Part 15

It was particularly outrageous that Saul should have gone to Damascus on that errand. Jesus Christ had been dead only three years, and the story of His kindness, generosity and love filled all the air. It was not an old story, as it is now. It was a new story. Jesus had only three Summers ago been in these very places, and Saul every day in Jerusalem must have met people who knew Christ, people with good eyesight whom Jesus had cured of blindness, people who were dead and had been resurrected by the Savior, and people who could tell Paul all the particulars of the crucifixion--just how Jesus looked to the last hour--just how the heavens grew black in the face at the torture. He heard that recited every day by people who were acquainted with all the circumstances, and yet in the fresh memory of that scene he goes out to persecute Christ’s disciples, impatient at the time it takes to feed the horses at the inn, not pulling at the snaffle, but riding with loose rein--faster and faster.

Truly, Paul was the chief of sinners. No outbreak of modesty when he said that. He was a murderer. He stood by when Stephen died, and helped in the execution of that good man. When the rabble wanted to be unimpeded in their work of destroying Stephen, and wanted to take off their coats but did not dare to lay them down lest they be stolen, Paul said: “I will take care of the coats.” So they put their coats down at the feet of Paul, and he watched them, and he watched the horrid mangling of glorious Stephen.

Is it not a wonder that when Paul fell from the horse he did not break his neck--that his foot did not catch somewhere in the trappings of the saddle, and he was not dragged and kicked to death? He deserved to die--miserably, wretchedly and for ever--notwithstanding all his metaphysics, eloquence and logic.

It seems to me as if I can see Paul today, rising up from the highway to Damascus, brushing off the dust from his cloak and wiping the sweat of excitement from his brow, as he turns to us and all the ages, saying:

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”

If it had been a mere optical illusion on the road to Damascus, was not Paul just the man to find it out? If it had been a sham and pretense, would he not have pricked the bubble? He was a man of facts and arguments, of the most gigantic intellectual nature, and not a man of hallucinations; and when I see him fall from the saddle, blinded and overwhelmed, I say there must have been something in it.

I have been reading this morning, in my New Testament, of a Mediterranean voyage in an Alexandrian ship. It was in the month of November.

On board that vessel were two distinguished passengers--one, Josephus, the historian, as we have strong reasons to believe; the other, a convict, one Paul by name, who was going to prison for upsetting things--or, as they termed it, “turning the world upside down.”

This convict had gained the confidence of the captain. Indeed, I think that Paul knew almost as much about the sea as did the captain. He had been shipwrecked three times already, and had dwelt much of his life amid capstans, yardarms, cables and storms, and he knew what he was talking about.

Seeing the equinoctial storm was coming, and perhaps noticing something unseaworthy in the vessel, he advised the captain to stay in the harbor. But I heard the captain and the first mate talking together. They say, in effect:

“We can not afford to take the advice of this landsman, and he a minister. He may be able to preach very well, but I do not believe he knows a marlinespike from a luff tackle. All aboard! Cast off! Shift the helm for headway. Who fears the Mediterranean?”

They had gone only a little way out when a whirlwind, called Euroclydon, made the torn sail its turban, shook the mast as you would brandish a spear, and tossed the hulk into the heavens. Overboard with the cargo! It is all washed with salt water and worthless now, and there are no marine insurance companies. All hands, ahoy, and out with the anchors!

Great consternation comes on crew and passengers. The sea monsters snort in the foam, and the billows clap their hands in glee of destruction. In the lull of the storm I hear a chain clank. It is the chain of the great apostle as he walks the deck or holds fast to the rigging amid the lurching of the ship. The spray drips from his long beard as Paul cries out to the crew, in tones of confidence:

“Now, I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God--whose I am and whom I serve--saying: ‘Fear not, Paul. Thou must be brought before Cæsar; and lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.’”

