Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  “So I have heard you say,” said Khefren. “The thought is not new. Before you were as a nation we Egyptians expounded that through our learned priests. So do the Indus. So did the Chinese and many others. Do you think it unique? God, or Ptah, as we Egyptians call Him, loves—it is said—all His children and would redeem them. It is our obstinacy and our dull souls which reject Him. You new Christians speak of the Golden Rule, but long before your Messias spoke that to you your Jewish fathers declared, ‘What is hurtful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man.’ We Egyptians say, “That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self. The Indus say, Tn five ways should a man minister to his friends and familiars—by generosity, courtesy and benevolence, by treating them as he treats himself.’ Therefore, it is obvious that Ptah, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and gods and men, loves and teaches all His creatures.”

  He smiled and continued, “Is it not true, then, that your Messias belongs to all men, who recognize Him dimly in all their religions, as well as you Christians?”

  “True,” said Saul, and frowned, reflecting. Then he said, “But we all men to recognize the Messias fully and come to Him for their salvation and their change of soul.”

  Khefren said, “What is it that ails you, Saul ben Hillel?”

  Saul was vaguely affronted. He replied, “I have an itch of the body, and some boils on my back. I have had them for many weeks and they now interfere with my rest.”

  Khefren smiled again. “And you have not prayed them from your flesh?”

  Saul gave his sharp boisterous laugh and rose and accompanied the Egyptian to his pharmacy. He stripped his clothing from his broad back and Khefren looked upon the bleeding and inflamed soreness on his skin and the oozing of it. He took a large jar of some golden powder from his shelf and dusted it over the inflammation. At once the itch and heat and pain subsided and Saul gave a deep sigh of relief. Khefren poured some of the powder into a pouch and laid it near Saul’s hand.

  “This will ease you. But it will not cure you,” said the Egyptian. “The affliction is in your mind. Tell me. What is it in your life which so irritates and disturbs and exasperates you, that the heat of your thoughts and your anger torment your flesh? And destroy your hours of rest and appears in the form of pus?”

  Saul was startled. He knew that Jewish physicians had long expounded that the sores and agonies of the soul would often appear visibly in the flesh, and in madness. But he had forgotten. Slowly, he put on his garments, thinking. Then he said with that abrupt confiding manner of his, “My people vex me, for how often I explain, ‘As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive,’ they do not attempt to understand. Many believe that I mean that customary death of the body will not occur to them, if they profess the Messias and trust in His promises, and that they will live eternally in the world without first the intervention of normal expiring. Did not the Messias save them from the death of Adam? Therefore, they will not die! Oh, there are many such fallacies among my people, and I lose my patience and I brood and wonder if this generation will ever comprehend.”

  Khefren made a slight and indulgent gesture with his long and slender dark hand. “Why will you not accept the normal stupidity and blindness and obtuseness of man as part of his being? Why will you, yourself, not understand that few can comprehend you, and that others must be guided like little dull children? Did you think your Messias suddenly endowed all who listen to Him with extraordinary intelligence and understanding? Did you not say, yourself, that your Messias asked, ‘Who, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?’ In short, a man is born with inherent capacities, and if those capacities are small and feeble no ‘taking thought’ will increase them.”

  “We Jews believe that a man can indeed increase his wisdom by learning,” said Saul, uneasy again.

  “He can only understand to the limit of his capacity, and in the majority of men that capacity is meager,” said the Egyptian. “We, in Egypt, have a learned and aristocratic class of priests, for we are older than you and infinitely wiser, and for the simple we have amulets and prescribed invocations and gestures, but for the wiser by birth we have other words, and other rituals, and for the wisest we have introductions to the Mysteries. We, in mercy, understand that though all souls are equal before God, in the matter of the divine Law, every soul is unique and entirely different from all other souls, in stature, in wisdom, and in comprehension. Some souls remain children forever. Others grow, for they have the capacity to grow, given to them by Ptah, the Father Almighty. Woe to you Christians, Saul ben Hillel, if your teachers ever proclaim that all men are equal in measure of soul and understanding and intelligence! If that comes to pass, then your faith will disintegrate and confusion abound.” He smiled his sardonic smile. “I believe you should hearken to your Messias rather than to your own hopes, Saul ben Hillel. Then perhaps your afflictions will disappear. Do not expect more of the ordinary man than he has the endowment to give.”

  He walked with Saul to the atrium again. “It is sufficient, surely,” he said, “for a man to be harmless, and harmlessness is not an attribute of man. Rather, he is a wild beast. Teach him peace; teach him not to harm. That is a prodigious task in itself!”

  “I pray I can bring you to the Messias,” said Saul.

  The physician was both astonished and amused. “My dear friend!” he exclaimed. “We Egyptians knew of Him long before the Israelites heard of Him through their prophets! Of a certainty, in your ages of exile in Egypt your wise men absorbed the knowledge of Him by way of our priests and our wise men. Does not our Osiris, murdered by intransigent man, not rise when the spring is in spate and speak again to his people? Does he not offer again his salvation and his peace? Jehovah has a thousand names, and through each He speaks to His children. I urge you once more: Speak of love and harmlessness and peace to your people, and however you name Him, He is One. To each generation, to each people, He speaks eternally.”

