_IN THE WILDERNESS._
[Illustration: Initial]
Afraid of the dark and fearful gorge, full of rocks and pitfalls and
unseen dangers; afraid of the unpeopled desert which awaited me above;
afraid of wild beasts, serpents, lepers and evil spirits; afraid of the
silence and solitude of night by the Salt Sea; afraid of all things behind
me and all before; I ascended cautiously and painfully the narrow path, if
path it might be called, praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
for protection.
I, who had never been out of my father’s house at that hour of the night
in my life, thus found myself amid a complication of circumstances which
might have appalled the stoutest heart.
I had ascended two-thirds of the way, when my keen ear caught upon the
night-wind the subdued but rough voices of several persons who were
descending the ravine. My heart stood still and I almost fainted with
affright. Fortunately, I remembered that I had just passed, a little lower
down, a large side-fissure or chink in the great rock wall of the ravine.
I went back with the utmost speed and caution, and got safely concealed in
the black crevice before the objects of my terror came along.
They were no doubt some of the party of Barabbas, who were returning with
or without the ransom of the old Persian. They were talking of ransom with
oaths and laughter as they passed. I held my breath in suspense; nor did
my heart recover its natural beat until they had descended a good
distance, and their voices floated faintly upward like the mutterings of
lost souls in some horrible abyss.
I was now afraid to start again lest I should meet another detachment of
the robbers. I waited a long time, listening intently. It suddenly
occurred to me that when the robbers reached the tent of Barabbas, my
escape would be discovered, and the swiftest runners despatched to
overtake me. This thought brought the cold drops to my forehead; and I
hurried breathless all the way up the ravine, actually thinking that I
heard the footsteps of men behind me, and voices calling my name.
Escaped from the robbers, I fell into the arms of the desert. I could have
extricated myself from the new danger if the sun had been shining. But the
day rose dark and cloudy, and I could not tell whether I was going east or
west, north or south. I failed to recognize any of the spots we had passed
the day before. I walked rapidly up and down the bare hills, over the
rough gullies and through the sandy hollows. After some hours of this
exhausting travel, both mind and body being on the stretch, I was shocked
on discovering that I had been moving in a circle, and was near the mouth
of the ravine again.
I would have stretched myself upon some rock in despair; but my dangerous
proximity to Barabbas and his men, revived my fears and gave supernatural
strength to my body. I fled away as fast as I could over new hills and
gullies and sandy bottoms. It must have been two or three hours after
noon, when I reached a hill overlooking a deep, narrow valley, the dry bed
of some nameless brook, which, in the rainy season, poured along over the
sands its little tribute to the sea. Thoroughly exhausted with hunger,
thirst, fatigue, loss of sleep, fear and despair, I lay down upon the
hillside. Lost in the wilderness, thinking of the still worse conditions
of my father and sisters, my misery was too deep for tears. A strange
torpor crept over my senses, and I fell into that profound slumber in
which the weary are strengthened and the sorrowful comforted.
When I awoke, the setting sun, just freed from clouds, was shining in my
face.
How life-giving, faith-giving, hope-giving is a sight of the sun, wrapping
his mantle of softened glory about him, and descending trustfully to sleep
in the kingdom of night, assured that Aurora will open duly her palace of
pearl, and his golden chariot with its fiery steeds issue forth in the
morning!
So does the Soul sink only to rise; sleep only to wake; die only to live:
ever changing in state, ever the same in substance.
I was thus drawing new vigor from the rays of the sun, when a voice of
heavenly sweetness broke upon my ear, a voice chanting this beautiful
Scripture:
“As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,
So panteth my soul after thee, O God!
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
When shall I come and appear before God?”
“Are there angels as well as demons in the desert?” said I, to myself.
A jutting brow of the hill concealed from me the source whence these
sounds appeared to issue. I arose and advanced to explore the mystery.
Rounding the intervening slope, I saw a young man seated upon a stone at
the mouth of a large cavern. His quick eye detected me in a moment, and he
advanced to meet me. He wore a single garment wrought of the finest
camel’s hair, which was secured about his waist by a leathern girdle.
