Ben-Hur: A tale of the Christ
storms which heaped the seashore with wrecks did but blow my ships the
sooner into port. Strangest of all, I, so dependent upon others, fixed
to a place like a dead thing, had never a loss by an agent—never. The
elements stooped to serve me, and all my servants, in fact, were
faithful.”
“It is very strange,” said Ben-Hur.
“So I said, and kept saying. Finally, O my master, finally I came to be
of your opinion—God was in it—and, like you, I asked, What can his
purpose be? Intelligence is never wasted; intelligence like God’s never
stirs except with design. I have held the question in heart, lo! these
many years, watching for an answer. I felt sure, if God were in it,
some day, in his own good time, in his own way, he would show me his
purpose, making it clear as a whited house upon a hill. And I believe
he has done so.”
Ben-Hur listened with every faculty intent.
“Many years ago, with my people—thy mother was with me, Esther,
beautiful as morning over old Olivet—I sat by the wayside out north of
Jerusalem, near the Tombs of the Kings, when three men passed by riding
great white camels, such as had never been seen in the Holy City. The
men were strangers, and from far countries. The first one stopped and
asked me a question. ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’ As if
to allay my wonder, he went on to say, ‘We have seen his star in the
east, and have come to worship him.’ I could not understand, but
followed them to the Damascus Gate; and of every person they met on the
way—of the guard at the Gate, even—they asked the question. All who
heard it were amazed like me. In time I forgot the circumstance, though
there was much talk of it as a presage of the Messiah. Alas, alas! What
children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps
are often centuries apart. You have seen Balthasar?”
“And heard him tell his story,” said Ben-Hur.
“A miracle!—a very miracle!” cried Simonides. “As he told it to me,
good my master, I seemed to hear the answer I had so long waited; God’s
purpose burst upon me. Poor will the King be when he comes—poor and
friendless; without following, without armies, without cities or
castles; a kingdom to be set up, and Rome reduced and blotted out. See,
see, O my master! thou flushed with strength, thou trained to arms,
thou burdened with riches; behold the opportunity the Lord hath sent
thee! Shall not his purpose be thine? Could a man be born to a more
perfect glory?”
Simonides put his whole force in the appeal.
“But the kingdom, the kingdom!” Ben-Hur answered, eagerly. “Balthasar
says it is to be of souls.”
The pride of the Jew was strong in Simonides, and therefore the
slightly contemptuous curl of the lip with which he began his reply:
“Balthasar has been a witness of wonderful things—of miracles, O my
master; and when he speaks of them, I bow with belief, for they are of
sight and sound personal to him. But he is a son of Mizraim, and not
even a proselyte. Hardly may he be supposed to have special knowledge
by virtue of which we must bow to him in a matter of God’s dealing with
our Israel. The prophets had their light from Heaven directly, even as
he had his—many to one, and Jehovah the same forever. I must believe
the prophets.—Bring me the Torah, Esther.”
He proceeded without waiting for her.
“May the testimony of a whole people be slighted, my master? Though you
travel from Tyre, which is by the sea in the north, to the capital of
Edom, which is in the desert south, you will not find a lisper of the
Shema, an alms-giver in the Temple, or any one who has ever eaten of
the lamb of the Passover, to tell you the kingdom the King is coming to
build for us, the children of the covenant, is other than of this
world, like our father David’s. Now where got they the faith, ask you!
We will see presently.”
Esther here returned, bringing a number of rolls carefully enveloped in
dark-brown linen lettered quaintly in gold.
“Keep them, daughter, to give to me as I call for them,” the father
said, in the tender voice he always used in speaking to her, and
continued his argument:
“It were long, good my master—too long, indeed—for me to repeat to you
the names of the holy men who, in the providence of God, succeeded the
prophets, only a little less favored than they—the seers who have
written and the preachers who have taught since the Captivity; the very
wise who borrowed their lights from the lamp of Malachi, the last of
his line, and whose great names Hillel and Shammai never tired of
repeating in the colleges. Will you ask them of the kingdom? Thus, the
Lord of the sheep in the Book of Enoch—who is he? Who but the King of
whom we are speaking? A throne is set up for him; he smites the earth,
and the other kings are shaken from their thrones, and the scourges of
Israel flung into a cavern of fire flaming with pillars of fire. So
also the singer of the Psalms of Solomon—‘Behold, O Lord, and raise up
to Israel their king, the son of David, at the time thou knowest, O
God, to rule Israel, thy children.... And he will bring the peoples of
the heathen under his yoke to serve him.... And he shall be a righteous
king taught of God, ... for he shall rule all the earth by the word of
his mouth forever.’ And last, though not least, hear Ezra, the second
Moses, in his visions of the night, and ask him who is the lion with
human voice that says to the eagle—which is Rome—‘Thou hast loved
liars, and overthrown the cities of the industrious, and razed their
walls, though they did thee no harm. Therefore, begone, that the earth
may be refreshed, and recover itself, and hope in the justice and piety
of him who made her.’ Whereat the eagle was seen no more. Surely, O my
master, the testimony of these should be enough! But the way to the
fountain’s head is open. Let us go up to it at once.—Some wine, Esther,
and then the Torah.”
