I have lived and died, and live again; and I await a second time the
bitterness of death.
“Lazarus,” said they, “is asleep or dead. That is all.”
Ah! how little did they know!
When I returned from the spiritual world, I had more wisdom than all the
ancients, than all the magi, than all the prophets. I could have enriched
the Church of God with spiritual treasures. I could have given light to
every mind and joy to every heart. I could have satisfied the hidden
hunger and thirst of the human soul. I was not permitted to do it. They
would have rejected my gold and my frankincense and my myrrh. They would
have turned from my offerings of spiritual truth as a wild beast turns
from a man when he offers it bread.
I have lived many ages too soon. I will write what I have seen and heard.
The world of mind will grow with the coming centuries into the capacity of
comprehending what I alone now comprehend. These premature utterances will
then be understood.
I was born in the little village of Bethany, which sits upon the eastern
slope of Mount Olivet, embowered all summer in leaves and fruit. There
were four children in the family; and our mother died in giving birth to
Mary, the youngest and most beautiful. Our father was a man of great
wealth and high social position, and we were reared in the lap of luxury.
My earliest recollection is that of playing in a large, terraced garden
with my brother and two little sisters. The garden was full of olive,
pomegranate, orange and date trees, and adorned with a great many shrubs
and flowers. It was cool, fragrant and shady, and we sported about the
tomb of our mother, which was cut in the solid rock, as merry and innocent
as the birds and butterflies which shared with us the peace and beauty of
the summer day.
I was ten years of age when Samuel, my younger brother, was taken from us.
It was the first real grief of my life. Although five years old when my
mother died, I was too young to remember the incidents. The angels are so
near us in our infancy, that the troubles of the world, which are
afterward engraved in marble, are then only written in water.
Little Samuel died calling my name. Oh that I could have obeyed his call,
and followed him into that bright and peaceful sphere in which I saw him
long afterward, and in which I shall soon see him again!
Early on the day of his burial our father went into the chamber where lay
his little white body covered all over with whiter flowers. He knelt
beside it and wept bitterly. He seemed unconscious that his three little
ones had followed him, and stood pale and trembling at the door. When we
heard the voice of his weeping we crept forward to the feet of our little
brother and wept also. Our father kissed us all tenderly, and controlling
his emotions and steadying his voice, he repeated from memory the
beautiful verses of Scripture which describe the grief and resignation of
King David at the loss of his child.
The body of our little brother was deposited in a niche in the rock close
to the dust of his mother. The garden was avoided as a playground for a
long while. I was busy with my books, Martha with her dolls—both rendered
thoughtful beyond our years. One day little Mary ventured into the garden
alone, but presently came running back and buried her golden head in her
sister’s lap in a shower of tears which needed no explanation. Who can
read the little child’s heart? Perhaps some playmate bird had called to
her: “Rosebud! rosebud! where is your brother?”
Then came the years of school and opening thought and expanding faculties,
and the first appearance of affections and passions, no longer the
dewdrops of the spring morning, but the beginnings of deep and swift
currents in the course of life.
My sisters were remarkable women, differing in style and character; yet
each a perfect picture of female loveliness!
Martha grew tall and firm and straight, with long black hair and black
eyes, a brunette complexion and a finely-cut oval face. She was the
impersonation of a pure and intelligent womanhood. She was active,
observant and critical. She regulated her life by lofty principle as well
as by noble impulse, and there was something about her that always
impressed you with the idea that she was brave and strong as well as
gentle and pure.
Mary was fragile in form, willowy and graceful in motion, soft and winning
in manners. Her eyes were blue and sparkling with the tender dew of
sentiment. The lily and the rose contended for supremacy on her face, and
sunbeams nestled always in her hair. She was the impersonation of a loving
and love-awakening womanhood. Her voice, her smile, her tear, expressed in
the most extraordinary manner the sensitive emotions of her soul.
Mary was my lily; Martha my rose. Martha was my ruby; Mary my pearl.
Martha was reason; Mary was sentiment. Martha was wisdom; Mary was love.
Martha was faith looking fixedly at the stars; Mary was charity looking
trustfully beyond them to God.
My father took a deep interest in the education and general training of
his children. He provided us with the best teachers in every branch, but
let nothing escape his own watchful supervision. It was greatly due to his
intelligent care and the inspiring stimulus of his affection, that we
attained a degree of mental and social development rarely witnessed in
children of our age.
A dark cloud hung over this good and wise father and his happy little
household.
His health had been gradually failing for a long time. He grew languid,
lost appetite, and became slow in his gait and stiff in his motions. He
abandoned his business in the city, and rarely went out of the house. He
declined receiving visitors, until our home, which had been so gay and
brilliant, became quite deserted and lonely. But his mental condition
underwent a change altogether incommensurate with his physical symptoms.
