through late loss of sleep,

That you do not invite me in to sit

A little at my ease while I disclose

The thought I had in coming to you now.

Nay, nay"—for Saul, broken in self-command

False shame to feel, and false self-blame, as found

Defaulting dues of hospitality,

Instinctive moved toward making Shimei guest—

"Permit me to decline the courtesy.

You are tired, you are very tired, and you should rest.

Once within, seated, I might stay too long,

Bound by the charms of your society.

"I pray you be not overmuch disturbed,

But really you should know it, Saul, the chance

You fell in with this night at Bethany—

I mean your meeting of your sister there

Confessed a bold disciple of the Way—

Is likely to engender consequence.

It was a noble chance, Saul, from the Lord,

Pushed to your hand—would you had used it nobly!

Alas, at the extreme pinch, your virtue failed!

I can excuse it, while regretting it,

I myself, Saul. Not every one, I fear,

Is naturally so lenient as I am.

My sympathy is facile, but the most

Will say, 'Why did not Saul send her to prison?'

Now what you need is, to forestall such talk

By giving people something else to say.

Fill their mouth full with daily fresh report

Of other, and still other, great exploits

Achieved by you in the same line, and then

They either will forget that one lapse yours,

Or cease, from the perversion of a sister,

Connived at or colluded with by you,

To accuse a taint and pravity of blood

Inclining you yourself to heresy.

"I give myself no end of trouble for you,

And I have made discovery of the man

You must not fail to move for as next prize.

He is a notable fellow, full of quip,

Quaint turn of phrase, and ready repartee,

Each trick of tongue to catch the common ear,

And mischievous accordingly; for he

Boasts everywhere how, having been born blind

And grown to forty years of age in blindness,

He one day met Jesus of Nazareth,

When that deceiver spat upon the ground

And mixed an unguent of the clay, therewith

Smearing his sightless balls, and bidding him

Go wash them in the pool of Siloam;

He went and washed, and came a seeing man.

"Such is his story, and so plausibly

He tells it that a wide belief he wins.

'Hirani' is the name by which he goes;

Name self-assumed since his pretended cure,

A kind of label that he boldly thrusts

In people's faces to placard his lie.

'He made me see'—he, to wit, Jesus, mind—

As were no other 'he' in all the world!

Well, this Hirani to be weaver feigns,

Mere cover to that other trade he drives—

A famous flourishing one with him, they say—

Proselyte-making for the Nazarene.

Clap him in prison, Saul, let him repeat

His marvel to the unbelieving walls.

At present, many of the Way are fled

Hither and thither through the countryside,

But this man tarries to rehearse his tale.

So there your plan is, ready-wrought for you;

Now, Saul, go sleep upon it, and farewell."

Man through malicious mind more miserable,

More miserable man from every cause

Of inward sorrow save malicious mind,

Never were met and parted than when there

Shimei found Saul and left him thus that morn.

Once more Saul visited his couch in vain;

Sleep could he not, could not but round and round

Tread the treadmill of painful barren thought,

On this fixed only, with resentful will,

Not to do that which Shimei pressed him to.

So, having eaten, without appetite,

He flung forth in the street dispirited—

Aimless, nor on the way through hope to aim,

Hopeless, nor on the way through aim to hope—

Irresolute, deject, energiless,

Therefore the destined prey of whatso snare

Should sudden first waylay his nerveless foot—

Forth in the street flung, at his door to meet

An ambushed messenger of Shimei's,

Who from his master gave him written word:

"The Sanhedrim to sit this afternoon

In council on the case you will present.

All feel the utmost flattering confidence

That Saul will promptly bring his prisoner in.

The bearer of this can guide you to your man."

'Himself false witness now become, the wretch!'

Thought Saul. 'This buyer of false witnesses

Has falsely told my brethren that I put

Myself in pledge to do a special task,

His bidding, and has got the council called

In expectation on their part from me

That I will bring them in this man to judge—

Death doubtless meant, instead of prison, for him!

The wretch, the perjured wretch, and damnable!

Yet for me what escape? Alternative

None offers. Yea, denounce might I the man

Even to his teeth before them all a liar—

But to what profit? He could truly say

I listened, not demurring, when he broached

This his new plan, as I had done before

Concerning the arrests at Bethany

By him projected, meekly made by me!

I should seem caviller, than he more false,

And trifler with the ancient majesty

Prescriptive of the Sanhedrim.'

Saul writhed

With all the frail remainder of his force,

Writhed—and submitted. With the guide he went,

And the man found whom he, under duress

Resented, sought. The invisible chains which then

That captive captor wore, far worse galled him

Than those whereof he plained at Bethany.

Master more cruel yet the devil can be

Than vehement conscience blinded by self-will.

Pride driving makes an intimate misery,

But a more intimate misery pride driven!

At his loom seated—there his handicraft,

Late learned by him after sight given him late,

Busily plying—Saul's intended prey,

With his hands weaving, as the shuttle flew,

A fabric of coarse cloth, wove with his tongue,

That subtler shuttle in the loom of thought,

Discourse simple yet sage, for those to hear,

A goodly audience, who had gathered round

Him in his place of labor out-of-doors

Under an awning stretched that fenced the sun—

Drawn thither by the fame of what he told,

A strange experience never man's before.

"Thou art disciple of the Nazarene?"

Abruptly so, intruding, Saul inquired.

The accent of authority that spoke

In him, the masterful demeanor his,

All felt, and of the listeners some, afraid,

Withdrew in silence; but the sifted more

Who stayed clouded their aspect, and, with grim

Mutter in undertone exchanged between

Them, each with other, asked or answered who

This was that rudely thus and threateningly

Broke in upon them. Saul! the Sanhedrim!

Were dreaded names, but red runs Jewish blood,

And hot, and quick, and those affronted men

Scarce waited for their neighbor seen thus scorned

To answer yea to his stern challenger,

Ere they together moved in mass about

Saul unattended, naked of all arms

Save his authority, and, hustling him,

Seemed on the verge of using violent hands

To thrust him forth—nay, to Saul's ears there came

That pregnant word, ready on Jewish tongues,

Yet readier hardly than to Jewish hands

The deed, word full of instant menace, "Stones!"

Saul knew his danger and his helplessness;

But, far from terror, though not void of fear,

Blanching not blenching, he a tonic breath

Drew, in an air that to another man

Had softened all his fibre or dissolved.

Vanished that mood of feebleness he brought,

And in its place a resolute, alert,

Defiant sense of self-sufficing strength

Supported him, nay, buoyed him almost gay,

As thus, with bitter words, he taunted them:

"Yea, now ye show what lessons ye have learned

Of unresisting meekness at the feet

Of this your teacher—then not to resist

When ye are certain to be overpowered!

But twenty of you to one man are brave!

Nay, but one man may twenty of you scorn.

Back, there! Stand back! This man my prisoner is.

I, Saul, commissioned by the Sanhedrim,

Summon and seize him to appear this day

Before their just tribunal to be judged

As self-confessed disciple of the Way.

Follow me thou! Make way before me there!"

The peremptory tone, the audacity,

The prompt aggressive movement, with the proud,

High, lordly speech disdainful, the assured

Serene assumption of authority

Enforced by personal will as strong as power—

These for a moment's space surrounded Saul

With that inviolable immunity,

The nameless spell which perfect courage casts;

Nay, so far gave him full ascendant there

That he quite to his man his way had made

And on a shoulder laid the arresting hand.

But stay! not quelled, suspended only, seems

The indignant angry humor of the crowd.

Scarce has Saul uttered his last scornful words

And turned to front the men about him massed—

Not doubting but, with only the drawn sword

Of his fixed forward countenance, he shall

This side and that before him cleave a way

Wide from amid them forth to pass—upon

Such hinging-point scarce poises Saul, when they,

With many-handed violence, seize him

And, irresistibly uplifting, bear

Helpless, headforemost, ignominiously,

Whither they will.

In vain Hirani cries,

By turns rebuking and beseeching them;

In vain he follows, warning them beware

To involve themselves in risk fruitless for him;

In vain implores them even for Jesus' sake,

Whose name will be dishonored by their deed;

Presents himself in vain a prisoner

Willing to go with Saul unmanacled;

In vain avouches he, in any case,

Shall yield his person to the Sanhedrim,

Doubtless to suffer but the heavier doom

For what is doing, unless they refrain.

Hirani had adjured them by the name

Of Jesus, but those heady men, that name,

That mastership, owned not, Jews only still,

Still in the changed new spirit all unschooled.

So by their own mad motion ever mad

Growing, they hurtle Saul along the way—

He the while musing, with mind strangely clear,

How like to Stephen's lot his own is now!—

Till chance unlooked-for their wild turbulence stays.

All had been teemed from Shimei's fruitful brain.

First, he had mixed the listening crowd around

The weaver at that moment with base men,

His creatures, who, for hirelings' pay, should stir

Their neighbors up to wreak indignity

Upon Saul's person, wounding to his pride,

And in the public view disparaging.

Then, at the point of need, to succor Saul,

Bringing his haughty colleague under debt

To himself, Shimei, for his very life—

This was that crafty plotter's next concern.

A band accordingly of men-at-arms,

Sworn in the service of the Sanhedrim,

He had made ready; and these now appeared

Confronting that tumultuary crowd.

Saul rescued—not without some disarray

And soil of rent apparel, hair and beard

Dishevelled, and disfigured countenance,

His person thus disparaged to the eye,

Hirani, as ringleader of the rout,

Chained and brought forward, while go free, but blamed

For being misled, the others—Shimei then

To view emerges. He addresses Saul:

"Well met! That fellow, with his crew of like,

Treated you badly, Saul. You might have prayed

To be delivered into Stephen's hands

From tender mercies such as theirs! I trust

You have not suffered worse than what I see,

Some slight derangement of apparel shown,

Your hair and beard less sleek than might beseem,

With here and there a scratch scored on your face—

Nothing more serious, let me trust? Our men

Were at the nick of time in coming up.

It was not pure coincidence. You see,

Both knowing your mettle and the vicious ways

These sanctimonious ruffians have at times,

I had misgivings that you might be rash,

And suffer disadvantage at their hands.

So, as in like case you would do by me,

I, with these faithful servitors of ours,

Run to your rescue here, and not too soon!

A little later would have been too late.

You were well started down the steep incline,

Which, very happily, as I learn, you styled

'The way of Stephen and all heretics.'

Droll, very, with of course its serious side,

Queer irony, you know, of will Divine,

Supposing they had really stoned you, Saul!

Well, well, it turns out better than your fears.

You will not, true, and I lament it, make

Quite a triumphal entry with your man

Before the Sanhedrim, leading him in,

With air of captain fresh from glorious war,

Who brings proud trophy of his single spear

Redoubtable; but the main point is ours,

The man we want is safe in custody."

Thus Shimei with his devilish sneering glee

Nettled the heart of Saul and cheered his own.

Before the council Shimei stood forth,

Instead of Saul, to accuse the prisoner.

With plausible glib mendacity, he said:

"Not only is this fellow heretic

After the manner of those Galilæans,

But myself saw with mine own eyes just now

How he the idlers in the street stirred up

To most unseemly act of violence

Against our brother Saul, worthy of death,

As being aimed at death, unless that I

Had ready been at hand with force enough

To rescue one of our own number thus

To the most imminent brink of stoning brought.

Saul, if he would, might show himself to you

In lively witness of the things I say."

Hereon to Saul he signed with hand and eye;

But Saul arose and calmly, with disdain,

Thus spoke: "The man here present prisoner

Is, out of his own mouth, disciple proved

Of Jesus Nazarene. As such I sought

To bring him hither before you to be judged.

