_The Appeal of Miriam_
[Sidenote: The Changes of Time]
When the first tumult of our spirits was passed, I had leisure to see
what changes the interval had made in faces so loved. Miriam’s betrayed
the hours of distress and pain that she must have passed through, but her
noble style of beauty, the emanation of a noble mind, was as conspicuous
as ever. I even thought, when her eyes met mine from time to time, that
they shone with a loftier intelligence, as if misfortune had raised their
vision above the things of our trivial world. My daughters’ forms had
matured, but Salome, the elder, had to a certain degree her mother’s
look; her glance was bright, yet she was often lost in meditation, and
the rapid changes of her cheek from the deepest crimson to the whiteness
of the snow alarmed me with menaces of early decay. Esther, too, had
undergone her revolution. But it was of the brightest texture. The seas,
the skies, the mountains of Greece, filled her glowing spirit with images
of new life. She had listened with boundless delight to the traditions
of that most brilliant of all people; the works of the pencil and the
chisel had met her eye in a profuseness and perfection that she had never
contemplated before; her harp had echoed to names of romantic valor
and proud patriotism; and as I gazed on her in those hours when in the
feeling that she was unobserved she gave way to the rich impulses of her
soul, I thought alternately of the prophetess and of the muse.
The shipwreck converted the solitary shore into a little village; the
sailors collected the fragments of the vessel and formed them into huts;
the caves that ran along the level of the sands supplied habitations in
themselves, and by the assistance of those dwellers on the precipice, who
had so unexpectedly started to light, the first difficulties of a wild
coast were sufficiently combated. The bustling activity of the Greek
mariners and the adroitness with which they availed themselves of all
contrivances for passing the heavy hour, their sleights-of-hand, sports
and dances, their recitations of popular poems, and their boat-songs,
kept the spot in continual animation.
This was my first contact with the actual people, and I acknowledged
their right to have been distinguished among the most showy disturbers of
mankind. The evil of the character too was displayed without much trouble
of disguise. They habitually gamed till they had no better stake than the
fragments of their own clothing; but they would game for a shell, for a
stone that they picked up on the sands, for anything. They quarreled with
as perfect facility as they gamed; the knife was out quick as lightning,
but to do them justice their wrath was as brief. The combatants embraced
at a word, danced, kissed, and wept; then drank, gamed, quarreled, and
were sworn brothers again. But this was Greece in its lowest rank.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Meets Constantius]
Constantius, the commander of the galley, was a specimen of the land
which produced a Plato and a Pericles. When I first saw him led to
me by Miriam as the champion who had restored her and her children
to happiness, I saw virtue and manliness of the highest order in his
features. He was in his prime, but a scar across his forehead and
the severities of martial life had given early seriousness to his
countenance. But his conversation had the full spirit of the spring-time
of life. It was incomparably various and animated, altogether free from
professional pedantry; it had the interest that belongs to professional
feelings. Military adventure, striking traits of warlike intelligence,
the composition of the fleets and armies of the various states that
fought under the wing of the Roman eagle, were topics on which his fire
was exhaustless. On those I listened to him with the strong sympathy of
one to whom war must henceforth be the grand pursuit; war for national
freedom—war purified of its evil by the most illustrious cause that ever
unsheathed the sword.
He had conversation for us all. His intercourse with the ruling lands
of the earth gave him a copious store of recollections, picturesque and
strange. Esther combated and questioned the traveler. Salome listened to
the warrior—listened and loved. He had higher topics of which I was yet
to hear. In the inhabitants of the precipice he found a little colony of
his countrymen, fugitive Christians driven out by persecution, to make
their home in the wilderness of nature.[23] The long range of caverns
which perforated the rock gave them a roof. The fertility of the soil,
and the occasional visit of a bark sent by their concealed friends,
supplied the necessaries of life, and there they awaited the close of
that ferocious tyranny which at length roused the world against Nero—or
awaited the end of all suffering in the grave. A succession of storms
rendered traveling impossible and detained us among those hermits for
some days. I found them intelligent and, in general, men of the higher
ranks of knowledge and condition. Some were of celebrated families, and
had left behind them opulence and authority. A few were peasants. But
misfortune and, still more, principle, extinguished all that was abrupt
in the inequality of ranks without leaving license in its stead. Jew as
I was, and steadily bound to the customs of my country, I yet did honor
to the patience, the humility, and the devotedness of those exiled men.
I even once attended their worship on the first day of the week, assured
that the abomination of idols was not to be found there, and that I
should hear nothing insulting to the name of Israel.
