Saul of Tarsus

On a certain day in March of the year 36 A.D., a Levite, one of the Shoterim or Temple lictors, came down from Moriah, into the vale of Gihon, and entered the portal of the great college, builded in Jerusalem for the instruction of rabbis and doctors of Law in Judea.

With foot as rapid and as noiseless as that of a fox among the tombs, the Levite crossed the threshold into the great gloom of the interior. This way and that he turned his head, watchful, furtive, catching every obscure corner in the range of his glance.

He saw that three men sat within, two together, one a little apart from the others. From this to that one, the alert gaze slipped until it lighted upon a small, bowed shape in white garments. Then the Levite smiled, his lips moved and shaped a word of satisfaction, but no sound issued. Silently he flitted into an aisle which would lead him upon the two, and suddenly appeared before them.

The small bent figure made a nervous start, but the Levite bowed and rubbed his hands.

"Greeting, Rabbi Saul; God's peace attend thee. Be greeted, Rabbi Eleazar; peace to thee!"

Rabbi Eleazar raised a great head and looked with an unfavorable eye at the Levite; in it was to be read strong dislike of the Levite's stealthy manner.

"Greeting, Joel," he replied in a voice quite in keeping with his splendid bulk, "peace to thee. Yet take it not amiss if I suggest that since there is no warning in thy footfall or thy garments, thou shouldst be belled!"

The other had dropped back in his seat, and the Levite bowed again to him.

"I pray thy pardon, Rabbi Saul, but I came as I was sent-in haste."

"It is nothing, Joel," Saul answered. "Give us news of the High Priest's health."

"He continues in health, God be thanked, but his spirit was sorely tried-" He stopped abruptly to look, as if in question, at the man sitting apart in the shadows.

"Who is that?" he asked suspiciously.

"A pupil," was Eleazar's impatient reply. The Levite looked again, but, the twilight thwarting him, he hitched a slant shoulder and, passing to one of the windows, drew aside its heavy hanging. Instantly, a great golden beam shot into the cold chamber and illuminated it gloriously. Saul threw his hand over his eyes to shut out the blinding radiance. But the pupil, helped at his reading by the admitted light, straightened himself, glanced up a moment, and turned to his scroll without a word.

"A stranger," Joel whispered, coming back to the rabbis.

"What burden of mystery dost thou conceal, Joel?" Eleazar exclaimed. "Yonder man is an Essene; look about; the stones will take tongue and betray thee, sooner than he."

"Let me be sure, let me be sure!" Joel insisted stubbornly.

As if obedient to Eleazar, he cast an eye about the chamber.

The light which came in at the west was straight from the spring sun, moted and warm with benevolence. That which entered at the east was only a quivering reflection from the marble walls and golden gates of the Temple. The chamber was immense, shadowy and draughty, the floor of stone, the walls of Hermon's rock, relieved by massive arcades supported on pilasters, and friezes of such images as were hieratically approved. The ceiling was so lost in height and cold dusk that its structure could not be defined. At the end opposite the doors was the lectern of ivory and ebony, embellished with symbolical intaglios and inlaid with gold. Beside it stood the reader's chair, across which the rug had been dropped as he had put it off his knees. Before the lectern, across and down the great chamber, were ranges of carven benches, among which were lamps of bronze, darkened and green about the reliefs and corrugations on the bowls, depending from chains or set about on tripods.

But besides the three already noted, the Levite saw and expected to see no others. Eleazar regarded his ostentatious inspection of the room with disgust.

"Thou hast a burden on thy soul, Joel," Saul urged mildly. "Let us bear it with thee."

The Levite came close and bent over the rabbis.

"Question your souls, brethren," he said. "Hath Judea more to lose than it hath lost?" he asked in a lowered tone.

"Its identity," Eleazar responded shortly.

But the Levite looked expectantly at Saul.

"Its faith," Saul suggested quietly.

The Levite nodded eagerly.

