_Eleazar Learns of Salathiel’s Renunciation_
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Journey Continued]
The country through which we passed, after leaving the boundaries of
Samaria—where, with all its peace, no Jew could tread but as in the land
of strangers—was new to me. My life had been till now spent in study
or in serving the altar; and I had heard, with the usual and unwise
indifference of men devoted to books, the praise of the picturesque and
stately provinces that still remained to our people. I was now to see for
myself, and was often compelled, as we advanced, to reproach the idle
prejudice that had so long deprived me, and might forever deprive so
many of my consecrated brethren, of an enjoyment cheering to the human
heart and full of lofty and hallowed memory to the men of Israel. As we
passed along, less traveling than wandering at pleasure, through regions
where every winding of the marble hill or descent of the fruitful valley
showed us some sudden and romantic beauty of landscape, my kinsmen took
a natural pride in pointing out the noble features that made Canaan a
living history of Providence.[8]
[Sidenote: A Prayer in the Valley]
What were even the trophy-covered hills of Greece or the monumental
plains of Italy to the hills and plains where the memorial told of the
miracles and the presence of the Supreme? “Look to that rock,” they would
exclaim; “there descended the angel of the Presence! On the summit of
that cloudy ridge stood Ezekiel, when he saw the vision of the latter
days. Look to yonder cleft in the mountains; there fell the lightning
from heaven on the Philistine.” In our travel we reached a valley, a spot
of singular beauty and seclusion, blushing with flowers and sheeted with
the olive from its edge down to a stream that rushed brightly through
its bosom. There was no dwelling of man in it, but on a gentler slope
of the declivity stood a gigantic terebinth-tree. More than curiosity
was attracted to this delicious spot, for the laughter and talk of the
caravan had instantly subsided at the sight. All, by a common impulse,
dismounted from their horses and camels; and though it was still far from
sunset, the tents were pitched and preparations made for prayer. The spot
reminded me of the valley of Hebron, sacred to the Jewish heart as the
burial-place of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. May they sleep in the bosom of
the Lord! The terebinth-tree, under which the greatest of the patriarchs
sat and talked with the angels—the fountain—the cave of Macpelah, in
which his mortal frame returned to the earth, to come again in glory,
appeared to lie before me.
From the day of my unspeakable crime, I had never joined in prayer with
my people. Yet, I was still a believer in the faith of Israel. I even
clung to it with the nervous violence of one who, in a shipwreck, feels
that his only hope is the plank in his grasp, and that some more powerful
hand is tearing even that plank away. But the sight of human beings
enjoying the placid consolations of prayer had from the first moment
overwhelmed me with so keen a sense of my misfortune—the pious gentleness
of attitude and voice, the calm uplifted hand, and low and solemn
aspiration were in so deep a contrast to the involuntary wildness and
broken utterings of a heart bound in more than adamantine chains, that I
shrank from the rebuke and groaned in solitude.
[Sidenote: Eleazar, the Brother of Miriam]
I went forth into the valley, and was soon lost in its thick vegetation.
