CHAPTER XV.

THE REVELS OF MEN AND RITES OF THEIR GODDESSES.

“Rude fragments now Lie scattered where the shapely column stood. Her palaces are dust. In all the streets the sprightly chords Are silent. Revelry and dance and show Suffer a syncope and solemn pause; While God performs upon the trembling stage Of His own works His dreadful part, alone.”—COWPER.

“Then shall ye know that I am the Lord, when their slain shall be among their idols, round about their altars ... upon every high place ... under every thick oak.”—Ezekiel vi.

Passing from Edrei toward Bozrah the pilgrim knight and his wife with their convoy reached Kunawat, the Kenath of Scripture, once the dwelling place of Job. Here for a time they abode. The number and variety of castles, temples, theaters and palaces in ruins, were sufficient to engage the attention of the travelers for many days. Rizpah was more cheerful than she was at Edrei, but yet restless to reach Bozrah, on which place her heart was set.

One day standing before an old Roman temple in Kunawat, Rizpah, somewhat interested by its well preserved Corinthian columns, and Sir Charleroy deeply engrossed in contemplation of an huge stone image, the former asks: “Has the knight recognized an old English or a new Bashan love?” The woman was finding the oft-repeated and prolonged visits to this particular place monotonous. She was annoyed, but modified her rebuke into raillery.

“There is something very fascinating in the Cyclopean face.”

“A broken stone fascinate a man? But I see ’tis that of a woman; the brain part gone. Would that the English knight had wed such; then he might have been loyal to creed, and not a martyr!”

“Rizpah knows that I could never have loved a brainless face, nor any one akin to this Kunawat goddess.”

“Not if she echoed thy ‘aye’ and ‘nay’ consistently? Be careful; as many strong men have fallen by having their conceit gratified as there have fallen women through flattery.”

“How absurd to hint that I could be so lured.”

“But the knight says Astarte fascinates!”

“I said so, meaning that I’m fascinated by the train of thoughts that the image awakens. Think a moment; we, the living of to-day confronting the acme of the thought of the ages long gone. Looking at this, I seem to be seeing over rolling centuries, right into the hearts of humanity that lived thousands of years ago.”

“All this might have been taken in at a glance! Having seen it, what use is it?”

“Use? To aid in finding a key to life’s problems. I’m filled with questionings; do not yearnings, such as beat through the being of the ancients pulse in those of to-day? Are not humanity’s temptations and needs ever the same?”

“Since the ancients did not tarry to compare with us, I, being only a woman, of Gerash, of to-day, can give only the shallow answer, I suppose so.”

“Oh, I’m not questioning Rizpah; but the ruins, the air, time, my soul, God!”

“And their reply?”

“Bewildering echoes of each question?

“And it’s all a mystery to Sir Charleroy?”

“I know a little; something, next to nothing.”

“Possess curious me of that little, and I’ll help thee wonder why so much greatness came to naught.”

“That wondering is easily met; they had, as god, one whose head could be broken as this one’s was; they that would survive must be sheltered by the Invincible.”

Rizpah, meanwhile had drawn close to the huge stone face and placing one hand beneath the mouth, the other on the portion of the head just above the moon crown, her arms stretched well nigh to their limits quizically remarked:

“Those that dined with her must have had pyramids for chairs. What dost thou think they were like?”

“Crusaders?”

“Now, I’m tantalized. Crusaders two or three thousand years ago? How absurd!”

“Oh, certainly they were not known by the name, Crusaders: but they that followed Astarte and such-like deities, whether called Kenaihites, Rephaim, Moslem, Christians, or by other appellation are all soldier-pilgrims, dominated by an ideal. There have been many female deities among the pagans and there is a deal of paganism left in humanity.”

“That’s because half the race are men. Astarte would be very popular to-day with thy sex, if she were here in living form, a whole woman, instead of a fragment and beautiful also—”

“Thou dost not care to hear more of the female deities?”

“Oh, yes; I’ll be fearfully jealous if thou dost keep any thing back. Tell me what madmen the ancients were?” She paused, slapped the face of the image, ejaculating “_Virago!_” then continued, “Why did they make their effigy both hideous and huge? Ugly things should be dwarfed!”

“The ancients, who knew not the grandeur of moral power, gave their deities terribleness in their physical proportions, and a mountain of flesh became their ideal of greatness—men ever try to make their objects of worship greater than themselves, thou knowest. Hast forgotten what Ichabod once told us of the Egyptians? How they expressed their reverence by piling up pyramids and made that very diminutive which they would caricature? Oh, how our true religion, having at its heart an only, all-beautiful, Almighty God, rises above these human devices!”

“I wonder that it did not, at its first appearing on earth, instantly overthrow all others.”

“And it is a still more wonderful thing that those who embraced it, having known, should have sometimes gone back to paganism? Thou dost remember that God’s chosen people, after enjoying marvels of His Providence, plunged headlong into idolatry in the very presence of His splendor at Sinai?”

“With shame I remember it. I marvel as well that this record, which evokes the ridicule of the grosser heathen, was made part of our Holy writings.”