Simple toilet! But when you looked at his fine head with its long black
hair curling about his bare neck, and his beautiful oval face soft as a
girl’s, full of all saintly thoughts and heavenly emotions, you knew that
you were in the presence of one who was clad interiorly in fine linen and
purple.
“Good sir,” said I, “behold an unhappy youth, who has just escaped death
by robbers, and is lost in this terrible wilderness!”
“One must have lived long in the desert to find his way out of it such a
dark day as this. It will be clear to-morrow, and I will pilot you into
the great highway. Meantime you are welcome to my poor hospitalities—a
cave for roof, a bed of skins, water to drink, wild honey and locusts to
eat; that is all.”
“I gladly accept your offer; and were your proffered gifts still more
humble, they would be sanctified by the light of brotherly love you throw
upon them.”
I seated myself on the stone while he went into the cave and brought forth
his simple food and drink, of which I partook heartily.
“To whom am I indebted for this kind reception?” I inquired, as I finished
my meal.
“I am John,” he answered, “the son of Zacharias; and I dwell in the desert
until the time of my showing unto Israel.”
A deep human groan from the interior of the cavern now startled me, and I
sprang from my seat.
“What is that?” I exclaimed.
“My poor old patient has awakened. I must go and examine him.”
“He takes in the sick as well as the wandering,” said I to myself. “Surely
the angels must protect him in some peculiar manner.”
John came forward again with an anxious countenance. “Alas!” said he, “the
old man has rapidly changed. He fell into a soft slumber an hour ago, but
he is now plainly dying. I knew he was very ill, for he has raved all day
about his children and some magicians who wish to destroy them.”
At these words a fearful tremor seized me. I could not speak. I sprang
past the young man, and in a moment was kneeling at the side of my father!
I seized his withered hand and covered it with kisses.
“My father! my father! Do you not know your son, your only son?”
The young hermit looked on in tears.
The old man slowly opened his eyes and cast a bewildered look, first at
me, and then at John.
“Yes—you are angels,” he said, “who have come to welcome my spirit into
paradise.”
He breathed heavily. I sank down weeping. John came forward with a little
basin of water. “There is no time to be lost,” said he in a low tone.
“Do you believe in God, and in Moses his lawgiver, and in the prophets his
servants?”
“I do! I do!” said the old man, eagerly.
“Do you repent of your sins, and pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you?”
“I do! and God be merciful to a miserable sinner!”
“Then I baptize you with water, the emblem of purification,—and in the
name of the Lord, the only God, into his spiritual Church and into the
hope of immortal life.”
Thus saying, he sprinkled some water on the old man’s forehead. His own
face shone with a meek and holy radiance. My father closed his eyes and
seemed to sleep.
Suddenly he started, frowning, as if some great pain had changed the
current of his thought.
“Tell my son to beware of his uncle. He is a magician.”
“Here is your son!” I exclaimed, eagerly; “here is your son! Oh, speak to
me, my father!”
He did not notice my grief; but, pointing slowly to John the Baptist, he
said, solemnly:
“Behold the prophet of God!”
He then looked fixedly upward; and as I followed his glance to the roof of
the cave, his spirit passed away beyond the blue dome, beyond the stars
and the sun, beyond the entire realm of nature, into the paradise of Moses
and the prophets.
I spent the night in prayer and tears by my father’s dead body.
Occasionally the young prophet broke in upon the stillness of the air with
his silvery voice, chanting the sweet verses of Scripture. I was sorely
tempted to rebel against the providence of God, which permitted such a
good man as my father to be so cruelly dealt with. The presence, however,
of the young prophet, was in itself a sermon, a blessing, a help to
resignation. One could not be skeptical or even critical in his luminous
atmosphere of peace and love. I reflected that there were many great
mysteries which my youthful and inexperienced mind could not at present
comprehend, and returning faith assuaged the grief it could not remove.
The next day about noon the young prophet offered a prayer over the
corpse, and we consigned it to a humble grave dug by our own hands in a
large cavern near by. I observed that there were four other graves in the
same spot.