The sound of the hymn that sank down in mingled sweetness with the
murmuring of the evening air through the leaves, and the bubbling of
the brook below, alone told me that I was near human beings. I sat
upon a fragment of turf, embroidered as never was kingly footstool and
with my hands clasped over my eyes, to remove from me all the images
of life, gave way to that visionary mood of mind in which ideas come
and pass in crowds without shape, leaving no more impression than
the drops of a sun-shower on the trees. I had remained long in this
half-dreaming confusion, and had almost imagined myself transported to
some intermediate realm of being, where a part of the infliction was
that of being startled by keen flashes of light from some upper world,
when I was roused by the voice of Eleazar, the brother of Miriam, at my
side. His manly and generous countenance expressed mingled anxiety and
gladness at discovering me. “The whole camp,” said he, “have been alarmed
at your absence, and have searched for these three hours through every
part of our day’s journey. Miriam’s distraction at length urged me to
leave her, and it was by her instinct that I took my way down the only
path hitherto unsearched, and where, indeed, from fear or reverence of
the place, few but myself would have willingly come.” He called to an
attendant, and, sending him up the side of the valley with the tidings,
we followed slowly, for I was still feeble. As we emerged into a more
open space, the moon lying on masses of cloud, like a queen pillowed on
couches of silver, showed me, in her strong illumination of the forest,
the flashes which had added to the bewildered pain of my reverie. While I
talked with natural animation of the splendor of the heavens, and pointed
out the lines and figures on the moon’s disk, which made it probable that
it was, like earth, a place of habitation, he suddenly pressed my hand,
and stopping, with his eyes fixed on my face: “How,” said he, “does it
happen, my friend, my brother Salathiel?” I started, as if my name, the
name of my illustrious ancestor, direct in descent from the father of
the faithful, were an accusation. He proceeded, with an ardent pressure
of my quivering hand: “How is it to be accounted for that you, with such
contemplations and the knowledge that gives them the dignity of science,
can yet be so habitually given over to gloom? Serious crime I will not
believe in you, though the best of us are stained. But your character is
pure; I know your nature to be too lofty for the degenerate indulgence of
the passions, and Miriam’s love for you, a love passing that of women,
is in itself a seal of virtue. Answer me, Can the wealth, power, or
influence of your brother and his house, nay of his tribe, assist you?”
[Sidenote: Speaks of Salathiel’s Gloom]
I was silent. He paused, and we walked on a while, without a sound but
that of our tread among the leaves; but his mind was full, and it
would have way. “Salathiel,” said he, “you do injustice to yourself,
to your wife, and to your friends. This gloom that sits eternally on
your forehead must wear away all your uses in society; it bathes your
incomparable wife’s pillow in tears, and it disheartens, nay distresses,
us all. Answer me as one man of honor and integrity would another. Have
you been disappointed in your ambition? I know your claims. You have
knowledge surpassing that of a multitude of your contemporaries; you
have talents that ought to be honored; your character is unimpeached and
unimpeachable. Such things ought to have already raised you to eminence.
Have you found yourself thwarted by the common artifice of official life?
Has some paltry sycophant crept up before you by the oblique path that
honor disdains? Or have you felt yourself an excluded and marked man,
merely for the display of that manlier vigor, richer genius, and more
generous and sincere impulse of heart which to the conscious inferiority
of the rabble of understanding is gall and wormwood? Or have you taken
too deeply into your resentment the common criminal negligence that
besets common minds in power, and makes them carelessly fling away upon
incapacity, and guiltily withhold from worth, the rewards which were
entrusted to them as a sacred deposit for the encouragement of national
ability and personal virtue?”
I strongly disavowed all conceptions of the kind, and assured him that
I felt neither peculiar merits nor peculiar injuries. “I have seen too
much of what ambition and worldly success were made of, to allow hope
to excite or failure to depress me. I am even,” added I, “so far from
being the slave of that most vulgar intemperance of a deranged heart, the
diseased craving for the miserable indulgences of worldly distinction,
that would to Heaven I might never again enter the gates of Jerusalem!”
[Sidenote: Beside the Tomb of Isaiah]
He started back in surprise. The confession had been altogether
unintended, and I looked up to see the burst of Jewish wrath descending
upon me. I saw none. My kinsman’s fine countenance was brightened with a
lofty joy. “Then you have renounced. But no, it is yet too soon. At your
age, with your prospects, can you have renounced the career offered to
you among the rulers of Israel?”
“I have renounced.”
“Sincerely, solemnly, upon conviction?”
“From the bottom of my soul, now and forever!”
We had reached the open space in front of the terebinth-tree that stood
in majesty, extending its stately branches over a space cleared of all
other trees, a sovereign of the forest. In silence he led me under the
shade to a small tomb, on which the light fell with broken luster.
