_BREAD ON THE WATERS._
[Illustration: Initial]
The impression made upon our minds by these extraordinary events was
ineffaceable. After three days and nights of perilous adventure and
suffering, from a youth I became a man. From little girls, my sisters
became women. There was ever afterward about us a pensiveness, a gravity
of manner, a too early maturity of thought, which excited the pity of
those who had known us during our father’s life, when a happy childhood
broke forth into smiles and pleasures, like a genial spring blossoming out
into perfumes and flowers.
Our six months of domestic life under the management of Magistus, with its
gloom, its neglect, its suspicions, its want of love and liberty, stood in
painful contrast with the merry sports, the delightful peace and the
religious sunshine of our father’s household. It was night compared with
day. But the unmasking of the characters of Caiaphas and Magistus was a
rude shock to our tender spirits. We had revealed to us at one view the
utmost depths of human depravity. We had stood consciously amid the
hideous and revolting spheres of hypocrisy, sensuality, robbery and
murder. There was a leprosy of the soul as well as of the body; there were
wild beasts of the spirit; there was a wilderness of the mind; there was a
death masquerading in the garments of life; and we had seen them all. We
had looked into hell.
This early and deep insight into the fearful connection between evil
spirits and wicked men, and their combined influence over the world, was
in one sense salutary. The recoil from the bottomless abyss into which we
had peeped, produced a rapid and unusual development of the moral nature.
In my sisters it took a religious, in myself a philosophical turn.
Those young girls, constitutionally pious and full of gratitude to God,
sought renewed strength and comfort in the exercises of faith and
religious duty. They devoted themselves to prayer and the study of the
Scriptures. With the womanly nature of the vine, which must cling to
something of firmer texture and stronger growth, they attached themselves
trustingly to the priests and scribes and doctors of the law, with a
natural and pardonable feeling. But they avoided Caiaphas.
I do not remember that I ever felt any decided respect or love for the
religious institutions of my country. I was born, I suppose, with the
element of veneration for the past left out of my mental organization. I
never could understand why men look back to the infancy and childhood of
the race for the oracles of wisdom. It is rather the business of each
century to scrutinize rigidly the inheritance it has received from the
preceding century, and to reject everything which is worthless,
unphilosophical and immature.
I was largely indebted to my father for my progressive temperament. He
despised pretension and ceremony. He conformed his life rather to the
spirit than to the letter of the law. His understanding sturdily revolted
against the mysterious and improbable. We were not trained after the
strict manner of the Pharisees, but with that freedom of action which does
not crush the individuality of the child. The reformer, the innovator, the
man of new ideas and life, is seldom born of the narrow-minded literalist
and bigot of an old system. The father is generally an intermediate link
between the old and the new; adhering loosely to the old himself, and
prophesying, inarticulately perhaps, the emancipation of his son from the
thraldom of the past.
When we get rid of the conventionalisms of an old and perishing system, we
become peculiarly open and sensitive to the grand intuitions of natural
religion. The gorgeous ceremonies of the temple made little impression
even on my boyish fancy: they were tiresome and disgusting to my riper
years. But I melted into tender admiration at the thought of John the
Baptist, praying and toiling in the wilderness, unseen of men, trusting in
God, and receiving to his loving bosom and care, the leper, the robber and
the lost ones of the world.
One of the teachers provided me by my excellent uncle Beltrezzor, was a
Greek; and the study of that wonderful language and literature led me
still farther away from the influence of Judaism, corrupted and failing as
it was. I was not slow to assert that the poetry of Æschylus and Homer
charmed me more than that of David and Isaiah; and that the philosophy of
Plato exceeded in value all the learning of the Scribes.
My heretical opinions, candidly avowed on proper occasions, but never
obtruded, had a gradual effect in breaking the spell of enthusiasm which
bound my sisters to the priesthood and the ritual. But the examples and
conversations of Beltrezzor had a still greater influence in lifting their
minds out of that narrow and exclusive circle of thought, in which the
typical Jew is born, lives and dies.
Beltrezzor was a man of most beautiful and lovely character. Simple in his
own tastes and dress, frugal in his own habits, but generous and even
lavish to others; cheerful and polite; active and industrious; truthful
and unselfish; full of liberal opinions and tender sympathies; he charmed
all who knew him by the purity and nobleness of his mind and the suavity
of his manners. One of the most opulent and honored men in his adopted
country, and an inveterate traveler by habit, he had quietly settled down
in the little village of Bethany to consecrate several years of his life
to our education and happiness.
