Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
conduct in the mortal life. When I heard of the Persian’s Realm of
Light, his Paradise across the bridge Chinevat, where only the good go,
the thought haunted me; insomuch that in the day, as in the night, I
brooded over the comparative ideas Eternal Transmigration and Eternal
Life in Heaven. If, as my teacher taught, God was just, why was there
no distinction between the good and the bad? At length it became clear
to me, a certainty, a corollary of the law to which I reduced pure
religion, that death was only the point of separation at which the
wicked are left or lost, and the faithful rise to a higher life; not
the nirvana of Buddha, or the negative rest of Brahma, O Melchior; nor
the better condition in hell, which is all of Heaven allowed by the
Olympic faith, O Gaspar; but life—life active, joyous, everlasting—LIFE
WITH GOD! The discovery led to another inquiry. Why should the Truth be
longer kept a secret for the selfish solace of the priesthood? The
reason for the suppression was gone. Philosophy had at least brought us
toleration. In Egypt we had Rome instead of Rameses. One day, in the
Brucheium, the most splendid and crowded quarter of Alexandria, I arose
and preached. The East and West contributed to my audience. Students
going to the Library, priests from the Serapeion, idlers from the
Museum, patrons of the race-course, countrymen from the Rhacotis—a
multitude—stopped to hear me. I preached God, the Soul, Right and
Wrong, and Heaven, the reward of a virtuous life. You, O Melchior, were
stoned; my auditors first wondered, then laughed. I tried again; they
pelted me with epigrams, covered my God with ridicule, and darkened my
Heaven with mockery. Not to linger needlessly, I fell before them.”
The Hindoo here drew a long sigh, as he said, “The enemy of man is man,
my brother.”
Balthasar lapsed into silence.
“I gave much thought to finding the cause of my failure, and at last
succeeded,” he said, upon beginning again. “Up the river, a day’s
journey from the city, there is a village of herdsmen and gardeners. I
took a boat and went there. In the evening I called the people
together, men and women, the poorest of the poor. I preached to them
exactly as I had preached in the Brucheium. They did not laugh. Next
evening I spoke again, and they believed and rejoiced, and carried the
news abroad. At the third meeting a society was formed for prayer. I
returned to the city then. Drifting down the river, under the stars,
which never seemed so bright and so near, I evolved this lesson: To
begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather
to those whose cups of happiness are empty—to the poor and humble. And
then I laid a plan and devoted my life. As a first step, I secured my
vast property, so that the income would be certain, and always at call
for the relief of the suffering. From that day, O brethren, I travelled
up and down the Nile, in the villages, and to all the tribes, preaching
One God, a righteous life, and reward in Heaven. I have done good—it
does not become me to say how much. I also know that part of the world
to be ripe for the reception of Him we go to find.”
A flush suffused the swarthy cheek of the speaker; but he overcame the
feeling, and continued:
“The years so given, O my brothers, were troubled by one thought—When I
was gone, what would become of the cause I had started? Was it to end
with me? I had dreamed many times of organization as a fitting crown
for my work. To hide nothing from you, I had tried to effect it, and
failed. Brethren, the world is now in the condition that, to restore
the old Mizraimic faith, the reformer must have a more than human
sanction; he must not merely come in God’s name, he must have the
proofs subject to his word; he must demonstrate all he says, even God.
So preoccupied is the mind with myths and systems; so much do false
deities crowd every place—earth, air, sky; so have they become of
everything a part, that return to the first religion can only be along
bloody paths, through fields of persecution; that is to say, the
converts must be willing to die rather than recant. And who in this age
can carry the faith of men to such a point but God himself? To redeem
the race—I do not mean to destroy it—to REDEEM the race, he must make
himself once more manifest; HE MUST COME IN PERSON.”
Intense emotion seized the three.
“Are we not going to find him?” exclaimed the Greek.
“You understand why I failed in the attempt to organize,” said the
Egyptian, when the spell was past. “I had not the sanction. To know
that my work must be lost made me intolerably wretched. I believed in
prayer, and to make my appeals pure and strong, like you, my brethren,
I went out of the beaten ways, I went where man had not been, where
only God was. Above the fifth cataract, above the meeting of rivers in
Sennar, up the Bahr el Abiad, into the far unknown of Africa, I went.
There, in the morning, a mountain blue as the sky flings a cooling
shadow wide over the western desert, and, with its cascades of melted
snow, feeds a broad lake nestling at its base on the east. The lake is
the mother of the great river. For a year and more the mountain gave me
a home. The fruit of the palm fed my body, prayer my spirit. One night
I walked in the orchard close by the little sea. ‘The world is dying.
When wilt thou come? Why may I not see the redemption, O God?’ So I
prayed. The glassy water was sparkling with stars. One of them seemed
to leave its place, and rise to the surface, where it became a
brilliancy burning to the eyes. Then it moved towards me, and stood
over my head, apparently in hand’s reach. I fell down and hid my face.
A voice, not of the earth, said, ‘Thy good works have conquered.
