CHAPTER XV

_The Appeal of Miriam_

[Sidenote: The Changes of Time]

When the first tumult of our spirits was passed, I had leisure to see what changes the interval had made in faces so loved. Miriam’s betrayed the hours of distress and pain that she must have passed through, but her noble style of beauty, the emanation of a noble mind, was as conspicuous as ever. I even thought, when her eyes met mine from time to time, that they shone with a loftier intelligence, as if misfortune had raised their vision above the things of our trivial world. My daughters’ forms had matured, but Salome, the elder, had to a certain degree her mother’s look; her glance was bright, yet she was often lost in meditation, and the rapid changes of her cheek from the deepest crimson to the whiteness of the snow alarmed me with menaces of early decay. Esther, too, had undergone her revolution. But it was of the brightest texture. The seas, the skies, the mountains of Greece, filled her glowing spirit with images of new life. She had listened with boundless delight to the traditions of that most brilliant of all people; the works of the pencil and the chisel had met her eye in a profuseness and perfection that she had never contemplated before; her harp had echoed to names of romantic valor and proud patriotism; and as I gazed on her in those hours when in the feeling that she was unobserved she gave way to the rich impulses of her soul, I thought alternately of the prophetess and of the muse.

The shipwreck converted the solitary shore into a little village; the sailors collected the fragments of the vessel and formed them into huts; the caves that ran along the level of the sands supplied habitations in themselves, and by the assistance of those dwellers on the precipice, who had so unexpectedly started to light, the first difficulties of a wild coast were sufficiently combated. The bustling activity of the Greek mariners and the adroitness with which they availed themselves of all contrivances for passing the heavy hour, their sleights-of-hand, sports and dances, their recitations of popular poems, and their boat-songs, kept the spot in continual animation.

This was my first contact with the actual people, and I acknowledged their right to have been distinguished among the most showy disturbers of mankind. The evil of the character too was displayed without much trouble of disguise. They habitually gamed till they had no better stake than the fragments of their own clothing; but they would game for a shell, for a stone that they picked up on the sands, for anything. They quarreled with as perfect facility as they gamed; the knife was out quick as lightning, but to do them justice their wrath was as brief. The combatants embraced at a word, danced, kissed, and wept; then drank, gamed, quarreled, and were sworn brothers again. But this was Greece in its lowest rank.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Meets Constantius]

Constantius, the commander of the galley, was a specimen of the land which produced a Plato and a Pericles. When I first saw him led to me by Miriam as the champion who had restored her and her children to happiness, I saw virtue and manliness of the highest order in his features. He was in his prime, but a scar across his forehead and the severities of martial life had given early seriousness to his countenance. But his conversation had the full spirit of the spring-time of life. It was incomparably various and animated, altogether free from professional pedantry; it had the interest that belongs to professional feelings. Military adventure, striking traits of warlike intelligence, the composition of the fleets and armies of the various states that fought under the wing of the Roman eagle, were topics on which his fire was exhaustless. On those I listened to him with the strong sympathy of one to whom war must henceforth be the grand pursuit; war for national freedom—war purified of its evil by the most illustrious cause that ever unsheathed the sword.

He had conversation for us all. His intercourse with the ruling lands of the earth gave him a copious store of recollections, picturesque and strange. Esther combated and questioned the traveler. Salome listened to the warrior—listened and loved. He had higher topics of which I was yet to hear. In the inhabitants of the precipice he found a little colony of his countrymen, fugitive Christians driven out by persecution, to make their home in the wilderness of nature.[23] The long range of caverns which perforated the rock gave them a roof. The fertility of the soil, and the occasional visit of a bark sent by their concealed friends, supplied the necessaries of life, and there they awaited the close of that ferocious tyranny which at length roused the world against Nero—or awaited the end of all suffering in the grave. A succession of storms rendered traveling impossible and detained us among those hermits for some days. I found them intelligent and, in general, men of the higher ranks of knowledge and condition. Some were of celebrated families, and had left behind them opulence and authority. A few were peasants. But misfortune and, still more, principle, extinguished all that was abrupt in the inequality of ranks without leaving license in its stead. Jew as I was, and steadily bound to the customs of my country, I yet did honor to the patience, the humility, and the devotedness of those exiled men. I even once attended their worship on the first day of the week, assured that the abomination of idols was not to be found there, and that I should hear nothing insulting to the name of Israel.