"Its faith," Saul continued, as if speaking to himself, "and after that there is nothing more. Yea, restore unto it its kings and its dominions, yet withhold the faith and there is no Judea. Desolate it until the land is sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, so but the faith abide, Judea is Judea, glorified!"

"What then, O Rabbi," the Levite persisted, "if the land be sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, if the faith be abandoned-what then?"

"God can not perish," Eleazar put in. "Fear not; it can not come to pass."

"Nay, but evil can enter the souls of men and point them after false prophets so that God is forgotten," the Levite retorted. His lean figure bent at the hips and he thrust his face forward with triumph of prophecy on it. Saul looked at him.

"What hast thou to tell, Joel?" he asked with command in his voice. The Levite accepted the order as he had worked toward it-with energy.

"Listen, then," he began in a whisper. "Dost thou remember Him whom they crucified at Golgotha, a Passover, four years ago?"

Eleazar nodded, but Saul made no sign.

"Know ye that they killed the plant after it had ripened," the Levite hastened on. "The seed of His teaching hath spread abroad and wherever it lodgeth it hath taken root and multiplied. Wherefore, there is a multitude of offspring from the single stem."

Saul stood up. He did not gain much in stature by rising, but the temper of the man towered gigantic over the impatience of Eleazar and the craft of the Levite.

"What accusation is this that thou levelest at Judea?" he demanded.

"A truth!" Joel replied.

"That Israel hath a blasphemer among them, which hath been spared, concealed and not put away?" questioned Saul.

"Dare ye?" the Levite cried.

"Dare ye not!" Saul answered sternly. "It is the Law!"

The Levite came toward him. "Go thou unto the High Priest Jonathan," he whispered evilly; "he hath work for thee to do!"

Eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away. There was tense silence for a moment.

"Is there a specific transgression discovered?" Saul demanded.

The Levite weighed his answer before he gave it.

"Rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city preaching-"

"Rumor!" Saul exclaimed. "Hast rested on the testimony of rumor?"

"Can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily.

"By the sick!" was the retort. "Go on!"

"It is the High Priest's vow to attack it," Joel declared. "He hath no other thought. It is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday troubled them in the Cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine, preached the Nazarene's heresy."

"In the Cilician-in mine own synagogue!" Saul repeated, in amazement.

"In thine, in the Libertine, the Cyrenian and the Alexandrian."

"And they suffered him?" Saul persisted with growing earnestness.

"They did not understand him, then; he is but a new-comer from Galilee."

"And I was not there; I was not there!" Saul exclaimed regretfully. "What is he called?"

"Stephen."

There was a sound from the direction of the silent pupil. They looked that way to see that he had dropped his scroll and had sprung to his feet. The Levite dropped his head between his shoulders and scrutinized him sharply. But the young man had fixed his eyes upon Saul, as if waiting for his answer.

"Stephen of Galilee," the Levite added, watching the young man. "A Hellenist; and he wrapped his blasphemy so subtly in philosophy that none detected it until after much thought."

The young man turned his face toward the speaker and a glimmer of anger showed in his black eyes.

"It is bold blasphemy which ventures into a synagogue," Saul said half to himself.

"Ah! thou pointest to the sign of peril," the Levite resumed. "Boldness is the banner of strength; strength is the fruit of numbers; and numbers of apostates will be the ruin of Judea and the forgetting of God!"

Saul caught up his scrip which lay beside him, but Eleazar continued to gaze at the beam of light penetrating the chamber.

"Wherefore the High Priest is troubled, and, laying aside all his private ambitions, henceforward he will devote himself to the preservation of the faith," the Levite continued.

"Which means," Eleazar interrupted, "the persecution of the apostate."

The Levite spread out his hands and lifted his shoulders. The Rabbi Eleazar forged too far ahead.

"It is our duty, Eleazar," Saul said, "to discover if this Galilean preaches heresy. Let us go to the synagogue."

Eleazar arose, a towering man, broad, heavy and slow, but his rising was as the rising of opposition.