Yet the model man, the like of whom we had never seen in Priest or Scribe,
was in our eyes a renegade and a pagan. He had abandoned the doctrines and
precepts of Moses for those of Zoroaster. His religion, which appeared so
sweetly in his life, was a puzzle to us, for we expected to discover its
quality in its outward observances. The following manifestations of the
religious spirit were all we ever detected: He sometimes looked from his
window at the rising sun, and muttered something like a prayer with bowed
head. He always spoke of Fire with a strange reverence, and said it was
synonymous with Power and Beauty. He kissed his hand to the first star he
saw in the evening. On the last day of every year, he had fruits, flowers,
wine and rice brought into his chamber, as offerings to the spirits of his
departed friends, who, he believed, visited him on that occasion.
Behold the simple ceremonial upon which was based so much goodness of
heart and so much wisdom of thought!
“Who was Zoroaster?” asked Martha one day of her uncle.
“Zoroaster, my child, was the friend and companion of Abraham. They lived
together in Haran until the Great Being, Ormuzd, the King of Light, called
Jehovah by the Jews, summoned them both to leave their country and fill a
sacred mission. Zoroaster went to the east and Abraham to the west.
Zoroaster like Moses received the book of God on the top of a burning
mountain, and gave laws to the people.”
“What kind of laws, uncle?”
“The essential moral teachings are as much like those of Moses as twin
sisters are like each other.”
“Then you do not worship idols?”
“No—we detest them.”
“You do not worship any of the gods of the pagan nations?”
“No, my child! There is but one God, Ormuzd, King of Light. All religions
come from him. Some are purer and more perfect than others. All true
prophets and priests are his servants. False priests and magicians are in
league with evil spirits. They are children of Ahrimanes.”
“If there is such fundamental identity, why then, uncle, do you prefer the
religion of Zoroaster to that of Moses?”
“Because its ritual is more simple, beautiful and sublime; because its
doctrines are more rational and philosophical; because the people who
believe it and live it, are more liberal and loving and enlightened than
the Jews; because it brings the soul nearer to the Power and Beauty of the
sun.”
“Uncle,” said Mary, affectionately kissing his hand, “are all the
worshipers of Ormuzd as good and pure and sweet-tempered as you are?”
The old man blushed: “The teachings of Zoroaster tend to make men far
purer and better than I.”
The sisters sank into a deep reverie. They had a glimpse of that great
world of moral light and beauty, which lay entirely outside of the limits
of the Jewish faith. They gazed on it with wonder.
“But, uncle,” said Martha, “in the great day of judgment will not the
unbelievers be sentenced to eternal punishment?”
“In the last day, my child, all the metals in the world will melt with
heat, and all human souls, living and dead, will pass in judgment through
the fiery element. To the good it will feel like a fragrant bath of warm
milk; to the evil it will be a torrent of burning lava. It will consume,
however, nothing but the wicked lusts of the heart. Evil will thus be
destroyed; and all men, freely forgiven by Ormuzd, will unite in a
universal chorus of love and praise.”
The sphere of our uncle’s life and character taught us charity for even
renegades and pagans; and the beauty and rationality of his singular
doctrines made me suspect that truth had temples elsewhere than in Judea.
I became fairly emancipated from the Jewish Church, and looked for the
regeneration of mankind to the ennobling and purifying influence of
knowledge, which, I believed, would finally illumine the world with its
waves of rosy light. Beautiful and illusive dream!
My sisters, disgusted as they soon became, with the fanatics, hypocrites
and impostors who thronged the temple, were not ready to cut loose from
the faith of Moses or the ceremonies of the law. They deplored the
corruptions and deadness of the Church. They shrank from the ritualists
who had no religion, and from the devotees who had no love in their
hearts. They sought consolation by looking eagerly for the Messiah, who
was to restore the sceptre to Israel and rekindle the embers of faith and
piety in the church.
Martha and Mary pondered upon all they had ever heard or read on this
wonderful subject. Born of a virgin, “the Prince of Peace, the Mighty
Counselor, the Everlasting Father,” was coming in the flesh? They
delighted to search the Scriptures for traces and predictions of his
birth, his appearance and his mission. They loved to walk in the grove of
olives which crowned the mount in rear of our house, whence they could see
the marble colonnades of the temple and its vast roof all fretted with
golden spikes, while they conversed arm in arm on their favorite theme.
Thus were we being secretly prepared by the experiences and circumstances
of our life, for the reception of the new and strange religion of Christ.
The thoughtful analysis of the past history of any human life, will reveal
here and there the movings of the finger of God. We do not see the divine
providence as an event approaches, but only after it has transpired.