  The Egyptian looked through the white portals of the atrium to the purple twilight. He said, “He is but One, blessed be His Name, and to those who adore Him, no matter the name they give Him, He is forever the same.”

  Saul’s heart swelled and he trembled. Before he could speak Khefren said, “Speak to the ignorant. Tell them of Him. For the world is full of Godless and wretched men, as always it will be, and take the slight harvest of men’s hearts with rejoicing, for even that harvest is blessed to Him.”

  He looked at Saul and his eyes became opaque. “I am subject to visions,” he said, “and often they are unwelcome. But I will tell you: There are races unknown to you now who will hear your voice through the ages, for never have they known the Holy One, and they live like beasts, worshiping animals and trees and stones, and the elements. To them will you bring your revelation, though they are not yet born. I tell you: The sun rises west.”

  Saul was tremendously moved. He said, “We are of the same people.”

  The Egyptian shook his head. “Ah, no. We Egyptians are of the Hebraic races. But you Jews are not. You are universal, and are of no race, or all. In that is your destiny and your despair and, perhaps, your ultimate triumph among those you call the heathen. For only the universal man can speak to all nations and to all races, and through you will men accept your Messias.”

  Seeing that Saul, dejected, shook his head the physician touched his shoulder with his hand. “Be not dismayed,” he said gently. “What began obscurely in dust and blood you will make glorious in the sight of men.”

  Again Saul shook his head, and now he bit his lip, and then he exclaimed, “How they insist, the foolish ones, that the Lord is a small sniveling person like themselves, and how they emphasize His meekness! He is not masculine, strong, powerful, massive and terrible in His wrath, a monumental figure! Ah, that diminishes them! They will not understand that His meekness consisted in offering Himself as the Lamb of God, without resistance, in their behalf. They insist on their o
wn meekness, and see it as holy stature instead of pusillanimity, because they lack strength of spirit. They make of their weakness a virtue, of their failings an offering, and they peek and peer modestly in what they believe is an imitation of the Divine Lord! Are these the warriors of God? No! They think servility is mildness, and timid speech praiseworthy, and lack of pride love. Above all, He desired to be adored by free men, free in their choice of Him, but these are not free!”

  “Ah,” said Khefren, “you are harsh,” but lines of laughter deepened about his eyes. Then he become sober. “I should like to warn you, my friend. Jews, wherever they live, move discreetly, in the majority, about the Romans. They are wise. They do not dispute with the Romans, or any man, except in the courts of law. They avert their heads when passing alien temples, but they do not spit upon its steps, nor do they speak in public contempt of those who bring incense and offerings to strange altars. They ask only that the same respect given by them to the religion of others be extended to them also, and few have challenged them. That, too, is wise.

  “But I have heard that your Christians are beginning to denounce ‘heathen gods’ before the very temple porticoes. I have heard that some have entered those temples and have overthrown the statues, before the faces of the worshipers. They dispute with those worshipers and frighten women and girls. They call down the wrath of God upon those who adore ‘false idols.’ Out of their weakness, as you call it, has come arrogance, and is not that always the story of weak men?

  “The Greeks laugh at their gods, but they feel that in the beauty and grace of their gods lies their own glory. The Romans do not believe in their gods, but the gods represent their country. A man’s pride in his past and in his nation is a powerful thing, and woe to that man who belittles it. Even now the Romans have begun to eye your Christians with disfavor, and the disfavor of a Roman can become dangerous—and fatal. Do your people court death and torture and exile zealously? No sane man does that. Therefore, warn your people to be temperate in their zeal, and not to offend, and not to insult the gods of others. In short, let them practice what they preach, and exercise a measure of tolerance.”

  Saul stared at him in consternation. “I have not heard of these things!”

  Nevertheless, they are true. The Romans are inclined to tolerance of religions, as you know, and there are Romans among your Christians, and Greeks also, and many others. But these are now more aggressive than your Jewish Christians! They are offending men where their emotions lie the deepest and are the most primal.”

  Saul’s back began to itch and heat again, and he moved his shoulders restlessly. “I have told them a thousand times or more that faith is a gift of God and that no man can force another to believe against his will. I have said to them, ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have faith, so that I could move mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing. Charity suffers long and is kind. Charity envies not, charity vaunts not itself, is not puffed up. Charity does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil. And now abide faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity.’ So I have spoken. Has it come to nothing?”

  “You are dealing with men, alas,” said Khefren.

  “I forget, always,” said Saul.

  Dispirited again, and again with considerable despair, he returned to his lonely little chamber in the poor inn, and sat down, his hands hanging between his knees, his head bent. Occasionally his old fiery anger against mankind seized him and shook him. Only last night had he admonished several of his people not to boast that they had the gift of tongues, and had been touched by Pentecostal fire. Worse, they insisted they could prophesy. They had gazed at him mutinously, though with their usual fear. “God has given to men many gifts, blessed be His Name,” he had said, “and none is poor in His sight. You who can teach are blest, those of you who can administer are also blest, and those who labor for God are blest, and some can only show in quiet lives and tender devotion and obscurity and love of neighbor Who has changed—their hearts. But is not that the greatest of blessedness? We are members of each other, and not one member is the lesser.”