This my attempt, most unexpectedly,

A crowd of idlers round about him drawn

Vacantly listening to discourse from him,

Resented; they, resisting, thrust me back—

I had ventured single-handed and alone—

And, borne to madness, might perhaps have wrought

Some harm to me—I know not; but one thing

I know, and that I freely testify,

This man, our prisoner, did nought of all,

Contrariwise, with all his eloquence

Endeavored to dissuade those violent,

Constantly saying and averring he,

In any case, should, of his own free will,

Give himself up to you—thereby to clear

The Name he sought to honor of reproach

For wild deeds done as in defence of him."

A moment, having heard Saul testify,

The Sanhedrim sat silent in fixed thought.

Then Shimei, ever easily equal found

To his occasion, when need seemed to him

Of whatsoever fraud in word or act,

Said that of course from brother Saul was heard

Never aught other than he deemed was true;

But the fact was, as would by witnesses

Be amply proved, that all this culprit's show

Of zeal to stay those rioters back was show

Merely, dust in the eyes of Saul to cast,

Or rather sport to make of him, the prey

Secure supposed of his, the prisoner's,

Malicious machination through the hands

Of his confederates, or tools, who knew

Better their master's purposes, his real

Purposes, than his feigned dissuasive words

To heed, and let his victim go. Saul's state

Was at the moment such, so ill at ease

His mind—why, even his body in that vile

Duress was hardly to be called his own—

Saul—and without offence would Shimei say it—

Might be regarded as not competent

On this particular point to testify.

At all events, here were good witnesses

Who, from a safer, steadier point of view

Than Saul's, and longer occupied, could tell

Both what the prisoner's wont had been to teach,

And what he instigated in this case.

With such preamble to prepare their minds,

Minds used to guess the drift of Shimei's wish,

This arch-artificer of fraud produced

As witnesses the men whom he had late

Mixed with Hirani's audience to foment

That lawlessness. Such serviceable tongues

Failed not to swear, in all, as Shimei wished.

Saul, in his secret mind with anguish torn,

Gazed at the man forsworn against, maligned,

And almost envied him. A look of peace

Was on him like a light of fixéd stars,

So constant, and so inaccessible

Of change through jar, through stain, so clear, so fair!

He listened to the voices round him loud,

As if some softer voice from farther sent

Made ever an inner music to his mind

Charming him with a melody unheard.

He saw the things, the faces, and the forms,

About him nigh, as if he looked beyond

Or through them, and beheld far, far away

Or whom or what to others was unseen.

So when the high-priest, from his middle seat

Among the councillors, accosted him,

Asking, "To all these things what sayest thou?"

The prisoner, like one absent-minded brought

To sudden sense of present things, replied:

"I hardly understand what 'these things' are,

For otherwhither I was drawn in thought.

But if it be inquired concerning Him

Whom lately they not knowing crucified,

Why, this I answer for my testimony:

'Let there be light,' said God, and light there was.

Almost thus did that Man of Nazareth,

Creative, speak for me, and changed my world

Of native darkness to this cheerful scene

Above, beneath, about me, sudden spread,

And sun and moon and stars for me ordained.

I praise Him as the Lord of life and light,

And Giver of light and life to dead and blind.

All glory to His ever-blesséd Name!"

The simple ecstasy from which he spoke,

Illuminated, and the holy power

Of truth, in witness such, meekly so borne,

Wrought even upon the jealous Sanhedrim

An influence which they could not resist,

And a pang shot to the inmost heart of Saul.

A faltering of compunction close on shame

Made the high-priest half-tenderly, with tone

As of a father toward a child in fault,

Say: "Nay, my son, deceived art thou; of will

Surely thou dost not utter blasphemy.

If so be demon power had leave from God

To give thee back one day what demon power

Had erst one day from God had leave to take

Away, thy sight—be glad indeed, but fear

To yield wrongly thy praise to demon power

Permitted; all to God permissive yield.

Glory belongs to God alone. My son,

Bethink thee now betimes and save thy soul.

'Jesus of Nazareth anathema!'

Those words repeat for all to hear, and go

Acquitted hence of that thy blasphemy."

So the high-priest to him, but he replied:

"Blinded again I should expect to be,

My eyeballs blasted to the roots of sight,

Nay, worse, my inner seeing quenched in dark,

Forever and forevermore past cure,

Were I to speak that Name except to praise.

Glory to God and glory to His Son,

Forever and forever in the heavens,

The heaven of heavens, seated at His right hand!"

"A bold blasphemer!" so, discordant, shrieked

Suddenly Shimei, the spell to break

He feared those simple, solemn, holy words

Again might cast upon the Sanhedrim.

The chance for heaven precarious is on earth

Ever, and now the heavenly chance was lost,

Such counter breath unable to withstand.

Those half-rapt souls reverted to themselves,

And brooked to listen—nay, assent gave they,

Even Saul too gave assent wrung out!—when, next,

"Stripes for his back!" sharply shrilled Shimei;

"Good forty stripes less one may save his soul!

He loves his blasphemy, give him his fill,

Whet him his appetite, make him blaspheme

His own Lord God, the man of Nazareth.

For that thrice damnéd name require from him,

At every lash, an imprecation loud,

On pain of instant death should one curse fail!"

So there with cruel blows was scourged the man,

At every blow he crying out aloud

Joy that he might thus suffer for that Name,

And, baffled, they gnashing their teeth on him.

"His madness has infected all his flesh,"

Screamed Mattathias; "cure there is but one.

Destroy his flesh with stones, let his flesh rot!"

This also they, beside themselves with rage,

Rage rabid from the sight of bloodshed vain,

Resolved—resolving with them likewise Saul!

Without the gate they thrust their victim forth,

And there stoned him calling upon the name

Of Jesus to his last expiring breath.

That night, the violated body, left

There where it fell by those his murderers

To be of ravening beast or bird the prey,

Was thence, with reverent rite, by unseen hands

Borne to a sepulchre, with spices wrapt

In linen pure and fine, and laid away

In secret, not unwept or unbewailed

Of such as loved him for the love he bore,

Quenchless by death, to the Belovéd Name.

BOOK XII.

SAUL AND THE APOSTLES.

Again deeply distressed in heart, Saul at set of sun withdraws to the top of Olivet for solitary thought. There falling asleep, after pensive soliloquy, he dreams that Shimei has followed him thither, and that he now pours a characteristic strain of sneer and instigation into his ear. This rouses him, and he goes moodily home. After a long, deep slumber there, he resolves on undertaking what he dreamed that Shimei proposed, namely, the arrest of the apostles. His men fail him at the pinch, and Saul bitterly upbraids them, declaring strongly that their renegade behavior only determines him the more sternly to root utterly out the pestilent Galilæan heresy, at whatever cost of exertion and blood and tears.

SAUL AND THE APOSTLES.

So one day more of bitterness had spent

Saul, and the night, the solemn night, came on,

Grateful to him, for he would be alone.

Whether the thought of home, no home, repelled,

Or longing toward his sister unconfessed

There in that banishment at Bethany

Bright with her presence in it—whether this

Drew him, or wish of lonely room and height

Where more he might from human kind be far—

However listing, Saul to Olivet

Turned him, and slowly to the summit climbed.

The moon not risen yet, the hemisphere

Of heaven above him was with clustered stars

Glittering, and awful with the glory of God.

Upward into those lucid azure deeps,

Withdrawn, deep beyond deep, immeasurably,

Gazing, Saul said: "Deep calleth unto deep!

Those deeps above me unto deeps within

Me cry, as infinite to infinite.

The spaces of my spirit answer back;

I feel them, empty but capacious, vast

And void abysses of unfed desire,

Hunger eternal and eternal thirst!

Upward I gaze, and see the steadfast stars

Unshaken in their station calmly shine,

I listen to the silence of the skies

And yearn, with what desire! for peace like that,

Vainly, with what desire! for peace like that!

Beneath the pure calm of the holy heaven,

So nigh! here am I seething like the sea,

That cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt

Continually! O state forlorn! Where, where,

My God, for me is rest? For me, for me!

'Great peace have they,' so sang that psalmist taught

By Thee, 'Great peace have they that love Thy law

And nothing shall offend them.' Answer me,

Lord God, do I not love Thy law? Then why

This opposite of peace within my breast?

Am I deceived? Do not I love Thy law?

Answer me Thou!"

But answer came there none,

Or Saul was deaf, and the great sky looked down,

With all its multitude of starry eyes,

Impassible, upon a human soul

Wretched, unrespited from long unrest.

The weary man upon a spot of ground

Bare to the heaven had thrown himself supine;

Lying diffuse, his wistful face upturned,

And poring on the starry-scriptured scroll

Above him, he such thoughts breathed out in words.

He had deemed himself alone, aloof from men;

But seemed had scarce his murmurous monotone

Died on his lips, he skyward gazing still,

When he was conscious of approaching feet,

Feet all at once so nigh, they in the dark

Touched him ere he could rouse himself to stand.

'Why, brother Saul! I stumble on you here,

Much as this morn you stumbled over me!'

Such, to the sleeping man, a voice seemed borne.

'Those odious false-cheery tones once more!

Shimei has watched, and, hither following me,

Lurked overhearing my soliloquy;

Then, stealthily retiring a few steps,

Comes back, as with the brisk and frank advance

Of one somewhither walking at full speed,

And stumbles against me of purpose rude!'

So Saul divined dissembling Shimei,

Who said, or to Saul, dreaming, seemed to say—

Vision as life-like as reality:

"How naturally appear our paths to cross!

I thought that I would take a casual stroll

Alone, and you the same thought had, it seems,

At the same time, directed both, odd too,

The self-same way—another proof, you see,

What kindred spirits we are!

"You must have marked

How fine the night is! What a wealth of stars!

Do you not sometimes wish, Saul, you could be

As comfortably calm at heart as stars?

How wonderfully quiet all is there,

Up in the region of the firmament!

Probably stars have nothing else to do

Than to be calm like that, and smile at us

Fretting ourselves down here with worry and work.

Worry is worse than work to wear us out.

But worst of all is having huge desires

That nothing in the world can satisfy.

Some men moon sighing for they know not what,

Mainly great hollow hungry mouths and maws,

Like void sea-beds; abysses of desire,

You know, that not the world itself could fill.

Better close up your heart than stretch it wide

And never get enough to make it full.

Adjust yourself, say I, to circumstance,

Hard work adjusting circumstance to you!

There's nothing better than to go right on

Doing the obvious duty next to hand,

And let the stars pursue their peaceful way,

As hindered not, so envied not, by you.

The sky is calm, no doubt—the upper sky—

But happens we do not live in the sky,

But on the earth, a very different place,

And man's work we, not star's work, have to do;

So let us be about it while we may.

"For instance now, to bring the matter home

(I trust I shall not seem officious, Saul,

I really must make one suggestion more),

Your pristine prestige has been much impaired

Through slips and ill-successes on your part.

No mean advantage to a man, repute

For what the godless Romans call 'good luck,'

Piously we, 'the favor of the Lord';

This is forsaking you, I grieve to find,

On all sides round, wherever I inquire.

Up, and recover it with one bold push,

Push that dares hazard all upon a cast.

You know twelve men there are in special sort

Dubbed the 'apostles' of the Nazarene,

Who play a part assigned as witnesses

To testify that Jesus rose again,

After his crucifixion, from the dead.

These fellows boldly in Jerusalem

Stay, while the rest run scattering far and wide.

Some kind of superstitious charm or awe

Surrounds them—that is, in their own conceit

And fond illusion of impunity.

Boldly arrest them, Saul, and spoil the spell."

Thus far, as oft in dreams will chance, Saul lay

And helpless heard what irked him sore to hear;

But now, the loathing irrepressible

Excited by such hateful speech, roused him

To spurning that asunder broke the bonds,

The nightmare bonds, of sleep. He, full awake,

Groped with his hands about, dreading to feel

Shimei indeed couched nigh, as he had dreamed,

Breathing into his ear. No Shimei there!

He sprang upon his feet, and in the light

Of the waned moon, now risen, still large and fair,

Looked round and round—to find himself alone.

"A dream, then," Saul said, "only a hideous dream!

