CHAPTER XXI
THE GREAT HARVEST
“The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.”
It is expedient that we return, and gather up a few threads that were dropped at the close of the chapter preceding the last. On the eventful morning when the comrades gathered at the Sheepmarket, and departed for the Upper Chamber to apprehend the assembly, there was a small party left behind which demands further notice. A controversy took place, and the little circle was rent by the decided and outspoken condemnation of Rebecca of the proposed movement.
“Saulus seems beside himself in this mad persecution!” she exclaimed with a deep flush. “I think the new sect has a right to live peaceably, and be free from molestation. God speed their escape!”
“Daughter! thou speakest wildly!” said Benoni reprovingly. “I bid thee hold thy peace! It would have been well for us had we left thee in Tarsus.”
Rebecca said no more, but held her own thoughts firmly. Since the stampede from the Temple, when her life was saved by the young stranger, she had made many apologies for, if not an actual defence of, the disciples of the New Faith. Her unknown rescuer had not told her that he was one of them, but she had an indefinable feeling that he might be of their number. His words and spirit were unlike those of any one she knew who was subject to the ceremonial system. How opposite in temper from her own brother, whom she began to fear was possessed by an evil spirit! It was not so much what Serenus had said, when he conveyed her to her home in her faint and exhausted condition, for their conversation had been brief and general; but his dignified mien, lofty spirit, and utter unselfishness greatly impressed her. His very presence had seemed an inspiration. How strange, that in answer to her question he should have announced himself merely as the “friend of Saulus”! Knowing nothing of his name or dwelling-place, she often wondered whether she might ever see him again. While naturally retiring, and rarely looking into the faces of strangers, it must be confessed that, as opportunity offered, she had some dim expectation that she would again behold the face of her kind benefactor.
Who is able to unravel the mysteries of a maiden’s heart? Who can untwist the delicate strands which, when combined, are able to guide and draw a gentle soul, and give it the force and direction of a new orbit?
In the case of Rebecca, the vital service rendered would, of itself, make gratitude strong and lasting. The lofty principles expressed, though in a brief and unstudied way, would also strike a unison in such a pure and intuitional nature as that of Rebecca. For a long time she had been quietly growing away from the heartless formalism of her people. She was ready for something better. Without knowing anything of the letter of the New Faith, peradventure its invisible vibrations were beating gently upon the strings of her higher nature, even though unrecognized.
Was there a mingled element of unconscious love subtly growing out of so brief an episode? What more natural? and yet what prophet can say either yea or nay?
As Saulus and his concourse moved away toward the Upper Chamber, an intense interest and curiosity possessed those who were left behind as to the outcome of the day’s proceedings. All felt that an important crisis had arrived. Cassia was exultant, while Rebecca was cast down. But despite their unlikeness, they preserved friendly relations for the sake of Saulus. Prospective sisterhood rendered each forbearing. Rebecca was sorely tried, but must needs not rebel against her surroundings.
Almon, the keeper of the hostelry, who had followed the concourse in the distance, soon returned, and announced to the family that the blasphemers were securely under arrest.
“I bear you good tidings,” said he, as with manifest glee he entered the court of the inn. “Saulus and his friends have the whole band under arrest, and they are soon to be taken in a procession to prison.”
Cassia clapped her little white hands with delight. Rabbi Abdiel and Benoni were exultant in their approval, while Rebecca was silent.
“Behold,” continued Almon, “the direct way from the Upper Chamber to the prison leads by the inn, so that captors and captives will soon move past our very doors.”
“To the house-top!” exclaimed Cassia excitedly. “Let us all go up and see the procession when it passes.”
She bounded up two stairways in hot haste, and the others soon followed. Rebecca would fain have been spared the sight, but something seemed to draw her.
There is frequently an indescribable fascination in beholding just that which one does not wish to behold.
“It is a proud day for thy son, O Benoni!” quoth the Rabbi.
“Yea, my brother; Saulus directs all this matter as seemeth him good.”
They had not long to wait.
From the distance, fierce cries, cheers, and curses echoed above the general hum of voices; and soon a black mass of moving figures surged slowly along one of the narrow streets that led into the square. Near the front was the untiring figure of Saulus, directing the movement of the throng. His eyes flashed, his step was firm, and his air that of a military conqueror returning from a victorious campaign.
When the motley crowd came near, the little group ranged themselves along the parapet that they might observe every feature of the procession. From their vantage-ground, it was easy to study every face, as it passed directly in front.
