CHAPTER V

_Eleazar Learns of Salathiel’s Renunciation_

[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Journey Continued]

The country through which we passed, after leaving the boundaries of Samaria—where, with all its peace, no Jew could tread but as in the land of strangers—was new to me. My life had been till now spent in study or in serving the altar; and I had heard, with the usual and unwise indifference of men devoted to books, the praise of the picturesque and stately provinces that still remained to our people. I was now to see for myself, and was often compelled, as we advanced, to reproach the idle prejudice that had so long deprived me, and might forever deprive so many of my consecrated brethren, of an enjoyment cheering to the human heart and full of lofty and hallowed memory to the men of Israel. As we passed along, less traveling than wandering at pleasure, through regions where every winding of the marble hill or descent of the fruitful valley showed us some sudden and romantic beauty of landscape, my kinsmen took a natural pride in pointing out the noble features that made Canaan a living history of Providence.[8]

[Sidenote: A Prayer in the Valley]

What were even the trophy-covered hills of Greece or the monumental plains of Italy to the hills and plains where the memorial told of the miracles and the presence of the Supreme? “Look to that rock,” they would exclaim; “there descended the angel of the Presence! On the summit of that cloudy ridge stood Ezekiel, when he saw the vision of the latter days. Look to yonder cleft in the mountains; there fell the lightning from heaven on the Philistine.” In our travel we reached a valley, a spot of singular beauty and seclusion, blushing with flowers and sheeted with the olive from its edge down to a stream that rushed brightly through its bosom. There was no dwelling of man in it, but on a gentler slope of the declivity stood a gigantic terebinth-tree. More than curiosity was attracted to this delicious spot, for the laughter and talk of the caravan had instantly subsided at the sight. All, by a common impulse, dismounted from their horses and camels; and though it was still far from sunset, the tents were pitched and preparations made for prayer. The spot reminded me of the valley of Hebron, sacred to the Jewish heart as the burial-place of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac. May they sleep in the bosom of the Lord! The terebinth-tree, under which the greatest of the patriarchs sat and talked with the angels—the fountain—the cave of Macpelah, in which his mortal frame returned to the earth, to come again in glory, appeared to lie before me.

From the day of my unspeakable crime, I had never joined in prayer with my people. Yet, I was still a believer in the faith of Israel. I even clung to it with the nervous violence of one who, in a shipwreck, feels that his only hope is the plank in his grasp, and that some more powerful hand is tearing even that plank away. But the sight of human beings enjoying the placid consolations of prayer had from the first moment overwhelmed me with so keen a sense of my misfortune—the pious gentleness of attitude and voice, the calm uplifted hand, and low and solemn aspiration were in so deep a contrast to the involuntary wildness and broken utterings of a heart bound in more than adamantine chains, that I shrank from the rebuke and groaned in solitude.

[Sidenote: Eleazar, the Brother of Miriam]

I went forth into the valley, and was soon lost in its thick vegetation. The sound of the hymn that sank down in mingled sweetness with the murmuring of the evening air through the leaves, and the bubbling of the brook below, alone told me that I was near human beings. I sat upon a fragment of turf, embroidered as never was kingly footstool and with my hands clasped over my eyes, to remove from me all the images of life, gave way to that visionary mood of mind in which ideas come and pass in crowds without shape, leaving no more impression than the drops of a sun-shower on the trees. I had remained long in this half-dreaming confusion, and had almost imagined myself transported to some intermediate realm of being, where a part of the infliction was that of being startled by keen flashes of light from some upper world, when I was roused by the voice of Eleazar, the brother of Miriam, at my side. His manly and generous countenance expressed mingled anxiety and gladness at discovering me. “The whole camp,” said he, “have been alarmed at your absence, and have searched for these three hours through every part of our day’s journey. Miriam’s distraction at length urged me to leave her, and it was by her instinct that I took my way down the only path hitherto unsearched, and where, indeed, from fear or reverence of the place, few but myself would have willingly come.” He called to an attendant, and, sending him up the side of the valley with the tidings, we followed slowly, for I was still feeble. As we emerged into a more open space, the moon lying on masses of cloud, like a queen pillowed on couches of silver, showed me, in her strong illumination of the forest, the flashes which had added to the bewildered pain of my reverie. While I talked with natural animation of the splendor of the heavens, and pointed out the lines and figures on the moon’s disk, which made it probable that it was, like earth, a place of habitation, he suddenly pressed my hand, and stopping, with his eyes fixed on my face: “How,” said he, “does it happen, my friend, my brother Salathiel?” I started, as if my name, the name of my illustrious ancestor, direct in descent from the father of the faithful, were an accusation. He proceeded, with an ardent pressure of my quivering hand: “How is it to be accounted for that you, with such contemplations and the knowledge that gives them the dignity of science, can yet be so habitually given over to gloom? Serious crime I will not believe in you, though the best of us are stained. But your character is pure; I know your nature to be too lofty for the degenerate indulgence of the passions, and Miriam’s love for you, a love passing that of women, is in itself a seal of virtue. Answer me, Can the wealth, power, or influence of your brother and his house, nay of his tribe, assist you?”