“This,” said he, “is the tomb of the greatest prophet on whose lips the
wisdom of Heaven ever burned. There sleeps Isaiah! There is silent the
voice that for fifty years spoke more than the thoughts of man in the
ears of a guilty people. There are cold the hands that struck the harp
of more than mortal sounds to the glory of Him to whom earth and its
kingdoms are but as the dust of the balance. There lies the heart which
neither the desert, nor the dungeon, nor the teeth of the lion, nor the
saw of Manasseh, could tame—the denouncer of our crimes—the scourge of
our apostasy—the prophet of that desolation which was to bow the grandeur
of Judah to the grave as the tree of the mountain in the whirlwind. Saint
and martyr, let my life be as thine; and if it be the will of God, let my
death be even as thine!”
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Renunciation]
He threw himself on his knees and remained in prayer for a time. I knelt
with him, but no prayer would issue from my heart. He at length rose,
and, leading me into the moonlight, said in a low voice: “Is there
not, where the holy sleep, a holiness in the very ground? I waive all
the superstitious feelings of the idolater, worshiping the dust of the
creature, for the King alike of all. I pass over the natural human homage
for the memory of those who have risen above us by the great qualities
of their being. But if there are supernal influences acting upon the
mind of man; if the winged spirits that minister before the throne still
descend to earth on missions of mercy, I will believe that their loved
place is round the grave where sleeps the mortal portion of the holy. In
all our journeys to the Temple, it has been the custom of our shattered
and humiliated tribe to pause beside this tomb, and offer up our homage
to that Mightiest of the mighty who made such men for the lights of
Israel!” He then earnestly repeated the question: “Have you abandoned
your office?” “Yes,” was the answer, “totally, with full purpose never to
resume it. In your mountains I will live with you, and with you I will
die.” Memory smote me as I pronounced the word; the refuge of the grave
was not for me!
“Then,” said he, “you have relieved my spirit of a load; you are now my
more than brother.” He clasped me in his arms. “Yes, Salathiel, I know
that your high heart must have scorned the prejudices of the Scribe
and the Pharisee; you must have seen through and loathed the smiling
hypocrisy, the rancorous bigotry, and the furious thirst of blood that
are hourly sinking us below the lowest of the heathen. Hating the tyranny
of the Roman, as I live this hour, I would rather see the city of David
inhabited by none but the idolater, or delivered over to the curse of
Babylon and made the couch of the lion and the serpent, than see its
courts filled with those impious traitors to the spirit of the law,
those cruel extortioners under the mask of self-denial, those malignant
revelers in human torture under the name of insulted religion, whose joy
is crime, and every hour of whose being but wearies the long-suffering of
God and precipitates the ruin of my country.”
He drew from his bosom and unrolled in the moonlight a small copy of the
Scriptures. “My brother,” said he, “have you read the holy prophecies of
him by whose grave we stand?” My only answer was a smile; they were the
chief study of the priesthood. “True,” said he; “no doubt, you have read
the words of the prophet. But wisdom is known of her children, and of
them alone. Read here.”
I read the famous Haphtorah:[9] “Who hath believed our report? and to
whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as
a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor
comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should
desire him. He is the despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows!”
[Sidenote: The Future Deliverer of Judah]
He stopped me, laying his hand on my arm; I felt his strong nerves
tremble like an infant’s. “Of whom hath the prophet spoken?” uttered he
in a voice of intense anxiety. “Of whom? Of the Deliverer that is to
restore Judah; Him that is to come,” was my answer. “Him that _is to
come_—still _to come_?” he exclaimed. “God of heaven, must the veil be
forever on the face of Thy Israel? When shall our darkness be light, and
the chain of our spirit be broken!” The glow and power of his countenance
sank; he took the roll with a sigh, and replaced it in his robe; then
with his hands clasped across his bosom, and his head bowed, he led our
silent way up the side of the valley.