The venerable Abdiel waved his hands with satisfaction, and blessed the God of Israel; and Saulus, looking up, proudly returned the salutation.
Near the head of the line of prisoners was a tall, dignified young man of noble presence and calm features, whose bearing and costume marked him as one of the most notable among them. Rebecca saw him, and instinctively exclaimed,—
“It is he!”
At the same moment, the young man turned his eyes upward, and their glances met. A slight nod of recognition passed between them, which was noticed by the others, so that Rebecca was forced to explain.
“Behold it is he who saved me on the day of the great stampede at the Temple! I know not his name, but he called himself ‘the friend of Saulus.’ ”
Almon also gave an exclamation of great surprise.
“As I live, that is the man!”
“Who is this man, O Almon?” said Benoni, astounded at the double recognition of the prisoner.
“It is he who saved Saulus from the thieves, and brought him to the inn at midnight, and ministered unto him. I wot not his name, but—oh, wonder of wonders!—as to Rebecca, he also proclaimed himself to me as the ‘friend of Saulus.’ ”
“Surely, there must be some mistake!” said Benoni. “Such a man among the prisoners!”
“Shame on the persecution!” exclaimed Rebecca. “Is Saulus to imprison the young hero who saved not only my life, but his own also?”
On the evening of the same day, Saulus despatched the following letter:—
“Officer in charge of the prisoners.
Sir,—Circumstances have conspired to cause me to change the special order which I gave thee concerning the heretic, Victor Serenus. I was then minded to reserve him for unwonted punishment, and that speedily; but behold I now order that thou at once release him, upon the condition that he leave the Holy City before the rising of to-morrow’s sun, never to return.
Saulus,Deputy of the Sanhedrin.”
Before the hours of evening were far advanced, the hearts of Amabel and the mother of Serenus were made glad by his arrival. Their surprise could hardly have been greater had he dropped from the skies.
“O children of the New Faith!” exclaimed the mother; “God is good! All is good! Even out of seeming evil springeth good! The law of the Lord is perfect!”
“What a day of fulfilment!” said Serenus. “Prison doors are opened through the power of the Truth. Bonds are stricken off, not by an interposition which suspends divine law, but through its perfect and orderly working.”
“Yea,” said Amabel; “the loving thought which thou hast held towards Saulus, even though unknown by him, hath borne its fruit.”
“The condition of my freedom,” said Serenus, “is that I leave the Holy City before the rising of to-morrow’s sun, never to return; but this in no wise disquiets me.”
Amabel’s cheeks grew pale, but she was silent.
“In time past,” continued Serenus, “it often seemed expedient that I depart from here, that peradventure I might kindle the flame of the New Faith in strange cities. But that concerning which I was formerly in doubt hath now been made clear to me. While in the prison cell, the Inner Guide prompted me that I should depart, but I wot not how it would come to pass. I must go, even to Rome, that from the heart of the world I may witness for the truth.”
He cast an inquiring look at Amabel.
“O Amabel! With thy devotion to the higher life, thou hast also given me a place in thine heart. Art thou willing to sacrifice worldly preferment, and share my lot, that we may go hand in hand to plant the standard of a pure spiritual religion? Canst thou with me bear hardship and seeming dishonor, yea, and peradventure further persecution, for the love of God, the sake of truth, and the good of thy kind?”
“Yea, Serenus! I fear nothing! I am willing, nay, glad, to go with thee to the ends of the earth, that I may help thee to succor the distressed, strengthen the weak, raise the fallen, and awake those who sleep, whether in the flesh, or in dead works and ceremonies. The Voice within me says—go!”
The mother of Serenus placed her hands upon the heads of her children, and gave them a loving dedication and benediction.
Everything was speedily arranged for an early departure on the morrow. An ordained disciple of the New Faith, who lived hard by, would come in at early dawn and unite Serenus and Amabel in marriage, according to the simple rites of the Upper Chamber. Before the midnight hour every preparation was completed for the new life so soon to begin.
During the silent hours, Peace, like a river, flowed in upon the souls in the quiet home.
Before the early dawn had fairly chased away the deep shadows of night, Serenus and Amabel were wedded.
“They spoke of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsighed for, and the future sure.”
As the morning mists were being dissipated, and the Temple roof gilded by the first rays of the rising sun, Serenus and Amabel, well mounted on small but hardy steeds, passed out through the gate leading toward the seaport of Cæsarea. The mother was to follow in a few days in the company of a convenient caravan.