Blessed art thou, O son of Mizraim! The redemption cometh. With two
others, from the remotenesses of the world, thou shalt see the Saviour,
and testify for him. In the morning arise, and go meet them. And when
ye have all come to the holy city of Jerusalem, ask of the people,
Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in
the East and are sent to worship him. Put all thy trust in the Spirit
which will guide thee.’
“And the light became an inward illumination not to be doubted, and has
stayed with me, a governor and a guide. It led me down the river to
Memphis, where I made ready for the desert. I bought my camel, and came
hither without rest, by way of Suez and Kufileh, and up through the
lands of Moab and Ammon. God is with us, O my brethren!”
He paused, and thereupon, with a prompting not their own, they all
arose, and looked at each other.
“I said there was a purpose in the particularity with which we
described our people and their histories,” so the Egyptian proceeded.
“He we go to find was called ‘King of the Jews;’ by that name we are
bidden to ask for him. But, now that we have met, and heard from each
other, we may know him to be the Redeemer, not of the Jews alone, but
of all the nations of the earth. The patriarch who survived the Flood
had with him three sons, and their families, by whom the world was
repeopled. From the old Aryana-Vaejo, the well-remembered Region of
Delight in the heart of Asia, they parted. India and the far East
received the children of the first; the descendant of the youngest,
through the North, streamed into Europe; those of the second overflowed
the deserts about the Red Sea, passing into Africa; and though most of
the latter are yet dwellers in shifting tents, some of them became
builders along the Nile.”
By a simultaneous impulse the three joined hands.
“Could anything be more divinely ordered?” Balthasar continued. “When
we have found the Lord, the brothers, and all the generations that have
succeeded them, will kneel to him in homage with us. And when we part
to go our separate ways, the world will have learned a new lesson—that
Heaven may be won, not by the sword, not by human wisdom, but by Faith,
Love, and Good Works.”
There was silence, broken by sighs and sanctified with tears; for the
joy that filled them might not be stayed. It was the unspeakable joy of
souls on the shores of the River of Life, resting with the Redeemed in
God’s presence.
Presently their hands fell apart, and together they went out of the
tent. The desert was still as the sky. The sun was sinking fast. The
camels slept.
A little while after, the tent was struck, and, with the remains of the
repast, restored to the cot; then the friends mounted, and set out
single file, led by the Egyptian. Their course was due west, into the
chilly night. The camels swung forward in steady trot, keeping the line
and the intervals so exactly that those following seemed to tread in
the tracks of the leader. The riders spoke not once.
By-and-by the moon came up. And as the three tall white figures sped,
with soundless tread, through the opalescent light, they appeared like
specters flying from hateful shadows. Suddenly, in the air before them,
not farther up than a low hill-top flared a lambent flame; as they
looked at it, the apparition contracted into a focus of dazzling
lustre. Their hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they shouted
as with one voice, “The Star! the Star! God is with us!”
CHAPTER VI
In an aperture of the western wall of Jerusalem hang the “oaken valves”
called the Bethlehem or Joppa Gate. The area outside of them is one of
the notable places of the city. Long before David coveted Zion there
was a citadel there. When at last the son of Jesse ousted the Jebusite,
and began to build, the site of the citadel became the northwest corner
of the new wall, defended by a tower much more imposing than the old
one. The location of the gate, however, was not disturbed, for the
reasons, most likely, that the roads which met and merged in front of
it could not well be transferred to any other point, while the area
outside had become a recognized market-place. In Solomon’s day there
was great traffic at the locality, shared in by traders from Egypt and
the rich dealers from Tyre and Sidon. Nearly three thousand years have
passed, and yet a kind of commerce clings to the spot. A pilgrim
wanting a pin or a pistol, a cucumber or a camel, a house or a horse, a
loan or a lentil, a date or a dragoman, a melon or a man, a dove or a
donkey, has only to inquire for the article at the Joppa Gate.
Sometimes the scene is quite animated, and then it suggests, What a
place the old market must have been in the days of Herod the Builder!
And to that period and that market the reader is now to be transferred.
Following the Hebrew system, the meeting of the wise men described in
the preceding chapters took place in the afternoon of the twenty-fifth
day of the third month of the year; that is to say, on the twenty-fifth
day of December. The year was the second of the 193d Olympiad, or the
747th of Rome; the sixty-seventh of Herod the Great, and the
thirty-fifth of his reign; the fourth before the beginning of the
Christian era. The hours of the day, by Judean custom, begin with the
sun, the first hour being the first after sunrise; so, to be precise;
the market at the Joppa Gate during the first hour of the day stated
was in full session, and very lively. The massive valves had been wide
open since dawn. Business, always aggressive, had pushed through the
arched entrance into a narrow lane and court, which, passing by the
walls of the great tower, conducted on into the city. As Jerusalem is
in the hill country, the morning air on this occasion was not a little
crisp. The rays of the sun, with their promise of warmth, lingered
provokingly far up on the battlements and turrets of the great piles
about, down from which fell the crooning of pigeons and the whir of the
flocks coming and going.