Ben-Hur; a tale of the Christ

by Lew Wallace

  CHAPTER V

  The young Israelite proceeded then, and rehearsed his conversationwith Messala, dwelling with particularity upon the latter's speechesin contempt of the Jews, their customs, and much pent round of life.

  Afraid to speak the while, the mother listened, discerning thematter plainly. Judah had gone to the palace on the Market-place,allured by love of a playmate whom he thought to find exactly as hehad been at the parting years before; a man met him, and, in placeof laughter and references to the sports of the past, the man hadbeen full of the future, and talked of glory to be won, and ofriches and power. Unconscious of the effect, the visitor had comeaway hurt in pride, yet touched with a natural ambition; but she,the jealous mother, saw it, and, not knowing the turn the aspirationmight take, became at once Jewish in her fear. What if it lured himaway from the patriarchal faith? In her view, that consequence wasmore dreadful than any or all others. She could discover but one wayto avert it, and she set about the task, her native power reinforcedby love to such degree that her speech took a masculine strength andat times a poet's fervor.

  "There never has been a people," she began, "who did not thinkthemselves at least equal to any other; never a great nation,my son, that did not believe itself the very superior. When theRoman looks down upon Israel and laughs, he merely repeats thefolly of the Egyptian, the Assyrian, and the Macedonian; and as thelaugh is against God, the result will be the same."

  Her voice became firmer.

  "There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations;hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes aboutit. A people risen, run their race, and die either of themselvesor at the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power,take possession of their place, and upon their monuments writenew names; such is history. If I were called upon to symbolizeGod and man in the simplest form, I would draw a straight lineand a circle, and of the line I would say, 'This is God, for he alonemoves forever straightforward,' and of the circle, 'This is man--suchis his progress.' I do not mean that there is no difference betweenthe careers of nations; no two are alike. The difference, however,is not, as some say, in the extent of the circle they describe orthe space of earth they cover, but in the sphere of their movement,the highest being nearest God.

  "To stop here, my son, would be to leave the subject where we began.Let us go on. There are signs by which to measure the height of thecircle each nation runs while in its course. By them let us comparethe Hebrew and the Roman.

  "The simplest of all the signs is the daily life of the people.Of this I will only say, Israel has at times forgotten God,while the Roman never knew him; consequently comparison isnot possible.

  "Your friend--or your former friend--charged, if I understood yourightly, that we have had no poets, artists, or warriors; by whichhe meant, I suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next mostcertain of the signs. A just consideration of this charge requires adefinition at the commencement. A great man, O my boy, is one whoselife proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by God.A Persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carriedthem into captivity; another Persian was selected to restore theirchildren to the Holy Land; greater than either of them, however,was the Macedonian through whom the desolation of Judea and theTemple was avenged. The special distinction of the men was thatthey were chosen by the Lord, each for a divine purpose; and thatthey were Gentiles does not lessen their glory. Do not lose sightof this definition while I proceed.

  "There is an idea that war is the most noble occupation of men,and that the most exalted greatness is the growth of battle-fields.Because the world has adopted the idea, be not you deceived. That wemust worship something is a law which will continue as long as thereis anything we cannot understand. The prayer of the barbarian isa wail of fear addressed to Strength, the only divine quality hecan clearly conceive; hence his faith in heroes. What is Jove buta Roman hero? The Greeks have their great glory because they werethe first to set Mind above Strength. In Athens the orator andphilosopher were more revered than the warrior. The charioteerand the swiftest runner are still idols of the arena; yet theimmortelles are reserved for the sweetest singer. The birthplaceof one poet was contested by seven cities. But was the Hellene thefirst to deny the old barbaric faith? No. My son, that glory isours; against brutalism our fathers erected God; in our worship,the wail of fear gave place to the Hosanna and the Psalm. So theHebrew and the Greek would have carried all humanity forward andupward. But, alas! the government of the world presumes war as aneternal condition; wherefore, over Mind and above God, the Romanhas enthroned his Caesar, the absorbent of all attainable power,the prohibition of any other greatness.

  "The sway of the Greek was a flowering time for genius. In returnfor the liberty it then enjoyed, what a company of thinkers theMind led forth? There was a glory for every excellence, and aperfection so absolute that in everything but war even the Romanhas stooped to imitation. A Greek is now the model of the oratorsin the Forum; listen, and in every Roman song you will hear therhythm of the Greek; if a Roman opens his mouth speaking wiselyof moralities, or abstractions, or of the mysteries of nature,he is either a plagiarist or the disciple of some school which hada Greek for its founder. In nothing but war, I say again, has Romea claim to originality. Her games and spectacles are Greek inventions,dashed with blood to gratify the ferocity of her rabble; her religion,if such it may be called, is made up of contributions from thefaiths of all other peoples; her most venerated gods are fromOlympus--even her Mars, and, for that matter, the Jove she muchmagnifies. So it happens, O my son, that of the whole world ourIsrael alone can dispute the superiority of the Greek, and withhim contest the palm of original genius.