Jehovah showed his back, not his face to Moses.
Some may be surprised at the idea that certain minds were _prepared_ for
the reception of the Christian religion by processes directed by divine
providence. They suppose that every one who saw the miracles and heard the
words of Christ, could have believed in him and followed him if he had
chosen. It is a mistake. There were many noble and pious Jews, to whose
minds the words and miracles of Christ had no weight whatever; who
rejected him unhesitatingly as a dreamer or an impostor. They were not
prepared to receive him.
There have been several revelations or dispensations of Divine Truth; and
there will unquestionably be more. The new revelation is seldom or never
received by the adherents of the old. The force of the decaying system is
first broken by schism. After schism comes a spirit of free inquiry, and
skepticism is developed. The old foundations are broken up; new ideas, new
influences, new life start forth. Then comes the possibility of a renewed
development, a reconsideration of principles, the evolution of higher and
more spiritual truth.
This fact was illustrated in the early days of Christianity. The first
disciples were not the leading spirits and great lights of the old
dispensation, who regarded themselves as the special guardians of
religious truth. That class misunderstood Christ and rejected him. The men
and women who forsook all and followed him had no special reverence for
the Jewish law and its ceremonies. Singularly enough, they were not
persons of strong religious convictions, however holy their life became
after receiving the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. They had outlived or
spiritually outgrown the Jewish dispensation. They cared little or nothing
for the opinions of priest or scribe. They stood aloof from the Jewish
ceremonial with skeptical indifference, waiting for Providence to give
them something radically new. They knew Christ by intuition; their spirits
had been organically prepared for his reception.
Christ rejected the Jewish Church long before it rejected him. He
neglected its ceremonies; he violated its laws; he disregarded its
superstitions; he ignored its magnates; he chose his associates from the
publicans and sinners of civil life, and his disciples from the publicans
and sinners of the moral world. If he ever comes again, the same phenomena
will recur; for the Divine laws repeat themselves, like the return of
comets and the revolutions of the sun.
I was acquainted with most of the persons who organized the infant Church
of Christ. There were within my knowledge but two exceptions to the
general law, that those who acknowledged the Messiah first and most
cordially, were outside of the orthodox pale. Thomas Didymus was a rigid
Pharisee and ritualist. He believed nothing which he could not see with
his own eyes and touch with his own hands. He was the least spiritual of
all the disciples.
Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was a man of ardent imagination,
intense faith and great genius. His mind, however, was cast in the
antiquated mould; and he was a stickler for orthodox observances. No logic
or rhetoric, however eloquent and convincing, could ever have shaken him
from his Pharisaic attachments. The miraculous interposition of heaven was
necessary to turn him from the service of the Jewish Sanhedrim.
Not without influence also in preparing us for the new era, was the
character of John the Hermit, afterward known as John the Baptist. For
several years we paid two annual visits to the tomb of our father, and to
the cave of the extraordinary young man who had befriended him in his last
illness. One of these visits was made when the angel of spring had touched
the snow-wreaths of winter with her silver wand and turned them into
flowers. The other was made when the forests of autumn clothed themselves
in their festal robes of crimson and gold, to celebrate the approach of
death with its prophecy of resurrection.
We chose one beautiful and cloudless morning, and making an early start,
mounted upon sure-footed mules, and well provided against those demons of
the desert—hunger and thirst—we crept slowly along over the brown hills
and through the desolate hollows. Ethopus and two or three more stout
domestics always attended us as a bodyguard. We made a picturesque party,
encamping in the mouth of the sacred cavern, startling the silence of the
wilderness with happy voices, and breaking its wild solitudes with the
enchanting presence of beauty and love.
John always received us with a graceful suavity, which seemed strange in
one so unaccustomed to society. We first paid our visit to our father’s
grave, and offered our tribute of tears to the ashes and memory of the
beloved. The prophet would improve the occasion to our spiritual
advantage, by repeating with simple eloquence many appropriate verses of
Scripture. We then returned to the cavern and conversed with the
heavenly-minded recluse, startling the echoes of his lonely hermitage with
incidents of life and travel and society, and with scraps of history,
biography, poetry and philosophy, brought from the gay and busy circle in
which we moved.
The prophet bore a quiet share in our animated talk, and partook sparingly
of our ample repast. He was full of childlike earnestness and credulity,
easily excited to smiles, easily moved to tears. The sphere of his
thoughts and feelings was as different from that of the priests and
scribes, as though he had been an angel descended from heaven,—full of
love and wisdom, without creed, without doctrine, without forms, without
ceremonies,—to mock with his sublime perfection the puny ritualist who
imagined no religion possible without them all.
