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diff --git a/old/69587-0.txt b/old/69587-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index bb39f5a..0000000 --- a/old/69587-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7451 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The quenchless light, by Agnes C. Laut - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The quenchless light - -Author: Agnes C. Laut - -Release Date: December 20, 2022 [eBook #69587] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Al Haines, Howard Ross & the online Distributed - Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUENCHLESS LIGHT *** - - - - - - -[Illustration: [page 75] THE PRINCESS STRUCK THE TREMBLING CREATURE A -BLOW ON ITS FLANK.] - - - - - _The_ - QUENCHLESS LIGHT - - BY - AGNES C. LAUT - -[Illustration: LOGO] - - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV - - COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - - - Copyright, 1923, 1924, by The Pictorial Review Company - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - - FOREWORD - - -How much is fact and how much is fiction in the narrative told here of -the early struggles against fearful odds in the lives of the Disciples? -And why could the life of each Disciple not be given in direct historic -record? - -For readers to whom these questions present themselves, answer can be -given in few words. - -The most cursory reading of the Gospels and Epistles makes self-evident -that the writers were very much more concerned with the message than the -messenger; and this was natural in an age when zealous partisans were -much more eager to rally round political and religious leaders than to -demonstrate the truth of the message in better living and good works and -pure beliefs. It is as if the early evangelists of the Faith were -determined to let the cause rest on its eternal truths rather than on -the merits or frailties of the human medium through whom the truths were -transmitted to humanity. It is as if the records seem to say—don’t -judge the message by the frail human vessel from whom you take it. Judge -it by its own effects. - -Of the human events in the lives of all the Disciples and Apostles—the -former, the first followers of the Living Visible Christ; the latter, -evangelists, who later became followers—very little, almost nothing, is -told. One finds some of the early followers first with John, the -Baptist, on the Dead Sea at Jordan Ford; then with Christ in Galilee, -then after the Crucifixion, in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Babylonia, in -Rome, in the cities of the Roman Road in Asia Minor, in Greece, in -Thrace, in Macedonia. Connected narrative of their movements, there is -none except a few chapters in the Acts on Paul’s travels from Damascus -to Rome; and even in this, there are long gaps. Paul speaks of hopes to -go to Spain. Did he go? We do not know, for if he did, Luke his -historian, leaves no record of that trip. Peter writes a letter from -Babylonia. Was he in the region of the Euphrates; or was he in Rome, -writing in cypher because of the perils to the Faith from the time Rome -set up Emperor Worship in all the pagan temples? Again, we do not know; -for consecutive narrative from year to year, there is none; so that any -attempt to give a connected life of the leaders of early Christianity -would fall down from sheer lack of data; but the facts, which we possess -authenticated beyond controversy by contemporary sacred and profane -writers, and by recent and ancient archæological and linguistic research -covering from Egypt to Ethiopia, from Ephesus to Mesopotamia—throw so -much light on the early struggles of the New Faith that by taking what -the modern scenario writer would call—“the spot-lights” of their -activities—we can reconstruct the early lives of the leaders of the -purest Faith the world has ever known. - -And now how much is fact and how much is fiction in these narratives? -Very little of the essential is fiction. The fiction is only the string -for the jewels of Truth. A semi-secular figure, who is absolutely -historic, has been chosen as the actor. The actor’s experiences are -taken from real life and actual fact. The reaction of the experiences on -the actor’s personality may be called imaginary; but they are such as -similar experiences would have been on you, or me to-day; and each -action is chosen to throw a flash light on some era in the Disciples’ -and Apostles’ lives, which is known and proved and authenticated in -history, archæology and the documents now coming so richly to light, -owing to better mastery of ancient script. In this way, we can get a -picture of the heroes and heroines of the early days, who kept the Faith -for us. We can get a picture of them as living, struggling, heroic, -dauntless men and women, and not the shadowy figures of half myth, half -fairy stories, with which we have too often enveloped the keepers of the -ark of the covenant of the Faith. - -I have referred to youth seeking light, where many of the old school -accuse them of thoughtlessly seeking only pleasure. I consider this a -libel on modern youth. - -It is in the hope of showing the verity of the heroic lives in the early -days of the Faith, that I have planned these records. It is in the hope -of showing the keeping of that Faith as the supremely best vocation for -youth that I have tried to dig out the unknown, historic facts bringing -us the Faith and clothe them in flesh and blood. If the stories send -back with fresh eyes readers to the old records, their aim is fulfilled, -and all the errors, I pre-claim as my own. The truths, themselves, are -eternally old as they are eternally young. - - A. C. L. - -WASSAIC, HARLEM ROAD - NEW YORK - - - - - CONTENTS - - - STORIES OF THE APOSTLES’ LIVES IN THEIR DAUNTLESS - STRUGGLE TO ESTABLISH THE NEW FAITH IN A DYING WORLD - -CHAPTER PAGE - FOREWORD v -I. NEITHER BOND NOR FREE 1 -II. ARDATH, THE FIELD OF FLOWERS 45 -III. THE SWORD AND THE SUNBURST 77 -IV. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 125 -V. “AND THERE SHALL BE NO MORE DEATH” 174 - - APPENDIX -Foreword to Appendix 209 -A. Concerning Paul’s Missionary Tours and Disputed Points 221 -B. Old Documents and Modern Views on the Herod Family 242 -C. The Significance of the Fall of Jerusalem and the Breaking Up 253 - of the Roman Empire -D. The Disputes as to Thecla in Legend and History 264 -E. Concerning the Early Gnostics and Apollos and Apollonius and 271 - John - Finale 283 - - - - - _BE GLAD_ - - _1_ - - _“Be glad! Be glad!” I sing!_ - _The sun rolls round the ring_ - _Of law! His beams outfling_ - _Like birds of song on wing._ - - _2_ - - _Be glad the sun is bright—_ - _Be glad the sun is light—_ - _Be glad the law is right—_ - _Tho’ truth we learn through pain—_ - _Be glad the darkest night_ - _Rolls round to light again._ - - _3_ - - _Our sin is but a sleep_ - _Out from the vasty deep_ - _Of Death’s eternal Keep_ - _For God, to Whom we creep._ - - _4_ - - _Breast forward! Shout the cry_ - _Of Joy, of Life, on high!_ - _To sadness give the lie!_ - _Ten-thousand spheres give voice_ - _The rivers racing by—_ - _The chorus join—Rejoice!_ - - _5_ - - _Mistake not carcass pains—_ - _They are your growing gains_ - _Of Soul on Self, ere wanes_ - _The Sun; and through the lanes_ - _Of the Far Golden West_ - _You pass to your long rest,_ - _O Warrior Soul; where shade_ - _And dark by that sword blade_ - _Of Light are cleft from you_ - _And never more pursue:_ - _The shadows cleft and reft_ - _By Him_ - _Who guards the Tree of Life_ - _From snatching hands of strife_ - _Elohim!_ - _And you pass to your rest_ - _In the all Golden West_ - _Where Sun sinks never more_ - _And Light far to the fore_ - _Sings with ten-thousand spheres—_ - _Give voice, Rejoice, Rejoice—_ - _Again, I say, Rejoice!_ - _A. C. L._ - - - - - _The_ - QUENCHLESS LIGHT - - - - - CHAPTER I - - NEITHER BOND NOR FREE - - -The old Idumean soldier of the Prætorian Guard sat on the stone bench in -front of his prisoner’s hut on the canal road to Rome and listened to -the drunken songs coming from the bargemen at the place called the Three -Taverns. - -It was a fair evening in spring. Frogs piped from the marshes. Oleander -and apricot bloom drugged the night with dreams. The sun hung over the -far sea in a warrior shield, and the dust from the chariot wheels -filtered the air with powdered gold. - -The Spring Festival was over. The corn ships from Egypt had come in to -Naples on time for the free gifts to peasant and slave. All Rome seemed -out in holiday attire, on foot, on barge, on horseback, or in chariot, -either going home to the hill towns, or down to the villas by the sea. -The plodding peasants and slaves had their little bags of free corn and -goatskins of wine flung over their shoulders, and were followed by their -wives and their children as they turned off up to the hills, where their -bonfires were already aglow with flamy eyes in the blue shadows of the -mountains, for all-night revels. - -On the canal and its paved road passed an endless procession of the -great and the rich. Litters, palanquins, chairs, with black Nubian -slaves between the poles, went surging past with the patter of the -runners’ bare feet on the pavement and the glimpse of painted face or -jeweled, pointed hand, when the breeze blew the silk curtains from the -latticed windows. Barges, with black-faced slaves chained to the iron -rowlocks and gayly clad men and women lolling on the ivory benches -beneath awnings and pennants of white, red and gold, went gliding down -the canal with a drip of water from the oars colored in the dusty air -like a rainbow. Then there would be the sharp ring of iron-shod hoofs -over the cobblestones—a centurion with his hundred horsemen riding in -rhythm as one man, their three-edged lances aslant, would gallop -seaward, followed by the whirl of gold-rimmed chariot wheels, when some -general or senator went flashing past to take his pastime for the night -down in his grand villa by the sea. - -The old Idumean soldier of the Prætorian Guard glanced in the hut to see -that all was well with the prisoner inside, glanced toward the Three -Taverns, whence came louder songs and wilder revels, loosened his metal -headpiece, laid the helmet on the stone bench beside him, and, with -another glance up and down the thronged road, raised a bronze tankard of -wine and drained it to the lees. Smacking his lips, he set it down and -began eating some bread and cheese, when the revels in the Three Taverns -rose to the tumult of a noisy brawl. A figure darted out of the dense -road crowds, running like a deer, pursued by a rabble of drunken -bargemen armed with pikes. - -The fugitive dashed along the stone parapet of the canal, looking wildly -to right and left, frantic for a way of escape. Then the figure dived -into the thronged road, as if the crowd would afford best hiding, in and -out among the plodding peasants, who scattered from the road in panic, -with the bargemen in full cry behind shouting, “Stop him!—stop -him!—slave!—slave!—runaway slave!” - -The old Idumean guard had sprung up with sword in his right hand for a -slash at the flying figure, when a great hue and cry rent the confusion. - -“Make way—make way—the Emperor!” and a centurion band galloped through -the dust, clearing the road with their long lances. - -There was a flash of gold-rimmed chariot wheels with flying horses in a -blur. There was the figure of a youthful man with a bare head and shaved -face, holding the reins far out as charioteers drive; and Nero’s royal -equipage had passed in a smoke of dust with a great shout from the barge -travelers, who clapped their hands and rose and waved their flags. The -fleeing figure, the pursuing bargemen, and the drunken rabble had -melted; and a little form crumpled up in the doorway of the prison hut, -panting as if its lungs would burst. - -The old Prætorian guard stood motionless, sword in hand. - -The pursuing rabble had disappeared back to the drunken revels in the -Three Taverns. - -The old Idumean drove his sword back in its scabbard with a clank. - -Then he surveyed the figure lying prone at his feet. - -A thin voice called softly from the dark of the prison hut: “Who is -there, my Julius? My eyes grow poor. I cannot see in this light. I -thought I heard some one running in distress.” - -“Nothing—nothing—Master! ’Twas only that madman Emperor of ours passed -in his mad race with his proselyte Jewess Queen. You heard only the -knaves of the Three Taverns noisy in their cups.” - -The crumpled figure had not looked up, but lay panting on its face. A -green-and-white turban, such as mountaineers wear, had fallen off. The -hair was gold as the golden light of the sunset and hung in unshorn -curls about the neck. There were the sky-blue jacket of the Asiatic -Greeks, the scarlet trousers and pointed red soft kid sandals of a page; -but the garments were torn as if snatched by the pack of human wolves. - -The burly Idumean guard smiled till his teeth shone like ivory tusks -through his grizzled beard. - -“No runaway this, but some grandam’s lackey,” he smiled. “Is it boy or -girl?” - -He touched the prone, panting figure with his boot. The form did not -rise. It crouched upon its knees, and, with face hidden in hands, bowed -the head at the soldier’s feet. - -An evil-faced old woman with bleared eyes and wiry, disarranged gray -hair came swaying drunkenly up from the Three Taverns and paused, -peering. - -“Off out of this, harpy, snake of the dirt—sniff earth!” the soldier -clanked his scabbard against the metal of his leg greaves, “back to your -wine-shop den. I’ll question you later of this! We’ll have none of you -here—” and the leering woman vanished in the gathering dusk. - -The soldier sat down on his stone bench. - -“Up—boy or girl, whichever you are—help me unbuckle my breastplate and -greaves!” - -The figure sprang up with the nimbleness of youth. The eyes were blue -with the terror of a frightened girl, the cheeks were burned with the -tan of a hillside grape, and the lips were fine and full as the caressed -lips of a child. The long, slim hands had slid off the metal breastplate -of the Prætorian, and were unbuckling the greaves of an outstretched -leg, when the soldier’s great hand closed on the slim wrist and twisted -the palm upward. - -“No slave you! No callus here! No gyve marks on the wrists! You’ve never -worked among the galley slaves—my little runaway! Thighs too thin and -shoulders too slim for these foreign swine we bring to Rome in droves. -Where do you come from, young one?” - -“From the mountains of Lebanon, my Lord Julius,” answered the downcast -face. - -The Idumean gave a start. “How know you the Romans call me Julius?” he -sharply asked. “I’m an Idumean of Herod the Great’s Guard.” - -“Because you were commander on the Alexandrian corn ship that carried -all the Jewish prisoners wrecked at Malta,” answered a trembling voice -in the falsetto between youth and man. - -“You were not among the prisoners, young one—nor sailors either! I -recall them—to a man. I’ll test your truth. Mind your tongue! Describe -the ship, the passengers, the prisoners.” - -“I took ship at Fair Havens, Crete. I came down from Phrygia. You -remember the Prophet, who was a prisoner from Cæsarea, wanted you to -tarry there for the winter?” - -“By Jupiter, I do; and now I wish I had, for I’d be back in Idumea, -leading our General Vespasian’s cohorts if I hadn’t wrecked that -accursed corn ship, and not be cooling my heels here, waiting the trial -of these Jewish fanatics—what next? Describe what next—the ship?” - -“The ship had a golden goose at the stern. It was full of Egyptian corn -to the rowers’ benches. She was deep as she was broad, and long as from -here to the Three Taverns—” - -“Go on! You guess well and may lie better—all corn ships are the -same—” - -“She had flaming pennants and huge iron anchors and two monstrous oars -as paddles that you used as rudders, and the pilot at the helm was a -bald-headed old man—” - -“They all are—these Greeks—from wearing caps so tight. Any bargeman at -the Taverns could have told you that. Go on—” - -“And she had only one little boat astern, that almost swamped in the -mountain waves; and when the northeaster struck her you were afraid of -being driven to Africa, and cut the great mainmast and threw her -overboard, and drifted for fourteen days, four hundred miles; and when -the hull sprang a leak and strained to split apart you frapped her round -and round with great cables and trussed her up as cooks tie up the legs -of a fowl! And when the soldiers would have sprung into the little boat, -you cut her adrift; and when you would have slain the prisoners to -prevent escape, and slain yourself to avoid punishment for the loss, it -was the Prophet, who is the prisoner in your hut there, stopped your -hand and foretold you not a soul would lose his life. Then you cast the -cargo overboard. - -“No stars, no sun we saw for fourteen days, only the clouds and the -pelting rain, and fogs so thick a sword could cut them. When the -breakers and the surf roared ahead, you heaved and heaved and heaved the -lead, and knew we were driving straight ashore to wreck in the breakers, -and you cast four great iron anchors out astern to hold her back; but -they only combed the fine sand as a housekeeper’s knife cuts dough. The -shore of Malta Bay was soft as paste. The pumps you set to work; but she -settled on her prow, like a swine’s snout in mud, with her goose-beaked -stern, high in the crash of waves, breaking to splinters—” - -“Stop!” cried the Idumean. “I’ll test your truth right there! The -bargemen of the Taverns might have told you all the rest. When the ship -broke and the sailors and the prisoners plunged over in the pelting dark -to swim for it, what said the Prophet, who is my prisoner, then?” - -“When you could not look the wind in the eye, my Lord Julius, the -Prophet bade you be of good cheer and thanked his strange Judean God, -whom he called Christus, that he was reaching Rome.” - -“By Jupiter, child,” cried the guard, with a crash of his sword on the -stone bench, “you have spoken truth! What next? Be careful how you -answer—your life hangs on it if you are slave! It is death to harbor a -runaway in Roman law—” - -“I know not what next, my Lord Julius; for Publius, the Governor of -Malta, took all your shipwrecked crew in, and you tarried to come by the -_Castor and Pollux_ on to Neapolis (Naples) while I took secret passage -on a fishing vessel and reached Rome first.” - -The Idumean then knew the youth spoke truth; but not all the truth—what -more? Here was a lad of noble birth and clad in a page’s garments, -caught and held and hounded by the harpies of the wine shops amid the -rascal loafers of the underworld—lost in the gutters of Rome for two -full years. Whose son was he and why was he here? - -The old guard’s manner changed. Could he find the boy’s parents there -might be money in it—honest money—not the kidnapper’s ransom for which -the knavish criminals of the Three Taverns had tried to steal him; but -the old soldier knew he must proceed cautiously. No gain to frighten a -startled bird that had fallen in your hand; a gift of gold from the -gods. Good money from a good father somewhere back in Grecian Asia could -he but win the lad’s trust and get his story true, and save some royal -youth from those sharp-taloned hawks of the wine shops. - -He bade the little stranger sit down on the bench. - -“The wine in the tankard there I drained; but here’s bread and -cheese—eat! How does that compare with the bread and cheese of your -Lebanon herds?” - -The lad ate ravenously. The guard went inside the hut and brought out -fresh wine. - -“The cheese is not so white as our goat curds; but the bread is like -pearls after Rome’s slave fare.” - -The old Idumean pricked up his ears. “Slave fare!” Then the boy had been -held by some one in Rome. The guard’s caution redoubled, to which he -added courtesy. - -The spring frogs piped from the marshes. Last snatches of bird notes -came from the oleander and acacia groves in front of the villas on the -far side of the canal. A cooling breeze came down from the hills where -the festive bonfires now winked a flamy eye. Only a few barges glided -down the waters of the canal. The traffic of the paved road had quieted -to an occasional soldier-tread echoing iron on the stones, or the -barefoot patter of a hurrying furtive slave, or the loud laughter of -lewd women, and louder disputes of the bargemen in the lodging houses. - -“What brought you here?” quietly asked the guard. - -“To see the sights of Rome—” - -“And I’ll warrant you’ve seen enough of them. Have you seen the -gladiators?” - -“Their blood sickened me,” answered the lad. “The narrow streets choked -me. I could not breathe their yellow air after our Lebanon sunshine. -These marshes send up a yellow stench; and the lodging houses stank; and -your freedmen loafers are night demons! I’d give all Rome for one night -back in Daphne’s Gardens at Antioch, or down by the sea at Cæsarea. Your -iron-shod hoofs keep me from sleep. I’d give all Nero’s Empire to hear -the padded tread of our camels over the turfs where the caravans of -Damascus and Chaldea meet!” - -The Idumean pondered that. He must, then, be the son of some Damascus or -Grecian merchant in Asia. Good money and plenty of it in those iron -chests! - -“Know you the ‘Camel Song’ of the sand rovers of Arabia?” he asked. - -In the starlight he saw tears spring to the long-lashed blue eyes. - - Sweet to mine ears are the sounds - Of thy tinkling bells, O my camel! - -“And, oh, how the singing sands made melody, my Lord, when the hot winds -drove them like sheets of snow!” - -“Aye, that they do,” returned the old Idumean, “and I would I were where -I could hear them sing instead of cooling my heels in Rome waiting for -this crazy Prophet to get his head chopped! Much good that will do!” The -old man’s manner warmed to desert memories of his native land. - -“I’ll befriend you. You can stay here. The Prophet needs some one to -care for him and cook his meals. He’s growing old. His sight is fading -fast. I’ve grown tired of nightly sleeping chained to the arm of a -prisoner you could not bribe to run away, while the Emperor takes his -pleasure and puts off the acquittal of a man Agrippa wrote was innocent, -all because his wife plays the convert to Jerusalem Jews to get a -revenue for protecting them, and hates this new sect of Jews that call -themselves Christians. You could not pay this prisoner to escape, though -fewer and fewer friends come to see him every day. They know the Empress -is their enemy and may work Nero to some fresh madness any day. If it -were not I value my own head, I’d sometimes believe him myself; but no -head of mine for these mad zealots! It takes the iron hand of a Herod to -beat out the flame of their sedition, and not the gentle pleading of -young Agrippa to bring them to their senses! When the Prophet gets his -pardon, if he is wise he’ll haste to Spain and never set foot in Rome or -Jerusalem again.” - -A second draft of wine—for the mountain lad had not touched the fresh -tankard—had loosened the old soldier’s tongue. “I mind when I served -Herod’s son as a lad like you at Cæsarea and won my freedom in the great -gladiatorial combat in the theater, where the sands swam in blood to the -knees, with Agrippa the Great sitting clad in his mail of silver, before -the owl flew over and brought him ill-omens so that he fell down dead—” - -“What?” interrupted the boy—“were you once a slave, too, my Lord -Julius?” - -“Too,” noted the old Idumean. The softened manner hardened. Was he a -slave after all? “What did the harpies of the wine shops want of you? A -lad clad in Damascus silks would not touch these sows of Rome’s -gutters.” - -The boy answered eagerly. “They said the Emperor would pass in his -chariot to-night; and the Empress Poppæa was to go down to the sea in -her ivory barge. They meant to strip me, throw me in the water, rescue -me, and offer me for sale as her barge passed—” - -The old guard laughed so harshly that all his ivory teeth gleamed ugly -as a boar’s tusks. “And I’ll warrant if ever she saw your milk-white -mountain skin stripped, they would have made the sale at three times a -slave’s price. There is more in this—there is more in this. Why did you -leave your mountains of Lebanon?” - -“I did not,” hotly protested the baited boy, becoming frightened at the -changed manner of the Idumean. “When Felix cleared the robbers out of -Galilee, I was held for ransom in their caves. They said we mountaineers -were robbers. We never were. We are shepherds; but I was caught in my -father’s caravan. He was the great sheik of the road from Damascus to -the East; and Felix gave me to young Agrippa for a toy, a plaything. I -was a page to the Princess Bernice when your prisoner Prophet in there -made his plea before Agrippa the Young to come to Rome and prove his -case; but when the Princess Bernice was sent to Cilicia to marry that -old man there, and still the evil tongues about her and her brother—” - - Family Tree of the Herods - - Herod-the Great-I - 41 B.C. to 4 B.C. or 4 A.D. - married Mariamne and 4 other wives - +---------------------+------------+-------------------+ - | | | | -Aristobulus Philip I. Herod II. (5 other lines ----------------------+ M. Herodias who married not historical) -put to Death 6 B.C. | left him 2nd time - | | - | | Herodias - | | banished 40 A.D. - | | -Herod III. Agrippa I. 37 to 40 A.D. -Bernice's 1^{st} +-----------------+---------------------+ -husband (died in | | | -Caesarea of stroke | | | ---44 or 45 A.D.) | | | - | | | - Agrippa II. Bernice Drusilla - last of line married (1) Herod III. married Felix - perished in eruption " (2) Polemon | - of Vesuvius perished Vesuvius Agrippa III. - an infant - perished Vesuvius - - - Family Tree of Polemon, who married Bernice - and - Tryphaena, who adopted Thekla - -(as indicated by Mommsen and Sir W^{m} Ramsay) - - Marcus Antonius = Octavia - +---------------------------------------------------+ - | | - Zenon of Laodicea +-------------+ - | | - | Antonia = Nero Drusus - | +-------------+ - | | | -Polemon-----------------+ Claudius | - | | 41-54 A.D. | - | | |Germanicus -Tryphaen b. 8 B.C. Polemon 17 A.D. | - | Caligula -Polemon of Pontus 37 A.D. 41 A.D. -37 A.D. to 72 A.D. - -The boy paused in confusion, blushing red as a girl. The Idumean grasped -his wrist. “Go on—the truth—or I’ll have you torn limb from limb by -the tigers in the arena. What of that night monster, Bernice, with the -snaky Herod blood in her veins?” - -The boy cried out with the pain of the viselike grasp. “The Princess -bade me not to fear to come to Rome, where she would come when she had -shaved her head and paid a vow in Jerusalem—” - -“Where she is now, and all Rome laughing at the pretext,” the old -Idumean loosened his grasp. “Where she is now, to slip her old husband -and throw her net over Titus, our General Vespasian’s son. I’ll warrant -it will be a net of air she’ll weave; the spider maid will throw her -wiles on the next poor fly! Did the King Agrippa’s sister send you to -Rome? Have a care how you answer that!” - -“No, my Lord Julius, the King, her brother Agrippa, handed me to a -Grecian merchant in Colossé; but with the gold his sister gave me I ran -away and took ship to Rome from Crete.” - -A curious, terrible crafty change had come over the guard. No wild boar -of the desert was he now, but crafty hunter stalking human prey in -Rome’s underworld. “Young one—I have no love for these seditious -Judeans; but I’ll befriend you because I have given you a Roman’s -pledge. Here’s my right hand as pledge no Roman ever broke. Had I lost -my prisoners it would have cost my head; but when you go into the -Prophet there, see you do not bleat like one of your long-eared mountain -goats! Blastus, Herod’s old chamberlain, is friend of his; so is Manæn, -Herod’s foster-brother, and Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward! Keep -yourself out of sight in the inner room when strangers call; for some of -Cæsar’s household also come here, whether to spy or believe, how do I -know? But how did the knaves and body snatchers of the Three Taverns -snare you?” - -“I was coming out to seek the young scribe Timothy—I saw him once and -helped him carry the Prophet in, when he was mobbed and stoned and left -for dead in Lystra—I thought he’d help me back to my people!” - -The Idumean rose impatiently. - -“That spider maid! The vixen with Herod’s snaky blood! Go inside! I’ll -lock the door! Prepare the Prophet his supper. I’ll to the Three Taverns -to ferret this. Remember if you try to run away—there is no escape from -Roman power in all the known world from Gaul to the Ganges; but I see -one rich way of escape to fortune for you, and money for me to make me -rich, if Bernice ever cast her eyes at you—might save young Titus, son -of our General, falling a victim to her wiles! Go in, I say, and keep -your tongue from blabbing—or I’ll cut it out with my dagger! Princess -Bernice! Titus’ mistress! By Jupiter, ’tis my lucky day at last and I’ll -make offerings to Fortune,” he muttered, striding off. - -The heart of the frightened boy almost stopped. He seemed to have jumped -from danger close to death or torture. What had he told, or not told, -that made him, a friendless Grecian boy in Imperial Rome, of great money -value to the Idumean guard the minute Bernice’s name was mentioned? Why -had the rough soldier called the young princess a “night monster,” “a -spider maid,” “a vixen with snaky blood,” “a nymph” aiming a net at -Titus, the son of the Roman General in Asia? Why should a girl princess -not flee one old husband, married to silence evil tongues, and seek a -younger mate in the General’s son? Wise, wise as seer or prophet is the -intuition of youth; but stronger than the breastplate of Imperial Rome -the innocence of youth; for the boy had not told all the truth. -Something he held back for the love of the royal mistress, who had -befriended him. He had not told the Idumean captain that when he had -been handed over to the merchant of Colossé he had been sold by King -Agrippa because his young master was jealous of his sister’s affections -for a page; and when he had taken ship at Crete, dressed as a page, he -was a runaway slave, with Princess Bernice’s gold in a goatskin wallet -round his girdle, obeying her orders “to have no fear to go to Rome; she -would meet him there: to wait.” - -To his youthful heart it seemed no evil thing that she should come to -Rome and marry Titus, Vespasian’s son, where he again could be her page. -He could not know that all Rome was now counting on General Vespasian to -save the Empire and become Emperor. He would not have had long to wait, -as destiny soon rolled the years to Vespasian’s triumphial entry into -Rome—if the harpy women of the wine shops on the water front had not -taken note of his beauty and set the bargemen on to kidnap him as bait -for higher game in Nero’s Palace, where ruled an evil woman, guided only -by her own wicked desires. - - * * * * * - -The boy heard the door clank as the Prætorian guard drew the chain -across outside and snapped the great twin locks with a key as long as a -man’s forearm. He heard the ring of the swift soldier tread as the -Idumean strode over the stones for the Three Taverns. - -Then he turned. The room was dark but for a flickering peat fire on the -hearth and a little guttering olive oil wick in a stone or breccia lamp -on a rough board table. The floor was softened with sand and earth. The -window was high and latticed, but let a soft breeze in from the sea. A -little, stooped old man with a white beard and snow white hair and -skullcap such as doctors of the law wore, sat on a backless stool at the -table, writing on a scroll which he unwound from a roller as he wrote, -with his eyes so close to the papyrus that he did not see the boy’s form -against the dark of the door. - -Except for the table and the backless stool there was no furniture in -the prison hut but two couches, close together near the door; and the -boy noticed that while the prisoner’s right hand wrote and wrote on -unheeding, his left arm, resting on the table, had a huge handcuff -attached to an iron chain which also lay on the table; and this was the -Prophet, whom he had helped the scribe Timothy carry in stoned for dead -at Lystra. This was the man, when the wreck broke up at Malta, who stood -in the pelting rain and the dark and bade the Lord Julius “be of good -cheer” and thanked his strange God “that now at last he could publish -the Glad News at Rome.” - -The boy had not noticed the strange leader of the strange new sect in -the Judgment Hall at Cæsarea, because he had been too young, the toy and -plaything of the youthful King Agrippa and his younger sister, Bernice, -and he had noticed him still less at Lystra, some years before, because -he had been still younger and much too excited over the mob. There is a -discrepancy here in the boy’s story as picked out of the old records; -and yet the discrepancy proves its truth, for he could not have been -more than four or five. Yet he distinctly remembered coming in on one of -his father’s caravans for Damascus from the South, and seeing the -maddened mob, and running with all the camel drivers toward the gates of -the city, where he had picked up the insensible Prophet’s cap and helped -the young scribe Timothy to shuffle the almost lifeless form through the -doors into the house of Lois and Eunice, Timothy’s people, who were -Greek merchants. - -On the ship wrecked between Crete and Malta, he recalled the prisoner of -two years ago well enough; but he had kept himself out of sight from -both prisoners and sailors all he could on that voyage, staying below -deck on plea of seasickness by day and coming up only in the wild -nights, when the high-rolling cape of his black cloak had hidden his -face; and he could dream his dreams of awakening youth, and the message -of hope his Princess’s black glance had thrown him when she slipped him -the wallet of gold pieces from her litter chair and bade him “haste to -Rome and wait there.” - -Yet it had been no easy business for him “to haste to Rome,” for the -merchant of Colossé to whom Agrippa in a moment of jealous suspicion had -sold him had been an exacting master, and had set the new young slave to -keeping accounts in the great warerooms. It had only been his knowledge -of the Phrygian patois dialect, half Assyrian, half Greek, that had -induced the merchant to send him to the seacoast and the Isles of the -Sea to collect exchange on accounts. He had collected the accounts. Then -he had taken ship at Crete and run away without a qualm. Why should he -have qualms? Had he not been kidnapped by the robbers of Galilee and -held for ransom, and, when the robbers were routed out by Felix, given -as a slave—he, who came from the mountaineers who never had been -slaves—to young King Agrippa and the sister, Bernice? - -After that, life had become a golden dream of awakening youth. Though -Bernice had been a wife to one Herod, and now was sent north to be wife -to another old man, after the custom of the Herods to strengthen their -thrones by marrying their daughters to powerful rulers, Bernice had been -almost as young as he—she was barely twenty. He had been set at first -to seeing that the Nubian slaves kept the royal baths at Cæsarea clean. -Then in a fit of suspicion over having any but black eunuchs, who were -mutes, attend the royal baths, Agrippa had sent him to keep the tracks -of the chariot races powdered with soft sand to fill the wheel ruts and -save the horses’ knees if a racer slipped on the swift course. - -There he had gained the first glimpse of the Princess’s favor toward -himself. She had been driving with her royal young brother in one of the -trials for the chariot races. The snowy steeds of the young King’s -chariot were given precedence of all others, the Festus’s wild Arab -horses were champing the bits to pass, and the Roman had great ado to -hold them behind Agrippa. A dozen other prancing teams were surging -behind. She had worn a silver bangle round her brow to hold back her -hair. On her brow hung a jade-stone ornament from Arabia with the -swastika cross of luck beaded in gold. In the wild charge of the racers -the jade pendant had bounced from its setting in the sand. Leaping in -front of the other racers, the boy had rescued the emblem of good luck -from trampling; and all the people in the seats of the great hippodrome -had cheered his pluck. Fortune had come to him in the little jewel with -the odd cross. - -When the charioteers came round the course again, King Agrippa himself -had stooped to receive the restored jewel; and the people had cheered -again; and when Agrippa and Bernice had gone up to Daphne’s Gardens at -Antioch, for the wild, lawless pleasures there, then had followed -another golden dream of awakening youth. The boy did not know, when he -had been with the royal lovers in Daphne’s Gardens, that only a few -miles away was the Prophet, with the Christians of Antioch; and here -they were, both thrown together in the evil snares of Rome.[1] Amid the -roses and the palms and the love temples and the fountains of the -gardens were artificial lakes, where plied boats with silken awnings -rowed by Naiads in silver-and-golden nets to the music of zither and -harp under the Moon Goddess. - -[1] This is the only point in the boy’s story where there is any -discrepancy between his experiences as told by himself and the sacred -and profane writers of the period. It does not appear among the sacred -writers whether the corn ships carrying the Prophet at the various ports -of call delayed long enough for the prisoners to have gone in to -Antioch, as they did at all the other ports where Christians dwelt; but -in the profane writers of Rome and Greece at the period ’61 A.D. to ’68 -A.D., are abundant proofs of all the youth’s adventures in Daphne’s -Gardens; and Bernice’s record became an infamy in Rome. - -Here Agrippa and Bernice took their pleasure, and he, now the trusted -page, accompanied them, as steersman for the nymphs. He was clad in -silvered silks, the girl rowers in spangled nets, with naked limbs the -color of pink shells. He knew that five hundred bastinadoes on the soles -of his feet would be the punishment if ever he breathed a word of what -he saw on these nights; and he saw nothing; but dipped his steersman -paddle to the rhythm of the temple music, and watched the limpid water -ripple in drops of moonlit gold, and dreamed his dreams of awakening -youth, which are wiser than seers in their intuitions and stronger than -breastplates of bronze in their innocence. He knew nothing going on -around him because he saw nothing but Bernice’s eyes; and she was so far -beyond his reach, he saw no spider net in those black, fathomless eyes. - -And then one day crashed down his house of dreams in catastrophe about -his youth. It had been a wild day of painted barges, of soothsayers, of -magicians, of story-tellers, of dwarfs, of buffoons, of libations to -Bacchus, and temple nymphs clad in golden gauze. The flesh of grown man -did not live that could pass that day unscathed; and the page, who had -been a mountain boy, knew naught of a goddess who could turn men to -swine. There had been an older man with King Agrippa and his sister that -day. The boy remembered afterward the older man had the face of one of -the satyrs, half man, half goat, of whom his mountain tribes told. - -There had been frenzied dancing in the love temples and more libations -to Bacchus; but the mountaineers do not drink; and at the end of that -day, to quiet evil tongues, Princess Bernice had been affianced to the -King with the satyr face; and the star of the boy’s lamp had gone out in -utter blackness, with his heart cold lead, till, passing from the love -temple in her curtained, latticed litter, she had thrust out her hand to -him in the dark and given him the purse of gold and bade him haste to -Rome and meet her there, while she went to Jerusalem to pay a vow! He -did not know the nature of that vow, though all the fashion of Rome was -laughing over it, and poets made mock of it and actors in the theaters -extemporized lines on “Bernice’s locks” and do to this day. - -He knew with the knowledge of youth she had shaved her head and taken -her vow to escape her elderly spouse; and now the rough Idumean guard -had said all Rome was laughing at the way the sly maid had gone to -Jerusalem but to throw her nymph net over Titus, son of Vespasian, who -might become Emperor after Nero. - -And now he stood in the prison hut of Rome, with the wolf harpies of the -water-front wine shops outside, locked in by the Roman soldier, who knew -there was fortune to be grasped by restoring a slave, with the threat -ringing in his ears—“There is no escape from Roman power in all the -known world; keep your tongue from blabbing—or I’ll cut it out with my -dagger,” and the Lebanon boy had seen captives whose tongues had been -cut by daggers. He knew this was no idle threat; but he did not know it -was his boyish beauty that had cast the fatal net of danger round -himself. - - * * * * * - -The boy stood with his head hanging, behind the locked door of the -prison hut, like a fly caught in an evil spider web. He did not ascribe -the net flung round him by dark eyes seen through the lattice of a -palanquin to any spider maid; for he was still thinking with the -knowledge of youth rather than age. He only knew the spider net had -become strong chains binding him to the evil forces of the great -Imperial City of the world, and that he had been flung into that net by -a destiny uncontrolled by him except for the one act—when he had run -away from his merchant master at Colossé. - -He was too deeply sunk in sudden despond and fear to notice the -flickering of the shadows from the lifted breccia-stone lamp held in the -Prophet’s hand, while the other hand shaded the old man’s defective -vision peering at the ragged figure against the back of the locked door. -All hope had flickered out for him with the turning of the double lock -by that great key the Idumean carried. - -A voice spoke out of the dark, quiet, clear, and limpid as his own -mountain streams in Lebanon: “Child, come here! Why are you troubled?” - -The boy raised his long-lashed blue eyes and looked across to see, not -the little withered wisp of a man he had remembered as the Prophet, but -a snow-white face illumined in an ethereal light and framed in an -aureole of snow white hair. - -“The Lord Julius bade me prepare your supper.” - -The Prophet did not press his question. “There are the corn bread and -the leben in the alcove,” he said, pointing to a dark corner of the -stone wall, “and in one jar you will find the drinking water and in the -other the fresh pulse.” - -The boy laid the meal on the rough table without a word and took his -stand behind the Prophet’s stool. He was still dust spattered and torn -from his fall. - -“Bring the couch to the table,” requested the Prophet. - -Thinking the Master wished to eat reclining, after the manner of the -Judeans, the boy lifted the couch and placed it at the table. - -“Join me,” gently urged the Prophet. “I remember when I was a lad in -Tarsus before I went down to study law in Jerusalem, we used to say of -the mountain men, when they had broken bread and salt with us, they -would be our friends forever, and never utter word, or think thought -against host or guest. A good rule, child.” - -Tears sprang to the lad’s eyes; for what the Prophet had said was true, -and recalled all the stern tradition of the mountain tribes, who dwelt -in tents and roved the desert on camels. - -“Let us bless God and give thanks,” said the Master, bowing his head; -and the boy understood neither the strange Deity to whom thanks were -given nor what there was for thanks in a prison hut. - -It must have been the white hair or the white beard; for though the wick -was guttering lower in the breccia lamp, that luminous look seemed to -shine brighter and brighter round the figure of the Prophet. The boy -could see his hands like hands of snow in the gathering dusk of the hut; -and his brow shone with the radiance of the sun’s white flame at dawn. - -“Why did you wish to see Timothy?” he asked, as though reading the lad’s -thought. - -Thereat, the youth’s pent emotions of terror and despondency and fearful -unknown danger broke in floods of speech. - -“And, oh, Master,” cried the boy, finishing the narrative that the -Idumean had forbidden him to tell, and holding back nothing but his love -for the Princess, “my Lord Julius says there is no escape from the power -of Rome from Gaul to the Ganges for a slave. Let me be your slave, oh, -Master! Master, buy me and save me! I’ll serve you as never Emperor was -served in thought and speech and act! I’ll serve you forever with no -brand on my palms or shoulders.” And the little mountaineer, who never -yet had bowed his head to earth as slave, fell at the old man’s knees -sobbing, and would have placed the Prophet’s foot on his neck. - -“What was your merchant master’s name in Colossé?” - -“The Lord Philemon; and oh, my Master, I’ll pay him back my price and -all the money I stole to run away to Rome. I’ll work my hands to the -bone! I’ll earn wages for my price by acting as runner between the poles -for the great Romans in the villas here. I’ll pay him back fourfold as -the law demands. Only let me stay—keep me from the wolves of Rome—keep -the Lord Julius from selling me to Nero’s Palace, or tearing out my -tongue for telling you, or flogging me five hundred bastinadoes on my -feet for running away, or betraying me for telling of Bernice’s -kindness. I know now what I should or should not tell, nor why—” - -“Ah, those crafty foxes of the Herod brood! ’Twas what Christ called -them when they slew John for Salome’s dance. She was of the same brood -of vipers long ago; and the blood of a Herod runs true to color.” - -The Prophet’s hands were over his eyes and he seemed to be thinking back -long, long years. The hearth fire guttered lower. The lamp wick had -burned almost to the edge of the oil, and still the Prophet’s face shone -with luminous radiance as of an inner white flame; and his hands looked -like ethereal hands through which flamed an inner fire of the spirit in -kindly deeds. - -“Dear Master, let me be your slave—” - -“Child, there are nor bond nor free in the Great Kingdom which I serve; -for neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, -nor things present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor depths, nor any -other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.” - -“Nor bond nor free?” cried the little mountaineer. “Is there a kingdom -in all the world where there are neither bond nor free?” - -“The Kingdom is here and now,” said the Prophet; and his brow shone with -the radiance of moonlight on the snowy peaks of Lebanon. - -“But, sir,” cried the boy, “they held me slave, and they hold you in -bonds; for the King Agrippa told the Lord Julius—” - -“Two bodies there are,” answered the Prophet gently, “one terrestrial -and one celestial—one that waxes old as a garment which we cast aside, -and one that grows younger with fuller life as the years nearer draw to -God; and neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor -powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature -than ourselves can place bonds upon that body. Like the air, which we do -not see, but in which we live and move and have our being, that -celestial body lives and moves and has its being in the love of God. -Child, rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice, that the Glad News has -come and the Kingdom is here—and now.” - - * * * * * - -When the Idumean returned, his mood seemed again gentler. He bade the -boy fasten the wrist gyves of the chain on the prisoner’s left arm to -his own right wrist, and to sleep on the floor, so that he as older man -would not be troubled in his sleep by the clank of the chain when he -tossed restlessly at night, as age is wont to do. - -And when the boy wakened in the morning with the day-star shining -through the lattice of the high window, he found his new Master had -thrown over him, against the dank chill of the marshes at night, his own -black gabardine doctor’s cloak of Damascus velvet. While the Idumean and -the prisoner, chained up again at sunrise, took the air in parade before -the barracks of the Prætorian Guard, the youth swept out the hut floor -with a broom of brush and laid the breakfast on the rough board table. -Then the bonds were unlocked from the guard’s arms and the prisoner sat -down to write letters, or receive visitors, and the old Idumean again -posted himself on the stone bench in front of the hut. - -When the lad came out, the Idumean bade him sit down on the bench to -talk. “The prisoner says he has arranged to take you for—by Jupiter—he -wouldn’t call you ‘slave’—a queer lot these followers of Christus—he -said he’d take you for his helper—he’d known your merchant master as a -friend in Colossé and would take you for a pledge of what that merchant -owed him. That’s good Roman law. You’re safe enough now. He said your -new name must be Onesimus—the Helpful One.” - -“Why, that—is my very own name. How could he know?” - -The Prætorian guard smiled. “He knows queer things in queer ways, this -prisoner. Rome is full of magicians and sorcerers and soothsayers, -mostly Greeks and Jews; but I never knew one could tell what he foretold -about the storm, nor hold from mutiny two hundred and seventy prisoners -swimming for freedom unchained in the open sea. What puzzles me is, when -he has this power, why doesn’t he use it to get himself his freedom -instead of wasting two full years here babbling of the Glad News—Glad -News—Glad News? News, indeed, ’twill be if Nero places all his tribe in -the arena to feed the wild beasts! Why doesn’t he use his power to build -himself a fortune, and buy a kingdom as Herod did, and rule all Jewry? -Then I’ll follow him myself; for Rome is breaking up.” - -“What does he say when you ask him that?” - -“Oh, folly about a Kingdom not made with hands; a Kingdom of the soul. -What’s a soul to Roman legions? Sometimes, like Festus, I incline to -think much learning hath made him mad—” - -“I remember the very words—the very words he said at Cæsarea the day I -saved the jewel on the chariot course for Princess Bernice; and King -Agrippa said ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian’—you know the -way King Agrippa has, pretending to agree, to draw the adversary on—” - -“And what said our Prophet to that?” - -“He smiled that gentle, fearless way of his and said—‘I would thou wert -such as I am’; and all his prison chains rattled to the floor as he -threw up his arm when he said that; and the great ones on the judgment -seat broke out in laughter. King Agrippa laughed the merriest of all; -and the Princess whispered ‘The gods forbid.’ What does he teach? What -does he believe, Lord Julius?” - -“How do I know?” answered the Idumean roughly. “It’s always Glad -News—Glad News—Glad News; Rejoice—Rejoice—Rejoice! By Jupiter, what -have the Jews had to rejoice about for a thousand years, till Rome came -and gave them good roads and theaters and forums and aqueducts, and held -the fierce sand rovers back, plundering their very Holy Temple with its -golden doors? I mind once hearing the soldiers talk of an Egyptian, I -think it was, who plundered their precious Temple before Herod rebuilt -it; and when he entered into their Holy of Holies, where never man trod, -and their own priests opened only once a year to take the gold angels -above the Altar, there wasn’t even the image of a little gold god—not a -thing in brass or silver like a god—only a queer blue cloud like a -flame from some of their magic fires—” - -“A queer blue cloud like a flame?” repeated the boy. “Why, that’s the -way his face and hands look in the dark. What does he teach?” - -“Listen when his visitors come, and you’ll learn soon enough if you can -make anything of their Greek doctrine and Jewish jargon—I can’t. I’m -Idumean—Roman—I believe in pikes and swords—in law and gold. One day -it’s ‘don’t be insipid’—‘don’t lose your salt’—‘never assume gloomy -looks’—‘don’t throw pearls to swine’—‘away with fear’—‘laugh at the -sting of death’—‘lead justice to victory’; or else he tells these Jews -of Rome they are ‘fatheads and dullwits and grosshearts,’ with which we -Romans agree; or else ‘the earth is an inn and death the eternal house -to which he has the key to another house of many mansions,’ or he quotes -that old Job legend of the Arabs, about ‘flesh renewed as a little -child’s’; but you should hear him when the young Timothy comes— ‘It’s -Timothy, son, beware the young widows.’ That’s what I call sense. - -“It would be good advice to you next time a princess with black eyes -casts her net at a simpleton! He calls his Christus a Lamb of sacrifice -for sin. That’s queer; for I remember nearly forty years ago, when I was -your age, I helped to crucify that Christus. Still it’s not so different -from the Sacred Bull of Egypt by which the priests get revenue, or the -Sacred Lion of Chaldea, or Jupiter of our Sun Temples. Our kings all get -revenue by some religious trick hitched up to fear of some god—sun or -star or love of war! As I tell you, I’m a plain soldier. I can make -nothing of it. I’m for the power of Rome, the law of Rome, the wealth of -Rome; there is no power on earth can stand up against it.” - -The boy sat pondering. He couldn’t forget that little blue flame above -the desecrated Altar of the plundered Temple, like the radiance of the -Prophet’s brow in the dark. Perhaps all eyes could not see that flame. -Perhaps that was what had blinded the Prophet. He’d ask him about that. - - * * * * * - -And so the summer ran to winter and the winter to spring again, when the -emptied corn ships went back to Greece and Egypt, laden with tin from -Britain and hides from Gaul and copper from Spain. - -The boy saw and pondered much. He was known now among the Jews of Rome -as the adopted son of the prisoner. What passed between the boy and the -Prophet, only God knows. They were as loving father and more loving son. -The Prophet was restless when the boy was out of his sight; and the -boy’s eyes followed his master with the mute love of a child for a -saint. But fewer and fewer converts came to see the Prophet; for Nero’s -mood was darkening toward the new sect; and the believers were -scattering to the hills and to the Isles of the Sea before the storm -broke. - -Only the gentle Greek physician called Luke kept coming; and one Mark, a -deacon, who talked much of a great leader, Peter; and the young scribe, -Timothy, grown more ethereal and frail as he added years, and a great -one, called Epaphroditus, who was friend of many great ones, but led no -sect for fear of his head. Once Epaphroditus came with a learned Jewish -scholar called Josephus, whose records may be read to this day. - -And he and the Prophet talked long and bitterly of the law, of the Roman -rulers and armies in Judea. Like Epaphroditus, Josephus openly joined no -sect that was cold or indifferent to Rome; but his beliefs may be read -between the lines of all he wrote. - -And once there came with Epaphroditus a strange huge man clad all in -white from Alexandria, followed by a caravan of camels that Roman rumor -said had traversed all the world. His name was Apollos; and he joined -the learning of the Persians to the learning of the Greeks; and had -prophesied all that the prisoner told; and his sayings, too, may be -found to this day both among the Egyptians and the Persians. The Prophet -and the huge man in white embraced like brothers; and all Rome went mad -with the sensations of a day over what they called the Magian. Rome was -more mad over his caravan of camels than about his doctrines. - -Once the boy turned to his beloved patron: “Master,” he said, “when you -have power to save me, why do you not use your power to save yourself -and flee from the dangers of Rome?” - -“Because he that saveth his life shall lose it.” - -And that night, when he was writing a letter to Timothy, who was in -Greece, to come to Rome, the boy heard the Prophet dictate the words, “I -have fought a good fight—I have finished my course. I have kept the -faith.” Why, the boy wondered, does he say he has finished his course? - -When Timothy came to Rome, the boy went in to his patron. - -Again, the frogs were piping in the marshes. It was a fair evening in -spring. Again, the oleander and the acacia and the almond and the -apricot bloom drugged the night with dreams. Again, the sun hung over -the far sea in a warrior shield, and the dust from the chariot wheels -filtered the air with powdered gold. Again the Spring Festival was over -and all Rome seemed out-of-doors, afoot, on barge, on horseback, or in -chariot, either going home to the hill towns of the poor, or down to the -rich villas by the sea. Again, the bonfires burned on the hillsides with -flamy eye, and gold-wheeled chariots flashed over the canal road in a -smoke of dust. Again, the bargemen and sailors and slave rowers up from -the corn ships of Egypt on Naples Bay made the night ring with knavish -revels in the water-front wine shops; but though the sun sank as golden -on the waters and the stars came out as silver over the hills, the canal -was no longer the happy thoroughfare of gay throngs in spring under -colored silk awnings with Nubian slaves on the rowers’ ivory benches; -for a mute fear was settling over Rome as to what madness Nero would -next pursue; and the great senators and generals no longer thronged to -Rome. They had moved their families to their hillside estates and villas -by the sea. The army and the loafers and the idle freedmen and the -slaves openly ruled Rome. Nero could hold the loafers and the idle -freedmen and the slaves with gifts of free corn and wild Bacchanalian -festivals and gladiatorial combats and the baiting of captives taken in -war by wild beasts, but all Rome was asking who was strong enough to -rule the vast Imperial Army. What would Vespasian, busy in the wars of -Palestine, do when he came? What would Titus, over whom Bernice was -casting her spider net, do? - -A pall rested over the gayly colored spring scenes of Rome. It was as if -Vesuvius rumbled and darkened long before the lava-flow buried the -beautiful villas in lakes of rock and fire. - -So when Onesimus, the helper, had asked the prisoner Prophet why he did -not save himself by escaping from Rome, and had pondered that answer -about those who save life losing life, and those losing life saving it, -he came back in this spring evening and stood timidly before the -Prophet. - -“My beloved Master, now that you have Timothy with you to write your -letters and the physician Luke to care for our body, would you miss me -if I went back to Colossé?” - -“I would miss you as I would a beloved son begotten of mine own flesh,” -said the prisoner gently. “Have you not cast out fear of all that man -can do unto you? Why do you wish to go to Colossé instead of carrying -the glad tidings to your mountain people?” - -“O Master,” Onesimus had fallen to his knees, with his face in the -Prophet’s hands, which he bathed in tears. “I fear not what all Rome can -do unto me; for I have joined that Kingdom not made with hands; but I -fear only the reproach of a good conscience and of my Lord of the Glad -Kingdom. I have saved enough of my earnings to pay back the merchant -Philemon fourfold the money I stole from him.[2] He bought me from King -Agrippa for a price. I would go back, his slave, till your King gives me -my freedom.” - -[2] The value of a slave at this time was about eighteen dollars of -modern money, though much more was paid for beautiful girl captives and -young men who gave promise of becoming gladiators. - -The Prophet’s hands lifted and rested on the boy’s hair. In the dark -they shone with the luminous light of the stars on snow. His lips were -moving—the boy heard him whisper— “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; -the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: -the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” - -That evening the Idumean of the Prætorian guards remained down at the -water front among the wine shops, and the Prophet wrote far into the -night. Onesimus would have written for him, for the prisoner’s eyes had -grown dimmer; but the Master said it was better this letter should be -written privately; and he wrote it on a wax tablet with an onyx stylus -to guide his failing sight. When he had finished he put the tablet in a -parchment case sealed with wax and bade the boy give it to the merchant -Philemon of Colossé. Then he embraced Onesimus and sent him to board the -barges that would go down the canal to the corn ships setting sail at -daybreak for Grecian Asia. - -Here briefly is what he wrote. You will find it exactly and fully as he -wrote it in the oldest record of documentary history in the world—the -most widely circulated documents in the modern world and probably the -least thoroughly read of all books in the world. Space permits only the -briefest outline of the letter, the original of which any reader can -compare in any language known in the world. Some few phrases differ -according to the language, but the purport is the same in all; and the -story is meticulously true in every essential, though scholars and -schools still quarrel over some dates and two or three names. As far as -it is possible to figure these early dates, this letter was written -between 62 and 64 A.D. - -“. . . to Philemon, our beloved and fellow worker, and to Apphia, our -gracious lady . . . I had great joy and comfort in your love, because -the hearts of God’s people have been and are, refreshed through you, my -brother. . . . Therefore, though I speak very freely, it is for love’s -sake I rather beg of you . . . I, the aged and prisoner . . . write to -entreat you on behalf of a child, whose father I have become in my -chains . . . I mean Onesimus, who was a bad bargain to you, but now, -true to his name, has become a helpful one to us both. - -“I am sending him back to you in his person, and it is as if I sent my -own very heart . . . I wished to keep him with me that he might minister -to me in my old age and chains, but without your consent I would not; -for I wanted it of your free will. Receive him back no longer as a -slave, but as brother, dear to me, beloved, as a fellow worker for -Christ. If you still regard me as comrade, receive him as myself. If he -was ever dishonest, or is in your debt, charge me with the amount. Hold -me responsible for the debt on your books. I pledge my signature. I will -pay you in full. (I say nothing of the fact you owe me yourself the same -amount.) - -“Yes, beloved, do me this favor for our Lord’s sake. Refresh my joy in -Christ. I write you in full confidence. I know you will do more than I -say, and provide accommodation for me; for I hope through your prayers I -shall be free to come. Greetings from my fellow prisoners, among whom -are Mark and Luke. May the graciousness of Christ be in the innermost -soul of every one of you. . . .” - -And though they put the signatures to the letters first in those days, -which was a better thing than our custom of having to read through a -letter to know who wrote it, the name signed to that letter by a -half-blind little old man, ill, and so near death (Nero’s blade was -already whetted for the sacrifice), with a chain on his arm in a prison -hut, was - - “PAUL.” - - - - - CHAPTER II - - ARDATH, THE FIELD OF FLOWERS - - -Three women sat cooped in the great fortress of Machærus, east of the -Dead Sea, peeved that a war for world power had interfered with their -own personal plans and petty intrigues. The rose-tinted mountains of -Moab rose far to the east, tier on tier above the Desert, dyed in a -mystic fire of cloud and light that might have been the abode of gods -from eternity. North and south, you could have dropped a pebble from the -turret, where the women sat, down precipice sheer as a wall twenty-five -hundred feet. West, the clouds boiled a silver sea far below the Fort -bastion on the blue and green of deep translucent waters. These waters -are to-day known as the Dead Sea. At that time, they were called the -Asphaltis Sea owing to the pungent burnt odor of petroleum and sulphur, -that came up from their hot springs. - -Safe as an eagle’s nest above the storm clouds perched the Fort on the -mountain height, where rulers’ wives and daughters were housed from -stress of war and raid, but angry as an eagle’s young were the strident -voices of these pampered favorites of harem and court, that the blood of -men flowing deep as the horses’ bridles over at the siege of Jerusalem, -should be keeping these caged birds from the garden of joy in life. - -The elder women rose petulantly and stood at the deep casement of the -window in the open turret, where the breeze came up from the silver -clouds lying below on the Sea. By the uncertain feeling out of her hands -for the stone wall, it was apparent she was almost blind. Her hair lay -lustrous black on her brow, but here and there a silver line showed she -was past middle age, and the slight film across the pupils of her black -eyes betrayed the cataract obscuring light. - -“A curse on these seditious Judeans,” she protested, tapping her -sandaled foot impatiently on the stone floor. “Rome gave them the best -government they have ever had—justice, safety, forums, aqueducts, -theaters, low taxes; and what have they returned to Rome for protection -from enemies east and west? Rebellion for seventy years! First Herod the -Great slew some brats in Bethlehem; and he must needs go mad with -jealousy and strangle his Jewess wife, and be haunted ever after by her -pale ghost in this accursed Fort! Then because I chose to love the -Second Herod instead of his brother Philip, to whom I was sold as child, -I must be taunted as a sinner of the streets by the little Hermit John; -and my Lord Herod must turn soft because he loved the ragged madman’s -‘rough honest ways.’ Honest? I call it insolence and would have torn his -tongue out if I could! What right have raving fanatics to pry open -private lives? I got him prisoned in the dungeon here for two full years -before I caught my Lord Herod in his cups and settled the Hermit’s mad -impudence with the headman’s sword. . . .” - -The two other women, who were yet in the flush of first youth, rose and -joined the elder in the open window of the turret. One was short, with -crafty laughing eyes and full voluptuous inviting lips, and the air of -insolence in her beauty that could challenge life. The other was tall -and slender with eyes that dreamed, but what or how they dreamed no soul -outside her own deep thoughts could know. - -“Then, Aunt,” pleaded the slenderer of the two, throwing an arm tenderly -around the blind woman, “with your mad Hermit dead, why rage and bruise -yourself against the past?” - -“Little soft dreaming fool!” The blind woman petulantly threw the girl’s -arm from her waist. “Have you forgotten when my Lord Herod’s first -wife—that discarded rag of treachery, who could not hold the love I -won—went back to her father, the King of Arabia, and roused all the -tribes to attack us here, we lost? We lost, and I was blamed, and my -Lord was banished first to the barbarians of the Danube and then to the -savages of Spain, to whom I must go unless you can snare Titus, the -Emperor’s son, over in the siege of Jerusalem there. Only you can save -the last of Herod’s line—Bernice.” - -The younger woman designated Bernice gazed deep in the silver clouds -boiling above the Dead Sea. - -“Much chance I have to snare Titus shut up here away from the warriors -of Jerusalem; but if we Herod women must be played as pawns to win -kingdoms, let us play pawn for the biggest prize of all—Rome.” - -The elder woman had placed her elbows on the casement of the window and -sank her face in her hands. - -“If you were not such a little fool of dreams, Niece Bernice, you would -never have left Jerusalem. You would have stayed on in the Temple Herod -built, paying your vows, if you had to cling to the Altar horns! You -were wife of Herod Third; and who did more for the Judeans? Free feasts, -free games, you remember Cæsarea; and all because your Lord let the Jews -stone James, that zealot of the Nazarene, know you what the populace -says? They say their God, whom no one has even seen, slew your husband -in his coat of silver mail!” - -“I thank their God for that,” absently answered the girl Bernice. “Herod -Third was too old. You chose your Herod. I was sold to mine.” - -The other younger woman with the insolent inviting voluptuous lips -laughed. - -“Because you had fallen in love with the little blue-eyed slave, -Onesimus, whom Felix and Festus rescued from the robber bands of -Galilee.” - -“That slur sounds not well from you, Sister Drusilla! You, yourself, -married freed slave. Have you forgotten Felix was freed slave?” asked -the slenderer of the sisters. - -Drusilla of the voluptuous lips laughed. “No, nor have I forgotten he is -the only one of all the Herod husbands who left his wife safe with -wealth in times of peril. He rose to be ruler under Rome. . . .” - -“And drove the Jews to insurrection by his thefts and taxes to give you -wealth,” interrupted Bernice. - -The older woman whirled on them with the fires of fury in her blind -eyes. “Peace to your sparrow chatter—fools—fools—fools! What do you -know of love, or constancy? You barter love and time for gain as -gamblers throw their dice. My Lord Herod and I bartered all for -love—and lost—and love as ever! And he is far among the savages of -Spain and I am caged here to wait the fortune of war at Jerusalem! And -time is short, and I grow old, and does his love grow cold? You read his -letter brought by the post this day, how he longs to hold me in his arms -once more! Nightly, I have prayed to Istarte and Venus and Astoreth for -my love to descend to him in far-off Spain down the beams of the -starlight, or moonlight, to hold him forever to me true! Instead of -answer to my prayers—what? This accursed Fort haunted by the spirits of -the dead! ’Twas here the spirit of Mariamne, whom Herod the Great -strangled, came haunting him till he went mad. ’Tis here where we are -shut up prisoners of the past, beating our weak women hands ’gainst the -fetters of fate, the ghosts of our past come haunting us! I tell you -fools that in the dark I can dream I am not blind, but when I pray for -my Lord’s love to come and wrap me in his arms, when it is dark and I -can forget I am blind—what comes? What comes? What comes? I say! I -could be a lioness to fight for my cubs, as all the Herod women ever -are; but when I pray for forgetfulness, what comes—I say?” - -“Dear Aunt Herodias,” gently expostulated the younger Bernice. “These -are not wise words. Our weak hands only bruise when we batter fate.” - -“Fool—your course is not yet run—dreaming of a blue-eyed slave, when -you should be in Jerusalem mending all our fortunes by marrying Titus, -the Emperor’s son!” - -The two drew back from the violence of the elder woman standing in the -open-windowed turret. - -“Herodias will be maniac unless we send her to her husband in Spain,” -whispered the sister Drusilla. - -“Maniac,” repeated the blind woman in scorn. “So you would be, if -nightly when you prayed for love there came rolling over the stone floor -the bloody head of that wild Hermit beheaded in the cellar here. . . . -If I could tear these scales from my eyes and prove it is not true; but -can a blind lioness fight. . . .?” - -“Let us go to the garden—we only anger her. She will rave to exhaustion -till she gets some sleep, and dreams she sees the head again,” murmured -Drusilla. “I could wish we were out of the haunted fortress here. It is -ill-fated! Do you go to Jerusalem and get the Emperor’s permission for -us to leave for Rome. . . .” - -“I will do that, Sister Drusilla, but do not anger her by making light -of her mad love for Herod. No Herod woman dare grow afraid. Our past is -a black, back wall! Our future is blacker if Jerusalem falls and Judea -is ruled direct from Rome. Our brother Agrippa will be deposed. He is -last of our line. Everything hangs on winning Titus’ favor; and with the -road to Jericho blocked black by troops, it is easier to say ‘go to -Jerusalem’ than go! Unless a caravan comes this way from the East bound -for the Sea, which I can join disguised, how can we escape the Roman -guard set to watch the gates?” - -They descended the stone stairs of the turret in thoughtful silence and -emerged in the great garden of the Fort. A broad walled parapet ran -round the edge of the sheer precipice on which the Fort was perched -above the cloudy Sea. Only one side gave exit, or approach—a narrow -causeway to the east with drop straight as a wall on either side, -leading out to the rose-tinted mountains of Moab, tier on tier above the -Desert dyed in a mystic fire of cloud and light. - -An old Idumean guard sat in the shade under the arched gate to the -causeway. He took his helmet off and yawned drearily. His beard had -grizzled gray and his thatch of close-cropped curly hair had whitened -with age. As the two sisters approached walking along the wall of the -parapet and came under the shade of the arch, he rose stiffly and -saluted. - -“How are the roads to Jerusalem, old Julius?” asked Drusilla, throwing -her purple silk cloak back over her shoulder so her bare arms shone -jeweled with bracelets. - -“Blocked, blocked, Good Ladies,” returned the old Idumean wearily. -“Dreary task this, your Highness, guarding sibyls, who could bewitch all -Rome’s generals if they escaped down to Jerusalem.” - -“What is the hammering we hear below the fog of clouds?” asked Bernice -trying to penetrate the import of his answer. - -“Camel bells of some caravan coming up the causeway, or clanking of the -forges down at Jericho making war engines for the siege.” - -“Are there many refugees in the caves between here and the Jordan, -Julius?” pressed Bernice. - -“The Nazarenes are fleeing from Jerusalem to the Desert of Moab like -sheep harried by wolves; and robber bands are everywhere. I’ll warrant -those poor sheep will be fleeced of their wool before they reach the -caves of their Secret Lodges. Dangerous, Ladies, too dangerous for -princesses in royal robes to venture these roads when my head’s pledged -for their safety.” - -“Why should a princess want to pass that way, old Julius?” smiled -Drusilla of the voluptuous lips. - -“Because Titus, the Emperor’s son, is at the end of yon road.” He -pointed down the precipice path towards Jericho beyond the Jordan. - -Drusilla laughed again. Bernice strolled through the arched gateway and -gazed past the rose-mist of light and clouds above the Desert mountains. - -“Are there ghosts in the dungeons beneath the Fort, dear Julius?” -pressed Drusilla. - -“None that I know but spears and swords to protect the women here if -Titus fail at Jerusalem,” answered the old Idumean, stretching his spear -across the open gate of the arch to the causeway across Princess -Bernice’s way. - -The two Princesses turned and retraced their steps along the parapet. -The old Idumean sat down on the bench again with an evil smile that -showed all his yellow teeth like boar’s tusks. - -“Witches! Enchantresses to turn men to swine! If I had my will, I’d -throw them all over the precipice into the Dead Sea.” - -“You see, Drusilla! We are really prisoners at Rome’s orders, though -they pretend they are protecting us here,” said Bernice. - -“What are prison walls to true love? Eat, drink and be merry; for -to-morrow we die,” laughed Drusilla. “Why are they holding us prisoners -here?” - -“To grace Rome’s chariot wheels if they conquer Jerusalem,” Bernice -answered bitterly. “And if I go to Rome, I go not with chained hands -behind the chariots. I ride with Titus in the chariot under the -conquerors’ arch—” - -“And I thank Jupiter,” insolently laughed Drusilla, “that my slave -husband Felix left enough gold to bribe freedom.” - -They descended the stone steps from the parapet to the gardens. The -rose-and-silver mist still boiled above the green translucent depths of -the Dead Sea. It looked, so far below, a jewel in jade. An odor of roses -and oleander came from the sloping gardens. Far below they could see the -flat tiled roofs of the village outside the walls clinging to the -precipice like birds’ nests; and every roof was crowded with women and -children, to get the air. - -“I hate women. If I had been a man, I would have been a warrior in the -thick of it at Jerusalem there,” said Drusilla. “Women are feeble and -helpless sheep. They either huddle in fright and go mad over the past -like Aunt Herodias up in the turret there, or—are eaten by the wolves. -If I knew where Felix camps among the barbarians, I’d throw my royal -estate to the winds and join him to-morrow.” - -“I would not. I’d rule the wolf,” said Bernice thoughtfully. - -Their purple silk cloaks brushed the snowy petals of the cyclamens -lining the garden paths. Bernice stooped and picked a field daisy. - -“Heart of gold,” she said dreamily, “with vesture of white silk round -it, I’ll pluck your petals and—wish.” She plucked the white petals one -by one, throwing them on the ground. - -“What does it say? Do you get your wish?” asked Drusilla. - -Bernice’s fingers rested on the last slender white petal. She plucked it -and kissed it. “I get my wish,” she said. - -The clank of an armed tread startled their daydream. - -They turned. It was the old Idumean. - -“Ladies, a camel caravan has just now come up the causeway from the -East. ’Twas their bells you heard! They ask permission to rest in our -khan during the heat of the day and go on to Jerusalem by night across -the Jordan.” - -“Who are they?” demanded the Princess Drusilla imperiously. - -“That was why I came to ask your permission, Princess! They are of the -new Christian band that gave such trouble to all the Herods. One is a -great figure of a man dressed in white with a flowing beard and train of -servants bound for the Isles of Greece. His name is Apollos. I saw him -in Rome, where he was held in honor, before Nero took the head of the -prophet, Paul! The other is a young presbyter, whatever that may be, -blue eyes, gold hair, who I could swear as slave served Paul in Rome. -His name has slipped my mind; but they came in great state with the -protection of Rome and ask lodgings in the Sun Temple till the heat of -day passes.” - -“Onesimus,” exclaimed Bernice. - -“Yes, as I mind now, Lady, that was his very name; but he has grown a -powerful man, fair as the angels of Gaul—but this Apollos as I -questioned him, seemed a follower of the mad Hermit, John Baptist, -’gainst whose ghost the Queen Herodias raves at night. If they did not -bear permission from Rome, I’d bid them pack to save trouble; but—” the -old Idumean scratched his thatch of whitening hair. - -Drusilla laughed insolently. - -“Bid them take quarters in the Temple of the Sun but avoid the Palace -here! Excuse us! Explain the Queen’s illness prevents our receiving them -with becoming honor! Send down the best of provisions and bid them enjoy -the full freedom of garden and baths after their journey. Begone—” she -peremptorily clapped her hands. - -Drusilla turned with a cynical laugh to her sister. - -“You get your wish, Sister! You can join their caravan and go to -Jerusalem and plead our case with Titus; but this must be kept from Aunt -Herodias. If this Apollos be a follower of the raving Hermit, John, -whose bloody head she sees every night in her dreams, she’ll be for a -potion of poison on him and ditch our plans deeper than the moat beneath -the walls. I’ll take care of the older man in the flowing white, ’spite -of his beard, if you’ll beguile the young one with the golden locks. Now -to the Temple of the Sun to make offerings to Istarte and Venus and -Astoreth and all the goddesses of love under the Evening Star! Herodias -cannot be moved while this madness is on her; but we can escape. You get -your wish, Sister.” - -But Bernice had turned white as the cyclamen of snow which brushed the -royal purple of her silk vesture. - -“Yes,” she repeated. “I get my wish! A curse upon it! Must Herod’s -daughters always, always be pawns in Rome’s royal game?” - -“What matter, if we are winning pawns?” smiled the other. “Cheer up, -Sister! Throw away regret! Cast off fear! We can escape. Herodias has -lived her life and won, and lost, and sits like an old fool drooling -over her loss; but we are young yet! Let us eat, drink and be merry; for -to-morrow we die.” - -“You said, yourself, but a moment ago, you thanked Jupiter your slave -husband Felix was the only one who had left a Herod daughter safe—” - -Drusilla, like her aunt earlier in the afternoon, whirled upon her -sister. Laughter had left only craft in the deep black eyes, and on the -cruel voluptuous lips. - -“Fool,” she said with a stab of scorn. “Do you hesitate because -Onesimus, your slave boy, has come back grown to man? Will your lure be -weaker, or stronger, now that he is grown with the strong wine of -manhood in his veins? If you, a Herod’s daughter, could hesitate now, -I’d stab you with my own hand the first time I found you asleep. Go to -Jerusalem! Win Titus! He will be Emperor, too, in time. Onesimus can -meet you in Rome. Bend fate to your will! Do not be bent and broken by -any fate. We go to the Temple gardens to-night.” - -The old Idumean went clanking back to the gate under the arch, -stiff-legged as legs are wont to walk, that have been in armored greaves -for seventy years. - -“A curse on this Herod brood,” he went, muttering. “These women have -thrown every Herod from his throne. If I had my will, I’d weight their -feet with stones and throw them over the precipice in the Dead Sea; and -I’d see these Nazarenes feed the lions as they fed the wild beasts in -Nero’s days. Disturbers! Disturbers! Trouble makers! Pilate, a suicide -stabbed by his own dagger! Procla, his wife, whining about the -crucifixion and bad dreams! Herod First a madman. Herod Two an exile -with his wife raving here over the Hermit’s bloody head! I’d like to -know didn’t she order his head off at one blow in this very Fort! Herod -Three falls dead in the theater of Cæsarea and his jade of a girl wife -here up to fresh tricks on Titus! Pah! A nice task for an old soldier -keeping guard of such harpies! I’d slash their lily-stem throats if I -had my way.” - - * * * * * - -The sun went down behind the rose-tinted mountains of Judea to the west. -Their peaks gleamed in blood and fire above the red and golden sands. -Bernice sat on an ivory bench in the gardens above the silver clouds -lying on the Dead Sea below. In her hand was a bunch of snowy cyclamens, -which she idly plucked. Before her stood the young presbyter, Onesimus, -clad like his master in flowing white, with black sandal straps braided -halfway to the knee, a sword hanging by a gold cord from his neck, his -hair as gold as the cord but cut short to the neck after the Greek -fashion, his deep blue eyes gazing at the Princess as he would read her -soul. Onesimus had grown to powerful manhood in these seven years since -he left Paul at Rome. - -She sat silent, thinking, but what she thought, he could not follow. -There was a fifing of insects from the dry grasses, that bordered the -garden walks. As the sun set over the blue green lake and the orange -hills beyond, the clamor of war from the cañon below dulled and fell -like the subsiding waves of an angry sea. She turned her seal ring round -and round, and drew it from her finger as if to pass it to him. She -pressed it to her lips. - -“Will this be amulet to keep you from all harm?” she mused. - -The young presbyter trembled. - -“My Unseen King will keep me from all harm,” he answered; “and I dare -not wear it till we are united for His Kingdom.” - -“Look,” she said, “the Evening Star—Isis. The dewdrops are her tears.” - -“’Twas the Star brought the Wise Men of the East,” he answered, “and -there shall be no more tears in His Kingdom.” - -An awful loneliness and an awful loveliness seemed to envelop her -fragile form. - -The young presbyter drew towards her as if to wrest her from her Dead -Sea hopes and take her to that Unseen Kingdom with violent hands. - -“Where have you been with the great Apollos, these long long years, my -Onesimus?” she dreamily asked. - -“To Babylonia and Assyria aiding the greatest apostle of all—Peter,” he -answered. - -“He, who lied and denied his leader and cut the High Priest’s servant’s -ear off at the trial long years ago, as I have heard the Queen Herodias -tell?” she asked. - -“Say rather, Princess, he who learned in sin his own weakness, and whose -great heart grew tender for all who fall in slippery places. He learned -not to trust his own strength even in love, but—God’s.” - -She pondered that absently plucking the cyclamens; and her hands were -slender as the lily stems. The silver clouds rolled from below and the -translucent water lay a painted sea. - -“What does your Master Apollos teach? How differs he from the others?” - -“I’ll answer that as Paul answered years ago in Rome, when Ephesus and -Corinth wrote to know whether they should follow Paul, or Apollos. Paul -followed the Nazarene. Apollos professed John, the Baptist; and when the -followers would have wrangled one against another, and so missed the -news of the Glad Kingdom in strife, Paul wrote back—’twas but a few -years before Nero slew him—Paul plants; Apollos waters; God gives the -increase!” - -“You speak as a gardener.” - -“I am, dear Princess— We are all gardeners, gardeners in the field of -flowers which the Persians call ‘Ardath’—the Garden of God called -Paradise.” - -“I like that. I can understand that better than an Unknown Kingdom not -made with hands! That Garden kind of Kingdom would be Glad News to me, -Onesimus! I could wander through that kind of Garden, forever, if I had -hold of your hand! Sit at my feet, dear playmate of the long ago, and -tell me of your Garden—no, sit by my side, I would hold your hand now!” - -She drew him down to the ivory bench beside her. He flushed as deep as -the rose-tinted mountains in the setting sun. - -“Now tell me of your Garden called Paradise, while I can feel your -thoughts flowing into mine through the palm of your hand. This is -Paradise enough for me.” - -“Your hand, dear Princess, throbs too hard for the peace of that Garden. -It is a Garden where there is eternal light, nor suffering, nor care, -nor sorrow, nor dark, nor sleep to miss one hour of joy.” - -“That, too, I like,” she said. “Let us not miss this hour of joy.” - -“It is watered by the Rivers of Eternal Life. God’s thoughts are the -seeds. They bloom in human flowers. ’Tis ours to keep those human -flowers from running into poisonous weeds. The flowers of this your -earthly garden are fixed by roots, where they are planted, but the human -thought seeds have power of choice like wings to bear them where they -will to go; and I would that you would will to join our Unseen Garden, -not made with hands but thoughts—” - -She drew his hand between her breasts and drank his eager gaze like one -athirst. - -“See yonder above the Sea is Istarte, the Evening Star of love, -Onesimus! Will love dwell in our garden there as it shone in the Garden -of Daphne long ago, when first I read your dear blue eyes?” - -“The God of Love is the Sun of that Garden, Princess,” he answered, -gently loosening her passionate grasp and placing in her emptied palm -the cyclamens she had let fall. “You bade me tell you of that Garden and -Apollos’ teaching. You know how the caves and grottos of the Jordan from -the Dead Sea to Damascus are filled with the Nazarenes, who have fled -from the siege of Jerusalem, which our Lord foretold. In all the cities -of Decapolis, Apollos preached in the Temples of the Sun. You know these -cities of the Greeks love and worship the Sun; but it was the Son of -God, Apollos preached, which John the Hermit foretold; and so when the -priests had sung the psalms, Apollos would sound out in his great -thunder voice like a silver trumpet: ‘Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates, -and let the King of Glory in! Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of -angel hosts, He is your King of Glory’; and when the multitude had -settled to listen, he would tell them of Ardath, the Garden of God in -Paradise, where God’s thoughts are seeds and bloom in human flowers. -Once, I mind, when a woman came weeping whose child had been slain in -the siege as she escaped, after she heard Apollos she left the Temple -rejoicing because her child had become a flower of light in the Garden -of God; and a lover, whose bride had been slain, went out, weeping no -more, because his bride was not dead, but waiting him in the Garden of -God; and a soldier mad with remorse that his cruelty had killed his wife -left all calmed because he had faith she, too, had gone to the Garden -and had sent him Apollos to teach the way.” - -Bernice plucked the snowy cyclamens again from their stems. Her slim -hand trembled. - -“Show me the way, Onesimus.” - -Her voice was so low he had to bend across her slender figure to catch -the words. - -“There is no other way but to repent, be baptized, leave off sin and -follow the Light of the Eternal Son.” - -So absorbed were the lovers they did not see the tall white figure of -the great teacher Apollos approaching on the path, accompanied by the -Princess Drusilla. - -“What is—this thing you call sin, my Onesimus? Is it sin for me to love -you as I do?” - -“Sin is the shadow of self, shutting out the light of God.” - -She pondered that. “And when I love you so you turn all life to rosy -mist, do I love self?” she asked. - -“Sin is anything that holds us in the realm of shadows, away from God. -It may be crime that fetters us in blind dungeons without bars like the -Queen Herodias up there in the turret. It may be gayety. It may be -wealth. It may be fear. It may be love of flesh, or power. It may be -anxious want. It may be doubt; but it is always shadow of self.” - -“And what is repentance? Would it cut me off from you?” - -“No, but it would cut you off from planning to gain power by snaring the -Roman General yonder. Repentance is to cancel sin by sinning no more, -forsaking self and following Light.” - -She threw her bare arms about his shoulder. “But if I gained Titus, the -Emperor’s son, I could have you too, Onesimus! You offer me a Shadow -Kingdom I cannot see or touch with hands. I aim at Rome.” - -“You aim, beloved, at the image of clay and iron seen by the Prophet -Daniel; and even now the iron is falling from the clay and the image is -crumbling down. The other Kingdom is of gold and light and -eternity. . . .” - -Two shadows fell athwart where they sat, and the Princess Bernice drew -back, while the young presbyter rose. Unutterable pain was on his -baffled face. Apollos in his flowing white garments cast a long giant -shadow between them. His back was towards the bench and so was the -figure of the Princess Drusilla. The towering Apostle with the white -hair and white beard had raised his shepherd’s crook and was pointing to -the rose-tinted peaks swimming in mystic fire of clouds and light; and -as he pointed his upraised staff and arms cast a shadow of the cross -between the young presbyter and the slim daughter of the last of the -Herods. - -“Yonder,” he was saying in a voice so like a silver trumpet that -traditions have come in Crete to this day that when he spoke all the -silver bells of the temple service rang, “Yonder are the mountains of -the wilderness, where our Christ was tempted. First, He was tempted to -satisfy the hungry cravings of wearied and faint flesh. Then, He was -tempted to try out whether God was God enough to save Him from rash -slips; and then he was offered all the kingdoms of the earth and their -pageantry as in a dream. . . .” - -“And why didn’t He accept the challenge as a Roman would?” asked the -Princess Drusilla in a cold, hard, calculating voice. “If He could have -proved His Kingdom instead of going to the Cross like a felon, I’ve -heard the Queen Herodias say all Judea would have risen and rallied to -Him and thrown off Rome. . . .” - -“Because the power given Him of God was not for service of self, but to -lead men back to God. We may not make playthings of miracles for self,” -he said. - -“So if the Queen Herodias will not acknowledge your God, you cannot cure -her madness?” demanded Drusilla. - -“Remorse is not repentance,” answered the Sage; and the two figures -passed on down through the oleanders of the garden. - -The rose-tinted misty mountains were wrapping them in shadow mantles of -purpling folds. A cold wind blew up from the waters, still and glassy as -a painted sea. - -The young presbyter stood silent. Bernice shivered. - -“How can you believe in your Unseen Kingdom, when your King was -crucified, and his followers are now scattered from Judea to these -caves?” she urged. - -“Death is but a boat across another sullen Jordan to the Gardens of -God,” he said, “and His Followers are scattered that they may scatter -the seed for the Garden to spread here on earth. Already the scattered -seed reaches from Rome to Ganges.” - -“Where does Apollos go now?” she asked. - -“To become preacher in Crete.” - -“And you?” - -“To join John, beloved of Christ, at Ephesus.” - -“And you leave?” - -“In an hour to travel in the cool of the night.” - -Far north, they could see to the snowy peaks of Hermon, where the sheet -lightning played. The clanking of forges plied in the valley below on -engines of war for the siege of Jerusalem, echoed like silver bells from -cavern and grotto. The pungent flower-drugged air had odor of temple -incense, and the breeze was as a cool hand laid on a fevered brow. The -shadows etched themselves clearer in the translucent depths of the -emerald Sea. The young presbyter’s lips were moving as in prayer. -Princess Bernice roused herself as if to throw off dreams. - -“’Tis not I who tempt you, Onesimus, with flesh, or daring, or power. -’Tis you, who tempt me to abandon the last of the Herod line for a -shadow Kingdom. My brother, King Agrippa, the last of the Herods, is -with Titus besieging the rebellious Zealots of Jerusalem. I’ll get my -bodyguard, Julius, and join your caravan, and go with you.” - -The young man’s face lighted up as a brow in sunrise. - - * * * * * - -Out under the arched gate they rode in the moon’s silvered dark, Apollos -in a litter on a camel, leading down the narrow precipitous causeway. -The Princess Bernice, too, rode a camel, but her form was swathed in -cloak; and the old Idumean rode before her on Arab horse, while the -young presbyter walked by her side. He carried his sword in his hand. - -Down the narrow bridle path from the causeway led the road to the Jordan -and Jericho and Jerusalem, scarce broad enough for the beasts, steep and -winding as a circular stair. Once where the way narrowed so that those -on stirrups had to dismount and only the camels kept sure footing, the -Idumean dismounted and held back to give right of way to the Princess’ -beast, before he turned his own horse and the young presbyter’s free to -let themselves down on their haunches. - -“Well rid of her! Well rid of her!” grumbled the old man. “If she had -not been going off with you, I would not have let her go. Have you no -other Nazarene teachers can rid me of the other two? Had she attempted -to escape to Titus, the General’s son, I would have cut her throat.” - -Down, down, the narrow winding way, the caravan descended, and where the -hot brooding malarial air of the Jordan smote them, the pebbly shaly -path turned to clay trampled to mire by the refugees fleeing the siege -for open desert and rocky cave. The current was dark and sullen and -flowed with the hurrying rage of human passion driving to the nemesis of -its own destiny. The heat was hideous and the din deafened thought. - -At the ford of the sullen dark river, they paused to water their beasts, -and mounting his horse, the young presbyter rode abreast the Princess’ -camel and signaled the Idumean to ride for her safety on the other side. - -“So would I ride with you through the Gates of Death, my Princess,” he -whispered, leaning towards the white face in the muffled cloak. “’Twas -here Christ was baptized and tempted of Self and the Evil One, and -renounced all earthly power to save men for the Glad Kingdom. You, too, -another time in safer place shall join our ranks by the sacred rite of -baptism, my Bernice.” - -But the white face answered never a word. She reached out her arm, where -she sat, and touched his brow with a hand cold as death. Then the -caravan plunged in the ford. The horses swam and scattered slightly, -heading downstream with the waves, but the camels kept footing and -floundered. As the beasts came panting up the far bank in a thicket of -willows and oleanders, the Idumean led to force the way, for the narrow -road past Jericho was packed with a slow-moving mass of fleeing women -and children and aged, escaping from the siege of the Holy City on Zion -Hill. - -Apollos, the great master, rode back abreast the Princess, and the -presbyter, Onesimus, led her camel afoot. - -“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, know that the -desolation thereof is nigh,” Apollos said. “Let them which are in Judea -flee to the mountains. They shall fall by the edge of the sword. They -shall be led away captive into all nations. Jerusalem shall be trodden -down of the Gentiles. When these things begin to come, then look up, and -lift up your heads; for redemption draweth nigh. Know you Who spoke -those words, your Highness?” - -But the Princess answered never a word; for her heart was cold with fear -of the sights she saw as in a shadow by the silver starlight. Where -Herod’s Pleasure Gardens had lain at Jericho, was such a press of -soldiers, they could not approach the city gates. The clank of the -forges for the engines of war had become as the rumble of thunder or -earthquake. Where she knew the Holy City must stand on Zion Hill, she -could discern only the blaze of towers and uptossing in midsky of -flaming javelin and torch to throw destruction inside the city walls; -and as the caravan advanced through the press of legion and cohort in -serried ranks of helmet and breastplate and spear, the narrow ascending -mountain road lay thick in a screen of smoke with a sickening odor of -burning she had not known could exist outside the purlieus of a nether -world. - -The old Idumean came back and wheeled his horse beside her. - -“We cannot get through the press though I break the pate of every head -under helmet,” he said. “We shall have to fork to the right for the -Damascus Road past the General’s tent.” - -“What is the smell of burning?” she asked, leaning forward from the -muffle of her camel. - -“The dead! They are burning the dead as they throw them out over the -walls in Gehenna Valley,” answered the old soldier; “and this road is -swimming in blood coming down the walls. The soldiers tell me it is -swimming in blood to the horses’ bridles beneath Olivet.” - -“Fear nought, Princess,” called the young presbyter, remounting his -horse to guard the rear, “you are only escaping a world that plays all -men false”, and they pressed on, taking the road that forked north of -the city. - -Daylight dim with fog and smoke and the dust of battle saw them on the -crest of the highway that led north from the Holy City towards either -Cæsarea on the Sea, or Damascus in the far snowy mountains. - -They paused again to breathe their spent camels and horses. - -Bernice signaled the young presbyter. - -“I would have your Arab horse,” she said. “I cannot ride this beast. He -is spent.” - -Onesimus helped her to dismount the panting camel and take place on his -own horse, fresh because he had ridden little. He felt the tremor of her -slender form as he helped her to saddle. Far as eye could see were tents -on the heights and plains: but the Holy City they could not see for the -fog of smoke and dust and mist. - -One great yellow tent spacious enough to house a thousand men lay not a -hundred yards to the left of their road. Above it blew the eagle -pennants of Rome. - -“On,” shouted the old Idumean, “we are safe here. That is the General’s -tent. They have paused because this is the Jewish Sabbath and they -parley for surrender. To-day will see their Holy City fall and ring to -our trumpets’ victory.” - -The caravan moved slowly forward. Soldiers rose sleepily where they lay -on the ground and saluted the old Idumean. The camels moved through the -mist in grotesque ghosts. Myriad tents were myriad island peaks in the -lifting morning mist. Then the sun outburst over the rose-tinted -mountains of Moab in the east; and the trumpets blew in a million echoes -through glen and grotto. - -Mountains and plains seemed to awaken with myriad soldier forms from -ground and tent. Their metal helmets gave back the morning light in -silvered fire. As the trumpets blew their silvery blasts amid the -echoing rocks, the young presbyter’s horse reared in panic terror. The -Idumean and the young presbyter sprang to snatch at the bridle. The -Princess threw out her arm and struck the trembling creature a blow on -its flank with the bridle rein. It bounded in mid-air and fled as on -winged feet straight for the tent of the sleeping Roman General. - -The old Idumean came a-sprawl on the ground, rolled over and sprang up -with his helmet awry. The astounded young presbyter had retained his -seat on the wearied camel, but gazed after the fleeing form as one who -has received his death blow. - -“A curse upon her and all her vixen foxy Herod brood,” raged the old -man, getting stiffly to his feet. “I might have known it was a trick -when she said she would go to the Grecian Isles with you.” - -The caravan moved forward again. The old Idumean was galloping furious -as his Arab horse could leap in wild bounds towards the General’s tent. -Just as the sunlight burst in a shield of fire over the embattled hosts, -the young presbyter looked back. - -The old Idumean had thrown himself from his horse and stood with drawn -lance across the door to the tent of the sleeping Roman General. - -“And because Peter erred through love in a slippery place, it gave his -great heart tenderness for all who trust in flesh,” said Apollos. Then -he smiled gently at his young presbyter. “The old Idumean is closer to -truth though he fell hard and cursed as Peter, than this Princess, -blinder in the fetters of her own wiles than the Queen Herodias, -prisoner back in the Fort,” he said. “We all have to learn by errors, -Onesimus, but it makes the way longer; and he who follows truth by a -circling road, comes out where he began.” - - - - - CHAPTER III - - THE SWORD AND THE SUNBURST - - -If a woman is forced by the chain of circumstances to barter her love -for power—is she justified in bartering herself to the highest bidder? - -That was the thought that chased through the Princess Bernice’s brain in -a dizzy whirl, when she struck her horse, and bolted from the -missioner’s caravan to force herself on the notice of the Roman -Emperor’s son and make such bargain as she could with her own charms for -coin to save herself and her brother—the King—from ruin. Had she ever -known a day of freedom of choice from early girlhood, when she had been -sold to one old husband to steady a tottering throne, to opening -womanhood, when widowed, she had again been sold like a slave on the -shambles to another aged and repugnant spouse to win alliance to -strengthen that same insecure throne? And when she had fled from that -second aged buyer on plea of religious vow, her name had been dirt under -the feet of the very beggars on the street—a byword among the Jews and -a joke among the actors of the Roman theaters in all the known world. If -the world would hound her to lawlessness for refusing to bow to -legalized slavery, she would accept the challenge and bid for a power -that would put the world under her feet and reduce the dogs, who barked, -to lick her very hands. - -“Dogs—dogs—dogs!”—she hated the whole scheme of life, that made of -her love and womanhood a pawn to lust and power. ’Twas all very well for -the Christian presbyter and the great revivalist to hurl anathemas at -her sin; but was the sin hers, which had forced her down in the -cesspools of lustful slime? If the world had made her sin, she would -take toll of the world for her sin and exact tribute that would -compensate her loss for the sin. - -Rebel? Yes, she knew she was rebel; but who had turned her into rebel? -If she could not fight Rome, she would exact price from Rome, by beating -it at its own ruthless gamble for power. To be sure, the presbyter and -the revivalist had offered her refuge from Rome in a Shadowy Kingdom not -made with hands; but had the God of that Shadowy Kingdom reached down -miraculous hand and saved her from the price she had already paid? Could -all the tears of repentance and sorrow for that past—which was not her -fault—wipe out the memories that seared her soul a quivering red? The -great revivalist had warned it was she who was tempting the young Greek -convert of the New Faith. Tempting? She laughed; and struck her frantic -horse again with all the vicious strength in her woman arm. It was she, -who had been tempted by a type of love she had not dreamed could exist -in the world of men; and what could she give back for that type of -love—now? An assoiled thing with drugged memories, which all the waters -of Dead Sea hopes and useless tears could not wipe out. How easily she -could have drawn the young Greek convert’s lips to her own and drawn his -soul through those lips and held it enchained forever in enchanted -fetters he did not dream! She loved him too well to make of his life -what fate had made of hers. - -She laughed now because she was forever past tears. She struck the horse -again and again because she would have made all living creatures suffer -a little of what she was suffering; and she could have screamed in such -a fury of incarnate demon exultation as the warrior women of the -barbarians screamed when they tortured fallen foe— She would have -laughed if the horse had stumbled and caused her death—that, at least, -would be going down with defiance in the very teeth of fate; but a -frantic horse on devil’s errand somehow does not stumble. It carries us -into the very pit of fate. - -It was just as the mists of morning were rising that some of the -soldiers stirred uneasily in their sleep to the echo of the trumpets and -bugles sounding reveille and the sharp iron-shod pound of the two horses -ridden at furious pace over the flinty rocks. Some of them sat up -wearily. A few commanders sprang to their feet, sword in hand. Their -first thought was of fresh dispatches from Rome, or word of surrender -from the besieged Holy City. What they decried through the rising gauzy -mist was the figure of a woman leaping from her horse in front of the -commander’s tent, followed by a soldier throwing himself from his horse -across her way and thrusting his lance before the tent entrance. Not -thus had refugees escaping over the walls of the besieged city by rope -come to the Roman for permission to seek safety in the caves beyond the -Dead Sea. - -The officers smiled in hard contempt. The soldiers laughed, an ugly -suggestive laugh. They laughed because they knew that while the war -lasted, if a goddess had come garbed as a woman, she would not be -received in that tent. They trusted, loved and idolized their commander -as they would a god, and already openly talked of Titus as the army’s -future Emperor, when the cares of Rome from Gaul to Ganges would have -worn out his father, Vespasian. - -The Roman Legions lay encamped on valley and hill in front of Jerusalem. -Seven months now had they besieged the Holy City from Passover Week in -spring when a million Hebrews from every country in the known world had -come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the birth of their nation from the -bondage of slavery in Egypt. It was now the golden summer season, which -we know as the end of August and opening of September. Russet mist -shimmered on earth and sky. As the sun rose over the red mountain rims -of Moab far to the east of the Dead Sea, the gauzy clouds took to -themselves wings and rose to mid-heaven, white as the snow of Hermon in -the north, and joyous as the lark’s greeting to newborn day. - -[Illustration: THE TEMPLE REBUILT BY HEROD] - -Seven long months the Roman Legions had beaten with their huge engines -of war against the three impregnable walls of the Holy City. Beleaguered -and assailants were both exhausted and had appointed this day a truce; -for it was the Jewish Sabbath. The besieged citizens would long since -have surrendered to Rome; for Rome had given them peace and prosperity -and security in their own Hebrew laws for a hundred years; but the mad -Zealot Robber Bands and Short Sword Ruffians, known as the Sicarii, who -had seized the city twenty-thousand strong Passover Week to plunder in -the name of Liberty from Roman yoke, when all the Temple Chests were -filled with gold tribute from Jews the world over, knew that surrender -meant death, and holding all the arms of the city, kept the gates of the -three unscalable walls locked against Roman entry or citizens’ escape. -Escape was possible only by leaping or dropping ropes from the high -walls. Women were held prisoners in the houses, as cattle for slaughter -are hemmed in shambles, to force the obedience of the men to the mad -Zealot Robber Bands. He who threw himself from the broad parapet of the -upper walls and missed death in the frantic leap, saw all his kin flung -forcibly over after him by the Zealots, into the bloody moat beneath the -southern precipice, where the slow burning fires of Gehenna had already -consumed more than six hundred thousand Jews. - -But all was peace of parley this calm Sabbath morning. - -Not a watcher appeared on the broad top of the walls from the Temple on -the east to the three Towers of Herod on the higher Zion to the west. -The world of fighters slept in the dead exhaustion of men who had lived -in armor day and night for seven months. The footmen of the Roman -Legions sprawled on the ground, helmets and face pieces still fastened, -metal armor still buckled to breast and thigh. The horsemen lay with -heads pillowed on saddles, their beasts stretched on the ground beside -them, bridle rein crooked in their elbows, shields thrown for protection -across their lower limbs. The huge battering rams, which the Romans had -hauled up to the walls and mounted on hurdles of trees and rocks and -sod, rested suspended in mid-air, the giant beams hanging over the wall -for first blow the next day, with rams’ heads of solid iron twisted and -torted from the smash of seven months’ ceaseless work. Where the cable, -that hauled back the beam coiled round a horizontal windlass, had been -tied to a stake driven in the ground, a hundred ropemen lay in a sleep -dead as death. The great catapaults, with jaws of a giant leviathan -gripping rocks for the toss over the walls, also hung silent and still -against the calm sky, with more cables fast to ground stages and more -fighters asleep with hands not a finger length from the ropes for the -call to fresh fight, when the trumpets should sound. - -North of Jerusalem, far as eye could see on mountain and plain, was a -yellow tent city of Roman Legions grouped round one large marquee on the -central ridge, above which gleamed the ensigns of the Emperor’s son, -Titus, the gleaming eagle in brass on a lofty pole in front of the -commander’s quarters. - -The woman and the soldier stood facing each other with blazing eyes -before the commander’s tent. The man did not speak. If Rome won, he -would not risk his head by letting her pass. If Rome failed, neither -would he risk his neck by offence to an imperious mistress, who was not -wont to be stopped in her will. - -Their eyes blazed. Both breathed hard. - -“Down with that lance.” The woman’s order was emphasized with a stamp. -She had tossed aside her black cloak, revealing royal purple below and -her right hand sought the pearl-handled dagger in the gold cord round -her waist. - -“The Emperor sleeps, Princess,” the soldier gasped back. “One to win -favor, had best not disturb the tired conqueror unannounced.” - -“Liar,” she said with the quick gleam of an angry comet, “drop your -spear.” - -The tent curtain lifted. An unarmed man in royal vesture like her own -emerged as if dazed from sleep. - -The Idumean’s lance went up with a flash in the sun, butt on ground, -point in air, held by hand as of an unseeing statue. The hair of the man -in the tent doorway curled unkempt and damp with night sweat on his -brow. He was unshaven and bent, unlike soldier mien, as if crushed with -burdens too heavy to be borne. He was still in the drowse of heavy -sleep. - -“Bernice—Princess—Sister,” he ejaculated. “Are you ghost—or flesh? In -the name of all the gods of Rome, how came you—here?” - -“Aye—how came her Highness here?” angrily repeated the old Idumean -guard. “And my life was sworn to hold the two Princesses and the Queen -Herodias safe in Machærus Fort beyond Jordan while the war lasts; but -she tricked me by tale of joining some Nazarene Christians going to the -Isles of Greece; and when the caravan passed this way up from the -Jordan, she broke from rank and wheeled her horse affrighted by the -morning trumpets straight for the General’s tent.” - -“Silence—fellow,” ordered the man. “Who gave you leave to speak? Come -inside, my Sister!” - -He lifted the tent flaps, and they passed in. There was not a soul -inside all the great tent but a Sabean slave laying out his master’s -armor for the day. - -“My Brother—my King—Agrippa—last of the Herod line,” the woman opened -her arms; and they embraced with the passion of the Herod line, that -loved as it hated, with the hot blood of the torrid Arab strain. - -“You may go,” the King ordered the man. - -Left alone, he turned to the Princess. - -“What means this—mad—adventure, Sister?” - -“It means, dear Brother, that the Herod women will no longer endure to -be cooped like sheep to be eaten by wolves yonder in Machærus Fort! -Herod women are of the lion line, my King! They fight not in cornered -walls. They crouch and spring for the foe’s throat, and never wait for -any foe to strike first.” - -“Dangerous words, if Rome overhears,” said he. - -“Have you forgotten how, from the male side, we spring from the -unconquered Arab, and from the other side from Mariamne, daughter of the -greatest of the Hebrew high priests?” demanded the Princess. “Have you -forgotten when the Great Herod would have broken Mariamne to his -imperious will, she defied him; and when he slew her, she came back and -haunted him till she drove him mad in that same Machærus Fort? Have you -forgotten how the great Imperial Cæsar called Herod to Rome, and Herod -would not lower eye or knee in presence of Imperial Rome; and how for -his fearless courage he won respect of all the Senate in Rome and gained -the Kingdom of Judea, which our Royal House has held from that day to -this? When did Herods win a kingdom by cringing in fear? Not thus are -kingdoms won, Brother! Old Queen Herodias grows madder every day with -dreams of the Hermit John’s head slain in the dungeons there. Sister -Drusilla, who has ever been jealous of me being younger and your -favorite, swears she will join her husband Felix, whether he is in Rome, -or among the barbarians. Know you not if the Romans win here, the secret -Zealots and Sicarii Sword Ruffians in the Fort there on the Dead Sea -will rise and cut our throats for loyalty to Rome; and if the Romans -lose here, they will tear us to pieces with bloody hands and feed us to -the dogs beneath the city walls?” - -The man’s head sank forward despairingly. - -“You should have been King in my place, little lioness! Rome’s luxuries -in youth have softened my Herod daring. I am no longer wild Arab of the -desert willing to wade waist deep in blood to power. I crave no more -kingship, but rest and peace.” - -“Then—confess it not,” scouted the Princess. - -“But I do confess it. I am weary of fighting for a kingdom to do as Rome -bids! If Rome fails, we are lost. If Rome wins, all Judea will be -ravaged from Galilee to the Dead Sea, and every city put up on the -auction block to the highest soldier bidder, slave or free. Know you our -royal revenues all come from the tribute taxes of these cities? Only -Felix, the freed slave, sister Drusilla’s husband, had cunning to -foresee. We of the royal line have been blinded by our own ambition and -mistook a shadow kingdom for the real. We are only weak shadows of Rome. -As waves Rome’s arm of command, so jumps our obedient shadow. Rome is -crumbling like a colossal image of clay. Only Felix laid him away gold -enough in strong iron chests to buy a villa down on Naples Bay, where I -had planned to send Sister Drusilla to her husband; and the Queen -Herodias on to her lord in banishment in Spain.” - -“And what did you plan to do with me?” asked the Princess, with the eye -of a harrier hawk on a weakling bird. - -“Trust Titus’ mercy! You have ever been favorite with him. He likes your -wild daring; but dare not too much! We have been loyal to Rome. . . .” - -“Mercy?” the Princess Bernice laughed. “Is that the Great Herod’s voice -I hear in the last of the Herod line? Do you also plan to march with -shackles on hands and balls on feet behind the conqueror’s car under the -Triumphal Arch at Rome?” - -“Sister, dearest Princess, my lioness,” answered King Agrippa, caressing -his sister’s hands. “Have you forgotten how a year ago we stood on the -Bridge of Fate that runs from the temple roof across the middle lower -city to Herod’s palace on the west, to plead with the high priests to -stem this revolt against Rome; and the whole populace of Jerusalem took -up stones to kill us? Only the height of the bridge saved our lives. -Have you forgotten the shameful names they shouted at you—Rahab, they -called you—a Herod Princess—because you had left your ancient spouse -up in Cilicia and came down to pay your vows in Jerusalem—you, my Queen -sister, the daughter of the high priests back to Aaron? Have you -forgotten the insults they hurled at me, for defending you—my favorite -Sister—though never Herod did more for the Jews than I have done? What -would you if we trust not Titus’ gratitude?” - -“Gratitude,” the Princess harshly laughed. “Gratitude, the sour-milk -diet of weakling fools and coward hopes.” She drew back from her brother -and screened her face by throwing her purple cloak over her shoulder as -she spoke. “What would I do? I’d do what every high priest’s woman has -had to do since Miriam, Aaron’s sister, beat the timbrels of victory on -the Red Sea. I’d rule the man! I’d ride with the conqueror in his car -beneath Rome’s Arch of Triumph! I’d turn a shadow kingdom into a real -earth power ruled with iron grip though it were fleshed in woman. They -call us—weak.” She laughed again. - -“I’d send Drusilla with her dove-cooing love to her slave husband Felix -on Naples Bay. I’d send the old drooling Queen Herodias to her doting -failure of a spouse in Spain to waste their souls away in vain regrets; -but I’d strike, and I’d strike now, straight at Titus’ heart for the -throne of Rome. . . .” - -“Not that—not that way, my Queen, my Sister,” her brother drew back in -horror. “Know you what names the populace call you, my royal Sister?” - -“A curse on these barking dogs! What care I for the curs of the gutter? -He who fights curs, finds himself snarling in their gutter. We Herods -have given Judea security for a hundred years. What have they given us? -They have snapped hands that fed them royal bread, free. Let the Romans -conquer and throw every Judean over the walls to the fires of Gehenna, -or sell the seditious slaves to Egypt for the price of dogs. Think you, -beloved Brother, that I have not sacrificed love for power? I left the -only man that ever I loved in my life but you—my King, to break from -the caravan to the Isles of Greece, and come to Titus, here. Yes, the -Greek slave—Onesimus, from whom you parted me in the Gardens of Daphne -long ago, now grown to man majestic as a gladiator! He offered me the -shadow kingdom of his Christ, and my weak heart might have yielded to -that love had I not seen the Emperor’s tent here when the mist rose; but -I would not drop the real kingdom of Rome within our grasp for all -shadow kingdoms of all the prophets since time began. What have the -prophets done for us, Brother? Show me a kingdom I can grasp; and I’ll -close my clutch on what I feel. I grasp not rainbows, my Agrippa!” - -King Agrippa sank to his cot with his face in his hands. - -“If you ride with the Emperor in his chariot under the Triumphal Arch, -know you what Rome will say?” - -“And what do I care what Rome says? Can Rome say worse than these -Judeans have shrieked as we rode through the streets? What care I what -Roman rabble bawls if I rule Rome? With the army in Titus’ strong hands, -the Senate will eat from our hands, whipped curs. Where is Titus? Take -me to him, Brother! We can save the last of Herod’s line.” - -King Agrippa rose irresolute. The Princess had stung him to action; but -one, who must be stung to action, must be kicked on by prods in action. - -“That I cannot, Sister Bernice, though you were Queen of Heaven.” King -Agrippa began pacing the tent. “We have a remnant of the Roman garrison -secure in the three great Towers of Herod, whence the Zealots and -Sicarii Sword Ruffians have been unable to drive them out—they are our -old loyal garrison of a year ago; and they have ample water in the roof -cistern, to hold out till we go in. That’s why our engines have avoided -throwing rocks at the west Towers. With them are three of the Nazarenes -who refused to be driven to revolt. Our spies tell us these Nazarenes -have rescued all the sacred scrolls from the Ruffians now in the Temple -to the east, and carried them for safe-keeping to Herod’s Towers by the -secret Aqueduct that runs from beneath the Temple to Herod’s Palace on -the west. You would be safe there; but I—cannot—take you there. The -Overhead Bridge from the Temple to the Palace has been smashed by the -great rocks we have been throwing over the walls, and the Aqueduct from -the Altar to the Palace is filled with rotting dead and plunder—the -rebel bands drove the high priests under, and cut their throats in the -Aqueduct, and the Temple floor now swims in blood. . . .” - -“And think you, Brother, my feet are so dainty they would spurn to wade -in the blood of these dogs or trample the rotting bodies of high priests -to gain our end? Have you forgotten how Herod the Great had strangled, -beneath the baths of Machærus, his wife’s brother, who was High Priest, -to gain his end; and how when his best loved wife taunted him with -murder and turned from him in hate, though he loved her to madness, he -slew her, too, and stopped at naught to make his throne secure? I am -such a Herod daughter! Shall we let slip what he paid such price to -gain?” - -The King’s brows knitted deep. Though scarce past mid-life, he bent with -the impotence of fate too powerful for him to master. - -“Princess, I cannot risk the General’s anger if we disobey his orders. -There is truce to-day. It is the Jewish Sabbath. The Emperor is for -mercy and letting famine force surrender. We have the city hemmed on -every side. They must surrender or starve. But the army will not hear of -another day’s delay! It will hurt our Emperor’s prestige! We shall -marshal all our strength this day to show the Jews inside, there cannot -escape one living soul from our circle of fire and sword. If they -surrender not to-night, neither old nor young, nor man nor woman, shall -escape the sword; and when the sword is dulled of slaughter, all others -will be sold as slaves. The soldiers are now down in the burning moat -stealing coins from the dead to buy slaves at the price of a dog, and -not a man in rank dare break the truce on pain of death! The General and -his young lieutenant, Trajan, are in the turrets of Antonia’s Tower next -to the Temple. Titus has not left off to lead for one hour from Passover -Week. Till victory perches on his eagle, he does not know that woman -exists; and if he did, he’d bid his soldiers knock her on the head!” - -“Pah!” she laughed. “You know not woman’s power on man.” - -“But this is no man—Titus is iron, my Sister—I occupy his tent alone! -Not one night for seven months has he slept in his bed; or known rest; -or taken off his armor. He is soldier now, and not lover dangling on a -woman’s whim. He fights hand to hand with Jews. Last night we had mined -from Antonia’s Tower under the Holy of Holies, and if the Jews do not -surrender this eventide, we break through. The orders are to slay and -slay. The Jews suspect. They must have heard our pickaxes below the -Temple breaking a hole in the wall of the foundation. Their soldiers -crowd all the upper galleries of the Temple to pour down boiling pitch -and set fire if we enter. Our spies tell us even now these swine Zealots -lie in stupor drunk with the holy wine mixed with Roman blood all over -the sacred Temple floor. One, son of Lazarus of Bethany, escaped from -the walls by rope last night, and told us the rotting dead pile the -streets, and the living pace pale shadows faint from famine; and when -the Zealots broke into the houses of the prisoned women to search for -food one Jewess of Arabian Petra fed these ravening beasts her own child -boiled for flesh; and then laughed and told them, and stabbed herself to -death raving vengeance.” - -Sister and brother paused and gazed desperately in each other’s eyes. - -“There is no hope but to trust the Roman Emperor’s mercy,” repeated King -Agrippa. - -“Rome’s mercy!” Princess Bernice laughed, and her voice was hard as -sword striking metal. “Sheep for hungry wolves! Would Herod the Great -have hesitated and whined ‘mercy, mercy,’ to wolves, as we pause now, -Brother of mine?” - -“Herod the Great dealt not with Titus. He dealt with a cringing Senate. -This Titus is a man.” - -“Then, if he is man, I—am—woman. Know you what that means? Take me to -Titus, though we wade in blood to our waists! Be not less than man, -yourself. Shall my power be less because he is man? Do you remember your -mad jealousy when we were younger? Do you think I’ll fail with him -because he is man? I have had two weak kings for husbands! Now I aim for -an Emperor.” - -“Bernice—are you mad? Do you know the price you’ll have to pay?” - -“Price? Fool!” she scouted. “Do I know the price I’ve paid to man since -I was a little child? This time, I’ll get paid for all I barter if I -have to cut his throat while he sleeps—” - -“Woman—,” he threw his hand across her lips. “You risk both our lives -with your mad talk.” - -She drew his hand from her lips and kissed it as she drew back. - -“Who go in as spies, Brother?” she pressed. - -“Who risks his life?” - -“I’ll risk my life—if you will do as much,” she urged. - -“You would not have the royal line of the Herods creep into their -kingdom spies?” he wavered; and in his wavering, she saw the triumph of -her old power and laughed. - -“I would have the royal Herod line creep through the fires of Hades to -grasp a real kingdom instead of this shadow of Rome’s leavings,” she -answered. “Go to the Tower of Antonia and get Titus’ permission! Tell -him you have found a woman of the high priest caste who will go in as -spy. Tell him she will take refuge in Mariamne’s Palace of the Herod -Towers—to give her pass to the remnant of the Roman Garrison there! -Tell him she will throw over the walls each day from the dovecots of the -Queen’s Tower news of all that passes inside the walls.” She clapped her -hands. The old Idumean came stiffly in. - -“Julius, follow King Agrippa up to Antonia’s Tower. Take your station -where the Roman sappers have mined the wall to the Temple. Bide there -till I send you word by page lad! Sharp your short sword as you wait and -get helmet that will meet your breastplate at the neck! Be sure to -protect your neck—you’ve only one! When the lad comes ask no question! -Leap through into the Temple and lift the pavement of the floor before -the Altar into the Aqueduct. Drop the lad through below! Then escape for -your life back through the hole in the wall! If you succeed, you shall -have free farm and pension all your life. If you fail, your tongue shall -be torn out!” - -She smiled joyously as the old Idumean went out; and then she bade King -Agrippa get her the garments of his page boy. - -Toward the tenth hour of the stone dial in front of the Imperial tent, a -page lad walked out following King Agrippa. He wore a cloak and his -turban cap came down over his ears to his very eyes. - -All the terraced garden below the outer walls had been cut to the roots. -Palm and cactus and hedge and olive trees had gone to build the huge -hurdles on which the idle battering rams stood suspended in mid-air. -Just once the page paused and swayed as he followed the king going up to -Antonia Tower. ’Twas where the Romans had torn down the first and second -walls of the Holy City. On the angle of a projecting bastion on the -inner third wall, where those on the parapet above could see, swung the -rotting skeletons of five hundred Jews crucified hanging by their spiked -hands. Their loose garments blew to the wind and the ravens still -circled above the featureless blackening skulls. Where the battering -rams rested motionless above the parapets, bags filled with sand and -dripping inky pitch showed how the besieged had fought back by firing -the hurdles and engines of war. Rumor ran through the Roman camp how an -old blind follower of Herod the Great, let down by ropes to work he -could not see, had fired and burned the first hurdles. But for the -creaking of the ravens perched on the turrets of the towers and fighting -over the black skulls, the silence was of an awfulness that was stabbed -by every footfall. Once or twice the page saw gaunt figures on the wall -top appear like phantoms and toss naked dead over to the burning moats -below; and down in the burning moats could be seen ghoulish figures of -the Roman Army searching the dead for coin to buy slaves in victory. A -quick catch of breath broke from the page. King Agrippa looked sharply -back but did not pause. Javelins, darts, broken arrows, bent spears, -crumpled shields littered the dust where gardens had once terraced the -hills. The ground was hot beneath the page’s sandals as though seethed -in flame. By the Tower of Antonio in front of the Temple, trickles of -red clotted blood black with flies ran out under the demolished walls. - -[Illustration: Map of Jerusalem] - -Then, they had vaulted the clutter of crumbled stones in the lowest -story of Antonia’s Tower where its east wall joined the Temple. Where -the broken wall was plugged by plank and bag, a cohort of Romans stood -guard silent as stone. The King raised his right hand. The old Idumean -came forward so swathed in sheet of mail and leggings of chain greaves -he could scarce be recognized but for the stiffness of his aged legs. In -his right hand, he carried a long sword, in his left the short circular -dirk such as the Sicarii Sword Ruffians inside bore. Not a word was -uttered. The old soldier, disguised as Zealot, moved forward and pulled -some bagging from the hole in the wall. Head first, then right leg, he -stepped through the hole. With frantic look of appeal as a dumb brute -going to its doom might cast in affectionate farewell to a loved master, -the page glanced back at the pale face of King Agrippa. Then, he -followed the disguised soldier through the hole in the wall and the -Romans stuffed the bagging and plank back in place. - -They were inside the sanctuary of the Holy Place. - -The silence was of a tomb. Gone was the golden Altar. Gone were golden -cherubim and seraphim above the Altar of which the Psalmist sang. Gone -were the golden candlesticks in mystic sevens. Gone were the great -golden basins and the brass brazier in which the priests had burned -sacrifices for the people’s sins from the days of Solomon. Gone were the -cunningly wrought tapestries of Damascus and Babylon in woven gold and -blue and purple and scarlet, which veiled the Holy of Holies in mystic -purity from profane gaze. Ax and sword had hacked the sheathing of gold -and silver from the pillars to each side supporting the cloisters and -galleries. And where were the mystic treasure boxes between pillars, in -which the Jews hoarded the offerings of the faithful through the fateful -centuries? The Babylonians had rifled these treasures long centuries -ago; but they had left the treasure chests. So had Antiochus of the -North; but even he could not destroy these great iron boxes, though he -had offered swine upon that vanished altar; and when Herod the Great had -restored the Temple, these treasure chests had been left filled and -untouched for a hundred years. Again the page swayed as faint; for -sprawled on the pavement floor lay drunken Sicarii Ruffians in the dead -sleep of swinish debauch, with sword in one hand, the golden flagons and -cups of the altar service in the other, and they slept on a floor -thickening with human blood. A slight tremor ran through the Temple, as -of an earthquake from the Dead Sea; or was it that the senses of the -page swam at what he saw? The Temple pavement seemed to heave and sink. -The great Golden Gate to the east—ninety feet it was in height—swung -open as of unseen hands, flooding the horror with a burst of sunlight. -The page covered his face with his hand. Was this the crumbling kingdom -of reality for which one grasped, rejecting that other shadow kingdom -not made with hands, but made of rest and peace and light and love and -eternity? - -Julius, the old Idumean, with one eye gleaming through his vizor on the -swinish forms asleep, and his long sword in his right hand, was prying -with the dirk in his left to hoist the stone that gave secret drop to -the dry Aqueduct below. The stone lifted as on hinges. The old Idumean -laid down his right-hand long sword, grasped the page by the neck, -signaled him to catch the edge of the black hole for the drop and was -still holding the trapdoor up, when either the tremor of the earthquake, -or the flood of sunburst from the Golden Gate, disturbed the sleepers. - -“Down, you tricky she-vixen of hell,” the Idumean hissed, “and hang by -your hands, which I’ve trapped, till Rome rots.” - -But Bernice, the Princess, had thrust up one arm in a sudden revulsion -at the drop in the under dark and caught the descending trap door with -the palm while she hung suspended by her right hand from the edge. The -noise had roused the sleepers. They were on him with a howl of tigerish -fiends. She saw him snatch at his long sword, miss it, leap back, strike -out with his short dirk sword. The iron-shod boot slipped on the bloody -floor. He fell with a crash of armor on stone. They sprang on his -outstretched arms, his mail-clad legs, his metal breastplate, hacking at -the chain thighs with their swords. Her last glimpse of the old Idumean -was of him shoving his chin down to meet the breastplate and save his -neck from their spears. Then a great broadsword crashed down. His metal -head piece went bounding over the floor with a gush of livid blood. Her -hand hold gave from the edge of the trap door. The stone slipped back to -its place in the floor, and she dropped to bottom in the dark of the -Aqueduct. - -It was black as night. She paused to think which way was west. Which way -lay the Herod Palace? Had she turned as she swung on the edge of the -trapdoor—and dropped? Then back in her dim memories of all the glories -of the Herod line—was it memory or a throwback of the mad daring blood -in her own daring veins?