  "To the excellences of other peoples the egotism of a Roman isa blindfold, impenetrable as his breastplate. Oh, the ruthlessrobbers! Under their trampling the earth trembles like a floorbeaten with flails. Along with the rest we are fallen--alas thatI should say it to you, my son! They have our highest places, andthe holiest, and the end no man can tell; but this I know--theymay reduce Judea as an almond broken with hammers, and devourJerusalem, which is the oil and sweetness thereof; yet the gloryof the men of Israel will remain a light in the heavens overheadout of reach: for their history is the history of God, who wrotewith their hands, spake with their tongues, and was himself in allthe good they did, even the least; who dwelt with them, a Lawgiveron Sinai, a Guide in the wilderness, in war a Captain, in governmenta King; who once and again pushed back the curtains of thepavilion which is his resting-place, intolerably bright, and,as a man speaking to men, showed them the right, and the wayto happiness, and how they should live, and made them promisesbinding the strength of his Almightiness with covenants sworn toeverlastingly. O my son, could it be that they with whom Jehovahthus dwelt, an awful familiar, derived nothing from him?--thatin their lives and deeds the common human qualities should notin some degree have been mixed and colored with the divine? thattheir genius should not have in it, even after the lapse of ages,some little of heaven?"

  For a time the rustling of the fan was all the sound heard in thechamber.

  "In the sense which limits art to sculpture and painting, it istrue," she next said, "Israel has had no artists."

  The admission was made regretfully, for it must be rememberedshe was a Sadducee, whose faith, unlike that of the Pharisees,permitted a love of the beautiful in every form, and withoutreference to its origin.

  "Still he who would do justice," she proceeded, "will not forget thatthe cunning of our hands was bound by the prohibition, 'Thou shaltnot make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything;'which the Sopherim wickedly extended beyond its purpose and time.Nor should it be forgotten that long before Daedalus appeared inAttica and with his wooden statues so transformed sculpture asto make possible the schools of Corinth and AEgina, and theirultimate triumphs the Poecile and Capitolium--long before theage of Daedalus, I say, two Israelites, Bezaleel and Aholiab,the master-builders of the first tabernacle, said to h
ave beenskilled 'in all manner of workmanship,' wrought the cherubim of themercy-seat above the ark. Of gold beaten, not chiseled, were they;and they were statues in form both human and divine. 'And theyshall stretch forth their wings on high, .... and their facesshall look one to another.' Who will say they were not beautiful?or that they were not the first statues?"

  "Oh, I see now why the Greek outstripped us," said Judah, intenselyinterested. "And the ark; accursed be the Babylonians who destroyedit!"

  "Nay, Judah, be of faith. It was not destroyed, only lost, hiddenaway too safely in some cavern of the mountains. One day--Hilleland Shammai both say so--one day, in the Lord's good time, it willbe found and brought forth, and Israel dance before it, singing asof old. And they who look upon the faces of the cherubim then,though they have seen the face of the ivory Minerva, will be readyto kiss the hand of the Jew from love of his genius, asleep throughall the thousands of years."

  The mother, in her eagerness, had risen into something like therapidity and vehemence of a speech-maker; but now, to recoverherself, or to pick up the thread of her thought, she restedawhile.

  "You are so good, my mother," he said, in a grateful way. "And Iwill never be done saying so. Shammai could not have talked better,nor Hillel. I am a true son of Israel again."

  "Flatterer!" she said. "You do not know that I am but repeatingwhat I heard Hillel say in an argument he had one day in mypresence with a sophist from Rome."

  "Well, the hearty words are yours."

  Directly all her earnestness returned.