The young prophet seemed to enjoy these semi-annual disturbances of his
thoughtful solitude. He always accompanied us on our return as far as the
great highway. He was so fully convinced that he was driven into the
wilderness by the Spirit of God, that we did not strive to allure him back
to the haunts of men. I regarded him as a gentle and amiable fanatic.
Martha pronounced him to be a young man of great promise, destined no
doubt to be a prophet or leader in the Church. Mary’s criticism was
limited to noting the extraordinary sweetness of his voice and the
softness of his hazel eyes. Once also a tear trickled down her cheeks,
when we spoke of his lonely days and nights in his self-inflicted
solitude.
It was in the third year after Beltrezzor’s return, that, on approaching
the cave of the hermit we saw a poor, emaciated creature, the skeleton,
the shadow, of a man, seated on the stone at its mouth. It was long before
we could recognize in this pitiable object, my generous deliverer, the Son
of the Desert. On feeling the premonitory symptoms of a dangerous fever,
he had left his band, which was then prowling about the Jordan, and had
come to the cave of the young hermit.
“You nursed my wounded friend. Take care also of me. I am sick in soul and
body. You are the only good man in the world. You alone make me believe in
God.”
These were the words with which he threw himself down upon the pallet of
skins. Long weeks of illness had passed away—and he was restored, standing
now on the border of life like a phantom flitting from the tomb. His
great, sad, earnest eyes seemed to say that he neither cared to live nor
was afraid to die.
We took a deep interest in this forlorn robber, who seemed to act, think
and feel so little like a robber. This proud, handsome man, without name,
without friends, was an enigma to us. He had sternly declined all reward
for his eminent services to us, and we felt under painful obligations to
him. When we bade him adieu with ardent wishes for his speedy restoration,
Martha, with great dignity and self-possession, took a ring from her
finger and deliberately placed it upon his.
“Do not forget us,” said she. “Our fates may part us, but the invisible
binds. On this ring is engraven the name of an angel. I give you my
guardian-spirit as your own. May he lead you into peace.”
He bowed his head low upon her hand; and when he raised it, there were
tears in his eyes.
I noticed after a while that these visits to the desert had a singular
effect upon Mary. For some time preceding them, there was an exhilaration
of spirits, a flush of expectation, a vivacity of manner, which added a
new lustre to her charms, a new glow to her beauty. During the visit,
however, she was timid, reticent and abstracted: and afterward for weeks
there was an unusual quietness of demeanor, as well as a tearfulness of
the eye and a pallor of the cheek.
“Lazarus,” said Martha to me one day, “had we not better bring our
father’s remains to Bethany and bury them with our mother’s? It would
spare us these long trips to the desert.”
Keen-sighted, motherly sister! But I—who had not then met with Helena and
knew nothing of love—I answered:
“Oh no! these visits to John are the most delightful events of the year.”
On the fourth spring of these visits Mary took down a little flower-pot
with a rose in it for John.
“I bring you a gem,” said she, “of nature’s light—a lamp, a star, to
illumine the darkness of the desert.”
That evening when returning, Mary and John fell behind the rest of us, and
when I turned to look after them, he was pointing out to her some rare
beauty of the clouds about the setting sun; and her face, turned full upon
him, was all aglow with a radiance not reflected from terrestrial skies.
The fall visit was looked forward to with unusual pleasure. It was a
glorious day. Why was it that the desert seemed more solitary than usual?
As we approached the cavern, the silence was appalling. There were no
recent footprints on the sands. The spiders had spun their webs across the
mouth of the cave. It was utterly deserted. John had gone. He had taken
away his pallet of skins, his earthen vessels for food and drink, his
sandals, his long staff. The flower-pot lay upon the ground with the
little rose-bush in it, long withered and dead.
The sisters burst into tears; and Martha kissed the little one most
tenderly on the cheek.
The Spirit of God, which impels men to the great missions of the world,
drives them away from the bloom of nature and from the gardens of the
soul,—away into the wilderness, where, tempted of devils and sustained by
angels, they gather strength for the doom and glory which await them!
Our father’s remains were brought to Bethany. Mary’s cheek grew paler. The
dew of tenderness trembled always in her eye. She searched the Scriptures
all day long for the coming Messiah. At night she dreamed—
Ah! what?
Of the withered rose-leaves in the deserted cavern.
[Illustration: Ornament]
[Illustration: Ornament]