Thank God! How horribly real it seemed! How like

Must I have grown to him, to have had his thoughts!

What demon's doom only to have such thoughts!

Perhaps a demon whispered these now to me!

I could even pity Shimei, to be haunt

And harbor of his ceaseless evil thoughts—

Could pity, save that I detest too much.

I cannot be like him and loathe him so;

Or does he haply also loathe himself?

Then were I like, for sure I loathe myself!

What travesty it was of those my thoughts!

And not ignoble thoughts, though vain, they were.

The mad pranks that our dreaming brains will play!"

So musing, there Saul, on the mountain's brow,

Statue-like stood some moments in suspense;

Then slow descending to his house repaired.

A deep, deep draught of pure oblivion

In sleep drowned him until the morrow noon.

Prayer then, and then fast broken, and calmly Saul

The ill dream of his yesternight revolved.

What better project for fresh act than that

Which, gladly now he pondered, Shimei

Did not propose, but only Shimei's

False lively mimic counterfeit in sleep?

Yea, he would next, with prompt but circumspect

Audacity, the audacious head and front

Smite of this growing mischief, in those men

Styled the apostles of the Nazarene.

Saul knew within his heart that secretly

He dreaded this adventure; therefore he,

With will sardonically set, moved on

To undertake it. Twenty men of tried

True mettle, men with muscle iron-firm,

And mind seasoned, through many hazards run,

And long wont of impunity, to scorn

All danger—such a score of men chose Saul,

And, from them veiling yet his purpose, took,

With indirection intricate, his way

Toward where, as he, by diligent quest, had learned,

The twelve apostles used each day to meet

In secret from their prowling enemies;

But to the common people, loving them

For manifold miracles of beneficence,

Their secret meeting-place was not unknown.

As, gradually, Saul with his retinue

Drew near the spot, so large a following

Of arméd men, led by a chief whose fame

Was rife now through Jerusalem for deeds

And purposes of uttermost revenge

Against the Galilæan heresy,

Gathered about their course a growing crowd,

Who, urged by various thought and feeling, watched

What might that minatory march intend.

Reached thus at length the place, Saul stays his steps,

And, turning to his men in halt to hear,

Speaks, with that dense clear voice which tense will breeds:

"Here hide the twelve arch-heretics of all.

Ye come to take them hence bond prisoners,

For lodgment in a hold whence no escape,

That they may cease sedition to foment.

Duly the fathers of the Sanhedrim,

Wise warders of our Hebrew commonwealth,

Will thence adjudge them to their doom of death.

No waste of words in parley now, leave asked,

Terms offered, naught of that, no paltering pause,

Instantly, stroke on stroke, down with the door!"

But pause they did, those picked, use-hardened men;

They stood as struck with palsy or with fear.

"Traitors be ye, or cravens, which?" cried Saul—

Amazement, indignation, ire, disdain,

Effacing exhortation in his tone.

Then, mastering himself, less fiercely he

Chode them: "Whence and whereto is this? Mean ye,

Ye surely mean not, mutiny? Rouse, then,

With will; obey, your loyalty retrieve!"

But still they hung there moveless, until one,

Seeming the spokesman of his fellows, said:

"No mutineers, no traitors, cravens none,

Are we. But look around, and judge what means

This concourse of beholders"—"'Look around'?

Around look?" thundered Saul. "Nay, straight-on looks,

These sole, become stout hearts, staunch wills. 'Around'

Cease looking ye, and all right forward stare

To where yon door fronts you and you affronts.

Batter it down, and, staring forward, on!"

The vehement, vindictive, dense onslaught

Of that impatient, proud, imperious will

Smote like the missile of a catapult

Against the clamped immovable dead wall

Of fixed inert resistance to Saul's wish,

Which strangely, as one man, those men opposed.

That impact did not shake that stubborn strength,

Nor shiver back in staggering recoil—

Absorbed, annulled, annihilated, waste!

One infinitesimal instant, Saul a blind

Mad impulse felt—which, that same instant, he

Quenched in a simultaneous saner thought—

To rush single upon the door, with blank

Ridiculous demonstration of balked will

Indignant. "Me, then, seize, your chief contemned,"

Said Saul, "contemned, since not obeyed, and me

Deliver captive to the Sanhedrim,

Denounced unworthy of your trust, and theirs!"

As, saying this, around he glanced, he saw,

With unintending eyes, a spectacle

Which well had awed him, but that he was Saul.

The frequence of spectators serried nigh

Had armed themselves with stones, and imminent stood,

A thunder-cloud of menace on each brow,

Ready those bolts of vengeance to let fly,

In hail-storm that no mortal might withstand,

At whoso dared defy their angry mood;

Portent so dire Saul could not but peruse.

"It was but question which should overawe,

Ye, or this rabble of sedition here,

And ye have solved it like the cowards ye are!"

So, with his passion humored to its height,

And javelin looks shot at his men in shower,

Cried Saul; "I had deemed otherwise of you.

And yet, even yet, once wake the dormant man

Within you, and, from hands through fear relaxed,

Harmless will drop those miscreant stones which now,

With your poltroonery, ye invoke to fall

In well-deservéd doom upon your heads!"

Upbraided thus, they, by that spokesman, said:

"Stoning may lightly be despised by men

Like us, whose trade it is at need to die;

And bloody death were meet for men of blood.

But we are of the people, as are these

Whom here thou seest around us, stone in hand;

And we, the people, love for cause those men,

Our benefactors, whom thou seekest to slay—

Wherefore, we know not, save perhaps it be

Some ill persuasion thine that slanders them

As enemies of our race, seditious men,

Conspiring to do evil and not good.

But, if we should as lief, as we should loth,

Offer them violence, and if we could,

As we could not, hope then to escape the stones

Here seen uneasy in so many hands

At only brandished threat of harm to them,

Know, there is more than mail enduing these

Inviolate against what human touch

Might mean them wrong. Something intangible,

Invisible, inaudible, unknown,

A might as irresistible as strange,

Not only arms them proof against assault,

But issues from them in dread strokes of doom,

Silent like lightning, and like lightning swift,

And instantaneous deadly more than that.

What prison-walls can prisoners hold these men?

Hast thou not heard how Ananias fell,

Sapphira too, his wife, dead at their feet,

Fell at their feet stone-dead, when they but charged

A lie unto the Spirit of the Lord

On those twain twinned in judgment as in crime?

A dreadful visitation, as from God;

But, whencesoever issuing, dreadful yet!

No panoply have we against such stroke,

Against the authors of such stroke, no power.

Slay us, or get us slain, we can but die;

But die like Ananias will we not!"

Saul listened with illimitable scorn;

And scorn incensed his rage thus crossed to be,

Hopelessly crossed, by crass perversity.

In rage and scorn, he scourged those men with words:

"There is no reasoning with minds like you!—

Too ignorant to guess how ignorant

Ye are, and self-conceited in degree

To match. Such ignorance, with self-conceit

Such, renders blind indeed. What boots it I

Should tell you superstition clouds your brain?

Your superstition would not let you hear.

Your very senses, given by God to be

The avenues of knowledge to your mind,

Satan has clogged to truth, and made of them

But open thoroughfares for lies from him

To enter by and capture you his own.

Mere Satan's lies those tales are that ye tell,

Of prison-doors thrown wide mysteriously

To let these men go free, and of deaths dealt

By magic sentence weaponless from them—

Mere Satan's lies those tales, or, were they true,

Yet tokens only of Satanic power

And craft permitted to disport them here

For their destruction who to be destroyed

Prove themselves greedy by such act as yours.

Dupes of the devil, go, I pity you!

This is your weakness, not your villainy.

I thought to make you helpers in my strife

To save the souls of others, but your souls

Themselves need saving first and most of all—

If souls like yours of saving worthy be,

Or capable! Some different make of men

From you, seems I must seek, to serve my need.

Yet you I thank at least for this, that ye

By your behavior show me what a sore,

How seated, and how wide, into the heart

Eats of my nation! Lo, I take the cup,

The full, the overflowing cup of shame

Which ye this day wring out for me, that cup

Take I with thanks from you, and to the dregs

Drain it, in pledge, in pledge and sacrament,

That I hereafter give myself more whole,

More absolute, more consecrate, to one,

One only, pure endeavor and desire,

The utter rooting out—at cost how dear,

No reckoning, mine or other's, toil, and tears,

And blood—wherever Jewish name be found,

Of this foul creeping rot and leprosy,

This blight, this blast, this mildew, on our fame!"

Saul, in the light of luminous wrath, foresaw

Nigh, and saluted, that career, which thence,

After Judæan cities overrun

With havoc at his hand to Jesus' name,

Will bear him ravening on Damascus road!

BOOK XIII.

SAUL AND SERGIUS.

After further persecution accomplished by him in Judæa, Saul, with spirits recovered, sets out for Damascus to carry thither the persecuting sword. Pausing on the brow of hill Scopus to survey Jerusalem just left, he soliloquizes. At the same moment, there rides up a troop of Roman horse escorting a man who turns out to be Sergius Paulus, an old-time acquaintance of Saul's, also bound to Damascus. The two pursue their journey together, highly enjoying their ride in that charming season of spring weather, and delightedly conversing on the way. They talk over Greek literature, and in particular by starlight at the close of the first day's journey, Sergius Paulus having by occasion recited an apposite passage of Homer, Saul matches and contrasts this first with a psalm of David, and then additionally with a strain from the prophet Isaiah. This gives rise to conversation on ensuing days, in which religious questions are discussed. Sergius declares himself an atheist of the Epicurean sort, and he plies Saul with incredulous inquiries about the religion of the Jews—Saul answering with Hebrew conviction and earnestness. The two part company at Neapolis (Shechem) because Sergius Paulus halts there, and Saul, in the spirit of true Jewish strictness, will for his part not rest till he has quite passed the bounds of Samaria.

SAUL AND SERGIUS.

Not yet his fill of slaughter supped, though forth

Afar the timorous flock of Jesus now

Were from before his restless, ravening, fierce,

Rapacious sword out of Judæa fled

To alien lands remote, beyond the heights

Of Hermon with their everlasting snows,

And farther to the islands of the sea—

Not yet, even so, his fill of slaughter supped,

Saul had from the high-priest commission sought

To search among the Hebrew synagogues

Of Syrian Damascus, and thence bring

Bound to Jerusalem whomever found,

Woman or man, confessing Jesus Christ.

The season was fresh flowering spring; the earth

Was glad with universal green to greet

The sun once more, returned in his blue heaven

After his winter's sojourn in the south.

How blithe the welcome of the morning was,

Forth looking from his east across the Hills

Of Moab on the just awakening world!

Saul met it with a sense as if of spring

And morning linking hand in hand for dance

Together in the courses of his blood,

As, mounted on a palfrey fresh and fleet,

With servitors attendant following him,

He issued jocund from Damascus gate.

The animal spirits of youth and health in him,

The joy of new adventure, the fine pulse

Of life felt in the buoyant, bounding step

With which his steed advanced him on the road,

The secret pleasure of release at last,

Release and long secure removal, won,

Through growing leagues of distance interposed,

From the abhorred access of Shimei—

These, with the season and the hour so bright,

Brightened the darkling heart of Saul to cheer.

He was a radiant aspect, fair to see,

Fronting his future with that sanguine smile!

The acclivity surmounted of a hill,

Whence downward dipped his road, declining north,

And farewell glimpse gave of Jerusalem,

Saul rein drew on his foamy-flankéd steed,

And, about winding him, paused, looking back.

His retinue, far otherwise than he

Mounted, part even on foot, with sumpter beasts

Bearing camp equipage, behind were fallen.

These, presently come up, he lets pass on

Before him in the way, while still at gaze,

There on the back of his indignant steed

Resentful to be curbed in mid-career—

Companion hoofs heard leaving him behind—

Saul sits, perusing, with an inner eye,

Yet more than with his outer, what he sees.