[Sidenote: A Simple Worship]

The ceremonial was simple. Those who had witnessed the heaven-commanded magnificence of the Temple might smile at the bareness of walls of rock, figured only with the wild herbage; or those who had seen the extravagant and complicated rites of paganism might scorn the few and obvious forms of the homage. But there was the spirit of strong prayer, the breathing of the heart, the unanswerable sincerity. Every violence of the mere animal frame was unknown. I saw no pagan convulsion, no fierceness of outcry and gesture, not even the vehement solemnity of the Jew. All was calm; tears stole down, but they stole in silence; knees were bowed, but there was no prostration; prayers fervent and lofty were poured forth, but they were in accents uttered less from the lip than from the soul—appeals of hallowed confidence, as to a Being who was sure to hear the voice of children to a Father who, wherever two or three were gathered together, was in the midst of them.

At length the storms cleared away and the sky wore the native azure of the climate. A messenger despatched to Cyprus returned with a vessel for the embarkation of the Greeks. Camels and mules were procured from the neighboring country for our journey, and the morning was fixed on which we were to separate. Yet with so much reason for joy, few resolutions could have been received with less favor. Constantius almost shunned society or shared in it with a silence and depression that made his philosophy more than questionable. Miriam was engaged in long conferences with Salome, from which they both came away much saddened. Esther was thus my chief companion, and she talked of the shore, the sea, and even of the tempests, with heightened interest. The Greeks, sailor and soldier alike, loved too well the romantic ease and careless adventure of the place to look with complacency on the little vessel in which they were to be borne once more into the land of restraint. The fugitive colony were not the slowest in their regrets. They had been deeply prepared for human vicissitudes, and had humbled themselves to all things; yet such is the strong and natural connection of man with man that they lamented the solitude to which they must again be left, like the commencement of a new exile.

[Sidenote: The Moment of Departure]

There are few things more singular than the blindness which, in matters of the highest importance to ourselves, often hides the truth that is as plain as noon to all other eyes. The cause which had deprived Constantius of his eloquence and Salome of her animation was obvious to every one but me. Nor was the mystery yet to be disclosed to my tardy knowledge. I had strayed through the cliffs, as was my custom after the heat of the day, and was taking a last look at the sea from the edge of the precipice. The sands far below me were covered with preparations for the voyage, which, like our journey, was to commence with the rising sun. The little vessel lay, a glittering toy, at anchor with her thread-like streamers playing in the breeze. The sailors were fishing, preparing their evening meal, heaving water and provisions down the rocks, or enjoying themselves over flagons of Syrian wine round their fires. All was the activity of a seaport, but from the height on which I stood, all was but the activity of a mole-hill.

“And is it of such materials,” mused I, “that ambition is made? Is it to command, to be gazed on, to be shouted after by such mites and atoms as those, that life is exhausted in watching and weariness; that our true enjoyments are sacrificed; that the present and the future are equally cast from us; that the hand is dipped in blood and the earth desolated? What must Alexander’s triumph have looked to one who saw it from the towers of Babylon? A triumph of emmets!” I smiled at the moral of three hundred feet of precipice.

[Sidenote: Salathiel Alone with Miriam]

A step beside me put my philosophy to flight. My wife stood there, and never saw I her beauty more beautiful. The exertion of the ascent had colored her cheek; the breeze had scattered her raven locks across a forehead of the purest white; her lips wore the smile so long absent, and there was altogether an air of hope and joy in her countenance that made me instinctively ask of what good news she was the bearer. Without a word, she sat down beside me and pressed my hand; she fixed her eyes on mine, tried to speak, and failing, fell on my neck and burst into tears. Alarmed by her sobs and the wild beating of her heart, I was about to rise for assistance when she detained me, and the smile returned; she bared her forehead to the breeze, and recovering, disburdened her soul.

“How many billows,” said she, gazing on the sea, “will roll between that little bark and this shore to-morrow! There is always something melancholy in parting. Yet if that vessel could feel, with what delight would she not wing her way to Cyprus, lovely Cyprus!”

I was surprised. “Miriam! this from you? Can you regret the place of paganism—the land of your captivity?”

“No,” was the answer, with a look of lofty truth; “I abhorred the guilty profanations of the pagan; and who can love the dungeon? Even were Cyprus a paradise, I should have felt unhappy in the separation from my country and from you. Yet those alone who have seen the matchless loveliness of the island—the perpetual animation of life in a climate and in the midst of scenes made for happiness—can know the sacrifice that must be made by its people in leaving it, and leaving it perhaps forever.”

“The crew of that galley are not to be tried by long exile. In two days at furthest, they will anchor in their own harbour,” was my only answer.

[Sidenote: Miriam Speaks of Constantius]

“And how deeply must the sacrifice be enhanced by the abandonment of rank, wealth, professional honors!—and this is the sacrifice on which I have been sent to consult my husband.”