—came half consciousness of how Herod the Great -in like case let down by baskets into robber caves of Galilee, black as -the night of this Aqueduct, had plunged on fearless in the dark, and -driven the cave robber bands over the precipice to a man. She boldly -advanced through the dark. By the feel of her feet, the stone footing -beneath was descending. That, she knew must be wrong; for the dry -Aqueduct was used to flush water from the Altar out east from the pools -at the Palace west. She turned. The Aqueduct ascended. That must be -right; for waters do not flow up; and it was the Palace pools that -flushed the Aqueduct to drain the Temple, and she fled through the dark -like a night demon. Was this the price she must pay for a kingdom of -which not one stone would be left upon another by sunrise if the Jews -did not surrender that very day to Rome? Fool! Judea was lost. It was at -Rome she aimed. - -Her foot tripped. ’Twas but the plundered gold of the Temple chests, she -knew by the rattle of coin on stone; and she sped on through the dark. -Then an odor struck her in the face that is like no other odor on earth. -It was the odor of those long dead in damp. She swayed faint against the -circular arch of the Aqueduct and like a flash in the night came memory -of the tales of long ago—these were the high priests that Herodias’ -lord had spurred to crucify the Christus of the Nazarenes. Her breath -came in gasps. Was she to perish here haunted forever by that Christian -cross, which the line of Herods had risked all to destroy in order to -perpetuate a crumbling kingdom? Her sandal touched a soft and naked -thing. She leaped over the tangled mass of unseen putrid flesh and ran -till her forward right hand touched bronze gate beneath the Towers of -Herod’s Palace. - -Three raps she gave, and then four, in the mystic number of the Hebrew -seven. It was the Roman pass to deceive the Jews in their own mystic -number. No answering sound came back. - -She rapped again, three—then four—louder and yet louder and could hear -her own muffled heart beats in the dark. - -Had the old Idumean, whom she had tricked, perished trapping her in -revenge? Her heart beat till she thought her temples would burst; and -she saw as in colored fires the bloody head of the Hermit John, who had -taunted Herodias to madness; the ghostly wraith of Mariamne, Herod’s -murdered wife; the pale face of the Nazarene, James, whom her own Herod -husband had ordered stoned to death—then circles of fire went whirling -before her eyes and in the circles a fiery cross with the crucified -figure of that Son of Man—she screamed and beat on the bronze door with -her hands. - -It seemed a century before seven faint taps sounded back from the other -side of the door. - -She rapped again frantically, beating the door with her clenched fist -and screaming “’Tis I—Princess Bernice—open—open—open the doors! For -the love of God, open the doors.” - -Then she sank to her knees, with the fiery circles whirling in her dying -consciousness, and in the midst of the circles ever the dangling figures -of crucified men on a wall. The bronze door creaked, and rasped, and -swung open. A Roman soldier, wan with hunger, stood in the dim light. He -fell back as if from a ghost and would have clashed the bronze door -shut; but she thrust the pass from Titus in his amazed hand and fainted -across the threshold at his feet. - -Must a woman ever pass through the portals of hell to gain her end? - -She risked her mother’s life in gaining birth. She risked her own in -giving birth; and was this the end? Why was woman accursed? Was there no -redemptive power in all the long chain of circumstances to free her from -the power of that ancient curse for grasping at the Tree of Life? What -was life? ’Twas life she had snatched at and lo! a flaming sword of -fire—circles of fire and in the center ever the cross of a crucified -love. Then, in her delirium, Onesimus, her lover, was bending over her -in the Garden of Ardath, the Paradise of Flowers; and every flower was a -child’s soul; and through her veins ran a flame that did not burn but -was of the very essence of light; and at her feet lay no Dead Sea of -tears but ran with the laughing glad voice of many waters Rivers of -Life—and their vesture was of the light of the very sun. They did not -need to speak. They knew without words. - -The flame was no longer fiery sword—it was golden light; and her lover -was trying to tell her that light was love, golden as the dawn over the -swimming mountains of Moab—over which they two seemed mounting in -chariots of fire—when an unseen hand, white as fuller’s earth, snatched -him from her—and she was falling—falling—falling—sinking with the -dead weight of her humanity straight to that Dead Sea of tears—the -laughter now was not the glad voice of many waters—it was the shrieking -mockery of the Roman world. She was marching with ball on feet and gyves -on wrists under the Triumphal Arch of Rome; and all Rome was pointing -fingers of scorn at the naked captive daughter of the Herod kings; and -the rabble dogs were snapping at the captive lines. She awakened with a -piercing scream. - -Was she living or dead? She was past caring. Let Fate do its worst. She -looked up. Slowly she recognized one of the Palace chambers of -Mariamne’s Tower; but whether the chambers were real or dream, she did -not know. But seven months before, she and King Agrippa had fled from -the threats of the populace beneath the Overhead Bridge to this very -Tower. She had played in it as child, and wantoned in it as girl, and -plotted in it as woman. She had drunk wine of life in that very Tower; -and were these the lees of the wine, that at last would sting as a -serpent? She sat up on her couch. Beside her stood the pale Roman -soldier of the garrison and an aged Jewess. A mid-life man stood in the -chamber door. An aged and venerable figure looked over her shoulder. One -who seemed physician was pressing a brew to her lips. - -“Who are these people?” she whispered faintly. - -“Fear not, daughter,” gently answered the aged woman. “We are Nazarenes, -followers of the Christ. It is no poison that Luke, the physician, would -give you! He, too, is a follower of the Nazarene, though he is Greek. I -am the mother of Mark, who has ever dwelt in Jerusalem. The aged apostle -is Matthew, who used to gather taxes for the Romans.” - -Then the instinct of fear, that haunted all the Herod blood and drove -that blood from crime to crime, came over her awakening consciousness in -a flood of memory; for had she not as girl stood on that Bridge between -Temple and Palace when her own Herod kin had urged the Jewish mob to -drag James, the crucified Christ’s kinsman, out to death by stone and -spear? How she had laughed at the rabble then, and clapped her hands to -see them hound the Nazarene preacher out from the Temple to his doom! -And now that rabble, if they knew she was here, would tear her to pieces -with bloody hands and throw her to the pavements for the dogs to lick -her blood. And then the instinct of craft, that ran in her Herod blood, -gave voice in question. - -“Why do you call me daughter?” she whispered back. - -And then she felt her hair which had fallen about her neck as she fled -through the Aqueduct. - -“Because Matthew, here, recognized you as King Agrippa’s sister. What -word of the Roman Army? Will they win the last wall to-day? When we let -down the baskets for food last night, the Zealots threw pitch bags and -burned the ropes. We dare no longer venture out on the Palace parapet. -They shoot fire arrows. And not one of us will leave the others. Whether -we live, or whether we die, it is nothing, daughter! The Zealots may -slay the body. They cannot slay the soul. But what tempted you to come -through the Aqueduct, child? Is to-day the end?” - -For answer, the silver trumpets blew from turret and tower, from hill -and plain, from cavern and grotto. The group rushed from the chamber for -the turret window. - -“Bear my cot to the window,” she commanded, the old imperiousness of -Princess and daughter of high priests surging back in her reviving -consciousness. - -Down sheer seventy feet from the turret window to the plain where the -Roman Legions had mustered, they gazed—first Titus, the Emperor’s son, -on a black stallion; then Trajan, his young officer, on a white horse; -then her brother, King Agrippa, on a low Arab fawn-colored steed, all in -trappings of brass with silver shields aslant the horses’ shoulders; -then the standard bearers with the Roman eagle in gold; then the -pikemen, clad in mail, with their long lances like fields of wheat; then -the horsemen in darker mail with lances aslant like knives moving in -rank; then the great engines of war that moved on wheels like erect -walls; then the Macedonian mercenaries on foot, six and seven rank deep -they wheeled and marched and countermarched; while one Josephus rode on -a white charger up to the walls shouting out: “Why would they die and -not surrender to the clemency of Rome?” - -The cowed populace answered never a word, but the Zealots and swordsmen -swarmed to the broad tops of the walls with hoots of derision. Stones -rained down on the emissary for peace. They hissed his words with -shameless insults, and bade the Romans not draw back in cowardice -because this was Jewish Sabbath, but to come on and dare to try the -third strong wall. When the peace emissary would have shouted again, -those on the wall threw a naked dead body in his face. - -The wild warrior blood of her Herod Arab ancestors surged through -Bernice’s veins. She knew then the urge that had driven her through the -Aqueduct. She could have leaped from the walls to join the Romans down -there fighting in carnival of blood had she been man. Why had she been -born woman—the tool—instead of man, the hand that wielded the tool? -She knew she was a rebel against Fate; but had not Herod the Great been -rebel, too, till he mastered Fate and made himself King? She tore her -purple girdle from her waist and waved it at the conquerors from the -turret window. - -The Roman trumpets faded in fainter echo. The marchers and counter -marchers encircled the city in a ring of swords. Bernice from the Tower -saw that the hired Macedonian mercenaries had been thrust forward first. -She knew what that meant—these were the swordsmen of the world paid in -plunder—there would be no mercy. Those not slain would be sold as -slaves, the men for the mines, the women—for what? Was this the Kingdom -for which she grasped? A silence fell for a moment on the terrific -confused clamor within the city. A melancholy wail of woe came up from -the central valley between Temple and Palace, and some madman’s maniacal -scream resounded from the parapets to the Tower—“Woe—woe—woe is -Jerusalem! How is that great Babylon drunk with the blood of the -prophets fallen! Jerusalem shall fall this day! There shall not be left -one stone upon another.” - -“Were not those the very words of our Lord, when you admired the beauty -of the Temple?” asked Mark. “Peter bade me to put that in his Gospel of -our Lord’s life.” - -“So every disciple has related to me, and so I have written in His Life, -for the Greek churches of Asia,” answered the physician, Luke. - -“And we thought he had come to set up earthly kingdom in this Temple,” -said the venerable Matthew. “And now we know it is a Kingdom not made -with hands for which all Time has prepared, and this earthly kingdom -shall vanish quite away for a New Heaven, and a New Earth. This is the -passing of the Old. These are the birth pangs to the New. Let us read -what the scrolls of the prophets have said.” - -And the three Apostles withdrew to a circular brass table in the middle -of the Tower. On the brass table were carved the signs of the zodiac and -the time of day pointed by an arrow as the outer sun swung round; but -the Princess Bernice had no thought for what the scrolls of the prophets -might say. An ancient urge was in her blood, old as those stars from -which the astrologers had cast the horoscope of fate in the signs of the -Zodiac. Again Roman power with its cohorts in silver and its legions -with spears like fields of waving grain seemed a realer realm than a -shadow kingdom not made with hands adown long future ages. How could she -serve the Emperor to bind his gratitude to give her foothold on the -ladder up to this earthly Imperial Throne? She had said she would wade -through the blood of the living or trample the putrid dead; and she had -done both. - -A lull fell like the silence between the crash of two monster ocean -billows. It was almost eventide, the end of the Jewish Sabbath, and the -mountains were folding them in purple mantles like royal kings at rest, -when the voices of the others in the room behind caught her ear. Luke, -the Greek doctor, was speaking and pointing to the signs of the zodiac. - -“You thought He spoke of time when He spoke of eternity. Here is the -zodiac of Egypt and Chaldea. Here is their prophecy, when the star -brought the Persian magi to the Bethlehem manger.” - -Bethlehem? She hated the very name of Bethlehem. Had not her Aunt -Herodias often told her the evil destiny of the Herods dated from the -massacre of infants there? Then she remembered that the door from the -hideous horrors of the Aqueduct had only opened when she called out in -the name of the Love of God. What was this new thing coming in the war -of worlds for power? But the pageantry of life blotted the answer to -that question, and she heard as in an unreal dream the reading of the -ancient scrolls. - -“Here,” the doctor Luke was pointing to the zodiac, “here is the -Scorpion, that Lucifer who fell from heaven from vaunting pride and set -out to lead man astray to fill his kingdom. Here is Taurus the Bull, -worshiped by Egypt and Chaldea which Abraham fled. Here are the Sun -worshipers, when Israel burnt her sons upon the walls. Here is the -Virgin, Mother of a Child in flesh to reveal God in form to man. Here is -Pisces the Fisher, and when our Christians fled from Nero’s sword in -Rome they used the Fisher sign to know one another. Christ said, ‘I make -you fishers of men,’ and we knew not what he meant. The fall of -Jerusalem is the fulfilment of our age. After our age, when the sword -shall give place to sunburst comes the Age of Air and water and freedom -with much going to and fro beyond the Isles of the Sea to nations not -yet born.” - -“Read from our own prophets and not from the astrologers of Chaldea and -Egypt,” requested the aged Matthew. “Why have these evils fallen on the -City of Zion?” - -Mark, the youngest of the three, took up a cylinder of brass. From it he -drew a parchment scroll written in Hebrew and rolled round a rod. “Here, -Luke, you are a doctor of learning. You read the Hebrew. We Hebrews have -not spoken our tongue since captive days in Babylon.” - -Luke took the scroll and went to the window to see the clearer in the -dimming light. - -“Thus saith Jeremy,” he said, slowly translating in a patois of Aramaic -and tradesman Greek. “Behold—our—reproach—our inheritance is turned -to strangers—our house to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless. . . . -Servants have ruled over us. . . . There is none that doth deliver out -of their hand. . . . We get our bread by the peril of our lives because -of the sword . . . our skin is black because of the famine . . . they -ravish the women of Zion and the maids in the cities . . . princes are -hanged by their hands . . . the Mountain of Zion is desolate. . . .” - -“That of this Age,” broke in Matthew. “We shall see the fulfilment of -that to-night; but what of the ages when the Time of the Sword has -passed? Read Ezekiel, Brother Luke—what says he of the nations of the -North beyond the Isles of the Sea? What says he of the Age of Freedom? -What says he of the Age of the Air when the Sword has given place to -Sunburst? What meant our Lord when He said greater miracles than He -worked should the world see before the end of Time? What signs will -foreshadow a New Heaven and a New Earth?” - -Luke turned the spool of the scroll and ran his finger from right to -left— “Is this the Age of Air?” he asked, then he read: - -“A whirlwind came out of the North, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding -itself, and a brightness . . . and out of the midst of the fire the -color of amber . . . and this was the likeness . . . a man . . . every -one had four wings . . . their feet were straight and sparkled like -burnished brass . . . the hands of men were under the wings on the four -sides . . . they had faces and wings . . . the wings were joined one to -another and turned not when they traveled . . . they went straight -forward with unmoving wings . . . the signs of the nation a lion, an ox, -and an eagle . . . two wings they had joined each to other on each side -. . . straight forward they went whither the spirit wished to go . . . -with burning coals of fires and lamps in front . . . up and down in the -air . . . up and down in the air . . . and their fire went forth as -lightning . . . but upon the earth they used wheels . . . there were -whirling rings in front . . . dreadful to see . . . but when the wings -were lifted the wheels were lifted . . . and in the firmament their -likeness was a terrible crystal . . . and the noise of the wings was the -rush of many waters . . . when they stood, they let down their -wings. . . .” - -“What means that?” demanded Mark. - -But the bent figure of the Apostle’s mother had risen with outstretched -hands and in her eye was the light of ancient prophetess. It was as if -she saw a Light with eyes of spirit, which eyes of flesh could not -see—adown long, long Ages mid races of beings not yet guessed, nor born -in thought. Her whole figure seemed aflame in vesture of unearthly -shining Light. Mystic was she, prophetess, seeress, with eyes boring -into the Far Future like stars piercing midnight dark. It was as if a -flash of lightning suddenly tore through the impenetrable veil of Life -concealed; as if an invisible Torch Bearer threw a flashlight on the Far -Future. “When the Age of the Sword shall pass for the Sunburst of the -Prince of Peace, there shall come dominion over the princes of the -powers of the air,” she slowly uttered, as one in trance of vision. -“Greater things than these shall ye do, and the Old Things are passing -away for the New; and Jerusalem must needs be destroyed to give -place. . . .” - -A terrific crash drowned the words. The siege of the last wall had -begun. - -The Palace rocked and vibrated with blows of the battering rams. Huge -stone blocks from the engines of war smashed down into the Eternal City -between Palace and Temple; and a fearful cry of throngs crushed as they -ran, rent the air. A great light flooded the darkening room of the Herod -Tower. - -All dashed to the turret window. A flame leaped with the roar of livid -sea to very mid-heaven of the vaulted blue. The Temple was on fire. The -Romans were inside the last wall. Fiery swords, bucklers, battle axes, -javelins, arrows, flaming balls of naptha went tossing in mid-air as the -Zealots on the roof plunged in the flames, or flung themselves to death -in the burning moats from the walls. Jerusalem rained fire from the -defenders on the parapet. The roar of the seething torrents drove all -the city into the street and over the prostrate bodies rode the horsemen -slashing with spear and sword, sparing neither women nor children, -inflamed by the defiant insults to the proffered peace and insane with -the demon lust for blood and plunder, held back these weary months. The -Palace rocked again. Bernice leaned far out from the turret window. Just -as the afterglow of the mystic sunset colored the heights of the Holy -City, a mirage of chariots and troops struck the flaming clouds in -shadow—the destruction of a shadow kingdom of sword and power. Armies, -principalities and powers—seemed to be fighting in rolling billows of -flame. The Princess hid her face in her hands on the window casement. - -Jerusalem had fallen. - -It was as if all the evils of all past ages in all past cycles of time -crashed down in one vibrant shock that shook the world; as if the iron -bands of law and order and empire forged in the furnaces of that Ancient -of Days—had burst asunder; as though a great Tidal Wave from Eternity -had submerged another Atlantis and thrown up in the wreckage on the -Shores of Timeless Eternity another race, another age, another order. -The terrible cry, that ascended to Heaven, was the cry of a Dying World. - -The Kingdom of the Herod line for which she had risked her life and -sacrificed her love was crumbling to dust and ashes under her eyes. - -The Old had passed away for the New; and Fate had rejected her pawn. - -Came the iron-shod trample of soldiers running up the stone stairs of -the Herod Tower, and King Agrippa broke into the room followed by Titus, -the emperor’s son, and Trajan, the youthful lieutenant, all faces -blackened with the smoke of battle. - -“You are safe here, my Sister,” cried the last ruler of the Herod line. -“The fire cannot touch these Towers. All the city but these Herod Towers -will be laid flat as plain by morning.” - -“And where,” demanded Titus, “is the Princess page, who risked her life -running through the Aqueduct this morning to do Rome service?” And Titus -was not such a figure as her dreams of power had painted. He was a -plain, short, thickset soldier, with keener eye for spear than woman’s -guiles. - -Then she stood erect and proud as Herod the Great had stood before the -Roman Senate many long years ago. The daughter of high priest and King, -she would meet Fate face to face. - -“Small chance I had to do Rome service, my Lord,” she said. “Your brave -legions captured the prize before I could add my woman help.” - -“But when my soldiers guessed that the woman who had broken through the -ranks in the morning to enter my tent was the page boy first to enter -the hole in the wall to the Temple court, they swore they would take the -city to-night, or perish to a man. Think you my Romans would be less men -than a weak little Princess?” That word “weak” with its commiseration of -male strength for child woman smote her hopes in the face like an iron -gauntlet. She had played an ancient game with an ancient pawn—and lost, -as Eve lost in an ancient garden; and she knew now what brought defeat -to woman; and she knew now if she had answered the true urge of her -heart, how she could have turned defeat to victory and wielded greater -power with unseen hands than all Rome’s strength. Man could slay, but -only woman could give life. - -“You were the wine to my men’s flagging courage, my little Princess,” he -said. “What reward do you claim?” - -“My Lord,” she said, hiding her defeat in his chivalry, “when the -chariots enter the Triumphal Arch at Rome, the last of the Herod line -would not pace behind in captive chains. Let them perish rather. They -would ride with the conqueror.” - -The conqueror did not answer at once. He was turning over that request -in his shrewd soldier mind. He smiled slowly as a man might smile at a -child playing with a sharp sword which he had snatched from its hand. - -“And it was for that you risked your life, child?” He laughed; and then -his face saddened. He did not see the hidden appeal of the dark eyes -gazing into his, though the young Trajan laughed brusquely and King -Agrippa turned his reddening face away. “It is not mine to grant your -request. Rome glories not in the blood of any race. My father did not -covet the Imperial throne; nor do I. I covet only peace and rest. We -have chosen seven hundred of the fairest Jews to grace the triumph; and -they shall not walk in chains. They fought too well. They shall all ride -in the chariots of the pageants; but my father, the Emperor, and I shall -walk humbly on foot divested of all war harness and make thank offering -to the gods of peace rather than victory. Such humble rôle would suit -not you, my little Princess; but Rome never forgets even a will to -service. I’ll appoint your brother and sister Drusilla a royal villa -with dower by the sea at Naples; and there if the gods favor me, and my -young officers do not carry you off, I shall see you sometimes, -Princess.” - -He strode quickly away. - -The Princess and her brother Agrippa stood by the turret window. - -Was it for this she had risked her life? She had reached Titus and -grasped the prize, and found it turn in her hands to Apples of Sodom and -the salt tears of the Dead Sea. She had thrown love to the discard and -was being told to play the wanton with underlings, whom her Herod pride -scorned. She, the daughter of high priests, back to Aaron, was to eat -the crumbs from Rome’s table, like the lapdogs, pets to be fondled, -abused, discarded—and then the grave! And for this, she had rejected -the children of love in the garden called Paradise; the wine of life -drawn from a lover’s lips; the laughing glad voice of many waters from -the River of Life; the golden light that was love—her spirit fell as it -had fallen in her delirious sleep; and she broke in a storm of weeping -in the arms of her weak brother, no longer King. - -Less than ten years saw Titus ascend that Imperial throne for which he -cared nought; but the very year he ascended the throne came another -flood of flame in fiery river down Vesuvius mountain burying the fair -villas of Naples Bay, and beneath that flood of death, unknown and -unfound, perished the last of the Herod line. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES - - - _The Dancing Girls from the Temples of Daphne_ - -Draw the upper horizontal line of a square and the lower vertical right -hand line! The two sides of this square represented the Great Roman Road -between East and West in the days following the Prophet, whom the Greeks -called “Christus—the Anointed” and the Hebrews called “Jesus or -Joshua—Salvation of God.” - -All roads led to Rome. Along this highway like beads on a string were -the cities of the Ancient World—Jerusalem, the Holy City, at the foot -of the right hand side; Damascus, the oldest city of man, halfway up; -Antioch, at the angle turning westward, the playground and halfway -house, where merchant princes and conquering emperors paused in their -far journeyings from Asia to Europe to take their pleasure and spend -their fortunes, whether of plunder or traffic; then along the horizontal -line leading from desert to sea, Iconium and Philadelphia and Sardis; -then on the sea—Ephesus, whence one could sail to Athens or Rome, to -culture or power. - -[Illustration: MAP OF THE ROMAN ROAD] - -When the summer sea lay in painted crystal, calm as glass, one could -come down from any of these cities, to fair harbors and take passage -forward on the great grain ships of Egypt or on little sailing vessels; -but when the equinoctial storms came in September, or when war filled -the great grain ships with troops, travelers were forced to follow the -caravan route, and the khans of all the cities were thronged with men of -every color and race under the sun. The poor camped in goatskin tents -outside the walls. They had nothing to lose from plunder. The rich -crowded the city plazas and inns and public khans in the throngs of a -great annual fair; and the merchants reaped their harvest in barter of -little silver images and amulets to protect from travelers’ perils, and -in the sports of theater and hippodrome, where the latest plays from -Athens and Rome were given; or lecturers from the Far East disputed -their mystic philosophies with the keen wits of Athens and the cynics of -Rome; or gladiators fought; or captives in war were thrown to the wild -beasts with a chance for life and freedom if they could vanquish tooth -and claw with naked hands. - -We sometimes bewail our modern civilization. Go read of the nightly -entertainments in these cities of the Great Roman Road! - - * * * * * - -It was the evening of September 24, in Iconium. Lystra and Derbe lay -only a few hours south, and there, by the curious trick Fate has of -interweaving lives, was the little Phyrygian lad, Onesimus, with his -father’s Damascus caravans, beating southward for Damascus where he was -first captured by the robber bands of Galilee and began his life of -slavery, which took him first to Cæsarea, then to Rome, then seven years -later, back over this very road where he rescued victims from crime as -he had been rescued by Paul in Rome. - -The city was thronged. Caravans returning from Ephesus had money to -spend. Travelers from the Asian Desert going on to Ephesus wandered -dazed amid the booths and shops, famed for their Tyrian purple damasks -and gold-thread curtains and rugs of goat hair silky as finest fur. The -plaza was a living mass of humanity clothed in brightest colors milling -in endless circlings round the musicians under the central trees, who -were paid by the city to give free entertainment to all visitors. The -balconies of houses overhanging the city square began to open shutters; -and dark eyes were seen above answering lovers’ signals below; but on -the sill of one deep casement sat a girl alone. A rabble had gathered -round a speaker in the city square. The speaker was short of stature, -with thighs that had been lamed in war or accident, but he was clad in -the black silk cloak of a man of distinction, and though his receding -hair showed premature care, his forehead reflected the white light of an -æsthetic; and as he declaimed, his eyes lighted up with a strange fire -of faith. Near the speaker lounged a richly dressed, stout, prosperous -Greek of the merchant class. He was not listening. He was watching with -amused cynicism the changing concentrated expression of the girl’s -intent face in the balcony above. The man twisted at the great emerald -signet ring on his little finger. He clanked the sword dangling in its -jeweled scabbard against the heel of his red morocco high boots. He -stuck his thumbs in the gold sash belting his sky-blue silk jacket. Then -he stroked his oiled curls projecting from the gold-and-blue turban cap. -The girl’s eyes never once glanced his way. They were riveted as on a -life and death messenger towards the little deformed orator round whom -larger crowds were now pressing. - -The stout, middle-aged Greek dandy flushed angrily and stepped sharply -up to the house door below the balcony. He lifted the brass knocker and -rapped loudly. The knocker was a great Roman eagle. The door was opened -by a middle-aged woman, clad in rich purple silk, and he was led to an -inner court open to the sky in the middle of the house. A fountain -played in the center of the court, and over the railing of the stone -stairs leading to the chambers off the upper balcony clung vines and -blooming flowers scenting the night air. - -“How now, my son, Thamyris?” smiled the middle-aged woman, showing teeth -white as pearls between painted lips, and shaking the black jeweled -pendants in her ears so they seemed part of the curls framing her ivory -face. - -“Not son—yet,” answered the man irritably, “unless your daughter Thecla -has eyes for her lover rather than that Jewish babbler ranting in the -square there.” - -“A pest on these wandering synagogue ranters, who upset our daughters’ -beliefs in the old gods.” The woman’s smile was hard as marble. “She has -not moved from that window for three nights since the fellow strayed -into Iconium and began speaking in the square! I can do nothing with -her. I like not her silence, Thamyris! I would she stormed; but she sits -silent as stone—listening, listening to that babbler! Who is he? A girl -never knows herself till a man teaches her what love is. Can’t you get -rid of him?” And the hard laugh of the girl’s mother had a sinister -knowledge that was not of youth, as she shot a glance at the middle-aged -man, which he read without words. “I want my daughter married. She is -eighteen summers this night. She will marry as I bid her, or go to the -temple gods and take her fate. I will have no daughter of eighteen -summers betraying my years.” - -The man laughed; but he laughed with angry red flush. He flung himself -down on the bench. “And yet, my Mother, eighteen summers wed to fifty -make not for peace to the man unless the maid come willingly. You -ask—who is he? I know not, except that he has changed his name from -Saul to Paul, follows the new sect of that Christus crucified in -Jerusalem and boasts he is a Roman citizen, else we could have him -crucified, too, for creating disorder by blaspheming against Greek gods. -All I know is—he is a fool. When he came here first and worked miracles -of healing, the people would have offered sacrifices to him as to a -god—he could have grown rich from the gifts of one caravan. I would -have pushed him, myself, for the profit in it, if he hadn’t played the -fool and backed away from the rabble’s worship and gifts; but when the -people were ready to crown him with garlands and make offerings of -beasts and jewels and gold, he had to cry out he was only a man and stop -them; and now the rabble are ready to stone him as a pious fraud. I -could leave him to the rabble but I fear the damage is done—he has -chilled Thecla’s love for me; and I’ll have no unwilling bride.” - -“Can’t you get rid of him?” insistently repeated the mother. - -“I’ll try. I can lodge a complaint and have him imprisoned for causing -disorder; but he is Roman citizen—more than that, I dare not do—” - -“More than that I will do,” added the mother harshly. “Unless she gives -you your word this night, I turn her from my door into the streets. -There you can seize her and carry her to your own house, Thamyris; or -the city magistrate will seize her for wandering the streets without the -badge of a courtesan on her forehead and have her burned at the faggots. -Little headstrong fool! Does she think to change our Greek customs for a -puny whim? I have given her dower to make a princess rich; and you have -given her gifts of an empress; and she sits listening to that beggarly -babbler, whom no one knows, stone to her blood mother’s commands and -cold as a Venus in snow to her lover. Go to her! Plead not! Command! Do -as you will! My ears are deaf! A girl denying her lover in Iconium would -last long as a gazelle baited by hounds—Pah!” - -The middle-aged, stout, heavy lover went bounding up the balcony steps -fast as his fat calves and stiff knees would carry him. He drew aside -the silk portières hanging across the daughter’s apartment and advanced -across the room a little breathless. The girl turned her head but did -not speak. Thereupon, something he had not reckoned smote his courage -cold. It was the love he had for the fair child in the window seat. He -could not touch her. He could not risk turning love to indifference, or -indifference to hate. - -“How now, my little bride,” he said gallantly drawing something from his -gold sash, “here are some gifts I purchased to-day from the Damascus -caravans—emerald earrings set in Damascus gold wrought fine as a spider -web, and a little silver mirror from an Arab merchant, which shall show -your face fairer than Venus’ eyelids penciled for the dawn.” - -He had meant to lay the gifts in her lap and take her thanks in an -embrace; but somehow he could only open the little cases and shove them -awkwardly along the stone window sill. - -The girl’s long-lashed eyes filled with tears. She smiled sadly. - -“My poor dear Thamyris,” she said gently. - -“Not poor,” he interrupted harshly, “nor dear, either, unless I am dear -to you.” - -“Dear Thamyris—if these gifts are to buy my love, I cannot take them. I -would be cheating you.” - -He sat down on the window sill beside her. - -“They are not gifts to buy your love. They are tokens of my love,” he -said, toying with the gold tassel of her sash. - -“Then, if they are tokens of your love, I am cheating you, dear -Thamyris; for I cannot give you love in return.” - -“I am no huckster,” he urged, flushing angrily. “They are the free gift -of a free Greek. I ask no love in return. I only ask that you become my -bride and let me teach you love.” - -She mutely shook her head. - -“Put them on,” he ordered abruptly. “Your mother has pledged you to me. -You are mine; but I will not claim you till you come willingly to my -arms.” - -“Because you command me, I put them on. I must obey you as long as I -remain in my mother’s house.” She fastened the filigree clasps to her -ears and thrust the silver mirror in her sash. - -The man sat in the window studying her. The rabble round the speaker in -the square below was growing noisier. - -“Thecla,” asked the man abruptly. “Is it that you love some one else?” - -The girl turned her full gaze upon him. Her eyes were deep blue. Her -lashes were long and black and curling. Her brows were arches penciled -fine as if done by an artist; and her whole face glowed with a radiance -as of sun dawn in spring. Her breathing quickened. - -“Yes, Thamyris, I love some one else; but you can never understand.” - -“Not this beggarly babbler, Paul, with the changing names and magic?” he -shouted. - -“No,” she said. Her glance dropped. “Not Paul. That is why I said you -would never understand. It is Paul’s Master—the Christ—I love—” - -The man broke in a loud impatient laugh. “Why, child, He’s dead! He was -crucified before you were born! You love a shadow—” - -“He is not dead,” she answered simply. “That is why I said you would -never understand. He is the Christ of Love and Light and Life—” - -“But will love for a myth, who was crucified by His own countrymen, keep -you from marrying a living man and lover? Does your Paul preacher down -there teach men and maids not to marry? That is blasphemy, my Thecla! It -proves the gods made a mistake in the way they made us.” - -The man almost shouted his relief. He had risen and was pacing the -floor. - -“No, love for the Christ would not keep me from marrying living man; and -Paul does not teach that. He teaches that the sin of sins is cheating -love; and that is what I would be doing if I married you, Thamyris, and -did not love you.” - -The man came forward to the window and gazed down in the square. - -“I’ll risk your not loving me,” he smiled. - -“I will not,” she answered. - -The man’s face darkened. He thrust his hands in his gold sash. - -“Thecla, what is this new madness setting all the Greek cities of Asia -by the ears? I am reasonable. I would learn; but I am a man; and I am -flesh and blood. You are pledged to me. I can claim you. You say I can -never understand. Let us reason this out. Granted I can’t -understand—what does Paul teach, tell me that?” - -“The Gospel of Youth and Gladness—” she began. - -“I can’t claim Youth, but if you will marry me, I can Gladness!” - -“And that the dead must bury their dead; and that you can’t put new wine -in old bottles,” she went on. - -The man’s face flushed and darkened. “Go on,” he said, “you are apt -pupil for this deceiver! Try walking in the streets alone to-night and -I’ll warrant an old bottle would be good protection for new wine gone to -a girl’s head.” - -“That money is the root of evil—” - -“But very useful to spoiled brides,” he added bitterly. - -“That children born of such union as you would force on me have teeth -set on edge because their fathers have eaten sour grapes; that we must -level up, not down; that the road to happiness is narrow as a razor; and -that if we find the great pearl called love, we must not cast it before -swine; and that is what I would be doing with your love—Thamyris—if I -took it and gave none in return. I would be the Circe of your pagan gods -turning your beautiful love into a thing for swine—” - -In the growing dusk she could not see his face, but she felt the waves -of his deep anger. - -“Once more and for the last time, I ask you—is it yes or no, Thecla?” - -“Dear Thamyris,” she pleaded, rising and laying her hand on his arm, “it -must be no for your own sake.” - -He flung her hand from his arm and strode heavily down the stairs of the -inner court. The mother rose from the stone bench by the fountain. - -“Well?” she demanded. - -The merchant drew his sword from his scabbard. “I must get this -arch-deceiver put away. I’ll have the impostor whipped from the city for -creating riots. He has turned her head,” and he flung through the street -doorway to the crowded city square. - -Thecla heard what he said from where she sat sadly down on the stone -sill of the upper balcony. “He that loveth father or mother more than me -is not worthy of me. . . .” she repeated, “and he that taketh not his -cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me; and he that findeth -his life shall lose it; and he that loseth life for my sake should find -it”—and she saw as in a trance, the red flowers dancing above the -fountains of the city square, the snowy mountains like opal gems in the -moonlight encircling the little city, the lake with its myriad pleasure -boats alight with lanterns, where the mountain torrents fed the great -water pool of the city—when the trance was broken by a wild halloo in -the city square. - -The little lame speaker was backing away from the menacing rabble now -milling round him with hisses of ridicule. Two rough fellows to rear had -picked up stones and hurled them. Rocks, rained down from a claque to -rear, pushed those forward into a riot. The preacher raised his arm to -screen his face. A rock had struck him. She saw the blood gush from his -face. He fell—then all was mingled in the confusion of the people -running for cover to the booths and shops, when a pound of iron-shod -hoofs came over the cobblestones. A Roman Legion swept into the square, -encircled the fallen form of the speaker, threw him across the saddle in -front of the captain, and wheeled towards the Roman prison on the far -side of the plaza. As the crowd came out again from the shops, she -caught a glimpse of Thamyris thrusting his sword back in its jeweled -scabbard glancing up towards her seat in the window. She drew back -sickened in soul and heavy-hearted. - -“As though treachery would win love,” she said. - -Her mother stood in the curtained entrance. - -“Have you given Thamyris his answer?” the woman demanded harshly. - -“I have,” answered the girl. - -The woman clapped her hands for a servant. A black woman came -noiselessly in and lighted the brass chandelier with a long taper. - -The girl stood as still and white as death under the light. The mother -read the answer in the white face, and her own face became white and -hard as stone. - -“Then—go—from—this house,” she slowly pronounced, “and never darken -its doors again till you are wedded wife of Thamyris.” - -The girl picked up her black cloak from the couch she was never to see -again, threw it over her shoulders and passed silently down the -courtyard stairs, and out to the night street. - -The hard marble face of the mother broke in a harsh cunning laugh. - -“And now—Thamyris,” was all she said. - -The black woman withdrew with a shiver and followed her young mistress -down the stairs. As she heard the street door shut twice, the mother -laughed again. - -The silence of midnight with a chill of the mountain snows fell on the -little city where East and West met on the Great Roman Road. - -When the two cloaked women passed through the outer door to the darkened -and deserted square, they were followed by three silent figures—two of -them rude fellows, who had thrown the rocks at the speaker and fomented -the riot of the throngs listening forward, the third with a -blue-and-gold turban cap, a blue-silk jacket and a sword in his gold -sash. - -“Follow,” the third ordered. “When they run for the dark lanes, seize -them. Clap your hands over their faces so they cannot scream! Do what -you like with the black woman—she is yours; but I am to rescue the -maid. See you hurt her not, but frighten her well, and when I strike at -you with my sword, take to your heels. Avoid the Roman watchman! This -must not be known! Come to my warerooms for your reward to-morrow.” - -But the Roman watchman with brass lantern on arm was pacing the center -of the square, and to him the two women hastened. The three men -following stealthily in the shadows of the buildings round the square -saw them pause and speak to the Roman. There was parley of some kind. -The Roman soldier seemed to be hesitating! He had laughed loudly at -first. Now he was in doubt and hesitating. The woman with the white face -had thrown back her cloak, lifted her hands and was unfastening her -earrings. She placed them in the Roman’s hands. He had liftened his -brass lantern and was examining the proffered jewels. He lifted his -bugle and blew a shrill whistle. Half a dozen Roman soldiers came -running from the prison side of the city square. - -The three spies dodged into a darkened lane between streets. When they -emerged on the city square again, stealthily glancing in all directions, -there was not a sign of Roman watchman, soldiers, women. Thamyris drew -his sword in a blind fury of balked passion. - -“Clowns—blackguards,” he stamped. “You were too slow! We have lost -them,” and he struck in impotent rage at his terrified tools. They -obeyed his injunction of but a moment before and took to their heels -down the dark lanes. - -The turnkey of the prison sat nodding over a tankard of wine in a little -room off the entrance from the square. A Roman watchman had roused him -and the two were examining, by the light of the soldier’s brass lantern, -a pair of emerald earrings set in Damascus filigree. - -“Good jewels—not false—by Jupiter—ten years’ wages; and what do you -say she wants?” - -“To see the wounded teacher rescued from the mob to-night; but she has -disobeyed her mother, refused to go to her affianced husband, and been -turned out in the streets as a courtesan. She refuses to wear a -courtesan’s red band round her brow; and by Iconium law, she will be -burned at the stake for that. These independent cities on the Roman Road -have their own laws.” - -“What’s that to us? The jewels are good! Take her to the prisoner’s -cell; but he is a Roman citizen. He must not be harmed without trial.” - -The watchman went back to the cloaked figures in the corridor. He led -them without a word down the long passageway lighted dimly by iron -candles with flaming pine knots. Before one cell tramped another Roman -soldier. The watchman spoke to the guard in a low voice. He came back to -the women. - -“He says—what will you give him to let you in?” - -Thecla drew a silver mirror from her girdle. - -The watchman went back to the guard. Again, there was a conference under -the light of the pine faggot in the iron clamp against the stone wall. -The silver mirror was being examined. The watchman returned to the -women. - -“He says after you have seen him—what will you do? We Romans interfere -not with Grecian laws in the independent cities. He does not want -trouble over this. What will you do afterwards?” - -“Tell him,” answered the Grecian girl, “I shall deliver myself to the -Greek magistrate to-morrow morning to be burned in the hippodrome for -disobeying my mother, and refusing to marry the man to whom she sold -me.” - -The guard heard the answer, put the great key in the cell lock and -pushed open the creaking door. The two women passed in and the door -locked behind them. - -For a moment they could see nothing by the smoky light of the pine knot -in the iron clamp of the wall except the silver beam of the moonlight -breaking the dark through a casement window so deep you could only see -the night sky outside as through a long high tube. There was the sound -of breathing, and a man’s figure lay on a cot against the wall, with one -arm and one foot padlocked to a staple in the stones. His head was -pillowed on a folded black cloak and his forehead bound in a white -cloth, where the rocks of the rioters had struck him, but the moonlight -falling on his face and hands showed a curious luminous radiance and -white peace. At first the Greek girl thought he was dead and her knees -gave under her. Then, she heard his breathing and knew that he slept and -was dreaming happy dreams, as children dream in peace, for the white -face smiled in its sleep. - -The Greek girl’s eyes closed and her lips moved in prayer. Yet she -hardly knew how or to whom to pray; for in the temples of Iconium there -were only statues of the goddess Venus, or Diana, or the Roman emperors; -and she had never before prayed to an Unknown, Invisible God. Her -serving woman fell to her knees and began to wail aloud, swaying her -body to and fro after the manner of the Blacks. When Thecla opened her -eyes from an almost inarticulate prayer, she saw the prisoner sitting up -on his cot. - -“Child—how came—you here?” - -She told him in a few words. - -“Have you counted the cost?” - -“No cost can be too great,” she said. - -He smiled quietly as though he had not been mobbed and stoned by a -riotous rabble but a few hours before. - -“True, child, no cost can be too great; for no one can leave father or -mother, or brother or sister to join the Glad Kingdom but the reward -shall be a hundredfold, both here and hereafter. The cost is but the -trifling price we pay to pass through the portals to the Unseen Kingdom, -whether here or hereafter; but why came you here?” - -“To be baptized into that Kingdom before they whip you from the city -to-morrow.” - -“Bid your serving woman bring me the jar of drinking water.” - -She kneeled at his feet. He dipped his finger in the jar and marked the -sign of the Cross on her brow. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, -the Son, and the Holy Spirit into the service of the Glad Kingdom both -here and hereafter, now and forever more,” he said. “Bid your woman hand -me the bread and the cup of wine. Quaff now the Loving Cup with me, -child!” He handed her a broken piece of bread. “In as oft as you do -this, you do it in remembrance of the Crucified One’s Last Supper with -His Loved Ones; but remember always, child—it is not the Doleful -Supper, which these children of the Adversary say; it is the Loving Cup -to commemorate His translation to the One and Only God.” - -So in the darkened prison of Iconium between midnight and dawn, the -first woman martyr to the new faith was baptized into the Unseen Kingdom -and quaffed the Loving Cup to her Lord; and in the little modern city of -Konieh, a thousand legends of Thecla, some true, some fanciful, are told -among the mountain folk to this day. Sometimes, they have it, that the -faggots were kindled in the Iconium Theater and the wild beast -tournament held in Antioch; but each city marking the crumbling stones -of the Old Roman Road has its own legend. - -Thecla rose from her knees. - -“My Master,” she said, “how can I serve the Kingdom if I am to be burned -to-morrow?” - -“That—I know not. God will lead you. If you are burned to-morrow, -’twill be but the fiery gate to the Unseen Kingdom and service there. If -you are not burned, God will lead you to service here. I shall be -whipped from the city at day dawn and go to Timothy, a child in years -like yourself, at Derbe and Lystra; but at Antioch is the Brotherhood, -where holy men and women plan our warfare against the Adversary—the -World, the Flesh and the Devil; but hard by Antioch are the Gardens of -Daphne, where many maids like you are forced to barter love for carnal -gain. Go to them, child! You have been rescued! Rescue them! How, I know -not. God will lead you and my prayers will follow you—a cloud of light -to fore—follow it—a screen of protection behind—look not back—but -press gladly forward to the high calling of a warrior for the Christ; -and the Lord bless you and keep you in the inmost sanctuary of His Grace -and Gladness! He shall renew your flesh as a little child’s and keep in -your heart an eternal youth, long as you drink of the Living Waters of -Life! Never repine! Never envy! Go forth rejoicing always! Rejoice, -rejoice, child, again I say rejoice! For our suffering is but as idle -passing dream, and we shall awaken to Eternal Day.” - - * * * * * - -All Iconium was agog. As far as it is possible to set down definite -dates in this era, it was about 46 A.D. - -First, an impostor, who followed the Christus of the Jews, had been -whipped from the city at day dawn for contempt towards the gods of Rome -and Greece. The mob had given over pursuing when he fell senseless -outside the walls of the city. Then, an overland caravan from Rome had -come along the road headed for Antioch; and in the caravan was the -famous and rich lady Trefina, cousin of the Emperor of Rome, bound to -spend the winter season in the pleasure gardens of Daphne; and the -merchant princes of Iconium were planning a great fête to entertain -these visitors and unlock their fat purses. It was bruited about that a -Greek girl, a convert to the Christian disturber, was to be thrown to -the wild beasts in the theater that night. Some said her crime was -sacrilege. Others said she was a woman of the streets, who refused to -wear the red cord that was badge of her calling, and had bribed the -guards of the prison to go in and corrupt the very prisoners under the -magistrate’s nose. Others again averred she had refused to obey her -mother and run away from the husband, who had bought her. And all -Iconium, high and low, was agog to see the great fête in the theater -that night for the Lady Trefina, cousin of the Emperor, who had but lost -her daughter and was in such dejection that the citizens were determined -to win her favor by an exhibition that would dispel her weariness of all -living. - -Again the fat Greek merchant, Thamyris, knocked on the door of the house -in the city square; and again the middle-aged woman opened the door and -drew him hurriedly in. - -The man threw himself on the stone bench with a groan. - -“You have heard the magistrate’s sentence for to-night?” he asked; and -the tears streamed down his cheeks. “I have tried to see her all day. I -have offered an emperor’s ransom to save her; but the coming of the Lady -Trefina from Rome has fixed the Roman Commander in his purpose and he -will not budge. They blame my slaves for fomenting the riot last night. -They despise us Greeks! They will tear us to pieces with bloody hands -and throw us to the beasts if we but stir to save her. My slaves have -betrayed me! They say I have been caught in my own trick—” the merchant -broke in heavy heart-shattering sobs. - -The mother stood surveying him with unutterable hard scorn. - -“Unmanly fool!” she taunted. “I thank the gods you are to be no son of -mine! Why did you not seize her and force her to your will, when she -passed through the door as we planned? Blunderer! Bungler! To let a wisp -of a maid slip through your fumble fingers like a jewel to mud! Not thus -did my Lord win me! He stole me from the hills of Phrygia, and broke me -to his will; and if I were a man, would I pause for this little fool’s -tears?” - -“Aye; and you poisoned your Lord for a night’s pastime, and took his -fortune and would sell your daughter to me to play wanton again for -another rich husband! Think you I would love Thecla if she had been such -as you?” and the wretched man broke again into terrible sobbing. - -For a second, the incarnate fury standing above the unguarded man could -not speak; and when she spoke, it was in the hiss of a serpent about to -strike. - -“Say you—that—to me?” she demanded. “Know you not I could denounce you -to the Romans to-night as the corrupter of my daughter and the cause of -all this riot to gain your ends? Say—you—that—to me? Take back what -you said—fool!” - -“Say—that—to you!” The man sprang to his feet and seized her by the -throat. “Yes—that—and that—and that,” he stabbed her at each word, -flung her on the tessellated pavement, and not pausing to see whether -she were living or dead, dashed through the doorway to the street and -ran through the deserted city for the theater, where all Iconium had -thronged. He did not notice his sky-blue jacket was spattered with -blood. He had flung his bloody dagger from him as he ran. He was a -madman. He knew not whether the roar he heard were in his own bursting -brain, or from the tier on tier of stone seats in the open theater, -where all Iconium was stamping their impatience and shouting for the -performance to begin. He tossed the guard at the gate a gold coin; and -the Roman laughed. - -“He was the maid’s lover,” said the Roman; and Thamyris vaulted the -stone stairs to the highest seat, where he could see both audience and -arena. The trumpets were blowing. Riders on horses with ribbons and -tassels were prancing round the arena. The great lady Trefina from Rome -was entering the royal box, for pipes and bugles and trumpets blew a -blast; and the drums beat for the stone doors to lift and admit the wild -beasts to the sanded circle below the spectators. First came a lioness -lashing her tail from side to side; but the spectators hissed. - -“Too full-fed,” the Greek merchant heard a Roman soldier behind him -saying. “If we had known the Lady Trefina was to be here to-night, we -could have starved the beast so she’d fight. I’d say—let in her cubs! -Stab one of her cubs, and she’ll liven up!” - -Then the fanfare of trumpets and pipes blew again to drown the shrieks -of the victim—a door on the opposite side of the arena lifted and a -horseman rode in with a naked girl across his saddle pummel. He spurred -his horse to a frantic gallop five times around the arena. The audience -rose and cheered to the echo. The Lady Trefina in the royal enclosure -was seen to sink back and drop her veil at the sight of the -entertainment that had been provided in her honor; but the horseman -having speeded round and round the arena now approached the dazed -lioness, reached over, and, with his long whip, struck the crouching -creature a stinging cut, and dropped the naked form across his saddle -pummel not a stone’s throw from the enraged beast. The trumpets blew -till the echo rang amid the temple columns encircling the arena, and the -spectators went mad in a blood lust of shouts. - -The fall had loosened the victim’s hair. It fell in great black coils -almost to her feet, and beneath her hair could be seen her nude form -pink as a shell or sun dawn. A terrible silence fell. The spectators -held their breath. The trumpets had silenced to be ready for a blast to -drown any cry of anguish. The naked Greek girl had lighted agile as a -bird on her feet, and she moved not so much as a hair’s breadth from the -crouching lioness now snarling and lashing head and tail from side to -side. Her flesh looked fresh as a little child’s. - -“Little fool! Why doesn’t she fight, or run!” demanded the Roman beside -Thamyris. The Greek merchant sank heavily where he sat and hid his face -in his hands. He wanted to shout her name, but had the coward’s -protective presence of mind to know a shout would raise uproar and -enrage the lioness. She was perishing and he, the real murderer, was -watching her perish. Sweat of anguish stood out on his body in hot drops -as of blood. What was it she had said—the sin of sins was cheating -love? - -The silence in the vast audience had grown so tense he could hear the -snarl of the lioness, the lash of its tail on the sand, the breathing of -the audience as if spellbound and cowed. He peered through his hands. - -“She is an enchantress and ought to be burned,” muttered a Jewish -priest. “Paul hath bewitched the maid.” - -The lioness had crouched but it had not sprung. It was advancing with -its red angry eyes on the motionless, naked form. The girl did not move. -The beast paused. The girl stretched out her hand. The lioness ceased -lashing its tail angrily and tossing its head from side to side. It was -creeping on her as a cat creeps on a bird. She stooped and all her hair -fell about and hid her nakedness. The great cat came on but it did not -strike nor spring. Its eyes were on the Greek girl’s, and the girl’s -eyes were on its eyes. It raised its head. She did not move her -outstretched hand. It sniffed her hand and dropped its head to her feet. -She slowly stooped and laid her hand on its head. - -Again the silence stretched so tense that a shuffle of feet and whispers -brought angry looks from neighbors on the seats. Slowly, gently, with -the caress of a mother for her young, the Greek girl was stroking the -head of the beast between its ears. It stooped and licked her feet and -lay down as if in the presence of a friend recognized, where it had -expected foe. On bended knee, the girl stooped, caressing the beast. - -The Lady Trefina in the royal enclosure had lifted her veil and was -leaning forward. The commandant was seen to lean across to her, and she -rose and threw a laurel wreath into the arena. The horseman came -spurring back and snatched the girl to his saddle. Other horsemen came -galloping with long lances and drove the now terrified lioness back -through the stone portal. All Iconium rose to its feet on the stone -benches and shouted salvos of frantic applause; but the cries were -mingled. Some shouted, “Saved—Saved!” others hissed and shouted back -“More—More.” - -Blood lust felt that it had somehow been cheated of its full glut. - -In the center of the arena stood a tall flagpole with the Roman eagle in -brass on the tip. The horseman with the naked girl now circled this in -frantic gallops. Reining his horse so suddenly that it reared on its -haunches, he now leaped off with the girl in his arms. He placed the -laurel wreath on her forehead. With such a broad belt as men use to -girth chariot teams, he now strapped the victim by the waist to the -pole. Iconium knew what was coming and began to roar in an earthquake of -applause. Never did this Greek city on the Great Roman Road fail of -entertainment for royal visitors. After all, the quick victory of the -girl over the beast was not to cheat their lust for horrors. Black -slaves were piling faggots and straw about the pole. Others were -emptying great vats of water in a lake about the pile to prevent the -fire leaping across the sands to the seats. - -Thamyris sank from the upper bench, where he sat, a crumpled heap of -blood-spattered blue silk with gold sash, to the stone space behind the -next tier. - -“Dead,” said the Roman standing behind him. “These Greeks are all soft -at pith. Would Roman die of love for a mistress?” - -The fanfare of trumpets was blowing again to drown cries of anguish; and -in the crash of drum and bugle and trumpet, another crash was not -heeded. The opal peaks no longer swam in silver moonlight. A black -squall was coming down from the mountains and the commandant was seen -signaling the attendants to hasten. - -Oil was poured on the faggots and straw, and a torch held to the far -edge near the pools of water. The flame shot up, illumining the dark -bloodthirsty faces, tier on tier of seats to mid-heaven. Again the crash -of trumpets! The white figure of the victim was seen to raise her hands -as if to Heaven and whether from the flame or the lightning of the -gathering storm, her face shone radiant and fearless as dawn. Clouds of -dust and sand blew through the arena in a tornado. Neighbor could not -see neighbor on the stone seats and all the assembly began drawing -cloaks over heads to protect them from the stifle of dust till the gust -had passed. There was a terrible and sudden lull, when sand and rain -came down in a deluge. Then the lightning bolts came—came in forks, and -spears, and javelins of dazzling blinding light. - -There was a reverberating crash that rocked the templed columns of the -theater as though they had been reeds in a wind. Women rose with -screams. Men dashed up in panic. Was the earthquake feared more in the -cities of the Roman Road than vengeance of God or man? A sharp -ricocheting splintering as of the theater falling, and the lightning -struck—struck the brass-tipped pole in the middle of the arena and the -deluge burst from mid-heaven in rods of rain—torrential rains in a -hurricane of wind and lightning. The pole fell. Some one shouted that -the Lady Trefina had fainted. The Roman, who had stood above Thamyris’ -dead body, saw an attendant run across the arena through the flashes of -lurid lightning, snatch an unconscious white prone figure from the pile -of quenched faggots, and dash to the royal enclosure of the Lady Trefina -with the naked Greek girl over his shoulder. - -The rest was lost in the darkness and the deluge of rain. - -When Iconium awakened to cloudless skies the next morning, the city of -the Roman Road was again agog with gossip. Had the Greek maid perished -of the lightning stroke, or the fire? Had any one seen her body? No one -knew. The great fête had ended in fiasco, and the commandant was in -testy mood not to be questioned. Certainly one rumor proved -true—Thamyris was dead; but whether he had died of grief for the loss -of his promised bride, or been stabbed in a brawl on the upper tier of -seats, newsmongers did not know; for his body had been found all -blood-spattered from blue jacket to silken breeches. Thecla’s mother -could not be seen; for she was ill abed of heartbreak. And certainly, -the Lady Trefina from Rome had departed at day dawn ill pleased with the -fête; for she had not waited for the caravan. She had gone ahead at -break of day in a litter chair with no attendant but the Roman -Commander, a Greek page boy, who looked like a girl, mounted on a fleet -horse, and an old colored woman bent astride over a mule, hanging to the -saddle pummel as though she were frightened out of her wits. - - * * * * * - -The record of Thecla must now jump forward some twenty years. - -The Roman Road on two sides of a square from Ephesus east to Antioch and -from Antioch south to Jerusalem to this day has legends of what happened -to her in these years. Some said she had escaped with the Lady Trefina -dressed as a page boy. Others said she had joined Paul and Timothy at -Derbe and Lystra. Others knew she had lived hidden in caves between -Antioch and Daphne Gardens. About all that is authentic that can be -gathered of this period is that the Lady Trefina adopted her in place of -the dead daughter and left her a substantial fortune. Paul had gone to -Rome, where Nero had beheaded him when he could not crucify a Roman -citizen. Peter had come up from Babylon to take Paul’s place in Rome, -hurrying over the same Roman Road from the Desert of the East and had -been crucified in Rome, because he was not a Roman citizen. Nero, -himself, had suicided. From Antioch to Damascus and Jerusalem, the Roman -Road was now yearly packed with Imperial troops, for Titus, the Emperor -Vespasian’s son, had taken the Holy City, and, except for the Herod -Towers on the west, left not a stone standing of the Jewish capital. The -Christian Sect, though hated by the Jews, had been driven by the war -from Antioch to Ephesus, where they gathered strength each day; and in -an era of universal persecution and massacre, Thecla was forgotten. She -was now only one of countless martyrs to a despised faith; and the faith -suffered less on the Roman Road than in the Imperial City or Judea, -because these Greek trade cities of Asia Minor had been granted -independent laws, provided they kept fealty to Rome. The only danger to -them was the Emperor worship, which Rome had set up in every Greek -temple—statues of Roman conquerors, side by side with Greek deities for -worship and homage to unify the Empire. Some philosophers declared -openly this was the worship of the Beast foretold in prophecy of Greek -sibyl and Hebrew seer. Others said the name in whispers and bided their -time for Rome’s fall from a pinnacle of intoxicated power. - -Again it was the month of September. Grapes hung heavy on the vineyards -lining the road. The olive groves alone shone brilliant green in the -drought. The cactus hedges stood withered and gaunt, like ragged ghosts -flinging wild arms out in the blue haze of late summer. On the broad -Roman Road the dust was a yellow curse to man and beast, but at dusk and -dawn it was a crimson glory against an amber skyline. - -Two travelers coming up from Jerusalem to Antioch had been driven off -their course by the press of troops going back to Rome after the fall of -Jerusalem. One was mounted on a huge, grizzled camel in trappings of -silver, with tassels and buckles of brass in the Roman eagle; but he was -no Roman. He was a Greek Hebrew, clad all in white, with a sword to the -gold cord round his neck, and he wore the long flowing white beard of -philosopher, or doctor of the laws. The other rode a jaded horse and was -a younger man, near the thirties or forties in age, pure Greek, with -blue eyes and golden curled hair cut short to his neck. He, too, was -clad in white cloak with sword scabbard hanging from the gold cord round -his neck; and a pack of sumptuary mules and camels in charge of servants -followed behind with tents and baggage. Failing to make way through the -press of Roman legions on the road to Damascus, the travelers had -skirted off to the left down by the sea path; but there, too, their -progress was impeded by the departing troops. At Cæsarea, they could get -quarters in neither khan nor inn, and had to camp outside the city wall. -When they sought to take ship for Ephesus, they found decks and holds -crammed, yes, crammed with the returning victorious legions; and the -plunder every man carried was a king’s ransom. There were priceless -Damascus hangings woven in gold thread taken from the Temple. Some of -the soldiers had cast off their hot metal armor and swathed themselves -in these gorgeous curtains and tapestries, and reeled sodden drunk from -the stone quay back and forward to the taverns. Others carried plunder -of gold coin and gold ornaments rifled from the houses of the destroyed -city openly in pouches round their waist, and could be seen in the port -streets dicing their gold away at a cheaper rate than a pound of gold -for a grain of wheat, or an ounce of silver for a roll of goat’s cheese; -and as it was the wine press season in Palestine and the new wine was -heady and raw, the intoxicated soldiers drank more freely of the wine -than the water, which had been poisoned by the bodies of the dead thrown -into wells and pools. Men could be seen draining a deep tankard at one -quaff, then throwing away the gold or silver cup, which came from the -Temple, and stretching themselves out to sleep off their debauch, by -roadside or in city gutter. - -The two travelers stood on the broad breakwater, that ran out in a -circle to the sea, and watched the captive Hebrews embarking for Rome. -There were seven hundred, all over seventeen in years and under -thirty—in the prime of manhood’s beauty, to grace the Triumph in the -Imperial City. All other captives, men, women, children, were being sold -into slavery to the Arabs and Egyptians for less than the price of a -dog. A few thousand older than thirty were being kept for the -gladiatorial combats that nightly entertained the Roman Legions in the -hippodrome. Some women and aged men—it is recorded about two -thousand—who could not bring a price as slaves—were being reserved to -be thrown to the wild beasts between the acts of the gladiatorial -fights. - -The two Greek travelers stood watching the embarkation from the quay. -Suddenly there was a great outcry of “Make way—make way—for King -Agrippa”; and the last of the Herod line—a man in middle age—passed -down the gangway, bent, broken, and gray of hair on his brow. He was -accompanied by the Princess Bernice in litter chair or palanquin, but -little did her pale face show the regal pride of the Herods, who had -ruled Judea for a century. She lay back in her chair indifferent to the -remarks of the gaping loungers, weary of life, with the cold hardness in -her dark-ringed black eyes of one who has lost the prize and slain all -hope in her soul. - -The young Greek onlooker gave a start forward. The older bearded man -laid a hand on his arm. - -“Let the dead bury their dead—my Onesimus! If souls refuse rebirth into -a new life and will remain in their own dungeons, they can but die! New -wine in new bottles, son; for the new wine has burst the old bottles in -the glad wine of a new life for the ages to come.” - -It was impossible to get passage by sea to Ephesus; so the next morning, -they resumed their journey along the sea road toward Antioch. It is -unnecessary to trace the progress forward of that journey. Every -stopping place was sacred to the past and to the future for all -time—Tyre and Sidon and Carmel, whose glories had departed with -memories of Elijah and Jonah and Solomon and Christ; then Seleucia, the -port leading through mountain pass to Antioch; but here, while war had -not left desolation, so many of the Roman officers had come up to pass -the winter in rest and pleasure that the Greek travelers were again -forced to camp outside the city walls and send their beasts and servants -into one of the public khans, where they would have shelter when the -autumn rains broke. - -The desert and mountain clans had done as they are doing to-day and have -done since time began—as the snows and rains of the upper mountains -began to fall, they had driven their herds down to the plains to pasture -for the winter or find sale to the Roman buyers. A yellow tent city of -woven camels’ hair dotted the plains outside the city walls of white -marble and gray stone. - -Having left guard at their tent, the two Greek travelers entered the -city gates to search for an evening meal at one of the public inns. They -found themselves seated at table in the courtyard of an inn near the -city gate, much frequented by the sheiks of the hill and desert tribes -with the herds outside. - -Motley rude fellows sat cheek by jowl with Arab sheiks and heads of -mountain clans and the rough riff-raff element that lives by its wits in -every great city. - -The younger man had set down his tankard of goats’ milk and turned to -his aged companion: “My Apollos,” he said, “why was I directed to leave -Babylonia and to come on to Ephesus? I had taken up the work of Peter -when he went to Rome.” - -His aged bearded companion gazed absently, as if far back and far -forward. - -“You have Peter’s Epistles to the Greek Churches of Asia?” he asked. - -“I have had them copied for all the Greek Churches of Asia.” - -“Recall you where he admonished—‘Love the brotherhood—fear God—honor -the King—for the time for me to lay aside my body is now rapidly -drawing near?’ He foreknew his own translation to the Upper Kingdom. -Matthew and Luke and Mark have gone to Egypt. Thomas has passed to the -beyond in Persia. John, only, is left among the Greeks and he is -banished to Patmos. I have been forbidden Rome since Paul’s death and -must to Crete. On you must fall the joy of directing the Greek cities of -the Roman Road. You must be bishop of Ephesus—” - -“I—bishop? I am not even an elder. Have you forgotten all Grecian Asia -knows I was a runaway slave?” - -“Nay, Onesimus—I have not forgotten; and because of what the gracious -help of God has done for you, would I see you bishop to encourage other -youth to join our warfare. We are a brotherhood militant, and who but -youth for fighting ranks! New wine in old bottles bursts the worn -goatskins. New wine of life for new age, son, old heads for guidance and -wisdom; but ours is the good news of youth and gladness; and when our -bodies wax old as a garment, we must lay them off and move on to eternal -youth in invisible realms.” - -There was a clink of wine jars from the adjoining table. A rough band of -mountain bandits had come in and were drinking heavily with some Antioch -merchants. A lewd oath followed by loud laugh came from the drunken -group. - -“She has ruined half the physicians of Antioch by her magic healing! She -has interfered with the sale of silver images of Diana and Venus by our -silversmiths; and now with her religious house in the grottos and caves -for the dancing girls of Daphne Gardens and half Rome here for winter -pleasure, what is to become of our maids for the Love Temples?” - -“How old is she?” asked a bearded fellow, who seemed to be leader of the -bandit group. - -“Old—that’s it—that’s her hold on these dancing girls! She keeps -eternally young with her magic and has lured away half our daughters -with her lies of a Christ, who can never die, and a love that is cheated -of a young girl’s dreams. I am a silversmith—I know what I say—we have -not sold one image this year, where we used to sell ten thousand.” The -silversmith stroked his beard and displayed the bracelets and rings of -his trade on his fat hand. - -“And the Lady Trefina left her great store of Roman gold, you say?” -asked the bandit eagerly. “Does she keep that gold in her caves?” - -“Not she, she is too crafty. That’s safe with the money changers here -and supports her schools for girls. Besides, it buys protection from the -Roman captain here. He, who harms her, would be impaled on the Roman -wall here for the hawks to pick his skull—” - -“But my band of wild boars could destroy a woman without harming her.” -It was then the bandit leader repeated the lewd oath that had first -startled the two Greek Christians. - -“But ply my young men with wine enough to-night, and we’ll prove her a -courtesan breaking the law without the red cord about her brow, which -the law enacts. Once prove on oath we’ve spent a night in her cave—the -laws of Antioch will do the rest. The Roman guard here would drive them -out like swine and throw them to the wild beasts in the hippodrome. We’d -have our dancing girls back in Daphne Gardens and no more of this folly -of heifers thinking they lead the herd.” - -The heads of the group went together over the wine tankards of the table -in lowered tone with ugly laugh on the part of the mountain bandits and -oily smile from the Antioch merchants. The bandit chief rose. He -whistled. Half a dozen young fellows from the mountain clans with long -swords in sashes and dirks in slings dangling from the right wrist -appeared in the portal of the patio as if by magic. The chief signaled -them to join the table, and more wine and yet more wine was ordered, as -old and young heads went together in undertones above the center of the -table. - -The two Greek Christians rose and passed out from the patio of the inn. - -“Who is this woman teacher of the Christian faith they mean to attack -to-night?” demanded the aged man, Apollos. “Said I not the new wine was -bursting the old bottles—the spiritual is defeating the carnal, and we -need youth in fighting rank to keep the faith clean as a Damascus sword? -Who is this woman?” - -“I know not, Apollos, unless one Thecla, a convert of Paul’s twenty -years ago in Iconium, when I was youth and captured by these same -bandits. She was said to have escaped to the caves near Antioch, where -she set up schools for the maids, who run away from the Love Temples of -Daphne Gardens. She toils so secretly few know how or where she dwells, -except that a great Roman lady left her fortune enough to buy protection -of Rome—” - -“There is vile work afoot to-night, Onesimus. We must call the Roman -guard and hasten up to protect her caves till they come. Do you instruct -our tent men, while I see the Roman captain.” - - * * * * * - -Up and up over circling trail they rode the rough mountain pass that led -between the sea and Antioch. Larch, oak, fir and pine forest closed -behind them darkening as they pushed their panting horses up the steep -ascent. Mountain torrents rushed down to right and left in the sibilant -hush of night slacking the thaw of upper snows. Narrower and narrower -led the pass till the riders could have tossed a biscuit from side to -side of the precipices closing in cañon cleft. Above tree line, the -clouds enfolded them in a silken gauze cool as wind on hot face; and -above the cloud line, they rode in a world of silver moonlight, with -black shadows of the rock walls etched in ink and the howl of hyena and -jackal reëchoing through the caves. The stars were lanterns hung in a -lucent blue that seemed but a hand reach away from the two silent -riders. Once, as they passed the dark mouth of a grotto in the rock wall -washed by the tumbling cascade of waters over the precipice, they heard -the roar of a lion that set all the mountains in echo. The precipices on -either side of the pass now came together in overhanging arch not a -lance length apart and, as they passed under the shadow, a mountain -cataract leaped down—rainbow colored in the mist of moonlight, but the -path seemed to be ending in a blind wall. - -“She chose her hiding place well,” said Apollos. - -“She would need to,” answered Onesimus. - -“Where is her religious house?” asked the aged man, as they breathed -their horses. - -Onesimus was no longer presbyter and prospective bishop. He was mountain -boy again as he had been twenty years ago before the bandits had -captured him, and his eyes were searching the face of the rock cleft -where only a silver bar showed open space, as an eagle might scout for -its hidden nest. An eagle did at that very moment utter shrill warning -of human intrusion. - -“That,” answered Onesimus, “must be her sentry of danger; for she was -mountain born as I am; and we always chose camp near an eagle’s nest for -warning.” - -The eagle uttered its woeful cry again to fore, and they passed through -the arch. The rock walls here were pitted with grottos as they are to -this day; and we, who smile at the early Christians adopting monastic -life to flee the world, the flesh and the devil in these early ages, -should remember that it was often life in the grottos, or death by wild -beasts in the hippodrome. In one place the silvered mossed rock seemed -to have been stoned up in front. Past this place, tumbled another -cataract. Dwellers in the grottos always chose sites with good drinking -water inside. Onesimus pointed ahead, drew his sword and moved forward. -To the side where the cataract gushed out was a door of long slabs so -narrow a man must enter sideways. Onesimus knocked on the door. A wicket -in the logs opened; and we, who laugh at wickets in the doors of -monastic houses, would do well to recall how and why such wickets were -first used. They were used to save the lives of those who kept the faith -for us. A woman’s face appeared in the wicket. It was a face in its late -thirties, but it was a face that would always be young; for it had not a -line of care or envy. Was it the moonlight; or was it a trick of -Onesimus’ own memories of Paul long ago in the prison hut of Rome; for -the face wore the radiance that artists have vainly tried to portray in -halo? - -“We are disciples of Paul,” he said in Greek. - -The woman flung the door open and drew them in. - -The grotto was empty but for a taper beneath a wooden cross, but at the -far end was a cleft in the rock—the real end of the pass leading to -grottos deeper in the mountain. - -“And He shall hide His own in a cleft in the rock,” said Apollos. “Go -you within and tell the Lady Thecla why we are here. Keep your sword -drawn at the cleft in the rock. If they break past my guard, strike as -they go through yon crack in the wall. I would open the wicket when the -rioters come.” - -There is no record of what the drunken rioters said, when the wicket -opened on a white bearded face instead of woman’s; but when they would -have smashed the door and forced entrance, Apollos drew a sword with -blade fine as Damascus razor and inquired calmly in tones too soft to be -safe what he might do for them. How could he serve them best? They -paused at that and fell back under the arch to confer. Came a thunder of -iron hoofs echoing in rip-rap over the stone road and the drunken crew -turned to flee pursuit of Roman guard; but flee—where? This road ended -in the blind wall of a stoned up cavern. They dashed back for hiding in -the caves lower down. There were echoes, oaths, clash of swords on metal -armor, neigh and scream of terrified horses; and a Roman centurion -galloped to the door. - -“What did you do with your trapped beasts? Have you taken them -prisoners?” demanded Apollos. - -“We took no prisoners. Not one escaped. We drove them over the -precipice. Yon eagle will have full crop for her nestlings to-morrow; -and that lion below will not roar so loud in hunger.” - -And so Thecla lived to the great age of ninety years and her memory is -kept sacred on September 24, to this day. Without dancing girls for the -Love Temples of Daphne Gardens, all the beauty and lure of the place -failed to hold the wintering pleasure seekers of Antioch. The very -winter that Onesimus passed over the Roman Road to become Bishop of -Ephesus, the great Love Temples of Venus were destroyed by fire. The -Christians said they had been struck by lightning as a manifestation of -God’s vengeance for the attempt on the Thecla Community, even as -lightning had once before delivered her from the Adversary. The -merchants of Antioch, who yearly spent a hundred thousand talents to -draw the pleasure seekers from Rome to winter in Daphne Gardens, said -the Christians had set them on fire; but the lure of Daphne Gardens fell -off from that year. To this day, you can find signs of the Cross and -inscriptions by the early Christians in the grottos and caverns, between -Antioch and the sea; but of Daphne Gardens, hardly enough remains to -mark the site, did we not know it was ten miles in circumference, and -five miles from the four hundred crumbling marble towers of Antioch. War -and plunder broke the power of Antioch; and what war and plunder could -not destroy, the earthquake threw down; but the Faith kept holy in the -grotto is reënacted to-day wherever “the new wine bursts the old -bottles” and the Loving Cup goes round to commemorate Him who first -broke women’s fetters. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - “AND THERE SHALL BE NO MORE DEATH” - - -The Bishop of Ephesus sat dreaming in the garden between his church and -his house. - -It was the glad season now known as Easter, some fifty years after the -death and ascension of our Lord. The sunshine of the Ægean Sea was a -luminous glory that clothed all the world of spring in garments of pure -light. The city square swam in a transparent gold that dazzled the eye. -Across the square, the aërial arches between the columns of the Great -Temple to Diana gave glimpses of a sea that was by turns turquoise blue -and emerald green, with a fret of snowy waves whose mermaid hair danced -rainbows in the sunlight. Between the arcades of the Temple columns, the -Bishop could catch hints of the surrounding circle of snowy mountains; -and they, too, swam opal jewels in a mirage of morning light. The years -had touched Onesimus lightly. He was stouter, stronger, more robust; but -few silver hairs intermingled with his gold curls, though an austere -strength now stamped face and figure, as of a man, whose shoulders had -grown the broader for their load. But the gladness of the day brought -back memories of his youth, this morning. - -What wonder—he mused—the Greeks’ frieze across the top of the Temple -columns represented their huntress Deity as driving the wild horses of -the waves with the wind in their tossing manes out to the pasture -grounds of the ocean deeps? The Bishop dreaming in the garden between -his little Christian church and his house smiled; for though he was -Christian, he was also Greek; and never the sun came over the snowy -mountains in spring but he felt the wild lure of the huntress, Diana, -with her silver horn winding through the woods and caves, leading youth -captive in pursuit of the fleet-foot rainbow hours. - -Something there was in the glad spring day of the beginning of time, -“when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted -for joy.” - -So sitting in the garden across the city square from the vast marble -Temple to Diana, he could not but smile gently to himself. Spite of -statue in silver like a spire to sky, and domes that vied in beauty the -opals of the snowy peaks, and friezes that were the glory of Grecian art -for two hundred years—not so many worshipers came from the seas and -hills to the Great Diana’s Temple. Especially, not so many worshipers -came to the Temple now that the Roman conqueror persisted in setting up -images of the Emperors to be worshiped equal with Diana. That very year, -vestal virgins had suffered death for refusing to offer incense to the -figure of the Roman Emperor—“Beast worship” it was now called among the -Greeks; and after the martyrdom of these vestals, the young Christian -Bishop reflected, his own little church had been crowded with new -adherents to the new faith. - -The three vestal virgins had been accused of breaking their girdle vows; -but Onesimus knew the real cause of their death had been—they had -laughed at the Goddess Roma set up beside the Great Diana; and when the -Great Diana had failed to protect them, faith in her power had fallen -off. The people knew the Temple was a cheat to barter gain for sacrifice -and hold allegiance to Rome. - -Books of Black Magic to the value of more than £2,000 had been burned at -Ephesus after Paul’s labors there; and what Paul had preached, Apollos -had confirmed, speaking from the very shrine of Diana, herself. Truly -what Paul “had planted, Apollos had watered, and God had given the -increase.” He thought of Ephesus, the third greatest city in the known -world, with its theater holding fifty thousand pleasure seekers, where -his little old half-blind, deformed Master, Paul, with the lion heart -and sword of the spirit had conquered the Prince of the Powers of the -Air—whether Black or White Magic, Onesimus did not know. He only knew -the Invisible King had conquered. - -Aquila and Priscilla had won Apollos, the Gnostic, to Christ, and had -accompanied Paul to Ephesus; and when Paul had left Ephesus to go on to -Rome, it was Apollos who had driven the Christ message home; so that now -Ephesus, rather than Antioch, was the rallying point for the followers -in Asia. The fall of Jerusalem had dispersed all followers there to the -deserts of Asia and Egypt. The incursions of the victorious Roman Army -had driven the Jews from Antioch. At Ephesus must be the final stand of -the followers for the Christ against pagan god and Jewish legalism and -the Black Magic of the sorcerers, now a scourge over all the world. - -Was Apollos an Apostate, “a wandering star,” as Peter and the others had -feared? Certainly, he had failed to come to the rescue of Paul, in -Corinth and Rome, when Paul’s need had been sore; but then, he had -defied the pagan gods in their own temples, while Paul always spoke from -Jewish synagogue, or from market place; and John had reported the -Master’s words—that those not against Him, were for Him; and Apollos -had one message and Paul another; and both led like Jacob’s ladder to -God. - -Fewer and fewer animals from the mountain herds went to the Temple as -sacrifices; and the trade in little silver images of Diana had fallen -away so that the silversmiths had removed their booths from the Temple -columns. The space, where the silversmiths’ booths used to stand, now -was taken up with aged and infant ragged beggars, imploring alms from -the worshipers by day and by night, huddling to sleep behind the shelter -of the columns. He could see these poor shipwrecks of port life this -morning, shaking off their drowsiness and tatters to begin another dull -round of another dull day; and yet—and yet—the legend of Diana’s -silver hunting horn winding divine music through the mountain passes to -the sea was in the young Greek Bishop’s very soul. - -The perfume of the morning flowers had no drugged night bloom. It was -clean, dew-washed, elusive as light. Dewdrops still lay on the lips of -the purple iris, the white narcissus, the voluptuous flaunting tulips. -Spider webs spun with diamonds of light and dew hung in the acacia and -oleander hedges. The great Easter lilies lifted royal spears of gold and -cups of nectar to greet the rising sun—easterly always pointed the -spears and cups to the sun god; and on the stone edge of the garden -fountain, a bird with a dash of sapphire blue and ruby red on his throat -was caroling love notes to burst his little palpitating heart. - -The Bishop closed his eyes in a prayer that was an inarticulate gloria -to the gladness of Life, and it was to the Glad Kingdom of Life in -Newness that he had dedicated his life long ago, when he had rushed as a -boy from pursuit of the kidnappers of Rome right into the prison hut of -Paul, the Apostle of Christ, who had opened the doors of that Glad -Kingdom. A bird’s wing almost brushed the Bishop’s face. He opened his -eyes to one of those common tragedies of garden life, seen every day if -we have eyes that see. Some insect of an early butterfly sort had come -out of winter chrysalis pale, faint, trembling with the effect of -casting off the dead body of its winter shell of skin, and was fanning -moist wings dry in the morning sun, when the little feathered songster -with a dart past the Bishop’s face, snatched away the dead shell body, -while the pale nymph rose in giddy circles in the dazzling light. - -The Bishop Onesimus gave a start. The nymph didn’t seem to realize that -it had died to one form of life and risen to another. It had thrown -aside what the Greeks called its “coat of skin” just as the beggars -yonder under the Temple arches were folding up their night rags and -coming out in the sun on the city square. - -The little drama of the garden had enacted his very prayer; for what was -the bird singing but a gloria to glad new life? And what was the nymph -doing but casting off the body of death for rebirth to new life? And was -not this the very thought that had been puzzling him this morning of the -ascension of his Lord on what we to-day call Easter? - -He had been reading John, the Beloved’s, last message to the Christian -Churches of the Great Roman Road with warnings against the Beast Worship -and foreflashes of things to come down the long ages. Of all the first -messengers of the Glad News, John only, the disciple of Christ, and -Apollos, the disciple of John the Baptist, remained on earth. Paul, -beheaded in Rome! Peter, crucified in Rome! Matthew, Mark, Luke lost to -history in Egypt! James martyred in Jerusalem! Thomas buried in the Far -East! Philip disappeared in Ethiopia! - -All were what the world called—Dead! - -Almost twenty years had passed since the Fall of the Holy City, when he -and Apollos coming from Jordan Ford had passed through Antioch and -rescued Thecla in the mountain caves. - -Yet here was John’s letter from banishment on Patmos Island, his last -message to the Seven Christian Churches of the Great Roman Road, -declaring “there shall be no more death,” and here was Paul’s letter to -the Corinthians sent forward to be read to his own flock in Ephesus, -declaring death was but a change of garment, an awakening from shadowy -dreaming sleep to an effulgent intensest reality of life! - -The Bishop strode back to his cloister. As he passed from his garden, he -noticed the ragged horde of beggars coming out from the night shelter of -Diana’s Temple to range themselves in posture of mendicants whining for -alms across the city square. There was a child—a little ragged Greek -with no clothing but a torn belted shirt, with tousled head, bare of -feet, not more than eight years old, with a baby in a sling on his back. -The baby’s eyes had been blinded and one arm broken—to arouse pity -among passers-by. Onesimus had noticed these children before; and it -made his mountain blood boil, for had not his Lord said—“Let little -children come unto me?” And had not the prophets predicted: “A little -child shall lead them?” And did this look as if the Shepherd of little -children were protecting them; as if the spirit of the child were -leading men back to God? It was as if a cloud of doubt suddenly obscured -the gladness of the Easter morning. For a moment, he watched the byplay -on the city square—the little Greek had stolen a flower from some city -hedge. A tall angular spare woman clad all in black had come out of the -Diana Temple from an all-night vigil. The child beggar was running along -with the blind baby on his back wobbling its head from side to side, -trying to sell her the stolen flower for a farthing. He made a clutch at -the tall woman’s skirts to try and force her attention. She turned on -him with imperious gesture and snatched her skirt from his hand so -roughly that the little beggar with the baby on his back fell face down -on the Temple steps; then something seemed to clutch at the heart -strings of the woman’s own memories; for she paused, turned back and -from the wallet in her pocket girdle, threw the child a handful of coins -that flashed bronze and gold in the sun. It was as if the cloud of -sadness that had obscured the gladness of the Easter morning had -vanished like mist in sun. - - * * * * * - -Onesimus entered the cloister off the side of his little Christian -church. He was tall, thin and athletic from his active life and -inheritance of mountain blood. Religion was to him not the old-age -anodyne to jaded physical sensations dying of the fungus that kills a -fly in frost. It was the essence compounded of more Life and more Light. - -“Growing old in the Kingdom is growing young,” he smiled. “What have we -to fear from old wives’ fables of the dark?” and he flung himself in a -stone chair below the cloister window and took up the letter of John to -the Seven Churches of the Great Roman Road. - -Progress had been rapid since he was a slave lad in Rome and Paul wrote -on clay and wax tablets. Progress is always swift when we look back, but -slow as a snail when we look forward; for John’s letters were on skin -parchment. - -The light came from the side of his church across from his cloister. He -had to bend and strain his vision to decipher the penmanship of the aged -disciple and it stabbed him to the quick, that message to his own little -church at Ephesus—an oasis of faith in a pagan desert of whirling -doubts—a message from his Unseen Lord through the hand of John: “I know -your works, your toil, your patience . . . you have never grown weary -. . . yet you no longer love Me as you did at first.” - -Could that be true? - -Did the Church no longer love Her Lord as at first? - -Had she grown cold with habit? Or was it fear of death being the end-all -that had chilled the fire of their first zeal? They had expected the -King to return in a blaze of glory; and here was John’s message pointing -to the glory as Kingdom Unseen, where spirits must clothe them in -garments of light, where the building stones of the many mansions would -be precious jewels of beautiful deeds, where the leaves from the Tree of -Life would be for the healing of all nations—all nations, not just Jew -and Greek—and where forgiveness would be a cup of forgetfulness to -begin Life afresh in the Kingdom of Gladness. - -Was it Doubt that had chilled love in Ephesus? For when he had come to -that line—“And there shall be no more Death”—hadn’t he paused, -staggered in belief, because he knew that all the apostles but Apollos -and John were dead? At that very line had he not heard in memory the -winding music of the huntress’ horn, when Diana’s horses came champing -down the mountains to plunge in the pastures of the sea? If Death were -end-all, better ride the wild horses of joy down to the eternal sea! - -Was it Doubt that had chilled Love? - -Onesimus sprang from his stone chair. - -He would settle it once and for all. John, the Beloved, was on Patmos -Isle; Apollos of John Baptist’s band on Crete—but a few hours’ sail in -a spanking breeze from Ephesus. He would go and ask them if Death itself -were slain, robbed of its victory, deadened of its pain. - -Was it true “there was to be no more Death?” If true, Onesimus wanted to -shout the glad news from the housetops. The very stones should cry out -in joy, the leaves clap hands in rhythmic dance, and all the feathered -songsters give voice in a gloria chant. Joy would be the voice of God in -many laughing waters; and the human body would no longer be dogged by -shadow, when Death, the spy, with skeleton face in the dark, was slain! - -But as the young Bishop sprang up, a shadow fell athwart the morning -light streaming in beams of gold across his church into his cloister. It -was the shadow of the woman clad all in black; the woman he had noticed -coming out from all-night vigil in the Temple of Diana and tossing the -gold and bronze coins to the beggar child, whom her rough jerk had -thrown down the marble steps. She stood in the shadow of the gold light -gazing at him. She was not young. He knew by her hair and fair skin that -like himself, she was Greek; but there was something almost sibylline in -her tense silence. Her skin was pale as white wax. Her lips were