“God’s compensation! The people stripped themselves of their jewels to make the calf; then of their garments to worship it according to the lewd rites of Apis. God since has lashed them naked around the world, as it were, by giving their history to all times. ‘_Be sure your sin will find you out_,’ is a stern truth haunting the conscience of the evil doer; but though exposure is a bitter medicine it is a saving one. God as such applies it.”

“I think the devil crazed the people at Sinai.”

“Yes, Rizpah, but Human Desire was his name. The revelers made their devil as well as their calf, that day.”

“But it is said ‘they rose to play.’ If so disobedient and heaven-defying how could they have found heart to play?”

“Odious, significant word that one is, here. It was a ‘_play_’ that engulphed all purity. No wonder they ceased to observe the ‘burning mountain!’ Only the pure in heart can see God.”

“Thank God! that thy people and mine have finally escaped, my husband.”

“So far as we have escaped, I thank Him; but, alas, the evangels of Egypt’s scarlet heresies still go about, and there are many, everywhere, led away in chains that seem of flowers at first, but are found to be of galling iron at last.”

“I did not know this?”

“Oh, these modern perverters disguise their horrible tenets with many refined phrases; yet He that overwhelmed gross Sodom and the jewelless, naked dancers about the golden bull, sees through all their thin drapings and will judge the free lover, corrupt socialist and libertine as He did those ancients. The Assyrian and Egyptian representations of Venus generally appeared holding a serpent; a sort of bitter admission of the curse in the hand of perverted love and the fierce lashings that follow it.”

“I fail to connect the ancient with the present heresies, my good teacher.”

“I pause to-day here, reminded of their common origin and consequences. God put it into the hearts of His creatures to love women, honor motherhood, and worship Him. Read Sinai’s law, and this is all manifest. There came a perversion; the love of woman was degraded, motherhood was denied its honor, and men became God-defying. There was a confusion worse than that of Babel, and the worshiping was transferred, first, to symbolized lust; then degraded. They that adored Venus, knowing how her adoration had depraved themselves, came to believe that she scandalized the heaven they imagined. Then came a time when her earthly rites even scandalized the wiser pagans.”

“My husband leads me along strange ways. Is it wise to do so?”

“I see a grand end; follow me. There is a deep significance in the fact that among the pagans there constantly appeared this adoration of woman on account of her power of motherhood. I take this adoration as proof of a conscious need feeling after a vaguely discerned truth. The yearning is suggested by the paired gods. Assyria had its Beltis, consort of Bel-nimrud; and there were Allelta of the Arabians, the many-breasted Diana of the Ephesians, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, Ceres and Venus of Rome, this Astarte of the Giants; beyond all, in utter odiousness Khem, the Phallic god of Egypt. Amid all these false ideals, the divine home with its pure love and our immortality by grace’s mystery, were overslaughed in human thought. The glaring passions, that were unwilling to believe in other immortality than that that comes through posterity, other heaven than that of sensuous pleasure, fascinated and dominated hearts and souls.”

“And worshiping women-gods did this.”

“Worshiping beings with the form of women did it! Reverence for true womanhood ever exalts and never degrades. But these ancients adored very gorgons with snakes for hair, and having tearing, brazen claws. They set these gorgons with the Harpies, in their mythologies, at the gates of dark Pluto’s palace. Alas, where men are led by ill-flavored women, is ever more Pluto’s gateway.”

“The up-digging of these ancient soils, knight, give forth foul odors. Did they not dread a just and jealous God?”

“No. It is the constant voice of history that false belief concerning these things of which I have spoken, brings both blindness and degradation. Unbelief comes swiftly in the wake of impurity. The gorgons had but one eye and that had the malign power of turning to stone all upon whom its glance fell. When men deify a fallen woman then look for a cataclysm of evils. Rizpah has seen little of the world, but this in time she’ll find true; the man whose cult or faith bends toward the libidinous is on the way to utter atheism. So these old-time free-lovers, like those of to-day, push out of the universe in their belief, the Great, Beautiful, First Cause. The pure in heart see God; the impure can not even pray to Him. The latter must be aided by an Immaculate One. They make a gulf betwixt their souls and heaven, which Great Mercy alone can bridge.”

“Ah, knight, I’d dread a return of those gross idolatries, knowing mankind’s trend, but that I knew that Shiloh was to come as a Reformer.” The knight caught at the words of his wife to lead her toward his own dear belief.

“If He came to Rizpah in the form of a man, unique because of his virgin purity, unlike any other in being all unselfish, and accompanied by a peerless woman, exemplifying all that is best in the gentle sex; between Himself and that woman a love deep to love’s last depth, pure as a sunbeam, enduring as eternity itself, would Rizpah welcome Him!”

“That would be a wondrous coming; but I’d welcome Him.”

“Does Rizpah believe such an appearing desirable?”

“Oh, on my soul, yes! If he should so come, methinks the rites which have gone on in the secrecy of the groves, under the uncertain light of the moon, would be driven from the earth, and men come to worship God, taking that man for the ideal of manhood, that woman as woman’s pattern.”

