The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 52

GEORGE CROLY

Salathiel, or Tarry Thou Till I Come!

George Croly, the author of "Salathiel," was born at Dublin on August 17, 1780, and became a clergyman of the Church of England. After a short time as curate in the north of Ireland he came to London and devoted himself chiefly to literary pursuits. In 1835 he was presented to the valuable living of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London, by Lord Brougham, where his eloquent preaching attracted large congregations. It was a saying among Americans of the period, "Be sure and hear Croly!" Croly was a scholar, an orator, and a man of incredible energy. Poems, biographies, dramas, sermons, novels, satires, magazine articles, newspaper leaders, and theological works were dashed off by his facile pen; and, according to Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, he was great in conversation. Croly's _chef d'oeuvre_ is "Salathiel," which, published in 1829, created a prodigious sensation, Salathiel being the character better known as the Wandering Jew. The description of the fall of Jerusalem is a wonderful piece of sustained eloquence, hardly to be squalled in romantic writings. Croly died on November 24, 1860.

_I.--Immortality on Earth_

"_Tarry thou till I come_!" The words shot through me. I felt them like an arrow in my heart. The troops, the priests, the populace, the world, pa.s.sed from before my senses like phantoms.

Every fibre of my frame quivers as I still hear the echo of the anathema that sprang first from my furious lips, the self-p.r.o.nounced ruin, the words of desolation, "His blood be upon us, and our children!"

But in the moment of my exultation I was stricken. He who had refused an hour of life to the victim was, in terrible retribution, condemned to know the misery of life interminable. I heard through all the voices of Jerusalem--I should have heard through all the thunders of heaven, the calm, low voice, "Tarry thou till I come!"

I felt at once my fate. I sprang away through the shouting hosts as if the avenging angel waved his sword above my head. I was never to know the shelter of the grave! Immortality on earth! The perpetual compulsion of existence in a world made for change! I was to survive my country.

Wife, child, friend, even to the last being with whom my heart could imagine a human bond, were to perish in my sight. I was to know no limit to the weight already crushing me. The guilt of life upon life, the surges of an unfathomable ocean of crime were to roll in eternal progress over my head. Immortality on earth!

Overwhelmed with despair, I rushed through Jerusalem, crowded with millions come to the Pa.s.sover, and made my way through the Gate of Zion to the open country and the mountains that were before me, like a barrier shutting out the living world. There, as I lay in an agony of fear, my soul seemed to be whirled on the wind into the bosom of a thundercloud. I felt the weight of the rolling vapours. I saw a blaze. I was stunned by a roar that shook the firmament.

When I recovered it was to hear the trumpet which proclaims that the first daily sacrifice is to be offered. I was a priest; this day's service fell to me; I dared not shrink from the duty which appalled me!

Humanity drove me first to my home, where to my unspeakable relief I found my wife and child happy and unharmed; then I went to the Temple, and began my solemn duties. I was at the altar, the Levite at my side holding the lamb, when suddenly in rushed the high priest, his face buried in the folds of his cloak, and, grasping the head of the lamb, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife from the Levite, plunged it into the animal's throat, and ran with b.l.o.o.d.y hands and echoing groans to the porch of the Holy House. I hastened up the steps after him, and entered the sanctuary.

But--what I saw there I have no power to tell. Words were not made to utter it. Before me moved things mightier than of mortal vision, thronging shapes of terror, mysterious grandeur, essential power, embodied prophecy. On the pavement lay the high priest, his lips strained wide, his whole frame rigid and cold as a corpse. And the Veil was rent in twain!

Fleeing from the Temple, I came into a world of black men. The sun, which I had seen like a fiery buckler hanging over the city, was utterly gone. As I looked into this unnatural night, the thought smote me that I had brought this judgment on the Holy City, and I formed the determination to fly from my priesthood, my kindred, and my country, and to bear my doom in some barren wilderness.

I ran from the Temple, where priests clung together in pale terror, found my wife and child, and bore them away through the panic-stricken city. As we journeyed a yell of universal terror made me turn my eyes to Jerusalem. A large sphere of fire shot through the heavens, casting a pallid illumination on the myriads below. It stopped above the city, and exploded in thunder, flashing over the whole horizon, but covering the Temple with a blaze which gave it the aspect of metal glowing in a furnace. Every pillar and pinnacle was seen with a lurid and terrible distinctness. The light vanished. I heard the roar of earthquake; the ground rose and heaved under my feet. I heard the crash of buildings, the fall of fragments of the hills and, louder than both, the groans of the mult.i.tude. The next moment the earth gave way, and I was caught up in a whirlwind of dust and ashes.

_II.--The Son of Misfortune_

It was in Samaria I woke. Miriam, my wife, was at my side. A troop of our kinsmen, returning from the city, where terror suffered few to remain, had discovered us, and brought us with them on their journey.