parted -and painted, showing teeth white as pearls; and in her great dark eyes -were both the insolence and unfathomable sadness of a woman fleeing in -vain from the skeleton clutch of age and catching in vain at the rainbow -hours of youth. She was measuring the strength of an almost feline -cunning against the strength of his clarity before she spoke; and there -was that in her, which could bait cunning with flesh and set a man -guessing of her past. She was richly clad and decked in jewels, from the -pearls in her hair to the jade in the clasp of her sandals. - -She smiled a slow smile with her lips, which had no reflex of joy in her -eyes, than which is no sadder smile on earth—’twas like a mask on a -death face. - -“I wish you good morrow, Sirrah,” she said. - -“Not—‘Sirrah,’” quietly answered the Bishop Onesimus in a silent rebuke -to familiar approach, “nor much need to wish good morning when God gives -free such day as this.” - -She winced but did not retreat. - -“How should I address you?” she asked smiling faintly. - -“In sincerity and truth, as I shall answer you, Lady. If you speak truth -to a liar, it conceals you best, for he takes all truth for lie. If you -speak lie to a liar, it accomplishes nothing; for he regards all words -as lies.” - -She winced this time and glanced away. - -“I wait for you to invite me to be seated,” she said. - -“The empty chair has already invited you, Lady.” He waited. - -She seated herself, but had lost her air of insolence and no longer -baited her dark eyes with a flicker of dare to a man’s guess of her -past. Into them had come the terrible pleading of a dumb brute for -respite from unseen foe. - -“What can I do for you, Lady?” asked the young Bishop. - -Into her face came the wan wistful smile of a gambler’s last cast of the -dice. Her glance fell. She leaned forward across the table. - -“I am not mad. Do not think me mad. You ask what can you do for me? I -have both heard and seen your miracles from faith. Years ago, when I was -a widow in Iconium, I saw your leader, Paul, work such miracles, but -when I sent a magician out to bribe him to tell the secret of his -tricks, I could learn nothing. Then he bewitched my only daughter, and -she deserted her affianced husband, and joined the Christian sect and -has kept house for what she calls her holy women in the hills on the -Roman Road for over twenty years. I am an old woman, but she is”—the -woman stammered—“she is eternally young. She wears a youth and radiance -that grow with growing years, while I—I flee a skeleton called age that -clutches me as I run; but she sits quiet while the death’s head of age -slips past, leaving her all untouched. You ask me what can you do for -me? I prayed all night in Diana’s Temple. I offered incense enough to -redeem ten slaves. I am not mad. Do not think me mad. I would pay any -price. Here is the gold. I gave a ragged beggar child gold enough to -make his parents rich, but to be told which way you lived. I would buy -from you your secret of eternal youth. How do you cheat age and death? -Why are you happier as you grow older?” - -The astounded Bishop fell back with a gasp. It was as if a dark shadow -made of self in withered flesh had cast itself athwart the translucent -gladness of the spring morning, and would hold the rainbow in its dead -and greedy hands. - -“Are you the Mother who cast her daughter out to the dogs of the -midnight streets in Iconium years ago, because she would not marry the -man to whom you sold her? Are you the Mother of Thecla, whom Paul -converted?” he demanded. - -The woman did not answer. She cowered like a dumb brute from a blow. - -“God’s mercy is long enough to reach down and pardon the meanest,” he -went on. “God wills not that anything He has created should perish, but -even now, you think only of self; and self is the demon that locks you -in your dungeon. When I saw you fling the beggar child down the stone -steps and then relent and throw the coins after him, I thought it was -repentance of your own hard heart; but now I know ’twas but another -offering made to the god of self to find another temple where your -prayer might be answered when you had failed with Diana. Even now, you -think not of the fate that your cruelty brought on your daughter! You -think only of saving yourself from skeleton age and death! Self is the -vampire that sucks life and youth and radiance to dry shell. Cast self -out and let the waters of life in. When you have pondered that, come -back for admission to the Kingdom of Gladness; and your own daughter -Thecla can open the door and give you the secret.” - -He strode from the cloister in the towering rage of a man who has seen a -daughter thrown to the wild beasts by the selfishness of a mother. The -woman’s body rocked with paroxysm of self-pity in the stone chair of the -cloister. - - * * * * * - -The woman and her selfish request that would have made out of miracles a -slave to self passed from the Bishop’s mind like a cloud that darkens -our path for a moment, then vanishes, leaving not the shadow of a -substance. His quest was a shining light that eclipsed every other -impression from his being. Before they could pass beyond his reach, he -would go to his aged master, Apollos in Crete, and to John, the Beloved, -in Patmos, and ask them in verity if that message in the letter to the -Seven Churches of the Roman Road was to be taken in spiritual parable, -or in letter truth—that there was to be no more Death. If the Kingdom -were here and now, then like the insect nymph on the fountain stone, -Death was but the change of a worn out fleshy garment for a vesture of -light. Being still in his prime, Onesimus, the Bishop, did not realize -that his quest was the self-same search as that of the aged woman, bent -and broken under sin at the end of the road where there is no turning. -All he realized was that if the Christ’s ascension meant no more Death, -then this springtime anniversary marked a gladness of earth and air and -sea, that created a New Heaven and a New Earth. - -As the Bishop stood at the prow watching the carved eagle’s head -noiselessly cut the calm seas between Ephesus and Crete, his soul was -wrapped in the deep calm of the beauty of the night. The silver moon -above hung silver in the water below. Only a cat’s-paw of wind was in -the canvas. The rowers below plied their oars as one man, keeping time -to some old rhythmic chant that was like the croon of the wind. The -Christian Bishop was Greek and the hypnotic rune carried his racial -memories back—back—back to the minstrelsy of hill clan and seaman, to -myths of the Isles of Greece—Minotaur—Bull-God—to whom the maidens -were offered; Mammon—God of Gold—to whom the youths were offered; and -raids over the mountain and sea to steal the victims. - -To Onesimus, standing musing, the real world had become a dream world, -when a sailor at the prowl spoke to him in Greek: - -“Know you this coin, Master? Is it gold or bronze?” - -The seaman was clad only in trunks and loose shirt, with bare feet and -bare head. He had a capstan bar over his left shoulder, but between the -forefinger and thumb of his right hand he held a rudely minted coin with -roughly stamped insignia, which glittered yellow in the moonlight. - -“It is gold. It is a very old coin. How did you come by it?” - -Onesimus had taken the coin and was turning it over and over in his -hand. - -The seaman’s apple cheeks and gray beard curled in a smile. “My son, he -sleeps under the steps of the Temple. Some rich merchant wife from the -Roman Road spends the night, night after night, praying to Diana in the -Temple. Diana does not give her what she asks; so then she comes out -angry in the morning and asks the way to the Temple of your new God, and -my son, he show her the way, and she throw him a handful of coin. I -think, my master, she make mistake. All the rest was bronze. My son, he -said she had a hard stiff face—you know its value, Master?” - -Onesimus had handed back the coin. He was hardly hearing the seaman’s -words. He was thinking of the scene in the morning, when he had doubted -the value of a child to the Kingdom; and now he knew that the beggar -child with the maimed baby on its back had led Thecla’s mother to the -door of the Kingdom, and he had clashed the door in her face because of -past sin. - -“Know you its value, Master?” repeated the seaman. “Will it buy my -freedom and my daughter’s, too? She is a slave girl in the Temples of -Crete and is wasting of a consumption. I would take her back to a good -woman in the hills off the Roman Road—a Grecian woman called Thecla. -Know you her?” - -Onesimus came awake to pressing duties, like a dreamer out of selfish -trance. - -“Yes, its value is three times the value of a slave; and I will now give -you six times its value in Roman coin to countervail my sin of this very -morning.” He had opened the leather wallet in his sash and was counting -six coins out for the seaman’s one, when a thought arrested him. - -“Who mutilated the infant on your beggar-boy’s back? Is this girl child -also yours?” - -“Nay, my Master,” the Greek seaman’s countenance saddened. “I sink not -so low. The little child is daughter of the Roman guard at Patmos; but I -am slave seaman for debt; and the witch, the fortune teller, at the -Temple steps, who keeps my son and forces him to beg, she it was who -maimed the infant. She feeds the children who are leased, and forces -them to earn bread. The infant was only a female and will be knocked on -the head; so the witch blinded her and broke her arm—” - -Gone were the Bishop’s dreams of a world of Light and Life and Love! -Gone were his memories of Diana and her hunting horn winding divine -music through the caves and grottoes of the Isles of Greece. He was down -to earth with his feet on the ground, a warrior again for righteousness -in a world of crime. What mattered the coward fear of Death? His duty as -a soldier of His Lord was to fight for right in Life, and let Death take -care of itself, as the nymph insect that morning had discarded its coat -of skin to the winds. - -He added another coin to the six he was counting out to the seaman. - -“See you redeem the infant as well, and take them all to the hospice of -the woman Thecla in the mountains,” he commanded. “I will stand bail for -your good citizenship when you get your pass of freedom from the Roman -Governor.” - -When the cusps of the mountains of Crete were sighted, and the great -canvas came clattering down, and the ship warped up to the quay, the -burly seaman—no longer slave but free—came to Onesimus with a capstan -bar over his shoulder. - -“You will need me, Master,” he said. “There are riots in Crete. One -Apollos proclaims the downfall of the old Temples. They threaten to kill -him to-night if he break in on the service. For me, I see not why they -should kill him. He is old—they say he is a hundred years—he will die -anyway; and he preaches— ‘There is no Death.’” The big seaman exploded -in a bluff laugh through his beard that was like the burst of a squall -through a mountain pass; and the two went shouldering up through the -dock rabble towards the temple. - -“They say,” went on the seaman with the new-found tongue of a slave -suddenly free, “this Apollos kept silent for five whole years in the -Lodges of India. Silent—not a word—only signs; but he learned their -magic and can fight the demons of air. ’Twas he gave my girl in the -Temple a cup of forgetfulness and bade her seek healing with the Greek -woman, Thecla, in the mountain caves off the Roman Road. He preaches -Gladness like you, Master, and always Light—Light—Light—a path up to -the dwellings of the gods,” the seaman laughed again. He was not sure -whether his garrulous babble were passing through the Bishop’s outer -ear. - -“What does he teach?” asked Onesimus, curious to learn a slave’s views -of the Glad News. - -“If we have no wants, we’ll seek few possessions,” continued the seaman. -“The winds are spirits—light is a garment—prayers are the smell of -flowers—incense is their seed—and he speaks only in the Temple at -night because he says men will remember his words in their sleep—” - -“Why, then, should the Temple priests threaten to kill him?” asked the -Bishop. - -The seaman paused in his march, shouldering through the crowds. He -evidently could not do two things at once—walk and talk. - -“How do I know, my Master?” The burly fellow thought. “He is rich. He -needs no money. He tells the people to give no money to the priests—” - -“Go on,” ordered the Bishop. - -The seaman lowered the capstan bar from his shoulder and began poking a -pass through the throngs. So great was the press at the main entrance to -the Temple that the seaman turned aside and wedged a way through the -flanking crowd into the darkened cloisters down each side of the vast -edifice to the Sun. The Temple was roofless. On the main central floor -knelt thousands in worship. Censer lights hung on chains across the -front of the altar and beneath the lights chanted the priests in -full-chested chorus, old as time, to the moon and sun deities, while the -voice of the vestal virgins and the boy choristers rose shrill and clear -from the galleries above the cloisters. - -“Go redeem your daughter in the galleries from the priests while I find -the Apostle Apollos,” directed Onesimus, “then meet me at the ship!” - -But to find the Apostle Apollos was no easy matter in this dim light -clouded with incense and mist blowing in from the sea. The sailor went -clambering the stone stairs to the upper galleries, while Onesimus -picked his way past the prostrate worshipers towards the altar, where -Apollos would be likely to appear if he dared to try to speak after the -singing. Then, he caught sight of the venerable Apostle. - -There was no mistaking that aged and beautiful figure—dressed in pure -white, with cork sandals, with hair and beard as white as washed silk, -and brow as lineless and radiant as the snowy mountain peaks—standing -calmly against one of the Temple pillars to the side of the high -smoke-clouded altar; but when Onesimus would have pressed forward to -him, he found the way through the last cloister stopped by a half-dozen -bloodhounds tied to the Temple columns to prevent the rescue of Apollos -by his followers; and one glance told Onesimus that Apollos stood so -motionless because he was bound by ankles and wrists to the upright -column. - -“Bah,” said a bearded Roman guard clad in armor to his eyes, who was -standing behind the leashed bloodhounds, “he saved others; let him save -himself! He raised others from death by his magic tricks. Now he’s dead -man himself under this wolf pack if he budge a hair, where he stands. -Give me the leashes. I’ll let the line out to close on him, when the -singing stops,” and suiting the act to the word, the Roman took the -leash ends of the bloodhounds and gave them line to creep up within -touch of the bound man if he but stirred a hair’s breadth. - -Onesimus moved up cautiously behind the Roman. He had the short dirk in -his belt that all Greeks wore, and from the gold cord round his neck -hung the usual traveler’s sword. - -He was of two minds—whether to trip the Roman guard and snatch the -bloodhounds’ leash, or jump forward in the gathering cloud of mist and -incense, cut Apollos’ bonds and himself divert the attack of the -bloodhounds—when he noticed something with his keen mountaineer eye -that the Roman guard did not see. Apollos’ wrists and ankles had been -bound to the pillar by deer thongs. The hounds had sniffed forward and -were licking at the deer thongs; and through the dark, Apollos’ gleaming -black eyes were boring to Onesimus’ very soul with unspoken message. -They forbade word or move for his rescue. They seemed to redirect the -younger man’s glance back to the bloodhounds. The blood hounds were -licking the deer thongs and the raw hide was stretching as it always -stretches when wet, and Apollos had let it slip down over his hands from -his wrists to the floor, where the dogs, in growling and snarling to -snatch at it, had bitten through the thongs binding his ankles. - -The Apostle did not move by a hair’s breadth. His brow was radiant with -a glowing light and his hair shone like fuller’s white. - -The cymbals clashed. The silver trumpets blew. The lines of chanting -priests had seized bells to ring in rhythm and fans to send up the -clouds of incense. And there was heard the hunting horn of Diana coming -down from the fleecy meadows of mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and -mares in the ocean deeps—the vestal virgins’ high clear soprano gave -back refrain to the chant of the priests—when a blast of wind from the -tidal waves of Diana’s stallions and mares champing out to sea, blew -through the Temple pillars, sending the clouds of incense and mist back -over the worshipers. - -Onesimus saw Apollos leap from the pillar to the altar stairs; and when -the Roman guard would have unleashed the hounds to tear him down, an -unseen foot tripped the soldier to his face on the tessellated floor of -the Temple, and the hounds were upon the fellow in a savage attack that -called the attention of the priests. Taking quick advantage of the -diversion and the back-blown cloud of sea mist and incense smoke, -Onesimus with a bound followed his Master, who had passed swiftly to the -stairs behind the altar, that led both to the vestal virgins’ galleries -above and to the famous underground labyrinths of Crete. - -“Follow me not, beloved! Farewell,” Apollos had turned. “Escape back to -the ship with your seaman and his daughter! Take them to Thecla in the -caves! Seek me not! Farewell for a little time—” - -Again the cymbals clashed. Again the silver trumpets blew. Again the -bells rang in rhythm to the chant of the priests and refrain of vestals. -Again the fans sent back the cloud of incense above the altar. Again was -heard Diana’s hunting horn coming down from the fleecy meadows of -mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and mares in the ocean deeps; but of -Apollos was nought to be seen. - -“Bah,” said a Roman guard standing near the astounded Bishop of Ephesus, -“’twas but a trick of levitation, which all these Eastern magic fellows -play. The fellow has lifted himself up by his sandal straps and -disappeared through the clouds of smoke, as he did when he was tried -before our Emperor Domitian for tearing a boy’s entrails out. Wasn’t I -there? Didn’t I see him? Didn’t he defy our Emperor to his face? They -could prove nothing against the scoundrel—he wraps himself in his cloak -like this”—the guard imitated a man hiding his face in his cape— “I -see him plain as I see you, we all see him, the Emperor was about to -have him seized and burned as all these Greeks and Jewish sorcerers -ought to be burned—and there, as we look, the knave disappears from our -very eyes and reappears down in a cave among his followers by the sea, -where he takes ship and flees for Asia again. If I’d been Emperor, I’d -have had him seized where found and burned on the spot. ’Tis only a -trick of levitation—holding the breath, mumbling a hocus-pocus, and up -they go—” - -“Simpler than that, Friend Roman,” responded a Greek priest of the -Temple, whose head was shaved like a billiard ball and whose face wore -the baffled look of one stunned by anger and fear. “There are thirty -thousand secret chambers in the old Minos Temples ’neath the Island -here, where all the Black Magic books of old have been hidden for a -thousand years. The knave must have known the secret passage to these -hidden underground caves, where ’tis like he hides now with all his -followers and rocks this Isle. ’Tis known the Isle always rocks in the -spring and autumn storms—and the old Greeks say ’tis from the Black -Magic of the Masters in the Caves. The man wrought Black Magic against -our Goddess. He ought to have been burned.” - -“I notice,” said another, “that he had no shadow. These demons have no -shadow—’tis how we Greeks know demons in human form; and he always wore -a ring with a mystic stone got from the Magicians of India to protect -him.” - -“A plague on these cursed Gnostics and Essenes and Nazarenes,” gritted a -Jew, joining the amazed group. “They are turning the whole world upside -down. Feed them to the beasts, I say, as they did in the mad Nero’s -day.” - - * * * * * - -Onesimus came out to the star-silvered night, dazed and dumb. Was there -“no more Death”? He could not answer. He stood by the rocky coast of the -calm painted sea with the Greek freed seaman and his daughter rescued -from the Temple service. Snow was falling in a white mantle on the upper -peaks of the opaline mountains. Was it “the Angel of the Snows” of which -Apollos and Enoch taught? Hoar frost seemed to be lining the upper -forested evergreens in the glint of jewels. Was it the Angel of the Hoar -Frost? Mist was rising from the sea to meet the mist from the mountains -in ghostly curtains. Was it the Spirit of the Mist wrapping its vesture -around the departed Apostle? And the winds began to chant a mystic rune -where the sea and rock met in the white fret of the night tide. Was it -the Angel of the Winds, which, Apollos had taught, come out to gather -earth thoughts for the weal or woe of earth? - -The Bishop of Ephesus fell to his knees and spent the rest of the night -on the shore in prayer. - -And so the Bishop on his way home to Ephesus, accompanied by the slave -seaman freed and the daughter redeemed from Temple service in Crete on -their voyage to Thecla’s hospice on the Roman Road—paused at Patmos, -the rocky desert isle, where John, the Beloved, lived in banishment and -dreamed. - -The vessel beached at dawn and while the sailors took on a fresh cargo -of fish, Onesimus asked the way to the hut of John, the exile. - -The Roman guard was father of the infant girl, whom the Greek sorceress -at Ephesus had leased and maimed to beg; and when the soldier heard from -the seaman of the coin which would ransom six slaves redeeming his -little daughter, the guard told Onesimus how John’s banishment had been -revoked and the aged Disciple had gone to Ephesus by the previous day’s -boat. - -“Yonder,” said the Roman guard, “is his prison hut; and yonder, where -you hear the roaring seas, is his Vision Cave—there is the voice of -many waters there—go not too far in—the maids of spray and rainbow -hair”—and the man laughed awkwardly at his own superstition. - -The little white stone hut stood on the wave-fretted rocks facing the -burst of sunrise over the green isles of Greece in the blue morning sea. -While the sailors loaded freight, the Bishop wandered up to the prison -hut of the last of the Disciples. It was such a prison hut as Paul had -occupied at Rome—but in a quieter cleaner haven, where the dawn came -over sea and peak in a Jacob’s Ladder to sleeping and waking dreams, up -and down which the Angels might pass from Heaven to men’s souls. Blue -and primrose were the skies above. Emerald and white were the seas -below. Yellow and gold were the spears of the sun, and opal were the -peaks of far mountains swimming between heaven and earth. - -The cave was a haven for a seer to dream or commune with God for the -wind played the harp in the gaunt trees growing from the bare rocks; and -the voice of many waters sounded day and night without ceasing, where -wave fret beat in the hollow resounding caverns of rock and landlocked -inlet; and the trickle of receding tides through the fine sands was as -the tinkling of myriad little bells. - -Onesimus drew from his traveler’s case a parchment; and here is what he -read, as in a trance between life and death: - -“And the sea gave up the dead, which were in it . . . and death and the -grave delivered up the dead, which were in them; and they were judged -every man according to their works . . . and I saw a new heaven and a -new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away -. . . and I heard a great voice out of the heavens saying— Behold, the -tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them and be their -God . . . and shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall -be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any -more pain; for the former things are passed away. . . . Behold I make -all things new. . . . Write; for these words are true and faithful . . . -I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life -freely . . . and there shall be no night . . . for the Lord God giveth -light . . . and the Spirit and the bride say—come; And let him that -heareth say come! And let him that is athirst come! And whosoever will, -let him take the water of life freely. . . .” When he had finished -reading, the Bishop was no longer in trance. He was in ecstasy. It was -as if the golden light of day dawn had photographed the last message of -the Last Disciple in letters of celestial fire across the firmament of -heaven and earth to all time in a rainbow of eternal hope. - -What matter whether his resurrection were a physical body, a soul body, -a spiritual body? Paul, himself, had said, when wrapped away in vision -to a Third Heaven not made of hands, that he knew not whether he was in -“terrestrial” or “celestial” body. Onesimus now knew that neither matter -nor spirit could perish—but only change, and He who had created both -would govern what form they must take in the New Heaven and the New -Earth; and Christ would give that cup of forgetfulness of sin from the -Book of Remembrance, which the pagan Greeks promised from drink of their -sacred spring. Then suddenly, as if in a glimpse of cosmic -consciousness, he knew the veil was very thin—thinner in every cycle of -ages—as the Old crashed down, the New grew up in its place—till the -New became a New Heaven and a New Earth, a New Heaven on Earth; and he -heard the voice of many waters, “not only as the rite of baptism for the -turning from sin,” but as a river of living waters flowing from the -throne of God, to carry mankind to the destiny of the Sons of God. He -knew the crucifixion of his Master had marked the end of a cycle, and -all His followers were the Torch Bearers of the Glad News to future -ages. - -The ship anchored at Ephesus too late for the Bishop to get carriage up -from the water front to the city square. As far as one can judge from -the configuration of sands and ruins, the distance was six or seven -miles. Accompanied by the Greek seaman, and the redeemed Temple vestal, -he walked the distance from tide water to city square, where his own -little church and dwelling stood across from the Great Temple to Diana -Artemis. Opposite the pagan Temple, the three left him to rouse the -little beggar boy, who commonly slept under the marble steps. The -Bishop’s intention was to prepare a cloister for these travelers on the -way to Thecla’s hospice to sleep; then snatch a few moments of sleep, -himself, before presenting himself at his own home where the aged John -would be housed and resting. - -The silver colossus of the Goddess stood an unearthly wraith in the pale -dawn of the city square. The morning mist came in a long ghostly beam -across his own church into the cloisters on the garden side. Some bird -awakened in the garden and stabbed the morning silence with a threnody -of unutterable beauty. The fountain in the garden fell with the tinkle -of tiny bells as though the flowers rang out their morning hymn, besides -which was no sound but the padded footfall of his own sandals across the -misty church. - -He stooped, steadying his hand on a stone bench and loosed the sandals -from his own feet, nor quite knew why he had done it, when a spear of -sunlight struck through the beam of mist aslant his church; and there on -the cot in his own prayer cell lay the figure of the aged Disciple, -John, in a deep sleep motionless and peaceful as death. - -Then Onesimus started back in an amaze that was neither fear nor horror. -It was as if his own doubts lay before him slain; for the figure of the -woman, clad all in black, was on her knees, bent over the feet of the -Disciple, sobbing. The air was heavy with the spring hyacinth odor for -the dead, and the weeping woman was breaking and pouring an alabaster -jar of perfumed ointment over the feet of the Beloved and wiping them -with her fallen hair. As she caught glimpse of the Bishop standing in -the half dark of the cell arch, she rose and whispered— - -“He is not dead. He only sleeps. There is no Death.” - -It was Thecla’s mother. - -“He hath but changed his vesture of flesh for vesture of Light,” said -the Bishop softly. “He hath gone to the New Heaven and the New Earth of -his Vision. He is not far away. He has fallen asleep to awaken in the -Garden of God.” - -So “fell asleep” John, the last of the Disciples. - -When the Bishop and the woman rose from prayer, the freed Greek seaman, -and the redeemed Temple maid and the two beggar children stood in the -cloister arch, waiting to be directed to the Thecla hospice of the Roman -Road. - -The Bishop placed his hands on the heads of the beggar children. - -“Suffer little children to come unto Him and forbid them not,” he said, -“for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven, for our youth shall lead the -whole redeemed world.” - - - - - FOREWORD TO APPENDIX - - -As a child and later a student, I recall intensely disliking Paul. I -wasn’t quite sure he was a “crazy fanatic and self-hypnotized epileptic -and self-deceived, unconscious fakir,” which I have heard teachers of -youth in our colleges call him; terrible views for a child to hold about -a saintly character—I only set them down to show how wrong teaching can -color our version of the Bible—but I regarded him as fanatical, narrow, -crabbed, sour, domineering, eager to dragoon men into believing as he -did, whether by fear of Hell-fire, which seemed to me a cowardly -fire-insurance policy against retribution or by sheer force of will, I -had not decided. I distinctly disliked saints, whose milk of human -kindness had turned sour. Later, years later, when I came back to read -his life in the sacred records, as I would read with unprejudiced eyes -in the search for facts which we carry to the reading of an ordinary -life, I was amazed and staggered to find he was a small man, frail of -body, short-sighted, suffering some physical ailment from the -persecutions to which he had been subjected, fearless as a lion where -the faith was concerned, humble and simple as a child in other matters, -generous in money matters—see the loan to Philemon—so independent that -while he collected funds for famine in Jerusalem, he would never touch -those funds himself, but supported himself by the making of tents, for -which there was great demand owing to caravan travel being universal, -and so great of heart that his tenderness extended to a little slave -boy, who came to him in Rome and who ultimately became the youngest -bishop in the Christian Church in the third largest city of the Roman -Empire. - -About this time I began reading the Bible as I would any other book, or -a newspaper editorial, critically but shorn of early beliefs and -prejudices. I read ignoring chapter divisions and verse divisions, which -too often have provided controversialists with bullets for -sharp-shooting in ambush by wresting sentences from context and meaning, -and using them as “the Devil quotes Scripture” for his own purposes; and -I can conceive of nothing that will restore belief quicker than to read -the Bible as a historical record of the birth and growth of a great -redemptive force for humanity—using redemption as a force in -present-day life, not in a far-away, vague shadowy Kingdom of the -Hereafter. - -About this time, too, I realized what one of the greatest American -theologians has frankly admitted—that the worst foes of Christianity -are not its enemies but “the friends in its own house,” and those foes -are sometimes medieval inheritances of superstitious interpretations, of -which we are unconscious; scraps of misapplied, ignorant Sunday-School -teaching. In fact, I have often wondered, if secular teaching were given -with as colossal ignorance of historic data as sacred teaching is given, -how many pupils could pass even a primary examination? How much would be -known of applied science, or even our own secular historic development? -For instance, how many Bible teachers know that Christ and John and Paul -all quote from the Book of Enoch, which is variously dated as from 200 -to 120 B.C.? How many know that “the camel and the eye of a needle” was -an Arab expression used to this day? How many know that many of the -expressions precious to the whole world were quoted by the writers from -ancient masters sacred and secular—such as the reference to -“principalities and powers” separating us from the love of God? How many -realize that “oil out of the flinty rock” was not a metaphor, but a -fact—such a fact, that modern drillers for petroleum have found oil in -that very spot? How many know that the fiery furnace recorded in the -book of Daniel to destroy the three young Hebrews is corroborated by -references in the Maccabees and other ancient books to naphtha waters -which burned with a flame to consume all towards whom the wind blew, but -which had a funneling air center inside, which left the furnace harmless -in the middle? How many know that tiles and statuary dug out of the -ruins of Babylon show a man lying unharmed under a lion in the lion’s -den of the king’s royal gardens? We ridicule the story of Jonah and the -whale; yet from the belly of a stuffed sacred alligator in Egypt amid -scraps of waste paper were taken precious lost records of the sayings of -Christ. - -The Bible is not much longer than seven short novels. The most of people -read seven novels in a year. The ordinary modern magazine has the same -number of words as a short novel. A great many people read a magazine -from cover to cover once a week. If the Bible were read in the same free -spirit, unclouded by inherited prejudice or taint of “creeds,” the -return to belief among youth would be a thing to astound the world. - -Why isn’t it so read? - -To quote the theologian—because “the literalists” insist that in the -reading, youth shall read into the context what they dictate rather than -what youth finds of everyday usable livable truths; and to-day, youth -will not be dragooned. He is going to follow the light of truth as he -finds the light of truth and proves the truth. He isn’t going to accept -one set of opinions on Sunday, which he finds won’t work out in everyday -life on Monday. Christianity has to be a workable scheme for every day -in the week, or youth is going to leave the church pews empty and crowd -to “the movies,” to the theater, to the anarchist lectures, to the wild -abandon of joy in the rhythmic emotional dance; and—youth is right. -With unfettered feet and wings of dawn to its soul, it faces always the -new day. It never looks backwards. It rejoices in Life; and Christianity -must be put in terms of youth, or preach to emptier and emptier pews. -Paul never ceased reiterating “Rejoice—rejoice and again I -say—rejoice.” Too often we have clothed a glad and glorious message in -habiliments of age and woe, which are really the consciousness of past -sins and failures. The Communion is not a Doleful Supper commemorating a -death. It is a Loving Cup commemorating a wonderful and glad new birth. -The Kingdom of Heaven is not to-morrow. It is now; or else it is never. -And yet, let us not blame the Middle Age interpretations shadowy with -crime and sorrow. In a carnival of lust and crime and rapine and sword, -the Middle Age Church preserved and conserved for humanity, like an -oasis of the spirit in a desert of materialism, all that has helped -humanity most, and this in spite of the fact it foolishly punished -astronomers, who proved the earth round and burned men who differed by a -hair’s breadth from its “credo.” While it was guilty of these tragical -mistakes of obeying the letter rather than the spirit—as the Pharisees -who crucified Christ, had done before it—the Middle Age Church kept the -faith for us, inspired and conserved art, science, letters, in a -wilderness of barbarism. Who encouraged almost sublime architecture? Who -produced paintings that have never been equaled to this day? Where did -Roger Bacon work out his great, though concealed, truths of science? In -the safety, though it was the imprisonment, of a friar’s cell. Roger -Bacon (1214-1294), the friar at Oxford, wrote these words. Were they -clairvoyant foresight, or the superior knowledge of a scientist from -facts? “Ships will go without rowers and with only a single man to guide -them. Carriages without horses will travel with incredible speed. -Machines for flying can be made in which a man sits. Machines will raise -infinitely great weights. Bridges will span rivers without supports.” -His superior knowledge was ascribed by his superiors to Black Magic; but -Pope Clement IV supported him and ordered his knowledge set forth in -books, of which he wrote three in eighteen months without secretary; but -his own immediate superiors ascribed his marvelous knowledge to -communications from the Devil, and had him imprisoned for fourteen -years. After seven hundred years, the light of that cell comes out to -the world: yet, the men who suppressed him thought they were protecting -God’s word from assault. It can only be added that the history of -ignorance repeats itself with surprising persistence. The good men of -his day were simply trying to tie truth down to the dead line of their -own ignorance. With a charity and a clarity infinite as the love of God, -let us be careful we do not do the same thing. - -Rather than condemn the mistakes of the Middle Age Church from whose -darkened and superstitious interpretations we yet suffer, let us beware -we do not repeat their mistakes by shutting out the new light of history -and archæology and science, where we should welcome it. - -Christianity does not need to apologize for itself, or beg the question. -When it does that, he who excuses accuses. When it does that, it is off -the carpet in the modern world. It can stand on the solid foundation of -its own truth. If that foundation cracks, it will fall as the Holy City -fell before a New Order. Rather than repel attack, we should welcome it. -Attack is the storm wind that strengthens the hold of the roots on the -eternal rocks. It is the wind that causes the corn stalk to put out guy -ropes above its roots to hold fast to sure foundation. I love to read -attacks on Christian truth if they are sincere and not cheap, cynical, -ignorant sneers, which never get anywhere. They force examination of the -certainty of the facts beneath our faith. - -To take but one example of what muddy thinking has done to stir up -shallow waters to make them look deep—consider the furious and foolish -controversy in the modern church over “miracles.” “We believe in -miracles,” shouts one section of the Church, “and if you don’t, we’ll -see that you are put out of the church and prove that you are damned.” -“We don’t believe in miracles and we defy you to put us out of the -church; or we’ll pull down the pillars of youth like Samson as we go -out,” shouts back the other section; and neither stops to ask in simple -clarity: - -What is a miracle? - -Is it God breaking, or intervening to prevent, the effect of His own -laws? - -We have no such phenomena in natural life, and shy back from answering -that question in as bold terms as it is asked. - -Or is it the working of a higher law overruling and annulling a lower -law? There are cases of that in nature, as when the effect of a warm and -constant ocean current is annulled by a cold wind from the north; but in -this case, neither law is abrogated. We are getting the effects of each; -but the effect of one is stronger than the other. That might be the -meaning of “a miracle”; but the explanation is so obscure and the -workings so complex and in the unknown, that if that be the conception -of “miracle” we had better not split the church over it. We are dealing -with too many unknown quantities to postulate with mathematical -certainty what we do know and what we don’t of fact, or to exclude from -fellowship on the grounds of what is unknown. - -Or is a miracle a superior knowledge of all laws and the use of that -knowledge to get certain effects, such as the knowledge of Roger Bacon, -who was seven hundred years in advance of his time? If that be -“miracle,” the controversy vanishes in thin air. - -A century ago, if any man had told us we could see through a man’s flesh -and count his ribs and the joints in his backbone, we would have called -him an unconscious fakir, or a conscious liar. Yet X-rays have worked -that “miracle.” - -Fifty years ago, if any one had told us we could go round the world -under the sea like Jonah in the whale’s belly, we would have answered -him in the language of Missouri, “Show me.” Yet the submarine has worked -that “miracle.” - -Twenty-five years ago, if any one had predicted we would course the -skies in winged chariots of which you can read a description in the -First Chapter of Ezekiel, we would have told him a comic legend about -Darius Green and his flying machine. Yet the aeroplane has worked that -“miracle.” - -Ten years ago, if some one had told us soberly and expecting belief that -he could talk without wire or letter from New York with a friend in -Honolulu, we would have had him examined for his sanity. Yet wireless -has worked that “miracle.” - -The impossibility of yesterday is the wonder of to-day and the -commonplace of to-morrow. The laws of the X-ray, of under-sea navigation -in submarine, of air travel in aeroplane, of wireless communication, -existed just as much and the same in the days of Christ as they exist -to-day; but men did not know those laws and did not know how to use -them. “Greater works than these shall ye do,” said the Master. We didn’t -believe Him, though we thought we did; and we witness the fulfillment of -the prophecy. We are heirs to the fulfillment of the prophecy by the -greatest Master in foresight the world has ever known, by One who did -more to set the human soul free of the shackles of ignorance and -prejudice than any other leader of all humanity. - -He, who postulates to-day on what is, or is not, miraculous, simply -writes himself down an ignorant muddy-brained thinker, stirring up -shallow waters to make them look deep. The “literalist” in this case -simply tries to bind youth down to “old wives’ fables” and to nursery -beliefs. He tries to level Christian truth down to the dead line of the -most ignorant. - -And so of nearly all the disputes in the Christian Church—“the -resurrection,” “the descent into Hell,” “the Immaculate Conception,” -“the letter inerrancy of the Scriptures.” Ask definitely what the -controversialist means by his own terms, and whether agnostic or -fundamentalist, instead of answering you, he backs against the wall of -his “rightness” and hurls thunder bolts of damnation and excommunication -from fellowship at you; and Youth still goes on its way in laughter and -gladness; and I thank God that it does. It would be terrible if -Christianity ever became as static and dead as the faith of the -Pharisee, who crucified Christ because He would not conform to the -letter of the law instead of the spirit. - -We should remember the simple words, “He will not wrangle.” All -Christianity asks is—“prove all things.” If they don’t prove up, don’t -take them. - -Not long ago, a friend had an experience that illustrates this. For -twenty years, she had practically never read the Bible. She had been -taught the Bible wrong and when the Bob Ingersoll era came on, -ridiculing these vulnerable teachings, she had quit reading the Bible. -As a professor, who teaches teachers in the largest teachers’ -institution in America, once said to me: “Really I envy you your naïve -beliefs! I envy any one who can believe that old stuff”; she had -discarded the Bible as a book of myths and fairy tales. She said once “I -can’t read it. I simply can’t read it. I read into it the old impossible -prejudices and creeds I was taught when I was a girl; and now I know -they are not true.” To overcome that mental habit of reading into the -Bible what isn’t in it, I suggested Weymouth’s translation in modern -phraseology with strictest adherence to linguistic scholarship. We miss -some of the old and beautiful phrases in this translation, but we get a -translation free of the old controversial doubtful implied -interpretations. She began re-reading the Bible as she would any other -authentic historic record. In her enthusiasm, she carried her new -treasure to a devout elderly saintly friend of the old school. The -friend sat up in horror. How dare any one suggest there could be any -improvement in the translation of the Bible. The good friend was -evidently in devout and blissful self-righteous ignorance of the sources -of the Bible. She evidently did not know that the Tindale Bible of 1555 -was improved in the King James Version of 1611, and the King James -Version was improved in the 1888 version; and there are still phrases -and words which linguistic research is improving. And recall that, in -old texts from which the Bible is taken, some of the old manuscripts did -not use the vowel but left the vowel to be guessed. The good friend—and -she was sincere—mistook the pebbles and the small rocks of the trail up -the slopes of light for the main foundation and the light ahead; and -promptly began hurling those rocks and pebbles at a true seeker after -light. - -It was a case of a saint’s shadow darkening a seeker’s trail. - - - - - APPENDIX A - - CONCERNING PAUL’S MISSIONARY TOURS - AND DISPUTED POINTS - - -“The Christian religion takes its stand upon the ground of history,” -says Malden in his _Problems of the New Testament_; “but there is now a -feeling abroad that the authority of the New Testament has been severely -shaken by recent studies, if it is not in danger of being destroyed -outright.” - -Fifteen years ago, such a statement would have been acknowledged as -voicing general sentiment, not to be denied; and the liberal wing of -scholars would have regarded the statement as grounds for relegating the -New Testament in history to the junk heap of picturesque myths, in which -there was, of course, some dim reflex of events that had happened, but -so embroidered by superstition as to be utterly untrustworthy as a basis -for belief founded on facts; while the literalists would have regarded -the same general sentiment as grounds for blind belief, for dogmas to -embody their blind belief, to which all Christians must subscribe, or be -cast out. Indeed, the most excited and least informed of the literalists -would have gone even farther as late as 1922—they would have passed -laws prohibiting free speech, free thought, the teaching of any brand of -belief but their own. The panic reiteration of dogma was a sad evidence -of lack of faith in the truth beneath their own beliefs. - -Truth needs no bludgeon of civil law or religious threat of exclusion. -All it needs is to be put forth with its proofs. He who seeks to -establish his own beliefs by disproving some one else’s—is wasting -precious time. Truth needs only that its torch be held high aloft -lighting the way, and humanity will follow; and the dark illusion called -error will vanish as darkness always disperses before light. - -But