[Sidenote: Speaks of Salathiel’s Gloom]

I was silent. He paused, and we walked on a while, without a sound but that of our tread among the leaves; but his mind was full, and it would have way. “Salathiel,” said he, “you do injustice to yourself, to your wife, and to your friends. This gloom that sits eternally on your forehead must wear away all your uses in society; it bathes your incomparable wife’s pillow in tears, and it disheartens, nay distresses, us all. Answer me as one man of honor and integrity would another. Have you been disappointed in your ambition? I know your claims. You have knowledge surpassing that of a multitude of your contemporaries; you have talents that ought to be honored; your character is unimpeached and unimpeachable. Such things ought to have already raised you to eminence. Have you found yourself thwarted by the common artifice of official life? Has some paltry sycophant crept up before you by the oblique path that honor disdains? Or have you felt yourself an excluded and marked man, merely for the display of that manlier vigor, richer genius, and more generous and sincere impulse of heart which to the conscious inferiority of the rabble of understanding is gall and wormwood? Or have you taken too deeply into your resentment the common criminal negligence that besets common minds in power, and makes them carelessly fling away upon incapacity, and guiltily withhold from worth, the rewards which were entrusted to them as a sacred deposit for the encouragement of national ability and personal virtue?”

I strongly disavowed all conceptions of the kind, and assured him that I felt neither peculiar merits nor peculiar injuries. “I have seen too much of what ambition and worldly success were made of, to allow hope to excite or failure to depress me. I am even,” added I, “so far from being the slave of that most vulgar intemperance of a deranged heart, the diseased craving for the miserable indulgences of worldly distinction, that would to Heaven I might never again enter the gates of Jerusalem!”

[Sidenote: Beside the Tomb of Isaiah]

He started back in surprise. The confession had been altogether unintended, and I looked up to see the burst of Jewish wrath descending upon me. I saw none. My kinsman’s fine countenance was brightened with a lofty joy. “Then you have renounced. But no, it is yet too soon. At your age, with your prospects, can you have renounced the career offered to you among the rulers of Israel?”

“I have renounced.”

“Sincerely, solemnly, upon conviction?”

“From the bottom of my soul, now and forever!”

We had reached the open space in front of the terebinth-tree that stood in majesty, extending its stately branches over a space cleared of all other trees, a sovereign of the forest. In silence he led me under the shade to a small tomb, on which the light fell with broken luster. “This,” said he, “is the tomb of the greatest prophet on whose lips the wisdom of Heaven ever burned. There sleeps Isaiah! There is silent the voice that for fifty years spoke more than the thoughts of man in the ears of a guilty people. There are cold the hands that struck the harp of more than mortal sounds to the glory of Him to whom earth and its kingdoms are but as the dust of the balance. There lies the heart which neither the desert, nor the dungeon, nor the teeth of the lion, nor the saw of Manasseh, could tame—the denouncer of our crimes—the scourge of our apostasy—the prophet of that desolation which was to bow the grandeur of Judah to the grave as the tree of the mountain in the whirlwind. Saint and martyr, let my life be as thine; and if it be the will of God, let my death be even as thine!”

[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Renunciation]

He threw himself on his knees and remained in prayer for a time. I knelt with him, but no prayer would issue from my heart. He at length rose, and, leading me into the moonlight, said in a low voice: “Is there not, where the holy sleep, a holiness in the very ground? I waive all the superstitious feelings of the idolater, worshiping the dust of the creature, for the King alike of all. I pass over the natural human homage for the memory of those who have risen above us by the great qualities of their being. But if there are supernal influences acting upon the mind of man; if the winged spirits that minister before the throne still descend to earth on missions of mercy, I will believe that their loved place is round the grave where sleeps the mortal portion of the holy. In all our journeys to the Temple, it has been the custom of our shattered and humiliated tribe to pause beside this tomb, and offer up our homage to that Mightiest of the mighty who made such men for the lights of Israel!” He then earnestly repeated the question: “Have you abandoned your office?” “Yes,” was the answer, “totally, with full purpose never to resume it. In your mountains I will live with you, and with you I will die.” Memory smote me as I pronounced the word; the refuge of the grave was not for me!

“Then,” said he, “you have relieved my spirit of a load; you are now my more than brother.” He clasped me in his arms. “Yes, Salathiel, I know that your high heart must have scorned the prejudices of the Scribe and the Pharisee; you must have seen through and loathed the smiling hypocrisy, the rancorous bigotry, and the furious thirst of blood that are hourly sinking us below the lowest of the heathen. Hating the tyranny of the Roman, as I live this hour, I would rather see the city of David inhabited by none but the idolater, or delivered over to the curse of Babylon and made the couch of the lion and the serpent, than see its courts filled with those impious traitors to the spirit of the law, those cruel extortioners under the mask of self-denial, those malignant revelers in human torture under the name of insulted religion, whose joy is crime, and every hour of whose being but wearies the long-suffering of God and precipitates the ruin of my country.”

He drew from his bosom and unrolled in the moonlight a small copy of the Scriptures. “My brother,” said he, “have you read the holy prophecies of him by whose grave we stand?” My only answer was a smile; they were the chief study of the priesthood. “True,” said he; “no doubt, you have read the words of the prophet. But wisdom is known of her children, and of them alone. Read here.”

I read the famous Haphtorah:[9] “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is the despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows!”

[Sidenote: The Future Deliverer of Judah]

He stopped me, laying his hand on my arm; I felt his strong nerves tremble like an infant’s. “Of whom hath the prophet spoken?” uttered he in a voice of intense anxiety. “Of whom? Of the Deliverer that is to restore Judah; Him that is to come,” was my answer. “Him that _is to come_—still _to come_?” he exclaimed. “God of heaven, must the veil be forever on the face of Thy Israel? When shall our darkness be light, and the chain of our spirit be broken!” The glow and power of his countenance sank; he took the roll with a sigh, and replaced it in his robe; then with his hands clasped across his bosom, and his head bowed, he led our silent way up the side of the valley.