I was totally at a loss to conceive of whom she spoke.

“Our friend—our deliverer from captivity or death—the generous being who, through infinite hazards, restored your wife and children to happiness and home——”

“Constantius? Impossible! At the very age of ambition, with his talents, his knowledge of life, his prospects of distinction!”

“Constantius will never return to Cyprus in that galley—will never draw sword for Rome again—will never quit the land given by Heaven to our fathers, if such be the will of Salathiel.”

“Strange. But his motives? He is superior to the fickleness that abandons an honorable course of life through the pure love of novelty—or is he weary of the absurdities of paganism?”

“Thoroughly weary—more than weary: he has abjured them forever and ever.”

“You rejoice me. But it was to be expected from his manly mind. You have brought an illustrious convert, my beloved! and if your captivity has done this, it was the will of Heaven. Constantius shall be led with distinction to the Temple and be one of ourselves. Judea may yet require such men. Our holy religion may exult in such conquests from the darkness of the idolatrous world.”

The voice of the hermits at their evening prayer now arose and held us in a silence which neither seemed inclined to break. Many thoughts pressed on my mind: the addition to our circle of a man whom I honored and esteemed; the accession of a practised soldier to our cause; the near approach of the hour of conflict; the precarious fate of those I loved in the great convulsion which was to rend away the Roman yoke or leave Judea a tomb. I accidentally looked up and saw that Miriam had been as abstracted as myself. But war and policy were not in the contemplations of the beaming countenance; nor their words on the lips that quivered and crimsoned before me. Her eyes were fixed on the sky, and she was in evident prayer, which I desired not to disturb.

[Sidenote: Miriam’s Candor]

She at length caught my glance and blushed like one detected; but quickly recovering, said in a tone never to be forgotten: “My husband! my lord! my love! would that I dared open my whole spirit to you! would that you could read for yourself the truths written in my heart!”

“Miriam!”

“This is no reproach. But I know your strength of opinion—your passion for all that concerns the glory of Israel; your right, the right of talents and character to the foremost rank among the priesthood—and those things repel me.”

“Speak out at once. We can have no concealments, Miriam; candor, candor in all things.”

“You have heard the prayers of those exiles; you acknowledge their acquirements and understandings; they have sacrificed much, everything—friends, country, the world. Can such men have been imposed on? Can they have imposed on themselves? Is it possible that their sacrifices could have been made for a fiction?”

“Perhaps not; the question is difficult. We are strangely the slaves of impulse. Men every day abandon the most obvious good for the most palpable follies. Enthusiasm is a minor madness.”

“But are those exiles enthusiasts? They are grave men, experienced in life; their language is totally free from extravagance; they reason with singular clearness; they live with the most striking command over the habits of their original condition. Greeks as they are, you see no haste of temper, you hear no violence of language among them. Once idolaters, they shrink from the thought of idols. Now fugitive and persecuted, they pray for their persecutors. Sharing the lair of wild beasts, and driven out from all that they knew and loved, they utter no complaint—they even rejoice in their calamity and offer up praises to the mercy that shut the gates of earth upon their steps, only to open the gates of heaven.”

[Sidenote: The Hope of Israel]

“I am no persecutor, Miriam. Nay, I honor the self-denial, as I doubt not the sincerity of those men. But if they have thrown off a portion of their early blindness, why not desire the full illumination? Why linger half-way between falsehood and truth? It is not, as you know, our custom to solicit proselytes. But such men might be not unworthy of the hope of Israel.”

“It is to the hope of Israel that they have come, that they cling, that they look up for a recompense—a glorious recompense for their sufferings.”

“Let them then join us at sunrise, and come to our holy city.”

“Salathiel, the time is declared when men shall worship not in that mountain alone, but through all lands; when the yoke of our law shall be lightened and the weary shall have rest; when the altar shall pass away as the illustrious victim has passed, and the wisdom of heaven shall be the possession of all mankind.”

I looked at her in astonishment. “Miriam, this from you! from a daughter of the blood of Jacob! from the wife of a servant of the Temple! Have you become a Christian?”

“I have done nothing in presumption. I have prayed to the Source of light that He would enlighten my understanding; I have, night and day, examined the law and the prophets. Bear with my weakness, Salathiel, if it be proved weakness. But if it be wisdom, knowledge, and truth, I implore you by our love, nay, by the higher interests of your own soul, follow my example.”

It was impossible to answer harshly to a remonstrance expressed with the overflowing fondness of the heart: I could only remind her of the unchangeable promises made to Judaism.