Half-shadow and half-light, Jerusalem

He sees, smitten athwart her level roofs

With sunshine from the horizontal sun,

The temple of Jehovah in the midst,

As if itself a sun, so dazzling bright

With its refulgence of reflected beams;

While, round about, the warder mountains stand,

Bathing their sacred brows in sacred light.

Saul's heart distends immense with patriot's joy,

Yet joy pierced through and through with patriot's pain.

"O beautiful for situation, thou,

Jerusalem!" he fervently bursts forth.

"Peace be within thy walls, prosperity

Within thy palaces! Yea, yet again,

Now for my brethren and companions' sakes,

Say I, 'Within thee, peace!' Lo, my vow hear:

For that the temple of the Lord my God

Is in thee, I henceforth thy good will seek.

And Thou, Jehovah in the heavens! behold,

Saul for himself that ancient promise claims:

'Prosper shall he Jerusalem who loves.'

For love not I Jerusalem, with love

To anguish, for her anguish and her tears?

Take pleasure in her stones, favor her dust,

O God, my God! Is not the set time come?

Do I not hear Thee say: 'Awake, awake,

Put on thy strength, O Zion, long forlorn,

And beautiful thy garments put thou on,

Jerusalem! Henceforth no more shall come

The uncircumcised into thee, nor the unclean!'"

"Amen!" Saul added, with a gush of tears,

The light mercurial feeling in his heart

Less to sad sinking, weighted down, than all,

With fluent lapse, to pleasing pathos changed.

Into that strain, so ardent and so true,

Of patriot prayer, deeply had braided been,

Half to himself unknown, a silent strand

Of subtle self-regard, vague personal hope

That would have spurned to be imprisoned in words:

'The new Jerusalem that was to be,

Should she not Saul her chief deliverer hail!'

Musing, and praying, and beholding, so,

Saul suddenly a sound of clanging hoofs

Heard, and, his eyes quick thither turning, saw,

Between hill Scopus, on whose top he stood,

And the Damascus gate through which he came,

Advancing toward him on the Roman road—

Cemented solid with its rutted stones,

Like an original stratum of the sphere—

A turm of horse, large not, but formidable,

Caparison and armor gleaming bright,

And with a nameless air forerunning them

Of wide-renownéd might invincible

Expressed in that momentous rhythmic tread

Four-footed, underneath which from afar

With pulse on pulse now rock to iron rang.

The cavalcade, by slow degrees more slow,

Moved up the acclivity till, reached the brow,

Sank to a walk their pace, when Saul perceived

An arméd escort was convoying one

Thereby betokened an ambassador,

Somewhither posting on affair of state,

Or haply citizen of high degree

Honored with ceremonious retinue.

This man regarded Saul with curious look

Respectful, which almost admiring grew;

And gravely, as their mutual glances met,

The youthful Roman to the youthful Jew

Inclined in distant salutation meant

For natural courtesy due from peer to peer.

Saul, in like wise, his greeting gave him back;

Whereon the Roman, reining to one side

His horse, and halting, said: "Peace, but methinks

I saw thee late, months since it may have been,

Where that fanatic Stephen suffered death

With stoning at your angry elders' hands."

"I, in that act of punishment," said Saul,

"As loyal Jew befitted, took my part."

"Nay, but as now I read thy features nigh,"

Sudden more earnest grown, the Roman said,

"Labors my brain with yet a different thought.

Somewhere we twain must earlier still have met.

In Tarsus I some boyish seasons spent;

I there, by chance full well-remembered, knew

A Hebrew-Roman boy whose name was Saul."

"Then Sergius Paulus is thy name," said Saul,

"And Saul am I—and Saul to Sergius, peace!"

Who but as man and man just now had met

Greeted again in sense of comradeship.

"Thy face is toward Jerusalem," to Saul

Said Sergius; "but thy look is less of one

Arriving, journey finished, than of one

Forth setting on adventure planned abroad."

"I journey to Damascus," Saul replied:

"And thither also I," said Sergius.

Damascus-ward turned Saul his horse's head,

And slowly, with the Roman, now resumed

His onward way, while further Sergius said:

"Having a brief apprenticeship at arms

Accomplished, to Jerusalem I came,

Centurion still, urged by desire to see

Thy capital city, famed throughout the world.

Since witnessing—by lucky hap it fell

My military duty to be there—

Since witnessing that spectacle so strange

Of Stephen's stoning—strange to Roman eyes,

Yet to eyes Jewish doubtless quite as strange

Our Roman fashion, hanging on the cross—

All various ways of various tribes of men

From clime to clime, delights me to observe—

What comedy to the gods must we present!—

Since I saw Stephen slain with stones, I say,

Good fortune, and some interest made for me

At Rome, have given me this my welcome chance

To travel and more widely see the world.

Now to Damascus I as legate go."

"And of our Sanhedrim as legate, I,"

Said Saul, "if so without offence I may

From Jewish mode to Gentile dare my speech

Conform—legate, or hand executive,

Say rather, in some certain offices

Deemed needful, to consult my nation's weal."

With mutual question asked and answered, vein

Of old-time boyish reminiscence shared

Between them as together on they rode—

Their horses pricking each the other's speed—

The two soon overtook their retinues,

Who, seeing their chiefs adjoined in comradeship,

Themselves in comradeship dissolved their sense

Of race and race to mix as men and men.

So all day long together, side by side,

Riding, or resting in the noontide shade,

Sergius and Saul, a frank companionship,

Immixed their minds in speech of many things.

Young life, young health, glad sense of fair emprise,

High-hearted hope of boundless futures theirs,

Delicious weather and blithe season bland,

Blue cloudless heaven forever overhead—

By the sole sun usurped his tabernacle

Whence sovran virtue beaming into all—

Sweet voice of singing-bird, sweet smile of flower,

Sweet breath exhaled from tender-fruited vine,

Joy, a full feast, through every flooded sense—

And, heightening all, that billowy onward sway

Of motion without effort on their steeds,

Made, to those lord possessors of the world,

Their talking like the coursing of their blood,

Self-moved, or like the running of a brook

That laughs and sparkles on its downward way,

As ceasing never from its hope to drain

The fountain, brimming ever, whence it flows.

Of arms, of art, and of philosophy,

They spoke, and letters; spoke, too, of the fame

Of ancient Grecian masters of the mind,

Who ruled, and rule, by charm of prose or verse.

First, Homer, hoar with immemorial eld,

Pouring his epics in that profluent stream

Which, like his ocean, wandered round the world;

Bold Pindar, with his lyric ecstasies,

On throbbing wings of exultation borne

Into the empyrean, whence his song

Broken descends in showers of melody;

Father of history, Herodotus,

"Half poet, epic, or idyllic, he"—

So, Saul thereto assenting, Sergius said—

"With his Ionic strain mellifluous

Of wonder-loving artless narrative";

Thucydides, the soul of energy;

Æschylus, Titan; happy Sophocles;

With soft Euripides unfortunate;

Then Socrates, "Who wrote no books," said Saul,

"Or wrote most living books in living men;

Plato, the chiefest book of Socrates,

Yet mind so large and so original

That, in him reading what his teacher taught,

One knows not whether Socrates it be,

Or Socrates's pupil, that one reads"—

"Knows not, and, for delight, cares not to know,

Full-sated with the feast of such discourse,

So wealthy, wise, urbane, harmonious!"—

Stung to enthusiasm, thus Sergius,

Continuing what from Saul ceased incomplete.

"Our Tully," added he, "from Plato's well

Deepest his draughts drank of philosophy,

And, thence inspired, wrote such sweet dialogue,

Latin half seemed delectable as Greek."

"Yea, and a man of fine civility

In manners as in mind, your Tully was,"

Said Saul; "Cilicia keeps his memory green

For virtues long in Roman rulers rare.

His too a sounding, stately eloquence,

And copious; but Greek Demosthenes

Pleases me better, with that stormy stress

Of passion in him, reason on fire with love

Or hatred, that indignant vehemence

Which overwhelms us like a torrent flood,

Or, like a torrent flood, upon its breast

Lifts us, and tosses us, and bears us on!

He is more like our Hebrew prophets rapt

Above themselves in sympathy with God."

In talk like this the livelong day was spent;

Hardly the talkers heeding when they passed

Meadows of flowers pied rich in colors gay,

Poppy, anemone, convolvulus,

Bright marigold wide yellowing belts of green

Into a vivid gold that dazed the eye;

And heeding hardly if upsprang the lark

From almost underneath their horses' hoofs,

Startled to leave her humble hiding nest,

And, soaring, better hide her otherwise

Amid the blinding lightnings of the sun;

Such sights and sounds and glancing motions swift

Scarce heeded—yet, as subtle influence,

Admitted, each, to infuse insensibly

Into their mood an added joyousness—

The afternoon declined into the eve.

Passed now a fountain on the wayside cliff,

Coyly, through ferny leafage, shedding down

Its weeping waters shown in fresher green,

Up a long glen they mounted to a crest

Of hill where opened a soft grassy plain—

Inviting, should one wish his tent to spread—

And here they twain their double camp bid pitch.

Supper soon ended, Saul and Sergius,

Ere sleep they seek, a hill, not far, ascend,

The highest neighboring seen, less thence to view

The landscape round them in the deepening dark

Glooming, or even the heavens above their heads

Brightening each moment in the deepening dark,

Than youth's unused excess of strength to ease

With exercise, and to achieve the highest.

But there the splendors of the firmament,

Enlarged so lustrous through that Syrian sky,

Hailed such a storm of vertical starlight

Downward upon their sense as through their sense

Inward into their soul beat, and a while

Mute held them, hushed with wonder and with awe,

Awe to the Hebrew, to the Roman, joy.

Then said the Roman:

"This is like that place

Of glorious Homer where he hangs the sky

Innumerably bright with moon and stars

Over the Trojan host and their camp-fires:

'Holding high thoughts, they on the bridge of war

'Sat all night long, and many blazed their fires.

'As when in heaven stars round the glittering moon

'Shine forth exceeding beautiful, and when

'Breathlessly tranquil is the upper air,

'And in their places all the stars are seen,

'And glad at heart the watching shepherd is;

'So many, 'twixt the ships and Xanthus' streams,

'Shone fires by Trojans kindled fronting Troy.'"

"The spirit of Greece, with Greek simplicity,

A nobleness all of Homer, there I feel,"

Concession checking with reserve, said Saul;

"Our Hebrew, to us Hebrews, rises higher.

Homer, unconscious of sublimity,

Down all its dreadful height above our sphere

Brings the august encampment of the skies—

To count the number of the Trojan fires!

Our poet David otherwise beholds

The brilliance of the nightly firmament,

Seeing it mirror of the majesty

Of Him who spread it arching over earth,

And who yet stoops His awful thought to think

Kindly of us as Father to our race,

Nay, kingdom gives us, glory, honor, power,

And all things subjugates beneath our feet.

Let me some echoes from that harp awake

To which, with solemn touches, this his theme

Our psalmist David chanted long ago:

'Jehovah, our dread Sovereign, how Thy Name

'Is excellent in glory through the earth!

'Upon the heavens Thy glory hast Thou set;

'The heart of babe and suckling reads it there,

'And, raised to rapture, utters forth Thy praise,

'That mute may be the adversary mouth

'Which would the ever-living God gainsay.

'When I survey Thy heavens, Thy handiwork,

'The moon, the stars, Thou didst of old ordain,

'Man, what is he? that Thou for him shouldst care,

'The son of man, that Thou shouldst visit him.

'For Thou hast made him hardly lower than God,

'And dost with glory him and honor crown.

'Dominion over all Thy works to wield

'Thou madest him, and underneath his feet

'Put'st all things, sheep and oxen, roaming beast,

'And winging fowl, and swimming fish, and all

'That passes through the pathways of the seas.

'Jehovah, our dread Sovereign, how Thy Name

'Is excellent in glory through the earth!'"