"I am enlisted in the teaching of the Law, not in the suppression of heresy," he said bluntly. "Furthermore, my work here is not yet complete. Wilt thou excuse me, my brother?"

"Let me not keep thee from thy duty," Saul answered courteously.

"Joel! Come with me," Eleazar commanded, and together the two disappeared into the interior of the college.

Then the young man who had held his place came out of the shadows into the broad beam of the sun, which fell now over Saul.

"Peace to thee, Saul," he said; "peace and greeting." The voice, in contrast to the tones of the men who had lately discussed, was very calm and level, restrained by cultivation, yet one which is never characteristic of an undecided nature.

"Thou, Marsyas!" Saul exclaimed in sudden recognition. He extended his hands to meet the other's in a greeting that was more affectionate than conventional. The young man with sudden impulsiveness raised the hands and pressed them to his breast.

"Saul! Saul!" he repeated with a quiver of emotion in his voice.

"And none hath supplanted me in thy loves, Marsyas?" Saul smiled. "Art thou come hither for instruction? Am I to have thee by me now in Jerusalem?"

The glow of warmth in the rabbi's manner did not contribute its confidence to the young man. He seemed not less troubled than moved. With searching eyes, he looked down from his superior height into Saul's face. As the two stood together, physical extremes could not have been more perfect.

The rabbi was not well-formed, and his frame had a note of feebleness in its make-up in spite of its youth and flesh. The face was pale, the eyes so deep-set as to appear sunken, the hair, thin, curling and lightly silvered, the beard, short, full and touched with the same early frost. Though no recent alien blood ran in his veins, his features were only moderately characteristic of the sons of Jacob. He was not erect, and the stoop in his shoulders was more extreme than the mere relaxation from rigidity, yet less pronounced than actual curvature. The veins on the backs of his hands stood up from the refined whiteness of the flesh, and when his head turned, the great artery in his throat could be seen irregularly beating. It was the physique of a man not only weak but sapped by a subtle infirmity.

He wore the head-dress and the voluminous white robes of a rabbi, girded with the blue and white cord of his calling. But his class as a Pharisee was marked by the heavy undulating fringes at the hem of his garment, and by the little case of calf-skin framing a parchment lettered in Hebrew which was bound across his forehead. Herein, by fringe, phylactery and the traditional colors, he published his submission to the minuti? of the Law.

In so much the rabbi could have had twenty counterparts over Judea, but his aggressive nature stamped him with an individuality which has had no equal in all time. Over his countenance was a fine assumption of humility curiously inconsistent with a consciousness of excellence which made an atmosphere about him that could be felt. Yet, holding first place over these conflicting attributes was the stamp of tremendous mental power, and a heart-whole sweetness that was irresistible. The union of these four characteristics was to produce a man that would hold fast to theory, though all fact arise and shouted it down; who would maintain form, though the spirit had in horror long since fled the shape. Thus, inflexibly fixed in his convictions, he was unlimited in his capacity for maintaining them. In short, he was a leader of men, a zealot, a formalist and an inquisitor-one of great mentality dogmatized, of great spirit prejudiced, of immense capabilities perverted.

Such was Saul of Tarsus.

But the other was a Jew of blood so pure, of type so pronounced, that the man of mixed races before him appeared wholly foreign. His line had descended from the persistent love of Jacob for Rachel, through the tents of them that slew the Midianitish women in the wilderness, through the households of Esdras and the camps of Judas Maccab?us.

He was above average height, and built ruggedly, as were Judah the lion, and Jacob who wrestled with the angel. One of in-door habit, he was fair on the forehead, under the soft young beard and the shining black curls at his temples. But his cheeks were crimson, his eyes intensely black and sparkling, his teeth, glittering ranges of shaded ivory. And the bold strength of his profile and the brilliance of his color seemed finished by the deep cleft distinctly discernible.

On his face was written an attribute common among men of a time of Messianic hopes and crises. Asceticism with its blank purity of brow set him apart from the sordid souls in his walk. Yet about him there seemed to be an atmosphere surcharged with physical radiations, with human electricity that fairly sparkled in its strength.

