The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 21, 1902, Page 2

(%] animated with life and the basest of hu- man passions, while they each mutely at- tested the skill in divination of the ange creature, who, like Tiberius Caes: had foretold & great future for me. Thus I did not quite despair as, re- duced to slavery and closely guarded by two swarthy soldlers, I left behind th depopulated little kingdom and advanced, across the open country, toward the wider, though scarcely less wretched one, that lay before me. A rough, uncultivated country, broken by little valleys and full of gullies worn in the sandy soll by rivulets of water in times of rain; a scanty growth of grass, brown, and apparently dead to the very roots from severe and long continued drought; & most dreary prospect in all di- rections, unretieved by & single green thing, & single human habitation; wal- lowing in the mire that owed its existence to & spring, the hidden fountains of which had not yet been affected by the long al sence of rain, at least a hundred ili-fa ored, balf-starved, unclean hogs. Such was the scene that had long wearied my often tearful eyes, such the only com- panions of my misery, I had becomc— what a position for a’ Jew to occupyi— & _common swineherd. Intense suffering, humiliation, gmount- ing to absolute degradation, and t§e utter lack of all promise in the biackfuture, had bumbled my once proud sphit and shown me the sin and folly of my past life. At last 1 had come to myseif. For many days 1 had marched to the eastward as the slave of the centurion whose reasoning made murder an act of morel excelience. My treatment had been barsh in the extreme, my food scanty, m; duties of a most onerous and humiliating character. I was satisfied that my condition was harder than that which fell to the or- dinary lot of slaves, and this I ascribed to the circumstance of my being a Jew. Beyond all question thé Romans hate and despise the people of my nation. True, we are subject to them, but which of all the once proud kingdoms of the earth is not? Upon reflection I decided that it was chargeable, not to the high character, but rather to the exclusiveness of our re- ligion. Claiming, and devoutly believing, that we worship the only true God, we not only refrain from teaching = the heathen to call upon his name, but ar- rogantly claim that we are his chosen, his only people. If, like the philosophers of Rome and Alexandria, we propagated our faith, it would establish its excellence in the minds and hearts of the Romans and become respected, if indeed, it did not speedily supersede the divinities that their own imaginations have created, their own evil inclinations endowed with the basest of worldly passions. Though God causes even the wrath of ‘man to praise him, thought I, he employs human means to effect that end. Hence, if his kingdom is to become universal, his faith must be propagated by man, At lengih, smarting under the pain and indignity of a scourging that the humane centurion had inflicted upon me, I man- &ged one night to escape from the camp. From the rapidity of our march I knew that the officer had been sent upor a mis- sion that called for the utmost dispatch, and remained for a time in concealment that he and his century might leave me safe to pursue mine own way in peace. Absolutely destitute, and in the m dst of a harsh and endly people, 1 found it difficult to secure ihe means of sub- sistence, there being few that would em- ploy me in my kind of labor. As I ad- became daiuy more deplorable. Long ab of rain had caused an almost total failure of crops, and famine held the land in its hard, re- vanced my conditi lentless grasp. At lengih 1 encountered a large lard- owner, who would have been rich b the tribute for the heavy taxes of Rome, Y levied upon him by the bandits that in- fested the neighboring mountains and the drought which prevented him from satis- fying either the legal or il.egai robbers that impoverished him. This man saved me from actual starvation and offered to supply me with food for the future if I would take charge of a large herd of swine which he was endeavoring to keep alive against the coming of rain and re- newed vegetation. The love of life proved stronger than the philosophy of Diogenes, reinforced by grief for my lost friends, and I accepted his offer. My dutles consisted.in driving the ani- mais from place to place that they might secure withered roots, worms, snakes, and other like disgusting food. At night I brought them back to the spring referred to, where I fed them, very sparingly, of the dried pods of the carob-tree, a species of Jocust that grows abundantiy in that country, and which, when fresh, are much used as food by the poorer people. Here 1 passed my nights, sleeping, when the weather was cold, in a rude hut that served at a storehouse for the sickle- shaped pods. My food, which consisted of a very inadequate supply of chestnuts, was brought to me every third day from the village where my master resided, by @ most miserable slave, who, I did not doubt, systematically robbed me of a por- tion of my scanty allowance. One night my cup of bitterness seemed full to overflowing, and I