Recited in slow solemn monotone,

As with an inward voice muffled by awe,

Those new and strange barbaric-sounding notes

Of Hebrew music shut in measured words

Smote on some deeper chord in Sergius' ear

That, trembling, tranced him silent for a while.

Then he said, rousing: "What a sombre strain!

From the light-hearted Greek how different!"

"Sombre thou callest it, and solemn I,

Who find in such solemnity a joy;

But different, yea, from the light-thoughted Greek."

Less as in converse than soliloquy

Deep-musing so to Sergius Saul replied.

"Our bard Isaiah modulates the strain

Into another mood less pastoral.

He pours divine contempt on idol gods,

On idol gods and on their worshippers;

And then majestically hymns His praise

Who made yon host of heaven and leads them out.

'To whom then will ye liken God?' he cries,

'Or what similitude to Him compare?

'The skilled artificer an image forms,

'And this the goldsmith overlays with gold,

'And tricks it smartly out with silver chains:

'Or haply one too poor for cost like this

'Chooseth him out a tree judged sound and good,

'And seeks a cunning workman who shall thence

'Grave him an image that may shift to stand!

'But nay, ye foolish, have ye then not known?

'Not heard have ye? You hath it not been told

'From the remote beginning of the world?

'From the foundations of the ancient earth

'Have ye indeed so missed to understand?

'He sits upon the circle of the earth

'And they that dwell therein are grasshoppers;

'He as a curtain doth the heavens outspread,

'And makes a blue pavilion of the sky.

'To whom then will ye liken Me? saith God;

'Whom shall I equal? saith the Holy One.

'Lift up your eyes on high, the heavens behold—

'Who hath these things created? who their host

'By number bringeth out, and all by names

'Calls? By the greatness of His might, for that

'So strong in power is He, not one star fails.'"

The deep tones ceased, and once more silence fell

Between those two amid the silent night.

But Sergius, lightly rallying soon to speech,

Said, with a ready, easy sympathy:

"There seems indeed to breathe in such a strain

Some solemn joy, but the solemnity

Is greater, and my spirit is oppressed.

Not less your poets differ from the Greek

In matter than in manner, when they sing.

How high you make your deity to be,

Beyond the stature of the gods of Greece!

Homer has Zeus compel the clouds, forth flash

The lightnings, and the thunderbolts down hurl;

The mightiest meddler with the world, his Zeus,

Yet of the world the mighty maker not.

But your Jehovah reaches even to that,

As with his fingers fashioning yonder heaven,

And fixing in their station moon and stars.

And he in human things concerns himself!

The Epicurean gods are cold and calm;

On high Olympus far withdrawn they sit,

And smile, and either not at all regard

Our case, or, if so be regarding, smile

Still, unconcerned, our case however hard.

Your Hebrew God is much more amiable,

But much more probable that Olympian crew;

Nay, probable not at all is either; dream,

Fond dream, the fable of divinities

Who either care, or care not, for our case.

We are the creatures and the sport of chance,

Puppets tossed hither and thither in idle play,

A while, a little while, fooled to suppose

We do the dancing we are jerked to do—

And then, resolved from our compacture brief

Into the atoms which once on a time

Together chanced and so were we, we drop

Plumb down again into the great inane

Abyss, and recommence the eternal whirl!

There is that Epicurean cosmogony,

An endless cycle of evolution turned

Upon itself, in worlds forevermore

Becoming, out of worlds forevermore

Merging in their original elements:

No god, or gods, to tangle worse the skein

Inextricably tangled by blind chance!"

Saul was affronted, but he held his peace,

Brooding the while his jealousy for God.

At length, with intense calm, he spoke and said:

"The Hebrew spirit is severe and says,

'The fool it is who in his secret heart,

Rebelling, wills no God.' 'The Hebrew spirit,'

Said I? Forget those unadviséd words;

For to speak so is not the Hebrew spirit.

God is a jealous God; His glory He

Will to another not divide; and God

Himself it is, the Living God, and not

What, Gentile fashion, my rash lips miscalled

'The Hebrew spirit,' that charges atheism

With folly. God His prophet psalmist bade

Write with a diamond pen on adamant

That stern damnation of the atheous soul:

'The fool hath in his heart said, God is not.'

This tell I thee my conscience so to cleanse

Of sin in saying 'The Hebrew spirit' for God."

With tolerant wonder, Sergius heard and said:

"A strangely serious race you Hebrews are;

I do not think I understand you yet.

I shall be glad to-morrow, if so please

Thee likewise, to renew this night's discourse."

So they descended from the hill and slept.

The herald Dawn, white-fingered, from the east

Had signalled to the stars, 'He comes! He comes!'

And these, veiling themselves from view with light,

Had all into the unapparent deep

Retired, and left the hemisphere of heaven,

Late glowing with their fixed or wandering fires,

One crystal hollow of pure space made void

To be a fit pavilion for the sun,

When forth from their encampment rode the twain,

Fresh as the morning from the baths of sleep,

And keen with hunger for the forward road.

"The allotment of my tribe," said Saul—"my tribe

Is Benjamin—in measure such, bare rock

And rugged hill, hardly through age-long toil

Of tilth so clothed as we have seen them clothed,

In terrace above terrace of won soil,

With verdure—that, we leave behind, to cross

This day the fatter fields of Ephraim."

Then Saul to Sergius rehearsed in short

The tale of Hebrew history, how God,

Having his fathers out of Egypt brought,

With sign and wonder thence delivering them

And hither led them through the parted sea,

And past the smoking top of Sinai—

Touched by the finger of God to burn with fire

And thunder and lighten more than man could bear

To see or hear, in sanction of His law—

Had lastly parcelled out this land to them

In portions by their tribes to be their rest.

While Saul to Sergius so discoursing spoke,

Over their right the sun, long since uprisen,

Climbed the steep slope of morning in the sky.

And now the summit of a ridge those twain

Reach, whence, straightforward looking, they behold,

In light so bright, through air so fair, a scene

Of the most choice the eye can rest upon.

A wide and long champaign of fruitful green,

On either side hemmed in with skirting hill,

Stretches before them to the bounding sky,

Where Hermon, scarce descried through distance dim,

Silvers with frost each morn his crown of snows.

Descended, they therein, through billowing wheat

Wind-swayed, might, to a watcher from the hill,

Seem laboring like two swimmers in the surf,

And hardly, in the fluctuation, way

Making whither they went; yet swiftly borne

Were they, and easily, onward. Soon Saul said—

And therewith pointed to two mountain peaks,

Seen towering on the left to lordly height,

Twin warders of a lesser vale between,

In stature twin and twin in symmetry—

"Ebal and Gerizim yon mountains are,

And these between the vale of Shechem lies,

Theatre once of oath and sacrament

Enacted by my nation with dread rite.

'A strangely serious race', thou yesterday

Calledst us Hebrews, strangely frivolous race

Surely were we, if somewhat serious not,

For we are heirs of serious history.

Yon natural amphitheatre thou seest,

Circled and sloped against those mountain sides

With spacious interval of plain enclosed;

There was the oath of our obedience sworn.

On Ebal half our tribes, and half our tribes

On Gerizim, stood opposite, and midst,

The tribe of Levi, God's peculiar tribe,

Stood in the vale about the ark of God,

Whence Joshua, our great captain, read the law—

He and the Levites, ocean-like the sound—

With blessing or with curse by God adjoined

As disobedient or obedient we.

This was when scarce our fathers had set foot

Hitherside Jordan in the promised land;

They from their stronghold camp came here express

To swear such solemn covenant with God.

Six hundred thousand souls of fighting-men,

With women and with children fourfold more,

Ranged on the one side or the other, joined

To them that mustered in the middle vale,

All heard the threatening or the gracious words,

And all, in multitudinous answer, said

'Amen!'—the tribes on Ebal to the curse,

And to the blessing, those on Gerizim,

Replying—choral imprecation dire

Upon themselves of every human ill,

If disobedient found, of promised good

Acceptance at the price, acknowledged just,

Of whole obedience to God's holy law.

It was as if Jehovah had adjured

All things, above, below, His witnesses,

'Hear, O ye heavens, and thou, O earth, give ear,

While thus My people covenant swear with Me.'

The host of Israel, though such numbers, heard—

These mountain-sides redouble so the voice."

"Theatric sacramental rite most weird,"

Said Sergius, "thou hast described to me.

Sure never elsewhere did lawgiver yet,

With ceremony such, a people swear

To obedience of his laws. The laws, I trow,

Subscribed and sealed with signature so strange,

Strange must have been. Example couldst thou give?"

"Of all those laws," said Saul, "doubtless the law

To Gentile ears the strangest, is the first;

That law it is which makes the Jew a Jew:

'Other than Me no god shalt thou confess;

'Image, resemblance, none, molten or carved,

'Of whatsoever thing in heaven, or earth,

'Or hidden region underneath the earth,

'Fashion to thee shalt thou, or bow thee down

'In service or in worship unto them;

'For I the Lord thy God a jealous God

'Am, and I visit the iniquity

'Of fathers upon children, chastisement,

'In long entail, on generation linked

'To generation, following hard the line

'Of such as hate Me, endless mercy shown

'To such as love Me and observe My law.

'Curséd be he who dares to disobey';

And Ebal, with its countless multitude,

Thundered to Gerizim a loud 'Amen!'

While heaven above and the wide world around

Hearkened in witness of the dreadful oath."

Saul ceased as mute with awe of memory;

And something of a sympathetic sense,

Communicated, also Sergius made

Silent in presence of such history.

Not long, for, rousing from his reverie,

And looking up before him nigh, he sees

A city with its walls and roofs and towers.

"Neapolis!" exclaims the Roman voice,

The Jewish, in tone different, "Sychar!" said.

"Neapolis! And here I halt," said Sergius;

"Sychar! And forward through Samaria, I,

Not pausing till this hateful soil be passed,"

Said Saul; "perchance to-morrow met again,

Beyond, we may together forward fare."

So there they parted with such slight farewell;

Nor after met, until, two morrows more

Now spent in separate travel, they had reached

The bursting fountain of the Jordan, where,

Forth from between the feet of Hermon born

Forever—in the joy and anguish born,

The certain anguish and the doubtful joy

Tumultuous of an everlasting birth—

Leaps to the light of life that famous stream,

Like many another child—from Adam sprung—

To run his heedless, headlong, downward course

And lose himself at last in the Dead Sea!

Here was what life, all-welcoming, lusty life,

Doom of what deadly worse than death was there!

A city here the tetrarch Philip built,

Or raised to more magnificent, which then,

In honor of dishonorable name

Imperial, Tiberius Cæsar, he

Called Cæsarea, and Philippi too

Eponymous therewith for surname joined;

But Paneas, earlier name, clung to the place,

As to this day it clings in Banias.

BOOK XIV.

FOR DAMASCUS.

Coming together again at Cæsarea Philippi (Paneas, Banias) after an interval of days, Saul and Sergius cross the southern spur of Hermon. A violent thunderstorm comes slowly up during the afternoon, which gives Sergius occasion, by way of mask to his own secret disquietude, to quote his Epicurean poet Lucretius on the subject of Jupiter's control of thunderbolts. As the storm increases in violence, the fears of Sergius overpower him, and he breaks down at last into a deprecatory prayer and vow to Jupiter. Saul then, the storm still raging, rehearses from Scripture appropriate fragments of psalm, timing them to the various successive bursts of tempest. The sound of a tranquil human voice has a quieting effect on Sergius, and even on the frightened steeds of the two travellers. The storm ceases, and they pass the night under a serene sky, ready to set out the next morning for the last stage of their journey to Damascus.

FOR DAMASCUS.

The splendor of the morning yet once more

Was a theophany in Syria,

When Saul and Sergius, met, from Paneas

Started, with mind to overpass that day

The spur of Hermon interposed between

Them and Damascus.

"Strange the human bent,"

Said Saul, "the universal human bent,

Toward worship of unreal divinities!

