Oh what a picture was his brave, handsome, indignant face! Soldiers came in. The brick and mortar were soon torn away. I was lifted out and carried into the open air. I was so overcome with joy that I fainted.
The men who beheld my ghastly features and emaciated form were loud in their curses of Magistus. I was laid on a bed in the house, and nurses were a.s.signed me. The kindly centurion did not leave me until I was comfortably fixed and had recovered from my swoon.
"Pontius Pilate," said he, "desired me to present you his congratulations, and to say that he will visit you to-morrow when you have been refreshed and strengthened by food and a night"s rest; and will then hear your story from your own lips."
I thanked him warmly.
"And my deliverer?" said I, "my unseen, faithful friend and deliverer!
Where is he? Who is he?"
No one present knew anything about my deliverer.
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XXV.
_WHAT HAD HAPPENED._
[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]
Pontius Pilate fulfilled his promise; and I told him my whole story from the time of my resurrection until my happy release by his good centurion.
When I was speaking about the invisible friend, the flower let down in the basket, and the parchment with its rude letters, his face grew sad. When I finished by asking him to inform me how and from whom he learned my condition, so that I could discover, reward and love my deliverer as he deserved, he drew a deep sigh and said:
"I fear I have done a very hasty and cruel thing!
"The man who informed me of your condition was the African who accompanied you to Rome, and who endeavored to rescue the slave from the fish-pond of Hortensius."
"My brave and good Anthony!" I exclaimed eagerly.
"He eluded my guards; and although wounded by one of them for his temerity, he rushed into my presence as I was finishing my morning meal.
The words he spoke were substantially these:
""Lazarus, whom you brought from Rome, is confined in a dungeon underneath the house of Magistus, in Bethany. They have starved him nearly to death, and he has been without water for a day and a night. Send help to him speedily, or it will be too late.""
"n.o.ble, courageous Anthony!" I exclaimed. "He shall have half of my possessions!" but I was disquieted by the darkening brow of Pilate.
"I asked him," continued the Roman governor, "if he had been in your employ since our return from Rome.
""No!" he replied, "I have seen him but once, and that was in prison.""
"He spoke the truth," said I; "he always spoke the truth!"
"I thought he was a messenger sent by some friend of yours. I remembered him immediately, and I remembered also my promise to Hortensius. I saw in him only an audacious criminal, returning without leave from an exile which had been decreed perpetual."
"And you threw him into prison?"
"If I had known of his beautiful and heroic devotion to you, his fate would have been different."
The evident remorse of Pilate startled me.
"And his fate? What was his fate? He is not dead," said I, elevating my voice.
"He was beheaded immediately."
"O cruel, cruel, cruel fate!" I exclaimed; and regardless of ceremony, I mourned for my dead friend with bitter tears and bitter words in the presence of his august murderer.
"I feel," said Pilate, when he bade me a friendly adieu-"I feel that I have discharged a severe duty in this matter; but the generous conduct of this African,-for he certainly must have known that he endangered his own life by appearing before me,-would have ent.i.tled him to a full pardon, which I would have given with pleasure for his own merits as well as for your sake."
As soon as my Christian friends heard of my reappearance, they crowded to see me. From them I learned the sorrows and trials my sisters had undergone, as well as the strange events which preceded, accompanied and followed the crucifixion of Jesus.
Magistus and Caiaphas had set afloat the story that I was engaged in the raid upon the city of Jerusalem, made for the double purpose of robbery and murder, by Barabbas and his party; many of whom were deluded into the enterprise under the idea that it was a patriotic rebellion against the Roman yoke. They also suborned witnesses to prove that I was killed in the night attack, and was buried by them with a crowd of other rioters who fell by the Roman arms.
This led to the confiscation of our estates; and as Mary and Martha were helpless and beautiful young women without relatives to protect them, they were a.s.signed to the special guardianship of Magistus. Caiaphas approved in strong terms this decree of the Sanhedrim, eulogized Magistus for his generous character and patriarchal virtues, and congratulated the sisters of a vile robber, themselves the disciples of a base impostor, on their extraordinary good fortune in being placed under the enviable protection of one of the shining lights of Israel.