thought of the advice of the King of Wretchedness and was almost persuaded to cease to drink of it. My supply of chestnuts had been exhausted early in the day and the slave would not visit me again until the fol- lowing_morning. Sharp-toothed hunger gnawed within me and made my mind more uneasy than my half-starved body. 1 was about to relieve my sore cravings by falling upon the pods, which, though far from palatable, would, I well knew, serve to sustain life, when pride, rather than motives of bonesty, suggested that they were not mine to eat. “I will not rob my master, who never told me I might eat of thgm,” 1 cried bit- terly, “neither will I owe my life to these unclean beasts by despoiling them of their rightful food.” In part to relieve myself of the tempta- tion, tne yielding to which I felt wou. entall the 10S3 0L My Soie rema.ning bo session— pect—and in_ part to -be free irom ssing darkness and slience of the place, I arose and sought the outer air. There, beneath the star-studded firmament, fashioned and set in place by the hand of God to divide the waters that he had created, 1 ijay and studied my past life, my present sad pre- dicament and the dark, foreboding future. Were. the waters above that mysterious dome as bitter as those of which I had ;‘Efcmly taken such deep draughts, below t? I recalled the day, now something more than three years past, when 1 had been aroused from a reverie among the vines in my father's vineyard by giadsome houts, “summoning me to tae festivitics beside the wine-press. Again I noted the beauty of the maidens, the strength of the young men, the skill of the dancers, the white feet .in the wine-press, the grace and mockery of the fair queen of the festival—the whole scene, bright and joyous, but for the scowling face of my brother Enos. Once more the murmurs of rage and cries for vengeance arose from the val- ley. Again the persecuting impulse of what I had regarded as religion, was pre sented to my vision. The eyes of Rabbl Samuel flashed, his tongue dropped gall, the crowd clamored for blood, the tailor wrested a stone from the pavement, the deep voice of Philo quoted the Law and rebuked the would-be mur- derers. I saw the faith that had become as natural, and, seemingly, as essential, as the air I breathed and the food I ate, wrenched and torn by the sudden ou break of fanaticism, which seemed to have seized upon my old friends and neighbors like a veritable demoniacal po: session. Half dormant doubts and queries developed with all the rapidity of the gourd that sheltered the prophet of old and ate into my faith as it was, in turn, destroyed by the worm which the Lord, Himself, had prepared. The rents in that garment of faith—so essential for the protection of a Jew— woven of custom, respect, reverence and ambition, had been mended, in part at least, by love, which lies at the founda- tion of the Law and was the force that caused the lips of the Prophets to move, The place which Enos, my elder brother, had never filled in my heart, was sudden- THE SUND AY CALL. ly Dpossessed vy the friend whose life I had most providentially saved. We love those whom we have succored, rather han those who have succored us. The ide World, the Kingdom ot Power— bow different it looked to me now than when 1 saw It, sparkling with pleasure, adorned with knowledge and smiling with promise, through the eves of a friend, whose love deprived the fair picture of every dark line, every sombre tint. Once more Joseph Manasseh supplied the place of a brother; won the heart of my kind old father, outwitted the cold and calculating Enos, prepared the way for the realization of the high hopes he had implanted in ‘my breast. Again I heard the wise, yet kindly words of part- ing, feit the tears that neither faith nor Ehllosuphy could suppress, fall upon my row, saw the outstretched hands that at once invoked and bestowed a blessing:. The years spent in Alexandria passed swiftly before my eyes. Increasing learn- ing broadened the scope of my mind, gave me powers that 1 had not before pos- sessed. I saw more and more clearly the narrowness of the faith of my youth and the abuses that had made it more a crea- ture of man than a bountiful gift of Ged. But with the false and useless departed CHRIST BLEAATNG LITTLF CEILLDRIENS a'so much that was of the very essence of true religion; the duty I owed to God and the scarcely less weighty one due to my fellow creature: With the boasted growth of philosophy and criticism; faith, humanit God, had been bereft of all elf mingling in com- ts. from the very thought of uld have recoiled with horror in youth; saw myself ng hard and wicked in the seductive, Gentile world. hough more recent, the months I had spent in Rome were far less distinct; the s that had been crowded and jum- together within their narrow span anged less orderly in my mind. Yet, &love feasting, drinking, gaming and the still more questionable pleasures of the nether stratum of the great city; above what seemed ihe apotheosis of vanity, the extreme of wasteful extravagance; in a v rd, above that height of folly that had Lestowed on me an epithet for the mouths of all Rome, arose my sin-con- ccived, vain-glorious, ill-fated