Even Saul, his long-time friend, on this occasion of sudden meeting, remarked this equal power of body and spirit. The Pharisee glanced at the young man's garments,-simple robes without fringes, without gaud, and white as the snows of Hermon.

"Strange," the Pharisee said after his peculiar manner of talking with himself, "strange that thou shouldst elect to be an Essene." A little proud surprise appeared on Marsyas' face.

"I can not be anything else," the young man answered.

"Thou hast not ventured. But, nevertheless, thou wilt be noted in the college. The Essenes are very few these days in Jerusalem; En-Gadi receives them all. And thou art a doctor of Laws-a master Essene. How long wilt thou study here?"

"Five years, Rabbi."

Yet the young man was at least twenty-five years of age. What course of instruction was it which carried a man into middle life before it was finished? What but the tremendous complexities of the Mosaic and the Oral Law. But these things had been taught the young man in the forecourt of the little synagogue in Nazareth where he was born. So, because his learning extended beyond the reach of the provincial Essenic philosopher who had taught him in his youth, the young man had quitted the little hill town in Galilee to come to the feet of the master Essene in the great college of Jerusalem.

To be an Essene was to live a celibate under the regime of community laws, under a common roof, at a common board; to be bodily and spiritually spotless, to believe in the resurrection of the soul, the brotherhood of man, and the frailty and the incontinence of women; to accept no hospitality from one not an Essene and to own no possessions apart from the common ownership of the order. But to be an Essenic doctor was to be the most ascetic scholar and the most scholarly ascetic in the world, at that time.

But Marsyas had no thought on Saul's contemplation of him.

"I heard the talk of the Levite," he said. "Because it concerns me much, I could not shut mine ears against it. I, too, have heard the creed of the Nazarenes."

"How, Marsyas? Harkened unto the heretics?"

"I have heard their creed," he persisted in his calm way. "It differs little from the teachings of mine own order, the Essenes, except that they believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and the receptiveness of the Gentile."

"And thou callest that a little difference?"

"Not so great that one going astray after the Nazarenes could not be satisfied with the Essenes, if he were obliged to give up his apostasy. I seek a remedy."

"Moses supplied the remedy," Saul averred with meaning.

"The Essenes are not inflicters of punishment," was the even reply.

The Pharisee made a conciliatory gesture. "It is then only a discussion of the practices of my class and of thine."

But Marsyas was not satisfied.

"Thou knowest Stephen?" he asked after a pause.

"Stephen of Galilee? Only by report."

"Perchance, then, thou knowest Galilee," the Essene resumed after a short pause. "Galilee that sitteth between Phoenicia the menace and Samaria the pollution, and is not soiled; that standeth between the Middle Sea, the power, and the Jordan, the subject, and is not humbled. She is Israel's brawn, not easily governed of the mind which is enthroned Jerusalem.

"We are rustics in Galilee, tillers of the soil, mountaineers and fishers, simple rugged folk who live in the present, expecting miracles, seeing signs, discovering prophets and wonders. We are patriots, bound and hooped against an alien, but bursting wide with whatever chanceth to ferment within us. Let there but arise a Galilean who hath a gift or a grudge or a devil, and proclaim himself anointed, and he can gather unto himself a following that would assail C?sar's stronghold, did he say the word."

He paused and seemed to recall what he had said.

"Yet, we are good Jews," he added hastily, "faithful followers of the Law and such as Israel might select to die singly for Israel's sake. No Galilean is ashamed of himself except when he permits himself to be led so far into folly that he can not turn back."

The Pharisee foresaw intuitively the young man's climax.

"The Law does not remit punishment for blasphemy, even if a soul turn back from its folly," he observed.

Marsyas' face became grave and he gazed at the place on the wall where quivered the reflection from the splendors of the Temple.

"Stephen is my friend," he said earnestly, "a simple soul, generous, fervid, and a true lover of God."

"If he be such, he is safe," Saul replied.