[Sidenote: A Simple Worship]
The ceremonial was simple. Those who had witnessed the heaven-commanded
magnificence of the Temple might smile at the bareness of walls of rock,
figured only with the wild herbage; or those who had seen the extravagant
and complicated rites of paganism might scorn the few and obvious forms
of the homage. But there was the spirit of strong prayer, the breathing
of the heart, the unanswerable sincerity. Every violence of the mere
animal frame was unknown. I saw no pagan convulsion, no fierceness of
outcry and gesture, not even the vehement solemnity of the Jew. All was
calm; tears stole down, but they stole in silence; knees were bowed,
but there was no prostration; prayers fervent and lofty were poured
forth, but they were in accents uttered less from the lip than from
the soul—appeals of hallowed confidence, as to a Being who was sure to
hear the voice of children to a Father who, wherever two or three were
gathered together, was in the midst of them.
At length the storms cleared away and the sky wore the native azure of
the climate. A messenger despatched to Cyprus returned with a vessel for
the embarkation of the Greeks. Camels and mules were procured from the
neighboring country for our journey, and the morning was fixed on which
we were to separate. Yet with so much reason for joy, few resolutions
could have been received with less favor. Constantius almost shunned
society or shared in it with a silence and depression that made his
philosophy more than questionable. Miriam was engaged in long conferences
with Salome, from which they both came away much saddened. Esther was
thus my chief companion, and she talked of the shore, the sea, and even
of the tempests, with heightened interest. The Greeks, sailor and soldier
alike, loved too well the romantic ease and careless adventure of the
place to look with complacency on the little vessel in which they were
to be borne once more into the land of restraint. The fugitive colony
were not the slowest in their regrets. They had been deeply prepared for
human vicissitudes, and had humbled themselves to all things; yet such is
the strong and natural connection of man with man that they lamented the
solitude to which they must again be left, like the commencement of a new
exile.
[Illustration: “‘Read the Scriptures. I have prayed for you. Read—’”
[_see page 109._
Copyright, 1901, by Funk & Wagnalls Company, N. Y. and London.]
[Sidenote: The Moment of Departure]
There are few things more singular than the blindness which, in matters
of the highest importance to ourselves, often hides the truth that is as
plain as noon to all other eyes. The cause which had deprived Constantius
of his eloquence and Salome of her animation was obvious to every one but
me. Nor was the mystery yet to be disclosed to my tardy knowledge. I had
strayed through the cliffs, as was my custom after the heat of the day,
and was taking a last look at the sea from the edge of the precipice.
The sands far below me were covered with preparations for the voyage,
which, like our journey, was to commence with the rising sun. The little
vessel lay, a glittering toy, at anchor with her thread-like streamers
playing in the breeze. The sailors were fishing, preparing their evening
meal, heaving water and provisions down the rocks, or enjoying themselves
over flagons of Syrian wine round their fires. All was the activity of a
seaport, but from the height on which I stood, all was but the activity
of a mole-hill.
“And is it of such materials,” mused I, “that ambition is made? Is it to
command, to be gazed on, to be shouted after by such mites and atoms as
those, that life is exhausted in watching and weariness; that our true
enjoyments are sacrificed; that the present and the future are equally
cast from us; that the hand is dipped in blood and the earth desolated?
What must Alexander’s triumph have looked to one who saw it from the
towers of Babylon? A triumph of emmets!” I smiled at the moral of three
hundred feet of precipice.
[Sidenote: Salathiel Alone with Miriam]
A step beside me put my philosophy to flight. My wife stood there, and
never saw I her beauty more beautiful. The exertion of the ascent had
colored her cheek; the breeze had scattered her raven locks across a
forehead of the purest white; her lips wore the smile so long absent,
and there was altogether an air of hope and joy in her countenance that
made me instinctively ask of what good news she was the bearer. Without a
word, she sat down beside me and pressed my hand; she fixed her eyes on
mine, tried to speak, and failing, fell on my neck and burst into tears.
Alarmed by her sobs and the wild beating of her heart, I was about to
rise for assistance when she detained me, and the smile returned; she
bared her forehead to the breeze, and recovering, disburdened her soul.
“How many billows,” said she, gazing on the sea, “will roll between
that little bark and this shore to-morrow! There is always something
melancholy in parting. Yet if that vessel could feel, with what delight
would she not wing her way to Cyprus, lovely Cyprus!”
I was surprised. “Miriam! this from you? Can you regret the place of
paganism—the land of your captivity?”
“No,” was the answer, with a look of lofty truth; “I abhorred the guilty
profanations of the pagan; and who can love the dungeon? Even were Cyprus
a paradise, I should have felt unhappy in the separation from my country
and from you. Yet those alone who have seen the matchless loveliness of
the island—the perpetual animation of life in a climate and in the midst
of scenes made for happiness—can know the sacrifice that must be made by
its people in leaving it, and leaving it perhaps forever.”
“The crew of that galley are not to be tried by long exile. In two days
at furthest, they will anchor in their own harbour,” was my only answer.