“Dost thou believe the prophets, master?” he asked, after drinking. “I
know thou dost, for of such was the faith of all thy kindred.—Give me,
Esther, the book which hath in it the visions of Isaiah.”
He took one of the rolls which she had unwrapped for him, and read,
“‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that
dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light
shined.... For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
government shall be upon his shoulder.... Of the increase of his
government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David,
and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth even forever.’—Believest thou the
prophets, O my master?—Now, Esther, the word of the Lord that came to
Micah.”
She gave him the roll he asked.
“‘But thou,’” he began reading—“‘but thou, Bethlehem Ephrath, though
thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he
come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.’—This was he, the
very child Balthasar saw and worshipped in the cave. Believest thou the
prophets, O my master?—Give me, Esther, the words of Jeremiah.”
Receiving that roll, he read as before, “‘Behold, the days come, saith
the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king
shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the
earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell
safely.’ As a king he shall reign—as a king, O my master! Believest
thou the prophets?—Now, daughter, the roll of the sayings of that son
of Judah in whom there was no blemish.”
She gave him the Book of Daniel.
“Hear, my master,” he said: “‘I saw in the night visions, and behold,
one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven.... And there
was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people,
nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting
dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall
not be destroyed.’—Believest thou the prophets, O my master?”
“It is enough. I believe,” cried Ben-Hur.
“What then?” asked Simonides. “If the King come poor, will not my
master, of his abundance, give him help?”
“Help him? To the last shekel and the last breath. But why speak of his
coming poor?”
“Give me, Esther, the word of the Lord as it came to Zechariah,” said
Simonides.
She gave him one of the rolls.
“Hear how the King will enter Jerusalem.” Then he read, “‘Rejoice
greatly, O daughter of Zion.... Behold, thy King cometh unto thee with
justice and salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt,
the foal of an ass.’”
Ben-Hur looked away.
“What see you, O my master?”
“Rome!” he answered, gloomily—“Rome, and her legions. I have dwelt with
them in their camps. I know them.”
“Ah!” said Simonides. “Thou shalt be a master of legions for the King,
with millions to choose from.”
“Millions!” cried Ben-Hur.
Simonides sat a moment thinking.
“The question of power should not trouble you,” he next said.
Ben-Hur looked at him inquiringly.
“You were seeing the lowly King in the act of coming to his own,”
Simonides answered—“seeing him on the right hand, as it were, and on
the left the brassy legions of Cæsar, and you were asking, What can he
do?”
“It was my very thought.”
“O my master!” Simonides continued. “You do not know how strong our
Israel is. You think of him as a sorrowful old man weeping by the
rivers of Babylon. But go up to Jerusalem next Passover, and stand on
the Xystus or in the Street of Barter, and see him as he is. The
promise of the Lord to father Jacob coming out of Padan-Aram was a law
under which our people have not ceased multiplying—not even in
captivity; they grew under foot of the Egyptian; the clench of the
Roman has been but wholesome nurture to them; now they are indeed ‘a
nation and a company of nations.’ Nor that only, my master; in fact, to
measure the strength of Israel—which is, in fact, measuring what the
King can do—you shall not bide solely by the rule of natural increase,
but add thereto the other—I mean the spread of the faith, which will
carry you to the far and near of the whole known earth. Further, the
habit is, I know, to think and speak of Jerusalem as Israel, which may
be likened to our finding an embroidered shred, and holding it up as a
magisterial robe of Cæsar’s. Jerusalem is but a stone of the Temple,
or the heart in the body. Turn from beholding the legions, strong
though they be, and count the hosts of the faithful waiting the old
alarm, ‘To your tents, O Israel!’—count the many in Persia, children of
those who chose not to return with the returning; count the brethren
who swarm the marts of Egypt and Farther Africa; count the Hebrew
colonists eking profit in the West—in Lodinum and the trade-courts of
Spain; count the pure of blood and the proselytes in Greece and in the
isles of the sea, and over in Pontus, and here in Antioch, and, for
that matter, those of that city lying accursed in the shadow of the
unclean walls of Rome herself; count the worshippers of the Lord
dwelling in tents along the deserts next us, as well as in the deserts
beyond the Nile: and in the regions across the Caspian, and up in the
old lands of Gog and Magog even, separate those who annually send gifts
to the Holy Temple in acknowledgment of God—separate them, that they
may be counted also. And when you have done counting, lo! my master, a
census of the sword hands that await you; lo! a kingdom ready fashioned
for him who is to do ‘judgment and justice in the whole earth’—in Rome
not less than in Zion. Have then the answer, What Israel can do, that
can the King.”
The picture was fervently given.
Upon Ilderim it operated like the blowing of a trumpet. “Oh that I had
back my youth!” he cried, starting to his feet.