with the War has come a subtle change. The change of front is -something deeper than a complete collapse of the scheme on which our -civilization seemed founded. It is a something deeper than the fear of -death that took such awful toll in the War. It is deeper than a panic -stampede from the impasse of our own former conclusions. - -It is a determination to get at basic truths and with them rebuild a -better civilization. Even if we have to proceed slowly step by step as -up a steep trail of rolling stones to higher outlook, we are determined -to eliminate error and get at truth, on which we’ll found our faith for -the morrow. - -The War only hastened a tendency that had been ripening for half a -century. It opened doors long closed in the East to linguistic scholars, -to archæologist’s spade, to such purely secular scientific expeditions -as the American expedition to the deserts of Tartary and Mongolia to -find if the original home of mankind and prehistoric life were really in -Asia. - -Men and women back from the horrors of War somehow vaguely realized that -dogmatic religion had not prevented a hideous throwback of civilization -to the practices of barbarism. They discovered with horror civilization -was only skin deep; and while some came back with hopeless fears that -science, in submarine and aeroplane and poisonous gases and armaments of -long-range devilish powers undreamed as possible, seemed to have created -a monster that would devour civilization, like the destruction of the -fabled Atlantis, others came back with a deeper insight. While science -had created the monsters of destruction, it had also discovered the -angels of mercy in surgery, in aeroplane, in wireless, that seemed -almost to rend the veil into the unseen. - -So humanity came back from the War seeking foundations for belief in -truth facts—sifting error from truth, proving all things, and holding -fast only to what it could prove and use; and neither science nor -religion asks any other criterion—“Try it; if it works, take it: if it -doesn’t, don’t”; and the latest scholarship declares bluntly -Christianity takes its stand on the ground of history. - -The story of Onesimus will be found in outline in the letter to -Philemon. Though Rome had neither Titus’ Triumphant Arch, nor -Vespasian’s magnificent colosseum, when Paul was prisoner in the hut -near the Three Taverns, one can reconstruct from Josephus and from the -Roman historians of the period the character of the Rome in which the -young Phrygian slave found himself enmeshed, and how Paul lived with the -radiance of a quenchless diamond amid the cesspool slime of a great -imperial city in the first stages of its moral decay. How great and -hideous was that moral decay could not be told in a book going through -the mails. Hints of it can be found in Philostratus’ _Apollonius_ -(Oxford, 1912). The references to Nero need no proof. They are -well-known history; and if space permitted, the letters, true or false, -of Paul and Seneca could be given. These letters can be found in the -Apocryphal Books of the New Testament, on which Malden (Oxford), Turner -(Oxford), Sir William Ramsay and Bishop Lightfoot have given the latest -best views. At first, my impression was Onesimus might have been a -colored slave like the Apostle later known as “Niger,” but on looking up -the past history of the Phrygian mountain clans, it was easy to see how -the constant raids of robber bands from upper Galilee to kidnap the -mountain boys and girls and sell them as slaves in the cities of the -Roman Road, might have produced a character like Onesimus, and that he -was pure Greek. To this day, the Druse descendants of these mountain -clans have resisted all enslavement. If captured and reduced to -servitude, they become fanatic demons of crime. If left free, they -preserve a peculiarly pure form of Christian belief, though primitive -and superstitious. Felix’s part in clearing out the robber bands of -Galilee is also history and can be found fully given in Josephus though -too often when he rescued the kidnapped victims, it was to resell them -to enrich himself. The jealousy between the sisters—Drusilla and -Bernice—is also given in Josephus. The fact that Felix, who had once -been slave himself, rose to marry the royal and proud line of the Herods -attests a character of peculiar force. The scene in the Cæsarean -Judgment Hall will be found given in the _Acts_, and still more fully in -Josephus. Of later authorities on Paul, besides Malden and Lightfoot, -are Robinson of Cambridge, Rendell Harris in his volumes of 1893 and -1911, Parry of Cambridge, 1920, Smith, 1919, and Kersopp Lake in 1916. -Students wishing to trace back these modern authorities to the ancients -and nearer contemporaries of Paul will find the references in these -volumes leading them back to Clement and Ignatius and Iræneus and hosts -of others. The name of Paul’s custodian on the ship wrecked en route to -Rome is variously spelled, but I have followed the spelling of the -_Acts_. The same name is again found in the fall of the Holy City. - -Church historians have been very severe on Bernice, who became a -character famous or infamous—as you will—in Titus’ day in Rome. Her -angling to ensnare the Emperor, who was a young general at the time, -became a joke in the Roman theaters, but would judgments be so severe, I -wonder, if censors looked up the age at which this child was married to -her first husband, and then to silence evil gossip about the affection -between herself and her brother, was married to a second aged husband -whom she at once left? She could not have been more than seventeen or -eighteen, when married to the second husband. All the Herods notoriously -married off their daughters and sisters to strengthen their own insecure -thrones. Women were a pawn for empire; and I, for one, would hate to -cast a stone at a girl of eighteen, who when she found herself a pawn -between lust and power, if she had to pawn herself, aimed at the highest -bidder. The name of Bernice’s second husband from whom she fled—Polemo -or Polemon—should be noted carefully; for it comes again in the story -of Thecla. The royal Roman lady, a relative of the Emperor, was either -wife or daughter of this ancient satyr, and her sympathy for Thecla may -have arisen from her own similar experiences. _Apollonius’ Life_ gives -the brand of the man’s vices. Young Agrippa, the last of the Herod line, -while too weak to master circumstances and rule with the iron ruthless -hand of Herod the Great, was undoubtedly the most decent of all the evil -Herods, and his character as portrayed by Josephus, hardly bears out the -evil insinuations of the Jews, who mobbed and would have murdered both -him and his sister. Paul’s opinion of the young man, we get in the -_Acts_, and Agrippa’s reaction to that appeal does not bear out proof of -a degenerate youth. “Almost,” says the boyish prince, he could not have -been much over twenty, “you would make me a Christian.” All that is -merely hinted here of the Daphne Gardens is mild compared to the truth -that can be found in any Roman record of the day. The lure of the Daphne -Gardens drew many Romans to spend the winter at Antioch, with fatal -results to the morale of officers and governors; and after the fall of -Jerusalem compelled the change of the headquarters of the Christian -church from Antioch to Ephesus. The best testimony to the influence of -the new faith in counteracting the evil of those Gardens is found in the -charges and countercharges when the temples were destroyed, that the -Christians had burned them. It was not with earthly fires they had -burned them but with the divine fires of the faith. - -In one secular account of the return of the Roman troops after the sack -of Jerusalem will be found mention of a shipwreck almost similar to that -which overtook Paul on his journey to Rome; and in early Grecian -statuary and pottery will be found ships “trussed” or “frapped” by ropes -to keep the timbers from going to pieces just as recorded in the _Acts_. -Lucian’s history describes the corn ships of the period; and Josephus’ -account of a wreck is an exact parallel of Paul’s experiences, except -that Josephus’ ship carried six hundred passengers. “Corn,” it need -hardly be told here, was not our modern corn but such grains as wheat -and barley. Palestine is now known to have been the original area of the -first wheat cultivated in the world. - -One very pointed question occurs here. Where Josephus refers to Christ, -his words are: “_Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it -is lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works . . . -he was the Christ . . . and when Pilate . . . had condemned him to the -cross . . . he appeared alive again the third day. . . ._”[3] - -[3] By some scholars, this paragraph is regarded as a forgery. - -And he hints that the destruction of Jerusalem was divine chastisement -for the murder of James, the disciple. His words are: “The brother of -Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James . . . he (Herod) -delivered to be stoned.” Luke’s account of this in the _Acts_ is: “Herod -the king stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the church; and -killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.” The two accounts do -not seem to agree, but recall all men wore swords in these days, even -the disciples—see the cutting of Malchus’ servant’s ear—and in a -rabble stoning a man to death both accounts may be true. That being -Josephus’ belief, why did he not refer more frankly to Christ as the -Messiah of Jewish expectation? That has been a puzzling question that -has cast discredit on Josephus as historian of the Roman era. Yet it -would not cast discredit on him if one paused to examine the -circumstances under which his history was written. He had been a -Pharisee of the Pharisees, in the best sense, and a Zealot of the -Zealots for the defence of Hebrew rights; but when he saw that Judea had -not a chance on earth against Roman power—that Rome could give order -and law where the Hebrews, themselves, could not, like Isaiah before -him, he counseled coöperation with the strong power rather than the -opposition that would inevitably end in national extinction. In the -siege of Jerusalem, like Agrippa, he went over to the Roman side against -the lawless robber bands, who held and plundered the Holy City. He did -everything in his power to save the city from total destruction by -imploring its surrender till he was stoned away by the fighters on the -walls. When the Holy City was conquered and totally destroyed but for -the Herod Towers on the west, he was taken to Rome and given quarters in -the royal palace, and wrote his record of the Roman era in Palestine for -Titus and Vespasian, as their guest and pensioner. As historian in an -era when emperor worship was being set up by Rome throughout the Empire, -he could hardly issue an official history under Roman approval that -acknowledged Pilate, the Roman governor, had crucified, at the behest of -the Jews, the unacknowledged Messiah. We wish for his own sake he had -frankly given record of the Christ, whose career he must have known in -detail in a land not much larger than Vermont, or say, about a hundred -and seventy-five miles long by sixty broad, which was the area of the -Jewish Palestine in his day. He gives full record of all the High -Priests and the Sanhedrim to the cutting of their throats in the -Aqueduct twenty-five years after Christ’s death. He was in and about -Jerusalem during the most of Christ’s life. Familiar with every foot of -Palestine, that life he must have known; but he is silent because he was -the pensioner of the government that had consented to Christ’s death. - -That Paul and Josephus and Apollos must have known one another is -self-evident. Each was a great student of the law and of philosophy. -Each was familiar with the studies of the great philosophies of -Alexandria. Paul quotes from them continually. Paul and Josephus had -both studied in Jerusalem. Paul and Apollos had both spent their boyhood -in Tarsus. Apollos seems to have been the richest of the three, and a -traveled gnostic. Josephus was soldier till he laid down arms in -Jerusalem to become historian in Rome, and he was a liberal Pharisee. -Paul was fanatical student of the Hebrew law till he became follower of -Christ. That Paul was tentmaker did not place a social chasm between him -and the other two; for every Hebrew boy had to learn a trade to forefend -against want in perilous times. - -Solely because it would require a library of books to give the -corroborative data of Paul’s life in Rome and in Cæsarea, the data -bearing on Onesimus’s story must here be condensed to notes for -reference. - -The Spring Festival in the Roman Empire occurred at almost the same -period of the year as the Jewish Passover and the Christian crucifixion; -so that the tortures inflicted on Christ and the later Christian martyrs -at this period were really to glut the lust for blood that was part of -the old pagan worship. Free gifts for charity to the mob had degenerated -into a bribe to the populace in place of justice. Rome was no longer -Roman. It was a composite of the known world. Though Rome gave her -Empire good laws and stable government, as Apollonius, the sage, pointed -out to the General, Vespasian, she could not ensure the execution of -those laws for two reasons: if she appointed local governors or kings, -like the Herods, to hold loyalty, she could not prevent them exacting -extortionate taxes for their own wealth; if she appointed Roman -governors like Pilate, they could not speak the languages of the -far-flung provinces and had to depend on underlings of native birth, who -perverted Roman justice. The Roman Empire was falling to pieces from -over-extension. Democracy was degenerating to mobocracy and mobocracy to -the tyranny of the Army. - -Would the old Idumean guard have been executed for the loss of his -prisoner in the shipwreck? He most certainly would; for Rome was as -ruthless to her own, as to her provincials. - -The object in kidnapping a beautiful slave can be found in the four -lives that have been written of Apollonius. We sometimes despair of the -world because religion seems to have done so little to change men. The -despair is the voice of unbelief. Read the old records. The tortures of -Thecla were mild compared to the martyrdom of many a Christian in the -pleasure gardens of Nero, where the victims were dipped in oil and then -tied to stakes, as torches, in ridicule of the claim that they were the -torch bearers of light and glad news. - -Rome standing for irresistible brute power, was ever jealous of the -cultured Greeks; and the Greeks returned scorn for scorn—which would -explain why Onesimus, a Greek runaway, was friendless in Rome. - -By the time of Paul’s first imprisonment, 63-64 A.D., Nero’s madness was -acknowledged in Rome. The great fire, of which Paul and Seneca -corresponded, took place in 64 A.D., but Rome, rolling in wealth and -luxury, did not want to upset prosperity by destroying good times; and -only after Nero’s suicide and three years of turbulence, when the Army -loomed as a terrible menace, was Vespasian, the strong general, called -to become Emperor. - -Regarding the Three Taverns, all through the Empire at this time, the -keepers of the wine shops were women; and in the East, they were called -Rahabs—a name with evil import to us to-day; but all the Rahabs were -not harpies—as witness the Rahab of Jericho in Joshua’s day. - -Fuller details of the equinoctial gales at Crete will be given on the -chapter on Apollos and John. - -In Malta, or Melita, is St. Paul’s Bay, to this day commemorating the -site of his landing and shipwreck, just as Lud gave London its name, and -the myth of Lud points back to a personality behind the myth. - -The songs of the Arabs are the same to-day as in Paul’s time and can be -found in Newman’s _Babylon and Nineveh_. - -The whole story of the gladiatorial combat in Cæsarea, to which old -Julius refers, will be found in Josephus. Both sides fought till the -arena swam in blood to the ankles, and of one side not a man was left -alive. Other victor slaves were given their freedom. - -Felix, like Herod the Great, tried to clean out the robber bands from -the caves of Galilee; but Felix was charged with selling the rescued -victims as slaves to accumulate a fortune for himself, though he had, -himself, been slave. This can all be found in Josephus with the full -story of the Herod family and their perplexing intermarriages and -repudiations of marriages. Bernice’s flight from her old husband was by -pretense a religious vow, but openly in the theater of Rome, she was -twitted with taking the vow to escape her spouse. - - - THE FAMILY OF HEROD THE GREAT - - Herod the Great - | - | d. 4 B.C. (married five times, - | had ten children, including) - +------------+-----------+-----+-----------+----------+-------+----- - | | | | | | -Aristobulus Alexander Herod Philip Archelaus | Philip - | m. (1) Herodias King of Judaea | Tetrach of - | banished to Spain 4 B.C. | Ituræa - | who divorced him deposed A.D. 6 | m. Salome - | | - | (2) Salome | - | Herod Antipas - | Tetrarch of Galilee - | m. (2) Herodias - +-----------------------+----------------------+ - | | | -Herod Agrippa I Herodias Herod -d. A.D. 44 m. (1) Herod Philip King of Chalcis -(Acts 12) (2) Herod Antipas -m. Bernice 1st - +-------------------+-------------------+ - | | | -Herod Agrippa II Bernice Drusilla - (Acts 26) m. Polemon 2nd m. Felix (Acts 24) - -Titus, Vespasian’s son, not yet thirty, will be more fully described in -the chapter on the fall of Jerusalem. Keep him distinct in your mind -from Titus, the Greek evangelist of Crete, who became Bishop. - -Philemon, the merchant of Colossé, Paul’s friend, was converted to the -new faith in Corinth or Athens. - -Who were “the friends in Cæsar’s household” of whom Paul wrote? Bishop -Lightfoot shows of the forty-three Christianized Jews and Greeks, who -met Paul when he reached Rome, and whose names may be found in the -letter to the Romans; many were in Roman governmental positions of -trust. Their names can be found scattered through the _Acts_ and the -apostolic letters to Rome and Asia. - -There seems almost no reason to doubt that the great Epaphroditus, the -Greek lover of learning, to whom Josephus dedicated his volume, was the -same benevolent Greek of Philippi who supplied Paul with money for his -needs in Rome, and who carried Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and who -seems to have been under surveillance with Paul in Rome; for in Rome, -even if his eyesight would have permitted Paul to follow his mechanical -means of supporting himself by tentmaking, there was not the same demand -as in the East for tents for desert travel, or in Greece for maritime -sailcloth. Aquila and Priscilla, who came later in the Apollos story, -like Paul, were tentmakers. Paul’s knowledge of seafaring was gained as -sailcloth maker. - -Always when religious faith wanes, necromancy, clairvoyance, sorcery -thrive. The Old World with its dying faiths both Roman and Grecian, was -now overrun with sorcerers of every description, practising -wonder-working and miracles by methods variously known as Black Magic -and White Magic. The knowledge of the methods underlying these powers -was undoubtedly drawn from India and Persia. Some workers were good and -some were bad. Some miracles were fraudulent and some were undoubtedly -genuine—using the word “miracle” in the sense of wonder-working; only -the Christians, the Essenes, the Gnostics, the Nazarenes refused to work -these wonders for profit. For some reason or other, probably because -they had lost faith in God, and learned magic from the Persians and the -Babylonians, the Jews had become great sorcerers in Paul’s day. More -will be given of this in the chapter on Apollos. It is given also in the -Acts. - -The reference of Onesimus to the luminous look, or radiance round Paul -in the half dark, and the old Idumean’s legend of Antioch’s invading -soldiers finding nothing in the Holy of Holies of the Temple between the -Cherubim and Seraphim but a little thin blue flame, would have been -laughed out of any court of evidence by science ten years ago. Not so -to-day. The study of wireless waves is opening the door to the -wonder-world of these waves. - -The caution to Timothy as the old soldier put it, “to beware the -widows,” and Paul’s somewhat severe injunctions regarding women to the -churches of Ephesus and Corinth arose from great trouble from the -activities of two women called Euodias and Syntyche, of whom nothing -more is known than that they were quarreling in the church of Clement at -Philippi, who wrote some of the finest and most universally accepted -Epistles, which are _not_ in the New Testament. Clement will be quoted -later. He was Bishop of Rome about the time John “fell asleep.” Turner, -one of the most critical of the higher critics, in his studies on _Early -Church History_, explains why Clement’s _Letters_ are not in our New -Testament. They were not disinterred from Alexandria till 1628, when -they were sent in a present to Charles I, which was seventeen years -after the _King James Version_ came out. Any one who wants to follow up -how desperately dissatisfied the King James translators felt with their -work, should read the _Journals of Evelyn_, a most devout churchman, on -his conversation with the survivors among the translators. Such letters -as Clement’s should be in supplementary readers in every Sunday School -and Church in the land. - -While Paul seems to have been prisoner in Rome for certainly two years, -and before coming to Rome, prisoner in Cæsarea for at least as long, he -was not without friends in both places. Philip’s four daughters, who -were prophetesses or teachers, resided in Cæsarea; and Paul seems to -have had great latitude in seeing his friends. This was because he was -not only a Jew but a Roman citizen. - -The tendency of modern scholarship is to regard Luke, the physician, as -“the man from Macedonia,” who begged for help. The Greek scholar is -supposed to have accompanied Paul as medical helper. - -When Onesimus left Rome carrying the personal letter to Philemon, in 64 -A.D. or thereabouts, he also carried along with one Tychicus the -circular letter to the Colossians. These facts can be found in the -postscript to the Epistles, which ought rather to be called simply -Letters with advice for the guidance of the Christians. - -In the _Philemon Letter_, I have followed the Weymouth translation, -rather than the _King James Version_, or the _Revised Version_. In fact, -I had read Philemon in the old versions many times before I saw its -beauty. Then one day, I happened to read it in Spanish, and the old -message in a new language of peculiarly graphic imagery shocked me into -a visualization of the picture—the old fighter down and out in chains -awaiting death, the slave running to him for safety, and the crippled -prisoner pleading for, not his own, but the boy’s freedom. Then, I -hunted up the best modern translation I could get—which was Weymouth’s; -and the picture struck me as one of the most pathetic and beautiful -recorded in the _New Testament_. No longer I saw Paul as the hunter of -heretics, the fanatical convert, the tireless preacher of a new creed, -but as a little old man in chains waiting for the headsman’s axe and -writing to Timothy: “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my -departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my -course, I have kept the faith.” This was before his second trial. Then -there follow the sad brave lines, “Demas hath forsaken me . . . only -Luke is with me . . . At my first answer no man stood with me, but all -men forsook me . . . the Lord stood with me and strengthened me . . . I -was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” In other words, they could -not throw Paul to the wild beasts because he claimed his Roman -citizenship; so they slew him with the headsman’s axe. - -How do we know Onesimus was a mere boy, when with Paul in Rome? This -question will be answered fully in the chapter on John and Apollos. -Suffice to say, Rome had such a surplus of slaves from conquest—there -were more than 30,000 Jews enslaved after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 -A.D.—that only those between the ages of eighteen and thirty were -considered of the slightest monetary value. Past thirty, they had either -won their freedom in war, in gladiatorial combat, by purchase, or had -been “worked out” and relegated to the mines, or the farm plantations, -or the galley ships, to die. Onesimus would not have been worth passage -money back to Philemon, if he had been old. The value of a slave had -fallen to $18 of modern money at this time. Human life was the cheapest -and least sacred thing in the world market. Slavery was the dry rot -eating away the underpinnings of the Roman Empire; for while, of a -population of a million and a half in Rome at this time, a tenth of the -people rolled in a luxury undreamed before or since, that tenth lived by -sapping the life blood of the slave hordes, who numbered in Rome alone, -almost a million of the populace. - -The theater and judgment hall at Cæsarea, where Paul pleaded his case -before the young Herod rulers, are fully described in Josephus, or in -such modern works as have already been mentioned, or in Dr. Taylor’s -_Paul_ (1881). The city, itself, was reputed to have a population of -200,000; but it was detested by the Jews and chiefly peopled by Greeks, -Phœnicians, Romans, and the riff-raff of Rome’s Asiatic world. Jerusalem -was to the Jew the Holy City but Cæsarea was the city of the conqueror. -Here were held the carnivals, the free feasts, the races where the -chariot wheels wore grooves in the stones, the gladiatorial combats, the -torture of prisoners, the wild-beast combats, and all the hippodrome -exhibitions by which Rome tried to hold the populace loyal. Josephus -gives a description of the Herod here who had caused the death of James, -the great scene in the judgment hall, when the Herod, who was Bernice’s -first husband, appeared in coat of silver mail; how the owl flying in -was observed as an omen of ill; and the King fell in a fit of apoplexy -either from overeating or intestinal troubles. - -By the time Paul and Peter perished in Rome, more than nine Christian -bishops had been tortured in the public forums and relegated as broken -wrecks to the mines. All these details will be found in the authorities -already quoted. - - - - - APPENDIX B - - OLD DOCUMENTS AND MODERN VIEWS - ON THE HEROD FAMILY - - -The many disputed points preceding the fall of the Holy City do not -enter into this story; but as many students may care to follow up the -history for themselves, the facts of the case with the pros and cons may -be set forth. - -Was the Apollos of Paul’s letters the same as Apollonius the great sage -of Asia Minor, variously known as a reformer, a gnostic, a mystic, but -refusing to ally himself with any government or any church? The early -Fathers’ antagonism to the Gnostics was so bitter that a record of it -would fill many volumes. - -The New Testament references to Apollos may be counted on one hand. We -hear of him first in the _Acts_, date about 54 A.D., “And a certain Jew -named Apollos born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the -scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the -Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spoke and taught diligently -the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began -to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom when Aquila and Priscilla had -heard, they took him unto them and expounded unto him the way of God -more perfectly. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the -brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; who, when he was -come, helped them much which had believed through grace: for he mightily -convinced the Jews and that publicly, shewing by the scriptures that -Jesus was Christ. And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, -Paul, having passed through the upper coasts, came to Ephesus.” These -words are written by Luke. - -We next find Paul writing to the Corinthians from Philippi about 59 -A.D., “Every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of -Cephas; and I of Christ. . . . For while one saith, I am of Paul and -another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who -is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed? . . . I have planted, -Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. . . . Therefore let no man -glory in men . . . whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas . . . and these -things . . . I have transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes. -. . . As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come -unto you with the brethren; but his will was not to come at this time; -but he will come when he shall have convenient time.” Then in a letter -to Titus, now Bishop of Crete, about 65 A.D., Paul begs Titus to bring -“Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing -be wanting unto them.” Titus, it should be added, was a Greek. - -This is practically all that is said of Apollos, Paul’s coworker, in the -_New Testament_, except that in one of the early Luke manuscripts on the -_Acts_, Apollos is given as Apollonius; see Turner’s _Early Church -History_. - -In Ignatius’ letter to the Magnesians, there is a reference to -Apollonius as a presbyter in the Asiatic Greek Church. - -Many authorities, among them Luther, considered that this Apollos wrote -the _Hebrews_. - -As to Apollonius, the Gnostic and Sage of Cappadocia, he shunned fame -and the populace to such an extent, though a temple was built and named -after him by a collateral descendant of the same family as rescued -Thecla, no authentic life of Apollonius was written till many years -after his activities had ceased. It is his misfortune that the legends -of his life and letters, which had passed into the hands of the Emperor -Hadrian, were handled by a supercilious court hanger-on, a Greek writer, -who knew nothing of the Gnostics and less of the Christians, and would -have considered either beneath his notice if he had known. Apollonius’ -biographer was Philostratus; and though there are constant references to -him in early writings as a reformer, a revivalist, a miracle or -magic-worker, no other authoritative life of him has been given than -Philostratus’, drawn from notes compiled by Damis, Apollonius’ -secretary. He seemed to have aroused as violent controversies in his -lifetime as since his death. His learning and piety, no one disputed. -His purity of life was known from India to Rome. He was born rich and -deeded his property over to his brother and his poor relatives. Yet so -great was the veneration of the populace and royalty for him, wherever -he went he lacked naught and traveled in great estate. He was born at -Tyana sometime just before or after the birth of Christ; but like Paul -born at Tarsus, he might still have been a Grecian Jew; and having -studied in Egypt, when young, his birthplace might easily have been -confused as Alexandria. By one class he was regarded as “a sorcerer,” “a -quack,” “a bonesetter in religion”; by another class, as a -miracle-worker and great revivalist; but we must not forget that the -Greeks first called Paul “a beggarly babbler.” He had the gift of -clairvoyance or prophecy, and foretold the famine mentioned in the -_Acts_, the murder of Domitian, and many other events of the period. In -his public addresses, he quoted repeatedly the language of Matthew, -Mark, Luke, John, and Paul—in fact, nine such phrases can be picked out -of Philostratus’ _Life of Apollonius_—to my mind one of the most -striking being where he speaks of “seeing through a glass darkly”—which -his enemies called the superstition of crystal gazing. Origen thought -him a sorcerer. Eusebius called him a philosopher, and in legend he -became in Greek-Asia a sort of St. George, or St. Patrick. He was known -to have been in Ephesus, Corinth and Crete from 60 to 65 A.D. Like Paul, -he had studied in Tarsus. At sixteen, he became a vegetarian or -wandering evangelist, like the Essenes. He undoubtedly possessed the -power of healing and refused all gifts for it. At Daphne Gardens, he -incurred enmity by calling the men “brute beasts.” His lodging was -always in the temples. He seemed to prefer to preach in the pagan -temples, either because he would be sure of a large audience, or secure -from interruption, or to find people whose spirits were blindly reaching -for God. He studied in Egypt, Ethiopia, India and Persia. - -Of translations of his life there have been many, Berwick’s one of the -earliest English, Phillimore’s, Mead’s and Flinders Petrie’s, the best -of the latest. Phillimore’s is bitter towards other translators. Mead’s -would, of course, be biased as both Gnostic and Theosophic; but Flinders -Petrie’s can hardly be accused of any bias but scholarship. Thanks to -Flinders Petrie, the details of Apollonius’ life are now known more -fully than any other Apostle except Paul. There are still differences as -to certain dates, but roughly, I think the following dates are accepted -by the majority of scholars. Please compare with Paul’s letters. - -Born 4 or 6 B.C. - -Tarsus 11 A.D. as a student. - -16 to 21 A.D. under the discipline of speechless silence traveling -through Asia Minor and the East. - -23 to 43 A.D. teaching, preaching, studying in Antioch. - -43 to 45 A.D. India and Persia. - -45 to 46 A.D. Crete, Sparta, Athens, Corinth. - -46 to 59 A.D. unknown. - -59 to 65 A.D. Corinth, Ephesus, Crete, Greek Asia. - -66 to 68 A.D. Greece, Rome, Spain, Africa, Sicily. - -69 A.D. Egypt and Alexandria and Phœnicia and Antioch and the East. - -83 A.D. Ephesus and Crete. - -Somewhere here he suffered trial for disrespect to Emperors; a most -dramatic story as given by Phillimore. - -83 to 96 A.D. preaching and teaching in Ephesus and Crete. - -When he had reached the age of a century, he disappeared in Crete as -told in a later chapter. - -Where Paul went out for the Gentiles to call sinners to repentance, and -Peter seems to have gone among the dispersed Jews of the Euphrates and -Rome, Apollos went forth to call “the righteous” to repentance; and from -the records of the times, the call to the sod-bound “righteous” seemed -as badly needed as the call to the sinners. - -Now whether Apollos were Apollonius, I do not know. They lived in the -period in the same places. For fiction purposes to throw the flashlight -on the conditions under which the Apostles labored, it does not matter; -but granted he may have been, isn’t there a dilemma in having him East -of the Dead Sea, on his way back from the Far East? - -Didn’t Apollonius, according to the legendary life of him, come back -from India by the Red Sea to Egypt? Didn’t he meet Vespasian in -Alexandria; and wasn’t he sent by Vespasian on an errand to Tarsus, -North of Palestine? How then, would he go East of the Dead Sea towards -Damascus? Fiction could brush these questions aside as immaterial in a -story; but it does not need to. From 66 to 70, every port in Egypt, -Palestine and Grecian Asia was packed with the Roman Armies hurrying to -crush Jerusalem. Christians had already hurried east of the Jordan and -Dead Sea to hide in the caves of the desert as Christ had warned them to -do, when he foretold the destruction of the Holy City. Travelers from -the Far East to Grecian Asia had to follow the Damascus Road; for they -could not safely venture in the war zone of the Coast and Jerusalem. - -How do we know Peter was in Babylonia? Because he says so in one of his -letters. Critics say the Babylonia he mentions is really Rome. I leave -that dispute wide open. There is no proof Paul and Peter were together -in Rome, when the former was executed. Paul’s death is given variously -as between 67 and 69 A.D. Note John’s references in the _Apocalypse_ to -“the two witnesses” in the other world! If Peter hastened from the -Euphrates to take up the work of Paul’s dispersed followers in Rome—and -there is no proof of Peter being elsewhere in these years—he must have -hastened for Rome almost contemporaneous with the revolt that ended in -the overthrow of Jerusalem; for his death by crucifixion took place soon -after Paul’s. Onesimus’ trip to Peter in the East is, of course, pure -fiction, for Peter’s first round-robin letter to the churches of Asia -was sent by Silvanus, a friend of Paul; and very few details are known -of the second letter. They are dated 60 to 66 A.D. The Vatican books in -this period are invaluable to all students of early Christianity. They -reject ruthlessly all fabulous stories. See “Pope’s Aids to the Bible,” -Vol. II; and Fouard’s “St. Peter.” - -How do I infer that in the siege of Jerusalem the Herod women were sent -for safety to the Herod Fort east of the Dead Sea instead of west? -First, because the Herod Fort on the west side of the Dead Sea was in -the hands of the rabble zealots and bandits, and was therefore against -Rome and the Herods. It was one of the first forts to be reduced after -Jerusalem. Second, because the Herod Fort east of the Dead Sea was -always an arsenal of defence against revolt and against the invasion of -Arab and Idumean from the east. Here, the Herods had their family -country place in distinction from the Palace in Jerusalem and from the -public buildings in Cæsarea on the sea. Here, Herod the Great -entertained Cleopatra and spurned her blandishments. Here, the Herods -retired with their families for family conference and often for the most -terrible crimes known in family history. It was a secret fort. Here were -the sulphur baths. Near Jericho were their pleasure gardens. Here, it is -now almost universally agreed, John Baptist was imprisoned and executed; -and Herod the Great passed the hideous days preceding his hideous death. -I can’t prove it was where they were kept for safety during the siege of -Jerusalem; but it does not seem to me there was any other place where -they could have been safely kept; for Cæsarea was in wild disorder. -Bernice had gone down to Jerusalem from her old spouse in Syria to lay -her plans for Titus, the Roman general; but as far as we know until the -end, she was not in the siege. Agrippa was with the Roman forces -throughout. Herodias’ madness and remorse can be found in her banished -husband’s letters. The final fate of the last of the Herods beneath -Vesuvius’ eruption can be found in Josephus. - -Letters from Pilate to Herod, from Herod to Pilate, give the data as to -Herodias’ blindness. In these letters, Herodias’ daughter is referred to -as a younger Herodias, not as Salome. Therefore I left Salome out of -these stories. The fiction woven about Salome’s name in modern -literature seems to me the most perfect example of sensualizing and -degrading biblical records that could be devised. The most cursory -glance at the Herod family tree show she must have been little more than -a baby at the time of the Baptist’s death—certainly under eight or ten. -When you consider the colossal pyramid of unclean modern literature and -music built on Salome’s name, it isn’t much of a testimony to the modern -heart being much cleaner than the Herod heart which we condemn. - -The superstition of the flower foretelling the lovers’ fate, which has -come down to our own day in the petals of the field daisy, dates back to -the very lotus flower worship of India and Egypt. - -The legendary “Ardath, the Field of Flowers” is, of course, from the -Persian and will be found in the _Book of Esdras_. In fact, to -understand this whole era, no student should fail to read _Esdras_ and -_Enoch_, which are parallel in writing and sentiment to _Daniel_ and -_Revelation_. Pilate’s fate and letters will be found in the _Apocryphal -New Testament_. - -Malden thinks from Paul’s letters to the people of Thessaly 54 A.D. -that, up to the assault on Jerusalem in 69-70, many of the Christians -still looked for Christ’s second coming in glory and majesty and power; -but in the letter to Cornith, when Paul had drawn his immortal picture -of “the celestial body,” it is evident the Christians knew they were -working for and in an Invisible Kingdom such as Onesimus described. -Malden gives the correct chronology in which the books of the New -Testament were written; so that one can follow the fuller and higher and -closer outlook the workers were attaining of their own mission. - -Details on the trails down to the Jordan at this time can be found in -Josephus, or Thomson’s famous _Land and the Book_. There is a full -description of Machærus Fort in Thomson also. - -It is interesting to note that the Roman Consul, who befriended Paul at -Corinth in the days of his work with Apollos, was Junius Galleo, a -relative of Seneca’s, which seems to bear out that Paul and Seneca knew -each other in Rome. In this period before Paul’s death, Burrhus, Nero’s -handy man, was sent again and again on messages from the Jews of Cæsarea -and Ephesus to Rome. - -Where was Mariamne, Herod the Great’s proud wife, murdered by him? Her -tomb has recently been discovered near Jerusalem; but it was in the Fort -east of the Dead Sea that Herod went mad with remorse over his crime -against her. - - - - - APPENDIX C - - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALL OF - JERUSALEM AND THE BREAKING UP - OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE - - -The fall of Jerusalem was of deeper, subtler significance than the -surrender of any one of the countless cities which were subject to Rome. - -Rome had passed through a few years of terrible turbulence after Nero’s -suicide in 68. When Vespasian, the steady-headed general with the Army’s -strength and loyalty behind him, surged to the crest of the turbulence -as Emperor in 69, Rome realized in order to stabilize her entire Empire, -she must crush rebellion or revolution wherever found. If one city like -Jerusalem, or one little province like Judea not much larger than -Vermont or New Hampshire, could defy Roman power, all the Eastern -provinces would flame in revolt; and there were certain considerations -that particularly embittered the Romans towards the Jews. From at least -thirty or forty years before the birth of Christ, the Jews of Jerusalem -had been granted special privileges by the Roman Senate. They were -allowed freely to exercise their own peculiar religious rites. Their -huge temple revenues from Jews in every part of the world were left -untouched by Rome. Though a head tax had been imposed from the days of -the census in Christ’s boyhood—supposed not to have exceeded from fifty -to sixty cents of modern money—the Jews paid no other tributary taxes -to Rome. Certain seaport towns, from the borders of Egypt in the south -to Asia Minor on the north, seemed to have paid some sort of municipal -tax in excise, which went to the members of the local rulers like the -Herod family as a personal revenue or bride’s dowry; and yet all local -rulers amassed colossal fortunes. How did they do it? By the perversion -of justice. While the Jews had their own courts dominated by high -priests, these court decisions were subject to appeal to Rome; and as -evident in the case of Paul and Felix and Festus at Cæsarea, a bribe -could buy freedom or friendship. Paul could have had his liberty if he -had paid a bribe. He would not and was held for two years. Then, while -the Roman generals cleaned out the robber bands and kidnappers of the -desert and Galilee and Dead Sea caves, they too often, like Felix, sold -both defeated brigands and brigand prisoners as slaves for immediate -profit. - -Now the Roman in religion was all things to all men. He set up the -goddess Roma in the temples with the features of whatever emperor -happened to be ruling, not because he believed his own ruler a god, but -because he saw that the great diversity of gods in the East split the -Empire up into warring factions; and Rome aimed to unify her Empire by -religion, and doubtless winked cynically at neglect to worship the -goddess Roma, as long as no disrespect was offered the statue; but -statue, image, picture, painting—all were abhorrent to the Jew, who -regarded all outside the pale of the chosen people as cursed by God; so -the Jews abominated the conqueror Romans; and the Romans despised the -Jews as bigots, fanatics, stiff-necked factionists. - -What added gall to bitterness with the Jews was that, from the time of -the captivity in Babylon and Persia, from five to seven centuries before -Christ, they had not known a national, safe, stable government of their -own. There were more Jews in Egypt and Asia Minor than in Palestine. -Faction had followed faction; revolution had followed revolution till -the Chosen People were the prey to any conqueror from Egypt to Persia; -and so there grew up the hope of a Redeemer, a Messiah, a royal son of -the line of David, to throw off the conqueror’s yoke and lead them to -victory. Such a Messiah, the prophets and the scrolls of the prophets -foretold. A Sadducee might be a bigoted sceptical materialist, but when -he heard the scrolls of the seers of 500 to 700 B.C. read, predicting -exactly what had happened to Babylonia and Assyria and Persia and -Greece, the agnostic Sadducee was not prepared to deny there might be a -Messiah. Somehow, in the modern mind, the Pharisee is held in lower -esteem than the Sadducee. The Pharisee was a gentle and, it might be, -attudinizing self-conscious poseur; but he was a scholar, and he was -liberal, and he was a gentleman. The Sadducee was a hard, ignorant, -materialistic bigot. He swore by Moses, but denied a future life and set -himself to grasp all the good things of this life within reach, and had -at the time of Christ’s death captured the best sinecures among the -offices of the high priests and council of seventy. He hated the Roman -with a bigoted, materialistic hatred, though he played politics with him -for his own job. The disappointment of both Sadducees and Pharisees at a -poor Nazarene named Jesus, calling himself the Messiah and gaining an -enormous following, flamed into delirious fanatic frenzy; and just then -rose the Zealots and Sicarii (short sword fighters) shouting “freedom at -any cost” and rallying all Jews in the Passover of spring—when more -than two million pilgrims visited the Holy City—to rise and throw off -the Roman yoke. The city gates were shut. The citizens inside had no -choice but to join the rebels, or let themselves down by ropes from the -walls at night and flee for the desert; but many citizens, knowing the -power of Rome and having all their means invested in Jerusalem, tried to -compromise. They were plundered, tortured, murdered. Women and children -were held for ransom, or hostages for the loyalty of the waverers; and -the rebellion that had flamed up in the name of “freedom” presently ran -lawless riot under an ægis better named “folly”; and for seven months -the Holy City was ruled by brute-beast crime and anarchy. If the -Sadducees and the Pharisees had intrigued with the rebellion at first, -they were now trapped in their own intrigue, for they saw their temple -chests rifled of the revenues of almost a century, the gold sheathing -ripped from the great pillars