The shadows cast over the Orchard of Palms by the mountains at set of
sun left no sweet margin time of violet sky and drowsing earth between
the day and night. The latter came early and swift; and against its
glooming in the tent this evening the servants brought four
candlesticks of brass, and set them by the corners of the table. To
each candlestick there were four branches, and on each branch a lighted
silver lamp and a supply cup of olive-oil. In light ample, even
brilliant, the group at dessert continued their conversation, speaking
in the Syriac dialect, familiar to all peoples in that part of the
world.
The Egyptian told his story of the meeting of the three in the desert,
and agreed with the sheik that it was in December, twenty-seven years
before, when he and his companions fleeing from Herod arrived at the
tent praying shelter. The narrative was heard with intense interest;
even the servants lingering when they could to catch its details.
Ben-Hur received it as became a man listening to a revelation of deep
concern to all humanity, and to none of more concern than the people of
Israel. In his mind, as we shall presently see, there was crystallizing
an idea which was to change his course of life, if not absorb it
absolutely.
As the recital proceeded, the impression made by Balthasar upon the
young Jew increased; at its conclusion, his feeling was too profound to
permit a doubt of its truth; indeed, there was nothing left him
desirable in the connection but assurances, if such were to be had,
pertaining exclusively to the consequences of the amazing event.
And now there is wanting an explanation which the very discerning may
have heretofore demanded; certainly it can be no longer delayed. Our
tale begins, in point of date not less than fact, to trench close upon
the opening of the ministry of the Son of Mary, whom we have seen but
once since this same Balthasar left him worshipfully in his mother’s
lap in the cave by Bethlehem. Henceforth to the end the mysterious
Child will be a subject of continual reference; and slowly though
surely the current of events with which we are dealing will bring us
nearer and nearer to him, until finally we see him a man—we would like,
if armed contrariety of opinion would permit it, to add—A MAN WHOM THE
WORLD COULD NOT DO WITHOUT. Of this declaration, apparently so simple,
a shrewd mind inspired by faith will make much—and in welcome. Before
his time, and since, there have been men indispensable to particular
people and periods; but his indispensability was to the whole race, and
for all time—a respect in which it is unique, solitary, divine.
To Sheik Ilderim the story was not new. He had heard it from the three
wise men together under circumstances which left no room for doubt; he
had acted upon it seriously, for the helping a fugitive escape from the
anger of the first Herod was dangerous. Now one of the three sat at his
table again, a welcome guest and revered friend. Sheik Ilderim
certainly believed the story; yet, in the nature of things, its mighty
central fact could not come home to him with the force and absorbing
effect it came to Ben-Hur. He was an Arab, whose interest in the
consequences was but general; on the other hand, Ben-Hur was an
Israelite and a Jew, with more than a special interest in—if the
solecism can be pardoned—the truth of the fact. He laid hold of the
circumstance with a purely Jewish mind.
From his cradle, let it be remembered, he had heard of the Messiah; at
the colleges he had been made familiar with all that was known of that
Being at once the hope, the fear, and the peculiar glory of the chosen
people; the prophets from the first to the last of the heroic line
foretold him; and the coming had been, and yet was, the theme of
endless exposition with the rabbis—in the synagogues, in the schools,
in the Temple, of fast-days and feast-days, in public and in private,
the national teachers expounded and kept expounding until all the
children of Abraham, wherever their lots were cast, bore the Messiah in
expectation, and by it literally, and with iron severity, ruled and
moulded their lives.
Doubtless, it will be understood from this that there was much argument
among the Jews themselves about the Messiah, and so there was; but the
disputation was all limited to one point, and one only—when would he
come?
Disquisition is for the preacher; whereas the writer is but telling a
tale, and that he may not lose his character, the explanation he is
making requires notice merely of a point connected with the Messiah
about which the unanimity among the chosen people was matter of
marvellous astonishment: he was to be, when come, the KING OF THE
JEWS—their political King, their Cæsar. By their instrumentality he
was to make armed conquest of the earth, and then, for their profit and
in the name of God, hold it down forever. On this faith, dear reader,
the Pharisees or Separatists—the latter being rather a political
term—in the cloisters and around the altars of the Temple, built an
edifice of hope far overtopping the dream of the Macedonian. His but
covered the earth; theirs covered the earth and filled the skies; that
is to say, in their bold, boundless fantasy of blasphemous egotism, God
the Almighty was in effect to suffer them for their uses to nail him by
the ear to a door in sign of eternal servitude.
Returning directly to Ben-Hur, it is to be observed now that there were
two circumstances in his life the result of which had been to keep him
in a state comparatively free from the influence and hard effects of
the audacious faith of his Separatist countrymen.