  He saw, alas, that many desired, above all else, to be singular, to stand before others for their awe, because of implied superiority in their faith. Could it be that it was these who were beginning to provoke the Romans and those of other religions in Antioch, and perhaps in many scattered nations where they had gone to live and to preach? Saul shuddered. When Barnabas returned from the Temple, Saul questioned him. Barnabas’ cheerful face changed, but he said at once, “We must not forget their humanity.”

  With bitterness Saul replied, “Their ‘humanity’ can cost them their lives, or at the least the tolerance of others, and what will that avail them and the Church? I tell you, I am filled with foreboding.”

  “Let us not be distressed,” said the other man. But Saul had begun to smile grimly as he remembered, from far days, what Rabban Gamaliel had said, that God should be consulted before men offered martyrdom to Him, and that God did not seek victims, however devout, though He loved the intention. He, Saul, had felt rebellion at the Rabban’s words. Now he understood.

  He said to Barnabas, who was watching him anxiously, “I have medicine for my sores. Dust my back with it.” He smiled at Barnabas then and said, “It is my anger and my impatience with our people that has given me the boils of Job. What a generation is this!”

  Chapter 43

  “I HAVE fought the good fight,” said Saul to himself, “I have run the race.”

  He had just returned from a brief visit to Jerusalem where he had hotly engaged Simon Peter in the fulminating argument concerning heathen converts to the Faith. Simon Peter had insisted that “the heathen” must first become Jews before being admitted to Christianity, but Saul had prevailed in spite of the bitter antagonism of the Apostles, and their earlier open contempt of him. He saw that they still distrusted him, both Jews and Christians. To them he was still “the great renegade.” But he called upon God to sustain him and with his eloquence and the power of his compelling voice he had finally convinced Simon Peter and the others, though not without some dark glances and sullen grimaces.

  He wrote to a friend: “The Gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to me, as the Gospel of the circumcision was given to Peter, for He that wrought effectually in Peter to the Apostleship of the circumcision the Same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles.—I withstood Peter to the same, because he was to be blamed, for he did eat with the Gentiles but when they were come to him he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. I said to Peter, ‘If you, being a Jew, live after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners as the Gentiles.’” (Gal. 2)

  Faith, to Saul, was the only thing necessary for a man to have to be admitted to the worship of the Messias, and to the Law. For faith was a gift of God, and a man of faith had been marked as His own.

  In Antioch, he had at length prevailed on his people that they must not be intemperate in their actions and speeches to others, not antagonize men in an unseemly and unnecessary manner, in an effort to bring them to Christ. Zeal was splendid, but excess was dangerous both to the faith and to themselves. Rather, a man should labor diligently and speak kindly. By the time Saul had attained some success—but not until his own wild shows of anger and disgust—there were many in the Church of Antioch who were Gentiles of scores of races, and a considerable portion were men of learning and culture and wealth. They had come to listen to “the Jewish prophet,” out of idleness or curiosity, and they had remained to pray with him. For the
God of the Jews was not licentious, cruel, depraved and voluptuous, nor was He capricious and unstable, inclined to favor without reason and to revenge without reason. He was to be feared because He was the Almighty, and all things were in His hand, but He was not to be feared because He was intemperate and malicious and unpredictable or violent, as were their own gods. He could not be placated or cajoled by amulets, sacrifices or superstitions. He desired only contrition and a faith in Him, and on those who trusted Him—and even those who did not—He lavished mercy and lovingkindness and eternal happiness and justice. A God whom a man could trust! A God who moved in light, and not in darkness! A God who was as simple as water and as mysterious as all life and death! A God who cared about men! Was not that astounding—that a God should care about that miserable little creature who lived one day and was destroyed the next, seemingly as the grass died? He listened to the whisper of a child as intently as He listened to the cry of—a thousand men before His altar! None could escape His love and His salvation, if a man only accepted these treasures.

  To men who feared and distrusted their,’ own gods, who lived in terror of them, or who did not believe in them at all because of their wantonness and malice and cruelty toward each other and mankind, the message was unique, astonishing, dazzling, filled with hope, exhilarating, incredible.

  But Saul made Him credible to them. Even the cultured and the wise became convinced, though not as early as did the credulous and the humble. The Church in Antioch prospered. Then Saul knew in his soul that he must leave the Church there, for the sandy soil had been replaced by rock, priests had been ordained, converts were sought with love and responded. Truly, in much less than twenty years since the Crucifixion the harvest had increased and the laborers also, and the Gospel had spread even to Rome and Athens, in little quiet colonies, and to Egypt, and other lands. It insistently crept like a small, unassuming plant filled with purple blossoms, and it covered the aridity of the soil of men’s lives and made fragrant their arduous duties and more bearable their pain and their slavery under Rome and her taxes.