ambition. Weare little disposed to calmly consider the full extent, the wide scope of past of- ferding. But as I lay that night beneath the pure of the softly blinking stars, the s of my mad de- v authority and short- most doubtful fame appeared be- ¢ me, unmasked of reasons and ex- What had 1 done? My heart grew heavier than Manlius' of goid, as T rea had accomplished. It had dissipated the ample competence that the life-long industry and loving heart of my father had bestowed upon me; had moved a pure, gentle, loving soul, whose true worth I had utterly failed to appreciate, to lay down her young life that I'might live; delivered the friend of my heart, mine other and better self, into the keeping of raving demons and doubtless brought him and his der voted wife to the most miserable of deaths. For myself I cared least of all, since what might remain to me of life seemed less than useless, but it had re- duced me to a condition than which a worse one I could not then conceive. As I passed, in as methodical a manner as I was able, all these several catas- trophes and the strange chain that had led to their accomplishment, before a mind that had ceased to plead for a bad cause, and sat as an impartial judge, I was amazed at mine own weakness and sinfulness. I saw that the arguments with which I had lashed forward what 1 had then termed my natural timidity and mod; but now knew to be my Dbetter nature, were utterly sophistical. As I had thought of relieving the condition of my distressed countrymen, the one pic-~ ture before my imagination had been m self, clad in official robes and started, per- haps, on a journey toward a throne. I had even tried to convince myself—I trembled as I realized jt—that in pander- ing to selfish ambition I was serving God. But my sin and folly had not been ut- terly without compensation: they had brought repentance. I was sorry, not that my ambition had miscarried, but that I had ever entertained it. I could not re- call and undo the fearful past, but re- golved to live more worthily in the future, As never before I saw the wisdowa and goodness of the great designer in leaving us free to transgress his will, since, with- out realizing the misery of sin we could never enjoy the true blids of holiness. And so it happened that, ragged, house- less, friendless, hungry, a stranger in a strange land, I felt within my heart a peace that had not pervaded it since I quitted the green vines of my native vine- thousand pounds ed what my ambition yards for the wide and fateful world, I Do longer wondered If the waters above the wide firmament that heid aloft the stars were of the flavor of the Sea of Sodom, for I knew now that the only tears shed by a pure and trustful soul fall for the griefs of others. In a word, I had come to myself. As I lay beneath the friendly, soothing influence of the stars, which, like the sun and moon, he made also, the latter, shaped like a bow of promise, arose over the eastern hills. I startsd as mine ayes fell upon the narrow crescent of soft light. It suggested at once the downfall of the kingdom of wretchedness and the sickle-like pods that had so ely tempted me. Few are, at all times, free from the power of superstitution, and my dark past, unhappy present and most unprome ising future rendered me an easy subject to its Influence. My depression was but mflmentnr{. however, for I scon remem- bered that the moon was new, not old, growing instead of diminishing. As for the swines’ food, I had not deflled my- self by eatin; of it. Another moment and the feeling of terror departed entirely, or rather gave Instant place—so swift are the revulsions of nature—to one of hope and trust in the future, To have repented was not sufficlent; I resolved to redeem my misspent’ past. know not, save in a most general way, my present jocation, but it now ocourred to me that the bright harbinger of wax~ ing strength and usefulness was suspend- ed over Kerloth, was mutely inviting me to return to the house of my father. My pulsa quickened at the thought, and I felt that, like Ahaz, a sign had been forced upon me. “I will be ever ready to welcome thee home with the open arms and blessings a father, and that without regard to state of thy fortunes. Forget not th pray thee. A thousand times during my gr: versity had those parting words dear father sounded In mine ears, and often had pride, the most pow: ron of foolishness, turne: from them. To return t, in rags, bereft of the fo s and noble friend that had depar me, seemed a task - ers. To encounter <3 and hear the sti sions of pity on tt o friends and acqr o note the sneer 1 know that he be I ate—all this ishment than I was able to bear. But my pride was humbled now and felt that to return g t would prove my past sins. r for my f mind, I > . imon viting love shone in his te trembled | jed lips. seemed to leap forth my feelings t of this lovin absent son own That became an ardent 1 cried aloud: “1 will arise and go unto my BOOK 1V, FAITH AND LOVE. I Upon the upper terrace of the highest of all the cluster of f hills ad- Joining Kerloth on the north a sharp p: file against the dawn-tinged eastern sky, appeared the tall, rugged figure of a man, 5