“Dost thou see that stone with eight lines crossing, lying just there by the image of Astarte?”

“I see it and the lines; but what of them?”

“In the far East, the land of the Fire Worshipers, on almost all the handiwork of man that symbol is placed. It is to represent an eight-pointed star, the Assyrian sign of immortality.”

“Eight lines crossing to represent immortal life? This is inane!”

“Not quite. I had its explanation from my wandering Jew, Ichabod, learned by much travel in the lore of many peoples. He thus interpreted the symbol as the Assyrians understood it; man, a four-pointed star; his four radiate limbs suggesting that likeness. Thou knowest that the Israelites have been wont to call men stars? The Assyrians, not having the sure word, were led to seek by human philosophy a theory of immortality, and they got no further than twice four, two human beings in union; so eight or a double star, their symbol of marriage, represented the only immortality they were able to find; that that comes from reproduction. At least that was the only reality, the rest being very vaguely believed, and believed only because they thought that the mystery of a new life coming forth, was a hint of a spiritual method analogous to the material. They then fell to worshiping the sun, the great fructifier and light of nature; fire, the essence of passion, became their highest god. It is said that those Magi of the East, that arrived long ago at Bethlehem, were fire worshipers, and that in answer to a cry for light, constantly uttered by their race, they took their journey to Judah, seeking it.”

“The world must turn to Israel ever for the truth, Sir Charleroy.”

“For some truth; not all; but there is a tradition that the star the wise men followed was a double one, two planets in conjunction. There is a fitness in the legend, for the seekers of light were brought to the cave where lay a mother and babe; the latter God’s finest presentment of immortality, the Incarnation; the fruit of the Divine in union with the human. I stand overcome with wonder and reverence when I remember that they of the East had some light from the Jews they held captive ages before. They lost most of what they had, then, longing for its return, God answered their prayer by taking them to the finest of schools, a blessed home circle. Behold all the East looking for light at Bethlehem!”

Rizpah evaded her husband’s graceful attempt to impress on her Christian tenets, by replying: “I prefer the Jewish choice number Seven, though I can not give it fine interpretations, as thou to the Eight of the East.”

“Rizpah prefers it because it is Jewish, and I prefer Seven because I read therein a covenant; for Seven is the sacred covenant number of God’s Word. Let me interpret: There is a Triune God, symbolized by Three; then man, the child of chance, the being tossed hither and thither by the four winds, a complex union himself of body, mind, animal life and immortal spirit. Four is his representative number, or symbol. The Assyrians paired fours; the Jews vaguely discerned a grander path to eternal felicity through the conjunction of God and man, the Three and the Four. From this they derived their covenant number, Seven.”

“These are charming explanations, Sir Charleroy; especially so, if sure ones!”

“But the truths are fairer than my poor words. I read that at creation the morning stars—meaning the beings that know no night, the very sons of God—shouted for joy! They saw an immortality having its springs in the being of the Eternal, and were glad. Since then the race has diverged into two lines. The gross and unbelieving, seeking to effect the apotheosis of human lust, have gone their ways reveling under the moonlight, and building their fanes in the groves which fade, while the believing and God-taught have walked in a covenant toward Him, ‘Who only hath immortality dwelling in light.’ Rizpah, some day that home group at Bethlehem, a father, mother, and child, surrounded by angels, overshadowed by God, will come to be thought the finest ideal of this life. Yea, a picture of Heaven itself!”

The knight’s wife fixed her piercing, dark eyes on his, there were expressed in her countenance admiration and fearfulness. She was charmed by his lofty sentiments, yet apprehensive of being led into some dangerous, Christian heresy. Fanaticism always has a terror of heresy, so-called, even though it seemed to be full of white truth. Presently she questioned:

“So Og, great as a mountain of flesh, and Astarte, goddess of the pleasure that kills, only, of all Kunawat’s ancients, have left enduring names?”

“One other name endures, the ages brightening its luster—Job, loyal to the last, in spite of the devil and a virago wife.”

“Poor woman! say I of Job’s wife. None have told her side of her family troubles. May be Job haunted the grove of the moon-crowned?”

“May be? Never! His splendid orations bespoke a man walking nigh Jehovah. Listen: ‘If I beheld the moon walking in brightness, if my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth kissed my hand, let thistles grow instead of wheat.’ He said this amid the votaries of the Lust-Queen.”

“And Job may be praised, not only as proof that there has been one patient man on earth, but as proof that a good man will stand pure to the last, though the world about acclaim the praise of delightful sins?”

“He stood because entranced by his beautiful ideal. He loved Him whose name is Holiness.”

“Heaven comes at last to such.”

“Job was God’s best friend on earth in his day, and his Heavenly Father gave him as his reward His best earthly gift—a new, pure, happy, fruitful home.”

“Are we through now with the fascinating image, knight?”

“Yes, Rizpah, if we take to heart its warnings. May we preserve our integrity, and have a home as our reward finer than that of the Man of Uz; yea, verily, as fine in its tempers and virtues as that of Bethlehem.”

So saying, the knight led Rizpah toward their abode.