“Yes,” said John, meekly, “this is my little cemetery. Here I bury my dead
in ground consecrated to the Lord. This was a robber who was wounded in a
fray and left by his comrades. He dragged his bleeding limbs into the
desert. I found him and bore him to my home. I preached to him the new
gospel of repentance and faith, and he died in my arms weeping like a
child over the sins of his youth. He who occupies that grave was a madman,
who broke his chains, and drove every one from him with knives and stones
until he met me in the wilderness. He followed me to my cave, and would
sit contented at my feet hearing me sing or read or pray. Under that mound
is a poor slave who fled, mutilated and frenzied, from a cruel master. I
kissed the wounds I could not heal; and he died clasping my hands
smilingly to his lips. And that last one is the grave of another poor
leper like your father, forsaken even by his wretched companions—but not
forsaken by the Lord, whose Word I obeyed when I tended him in his long
illness.
“I call it consecrated ground,” he continued; “for these poor people are
the children of God. The leper is cured of his leprosy; the slave is free;
the madman is sane; the robber is forgiven.”
“What induces you,” said I, “to lead this strange, lonely life, so full of
self-sacrifice, so full of terrors and dangers?”
“The Spirit of God!” he said, solemnly.
“Are you not afraid of the silence, the solitude, the darkness of the
desert?”
He replied in the words of Scripture:
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the
strength of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?”
I felt awed in the presence of this young man, who was not more than ten
years older than myself. I was better satisfied to leave my father’s ashes
in his keeping, than if I had built above them the most splendid monument
of Pentelican marble or Corinthian brass.
After a frugal meal we started for the public road. It was ten long miles
to the nearest highway, and it was ten more from that to Bethany. We
discoursed, as we walked along, about spiritual things; and although I did
not understand half he said, he spoke with such eloquence and sincerity
that he convinced me he had some great mission in the world. We parted a
little before sunset with mutual embraces and blessings. I dropped some
grateful and admiring tears as I gazed after the heavenly-minded hermit,
picking his way with his long staff through the rough places, until he
disappeared from sight over the brown, bare hill.
It was not until the comforting and sustaining power of his presence was
withdrawn, that I recognized how exhausted and helpless and lonely I was.
Fatigue, fear, excitement, sorrow, loss of sleep and inadequate
nourishment, had considerably shattered my nerves; and now to appear
suddenly in the presence of an uncle who thought he had murdered me, was a
difficult and perhaps a dangerous task. I would gladly have turned in any
other direction; but my sisters were in the power of the monster who had
plotted my assassination. Nothing but a vague fear that those lovely women
were in some trouble or distress, gave strength to my tired limbs and
courage to my aching heart.
Night came on, and I had to advance more slowly. The full moon was shining
halfway down the western sky, but a dark cloud had risen from the ashes of
the sunset, and was advancing upward. It was important that I should make
all the haste I could, before the light of the moon was obscured by that
ascending blackness. To get out of the road might be to lose the whole
night.
I moved so rapidly that I became exceedingly tired. If I sat down to rest,
a mysterious fear impelled me to rise and press forward to Bethany. I have
faith in those secret attractions, those silent monitors, those
inexplicable warnings. A minute’s repose of muscle, a minute’s
recuperation of breath, and I started again with renewed energy.
A wind came up behind the cloud and drove it furiously onward. It covered
the moon and all was dark. I groped my way. I stumbled over obstacles. I
advanced slowly. It was late, late in the night, when I entered the
village of Bethany. No lights were visible; no sounds were heard. I
traversed the streets alone. I passed my uncle’s residence, brimful of
maledictions against its wicked proprietor. Soon my father’s house loomed
up before me. I saw the long white wall in front of it, and the parapet of
the house-top darkening above.
Suddenly a strong blast of wind stirred all the trees of the village. It
sighed along the deserted streets and up into the sky. It lifted the lower
edge of the cloud from the moon which shone out, low down, just above my
father’s house, as it were with a sudden brilliancy.
It revealed to me two astonishing things.
One was a large, strange, gilded vehicle drawn by two powerful horses
standing before the gate.
The other was the figure of a woman on the house-top, between me and the
moon—a woman with flowing robes and disheveled hair, raising her arms
wildly to heaven, while a man was approaching her in the attitude of
striking.
It was my sister Martha!
With a cry of horror I sprang against the gate, which gave way before me.
[Illustration: Ornament]
[Illustration: Ornament]