Fourteen days have passed, and there is no abatement of the storm. It is midnight. Standing on the lookout, the man peers into the darkness, and, by a flash of lightning, sees the long white line of breakers, and knows they must be coming near to some country, and fears that in a few moments the vessel will be shivered on the rocks.

The ship flies like chaff in the tornado. They drop the sounding line, and by the light of the lantern they see it is twenty fathoms. Speeding along a little farther, they drop the line again, and by the light of the lantern they see it is fifteen fathoms. Two hundred and seventy-six souls within a few feet of awful shipwreck!

The managers of the vessel, pretending they want to look over the side of the ship and undergird it, get into the small boat, expecting in it to escape; but Paul sees through the sham, and he tells them that if they go off in the boat it will be the death of them.

The vessel strikes! The planks spring! The timbers crack! The vessel parts in the thundering surge! Oh, what struggling for life! Here they leap from plank to plank. There they go under as if they would never rise, but, catching hold of a timber, they come floating and panting on it to the beach.

Here strong swimmers spread their arms through the waves until their chins plow the sand, and they rise up, and ring out their wet locks on the beach. When the roll of the ship is called, two hundred and seventy-six people answer to their names.

Paul was the most illustrious merely human being the world has ever known. He walked the streets of Athens and preached from yonder pile of rocks, Mars Hill.

Though more classic associations are connected with Athens than with any other city under the sun--because here Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Pericles, Herodotus, Pythagoras, Xenophon and Praxiteles wrote, chiseled, taught, thundered or sung--yet, in my mind, all those men and their teachings were eclipsed by Paul and the Gospel he preached there and in the near-by city of Corinth. Standing yesterday on the old fortress at Corinth, the Acro-Corinthus, out from the ruin at its base arose in my imagination the old city--just as Paul saw it.

I have been told that, for splendor, the world beholds no such wonder today as that ancient Corinth, standing on an isthmus washed by two seas--the one sea bringing the commerce of Europe, the other sea bringing the commerce of Asia.

From her wharves, in the construction of which entire kingdoms had been absorbed, war galleys with three banks of oars pushed out and confounded the navy yards of all the world.

Huge handed machinery, such as modern invention can not equal, lifted ships from the sea on one side and transported them on trucks across the isthmus and sat them down in the sea on the other side.

The revenue officers of the city went down through the olive groves that lined the beach to collect a tariff from all nations. The youth of all peoples sported in her isthmian games and the beauty of all lands sat in her theaters, walked her porticos and threw itself upon the altar of her stupendous dissipations. Column, statue and temple bewildered the beholder. There were white marble fountains into which, from apertures at the side, there gushed waters everywhere known for health-giving qualities. Around these basins, twisted into wreaths of stone, there were all the beauties of sculpture and architecture; while standing, as if to guard the costly display, was a statue of Hercules of burnished Corinthian brass. Vases of terra cotta adorned the cemeteries of the dead--vases so costly that Julius Cæsar was not satisfied till he had captured them for Rome. Armed officials paced up and down to see that no statue was defaced, pedestal overthrown or bas-relief touched.

From the edge of the city the hill held its magnificent burden of columns and towers and temples (one thousand slaves waiting at one shrine), and a citadel so thoroughly impregnable that Gibraltar is a heap of sand compared with it. Amid all that strength and magnificence Corinth stood and defied the world.

Oh, it was not to rustics who had never seen any thing grand that Paul preached in Corinth. They had heard the best music that had come from the best instruments in all the world; they had heard songs floating from morning porticos and melting in evening groves; they had passed their whole lives among pictures and sculpture and architecture and Corinthian brass, which had been molded and shaped until there was no chariot wheel in which it had not sped, and no tower in which it had not glittered, and no gateway that it had not helped to adorn.