The wickedness and duplicity of this high priest will be almost incredible to future times. But the age was evil; the church was corrupt; and public and private morality reduced to the lowest ebb. The priesthood was a matter of bargain and sale. The office of high priest, the holiest and highest in the Jewish theocracy, was obtained by bribery and fraud and in more than one instance by murder. Caiaphas was one of the most consummate hypocrites that ever entered the holy of holies. He might have changed places with Barabbas, and justice and religion would not have fared the worse for it.
My sisters, terrified at the thought of falling into the power of Magistus, their remembrance of whom was anything but pleasant, fled from our house and concealed themselves with some of the disciples of Jesus.
The two chief miscreants of the Sanhedrim seemed determined to get possession of these unhappy and forlorn women; and they inst.i.tuted the most rigorous search through the houses of all persons who were suspected of harboring them. Their evil pa.s.sions seemed only half gratified by my destruction and the seizure of our property. Fearful would have been the fate of these angelic friends of Jesus, had they fallen at that time into the hands of his fiercest enemies.
Spies and detectives fully authorized to search, arrest, bribe, intimidate and even kill, were set upon their track in every direction. The country became so unsafe for them, that they were conveyed by stealthy night marches to the hut of some friendly fishermen away down on the sea of Galilee. Even there they were pursued; and Peter the apostle rowed them across the sea on a dark and stormy night, and concealed them in the very tombs whence issued the maniac out of whom Jesus cast a legion of devils.
After many sufferings and hair-breadth escapes, they were conveyed out of the country, and at that moment were living concealed in the city of Antioch, at the house of a poor but worthy man-himself a Christian, for Christ had cured him and nine others of the leprosy; and he alone of the ten had turned back to give thanks.
I wept when I thought of the unhappiness of my poor sisters; and I felt an urgent desire to regain my shattered strength and rejoin them.
The story of the crucifixion of the Lord struck me with wonder and awe. I was not surprised that Judas Iscariot had betrayed him. But the pathetic incidents of his last supper, his betrayal, his trial, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his appearance to his disciples, and his ascension, affected me to tears, and filled me with a spirit of humility, love and prayer.
"Those are pictures," said I, to my friends, "which will be painted on the heart of the Christian Church in the colors of heaven, and which the powers of death and h.e.l.l can never efface.
"If such," thought I to myself-"if such is the effect of this divine history as it appears in the literal form to man, what must be the power and glory of the spiritual signification of these great and holy things, when they are studied by angels in the light of heaven!"
Barabbas and his bravest lieutenants, including the Son of the Desert, had fallen into the hands of the rulers. Barabbas conveyed to Magistus a threat, that if he were not released he would expose to the Sanhedrim his attempt to murder his nephew. Whether Magistus and Caiaphas, who acted always in concert, feared an exposure of this kind, which is not probable, considering the source whence the charge would come, or whether they followed spontaneously the wicked instincts of their own souls, they procured the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Christ.
The mercy extended to Barabbas was not given to his followers; and two of them were selected to be crucified with Jesus, to increase the ignominy of his execution. And so Christ was crucified between two thieves-or men so reputed.
One of these was the Son of the Desert.
This brave, wild man, strangely compounded of good and evil, was heavily ironed and cast into the deepest dungeon. Magistus had a habit, consistent with his cruel disposition, of visiting prisoners condemned to death, and enjoying the terrors with which they contemplated their approaching fate.
The Son of the Desert did not gratify his pa.s.sion for witnessing the sufferings of abject misery. He was singularly cheerful and buoyant. He declared himself not only willing but anxious to die. He had nothing to contemplate with pleasure when he looked back; and as to the future, if the soul were really immortal and a second life were given him, he was determined to start upon it with new principles and motives.