"No, my child! There is but one G.o.d, 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 ident.i.ty, 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 pa.s.s 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 l.u.s.ts 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 emanc.i.p.ated from the Jewish Church, and looked for the regeneration of mankind to the enn.o.bling 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 circ.u.mstances of our life, for the reception of the new and strange religion of Christ.
The thoughtful a.n.a.lysis of the past history of any human life, will reveal here and there the movings of the finger of G.o.d. 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 n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 cla.s.s 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 superst.i.tions; he ignored its magnates; he chose his a.s.sociates 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 G.o.d, that we did not strive to allure him back to the haunts of men. I regarded him as a gentle and amiable fanatic.
Martha p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d."
These were the words with which he threw himself down upon the pallet of skins. Long weeks of illness had pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tre 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 G.o.d, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
IX.