He became silent and melancholy, and so unlike his former patient and
sweet self! He repulsed every attempt on our part to inquire into the
nature or cause of his troubles. His mental faculties were also greatly
weakened.
We could not comprehend the meaning of all this. We became very unhappy.
We knew he was wealthy, honored and beloved—in possession of all that men
covet for good or evil ends. The country was in a state of profound
repose. It was incredible that the mere approach of sickness and death,
could so change the character of a good and brave man.
My father was now frequently closeted with Caiaphas, a young priest of
stately appearance and ingratiating manners. I became very anxious to
learn the subject of these prolonged interviews. I once questioned
Caiaphas at the gate about my father’s condition; but he evaded me
adroitly. At last my curiosity, prompted by filial love, triumphed over my
sense of propriety, and I crept to my father’s door one night, when he and
Caiaphas were together, and applied my ear to the keyhole. For a long time
the tones were too low for me to catch any meaning; but my father suddenly
raised his voice in an excited manner—
“I assure you he is a thief and a robber, and addicted to magic. O
Caiaphas! save my children and their property from this monster!”
I was terrified at these words, and slipped away in the darkness. There
was the secret of my father’s grief. He expected to die very soon, and was
anxious for the fate of his children when he was taken from them. I wept
on my bed nearly all night at the idea of losing my good parent. But who
was this monster he so much dreaded? That set me to thinking.
When a man died, his minor children and property passed under the
guardianship of his next of kin. My father had no brothers in Judea, for
his only brother had wandered off more than thirty years before. He was an
eccentric character who forsook his religion and changed his name. Beyond
that we knew nothing of him. Nor did my father even know where to find
him.
His only sister was married to Magistus, a citizen of Bethany. She was a
confirmed invalid and never seen. In the event of my father’s death we
would fall to their care. Magistus then was this terrible monster, a thief
and a magician. I was confirmed in this conclusion by the fact, that my
father and Magistus had long been on bad terms; and my father was not the
man to withdraw his friendship from a worthy person.
Magistus was a thin, sallow, ugly old man, with an immense hooked nose
like the beak of a bird of prey. His black eyes were small, fierce and
sly. He had a long dingy beard which he had twisted like a screw.
Notwithstanding this sinister appearance, he had the reputation of being a
good and wise man. People speak well of a rich man who seems always to
retire modestly from the public eye. Magistus moreover was a great friend
of the priesthood and a favorite with the priests.
I could not reveal to my sisters the approaching death of our father and
the fears he had expressed about our legal guardian. I was astonished and
somewhat relieved when he passed the warmest eulogy upon Caiaphas the next
morning, and told us to look to him for comfort and to rely on him for
help in the greatest emergencies. What astonished me still more was, that
this reliable friend never visited my father again.
We were greatly distressed that no medical aid was called in. The
suggestion was always repudiated with a strange earnestness. Whatever the
disease was with which our father was afflicted, he was plainly growing
worse and worse. At last he refused to quit his chamber, or to admit any
one into it. He commanded a little food and water to be placed upon a
table on the gallery underneath his window; and what was singular, he only
took it in during the night when no one saw him. These things threw us
into the saddest consternation. We began to fear that he was losing his
reason. We were frantic with excitement. We determined to see him and
nurse him. We knocked at his door and window and entreated him to show
himself to his children.
At last he called out in a voice which showed he had been weeping:
“Calm yourselves, my children! and pray to God. A great evil has come upon
us, which can be concealed but a little longer. My soul is overwhelmed
with misery, but my heart beats for my children with the tenderest love.
Ask me nothing at present; it is more than I can bear. If you love me and
would obey me, keep away entirely from my chamber. Let no one come into
the house—and least of all, your uncle Magistus.”
We were reassured of his love and his rationality by these words; but they
filled us with a vague terror and overwhelmed us with sorrow. We had no
one to appeal to, no one to consult. We were commanded to keep everybody
away. Thus several weeks of fearful suspense rolled by. The neighbors
began to inquire about my father. His seclusion became the wonder and talk
of the village. The interrogations, always disagreeable, became absolutely
impertinent. The mystery had excited suspicion.
Worse than all, Magistus became a regular visitor to the gate. He
questioned the porter in the subtlest manner. He obtained from him the
facts that my father had never received any medical attention, that he had
concealed himself in his chamber, and had not been seen for weeks, even by
his children. He evinced the liveliest satisfaction. “The apple will soon
drop,” said he aloud to himself. All this was faithfully reported to us.