In the first place, his father followed the faith of the Sadducees, who
may, in a general way, be termed the Liberals of their time. They had
some loose opinions in denial of the soul. They were strict
constructionists and rigorous observers of the Law as found in the
books of Moses; but they held the vast mass of Rabbinical addenda to
those books in derisive contempt. They were unquestionably a sect, yet
their religion was more a philosophy than a creed; they did not deny
themselves the enjoyments of life, and saw many admirable methods and
productions among the Gentile divisions of the race. In politics they
were the active opposition of the Separatists. In the natural order of
things, these circumstances and conditions, opinions and peculiarities,
would have descended to the son as certainly and really as any portion
of his father’s estate; and, as we have seen, he was actually in course
of acquiring them, when the second saving event overtook him.
Upon a youth of Ben-Hur’s mind and temperament the influence of five
years of affluent life in Rome can be appreciated best by recalling
that the great city was then, in fact, the meeting-place of the
nations—their meeting-place politically and commercially, as well as
for the indulgence of pleasure without restraint. Round and round the
golden mile-stone in front of the Forum—now in gloom of eclipse, now in
unapproachable splendor—flowed all the active currents of humanity. If
excellences of manner, refinements of society, attainments of
intellect, and glory of achievement made no impression upon him, how
could he, as the son of Arrius, pass day after day, through a period so
long, from the beautiful villa near Misenum into the receptions of
Cæsar, and be wholly uninfluenced by what he saw there of kings,
princes, ambassadors, hostages, and delegates, suitors all of them from
every known land, waiting humbly the yes or no which was to make or
unmake them? As mere assemblages, to be sure, there was nothing to
compare with the gatherings at Jerusalem in celebration of the
Passover; yet when he sat under the purple velaria of the Circus
Maximus one of three hundred and fifty thousand spectators, he must
have been visited by the thought that possibly there might be some
branches of the family of man worthy divine consideration, if not
mercy, though they were of the uncircumcised—some, by their sorrows,
and, yet worse, by their hopelessness in the midst of sorrows, fitted
for brotherhood in the promises to his countrymen.
That he should have had such a thought under such circumstances was but
natural; we think so much, at least, will be admitted: but when the
reflection came to him, and he gave himself up to it, he could not have
been blind to a certain distinction. The wretchedness of the masses,
and their hopeless condition, had no relation whatever to religion;
their murmurs and groans were not against their gods or for want of
gods. In the oak-woods of Britain the Druids held their followers; Odin
and Freya maintained their godships in Gaul and Germany and among the
Hyperboreans; Egypt was satisfied with her crocodiles and Anubis; the
Persians were yet devoted to Ormuzd and Ahriman, holding them in equal
honor; in hope of the Nirvana, the Hindoos moved on patient as ever in
the rayless paths of Brahm; the beautiful Greek mind, in pauses of
philosophy, still sang the heroic gods of Homer; while in Rome nothing
was so common and cheap as gods. According to whim, the masters of the
world, because they were masters, carried their worship and offerings
indifferently from altar to altar, delighted in the pandemonium they
had erected. Their discontent, if they were discontented, was with the
number of gods; for, after borrowing all the divinities of the earth
they proceeded to deify their Cæsars, and vote them altars and holy
service. No, the unhappy condition was not from religion, but
misgovernment and usurpations and countless tyrannies. The Avernus men
had been tumbled into, and were praying to be relieved from, was
terribly but essentially political. The supplication—everywhere alike,
in Lodinum, Alexandria, Athens, Jerusalem—was for a king to conquer
with, not a god to worship.
Studying the situation after two thousand years, we can see and say
that religiously there was no relief from the universal confusion
except some God could prove himself a true God, and a masterful one,
and come to the rescue; but the people of the time, even the discerning
and philosophical, discovered no hope except in crushing Rome; that
done, the relief would follow in restorations and reorganizations;
therefore they prayed, conspired, rebelled, fought, and died, drenching
the soil to-day with blood, to-morrow with tears—and always with the
same result.
It remains to be said now that Ben-Hur was in agreement with the mass
of men of his time not Romans. The five years’ residence in the capital
served him with opportunity to see and study the miseries of the
subjugated world; and in full belief that the evils which afflicted it
were political, and to be cured only by the sword, he was going forth
to fit himself for a part in the day of resort to the heroic remedy. By
practice of arms he was a perfect soldier; but war has its higher
fields, and he who would move successfully in them must know more than
to defend with shield and thrust with spear. In those fields the
general finds his tasks, the greatest of which is the reduction of the
many into one, and that one himself; the consummate captain is a
fighting-man armed with an army. This conception entered into the
scheme of life to which he was further swayed by the reflection that
the vengeance he dreamed of, in connection with his individual wrongs,
would be more surely found in some of the ways of war than in any
pursuit of peace.
The feelings with which he listened to Balthasar can be now understood.
The story touched two of the most sensitive points of his being so they
rang within him. His heart beat fast—and faster still when, searching
himself, he found not a doubt either that the recital was true in every
particular, or that the Child so miraculously found was the Messiah.
Marvelling much that Israel rested so dead to the revelation, and that
he had never heard of it before that day, two questions presented
themselves to him as centring all it was at that moment further
desirable to know:
Where was the Child then?
And what was his mission?
With apologies for the interruptions, he proceeded to draw out the
opinions of Balthasar, who was in nowise loath to speak.