'Paneas!' The very sound insults the name

And solitary majesty of God,

Jehovah, Ever-living, Only True.

Think of it! 'Pan', forsooth! And God, who made

These things which we behold, these waters, woods,

And mountains, glens, and rocky cliffs, and caves,

Who these things made, and made the mind of man

Capacious of Himself, or capable

At least of knowing Him Creator, such

A God thrust from His own creation forth,

By His own noblest creature thus thrust forth,

That a rough, rustic, gross, grotesque, burlesque,

Goat-footed, and goat-bearded, horned and tailed

Divinity like Pan, foul caricature

At best of man himself who fashions him,

And out of wanton fancy furnishes him

His meet appendages of brute wild beast—

That this deform abortion of the brain

Might take the room, made void, of God outcast,

And, with his ramping, reeling, riotous rout

Of fauns and satyrs, claim to be adored!

I feel the Hebrew blood within me boil

At outrage such from man on God and man!

Phœbus Apollo seems an upward reach

Of human fancy in theogony;

Some height, some aspiration, there at least,

Toward what in man, if not the noblest, yet

Is nobler than the beasts that browse, or graze.

Apollo, too, I hate, but I loathe Pan!"

"We Romans are more catholic than you

Hebrews," said Sergius, "more hospitable

To different peoples' different gods. Our own

Synod of native deities we have,

But we make room for others than our own.

From Greece we have adopted all her gods,

And all the gods of Egypt and the East

Are domiciled at Rome—all save your god,

Jehovah, his pretensions overleap

The bounds of even our hospitality,

Who not on any terms of fellowship

Will sit a fellow with his fellow-gods.

Him sole except, it is our policy

To entertain with wise indifference

In brotherly equality all gods

Of whatsoever nations of the earth.

A temple at Rome have we, Pantheon called,

So called as to this end expressly built

That there no human god might lack a home.

Such is our Roman way; your Hebrew way

Is different; different races, different ways."

Sergius so spoke as if concluding all

With the last word of wisdom to be said;

He paused, and Saul mused whether wise it were

To answer, when thus Sergius further spoke:

"I marked late, when 'Neapolis!' I said,

'Sychar!' saidst thou, in tone as if of scorn;

'Hateful,' thou also calledst Samarian soil—

Wherefore? if I may know." "'Sychar,'" said Saul,

"Imports deceit, and there deceit abounds.

From the Samaritans we Jews refrain;

Corrupters they of the right ways of God.

Across their soil we either shun to go,

Or, going, hasten with unpausing feet."

"Those also have their ways!" said Sergius;

"Such humors of the blood thou wilt not cure.

Worship Jehovah ye, it is your way,

And let us Gentiles serve our several gods,

Or serve them not, be atheists if we choose—

I, as thou knowest, an atheist choose to be—

Of comity and peace the sole safe rule.

This therefore is the sum—I say it again—

Ways diverse worship men, or worship not,

All as our natural bents may us incline.

Keep your Jehovah, you, He is your God,

Chosen, or feigned and fashioned to your mind—

Keep Him, but not impose your ethnic dream,

Or guess, of deity on all mankind."

"No dream of ours," said Saul, "Jehovah is.

Nay, nay, alas, far otherwise than so,

Our Hebrew dreams of God have, like the dreams

Dreamed by all races of mankind besides,

Grovelled to low and lower, have bestial been,

Or reptile, nay, to insensate wood and stone

Descended; we have loved idolatry,

We, with the rest, and hardly healed have been,

Though purged with hyssop of dire history,

Constrained—against the subtly treacherous soft

Relentings of our heart, oft yielded to,

Then punished oft full sore, which bade us spare

Whom God to spare forbade—constrained to slay

With our own swords, abolish utterly,

The idolatrous possessors of this land,

In judgment just on their idolatry,

And lest we too be tainted with their sin;

Yet foul relapse despite, and after, stripes,

Stripes upon stripes again and yet again,

Suffered from the right hand of God incensed,

Defeat, captivity, long servitude,

With the probe searched, with the knife carved until

Scarce left was life to bear the cautery

Wherewith a holy and a jealous God

Out of our quivering soul throughly would burn

That clinging, deep, inveterate human plague

Inherited from Adam in his fall,

That devil-taught depravity which prompts

Apostasy to other gods no gods—

Hardly so healed, with dreadful chastisement,

Has been my nation of her dreadful crime.

Loth, slow, ingrate, rebellious pupils, we

Taught have been thus to worship only God—

Jehovah, only God of the whole earth!"

Those last words as he spoke, Saul his right hand

Swept round in waving gesture—for they now

A height of goodly prospect had attained,

Wherefrom, pausing to breathe their laboring steeds,

They backward looked beneath them far abroad—

Swept round his hand, as if the circuit wide

Of the whole earth might there his words attest;

Their fill they gazed, then upward strained once more.

At length a stage of smoother going reached,

Sergius, abreast of Saul, took up the word:

"Yea, might one deem thy Hebrew race indeed

Had been the subjects of such history,

So purposed, then sound were thine argument

And thy Jehovah would be very God,

And God alone, and God of the whole earth.

But other races too besides thine own

Have had their chances, their vicissitudes;

Fortune to all has served her whirling wheel,

And every several race has had its turn

Of rising now, now sinking in the dust.

Wherefore should we you Hebrews sole of all

Reckon divinely taught by history,

Taught to be theists in an atheist world,

Or in a world idolatrous, of God

The True, the Only, only worshippers?"

"The other nations all," so Saul rejoined,

"Followed the bent of nature, had their will,

What they chose did, and were idolatrous,

God gave them up to their apostasy;

Us God withstood, His Hebrews He forbade;

With the same bent as others, as headstrong,

We Hebrews strangely went a different way,

And upward moved against a downward bent.

A fiery flaming sword turned every way

Forever met us on the errant track,

And forced us right though still found facing wrong.

God's prophets did not fail, age after age—

Until for that we needed them no more—

To warn us, chide us, threaten, plead, conjure,

Against our passion for idolatry.

Yet, as defying all that God could do,

Such was the force of that infatuate love

Fast-rooted in the sottish Hebrew heart

For idol-worship, that King Solomon,

The greatest, wisest, wealthiest of our kings,

Mightiest, most famous, most magnificent,

The glory and the crown of Israel,

The wonder and the proverb of the East—

This king, at point of culmination highest

To the far-shining splendor of our race,

The son of David, Solomon, turned back

From God who gave him his pre-eminence,

From God, the Living God, turned back, and sold

His heart, his spacious, all-experienced heart,

To gods that were no gods.

"Against a will,

A set of nature, a prime pravity

Stubborn like this, and tenfold impulse given

Through such example in our first of kings,

That, conflagration of infection round,

We should escape and not idolatrous be,

We only of all nations on the earth,

This, without miracle, were miracle,

A miracle of chance, confounding chance,

Monstrous, incredible, impossible!

Nay, miracles on miracles were for us wrought,

The manifest finger of God unquestionable,

Yet to ourselves ourselves, to all men we,

Wisely looked on, are chiefest miracle,

Witness from age to age that God is God."

With Hebrew heat, thus Saul to Sergius;

The frequent steep ascents meanwhile, the halts

For rest, for prospect, or for dalliance

Under some cooling shade of rock or tree—

Shield from the waxing fervors of the sun—

Slack pace, due to the humors of their steeds

Unchidden while their masters held discourse,

Left the twain still below the topmost crest

Of Hermon when the noontide hour was on.

Large leisure to refection and repose

Allowed, with converse, and mid-afternoon

It was, before to horse again were got

The horsemen, and their forward way resumed.

As, lightly, they into the saddle sprang,

Out of a purple-dark dense cloud that slept

Wakefully now along the horizon's rim

Under the flaming sun in the deep west,

There came a roll of thunder to their ears,

Remote, and mellow with remoteness, rich

Bass music in long rumbling monotone;

They listened with delight to hear the sound.

Then Sergius, as the vibration died

In low delicious tremble from their sense,

Said, coupling this with that in Saul's discourse,

Fresh, or remembered from the days before:

"That thunder and this mountain bring to me,

Imagined, the wild scene on Sinai

When your lawgiver gave his laws to you.

He schemed it well to have a thunder-storm

Chime in and be a brave accompaniment

To enforce his ordinances upon the awe

Of the unthinking timorous multitude.

Popular leaders and lawgivers have

Always and everywhere their tricks of trade,

To impress, hoodwink, and wheedle vulgar minds.

Our Sabine Numa, he Pompilius named,

Had his mysterious nymph Egeria

To bring him statutes for all men to heed;

And that Lycurgus got an oracle

From famous Delphi to approve his laws,

Which having sworn his Spartans to observe

At least till he returned from whither he went

Abroad, he, after, masked in such disguise

That never thence to have returned he seemed.

The herd of men still love to be cajoled,

Trolled hither and thither about with baited lies;

Frighten them now with brandished empty threat,

And now with laud as empty tickle them.

Augustus taught the art to tyrannize

Through forms of ancient freedom false and vain,

The stale trick since of all our emperors.

Your Hebrew Moses in his rude grand way

Well plied his shifts of lead and government."

Thunder, a rising mutter, broke again,

And Sergius in his saddle turned to look;

But Saul, with forward face intent, replied:

"Nay, but our Moses thou dost misconceive.

All was to lose and naught to gain for him

Then when he left the ease, the pomp, the power,

Of Pharaoh's court—of Pharaoh's daughter son

Esteemed, and to imperial futures heir—

This left, and loth his brethren led, slaves they,

Out of the realm of Egypt to the sea—

For such a multitude impassable,

Yet passed, through mighty miracle, by all—

Beyond the sea, into that wilderness

Led them, where neither food nor water was,

Yet food found they, and water, in the waste,

Full forty years of error till they came

Next to a land set thick with bristling spears

Against them—though land promised them for theirs—

And land that Moses never was to see,

Save as afar in prospect from the mount,

Because unworthy judged to enter there,

Who unadviséd words in haste let slip,

Unworthy judged, and meekly by himself

Recorded judged unworthy—such a man,

To such a people, so long led by him,

Through such straits of extremity, not once

Spake words to humor or to flatter them;

Thwarted them rather, balked them of their wish,

Upbraided, blamed, rebuked, and punished them,

Each art of selfish demagogue eschewed.

To rule and leadership like his, nowhere

Wilt thou find precedent or parallel;

One key alone unlocks the mystery—God!"

At that last word from Saul, like answer, came

A deep-mouthed boom of thunder from the west,

After a sword of lightning sudden drawn

Then sheathed within the scabbard of the cloud,

Which now, spread wide, had blotted out the sun.

A vagrant breath of tempest shook the trees,

And the scared birds flew homeward to their nests.

Sergius remarked the stir of elements

Uneasily the more that he alone

Remarked it, Saul, involved in his own thought,

Seeming unconscious of the outward world.

The Roman, groping in his secret mind

Vainly to find support of sympathy,

Faltered to feel himself thus fronted sole

With danger he could neither ward nor shun,

In presence yet forbidding sign of fear.

In this distress he buoyed himself with words,

Cheer seeking in the sound of his own voice:

"A merry place that in Lucretius

Where this bold poet rallies Jupiter—

The whole Olympian crew, Jupiter most—

In such a rattling vein of pleasantry,

On his plenipotence with thunderbolts!

Lucretius, thou shouldst know, interpreter

Of Epicurus is to Roman minds;

From whom we moderns learn the truth of things

And generation of the universe.

'If Jupiter,' Lucretius sings and says,

'If Jupiter it be, and other gods,

'That with terrific sound the temple shake,

'Shake the resplendent temple of the skies,

'And launch the lightning whither each one wills,

'Why is it that the strokes transfix not those

'Guilty of some abominable crime,

'As these within their breast the flames inhale,

'Instruction sharp to mortals—why not this,

'Rather than that the man of no base thing

'To himself conscious should be wrapt about

'Innocent in the flames, and suddenly

'With whirlwind and with fire from heaven consumed?