Ah, it was a bold act for Paul to stand there amid all that and say:

“All this is nothing. These sounds that come from the Temple of Neptune are not music, compared with the harmonies of which I speak. These waters rushing in the basin of Pyrene are not pure. These statues of Bacchus and Mercury are not exquisite. Your citadel of Acro-Corinthus is not strong, compared with that which I offer to the poorest slave who puts down his burden at that brazen gate. You Corinthians think this is a splendid city; you think you have heard all sweet sounds and seen all beautiful sights. But, I tell you, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Following up Paul’s line of thought, we may say the Bible, now, is the scaffolding to the rising Temple, but when the building is done there will be no further use for the scaffolding.

PHARAOH.

One of the most intensely interesting things I saw in Egypt was Pharaoh of olden times--the very Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. The inscription on his sarcophagus and the writing on his mummy bandages prove beyond controversy that he was the Pharaoh of Bible times. All the Egyptologists and the explorations agree that it is the old scoundrel himself.

Visible are the very teeth with which he gnashed against the Israelitish brick makers. There are the sockets of the merciless eyes with which he looked upon the over-burdened people of God. There is the hair that floated in the breeze off the Red Sea. There are the very lips with which he commanded the children of Israel to make bricks without straw.

Thousands of years afterward, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as if in imploration; but his skinny bones can not again clutch his shattered scepter. He is a dead lion.

PONTIUS PILATE.

At about seven o’clock in the morning, up the marble stairs of a palace and across the floors of richest mosaic and under ceilings dyed with all the splendors of color and between snowbanks of white and glistening sculpture, passes a poor, pale and sick young man of thirty-three years, already condemned to death, on his way to be condemned again. Jesus of Nazareth is His name.

Coming out to meet him on this tesselated pavement is an unscrupulous, compromising, time-serving and cowardly man, with a few traces of sympathy and fair dealing left in his composition--Governor Pontius Pilate.

Did ever such opposites meet? Luxury and pain, selfishness and generosity, arrogance and humility, sin and holiness, midnight and midnoon.

The bloated-lipped governor takes the cushioned seat, but the prisoner stands, his wrists manacled. In a semicircle around the prisoner are the Sanhedrists, with eyes flashing and fists brandished, prosecuting this case in the name of their religion.

The most bitter persecutions have been religious persecutions, and when Satan takes hold of a good man he makes up by intensity for brevity of occupation. If you have never seen an ecclesiastical court trying a man, then you have no idea of the foaming infernalism of those old religious Sanhedrists.

Governor Pilate cross-questions the prisoner, and he finds right away that he is innocent; so he wants to let him go. His caution is also increased by some one who comes to the governor and whispers in his ear. The governor puts his hand behind his ear, so as to catch the words almost inaudible.

These whispered words are a message from Claudia Procula, his wife, who has had a dream about the innocence of this prisoner and about the danger of executing him, and she awakens from this morning dream in time to send the message to her husband, who was at that hour on the judicial bench.

And what with the protest of his wife, the voice of his own conscience and the entire failure of the Sanhedrists to make out their case Governor Pilate resolves to discharge the prisoner from custody.

But the intimation of such a thing brings upon the governor an equinoctial storm of indignation. They will report him to the emperor at Rome. They will have him recalled. They will send him up home, and he will be hanged for treason, for the emperor has already a suspicion in regard to Pilate, and that suspicion does not cease until Pilate is banished and commits suicide.

So Governor Pontius Pilate compromises the matter, and proposes that Christ be whipped instead of assassinated. So the prisoner is fastened to a low pillar, and on his bent and bared back come the thongs of leather, with pieces of lead and bone intertwisted, so that every stroke shall be the more awful.

Christ lifts Himself from the scourging with flushed cheek and torn and quivering and mangled flesh, presenting a spectacle of suffering in which Rubens, the painter, found the theme for his greatest masterpiece.

But the Sanhedrists are not yet satisfied. They have had some of the prisoner’s nerves lacerated; but they want them all lacerated. They have had some of his blood; now they want all of it, down to the last corpuscle.