Passing forward at a single bound, over the months of hot persecution noted in the preceding chapter, during which Serenus and Amabel were far away, we rejoin Saulus and his band on the way to Damascus. The first stage of the journey was over the Roman road which led from Jerusalem to Cæsarea.
As the Judean sun climbed higher in the heavens, and poured out his fiery rays, they rode rapidly along the hill-country which forms the divide between the valley of the Jordan and the Mediterranean. At intervals from some elevated spot over which the route led, they would halt for a few moments, and cast a lingering look backward upon the now distant golden Temple roof, and the white towers and battlements which they had left far behind. Anon a far-searching glance to the westward would faintly disclose the deep blue of the Great Sea. Every foot of the way was rich in historic association to the Israelite, and every town and village consecrated by some event which formed a part of the national folk-lore.
The companions of Saulus proposed a rest of a few hours during the intense heat of the midday; but he refused to make more than a brief stop, barely permitting space to feed the animals and satisfy their own hunger. He was even impatient at the ordinary rate of progress, and was minded to hurry forward. The next morning they saw Mount Gerizim, “the Mount of Blessing,” towering up in the distance before them. Upon that bald, brown summit Moses had stationed the priests and Levites, to bless the Children of Israel when they passed over Jordan.
The route wound through the soft green fields which lie around the base of the mountain, and midday brought them to Shechem in Samaria, where they stopped for refreshment. On this hallowed ground Jacob had encamped and erected an altar, and here Joseph had been sent to seek his brethren. On this spot Joshua had gathered all the elders and judges of Israel, and they “presented themselves before God.”
Saulus was familiar with all this rich heritage of national history, so full of meaning to the Chosen People; but now it palled upon him, and seemed dim and distant.
Leaving the Roman road at this point, they took the Damascus route to the northeast, which was much more rough and difficult. Passing Mount Ebal and Mount Tabor, and skirting the beautiful Sea of Galilee, set like a gem amid the surrounding hills, they pressed on, until on the morning of the sixth day they found themselves not far from their journey’s end.
To the west, and parallel with the last stage of their journey, the lofty chain of the Antilibanus stretched itself, like a huge wall, northward and southward as far as the eye could reach. Crowning all, with serene dignity and cool and dazzling whiteness, snow-capped Hermon formed a strange contrast with the torrid Syrian wilderness which immediately surrounded them.
Two hours more, and now, in the far distance, there was dimly visible the “Eye of the East,”—beautiful Damascus. On they pressed, and it gradually enlarged. Now its white terraced roofs and cupolas began to resolve themselves, and assume shape and character. In what a mass of living green was the city embowered! Behold a great wide-stretching emerald oasis was in front, in striking contrast with the bare brown desert, within the confines of which they still lingered.
Soon they passed for a short distance over one of the spurs of the Antilibanus, and could look down and follow with the eye the courses of the long winding Pharpar and the “golden Abana,” as they transform the wilderness, and cause it to bud and blossom like the rose. What wonderful beauty!
By Eastern metaphor Damascus was “a handful of pearls in its goblet of emerald.” The perennial streams from Lebanon spread into rivulets, and gurgle and disport themselves, forming the bases for blooming gardens of flowers and fruits—a terrestrial paradise.
Again they descended to the brown, scorched plain, and the torrid noonday was at hand. But before the flight of another hour they would be in Damascus, encircled and refreshed by its clear cool streams—their journey ended.
The time since they had left Jerusalem seemed well-nigh age-long to the young zealot. Deprived of the hot hunt, which for months had hardly afforded space for a quiet thought, he was forced to think. In vain he essayed to still the confused hum of the mechanism of his soul. To a mind under less intense pressure, and free from a stored-up mass of vivid tragic pictures, the changing scenery and stirring events of the journey would have afforded occupation. But to Saulus every hour was an hour of agony, its slowness interminable.
The outward world of variety and beauty meant nothing to Saulus now, for he was dwelling in a thought-world of his own contriving. He had walled himself around with abnormal and inhuman elements, and look which way he might, they must stare at him, face to face.
Nearer, vastly nearer than his surrounding comrades, were the living, barbed thoughts, which like imps of darkness peopled his mind.
On the walls and corridors of his soul were hung, high and low, moving, burning panoramas, and gaze upon them he must. The hellish art, which he had unwittingly moulded and upreared, thickly curtained the picturesque hills and valleys, the grand mountains, blue seas, and flowing rivers, which were incidental to the journey. The prods of an ox-goad to his outer flesh would have seemed tolerable could they have been received in exchange for those unseen goadings which punctured his guilty consciousness.
