Damascus, first-born of cities, _Om el Denia_,[48] mother of
generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast before the Pyramids!
what sounds are those that, from a postern gate, looking eastwards
over secret paths that wind away to the far distant desert, break the
solemn silence of an oriental night? Whose voice is that which calls
upon the spearmen, keeping watch for ever in the turret surmounting
the gate, to receive him back into his Syrian home? Thou knowest him,
Damascus, and hast known him in seasons of trouble as one learned in
the afflictions of man; wise alike to take counsel for the suffering
spirit or for the suffering body. The voice that breaks upon the night
is the voice of a great evangelist--one of the four; and he is also a
great physician. This do the watchmen at the gate thankfully
acknowledge, and joyfully they give him entrance. His sandals are
white with dust; for he has been roaming for weeks beyond the desert,
under the guidance of Arabs, on missions of hopeful benignity to
Palmyra;[49] and in spirit he is weary of all things, except
faithlessness to God, and burning love to man.
[Footnote 48: '_Om el Denia_':--Mother of the World is the Arabic
title of Damascus. That it was before Abraham--_i.e._, already an old
establishment much more than a thousand years before the siege of
Troy, and than two thousand years before our Christian era--may be
inferred from Gen. xv. 2; and by the general consent of all eastern
races, Damascus is accredited as taking precedency in age of all
cities to the west of the Indus.]
[Footnote 49: Palmyra had not yet reached its meridian splendour of
Grecian development, as afterwards near the age of Aurelian, but it
was already a noble city.]
Eastern cities are asleep betimes; and sounds few or none fretted the
quiet of all around him, as the evangelist paced onward to the
market-place; but there another scene awaited him. On the right hand,
in an upper chamber, with lattices widely expanded, sat a festal
company of youths, revelling under a noonday blaze of light, from
cressets and from bright tripods that burned fragrant woods--all
joining in choral songs, all crowned with odorous wreaths from Daphne
and the banks of the Orontes. Them the evangelist heeded not; but far
away upon the left, close upon a sheltered nook, lighted up by a
solitary vase of iron fretwork filled with cedar boughs, and hoisted
high upon a spear, behold there sat a woman of loveliness so
transcendent, that, when suddenly revealed, as now, out of deepest
darkness, she appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. Was
she born of woman? Was it perhaps the angel--so the evangelist argued
with himself--that met him in the desert after sunset, and
strengthened him by secret talk? The evangelist went up, and touched
her forehead; and when he found that she was indeed human, and
guessed, from the station which she had chosen, that she waited for
some one amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, he groaned
heavily in spirit, and said, half to himself, but half to her, "Wert
thou, poor ruined flower, adorned so divinely at thy birth--glorified
in such excess that not Solomon in all his pomp--no, nor even the
lilies of the field--can approach thy gifts--only that thou shouldest
grieve the holy spirit of God?" The woman trembled exceedingly, and
said, "Rabbi, what should I do? For behold! all men forsake me." The
evangelist mused a little, and then secretly to himself he said, "Now
will I search this woman's heart--whether in very truth it inclineth
itself to God, and hath strayed only before fiery compulsion." Turning
therefore to the woman, the Prophet[50] said, "Listen: I am the
messenger of Him whom thou hast not known; of Him that made Lebanon
and the cedars of Lebanon; that made the sea, and the heavens, and the
host of the stars; that made the light; that made the darkness; that
blew the spirit of life into the nostrils of man. His messenger I am:
and from Him all power is given me to bind and to loose, to build and
to pull down. Ask, therefore, whatsoever thou wilt--great or
small--and through me thou shalt receive it from God. But, my child,
ask not amiss. For God is able out of thy own evil asking to weave
snares for thy footing. And oftentimes to the lambs whom He loves, He
gives by seeming to refuse; gives in some better sense, or" (and his
voice swelled into the power of anthems) "in some far happier world.
Now, therefore, my daughter, be wise on thy own behalf; and say what
it is that I shall ask for thee from God." But the Daughter of Lebanon
needed not his caution; for immediately dropping on one knee to God's
ambassador, whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch fell upon
the glory of a penitential eye, she raised her clasped hands in
supplication, and said, in answer to the evangelist asking for a
second time what gift he should call down upon her from Heaven, "Lord,
that thou wouldest put me back into my father's house." And the
evangelist, because he was human, dropped a tear as he stooped to kiss
her forehead, saying, "Daughter, thy prayer is heard in heaven; and I
tell thee that the daylight shall not come and go for thirty times,
not for the thirtieth time shall the sun drop behind Lebanon, before I
will put thee back into thy father's house."
[Footnote 50: "_The Prophet_":--Though a Prophet was not _therefore_
and in virtue of that character an Evangelist, yet every Evangelist
was necessarily in the scriptural sense a Prophet. For let it be
remembered that a Prophet did not mean a _Pre_dicter, or _Fore_shower
of events, except derivatively and inferentially. What _was_ a Prophet
in the uniform scriptural sense? He was a man, who drew aside the
curtain from the secret counsels of Heaven. He declared, or made
public, the previously hidden truths of God: and because future events
might chance to involve divine truth, therefore a revealer of future
events might happen so far to be a Prophet. Yet still small was that
part of a Prophet's functions which concerned the foreshowing of
events; and not necessarily _any_ part.]
Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of the evangelist. She
sought not to varnish her history, or to palliate her own
transgressions. In so far as she had offended at all, her case was
that of millions in every generation. Her father was a prince in
Lebanon, proud, unforgiving, austere. The wrongs done to his daughter
by her dishonourable lover, because done under favour of opportunities
created by her confidence in his integrity, her father persisted in
resenting as wrong's done by this injured daughter herself; and,
refusing to her all protection, drove her, whilst yet confessedly
innocent, into criminal compliances under sudden necessities of
seeking daily bread from her own uninstructed efforts. Great was the
wrong she suffered both from father and lover; great was the
retribution. She lost a churlish father and a wicked lover; she gained
an apostolic guardian. She lost a princely station in Lebanon; she
gained an early heritage in heaven. For this heritage is hers within
thirty days, if she will not defeat it herself. And, whilst the
stealthy motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth day, behold!
a burning fever desolated Damascus, which also laid its arrest upon
the Daughter of Lebanon, yet gently, and so that hardly for an hour
did it withdraw her from the heavenly teachings of the evangelist. And
thus daily the doubt was strengthened--would the holy apostle suddenly
touch her with his hand, and say, "Woman, be thou whole!" or would he
present her on the thirtieth day as a pure bride to Christ? But
perfect freedom belongs to Christian service, and she only must make
the election.
Up rose the sun on the thirtieth morning in all his pomp, but suddenly
was darkened by driving storms. Not until noon was the heavenly orb
again revealed; then the glorious light was again unmasked, and again
the Syrian valleys rejoiced. This was the hour already appointed for
the baptism of the new Christian daughter. Heaven and earth shed
gratulation on the happy festival; and, when all was finished, under
an awning raised above the level roof of her dwelling-house, the
regenerate daughter of Lebanon, looking over the rose-gardens of
Damascus, with amplest prospect of her native hills, lay in blissful
trance, making proclamation, by her white baptismal robes, of
recovered innocence and of reconciliation with God. And, when the sun
was declining to the west, the evangelist, who had sat from noon by
the bedside of his spiritual daughter, rose solemnly, and said, "Lady
of Lebanon, the day is already come, and the hour is coming, in which
my covenant must be fulfilled with thee. Wilt thou, therefore, being
now wiser in thy thoughts, suffer God, thy new Father, to give by
seeming to refuse; to give in some better sense, or in some far
happier world?" But the Daughter of Lebanon sorrowed at these words;
she yearned after her native hills; not for themselves, but because
there it was that she had left that sweet twin-born sister with whom
from infant days hand-in-hand she had wandered amongst the everlasting
cedars. And again the evangelist sat down by her bedside; while she by
intervals communed with him, and by intervals slept gently under the
oppression of her fever. But, as evening drew nearer, and it wanted
now but a brief space to the going down of the sun, once again, and
with deeper solemnity, the evangelist rose to his feet, and said, "O
daughter! this is the thirtieth day, and the sun is drawing near to
his rest; brief, therefore, is the time within which I must fulfil the
word that God spoke to thee by me." Then, because light clouds of
delirium were playing about her brain, he raised his pastoral staff,
and pointing it to her temples, rebuked the clouds, and bade that no
more they should trouble her vision, or stand between her and the
forests of Lebanon. And the delirious clouds parted asunder, breaking
away to the right and to the left. But upon the forests of Lebanon
there hung a mighty mass of overshadowing vapours, bequeathed by the
morning's storm. And a second time the evangelist raised his pastoral
staff, and, pointing it to the gloomy vapours, rebuked them, and bade
that no more they should stand between his daughter and her father's
house, and immediately the dark vapours broke away from Lebanon to the
right and to the left; and the farewell radiance of the sun lighted up
all the paths that ran between the everlasting cedars and her father's
palace. But vainly the lady of Lebanon searched every path with her
eyes for memorials of her sister. And the evangelist, pitying her
sorrow, turned away her eyes to the clear blue sky, which the
departing vapours had exposed. And he showed her the peace that was
there. And then he said, "O daughter! this also is but a mask." And
immediately for the third time he raised his pastoral staff, and,
pointing it to the fair blue sky, he rebuked it, and bade that no more
it should stand between her and the vision of God. Immediately the
blue sky parted to the right and to the left, laying bare the infinite
revelations that can be made visible only to dying eyes. And the
Daughter of Lebanon said to the evangelist, "O father! what armies are
these that I see mustering within the infinite chasm?" And the
evangelist replied, "These are the armies of Christ, and they are
mustering to receive some dear human blossom, some first-fruits of
Christian faith, that shall rise this night to Christ from Damascus."
Suddenly, as thus the child of Lebanon gazed upon the mighty vision,
she saw bending forward from the heavenly host, as if in gratulation
to herself, the one countenance for which she hungered and thirsted.
The twin sister, that should have waited for her in Lebanon, had died
of grief, and was waiting for her in Paradise. Immediately in rapture
she soared upwards from her couch; immediately in weakness she fell
back; and being caught by the evangelist, she flung her arms around
his neck; whilst he breathed into her ear his final whisper, "Wilt
thou now suffer that God should give by seeming to refuse?"--"Oh
yes--yes--yes," was the fervent answer from the Daughter of Lebanon.
Immediately the evangelist gave the signal to the heavens, and the
heavens gave the signal to the sun; and in one minute after the
Daughter of Lebanon had fallen back a marble corpse amongst her white
baptismal robes, the solar orb dropped behind Lebanon; and the
evangelist, with eyes glorified by mortal and immortal tears, rendered
thanks to God that had thus accomplished the word which he spoke
through himself to the Magdalen of Lebanon--that not for the thirtieth
time should the sun go down behind her native hills, before he had put
her back into her Father's house.
_De Quincey._