THE STORY HALTS FOR A MOMENT AT AN EPISODE.
RESTLESS and anxious, Apaecides consumed the day in wandering through
the most sequestered walks in the vicinity of the city. The sun was
slowly setting as he paused beside a lonely part of the Sarnus, ere yet
it wound amidst the evidences of luxury and power. Only through openings
in the woods and vines were caught glimpses of the white and gleaming
city, in which was heard in the distance no din, no sound, nor 'busiest
hum of men'. Amidst the green banks crept the lizard and the
grasshopper, and here and there in the brake some solitary bird burst
into sudden song, as suddenly stifled. There was deep calm around, but
not the calm of night; the air still breathed of the freshness and life
of day; the grass still moved to the stir of the insect horde; and on
the opposite bank the graceful and white capella passed browsing through
the herbage, and paused at the wave to drink.
As Apaecides stood musingly gazing upon the waters, he heard beside him
the low bark of a dog.
'Be still, poor friend,' said a voice at hand; 'the stranger's step
harms not thy master.' The convert recognized the voice, and, turning,
he beheld the old mysterious man whom he had seen in the congregation of
the Nazarenes.
The old man was sitting upon a fragment of stone covered with ancient
mosses; beside him were his staff and scrip; at his feet lay a small
shaggy dog, the companion in how many a pilgrimage perilous and strange.
The face of the old man was as balm to the excited spirit of the
neophyte: he approached, and craving his blessing, sat down beside him.
'Thou art provided as for a journey, father,' said he: 'wilt thou leave
us yet?'
'My son,' replied the old man, 'the days in store for me on earth are
few and scanty; I employ them as becomes me travelling from place to
place, comforting those whom God has gathered together in His name, and
proclaiming the glory of His Son, as testified to His servant.'
'Thou hast looked, they tell me, on the face of Christ?'
'And the face revived me from the dead. Know, young proselyte to the
true faith, that I am he of whom thou readest in the scroll of the
Apostle. In the far Judea, and in the city of Nain, there dwelt a
widow, humble of spirit and sad of heart; for of all the ties of life
one son alone was spared to her. And she loved him with a melancholy
love, for he was the likeness of the lost. And the son died. The reed
on which she leaned was broken, the oil was dried up in the widow's
cruse. They bore the dead upon his bier; and near the gate of the city,
where the crowd were gathered, there came a silence over the sounds of
woe, for the Son of God was passing by. The mother, who followed the
bier, wept--not noisily, but all who looked upon her saw that her heart
was crushed. And the Lord pitied her, and he touched the bier, and
said, "I SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE," And the dead man woke and looked upon
the face of the Lord. Oh, that calm and solemn brow, that unutterable
smile, that careworn and sorrowful face, lighted up with a God's
benignity--it chased away the shadows of the grave! I rose, I spoke, I
was living, and in my mother's arms--yes, I am the dead revived! The
people shouted, the funeral horns rung forth merrily: there was a cry,
"God has visited His people!" I heard them not--I felt--I saw--nothing
but the face of the Redeemer!'
The old man paused, deeply moved; and the youth felt his blood creep,
and his hair stir. He was in the presence of one who had known the
Mystery of Death!
'Till that time,' renewed the widow's son, 'I had been as other men:
thoughtless, not abandoned; taking no heed, but of the things of love
and life; nay, I had inclined to the gloomy faith of the earthly
Sadducee! But, raised from the dead, from awful and desert dreams that
these lips never dare reveal--recalled upon earth, to testify the powers
of Heaven--once more mortal, the witness of immortality; I drew a new
being from the grave. O faded--O lost Jerusalem!--Him from whom came my
life, I beheld adjudged to the agonized and parching death! Far in the
mighty crowd I saw the light rest and glimmer over the cross; I heard
the hooting mob, I cried aloud, I raved, I threatened--none heeded me--I
was lost in the whirl and the roar of thousands! But even then, in my
agony and His own, methought the glazing eye of the Son of Man sought me
out--His lip smiled, as when it conquered death--it hushed me, and I
became calm. He who had defied the grave for another--what was the
grave to him? The sun shone aslant the pale and powerful features, and
then died away! Darkness fell over the earth; how long it endured, I
know not. A loud cry came through the gloom--a sharp and bitter
cry!--and all was silent.
'But who shall tell the terrors of the night?' I walked along the
city--the earth reeled to and fro, and the houses trembled to their
base--the living had deserted the streets, but not the Dead: through the
gloom I saw them glide--the dim and ghastly shapes, in the cerements of
the grave--with horror, and woe, and warning on their unmoving lips and
lightless eyes!--they swept by me, as I passed--they glared upon me--I
had been their brother; and they bowed their heads in recognition; they
had risen to tell the living that the dead can rise!'
Again the old man paused, and, when he resumed, it was in a calmer tone.
'From that night I resigned all earthly thought but that of serving HIM.
A preacher and a pilgrim, I have traversed the remotest corners of the
earth, proclaiming His Divinity, and bringing new converts to His fold.
I come as the wind, and as the wind depart; sowing, as the wind sows,
the seeds that enrich the world.
'Son, on earth we shall meet no more. Forget not this hour,--what are
the pleasures and the pomps of life? As the lamp shines, so life
glitters for an hour; but the soul's light is the star that burns for
ever, in the heart of inimitable space.'
It was then that their conversation fell upon the general and sublime
doctrines of immortality; it soothed and elevated the young mind of the
convert, which yet clung to many of the damps and shadows of that cell
of faith which he had so lately left--it was the air of heaven breathing
on the prisoner released at last. There was a strong and marked
distinction between the Christianity of the old man and that of
Olinthus; that of the first was more soft, more gentle, more divine.
The heroism of Olinthus had something in it fierce and intolerant--it
was necessary to the part he was destined to play--it had in it more of
the courage of the martyr than the charity of the saint. It aroused, it
excited, it nerved, rather than subdued and softened. But the whole
heart of that divine old man was bathed in love; the smile of the Deity
had burned away from it the leaven of earthlier and coarser passions,
and left to the energy of the hero all the meekness of the child.
'And now,' said he, rising at length, as the sun's last ray died in the
west; 'now, in the cool of twilight, I pursue my way towards the
Imperial Rome. There yet dwell some holy men, who like me have beheld
the face of Christ; and them would I see before I die.'
'But the night is chill for thine age, my father, and the way is long,
and the robber haunts it; rest thee till to-morrow.'
'Kind son, what is there in this scrip to tempt the robber? And the
Night and the Solitude!--these make the ladder round which angels
cluster, and beneath which my spirit can dream of God. Oh! none can
know what the pilgrim feels as he walks on his holy course; nursing no
fear, and dreading no danger--for God is with him! He hears the winds
murmur glad tidings; the woods sleep in the shadow of Almighty
wings--the stars are the Scriptures of Heaven, the tokens of love, and
the witnesses of immortality. Night is the Pilgrim's day.' With these
words the old man pressed Apaecides to his breast, and taking up his
staff and scrip, the dog bounded cheerily before him, and with slow
steps and downcast eyes he went his way.
The convert stood watching his bended form, till the trees shut the last
glimpse from his view; and then, as the stars broke forth, he woke from
the musings with a start, reminded of his appointment with Olinthus.