What subtle and often warring forces make up the mind of man! How it may kindle, unwittingly and even conscientiously, at its own centre, hellish flames; while the same energies, used after the divine order, will create heavenly harmonies and immortal loves!
How prolific are thought-activities, and how blind the world to the related sequences which are bound to them by hooks of steel! How untiringly the false self, in the ignorance of its own deeper nature, forges bonds for its own inthralment!
But though unheeded, the Inner Guide is ever awaiting an opportunity to blaze the path to freedom.
It matters not that the intangible scorpions which sting the human consciousness have been invoked in the name and guise of religion. Their retributive venom is not thereby lessened.
Each soul rears its own dwelling-place, and puts in furnishings which correspond. The objective divine order is good, and only good. Those spectres and distortions which are called wrong, evil, and even hell, which shrivel and blast human lives, are the creations of disorderly and unregulated thought-forces. The beautiful stuff from which both an inner and outer paradise may be builded is strewn around in endless profusion. It is mis-direction which makes it “evil.”
Before demonstrating beauty and perfection, men make educational mistakes, but the mockery and hollowness of failure finally drive them to the Real.
Hell is corrective rather than vindictive, a condition of mind, and not a place. It is as possible in this realm as the next, and Saulus was there. He was a realist, and had lived entirely from the outside. No lighter measure of flames would have sufficed to bring him to himself, and lead him to discover true being.
Punishment is kindly in its mission to the world. Man would fain sever cause and effect, but God has bound them together. Had not a flame in the soul of Saulus broken in upon his persecutions, they would not have been arrested.
Purifying fires reduce the Counterfeit to ashes, and then man is revealed to himself in his inmost and divine image. If evil were an objective Reality, when would be its end? Thanks to the Universal Order, it is but a subjective disciplinary experience, and carries within the seeds of its own limitation and final dissolution.
Mingled with the agony which made up the weary days and nights of the journey, Saulus had brief ecstatic upliftments and visions. Often they would pass into short trances, when he would lose all sense of time and surrounding, and dwell in the realm of the unseen. His violent transitions, often accompanied by some physical epileptic symptoms, were a source of great wonder to his companions, who were exceedingly superstitious concerning such weird phenomena. Was he possessed at times of good and evil spirits, or was he on the verge of lunacy?
The strange and ungovernable moods of Saulus, with their sharp contradictions, greatly undermined his leadership, and the ardor of his attendants was visibly dampened. A few secretly cursed the day upon which they joined the crusade. That aforetime unfaltering hero, who with iron will had inspired them in former days, was broken, and almost feeble. Courage alternated with violent and foolish fears. He heard pursuers upon his track, and saw faces and Shapes that were unshared in the experience of his comrades. Fierce outbursts of the spirit of persecution were followed by fits of moaning and weeping. When he came out of his trances, he was at a loss to know whether he had been out of the body or in the body.
It seemed as though Titanic forces within the soul of Saulus were battling for its possession, with varying victory and defeat. What direction will this tremendous soul-force finally take? An Inner Spirit was expanding which threatened to burst the bonds and standards of the outer world. Education, religion, custom, and ceremonial obligation quivered in the balance.
The beautiful city of the East was now in the immediate foreground. But with all its loveliness, it stood forth as the embodiment of continued persecution and death. That shaft pierced between the joints of the soul’s armor and went home. Saulus was struck through and through by a shock of spiritual electricity. The overstrained tension of the bond which held him to the Old snapped under the stress of the terrible vision.8
The flame of the Inner Spirit which so long had smouldered, burst forth, consuming the outer shell of “wood, hay, and stubble!”
The Voice which so often had struggled in vain for a hearing, echoed and re-echoed in tones of thunder!
There was an overshadowing Presence!
The Inner Christ in all his beauty was photographed by flash-light upon the soul of Saulus!
The manger was here, and the Christ-consciousness came to birth!
Like the “pure in heart,” Saulus saw God!
The stone was rolled away from the door of the sepulchre of self, and the Resurrection took place.
The tribunal of God was set up at the soul-centre, and the divine image and likeness unveiled.
The altar of Love, upon which stick after stick of fuel had been added, even though soaked by the sweat and blood of persecution, was lighted from heaven, and burst into brightness!
The Divine found another channel for manifestation in the Human, making plain their intrinsic and ideal Oneness!
The sudden enlargement of the soul of Saulus almost rent the tenement of clay.
Sense, time, and place were obliterated!
The Persecutor was dead!
The Apostle had been born!