Three little sparrows in a nest among the green leaves, could not have
been in greater trepidation with an ugly bird of prey gazing at them from
a neighboring branch.
The dénouement approached. We were whispering our sorrows together one
day, seated by the little fountain in the inner courtyard of the house,
upon which the door of our father’s chamber opened. Suddenly voices and
footsteps were heard approaching. A moment after Magistus appeared,
followed by a venerable-looking old priest and stately Roman centurion. My
sisters clung to me in terror.
Without noticing us, the party rapped loudly on my father’s door, and
commanded him to come forth. “In the name of the Mosaic law,” said the
priest; “and by order of the Roman governor,” added the centurion. The
words were repeated in a louder voice: the door slowly opened and my
father stepped out, exclaiming, “Unclean! unclean!”
All fell back several paces.
“The scourge of God!” said the priest with deep solemnity.
“Damnable Eastern plague!” muttered the Roman soldier.
“Incurable! incurable!” exclaimed Magistus.
It was the leprosy!
That ghoul of diseases, which slowly devours a living victim, had made
fearful ravages upon my poor father’s frame. His eyebrows and eyelashes
were gone; his chin and ears were much swollen, and a pearl-white scaly
ulcer deformed his forehead; his hands had a sickly and withered
appearance.
We now understood the meaning of his strange conduct. The disease began
first about the joints and the covered parts of his body. As soon as it
broke out on the skin, the poor man had shut himself up to conceal his
affliction and to avoid contaminating his family. Knowing himself stricken
with a disgusting and incurable malady, which would exclude him from
society and drive him away from his children, he bore the burden of his
awful secret alone. Magistus had discovered his condition, and anxious to
revenge himself upon virtues he could not imitate, and to get possession
of the property, he laid the case before the authorities, and insisted
that the law of separation should be executed upon his brother-in-law.
As the unhappy man stood in the doorway, he turned his eyes upon the pale
faces of his terrified children, and, silently wringing his hands, looked
upward to heaven. He was turning away, when all three of us sprang forward
at once, and with cries which would have moved the coldest heart, fell at
his feet and clung about his knees.
“Touch me not! my sweet children!” he exclaimed, in a hoarse and feeble
voice. “Touch me not. It is all over! Caiaphas will befriend my orphans.”
He had not finished the words before several strange domestics, who had
rushed in at a signal from Magistus, proceeded to drag us from the spot.
“Away with them!” said the hideous old man, fiercely. “Confine them in the
farthest room. We want no young lepers—no more scourges of God.”
“If it were a scourge of God,” cried I, struggling to escape, “it would
have been sent upon you and not upon my noble father.”
We were carried weeping out of the courtyard. Looking back to the door, we
saw the unhappy man waving his last adieu to us with his poor, sickly,
withered hands.
The Mosaic law against the unfortunate leper was cruelly severe; but the
Roman power which occupied the country and feared the ravages of leprosy
among the soldiery, added greatly to its force and to the stringency of
its execution.
The leper was sentenced to a social and civil death far more terrible to a
man of sensibility than the mere separation of soul and body. He was
driven from the face of his fellow-men, and dwelt in caves and hollow
trees and deserted ruins. No one was permitted to touch him, to approach
him, or even to speak to him. He was compelled to cry out, Unclean!
unclean! so as to warn every one of his dangerous proximity. He became
literally the wild man of the woods and the mountains and the desert—the
companion and sometimes the prey of wild beasts.
Those who had friends and money had little huts erected for them in remote
but safe places, and were amply provided with food and even luxuries by
servants who deposited the articles upon the ground at a considerable
distance from their habitations.
Such was the fate of our good and generous father—the idol of our hearts
and the model of all social and heroic virtues.
We spent the night in tears, and the next day in an agony of grief. I do
not know who witnessed the dreadful ceremonies of the law. He was examined
by the proper inspectors, and pronounced unclean and incurable. He was led
into the great highway. The people stood afar off. The priest in a loud
voice pronounced the curse of God upon him—the service of the dead over
the living body. He cut him off from the congregation of Israel. The
guards then drove him before them into some uninhabited place, and he
disappeared from the sight of men.
He was always visible, however, to the hearts of his three little orphans.
We followed his steps with filial vigilance. We saw him toiling along in
the sand of the desert, and we shared his burden of heat and hunger and
thirst. We saw him seated under a palm tree, or in the shadow of some
great rock, and we felt the sorrows of his thoughts as if they were our
own. We saw him kneeling by the brook, and we mingled our prayers with
his. We saw him sleeping in his lonely hut, lighted only by the moon, and
we were comforted by his dream of angels and heaven.
[Illustration: Ornament]
[Illustration: Ornament]