So Governor Pontius Pilate, after all this merciful hesitation, surrenders to the demoniacal cry:

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

But the governor sends for something. He sends a slave out to get something. Although the constables are in haste to take the prisoner to execution, and the mob outside are impatient to glare upon their victim, a pause is necessitated.

Yonder it comes--a wash basin. Some pure, bright water is poured into it, and then Governor Pilate puts his white and delicate hands into the water and rubs them together, and then lifts them dripping, for the towel fastened at the slave’s girdle, while he practically says:

“I wash my hands of this whole homicidal transaction. I wash my hands of this entire responsibility. You will have to bear it.”

Behold in this that ceremony amounts to nothing, if there are not contained in it correspondences of heart and life.

It is a good thing to wash the hands. God created three-fourths of the world water, and in that act commanded cleanliness; and when the ancients did not take the hint, He plunged the whole world under water, and kept it there for some time.

Hand washing was a religious ceremony among the Jews. The Jewish Mishna gave particular directions how that the hands must be thrust three times up to the wrist in water, and the palm of the hand must then be rubbed with the closed fist of the other.

All that was well enough for a symbol, but here is a man in the case under consideration who proposes to wash away the guilt of a sin which he does not quit and of which he does not make any repentance. Pilate’s wash basin was a dead failure.

Ceremonies, however beautiful and appropriate, may be no more than this hypocritical ablution. In infancy we may be sprinkled from the baptismal font, and in manhood we may wade into deep immersion, and yet never come to moral purification. We may kneel without prayer and bow without reverence, and sing without any acceptance. All your creeds, liturgies, sacraments, genuflections and religious convocations amount to nothing unless your heart-life go into them.

When that bronzed slave took from the presence of Pilate that wash basin he carried away none of Pilate’s cruelty, wickedness or guilt.

Nothing against creeds; we all have them--either written or implied. Nothing against ceremonies; they are of infinite importance. Nothing against sacraments; they are divinely commanded. Nothing against rosary, if there be as many heartfelt prayers as beads counted. Nothing against incense floating up from censer amid Gothic arches, if the prayers be as genuine as the ceremony is sweet. Nothing against Epiphany, Lent, Ash Wednesday, Easter, Good Friday, Whitsuntide or Palm Sunday, if these symbols have behind them genuine repentance, holy reminiscence and Christian consecration.

But ceremony is only the sheath to the sword; it is only the shell to the kernel; it is only the lamp to the flame; it is only the body to the spirit. The outward must be symbolical of the inward. Wash the hands, by all means; but, more than all, wash the heart.

Behold, also, as you see Governor Pontius Pilate thrust his hands into his wash basin, the power of conscience. He had an idea there was blood on his hands--the blood of an innocent person, whom he might have acquitted if he only had the courage.

Poor Pilate! His conscience was after him, and he knew the stain would never be washed from the right hand or the left hand; that, until the day of his death, though he might wash in all the lavers of the Roman Empire, there would be still eight fingers and two thumbs red at the tips.

Alas for this Governor Pontius Pilate! That night, after the court had adjourned and the Sanhedrists had gone home and nothing was heard outside the room but the step of the sentinel, I see Pontius Pilate arise from his tapestried and sleepless couch and go to the laver and begin to wash his hands, crying: “Out! Out, crimson spot! Tellest thou to me and to God and to the night my crime? Is there no alkali to remove these dreadful stains? Is there no chemistry to dissolve this carnage? Must I to the day of my death carry the blood of this innocent man on my heart and hand? Out, thou crimson spot!”

Against the disappointing and insufficient laver of Pilate’s vice, cowardice and sin I place the brazen sea of a Savior’s pardoning mercy!

QUEEN OF SHEBA.

What is that long procession approaching Jerusalem? I think, from the pomp of it, there must be royalty in the train. I smell the breath of the spices which are brought as presents, and I hear the shout of the drivers, and I see the dust-covered caravan, showing that they come from far away. Cry the news up to the palace:

“The Queen of Sheba advances.”