[Sidenote: Miriam Speaks of Constantius]
“And how deeply must the sacrifice be enhanced by the abandonment of
rank, wealth, professional honors!—and this is the sacrifice on which I
have been sent to consult my husband.”
I was totally at a loss to conceive of whom she spoke.
“Our friend—our deliverer from captivity or death—the generous being who,
through infinite hazards, restored your wife and children to happiness
and home——”
“Constantius? Impossible! At the very age of ambition, with his talents,
his knowledge of life, his prospects of distinction!”
“Constantius will never return to Cyprus in that galley—will never draw
sword for Rome again—will never quit the land given by Heaven to our
fathers, if such be the will of Salathiel.”
“Strange. But his motives? He is superior to the fickleness that abandons
an honorable course of life through the pure love of novelty—or is he
weary of the absurdities of paganism?”
“Thoroughly weary—more than weary: he has abjured them forever and ever.”
“You rejoice me. But it was to be expected from his manly mind. You
have brought an illustrious convert, my beloved! and if your captivity
has done this, it was the will of Heaven. Constantius shall be led
with distinction to the Temple and be one of ourselves. Judea may yet
require such men. Our holy religion may exult in such conquests from the
darkness of the idolatrous world.”
The voice of the hermits at their evening prayer now arose and held
us in a silence which neither seemed inclined to break. Many thoughts
pressed on my mind: the addition to our circle of a man whom I honored
and esteemed; the accession of a practised soldier to our cause; the near
approach of the hour of conflict; the precarious fate of those I loved
in the great convulsion which was to rend away the Roman yoke or leave
Judea a tomb. I accidentally looked up and saw that Miriam had been as
abstracted as myself. But war and policy were not in the contemplations
of the beaming countenance; nor their words on the lips that quivered
and crimsoned before me. Her eyes were fixed on the sky, and she was in
evident prayer, which I desired not to disturb.
[Sidenote: Miriam’s Candor]
She at length caught my glance and blushed like one detected; but quickly
recovering, said in a tone never to be forgotten: “My husband! my lord!
my love! would that I dared open my whole spirit to you! would that you
could read for yourself the truths written in my heart!”
“Miriam!”
“This is no reproach. But I know your strength of opinion—your passion
for all that concerns the glory of Israel; your right, the right of
talents and character to the foremost rank among the priesthood—and those
things repel me.”
“Speak out at once. We can have no concealments, Miriam; candor, candor
in all things.”
“You have heard the prayers of those exiles; you acknowledge
their acquirements and understandings; they have sacrificed much,
everything—friends, country, the world. Can such men have been imposed
on? Can they have imposed on themselves? Is it possible that their
sacrifices could have been made for a fiction?”
“Perhaps not; the question is difficult. We are strangely the slaves
of impulse. Men every day abandon the most obvious good for the most
palpable follies. Enthusiasm is a minor madness.”
“But are those exiles enthusiasts? They are grave men, experienced in
life; their language is totally free from extravagance; they reason with
singular clearness; they live with the most striking command over the
habits of their original condition. Greeks as they are, you see no haste
of temper, you hear no violence of language among them. Once idolaters,
they shrink from the thought of idols. Now fugitive and persecuted, they
pray for their persecutors. Sharing the lair of wild beasts, and driven
out from all that they knew and loved, they utter no complaint—they even
rejoice in their calamity and offer up praises to the mercy that shut the
gates of earth upon their steps, only to open the gates of heaven.”
[Sidenote: The Hope of Israel]
“I am no persecutor, Miriam. Nay, I honor the self-denial, as I doubt
not the sincerity of those men. But if they have thrown off a portion of
their early blindness, why not desire the full illumination? Why linger
half-way between falsehood and truth? It is not, as you know, our custom
to solicit proselytes. But such men might be not unworthy of the hope of
Israel.”
“It is to the hope of Israel that they have come, that they cling, that
they look up for a recompense—a glorious recompense for their sufferings.”
“Let them then join us at sunrise, and come to our holy city.”
“Salathiel, the time is declared when men shall worship not in that
mountain alone, but through all lands; when the yoke of our law shall be
lightened and the weary shall have rest; when the altar shall pass away
as the illustrious victim has passed, and the wisdom of heaven shall be
the possession of all mankind.”
I looked at her in astonishment. “Miriam, this from you! from a daughter
of the blood of Jacob! from the wife of a servant of the Temple! Have you
become a Christian?”
“I have done nothing in presumption. I have prayed to the Source of light
that He would enlighten my understanding; I have, night and day, examined
the law and the prophets. Bear with my weakness, Salathiel, if it be
proved weakness. But if it be wisdom, knowledge, and truth, I implore you
by our love, nay, by the higher interests of your own soul, follow my
example.”
It was impossible to answer harshly to a remonstrance expressed with
the overflowing fondness of the heart: I could only remind her of the
unchangeable promises made to Judaism.