and colonnades, the holy wine brought from -vault and cellar and poured out, mingled with human blood, in a deluge -of frenzied debauch that lasted from spring till autumn—seven long -months. Famine only rendered the conditions more desperate. If the -Zealots surrendered now, they knew they would be put to the sword and -lose the loot hidden in the secret aqueduct under the Temple; so they -fought with the maniacal frenzy of cornered beasts. The Pharisees and -Sadducees of the Sanhedrim would now have surrendered to Rome; but the -Zealots pursued them into the Holy of Holies and either stabbed them -there and threw their bodies in the aqueduct below, or pursued them into -the very aqueduct, where they were slain. - -Keep in mind the configuration of the Holy City at this time—the Herod -Palaces to the west, the great Temple to the east, the whole city like -an eagle’s nest on the flat top of a lofty rock. Between the Temple and -the Palaces lay the main body of the cramped, crowded city -thoroughfares. This central city lay in a slight depression. Between the -Temple east and the Palaces west ran an overhead bridge. Below ran a -very large underground aqueduct, which supplied water to the Temple. The -water supplies came from pools and cisterns used at the Palaces and were -sluiced on during the great yearly sacrifices through the aqueduct to -run under the Temple and carry off the refuse to the precipice to the -east or south of the Temple. When the sacrifices were over, the water -was turned off the aqueduct and presumably used for the Royal Palace -enclosures. - -The best description of ancient Jerusalem is in Josephus covering -hundreds of pages; of modern Jerusalem is in Thomson’s _Land and Book_; -but until the transfer of control of the Holy City from Turkish power, -it has been impossible to examine the underground passages beneath the -city of which there are many, or the lines of the old Herod walls. -Within fifty years of Christ’s death, the site of the Temple was plowed -and a shrine set up to a pagan Venus. - -Whichever way the war befell, the Herod regime was doomed. By rebellion, -the Jews had forfeited their privileges. There could be no royal -revenues for the Herods through local governments. If the Zealots had -triumphed, then Roman protection would no longer hold the Herod throne -secure; and the Herods were hated by the populace. - -Up to the final truce portrayed in the story of the fall of the Holy -City, Titus, the commanding Roman general, had exercised great clemency -and forbearance. He had permitted refugees from the beleaguered city to -pass through his lines untouched, to the desert beyond Jordan. He had -sent emissary after emissary to the more intelligent section of rulers -to advise them to save themselves by surrender; but each peace mission -had met with treachery and insult. Twice in sorties of semipeace -messengers, Titus had been cut off from his own soldiers and almost -slain; so it was necessary to call to the aid of the regular Roman Army, -the Macedonian Mercenaries; and from that moment, Jerusalem was doomed, -for the Mercenaries were paid in plunder. - -Titus was at this time not yet Emperor; but among the Jewish writers, -all rulers from Rome are referred to as Cæsar, or Emperor, or King. The -Herods were really only deputies; but they were always called Kings. -Titus was still a very young man and his leading general, Trajan, could -not have been very much past his early twenties. In the most -scandal-loving age Rome ever knew, very little has come down in history -against Vespasian and his son Titus. Both men were essentially soldiers -and cared little for the empty noise of triumph and kingship, though to -keep the populace loyal Titus erected the Great Arch, under which more -than 30,000 Jewish captives passed and on one side of which the Jewish -Tables of the Law were represented. Vespasian and Titus built the Temple -of Peace to celebrate the victory; but if you read Josephus carefully, -it will be found this was more in concession to mob politics than to -glory in triumph. It was to impress the seething East with fear of -Rome’s power. - -The attempt of the Nazarenes and the scribes to save the sacred scrolls -is history, not fiction. Many old Hebrew scrolls mentioned in the Old -Testament were lost forever at this time. There were the _Book of the -Covenant_, the _Book of the Law_, the _Book of the Wars_, _Acts of -David_, _Samuel the Seer_, the _Book of Gad_, David’s _Seer_—and seven -other volumes not embodied by Ezra in Scripture, but known to the Jews. -Among the lost scrolls there is a story told of the _Book of Jasher_ of -which an 1840 translation lies before me. This book is mentioned in the -David wars, and several forgeries of _Jasher_ appeared. It is said the -genuine _Jasher_ was brought from Jerusalem by Titus. When his officers -went to plunder the city, one _Sidrus_ found in a secret wall chamber in -an ancient scribe’s house, a library of books among which sat the old -scribe reading. Somehow, _Jasher_ was carried by the Army officers to -Seville and in 1613 it was printed in Venice. - -That many old scrolls were carried to Spain either by the dispersed -Jews, or by the Roman Army, there is no doubt; for after the expulsion -of the Moors from Granada centuries later, thousands of such Hebrew -volumes were burned in mistake for pagan Arabic. Intolerance and fanatic -ignorance are dangerous weapons, whether ancient or modern. - -As to the interpretation given to the Zodiac and to the prophecies by -the Nazarenes in the Herod Tower the night of the fall of the Holy -City—this is fiction; and had to be, for Gnostics, Essenes, Nazarenes, -Sadducees, Pharisees, Theosophists, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Hindoo -scholars all disagreed violently on what the signs of the Zodiac -portended, or how the events proclaimed by the seers of old should be -fulfilled. There isn’t any doubt at all that the prophecy of Jeremiah -was being fulfilled literally before the very eyes of the watchers in -the Herod Towers; but when you come to the winged chariots with wheels -in Ezekiel—where the Eastern mystic would see the wheels as symbols of -planetary chains, the western literalist would see a modern aeroplane -coursing the clouds. - -On one thing Eastern mystics and Western literalists would agree—the -fall of Jerusalem marked the crash of the Old and the birth of the New. -One Order had died. A New Order was born; and the old seeress voiced the -expectation which is so rife even to-day that the sword will yet give -place to the plowshare; that humanity shall pass to and is working -towards a more spiritual sphere, where we may have what the scientists -call a sixth cosmic sense and command the powers of water and air. -Wireless waves give us the first inkling of this power. - -The statement that “Israel burnt her children on the walls” to the Fire -God is not fiction. It is true. It is to be found in the Bible; and -within the last ten years jars have been dug up in Palestine where the -bodies of cremated infants were so offered. - -Space does not permit going into the mystic sign of a virgin in the -Zodiac. We have only to remember the Zodiac came from the Far East; and -so did the Persian magi to Christ’s manger. Another point worth noting; -the Apostles, now grown aged, knew the Messiah’s kingdom was not to be -an earthly kingship. They learned this very slowly, but the fall of the -Holy City must have clenched forever the convictions. - -There is another very interesting point here, which will be discussed -more fully in the last chapter. The cry of the maniac on the walls is -not fiction. It is fact. It will be found in Josephus. It is almost the -very wording of the cries of despair in John’s _Apocalypse_. In John’s -Vision are two references to the Temple as still standing; and this -brings up the question, was the _Apocalypse_ written long before John’s -death and not somewhere round 90 A.D.? - -Please note—there were bad earth tremors all over the world from 66 to -68, 69, 70 and 79, from Vesuvius to the Dead Sea. It was the last great -eruption that took the lives of the three Herod descendants on Naples -Bay; just as it was doubtless one of the earlier tremors that threw the -great Temple door to the east open during the siege. This door was -opened only once a year at the Passover. - -There was a record that though Matthew passed through Cæsarea, where -Philip’s prophet daughters dwelt, and through Jerusalem on to Egypt, a -copy of his Gospel in Hebrew was first found in Cæsarea. This is -discussed fully in the volumes already named on the apostolic days. - -Was “the son of one Lazarus of Bethany,” the son of Christ’s friend? The -dates would seem to prove the possibility. On the other hand, though -Bethany was a very small village, the name Lazarus was a very common -one. The story of this escape from the city is found in Josephus. - -That Herodias’ husband had been banished from Palestine to the Danube -and from the Danube to Spain will be found in the _Herod Letters_ -already quoted. - -The location of the Antonia Tower was exactly as given in the story—a -bastioned high Tower ascended by circular steps inside, with the east -wall joining the roof and upper galleries of the Temple, the west side -of the Tower running along the parapet of the North Jerusalem Wall to -the Herod Towers of the Palaces on the west side of the city. - - - - - APPENDIX D - - THE DISPUTES AS TO THECLA IN - LEGEND AND HISTORY - - -Concerning the story of Paul and Thecla, there are fortunately very few -controversial questions that cannot be answered definitely and simply. - -Was there ever any real Thecla? - -If so, how much of her story is legend, and how much history? - -And of the known history, how closely have the facts been followed in -the story? - -Many of the Paul and Thecla legends must be ascribed to folklore of the -Roman Road, much of it wildly exaggerated; but beneath the legends is -the fact of some young woman martyr converted by him in Iconium, Derbe -or Lystra, escaping the ordeal of wild beasts and fire, whether in -Antioch or Iconium, and leaving a tradition of having retired to the -caves, where she established one of the first monastic houses among the -Greeks, and drew away the Daphne dancing girls from sensual pagan rites -of the Temples to such an extent that the merchants of Antioch were so -maddened at the fall off in trade of sacrificial beasts, images and -incense to pleasure seekers and winterers from Rome that they plotted -against the lives of the Christian refugees hiding in the mountain -caves. - -How much of her story is legend, and how much history? - -Tertullian says her story, as given in the _Apocryphal_ New Testament, -was forged by a writer of Asia. Yet Eusebius, Gregory and a dozen others -before the fourth century refer to Thecla as having been a genuine -character, whom legend had obscured and magnified as mist hides and -exaggerates real figures in real life. Basil of Seleucia wrote her life -in verse. Another Scholastic reports how an emperor had visions of her. -The original version of her life on which this story is written is now -in a Greek manuscript in the Bodleian Library and was regarded by Middle -Age biblical students as largely legendary, but a picture of the status -of woman in the first century in Greek Asia. The references to the names -of Paul’s associates and the apostates from the faith are the same as in -the _Acts_, but whether Thecla is to be regarded as “the half wit,” who -followed Paul, or one of “the honorable women” won to the faith, it is -impossible to tell. It is disappointing here to have to record that -while the Catholic, Armenian and secular writers acknowledge Thecla as a -fact, the great Presbyterian divines nearly all ignore her, though they -quote in full the descriptions of Paul, from the life of Thecla. This -strikes me as not exactly according to the rules of good sport. If the -Thecla account of Paul is true, why isn’t the account of Thecla true? It -is interesting to add there is a biblical manuscript in the British -Museum, presented to Charles I, 1628, said to have been copied by -Thecla, the Martyr. It includes the Epistles of St. Clement. The Vatican -“Aid to Bible Students” wisely rejects the fables of Thecla’s Life; but -all scholars accept the fact there was a Thecla, Martyr. - -Iconium itself, or Konieh of to-day, was a city of 30,000 people, noted -for its wool and leather, carpet and tent industries. It was a sort of -halfway house for the Greeks from the Isles of the Sea and the desert -travelers of Persia and Babylonia. The church where Paul preached at -Iconium has been found by modern archæologists. - -What do modern scholars such as Ramsay and Turner say of Thecla? - -I quote from Turner’s review of Ramsay’s _Church in the Roman Empire -before A.D. 170_: “The Acts of Paul and Thecla do not . . . come to us -. . . in the best of company . . . and contain all the marks which -characterize this whole class of forgeries.” He then refers to mistakes -in the place names of the Bodleian copy and the belittling of marriage -which betrays the author of this manuscript as a Gnostic or Essene; “and -yet . . . the details have probability . . . and it is doubtful . . . -how far it is possible to disentangle the original matter from . . . -recasts.” It was on Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts XIII, 51). He -was following the Roman Road of Augustus and branched to Iconium. He is -described as “small, bald and bow-legged, with close-meeting eyebrows -and long nose, but graceful, gracious and radiant.” Ramsay accepts this -description of Paul in the Thecla legends. At Iconium, his host was the -Onesiphorus, mentioned in his letters, and he was pestered by the -frantic jealousy of the Demas and Hermogenes, also mentioned in his -letters. Paul was accused of causing friction between man and woman; and -he was scourged and expelled from the city. There follows the story much -as I have given it here, with long details and repetitions and -embellishments left out. When Nero used the bodies of Christians as -torches for his pleasure gardens and a Herod daughter had to flee from -an old satyr, whom her dowry had bought—it is a pretty sound inference -without any legendary exaggeration that a young girl, who joined the -despised Christians and refused to marry her lover, would be treated -without mercy in an age so sensual that sex had become an untellable -part of religious worship. - -And now we come to one of the proofs that Thecla was more than legend. -The _grande dame_ who adopted her is variously named Trifina, Trefina, -Tryphæna of the house of Polemon (date of reign 37 B.C. to 63 A.D.). It -was to one of the Kings of the house that Bernice was the second time -married and from whom she fled to Jerusalem. He was a converted pagan to -the Jewish faith, probably to get Bernice’s dowry. The Herod daughters -were half Arab, but they were also half of the Jewish high-priest blood; -and union with what one historian calls “these half-breed brutes” proved -too strong for even Herod blood. Trefina was daughter of a Polemon from -44 A.D. to 63 A.D. This Polemon’s wife had been a first cousin to the -Emperor Claudius and ruled over Pontus jointly with her son till about -40 A.D., when she retired. Her daughter had died, and the query is—was -her son the man who married Bernice; or had Trefina’s husband discarded -her and married Bernice? Her son was reigning at the time she passed -through Iconium. Her dead daughter’s name is given as Falconilla, the -same as in the legend of Thecla. To know the type of the vice of this -house one must read Apollonius’ _Life_. - -Practically the verdict of Ramsay and Turner on Thecla is, “the _Acts of -Thecla_ . . . expand the hints of St. Luke and throw a welcome light on -the social conditions.” Luke refers to “many women” attending Paul’s -services in the house of Onesiphorus. In other words, Thecla was a -personality, but her real history is lost in legend. - -Of the legend, how closely have the facts been followed in this story? -Modern decency would not permit all the details of the insults to -Thecla, so these are shortened in the story here. She was exposed not -only in the arena of Iconium but in the arena of Antioch for repulsing -the lewd advances of the city magistrate, who in one of the fêtes -represented the god Roma and proceeded to claim her as a vestal virgin. -All these details have been omitted or shortened in the story, and her -experiences have been centered at Iconium. - -For the rest, the story conforms to the facts of the age. The Greeks -were the rich trader class despised by the soldierly Romans. Men were -addicted to effeminacy, jealousy, self-adornment; and the Greek matrons -chased their daughters into early marriages to avoid having evidence of -age in their family. Paul was called a “Jewish babbler” here as he was -in Greece. Girls who would neither marry nor become temple vestals were -thrust in the streets as courtesans. The red cord of the courtesan -marked the difference between the temple virgins consecrated to the god -and the temple girl kept as a bait for lust and revenue, of which one -Aphrodite Temple had a colossal revenue. Gnostics will deny that the -names of “the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost” were used in baptism -before the fourth century. I refuse to discuss the controversy—it is -nonessential to the true picture of conditions set forth in the story. - -There is one interesting minor point for the argumentative to worry -over. Paul refers again and again to the man with shaved hair, the woman -with unshaved and covered head, both references really advising the -Christian away from the temple vices which becurled men and women with -short red-corded hair symbolized. There is a reference to Paul taking a -vow, himself, that carried him to Jerusalem. (Acts xviii, 18). He had -his head shaved. Now, the Thecla legend describes Paul as “bald,” like a -man who, Roman fashion, had always worn his hair short. Yet the most of -the pictures of Paul and the other early saints represent them with hair -like a thatch, beards like Druids, and expressions about as cheerful as -an inverted tablespoon, though their evangel was called “the Glad News,” -and the keynote of Paul’s life was—“Rejoice.” - - - - - APPENDIX E - - CONCERNING THE EARLY GNOSTICS AND - APOLLOS AND APOLLONIUS AND JOHN - - -With the bitter and raging disputes, regarding the writing of the -_Apocalypse_; whether John followed the Gnostics or the Gnostics -followed John; whether John was the son of Zebedee, whose mother once -pleaded that he might sit at the right hand of Christ throned in his -earthly kingdom, or whether this John was a younger man; whether the -Gospel was written before or after the _Apocalypse_; whether the “Beast” -symbolized a dragon of approaching universal anarchy, or Rome’s brute -power, or the goddess Roma in the Temple; whether Onesimus, the runaway -slave, was Onesimus, the young bishop of Ephesus; whether the passing of -Apollos is legend or fact; why a man like Apollos, of whom the -contemporary literature of the day is full of references, was so -completely ignored by all the early writers of the church except three -or four, the last story of this volume as fiction has nothing to do. - -The object has been to shun controversy as a smoke screen concealing -facts under prejudice and ignorance, and use the story only to throw a -flashlight on early conditions; but for students, who wish to come to -their own conclusions and not have other people’s conclusions rammed -down their throats, a few references will be given, which can be -followed up. - -First, it was self-evident to all the Christian communities by the last -quarter of the first century A.D.—in which the story is timed—that -Christ had not come to set up a glorified earth kingship. Rather, he had -come to transmute the earth kingdom into a régime so in harmony with His -own Unseen Kingdom that it would transmute the world into a New Heaven -and a New Earth. This was the Christian’s job, first in getting himself -cleansed of sin, second in working for humanity, and it was now apparent -it was a long job stretching down the centuries; so the writings of -John, instead of being “close ups” as the movies would put it, are -telescopic flashes back to the night of time and creation and telescopic -flashes forward to the eternity of soul and universe; and the pivot of -the telescope is the little flash between past and future called “now”; -and the eye looking through the telescope to past and future is John’s. - -Here are a few historic facts as guide posts. - -The fall of Jerusalem had driven the Christians from Antioch to Ephesus, -for reasons already given—Antioch was overrun with the Army. While -Ephesus was not a great commercial center like Corinth, it was the third -city of the civilized world as a center of learning, worship, culture, -wealth. Rome ranked first. Athens came next, Ephesus and Alexandria -next. - -From the time the goddess Roma was set up, the temples began to be -deserted; and this infuriated Rome, who hoped to see the new deity unify -her crumbling empire in a new cohesion. The Nero persecutions of 64 to -68, which had been the diversion of a cruel madman, now became the set -policy of the Empire under Domitian, and ran a terrible course from 81 -to 96 A.D. The Christians were dispersed, but they were not immune. -Again and again we find that Demetrius, the silversmith, who gave Paul -such trouble as related in the _Acts_, called to confer in Rome as to -the restoration of the old religions. See the _Life of Apollonius_. The -falling away from the temples not only alarmed the Empire, but -dislocated trade. It hurt the silversmith’s trade from Ephesus to -Damascus and cut off an enormous yearly market for the cattle and sheep -of sacrifice. The pocket nerve was touched; and the cruelty of an acute -anger was mingled with the most diabolical obscene falsehoods to destroy -the new Christian cult. - -Nothing disloyal could be proved against John; so his banishment to -Patmos was revoked. Frightful volcanic fires could be seen from Patmos -during John’s stay there, and the whole Mediterranean rang with the -horror of the Vesuvius eruption. We may find tinges of this in his -_Apocalypse_. See Peters’ _Bible and Spade_, Beckwith’s _Apocalypse_, -Turner’s _Early Church History_, Malden’s _New Testament_, and the other -authorities mentioned in former supplementary chapters. Irenæus says -John settled and lived in Ephesus till the reign of Trajan. He is -supposed to have come back from Patmos to Ephesus and helped in a -training school for Christian workers there. Ephesus was the very center -of Platonic and Gnostic learning at this time; and the Gnostic beliefs -of the “Logos” or “Word” run all through John’s writings. There is a -curious difference in John’s attitude to Rome in the Gospel and in the -_Apocalypse_. The former seems to counsel rendering to Cæsar the things -that are Cæsar’s; in the latter, the Seven Hilled City is a Beast. Why? -The only answer is a guess that hardly needs to be given. The martyrdom -of the Christians had begun. Clement refers to the recall of John from -Patmos after Domitian’s death. Nor could anything disloyal be proved -against Apollonius. Though he openly said that he detested “tyrants,” no -king need put that cap on unless it fitted; but as he frequented the -temples and ignored the goddess Roma, he was considered dangerous and so -was tried on the charge of having torn a boy’s entrails out for the -purposes of divination. The charge was ridiculous and could not be -proved, and Apollonius came back to Ephesus and frequented Crete, where -Titus, the Greek and youthful Christian, had become Christian bishop by -65 A.D. The fact that the young Titus would work in the Christian Church -and the aged Apollonius in the pagan temples may explain the hostility -or silence of some of the church fathers to the Eastern Sage. This seems -to me a more rational explanation than the Theosophists’ charge that the -Christians were jealous of Apollonius as a rival in the eyes of the -populace to Christ. Apollonius is never spoken of as “a rival to -Christ.” He is spoken of as a worker of miracles, which could not be -denied, and as a clairvoyant “see-er” of events which came to pass, like -the reign of Vespasian, the deterioration of Domitian and the -assassination of the tyrant. If Apollos be Apollonius—and I decline to -give even an opinion on that dispute, in spite of dates, abbreviations -and events pointing to only one “Apollos” sage in this era—Paul settled -the matter when he said one “planted” and the other “watered” and “God -gave the increase.” The rivalry was rather between Paul and Apollos—and -it was a rivalry of fanatic followers, not leaders. Let us not blame the -followers too harshly. Paul had made it his life work that Christianity -should not be an off-shoot of Judaism but an all-embracing world -religion. Apollos still preached in the pagan temples and the Christians -may have feared dilutions of the pure truths with such errors as the -fleshy Nicolatians, whom John denounced; if the flesh was only a -garment, then it didn’t matter much what sins stained the garment—you -could lay it off. Therefore liberty ran riot in the libertine and -visions ran to medium frenzies. Some of these trance frenzies were of -such a nature as cannot be told. In one, the initiate to the mysteries -was placed naked and drugged under a high altar, on which was slain a -bull. The aspirant to enter the mysteries had to open his mouth and -drink of the hot blood as it poured down on him—an almost parallel -ceremony with the Ancient Aztecs, where the blood was human. - -To revert to the historic facts on Ephesus—it was a dream city of -inexpressible beauty, basking in a wonderful sunlight between mountain -and sea, with white alabaster colonnades—one hundred and twenty columns -there were across the face of the Diana Temple, which was over four -hundred feet long and two hundred broad—at the entrance to the Temple, -to the great hippodrome reported to seat 50,000 people, to the public -square park in the heart of the city, to the baths, to the circus, to -the fountains. The city occupied an area of five by three miles. Coming -out of the Mediterranean, ships ascended the dredged Cayster River, to a -square basin landlocked and surrounded by a magnificent stone parapet. -On one side were the wharfs and docks; on the other the broad steps up -to Diana’s Temple. The city proper, with its public park, faced the end -of the basin of the sea through more magnificent elaborate colonnades. -In fact, it might be said there was neither an ungraceful nor inartistic -architectural line in all Ephesus. The city might have been dedicated -and consecrated to beauty. The Diana goddess was not the huntress as -told in the story. The huntress had been degraded first into an Eastern -Astarte presiding over the productive powers of the earth, and finally -still farther degraded to the sensuous rites, which at this time were -running a sort of delirious frenzied riot in the world. Cressets of -naphtha petroleum oils, and asbestos soap or oils may be used to explain -much of the apparent magic of altar fires that never went out and -priests who could handle flame without harm; and all the magic was -concentrated on the materialistic aim of obtaining revenues from the -enormous traffic that passed through Ephesus to and from Asia to Rome; -and the great Diana festivals were at Ephesus in spring. Earthquake and -war demolished ancient Ephesus. The Diana statue was carried off to -France. The stones of the beautiful Ionic columns went to build churches -in Sienna and Rome. The ruins of Ephesus by 1888, when the -archæologist’s spade had been busy, were a melancholy epic in crumbling -stone. - -Half a century ago, the legends of underground chambers in Crete were -regarded as myths. To-day, we know those myths were founded on historic -fact and the spade has dug up ancient Crete culture. Phillimore -ridicules Flinders Petrie for accepting the story of the earthquake and -storms on the night of Apollonius’ passing from human ken in the Temple -at Cydonia, Crete. Yet there is not a sailor of the Mediterranean, who -does not know the superstition of all Cretans at the time of the spring -and fall equinoctial gales. The Island trembles and vibrates to the -storms. Cretans say to this day—and there are 300,000 of them believe -it—that Crete was created by a volcanic blow-up—a remnant of the -submerged Atlantis—and is very delicately balanced on subterranean -rocks. When the gales come, it trembles on this balance. Knossus marks -the ruins of the Palace of Minos of 3000 B.C. Greek hermits still -frequent the mountains of the Island and live the tranquil life of the -ancient contemplative Gnostic. - -Of Patmos, little is to be said except that it is not so large as the -length and breadth of New York City, and was a very short run by sail -from Ephesus, ships usually pausing to and from Crete. In the story, -Onesimus paused on his way back. The ecstasy of the _Revelation_ on -Patmos would to-day be called “a glimpse of cosmic consciousness”; and -there is no use going into the dispute whether the vision covered only -the few months John was exile on Patmos, or a series of years beginning -at the fall of the Holy City and extending down to the reign of -Domitian, when persecution compelled the Christians to use cypher in -many of their communications; and “the Beast” may have been symbolized -with emperor worship, or the impending anarchy. - -The story takes for granted that Onesimus, the runaway slave, was -Onesimus, the young bishop. This is a disputed point. I don’t care to -take up the dispute. It is nonessential to the aim of the story; but if -the question of his age be asked it is easily answered. If Onesimus were -a young man of twenty with Paul in Rome in 64 to 68, then by 86 to 96 -A.D., when John is supposed “to have fallen asleep in Ephesus,” he would -still be a young man in his forties to preside over the destinies of -Christianity at the very pivotal point in Grecian Asia. - -For those who like to worry disputes out as a dog worries a cat, or a -cat worries a mouse, the references of the early fathers to Onesimus may -be quoted: - -In Ignatius’ _Letters to the Ephesians_, which Archbishop Usher of -Oxford, 1644 (see _Evelyn’s Journals_), issued, and later scholars -regarded as authentic letters, though corrupted in texts—when Ignatius -himself was on his way to martyrdom in Rome, are found the words—“I -received, therefore, in the name of God, your whole multitude in -Onesimus . . . who, according to the flesh is your bishop . . . whom I -beseech you . . . that you strive to be like unto him . . . and blessed -be God . . . you are worthy . . . enjoy such an excellent bishop.” Then -he goes on to speak of “Burrhus,” who was a handy man for Nero in the -days Onesimus was in Rome, and Paul and Luke wrote of “friends in -Cæsar’s household.” Again, he couples the names of Onesimus and Burrhus -in the seventh verse of the first chapter. Again, he congratulates them -on their Bishop in Chapter II, who commends their “good order” to -Ignatius on his way to Rome in bonds. In his letter to the Magnesians he -refers to Onesimus and Apollonius as working together and begs them not -to use their “bishop too familiarly, owing to his youth.” Though “to -appearance young, he must be obeyed, because he presides in the place of -God.” In his letter from Smyrna to the Trallians, he refers to the faith -having got inside the Palace at Rome; and his letter to the -Philadelphians is written by “Burrhus sent from Ephesus”; and Ignatius -of Antioch, to quote Turner of Oxford, “was a trusted and responsible -leader.” The martyrdom of Ignatius is no longer placed as late as 107 -A.D., so the discrepancy in dates here is still unsettled. (See Bishop -Lightfoot.) To show how widely and wildly scholars vary in their dates, -take your New Testament, note the dates of the letters at the heads of -the Epistles, and compare to these dates given in Turner—Peter visits -Rome 42 A.D. (See date 60 to 66 A.D. of Peter’s letters from Babylon.) -Peter and Paul martyred in Rome 57 or 58 A.D. (Note the dates of Paul’s -Epistles from 59 to 64 A.D.) Suicide Nero, 67 or 68 A.D. (Yet Paul’s -second trial was towards the end of Nero’s life.) Death Domitian 95 or -96. (Note date of Apollonius’ prediction in Ephesus.) I give these wide -variations in authorities solely to show how picayune and childish and -nonessential to the picture as a whole are the minor points over which -scholars have wrangled; while youth grew bored and slipped away from -teachers, who wrangled instead of teaching. - -All these references are not proofs, but they throw the burden of -disproof on those who call Paul’s servant a “bell hop” and declare the -Onesimus of Ephesus another Greek. Onesimus was the carrier of Paul’s -letter to the Ephesians; and Apollos was the great Gnostic leader in -Ephesus at this time. - -The passing of Apollonius in Crete is too long a story to be repeated -here. I have followed Flinders Petrie, though those who want to jump -into the controversy over Apollonius would do well to read Phillimore’s -acrid comments and the Theosophists’ who are a modern and divided -edition of the ancient Gnostics. The Theosophists say Apollonius is the -riddle of riddles of the first century. “No one knows where he came from -or where he went.” By Empire and Church, “every means were used to sweep -his memory from men’s minds,” because he would conform to neither Empire -nor Church. Whether he died in Crete, or Ephesus, about 96 A.D., the -modern Gnostics do not say. He remained always the aristocrat, the -scorner of all outward show of piety or power. The churches of Asia -actually prayed to Apollonius after his death, so one sees another -reason why the church discouraged his cult, just as Paul had to stop -Asiatic Greeks from worshiping him. He was lecturing in Ephesus at the -time Domitian was murdered in Rome—and suddenly stopped in the middle -of his lectures and described the far-off crime in the Imperial City, -crying out to the assassins to strike home to the tyrant’s heart. Then -he described the wild joy in the Roman city streets over the news of -Domitian’s death. A descendant of Trefina’s of the Thecla legend built -him a fane in Asia Minor. In those days, they called it a Temple to a -new god, Apollonius. In our day, we would probably call it a memorial -church. - -With these hints, any one feeling it a personal mission to settle the -disputes on which the flashlight has been cast by the five stories of -the apostolic ages—can do the settling for his own conscience and let -his fellow readers do the same. - -The day has passed when youth will be bludgeoned into belief. It wants -facts, or as close as it can get to facts—then it will do its own -believing or disbelieving; and as Malden says, Christianity takes its -stand on the ground of historic truth. Let us get the flashlight on the -essential truths. - - - - - FINALE - - -At a time when our own modern world seems to be passing through a welter -similar to the apostolic ages, it may not be amiss to close by quoting -from Bishop Solomon at Lake Van, Armenia, who officiated between the -Tigris and Euphrates about 1222 A.D. His _Book of the Bee_, translated -by Wallis Budge, the great orientalist, in 1886 (Oxford), reflects many -of the ancient church traditions among the religious communities founded -by the Apostles. - -The old scholar gives his work the name of _the Bee_ because the bee -culls its pure honey from all flowers; and so he attempts to cull the -best from the old records of the early church. - -He begins with the creation as told in Genesis and interprets that -record partly as a mystic race record according to the Gnostics and -Theosophists, and partly as a record of fact; but he sets down both -interpretations side by side, and forces no conclusions. You get the -sense that the old scholar knows he is dealing with an epic; but whether -that epic is a myth reflecting a fact on the clouds, or a fact obscured -by myth—you must decide for yourself; for “Know, O brother,” he says, -“where there is true love, there is no fear; and where there is freedom -of speech, there is no dread . . . on subjects beyond the capacity of -our simple understanding . . . do not enquire too closely into the -divine words.” - -And the advice is as good for our day as for his own. - -The first thirty chapters have an amazing similarity to _Genesis_, the -_Book of Enoch_, the _Book of Jasher_, _Revelation_; and should be read -parallel with _Ezekiel_ and _Daniel_. They carry the human mind back to -the very dawn of time. - -It is where the record comes down to apostolic days that it throws a -flashlight on the historic personages in the fiction of this volume. - -I make no comment but set down in brief the old writer’s contributions -to historic data. - -He says that Mary, the Mother of the Messiah, was brought up among the -Temple virgins. The Salome, who was the midwife at Christ’s birth, -resembles the Salome of the Gnostics’ _Pistis Sophia_. Whether the star -followed by the Magi were a star of vision, or a constellation of the -Zodiac—he does not know. He does not think the massacre of the infants -followed immediately after the visit to the manger, but within two -years. The legends of the Magi’s gifts are given very fully. He says it -was the father of Nathaniel who saved John the Baptist’s life, when -Zechariah was murdered before the altar of the Temple. This refers to -Christ’s recognition of Nathaniel later with Philip. He says Christ met -Lazarus first in Egypt, when Lazarus befriended the exiles, Joseph and -Mary. The Herodias episode is given very fully as recorded in Chapter II -here. Machærus is given as the place of John’s imprisonment and murder. -Abgar, King of Edessa, who wrote letters to Christ, finally bought -Christ’s woven seamless garment over which the soldiers cast dice. -Joseph of Arimathea, he calls a Senator. He says Mary died between her -fifty-eighth and sixty-first year. He gives very fully the ten occasions -on which Christ was seen in vision or in body—the last time by Stephen -and Paul. The upper chamber of the Last Supper had been prepared by -Lazarus to whom it belonged, by Simon the Cyrenian, who helped to carry -the cross, by Joseph, the Senator, and by Nicodemus. - -His notes on the Apostles are invaluable. Peter preached in Antioch and -in Rome, where Nero crucified him, head downwards. Andrew, his brother, -went to the wild Scythians of the North. John, the son of Zebedee, the -hero of the fifth story in this volume—over whom the higher critics -have waged such bootless battle—preached in Ephesus, was exiled to -Patmos, came back to Ephesus, built a church and taught there with -Ignatius, till he “fell asleep.” John Second, a young disciple of John -the Apostle, became Bishop of Ephesus and wrote the _Revelation_ as told -him word for word by John, the friend of Christ. This brings up a -dispute hoary with age. Was the youth beloved of Christ, the first John -or the second? I cannot answer that question. The dispute as to the -death of James is unconsciously explained by the author of the _Book of -the Bee_. James was cast down from a pinnacle of the Temple. The rabble -that pursued, slew him with sword and stone. He was slain by order of -Herod, Bernice’s first husband. Philip left his prophetess daughters in -Cæsarea and worked in Phrygia, Onesimus’ home country. Thomas went from -Jerusalem to Persia and India, where he was stabbed to death for -baptizing the daughter of a great ruler. No modern scholar needs to be -told there are remnants of Thomas’ early followers yet in India. Matthew -found refuge from the Jews in Tyre and Sidon and Antioch. The _Book of -the Bee_ says nothing of his mission to Egypt. Bartholomew worked in -Armenia; Jude in Laodicea, the city of wealth and apathy; Simon Zelotes, -inward from Aleppo; James, son of Alphæus, in Tadmor—Palmyra, the -glorious; Matthias, successor to Judas, in Sicily. - -In Rome, Paul sought the Gentiles; Peter, the dispersed Jews. There are -disputes here, I don’t care to go into. I have already touched on them. -Peter gave his record to Mark; Paul, his to Luke—which jibes remarkably -with the verdict of higher critics. - -Luke had been the physician, who attended Lazarus—a not improbable -thing if Lazarus were in Egypt as Luke’s writings are full of reference -to the Greek culture of Alexandria, Egypt. Mark is given as a stepson of -Peter; and Rhoda was his sister. Zacchæus, the publican, was slain, -while preaching. Joseph, the Senator, transferred his labors to the ten -Greek cities of Decapolis. Nicodemus and his brother, Gamaliel, the -great philosophers, became open professors of the faith. Nathaniel was -stoned to death. Simon, son of Cleopas, became a bishop in Jerusalem. -Cephas (Peter) taught in Baalbec—the wonder of the Old World; Barnabas -in Italy; Titus in Crete; Justus in Cæsarea; Hermas, the shepherd, in -Antioch; and others of the seventy dispersed to all parts of the known -world. - -Of Onesimus, the _Book of the Bee_ says “his legs were broken in Rome.” -Whether this was when he fled for protection to Paul—in which case, the -story is much more dramatic and illustrative of the beauty of Paul’s -character than I have given—or after his return from distributing -Paul’s letters to the Greeks of Asia—the record does not say. It is -probably this reference that gave rise to the young Onesimus, who became -bishop, being distinct from the young Onesimus, whom Paul sent back to -Asia Minor. The record does not say he suffered martyrdom in -Rome—simply that “his legs were broken.” Apollos, the _Book of the Bee_ -says, was “burnt with fire.” I have no comment to make on that. If -Apollos were Apollonius, his fate could be ascribed to death by fire; -but if Apollos were not Apollonius, then the lack of all reference to -Apollonius, so famous from Rome to India, by a writer of the legends of -the apostolic days, is very remarkable; for Apollonius had a temple -named after him in Asia Minor and had been a great figure in his day in -Babylonia. Timothy taught and died in Ephesus. Candace’s Eunuch -established missions in Ethiopia. The foster brother of Herod is called -Manæl, not Manæn. - -The names of those followers, who fell away in persecution, are much as -given in Paul’s letters and early church history—Judas, Simon, Levi, -Hymenæus, Demas—of the riots in Asia Minor. The _Book of the Bee_ says -Philip had three daughters, who were see-ers, or prophetesses; _the -Acts_ say four. The _Book of the Bee_ says each of the Twelve and of the -Seventy jotted down memories of Christ, but to avoid confusion, confided -their memories—the Twelve to Matthew and John; the Seventy to Luke and -Mark—and this, too, sustains the shots in the dark of the higher -critics. - -The child, of whom Christ said, “except ye become as children,” the -_Book of the Bee_ says, grew up to be Ignatius. The children on whom -Christ laid his hands were Timothy and Titus. The Marys of the Gospel -were—Mary, the Mother of the Messiah; Mary, the mother of Cleopas; -Mary, the wife of Peter and mother of Mark; Mary, the sister of Lazarus. -Was Mary, the sinner, the Mary of Magdala out of whom were cast the -demons? The _Book of the Bee_ says frankly the early church did not -know. They know she was healed and became a holy woman. Thecla, the -_Book of the Bee_ refers to as “the Blessed”; so that I cannot regard -the legend as a fiction. - -I cannot close better than to quote the prophecies of the old sage of -1200 A.D. Keep in mind exactly what has happened in Asia Minor between -1914 and 1924, and then decide for yourself whether all see-ers are -“self-hypnotized fakirs,” or “deluded epileptics having fits”—which I -have heard them called by teachers of youth. At all events, give this -old seer the same fair hearing you do to the prophecies of Roger Bacon, -the friar, who was almost contemporary, imprisoned in another part of -the world for predicting what science would accomplish; and when you -have done that fairly and squarely, lay the book down and ask yourself -what you believe. As the prophecies cover nearly twenty pages, I -condense: “the children of Ishmael will go forth from this wilderness -. . . and the fat ones of the kingdom of the Greeks . . . shall be -destroyed by Ishmael, the wild ass of the desert . . . it shall be a -merciless chastisement . . . for the sin of the Christians . . . mad -with drunkenness, anger, shameless lasciviousness . . . hence God will -deliver them over to the impurity of the Barbarians.” There follows just -what happened in the late War, the murder of men, the pollution of -women, the death of the children, the robbery of all property, the sale -into slavery of harem and desert bandit, the oppression of the poor. -“They will mock at those who frame laws. The little shall be esteemed as -the great, the despised as the honorable, from sea to sea, from east to -west, from north to south . . . hungering and thirsting and torture in -bonds . . . infants torn from their mothers’ bosoms . . . priests and -deacons slain . . . clothes for their horses out of holy vestments . . . -cattle in the churches . . . famine . . . dead bodies without any to -bury them . . . while the tyrants shall boast—‘the Christians have -neither a God, nor a deliverer.’” There follows the victory of the -Greeks and a terrible slaughter. “Egypt ravaged, Arabia burnt, Hebron -laid waste.” . . . Then shall follow “a great peace . . . joy on earth -. . . churches reopened . . . great cities rebuilt . . . for the gates -of the North” shall be opened. Twenty-two kingdoms shall come through -the gates of the North. In the plains of Joppa, the great battle will be -fought. The leader of destruction will fight there and be overthrown by -a leader of the cross from the land of Ethiopia. The leader of -destruction will delude many with “phantoms.” Hosts of the Indians will -ally themselves with him. Then will come a second Elijah (or Elias) and -lead to the great victory of the cross. - -There follows the passing of the Old Order like a garment discarded for -the New when a light shall burst over humanity with the effulgent -radiance of the very heavens; when those, who are asleep shall awake -clothed in light, eternally young; when each shall treasure his eternal -light and fire in his own spirit; when the only grief shall be the grief -for transgression of laws man can never break, but which break man; when -the love of God shall extend to the meanest and poorest of all -creatures; when justice will exact “to the uttermost farthing” of -repentance for sin; when those barred from light will be those only who -persist in barring light from their spirit. - - * * * * * - -Here, let us close the old seer’s prophecy, be it trance or dream; for -his hope is the hope of all humanity with all its creeds for all time, -now as then. - - THE END - - - - - =BOOKS OF SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE= - - -THE TRUTHS WE LIVE BY -By JAY WILLIAM HUDSON -Present clashing ideas, scientific and religious, reconciled above the - level of skepticism on a basis of ancient fundamentals. - -THE LIFE OF CHRIST -By REV. 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