Let all the people come out to see. Let the mighty men of the land come out on the palace corridors. Let King Solomon come down the stairs of the palace before the Queen has alighted. Shake out the cinnamon and the saffron, the calamus and the frankincense, and pass it into the treasure house. Take up the diamonds until they glitter in the sun!

The Queen of Sheba alights.

She enters the palace.

She washes at the bath.

She sits down at the banquet.

The cup bearers bow. The meat smokes. The music trembles in the dash of the waters from the modern sea. Then she rises from the banquet, walks through the conservatories, gazes on the architectural marvels, and asks Solomon many strange questions. Thus she learns about the religion of the Hebrews, and then and there she becomes a servant of Jehovah.

The Queen of Sheba is overwhelmed. She begins to think that all the spices that she brought, and all the precious woods which are intended to be turned into harps and psalteries and into railings for the causeway between the Temple and the palace and the $1,800,000 in money--she begins to think that all these presents amount to nothing in such a palace; and she is almost ashamed that she has brought them, and she says within herself:

“I heard a great deal about this place and about this wonderful religion of the Hebrews, but I find it far beyond my highest anticipations. I must add more than 50 per cent to what has been related. It exceeds every thing that could have been expected. The half was not told me.”

What a beautiful thing it is when social position and wealth surrender themselves to God! When religion comes to a neighborhood, the first to receive it are the women. Some men say it is because they are weak minded. I say it is because they have quicker perception of what is right, more ardent affection and capacity for sublimer emotion.

After the women have received the Gospel, then all the distressed and the poor of both sexes--those who have no friend except Jesus. Last of all come the greatly prospered. Alas, that it is so!

Do you know where Sheba was? Some say it was in Abyssinia; others say it was in the southern part of Arabia Felix. In either case it was a great way off from Jerusalem. To get from there to Jerusalem the Queen of Sheba had to cross a country infested with bandits and go across blistering deserts.

Why did not the Queen of Sheba stay at home and send a committee to inquire about this new religion, and have the delegates report in regard to that religion and wealth of King Solomon? She wanted to see for herself and hear for herself. She could not do this by work of committee. She felt that she had a soul worth ten thousand kingdoms like Sheba, and she wanted a robe richer than any woven by Oriental shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the jewels of eternity.

Bring out the camels. Put on the spices. Gather up the jewels of the throne and put them on the caravan. Start now--no time is to be lost. Goad on the camels. When I see that caravan--dust-covered, weary and exhausted--trudging on across the desert and among the banditti until it reaches Jerusalem, I say: “There is an earnest seeker after truth.”

SALOME.

This is the anniversary of Herod’s birthday. The palace is lighted. The highways leading thereto are all ablaze with the pomp of invited guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and all the mighty men of the land are coming to mingle in the festivities.

The table is spread with all the luxuries that royal purveyors can gather. The guests, white robed and anointed and perfumed, come and sit at the table.

Music! The jests evoke roars of laughter. Riddles are propounded. Repartee is indulged. Toasts are drank. The brain is befogged. The wit rolls on into uproar and blasphemy. They are not satisfied yet. Turn on more light. Pour out more wine. Music! Sound all the trumpets. Clear the floor for a dance. Bring in Salome, the beautiful and accomplished princess. The door opens, and in bounds the dancer. The lords are enchanted. Stand back and make room for the brilliant gyrations. These men never saw such “poetry of motion.” Their souls whirl in the reel and bound with the bounding feet.

Herod forgets crown and throne and every thing but the fascinations of Salome. All the magnificence of his realm is as nothing compared with the splendor that whirls on tiptoe before him. His body sways from side to side, corresponding with the motions of the enchantress. His soul is filled with the pulsations of the feet and bewitched with the taking postures and attitudes more and more amazing.