  "Where was I? Oh yes, I was claiming for our Hebrew fathers thefirst statues. The trick of the sculptor, Judah, is not all thereis of art, any more than art is all there is of greatness. I alwaysthink of great men marching down the centuries in groups and goodlycompanies, separable according to nationalities; here the Indian,there the Egyptian, yonder the Assyrian; above them the music oftrumpets and the beauty of banners; and on their right hand andleft, as reverent spectators, the generations from the beginning,numberless. As they go, I think of the Greek, saying, 'Lo! TheHellene leads the way.' Then the Roman replies, 'Silence! whatwas your place is ours now; we have left you behind as dusttrodden on.' And all the time, from the far front back overthe line of march, as well as forward into the farthest future,streams a light of which the wranglers know nothing, except thatit is forever leading them on--the Light of Revelation! Who arethey that carry it? Ah, the old Judean blood! How it leaps at thethought! By the light we know them. Thrice blessed, O our fathers,servants of God, keepers of the covenants! Ye are the leaders ofmen, the living and the dead. The front is thine; and though everyRoman were a Caesar, ye shall not lose it!"

  Judah was deeply stirred.

  "Do not stop, I pray you," he cried. "You give me to hear thesound of timbrels. I wait for Miriam and the women who wentafter her dancing and singing."

  She caught his feeling, and, with ready wit, wove it into her speech.

  "Very well, my son. If you can hear the timbrel of the prophetess,you can do what I was about to ask; you can use your fancy, and standwith me, as if by the wayside, while the chosen of Israel pass us atthe head of the procession. Now they come--the patriarchs first;next the fathers of the tribes. I almost hear the bells of theircamels and the lowing of their herds. Who is he that walks alonebetween the companies? An old man, yet his eye is not dim, nor hisnatural force abated. He knew the Lord face to face! Warrior, poet,orator, lawgiver, prophet, his greatness is as the sun at morning,its flood of splendor quenching all other lights, even that of thefirst and noblest of the Caesars. After him the judges. And thenthe kings--the son of Jesse, a hero in war, and a singer of songseternal as that of the sea; and his son, who, passing all otherkings in riches and wisdom, and while making the Desert habitable,and in its waste places planting cities, forgot not Jerusalem whichthe Lord had chosen for his seat on earth. Bend lower, my son!These that come next are the first of their kind, and the last.Their faces are raised, as if they heard a voice in the sky andwere listening. Their lives were full of sorrows. Their garmentssmell of tombs and caverns. Hearken to a woman among them--'Singye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously!' Nay, put yourforehead in the dust before them! They were tongues of God, hisservants, who looked through heaven, and, seeing all the future,wrote what they saw, and left the writing to be proven by time.Kings turned pale as they approached them, and nations trembled atthe sound of their voices. The elements waited upon them. In theirhands they carried every bounty and every plague. See the Tishbiteand his servant Elisha! See the sad son of Hilkiah, and him, the seerof visions, by the river of Chebar! And of the three children ofJudah who refused the image of the Babylonian, lo! that one who,in the feast to the thousand lords, so confounded the astrologers.And yonder--O my son, kiss the dust again!--yonder the gentle sonof Amoz, from whom the world has its promise of the Messiah tocome!"

  In this passage the fan had been kept in rapid play; it stoppednow, and her voice sank low.

  "You are tired," she said.

  "No," he replied, "I was listening to a new song of Israel."

  The mother was still intent upon her purpose, and passed thepleasant speech.

  "In such light as I could, my Judah, I have set our great menbefore you--patriarchs, legislators, warriors, singers, prophets.Turn we to the best of Rome. Against Moses place Caesar, and Tarquinagainst David; Sylla against either of the Maccabees; the bestof the consuls against the judges; Augustus against Solomon,and you are done: comparison ends there. But think then of theprophets--greatest of the great."

  She laughed scornfully.

  "Pardon me. I was thinking of the soothsayer who warned Caius Juliusagainst the Ides of March, and fancied him looking for the omensof evil which his master despised in the entrails of a chicken.From that picture turn to Elijah sitting on the hill-top on theway to Samaria, amid the smoking bodies of the captains and theirfifties, warning the son of Ahab of the wrath of our God. Finally,O my Judah--if such speech be reverent--how shall we judge Jehovahand Jupiter unless it be by what their servants have done in theirnames? And as for what you shall do--"

  She spoke the latter words slowly, and with a tremulous utterance.

  "As for what you shall do, my boy--serve the Lord, the Lord God ofIsrael, not Rome. For a child of Abraham there is no glory exceptin the Lord's ways, and in them there is much glory."

  "I may be a soldier then?" Judah asked.

  "Why not? Did not Moses call God a man of war?"

  There was then a long silence in the summer chamber.

  "You have my permission," she said, finally; "if only you servethe Lord instead of Caesar."

  He was content with the condition, and by-and-by fell asleep. Shearose then, and put the cushion under his head, and, throwing ashawl over him and kissing him tenderly, went away.