'Also, why seek they out, the gods, for work

'Like this, deserted spots, and waste their pains?

'Or haply do they then just exercise

'Their muscles, that thereby their arms be strong?'"

Sergius so far, from his Lucretius,

When the cloud, cloven, let out an arrowy flash,

And, following soon, a muffled muttering threat

Prolonged, that ended in a ragged roar—

As if, with angry rupture, violent hands

Atwain had torn the fabric of the sky.

A shuddering pause, but again Sergius,

Flying his poet's gibes at Jupiter:

"'Why never from a sky clear everywhere

'Does Jupiter upon the lands hurl down

'His thunderbolts, and thunder-booms outpour?

'Or, when the clouds have come, does he descend

'Then into them that nigh at hand he thence

'The striking of his weapon may direct?'"

One sheet of flame the bending welkin wrapt,

And a broadside of thunder roared amain.

With mortal strife against a mortal fear,

Hidden, the Roman struggled, not in vain—

As, faltering yet from his feigned gayety,

He, in a forced voice almost grim, went on

With that Lucretian blasphemy of Jove:

"'Why lofty places seeks out Jupiter,

'And why most numerous vestiges find we

'Traced of his fires on lonely mountain-tops?'"

No farther—flash on flash and crash on crash,

Chaos of light and universe of sound!—

For the wind roared a tumult like the sea

Which the gulfs filled between the thunder-peals.

One mighty blast, frantic as battle-charge

When, mad with last despair, ten thousand horse

Headlong into the hell at cannon-mouth

Plunge—such a blast rushed down the rent ravine

Whereby, along a shaggy side, the twain,

Now nigh the utmost mountain summit, climbed.

The glacial air, as in a torrent rolled

Precipitous or vertical sheer down

Some dizzy height in cataract, so swift!

Unhorsed them both; but, crouching, man and steed,

With one wise instinct instantly to all,

Which equalled all—supreme desire of life—

They huddling crept transverse to where a rock

On their right hand lifted its moveless brow

And, safely founded in the mountain's base,

Made, leaning, an impendent roof which now

Proffered a dreadful shelter from the storm.

Hardly this refuge gained, the tempest, loosed,

Hailstones and coals of fire commingled, fell.

The wind, with such a weight oppressed, went down,

And, with the sinking wind, a water-spout,

Whirled roaring in its spiral from on high,

Those watchers saw peel off, with one steep swoop

Descending, a whole mountain-top and roll

Its shattered forest into the ravine

Suddenly thus with foaming torrent filled.

Therewith, as weary were the storm, a lull;

Lull only, for the welkin seemed to sink

Collapsed about them, and what was the sky

Became the nether atmosphere on fire,

Enrobing them with lightning fold on fold

And thunder detonating at their ears.

Sergius, ere shut had seared his eyes the glare,

Saw a gigantic cedar nigh at hand,

Under a flaming wedge of thunderbolt,

Riven in parted halves from head to foot,

Fall burning down the frightful precipice.

Spite of himself, his terror turned to prayer:

"O Jupiter," he said, "it was not meant,

What I spoke late against thy majesty!

Spare me yet this once more, and I a vow,

A pledged rich vow, will in thy temple hang,

Then when I first shall safe reach Rome, inscribed

'From Sergius Paulus to King Jupiter,

Lord of the lightning and the thunderbolt.'"

"'Give ye unto Jehovah,'" so at last,

Fragments of psalm responsive to the storm—

As in antiphony of worship joined,

He and the elements!—chanting, Saul burst forth,

At intervals, between the swells of sound,

And varying to the tempest's varying phase,

"'Give ye unto Jehovah, lo, all ye

'Sons of the mighty, to Jehovah give

'Glory and strength; unto Jehovah give

'The equal glory due unto His name;

'Worship Jehovah in fair robes of praise!'"

"'Deep calleth unto deep at the dread noise

'Made by Thy waterspouts. The earth, it shook

'And trembled; the foundations of the hills

'Moved and were shaken for that He was wroth.

'The heavens moreover bowed He, and came down,

'He His pavilion round about Him made

'Dark waters and the thick clouds of the skies.

"'Jehovah also thundered in the heavens,

'And therein the Most High gave forth His voice,

'Hailstones and coals of fire!

"'Jehovah's voice

'In power!

"'Jehovah's voice in majesty!

"'Jehovah's voice is on the waters! God,

'The God of glory thunders!

"'Lo, His voice,

'Jehovah's voice, the mighty cedar breaks,

'Jehovah's voice divides the flames of fire!

"'Praise ye Jehovah, heavens of heavens, and ye

'Waters that be above the heavens, Him praise!

'Praise ye Jehovah, from the earth beneath,

'Thou fire, thou hail, thou snow, and vapors ye,

'Thou, stormy wind that dost fulfil His word!'"

So Saul, in dialogue with the elements,

That heard him, and responded voice for voice.

Sublimity into sublimity

Other, immeasurable heights more high,

Was lifted and transformed, the terror gone,

Gone or exalted to ennobling awe—

In converse such, God, with His image man!

The thunder, and the lightning, and the hail

Falling in power, the pomp of moving clouds,

The sound of torrent and of cataract,

The multitudinous orchestra of winds—

Trumpet and pipe, resounding cymbal loud,

Timbrel and harp, sackbut and psaltery—

The majesty of cedars prostrate strewn

In utmost adoration, the veiled sun,

The kneeling heavens, face downward on the earth,

In act of penitence as found unclean

By the white-burning holiness of God—

All this wild gesture of the elements

And deep convulsion of the frame of things,

Appalling only erst, interpreted

By interjections such from Saul of phrase

Inspired, seemed from confusion and turmoil

Transposed and harmonized to an august

Service and symphony of prayer and praise

And solemn liturgy of the universe.

Sergius was charmed insensibly to peace,

And a calm human voice had subtle power

To soothe to breathing rest the trembling steeds.

And now began the cadence of the storm;

Lifted the sky was from the burdened earth,

The lightnings flashed less imminent, less thick.

The thunder dulled his stroke, retired to far

And farther in the muffling firmament,

The hail ceased falling in a fall of rain,

Through which at last the low descending sun

Smiled in a rainbow on the opposite cloud.

"God's sign," said Saul, "His seal of promise set

Oft on the clouds of heaven when storm is past,

In radiant curve of blended colors fair,

That He with flood no more will drown the world."

Therewith they got them to their path again,

And, forward hastening, on the farther slope

Of Hermon overpassed, were met by some

Returning of their escort companies

Who sought their laggard masters left behind.

These had crossed earlier, and, before the storm,

Housed them in covert, where all now with joy

Welcomed their chiefs from threatened scath escaped.

They slept that night beneath a starry sky

Fair as if wrinkled never by a frown;

To-morrow they would see that paradise,

Renowned Damascus, pearl of all the East.

This their sleep filled with dream of things to be,

Until the morning breaking radiant made

The desert seem to blossom as the rose

Wherein Damascus sat an oasis.

BOOK XV.

SAUL AND JESUS.

The scene of the poem changes, being transferred to Paradise. Here a group composed of those who had come to their death by the hands of Saul assemble, privileged by special grace to witness from their celestial station the happy overthrow and conversion of their late persecutor. Sergius applies his interpretation of the occurrence, and Saul finishes his journey on foot, blind, led by the hand into Damascus.

SAUL AND JESUS.

Without the limits of this earthly sphere,

Immeasurable distances beyond

The region of the utmost fixéd stars,

Nay, high above all height, transcending space,

Transcending time, subsists a different world,

Invisible, inapprehensible

To whatsoever power of human sense,

All unimaginable even—so far

Removed from aught that ever we on earth

Have seen, or heard, or felt, or known, or guessed.

Believed in only, and not otherwise

Than to the vision of meek Faith revealed

(Though indefeasible inheritance

Reserved for her fruition after death),

Yet is that world unknown substantial more

Than all this solid-seeming universe

Of matter round about us that assaults

Our senses daily with its imminence,

Its impact, as if nothing else were real!

But till the destined moment, we must deem,

Much more, must speak, of that transcendent world,

And of our human brethren there insphered,

In figure borrowed of our mortal state.

While those things nigh Damascus so befell,

And now the night was almost waned to morn,

Its different morning in that different world

Dawned to the saints forever summering there

In bliss and glory with their glorious Lord.

Morning in the celestial Paradise

Is not as morning here, new-springing day

Crescent the same out of eclipsing night:

No night is there, and therefore no vicissitude

Of dark and bright to separate the days.

Yet condescends our Father to their frame,

Still finite though immortal, still in need

Of changes to diversify their state,

And punctuate into periods the smooth lapse,

Else cloying with prolonged beatitude,

Of that eternal dateless life serene

Lived by the happy souls in Paradise;

Our Father condescends and gives them days

And days, with difference of each from each,

That they may reckon up and date their bliss;

No night is there, but without night a morn.

Morning in Paradise is perfect light

Ineffably more fair become to-day

Than yesterday, forever, through more fair

Disclosure, dawn on dawn, eternally

Made of the glory of the face of Him

In whom to His belovéd God still shines.

Morn such had risen once more in Paradise,

When there a group elect together drawn,

Wearing a brow of expectation each,

Stood on a flowery hill enringed around

To be almost an island with a loop

Of river, the river of life, that lucent flowed

Mirroring ranks of trees along its banks

Ruddy or gold in gleams of fruitage seen

Glimpsing against the rich green of their leaves—

Here stood a chosen group who waited now

Tidings a messenger to come should bring.

These were those all who lately on the earth

Had suffered death for Jesus' sake through Saul—

All saving Stephen; he, at point of dawn

That morning, had been summoned by his Lord

To bear from Him some embassy of grace.

The man born blind was there whom Jesus healed

To double seeing, seeing of the soul,

As of the body, and whom not the threat

Of stripes, of stones, and not the blandishment

Of gentle words from lips with power of death

Could bribe to live at cost of least unfaith

Toward his Light-giver and Redeemer Lord—

He, and a little company besides,

Women with men, who like him lightly recked

Of loss but for a moment then and there

Compared with that far more exceeding weight

Of glory now, in over-recompense,

Forever and forever sealed their own.

This little group, beyond their happy wont

Beatified with hope that heavenly morn,

Soon greet one coming whose irradiate brow

Bespeaks him fresh from audience with the King;

Stephen it was, whose earthly-shining face

Was shadow to the brightness now it wore.

The martyr to his fellow-martyrs brought

Glad tidings; they were all that day to see

Break forth in power the glory of the Lord.

"Saul," Stephen said, "still breathes his threatening out

And slaughter aimed against the church of Christ;

He journeys to Damascus in this mind.

But the Lord Christ will meet him in the way

And overthrow him with resistless light.

Ours is to tarry on this pleasant hill

Of prospect, and, hence gazing, all behold,

Tasting a sweet revenge of Paradise,

To see our prayers fulfilled, in Saul become

From persecutor brother well-beloved,

And builder from destroyer of the church."

So these there sat them down upon the mount.

Here, gaze turned ever earthward, they in talk

Of earthly things that still were dear to them

Consumed the happy heavenly hours, until,

To those their native Syrian climes, drew nigh

Noontide; then, in a new theophany,

The transit of a shadow!—seldom seen

There where was neither sun, nor moon, nor star,

But all was equal universal light—

Came sudden notice to their eyes to watch

The Messianic dread procession forth,

Christ in the majesty of solitude,

Swifter than meteor's fall, from Paradise.

HE, purposed not to slay, only cast down

Saul from the top of his presumptuous pride,

And break him from his disobedient will,

Would not in His essential glory meet

His creature, lest he be abolished quite,

But dimmed Himself with splendor which, more bright

Than the supreme effulgence of the sun

At mid-day in a crystal firmament,

Fixed, but more vivid than the fleeting flash

Of lightning when its beam burns most intense,

Was splendor yet of ray less luminous

Than the accustomed radiance of His face,

And showed as cloud against that shining sky.