On this pilgrimage to Naphtali, my native home, my absence from prayer and my sadness struck all our kinsmen; and Eleazer, brother of Miriam, questioned me thereon. In my bitterness I said to him that I had renounced my career among the rulers of Israel. Instead of anger or surprise, his face expressed joy. He pointed out to me the tomb of Isaiah, to which we were approaching. "There lies," said he, "the heart which neither the desert nor the dungeon, nor the teeth of the lion, nor the saw of Mana.s.seh could tame--the denouncer of our crimes, the scourge of our apostasy, the prophet of that desolation which was to bow the grandeur of Judah to the grave."

He drew a copy of the Scriptures from his bosom, and read the famous Haphtorah. "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty, that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows!" He stopped, laid his hand upon my arm, and asked, "Of whom hath the prophet spoken? Him that _is to come_, still _to come?_" Then he left me.

Some years pa.s.sed away; the burden remained upon my soul. One day, as I dwelt among my kinsmen in Naphtali, I was watching a great storm, when suddenly there stood before me a spirit, accursed and evil, Epiphanes, one of those spirits of the evil dead who are allowed from time to time to reappear on earth.

"Power you shall have, and hate it," he announced; "wealth and life, and hate them. You shall be the worm among a nation of worms--you shall be steeped in poverty to the lips--you shall undergo the bitterness of death, until----Come," he cried suddenly, "son of misfortune, emblem of the nation, that living shall die, and dying shall live; that, trampled by all, shall trample on all; that, bleeding from a thousand wounds, shall be unhurt; that, beggared, shall wield the wealth of nations; that, without a name, shall sway the council of kings; that, without a city, shall inhabit in all the kingdoms; that, scattered like the dust, shall be bound together like the rock; that, perishing by the sword, chain, famine, and fire, shall be imperishable, unnumbered, glorious as the stars of heaven."

I was caught up and swept towards Jerusalem. It was the twilight of a summer evening. Town and wall lay bathed in a sea of purple; the Temple rose from its centre like an island of light; the host of Heaven came riding up the blue fields alone; all was the sweetness, calm, and splendour of a painted vision. As the night deepened, a murmur from the city caught my ear; it grew loud, various, wild; it was soon mixed with the clash of arms; trumpets rang, torches blazed along battlements and turrets; the roar of battle rose, deepened into cries of agony, swelled into furious exultation. "Behold," said the possessed, "these are but the beginnings of evil!" I looked up; the spirit was gone. In another minute I was plunging into the valley, and rushing forward to the battle.

From that moment I became a chieftain of Israel, and as Prince of Naphtali led my people against the legions of Rome. I came to be a priest, I became a captain. I was ever in the midst of battle; I was cast into dungeons; brought to the cross; cast among lions; shipwrecked, driven out to sea on a blazing trireme; accused before Nero and t.i.tus; exposed a thousand times to death; and yet ever at the extreme moment some mysterious hand interfered between my life and its destruction. I could not die.

_III.--The Abomination of Desolation_

And through all these awful years of incessant warfare I was now lifted up on a wave of victory to heights of dazzling glory, and now plunged down into the abysm of defeat. I saw my wife and children torn from me; restored, only to be dragged away again. I saw Rome driven from the Holy City, only to see her return in triumph. And all through these maddening vicissitudes, suspected by my own people, and knowing my own infamy, I heard the voice, "Tarry thou till I come!"

The fall of our ill.u.s.trious and unhappy city was supernatural. During the latter days of the siege, a hostility, to which that of man was as the grain of sand to the tempest that drives it on, overpowered our strength and senses. Fearful shapes and voices in the air; visions startling us from our short and troubled sleep; lunacy in its most hideous forms; sudden death in the midst of vigour; the fury of the elements let loose upon our unsheltered heads; we had every evil and terror that could beset human nature, but pestilence, the most probable of all in a city crowded with the famishing, the diseased, the wounded, and the dead. Yet, though the streets were covered with the unburied; though every wall and trench was teeming; though six hundred thousand corpses lay flung over the ramparts, and naked to the sun--pestilence came not. But the abomination of desolation, the pagan standard, was fixed; where it was to remain until the plough pa.s.sed over the ruins of Jerusalem.

On this fatal night no man laid his head upon his pillow. Heaven and earth were in conflict. Meteors burned above us; the ground shook under our feet; the volcano blazed; the wind burst forth in irresistible blasts, and swept the living and the dead in whirlwinds far off into the desert. Thunder pealed from every quarter of the heavens. Lightning, in immense sheets, withering eye and soul, burned from the zenith to the ground, and marked its track by forests on flame, and the shattered summits of hills.

Defence was unthought of; for the mortal enemy had pa.s.sed from the mind.