“But it is of those promises I speak,” urged she; “we have seen the day
that our father Abraham longed to see; that mighty Being, the Lord of
eternity, the express image of the glory of the Invisible, the hope of
the patriarch, the promise of the prophet, has come.”
I was alarmed.
“Yet Israel is divided and enslaved, torn by capricious tyranny, and
hurrying to the common ruin of doomed nations. Is this the triumphant
kingdom of prophecy?”
“Salathiel, I have doubted like you; but I have been at length convinced
out of the mouths of the prophets themselves. Have they not declared that
Israel should suffer before it triumphed, and suffer too for a period
that strikes the mind with terror? that the King of Israel should be
excluded from his kingdom—nay, take upon him the form of a servant—nay,
die, and die by a death of pain and shame the death of a slave and
criminal?”
“It is so written. But it is beyond our power to reconcile.”
“Pray then for the power, and it will be given to you. Ask for the spirit
of holy intelligence, and it will enlighten you. Pride is the crime of
our nation. Humility would take the veil from the eyes of our people.
Salathiel, my lord, the being treasured in my heart! read the Scriptures.
I have prayed for you. Read——”
“But how can the promise of the kingdom be denied? It is the theme
first, last, and without end of all the inspired masters of Israel. What
splendor and reality of history was ever more vivid and real than the
glorious promises of Isaiah?” I murmured.
[Sidenote: The Coming of the Messiah]
“Yet what force and minuteness of picturing ever excelled Isaiah’s
description of the lowliness, the obscurity, the rejection, the agonies,
and the death of the Messiah? Why shall we suppose that the one
description is true and the other false? Has not the same inspiration
given both? Why shall we conceive that the Messiah and His kingdom
must appear together? We see the time of His first coming defined to a
year, by our great prophet Daniel. But where do we see the time of the
triumphant kingdom defined? Why may it not follow at a distance of ages?
We know that we shall stand at the latter day upon the earth and in our
flesh shall see God. Why shall not the triumph be reserved for that day
of glory? Are our people now fit to be a nation of kings? Or are the best
of us, in the mortal feebleness of our nature, fit to share in a triumph
in which angels are to minister? fit dwellers of a city from which error
and evil are to be excluded; in which there is to be no tear, no human
suffering, no remembered bitterness; ‘a city whose builder and maker
is God’; within whose walls live holiness, power, and virtue; on whose
throne sits the Omnipotent!”
[Sidenote: Salathiel Considers Paganism]
Sensations to which I dared not give utterance oppressed me; my crime, my
fate, rose up before the mental eye. I had no answer for this admirable
woman. Her pure zeal and her holiness of heart touched me deeply. But
let no man blame my stubbornness until he has weighed the influence of
feelings, born in a people, strengthened by their history, reenforced by
miracle, and authenticated by the words of inspiration. That Judaism was
purity itself to the worship and morals of the pagan world, that it was
the continued object of a particular Providence, that it alone possessed
the revelations of God, were facts that defied doubt. And that those
high distinctions should be made void, and the slavish mind of paganism
be admitted into our privileges—still more, that it should be admitted
to the exclusion of the chosen line—seemed to me a conclusion that no
reasoning could substantiate; a fantastic and airy fiction to which no
reasoning could be applied.
The moon ascended in serenity, and her orb, slightly tinged by the
many-colored clouds that lay upon the horizon, threw a faint silver
upon the precipice. The sounds below were hushed; the moving figures,
the vessel, the sea, the cliffs, were totally veiled in purple mist. We
could not have been more alone if we had been seated on a cloud, and the
beauty, the exalted gesture, and the glowing wisdom of the being before
me were like those that we conceive of spirits delegated to lead the
disembodied mind upward from world to world. A sea-bird winging its way
above our heads broke the reverie. I reminded my teacher that it grew
late and our absence might produce anxiety.
[Sidenote: The Secret of a Scroll]
“Salathiel,” said she, with mingled fervor and softness, “you know I
love you; never was heart more fondly bound to another than is mine to
you. I am grateful for your permission to receive Constantius into our
tribe. But one obligation, infinitely dearer, you can confer on me—read
this scroll.” She drew from her bosom a letter, written to his church
by one of the Christian leaders in Asia. “I desire not to offend your
convictions, nor to hasten you into a rash adoption of those of others.
But in this scroll you will find philosophy without its pride, and
knowledge without its guile; you will find, furthermore, the disclosure
of those mysteries which have so long perplexed our people. Read, and may
He who can bring wisdom out of the lips of babes, and make the wisdom
of the wise foolishness, shed His light upon the generous heart of my
husband!”
At another time I might have started in horror from this avowal of her
faith. But the scene, the circumstances, an unaccountable internal
impression—a voice of the soul, prohibited me. I took her trembling hand,
and without a word led her down to our dwelling.