The young man fingered the scarf that girded him.

"The brothers at En-Gadi would receive him," he said.

"What need of him to retire from the world if he be a good Jew?" Saul persisted.

Again the young man hesitated. Saul was driving him into a declaration that he would have led forth gradually. Then he came to the Pharisee and laid a persuading band on his arm.

"Go not to the synagogue," he entreated. "Wait a little!"

"Wait in the Lord's business?" Saul asked mildly.

"Be not hastier than the chastening of the Lord; if He bears with Stephen, so canst thou a little longer. Give love its chance with Stephen before vengeance undoes him wholly!"

"Marsyas," Saul protested in a tone of kindly remonstrance, "thou dost convict him by thy very concern."

"No!" the young Essene declared, pressing upon the Pharisee in passionate earnestness. "I am only troubled for him. Let me go first and understand him, for it seems that there is doubt in the hearts of his accusers, and after that-"

"Thine eye shall not pity him," Saul repeated in warning.

"Saul! Saul! He is my beloved friend!"

"Moses prepared us for such a sorrow as apostasy among those whom we love. What says the Lawgiver-'thy friend, which is as thine own soul, thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death!'"

The lifted hands of the young Essene dropped as if they had been struck down.

"Death!" he repeated, retreating a step. "Wilt thou kill him?"

"I am more thy friend, Marsyas," the Pharisee went on, "because I am zealous for the Law. The heresy is infectious and thou art no more safe from it than any other man. And I would rather sit in judgment over Stephen, whom I do not know, than over thee, who art dear to me as a brother."

The young man drew near again.

"Dear as a brother!" he said. "Stephen is that to me. Even now didst thou ask if any had supplanted thee in my loves. No; yet my loves have broadened, so that I can take another into my heart. The Lord God be merciful unto me, that I may not be driven to choose one, for defense against the other! Even as ye both love me, love one another! Saul! Thou wast my earlier friend! I can no more endure Stephen's peril than I can uproot thee from my heart!"

Saul flinched before the concealed intimation in the words. A wave of pallor succeeded by hardness swept over his face, and Marsyas, observing the change, seized the Tarsian's hands between his own.

"Wait until I have seen him," he besought, "and if there be any taint in his fidelity to the faith, I shall stop at no sacrifice to save him. He is, if at all, only momentarily drawn aside, and as the Lord God daily forgives us our sins, let us forgive a brother-"

Saul tried to draw away, but the young Essene's imploring hands held his in a desperate clasp.

"I will give up mine instruction," he swept on. "I will retire into En-Gadi and take him with me! I will give over everything and become one of their husbandmen; I will have no aim for myself, but for Stephen! And if I fail I will take sentence with him! Wait! Wait! Let me return to Nazareth and get my patrimony! I will come then and take him at once to En-Gadi! Saul!"

But Saul threw off the beseeching hands and stepped back from the young man. The two gazed at each other, the Pharisee to discover a crisis in the Essene's look; the Essene to see immovability in the Pharisee.

Then the distress in Marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned in his black eyes. He straightened himself and stretched out a hand.

"I have spoken!" he said. Turning purposefully away, he went back to his place and took up his scroll. For a moment he held it, his eyes on the pavement. Slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll dropped-dropped as if he had done with it.

Catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and Saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad.

Joel came out of the interior of the building.

"I will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered.

The Pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and, inclining his head, led the way out.

At the threshold of the porch he halted. In the street opposite two young men were walking slowly. One was slight, young, graceful and simply clad in a Jewish smock. The other was Marsyas, the Essene, who went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion. The faces of the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of living, and youthful purity of heart. But the expression of the slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident.

As Marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination, not entirely earthly.

Joel seized Saul's arm, and held it while the two approached, unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch.

"That is he," he whispered avidly. "That is he! Stephen, the apostate!"

Stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the Pharisee's eye, returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised his face to Marsyas and so they passed.

The pallor on Saul's face deepened.