“But it is of those promises I speak,” urged she; “we have seen the day that our father Abraham longed to see; that mighty Being, the Lord of eternity, the express image of the glory of the Invisible, the hope of the patriarch, the promise of the prophet, has come.”

I was alarmed.

“Yet Israel is divided and enslaved, torn by capricious tyranny, and hurrying to the common ruin of doomed nations. Is this the triumphant kingdom of prophecy?”

“Salathiel, I have doubted like you; but I have been at length convinced out of the mouths of the prophets themselves. Have they not declared that Israel should suffer before it triumphed, and suffer too for a period that strikes the mind with terror? that the King of Israel should be excluded from his kingdom—nay, take upon him the form of a servant—nay, die, and die by a death of pain and shame the death of a slave and criminal?”

“It is so written. But it is beyond our power to reconcile.”

“Pray then for the power, and it will be given to you. Ask for the spirit of holy intelligence, and it will enlighten you. Pride is the crime of our nation. Humility would take the veil from the eyes of our people. Salathiel, my lord, the being treasured in my heart! read the Scriptures. I have prayed for you. Read——”

“But how can the promise of the kingdom be denied? It is the theme first, last, and without end of all the inspired masters of Israel. What splendor and reality of history was ever more vivid and real than the glorious promises of Isaiah?” I murmured.

[Sidenote: The Coming of the Messiah]

“Yet what force and minuteness of picturing ever excelled Isaiah’s description of the lowliness, the obscurity, the rejection, the agonies, and the death of the Messiah? Why shall we suppose that the one description is true and the other false? Has not the same inspiration given both? Why shall we conceive that the Messiah and His kingdom must appear together? We see the time of His first coming defined to a year, by our great prophet Daniel. But where do we see the time of the triumphant kingdom defined? Why may it not follow at a distance of ages? We know that we shall stand at the latter day upon the earth and in our flesh shall see God. Why shall not the triumph be reserved for that day of glory? Are our people now fit to be a nation of kings? Or are the best of us, in the mortal feebleness of our nature, fit to share in a triumph in which angels are to minister? fit dwellers of a city from which error and evil are to be excluded; in which there is to be no tear, no human suffering, no remembered bitterness; ‘a city whose builder and maker is God’; within whose walls live holiness, power, and virtue; on whose throne sits the Omnipotent!”

[Sidenote: Salathiel Considers Paganism]

Sensations to which I dared not give utterance oppressed me; my crime, my fate, rose up before the mental eye. I had no answer for this admirable woman. Her pure zeal and her holiness of heart touched me deeply. But let no man blame my stubbornness until he has weighed the influence of feelings, born in a people, strengthened by their history, reenforced by miracle, and authenticated by the words of inspiration. That Judaism was purity itself to the worship and morals of the pagan world, that it was the continued object of a particular Providence, that it alone possessed the revelations of God, were facts that defied doubt. And that those high distinctions should be made void, and the slavish mind of paganism be admitted into our privileges—still more, that it should be admitted to the exclusion of the chosen line—seemed to me a conclusion that no reasoning could substantiate; a fantastic and airy fiction to which no reasoning could be applied.

The moon ascended in serenity, and her orb, slightly tinged by the many-colored clouds that lay upon the horizon, threw a faint silver upon the precipice. The sounds below were hushed; the moving figures, the vessel, the sea, the cliffs, were totally veiled in purple mist. We could not have been more alone if we had been seated on a cloud, and the beauty, the exalted gesture, and the glowing wisdom of the being before me were like those that we conceive of spirits delegated to lead the disembodied mind upward from world to world. A sea-bird winging its way above our heads broke the reverie. I reminded my teacher that it grew late and our absence might produce anxiety.

[Sidenote: The Secret of a Scroll]

“Salathiel,” said she, with mingled fervor and softness, “you know I love you; never was heart more fondly bound to another than is mine to you. I am grateful for your permission to receive Constantius into our tribe. But one obligation, infinitely dearer, you can confer on me—read this scroll.” She drew from her bosom a letter, written to his church by one of the Christian leaders in Asia. “I desire not to offend your convictions, nor to hasten you into a rash adoption of those of others. But in this scroll you will find philosophy without its pride, and knowledge without its guile; you will find, furthermore, the disclosure of those mysteries which have so long perplexed our people. Read, and may He who can bring wisdom out of the lips of babes, and make the wisdom of the wise foolishness, shed His light upon the generous heart of my husband!”

At another time I might have started in horror from this avowal of her faith. But the scene, the circumstances, an unaccountable internal impression—a voice of the soul, prohibited me. I took her trembling hand, and without a word led her down to our dwelling.