Our hearts quaked from fear, but it was to see the powers of heaven shaken. All cast away the shield and the spear, and crouched before the descending judgment. Our cries of remorse, anguish, and horror were heard through the uproar of the storm. We howled to the caverns to hide us; we plunged into the sepulchres, to escape the wrath that consumed the living.

I knew the cause, the unspeakable cause; knew that the last hour of crime was at hand. A few fugitives, astonished to see one man not sunk into the lowest feebleness of fear, besought me to lead them into safety. I said they were to die, and pointed them to the hallowed ground of the Temple. More, I led them towards it myself. But advance was checked. Piles of cloud, whose darkness was palpable even in the midnight, covered the holy hill. I attempted to pa.s.s through it, and was swept downward by a gust that tore the rocks in a flinty shower around me.

While I lay helpless, I heard the whirlwind roar through the cloudy hill; and the vapours began to revolve. A pale light, like that of the rising moon, quivered on their edges; and the clouds rose, and rapidly shaped themselves into the forms of battlements and towers. Voices were heard within, low and distant, yet strangely sweet. Still the l.u.s.tre brightened, and the airy building rose, tower on tower, and battlement on battlement. In awe we knelt and gazed upon this more than mortal architecture. It stood full to earth and heaven, the colossal image of the first Temple. All Jerusalem saw the image; and the shout that, in the midst of their despair, ascended from its thousands and tens of thousands told what proud remembrances were there. But a hymn was heard, that might have hushed the world. Never fell on mortal ear sound so majestic and subduing, so full of melancholy and grandeur and command.

The vast portal opened, and from it marched a host such as man had never seen before, such as man shall never see but once again; the guardian angels of the city of David! They came forth glorious, but with woe in their steps, tears flowing down their celestial beauty. "Let us go hence," was their song of sorrow. "Let us go hence," was announced by the echoes of the mountains.

The procession lingered on the summit. The thunder pealed, and they rose at the command, diffusing waves of light over the expanse of heaven.

Then the thunder roared again; the cloudy temple was scattered on the winds; and darkness, the omen of her grave, settled upon Jerusalem.

_IV.--The Hour of Doom_

I was roused by the voice of a man. "What!" said he, "poring over the faces of dead men, when you should be foremost among the living? All Jerusalem in arms, and yet you scorn your time to gain laurels?" I sprang up, and drew my scimitar, for the man was--Roman.

"You should know me," he said calmly; "it is some years since we met, but we have not been often asunder."

"Are you not a Roman?" I exclaimed. He denied that nationality, and offered me his Roman trappings, cuira.s.s and falchion, saying they would help me to money, riot, violence, and vice in the doomed city; "and,"

said he, "what else do nine-tenths of mankind ask for in their souls?"

He tore his helmet from his forehead, and, with a start of inward pain, flung it to a measureless distance in the air. I beheld--Epiphanes! "I told you," he said, "that this day would come. One grand hope was given to your countrymen; they cast it from them! Ages on ages shall pa.s.s before they learn the loftiness of that hope, or fulfill the punishment of that rejection. Yet, in the fullness of time, light shall break upon their darkness. They shall ask: Why are barbarians and civilised alike our oppressors? Why do contending faiths join in crushing us alone? Why do realms, distant as the ends of the earth, unite in scorn of us?"

"Man of terrible knowledge," I demanded, "tell me for what crime this judgment comes?"

"There is no name for it," he said, with solemn fear.

"Is there no hope?" said I, trembling.

"Look to that mountain," was the answer, as he pointed to Moriah. "It is now covered with war and slaughter. But upon that mountain shall yet be enthroned a Sovereign, before whom the sun shall hide his head. From that mountain shall light flow to the ends of the universe, and the government shall be of the everlasting."

In a few minutes he had carried me to the city, placed me on a battlement, and had disappeared.

Below me war raged in its boundless fury. The Romans had forced their way; the Jews were fighting like wild beasts. When the lance was broke, the knife was the weapon; when the knife failed, they tore with their hands and teeth. But the Romans advanced against all. They advanced till they were near the inner temple. A scream of wrath and agony at the possible profanation of the Holy of Holies rose from the mult.i.tude. I leaped from the battlement, called upon Israel to follow me, and drove the Romans back.

But Jerusalem was marked for ruin. A madman, prophesying the succour of heaven, prevented Israel from surrendering, and thus saving the Temple.

Infuriated by his words, the populace kept up the strife, and the Temple burst into flames. The fire sprang through the roof, and the whole of its defenders, to the number of thousands, sank into the conflagration.

In another minute the inner temple was on fire. I rushed forward, and took my post before the veil of the portico, to guard the entrance with my blood.

But the legions rushed onward, crying that "they were led by the Fates,"