For, in that unimaginable world

Of perfect, purged from sin and sin's defect,

The senses of the blest inhabitants,

Their organs and their faculties, are all

Inured to bear with ease, with pleasure bear,

Continuance and intensity of light

That mortal frames like ours would quite consume.

Those there from light need neither change nor rest,

Their proper substance is illuminate,

And their bliss is to bathe themselves in light,

And light, more light, drunk in at every pore

From the bright omnipresence of the Lord,

Revealed each day brighter forevermore,

Makes their eternal life eternal joy.

But on this day select of many days,

The happy people all of Paradise

Saw Jesus as a darkness of less light,

A glancing shadow, pass from out their sphere—

The most unweeting whither or why He went;

But those knew who kept vigil on the mount.

These had their sense for sight and sound that day

Exalted to seraphic keen and clear

Beyond the glorious wont of Paradise;

While a circumfluous ether interfused

For their behoof between where thus they stood

And where they earthward looked, a subtile air,

A discontinuous element rare like space,

Was now such vehicle, so voluble,

For lightest appulse to both eye and ear

Supernal, thrice sevenfold refined, as made

Seem nigh things seen or heard, however far.

Fixed to behold and hearken thus at ease,

They saw afar two pilgrim companies,

Where, near Damascus, these a shady tuft

Of grove or thicket, in the arid waste

Of burning sand, at noontide hour had found,

For rest and coolness ere their goal they gained.

Those pilgrims just in act, as seemed, to start

Anew upon the way for their last stage

Of going, one, well recognized for Saul—

Remounted not from halt, but some few steps

Leading his horse with bridle-rein remiss

Along his destined path—comrade beside,

Was by this comrade asked, as in discourse

After suspense renewed: "How was it, then,

Through what offence, that he deserved his death?

Since atheist not, and not idolater,

Nor yet of those Samaritan heretics,

Wherein did Stephen fail of loyalty?"

"Traitor was he," said Saul, "to our chief hope,

He taught that Jesus Nazarene was Christ;

Nay, that impostor, he, blaspheming, made

Coequal partner of the eternal throne

And solitary majesty of God;

Worst of idolatry such blasphemy!

Jesus of Nazareth anathema!"

Almost, at this, a shudder of horror ran

Chill through the spiritual pure corporeal frames

Wherein were housed those blessed essences,

Hearing from earth such words in Paradise!

They then considered at what cost were bought

Perpetual consciousness of things terrene!

Watched they meanwhile that cloud of glory go

Darkened wherein the Lord of light was hid.

Incredibly though swift its far descent,

Yet answerably swift their vision was,

As swift likewise the motion of their mind;

And so they plainly saw how, by degrees,

What shadow was, in the celestial sphere,

Became a growing brightness as it went,

Until, within the bounds of sunshine come,

That mild beclouded glory, still unchanged,

Paled with its bright the brilliance of the sun.

Hardly those watchers dare keep looking, pierced

With a redeemed fine sympathy for Saul,

And marvelling, "Such light can he bear and live?"

To Saul himself no interval there seemed;

Instant, with his anathema, down smote

That awful light on him, and straight to earth

Prostrate as dead he fell, yet heard a Voice,

Awful not less, speak twice his name, "Saul, Saul,"

And, "Wherefore dost thou persecute Me?" ask.

Then further these deep searching words to him:

"Hard findst it thou to kick against the pricks!"

"Who art Thou, Lord?" came trembling forth from Saul,

Whereby their brother yet alive those knew.

"Jesus I am, Jesus of Nazareth,

The crucified, whom thou dost persecute,"

They heard Messiah say, and thrilled with joy

Of gratitude to feel afresh that He

Suffered when any suffered for His sake,

And bled in wounds that made His brethren bleed,

Joining Himself to them, by fellowship

Of passion, they in Him and He in them,

The living members with the living Head

Mysteriously incorporate in one.

Thus a sweet thrill of grateful love to Him,

Their Saviour, trembled in those heavenly breasts,

While in suspense of balanced hope and fear—

The fear but such as made the hope more bliss—

They waited what their brother next would say.

But in the prostrate man, at such reply,

Felt from amidst that imminent light descend,

"I Jesus am whom thou dost persecute,"

Thought following thought, a fleet succession, flew

The boundless blank astonishment was brief

Which, as with wing world-wide of hurricane,

Shadowy, his mind bewildering overswept.

'Such power of splendor his, the Nazarene's!

Jesus had launched that thunderbolt of light!

The Lord of Glory then the crucified!'

The momentary hurricane was past,

But passing it had overturned the world.

Saul vividly saw Stephen as that day

He shone Shekinah in the temple court

Effulgent with a milder light like this;

'And this was that which Stephen prophesied!

How madly had he kicked against the pricks!'

Next, Stephen martyr stood before his eyes

Uplifting holy hands to heaven in prayer,

On poise for that translation to his Lord

Wherein his, Saul's, the murderer's part had been!

And Rachel flashed in vision on his mind,

Pathetically beautiful, once more,

As on that moonlit eve at Bethany!

The sisters there, and Lazarus—with Ruth

Exalted in her mother-majesty!

Hirani, then, in his simplicity

Perplexed before the Sanhedrim, but borne

In ecstasy above them far away,

Thence looking down upon them all, a light

Fair on his forehead like the light of stars;

All these things in his past, with many more—

Instant, at sudden summons of his mind,

To swear against him his own blasphemy—

Shot through Saul's spirit, as the lightning leaps,

Rapid, one leap, from end to end of heaven.

'This dreadful splendor was not vengeance all,

It had not slain him, he was thinking still!

A grace was in the glory, oh, how fair!'

The features of a Face began to dawn

Upon him in the darkness of that light;

As the sun shineth in his strength, it shone,

An awful Meekness mild with Majesty!

The outward light light to his soul became—

A light of knowledge of the glory of God

To Saul, seen in the face of Jesus Christ!

'It would be freedom to serve such a Lord!'

The passion of rebellion all was gone,

A passion of obedience in its place;

The will that hated had dissolved away,

And will no more was left, but only love.

This love which was obedience spoke and asked,

"Lord Jesus, what wilt thou have me to do?"

The Brightness of the Father's Glory said:

"Rise thou, and stand upon thy feet, for I

Have to this end appeared to thee, to make

Thee minister and witness both of what

This day thou hast beheld and of those things

Wherein I after will appear to thee,

Delivering thee from Jewish enemies

And from the Gentiles unto whom I now

Send thee, their eyes to unseal and them to turn

From darkness unto light, and from the power

Of Satan unto God, that they of sins

Forgiveness may receive, and heirs become

Among those sanctified through faith in Me."

Saul heard, and in his heart of hearts obeyed;

And his whole life thenceforth obedience was—

Whereof the greater song remains to sing,

If so be God vouchsafe such grace to me.

But Jesus to His servant further said,

"Hence now into Damascus city go;

There fully shall be shown thee all thy way."

A way indeed stain-traced in blood and tears,

As Saul foresaw to Rachel; but in tears

And blood his own thereafter to the end,

Even to the end of that apostleship.

Yet glorious end! Already then afar

Will kindle the dark earth with many a ray,

Never to be extinguished, of heaven's light

Caught from the torch that this world-wandering man,

This flying angel fledged with wingéd feet

Tireless, this heart of love unquenchable,

Has borne abroad, when, now the good fight fought,

Finished his course, the faith full kept, he, last,

With aged eagle eyes strained forward, sees

The crown of righteousness laid up for him

Which Christ, the Righteous Judge, will give him then,

Give him in that forever-imminent Day—

Nor him alone, as his vicarious soul

Swells to remember, but all them likewise

Who shall have loved the appearing of the Lord.

The transit of a thought athwart the brain—

What computation for such speed in flight!

What reckoning of the number of the thoughts

That in an individual instant will

Chase one another through a human mind

In never-sundered continuity

Of change! The measureless diameters

Of being that a mortal man may cross

From one pulse to another of the blood!

How, in the twinkling of an eye, become

The spirit its own polar opposite!

Between his Lord's reply, "I Jesus am,"

And his own further question instant asked,

"Lord Jesus, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

That prostrate proud young Hebrew penitent

The utmost stretch of longitude traversed

That can divide two different selves in man—

He from rebellious to obedient passed,

Blasphemer was adoring worshipper,

The Pharisee was Christian, Saul was Paul.

At witness of the wondrous change, the joy,

The grateful joy, within those friendly minds

Above who saw it, borne to ecstasy

Of gladness, was triumphal, and broke forth

In singing such as heard in Paradise:

"Glory to God, and to our Saviour Lord,

For one more captive to the heavenly thrall;

For one more human soul to heaven reclaimed

From hell, and star set in Christ's diadem!

For one more witness, an apostle new,

Like angel flying through mid-heaven, to fly

And wing the Gospel wide throughout the world!

Thanks to thee, Christ, for that his name is SAUL!"

Heard was this quiring song afar, and heaven

Her other joy suspended at the sound:

And every echoing hill of Paradise,

Each grove, each grotto, every fountain-side,

With every bank of river, every glen,

And every bowery, flowery wide champaign

Where angels bask in bliss, took up the strain

And rang it swelling to the highest heaven;

While harpers harped it to their harps, and palms

Were rhythmic waved in music to the eye,

And the trees clapped their hands, and God was pleased.

So they in Paradise, who saw and heard

Truly; Saul's fellow-pilgrims nigh at hand

Vacantly wondered, who, though they the light

Beheld, and heard the voice speak, missed the sense.

Sergius, recovered from his first surprise

And terror, mused within himself, and found,

Remembering words from Saul against the gods,

Easy solution of the mystery;

'Pan roared at him from out the copse-wood nigh,

With wholesome punishment of fear infused

Avenging his despised divinity;

While lord Apollo twanged his silver bow

And shot at him a shaft of blinding light;

The gods of right are wroth to be reviled!'

Saul from the ground arose a sightless man;

The glory that not slew had blinded him.

His steed he would not mount again to ride,

But chose, humbly, and guided by the hand,

Footing to go among his followers.

Who, that blithe morning, as the morning blithe,

Forth for Damascus from Jerusalem

Rode breathing threat and slaughter quenchless sworn

Against the church of Jesus Nazarene,

Entered the city walking, led and blind,

Bondslave thenceforth to the One Worthy Name.

THE END.

Transcriber's note:

Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.

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Table of Contents

The Epic of Saul

WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON

CONTENTS.

THE EPIC OF SAUL.

PROEM.

BOOK I.

SAUL AND GAMALIEL.

THE EPIC OF SAUL. SAUL AND GAMALIEL.

BOOK II.

SAUL AND THE SANHEDRIM.

SAUL AND THE SANHEDRIM.

BOOK III.

SAUL AGAINST STEPHEN.

SAUL AGAINST STEPHEN.

BOOK IV.

STEPHEN AGAINST SAUL.

STEPHEN AGAINST SAUL.

BOOK V.

SAUL AND SHIMEI.

SAUL AND SHIMEI.

BOOK VI.

SAUL AND RACHEL.

SAUL AND RACHEL.

BOOK VII.

STEPHEN AND RUTH.

STEPHEN AND RUTH.

BOOK VIII.

STEPHEN MARTYR.

STEPHEN MARTYR.

BOOK IX.

RUTH AND RACHEL.

RUTH AND RACHEL.

BOOK X.

SAUL AT BETHANY.

SAUL AT BETHANY.

BOOK XI.

SAUL AND HIRANI.

SAUL AND HIRANI.

BOOK XII.

SAUL AND THE APOSTLES.

SAUL AND THE APOSTLES.

BOOK XIII.

SAUL AND SERGIUS.

SAUL AND SERGIUS.

BOOK XIV.

FOR DAMASCUS.

FOR DAMASCUS.

BOOK XV.

SAUL AND JESUS.

SAUL AND JESUS.

Transcriber's note:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE