Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  It was into this temple that a number of Christians roared one sunset, when some of the rheumatic old captains and centurions were paying honor to Augustus and their nation, and not only screamed “Woe!” to those present before the altar, but seized and hurled down the statue of the dead Caesar. The translucent alabaster, beautifully chiseled, smashed to fragments on the gold and black marble of the floor, carrying the altar with it in the sound of thunder and destruction, and the altar lights leaped up amid the tangle of silk like veritable flames out of Hades, perfumed with incense and burning flowers. The priests rushed in horror to survey the ruins, and they lifted their hands and cried to the aghast worshipers, “Let this infamy be avenged, or we are not Romans, but only asses and dogs!”

  The Romans, being tolerant and cynical toward their gods, had overlooked the former excesses of the Christians, despite protests from local inhabitants of Tarsus. Who cared about Isis and Cybele and Osiris and Horus and the multitude of other Eastern gods? But when Caesar Augustus had been attacked the patience and tolerance of the Romans came to a cold and vengeful end. Religion might be attacked, for every priest—as every one knew—believed that only he had the truth. But an attack on Augustus was an attack on Rome herself, a flouting of her authority and rule and law, a display of enormous contempt for all that was Rome. The centurions and the generals and the captains and the soldiers came in a body to the legate and demanded justice and vengeance on that “Jewish sect,” including all the other Jews in Tarsus, Had they not wrought infamy on Rome? Were Romans meek donkeys that they should be openly defamed and ridiculed? Dishonor demanded to be washed out in blood. The noble history of Rome had been spat upon, reviled, and with it all her sons. Worse still, if the desecraters were not apprehended at once, and punished, then Rome might as well furl her banners and slink back behind her walls and surrender to the barbarians, and let the orderly world collapse into shrieking chaos.

  The legate, a fat and peaceful man, hated controversy, so he deftly asked the soldiers what they would suggest. They suggested that the Jewish-Christian community be fined a sum sufficient to replace the holy statue, and that they then be commanded to adore it. This seemed eminently reasonable to the legate who called the leaders of the Jewish and Christian community to have an audience with him. He said to them, “Rome is a mighty and pacific city and her legions roam the world to maintain her Pax Romana and her law. Members of your sects have defiled and destroyed a sacred statue to the divinity, Augustus Caesar, in defiance of the ordinances of Rome that all religions must be respected and revered. You must pay in gold for the restoration of this statue and the other destruction wrought upon the temple, and then after that your people must adore the divinity one day a week, man, woman and child, cripple or aged, and make a just sacrifice in his name on the day designated.

  The Jewish Community and the Christian agreed to the restoration of the statue. One rabbi and one elder pleaded, “These were delirious youths and we disclaim them and their shameful violence, and if they become known to us we shall punish them. It is very possible that these malcontents are not true believers, for if they were, they would have honored the law of respect for others and their religion and their opinions. It is also possible that they are haters of mankind and wish to incite brother against brother for their own obscure and evil purposes.”

  “I have heard,” said the legate, “that the Christians are haters of men.”

  “We are lovers of men,” said the Christian elders, turning very pale. “It was so commanded by God, blessed be His Name, under the Mosaic Law, and by His Messias.”

  “We have lived in peace with Rome,” said the Jewish rabbis, turning even more pale. “It is true that we have our Zealots and our Essenes, as the Christians have their excessive malcontents, but we have not approved them.”

  The legate was becoming impatient. “I do not understand the Jewish sects, nor do I wish to understand,” he said. “As a Roman, however, I honor your religion. But in turn you must honor mine. You must adore the statue of the divine Augustus Caesar when it has been procured with your money. I have spoken, and will speak no more.”

  The Jewish and Christian leaders frantically assured each other that with the restoration of the statue the legate would forget that he had commanded public adoration of it by the Jewish and Christian communities. But their hope was in vain, as all hope of man must be, for the Roman soldiers would not permit the legate to forget, for the honor of Rome must not be humiliated lest all subject nations should hear of this and be defiant also. So a day was proclaimed when the Jewish and Christian communities must adore the statue, and those refusing to do so would be severely punished as rebels against Rome, and traitors.

  Those wealthy enough among both Jews and Christians quietly departed for long sojourns in other countries, for their health, and those who had no firm faith at all accompanied them, or decided that their religion was worth a simple reverence to the statue, with interior reservations, for the sake of peace and safety and tranquillity. “After all,” they said to each other, “have we not been forced through the centuries to worship Baal and Moloch and other heathen gods, and have we not, on the Day of Atonement, disavowed those vows which we were forced to utter, and were forgiven by God, blessed be His Name?”

  But the men of stronger faith, both Jews and Christians, declared that they would prefer death to the worship of false idols, and they let their resolution be well known throughout Tarsus. They were vehement in their public utterances, and in the synagogues. This inflamed the soldiers, and the populace also who had never loved the Jews and particularly despised the Christians, the alleged haters of joy and gods and life and men. To them there was no distinction at all between the orthodox Jews and the Christians. They were Jews together, and everyone knew that the Jews were a contentious people. That there were Christians who were Greeks and Syrians and Cilicians and Egyptians and Persians and even Romans was either ignored or unknown to the rabble.

  So on one hot Sabbath evening when the nearest and largest synagogue was filled to the doors with both Jews and Christians, worshiping their one God together, the foot soldiers and scores of slavering incendiaries and lusters after blood gathered before the synagogue and set it afire, first barricading the doors so that none could leave. The windows were mere slits in the thick stone walls, so escape there was impossible. The dome of the synagogue became incandescent and from beneath it rose desperate cries and agonized prayers.

  Lucanus, overcome, could not continue. He bent his head and wept, and there was only the sound of his weeping in the sweltering little chamber, and the weeping of Timothy. But Saul sat rigidly upright and stared at the cracked plaster wall and his face was the face of a dead man.

  He said, “Continue. I know my son, Boreas, is dead, and that you came to tell me.” His voice was calm and lifeless.

  “It is true,” said Lucanus, when he could control himself. “And his young wife, Tamara bas Judah, died also, and their little children, and all of the house of Judah ben Isaac, and the wife of your old tutor, Aristo, and two hundred others.

  Boreas—he attempted to save his infant daughter, and hoped that one outside would be merciful, and he thrust her through one larger slit—”

  “And the child was murdered also,” said Saul.

  Lucanus could not speak. The silence in the room was like the silence of death. Then Lucanus faltered, “Your tutor, Aristo, was an old man. I must tell you all. When his wife died in that fire, he hanged himself. All that you have loved in Tarsus, Saul, has perished.”

  Saul turned his great leonine head and gazed fixedly and without tears at the candle which fumed and burned redly on the table near his shoulder. He might have been reflecting or indifferent.

  “I am a Christian, but I am also a man,” said Lucanus, and now his voice was low and baneful. “One of those who perished was the beloved only daughter of the legate, himself. He had not known that the maiden and her mother were Christians, recently baptized. Four wive
s of the centurions and captains were incinerated. Their husbands had not known that the women were Christians. Those incendiaries and their inciters have been arrested, and they will die for their crimes.”

  Saul rose from his bed like a man hypnotized and he sought his dagger and he slashed his garments slowly and carefully. Then he sat down in a far corner and bent his head and began the long lamentation for the dead, uttering, “The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be—” But he could not say the final words and could only rock on his buttocks, groaning like an animal that has been mortally wounded, until the very walls echoed his groaning.

  “Blessed be the Name of the Lord,” said Timothy in a broken voice, but Saul did not repeat it.

  Then Lucanus rose and went to Saul and stood over him and said in a deep and shaking voice, “‘I am the Resurrection and the Life—’”

  When Saul did not heed him the physician knelt before him and took him in his arms. But with a convulsive gesture, such as a dying man gives in his extremity, Saul pushed him from him. Then he fell face down on the floor as if he had died, and the dreadful groaning ceased.

  Together Lucanus and Timothy lifted the unconscious man to his bed, and he lay there and the physician felt his weak and staggering pulse and wiped away the icy sweat which gathered on his face. And Lucanus remembered how he had stood outside the synagogue, listening to the screams of children and their mothers and had watched the walls finally fall in mercy upon them in a last and terrible explosion of scarlet flame. The physician found it in his heart to hate again, even more fiercely than he had hated on that appalling evening. He looked down at Saul and he questioned why this man, who gave all his life and heart to God, should have been made to suffer so, as if an evil punishment had crashed upon him.

  Lucanus said to Timothy, “Would that he die before he awakens again to knowledge! But that, doubtless, will not be granted. He will continue to the end. He is a greater warrior than I, for I confess that if all that I have loved had died so, in innocence, and defenseless I should turn away—”

  “They live again, in the Vision of the Messias, blessed be His Name,” said Timothy. “Only we are left to mourn, and to remember.”

  But Lucanus did not reply.

  Chapter 47

  LUCANUS stayed at the inn with Saul for many days, and for those days Saul lay on his bed, mute and still and almost motionless. Lucanus fed him like an infant, and Saul ate and drank a little as if only his body were present and his soul at a far distance. The physician bathed him and removed garments and replaced them. He bought the best of wine for the stricken man, and mixed with it certain potions and the beaten eggs of geese, and forced it gently through the clenched lips. Young Timothy was like a small son whose father had been struck down, and it soothed him to be sent on errands and to write letters. He would look at Saul with grief, wringing his hands.

  Peter, having heard, wrote tenderly to the man whom he had once declared to be a thistle in his hand, a stone under his foot, a cinder in his eye. He reminded Saul of what the Messias had said, that men, though they die, will live again in the radiant shadow of His Being, and that those who perish in His Name will be assumed to Him at once. Sephorah wrote a tearful and loving letter, and so did many members of the Jerusalem Community, and elders and deacons who had once quarreled with him and now suffered with him. Lucanus read all these bountiful letters to Saul, who said nothing. Then members of the Christian community in Tarsus came in groups to console him, but he would not see them. They promised prayers for his alleviation of sorrow, and he did not answer them.

  The cold bright winter came to Athens and Lucanus bought a small brazier for Saul’s chamber, and he now slept on a floor pallet near Saul’s bed the better to hear him and attend him. Though Saul was so still and so silent, Lucanus guessed acutely at the agony he was enduring, too great for speech, for even the flicker of an eye, tor tears, for mourning.

  “He was a noble Apostle,” said the Christians.

  “He is a noble Apostle,” said Lucanus, and they went away in silence.

  “He is our brother, and though we do not accept what he has told us he is still our brother, a Jew among Jews. He has our prayers, and may God, blessed be His Name, infuse new life into him that he may live again,” said the Jews.

  “I pray with you,” said Lucanus, “in the Name of Him Who was a Jew also.”

  One night, Saul awoke from his lethargy and was instantly aware. He saw Lucanus sleeping wearily beside him. He saw the weak candle flame. Confused memories tried to return to him, but he shrank from them. Then he fell asleep again. He began to dream.

  He dreamt that he was wandering in a vast garden, and the tremendous trees floated in a golden mist and all the flowers glittered with a silvery dew. There was the sound of singing waters, and the distant sight of ivory and golden hills, and fountains. It was warm, and the soft air was perfumed and the sky beamed in clear blueness. He wandered, and knew there was something he must remember which would cause him anguish, but it was sufficient now to walk in this bliss, this shining solitude, this calm joy, this assurance of love and companionship, though he saw no one. The grass under his feet was fresh and new and sparkling with greenness, and he saw glades offering blue cool shadow and many of the trees were flowering in a myriad colors. How blessed this was, how full of peace. Who had said, “The peace that passes understanding?” Saul could not remember, but the words echoed in his heart and he knew that peace. A branch of a tree hung over his head and he saw it was heavy with scarlet globed fruit, and he took one and ate of it and it was like honey and wine, refreshing his soul.

  Then he saw a young man approaching him across the grass, and there were enormous wings of light palpitating from his shoulders, and his garments shimmered like moonlight and clung to his massive limbs and flecks of white fire radiated from his robe and his face was more beautiful than the face of any man, with locks glossy and dark and polished, and eyes deep and dark and bearing in them an expression which no human creature could understand. It was enigmatic, removed, kind and aloof. His feet, sandaled with silver, barely bent the grass and where he moved he left a fading brightness. A curious sword hung in its curious scabbard from his gemmed girdle, a sword shaped like a jagged bolt of lightning, and there was lightning on his brow.

  Saul was not afraid, but he felt a pulsing deep within him and an awe. The young man came closer to him, and he was taller than the tallest man and his arms were clasped with jeweled armlets. He looked down at Saul reflectively, and his slight smile was not human though it remained gentle. Saul could see his strong pale throat and the throbbing in it.

  “Saul ben Hillel,” said the stranger in a voice which was both close and far, and filled the silent air. “I bear a message for you.”

  Saul knelt before him and clasped his hands, and waited, looking up into that unearthly countenance.

  “There is a time for mourning, and that time has passed,” said the stranger.

  “You have forgotten much, but it has been forgiven you, as all is forgiven to those who love. Now you must gird yourself like a man and resume what has been ordained for you, lest those who love you are grieved that their passing has ended your life and your mission. Multitudes have sorrowed before you, and multitudes will sorrow after you, but sorrow is vain, for only One can heal and you have not asked Him.”

  “My heart is only human,” said Saul. “I sorrow with a human heart.”

  “He also has a human Heart,” said the stranger with severity. “It has grieved, and is grieving still, as no other man could grieve. The humanity of His Heart surpasses yours, Saul ben Hillel, and His sorrow is as a mountain. Will you desert and betray Him, or will you rise and say, ‘There is none else, O my Lord and my God?’”

  Saul began to weep. The stranger continued, “God also has a Son, and He saw that Son offer up Himself for wretched mankind, saw. His flesh bruised and nailed and torn, saw His humiliation and the fear and shrinking in that most human Heart, saw the malic
e which surrounded Him, and watched His death.”

  Saul lifted his tearful face and stretched up his arms and looked at the sky and said, “Forgive me, my Lord and my God, and strengthen me so that I may endure and not forget again, and spread Your Wings beneath my feeble flutter and carry me. For I am not God. I am only a man and You have fashioned me to suffer as a man.”

  When he looked for the stranger he was gone, and now a dark noisomeness closed about Saul and he awakened and saw it was cold hard morning and Lucanus was stirring the coals in the brazier.

  Saul said in a weak but clear voice, “Dear friend, I have seen an angel, and he has reproved me.” Now, in reality he wept the first tears, and Lucanus held him in his arms and did not restrain him, but comforted him in silence.

  And now the long missionary journey began. Accompanied by Timothy and Luke, Saul resumed a colossal task which to him seemed endless, frequently frustrating, dolorous, desperate, harsh with opposition, resentment, persecution and ridicule and obduracy from members of the young Church. On receiving a letter from Corinth that he not visit that city again he answered sadly and tenderly: “I made up my mind not to make you another painful visit. For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the One whom I have always pained? And I wrote as I did so that when I came I might not be pained by those who should have made me rejoice.—For I wrote out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.” (Cor. 2:1-4)

  As time passed his afflicted eye began to darken, and his strength, which had, for years, been the strength and energy of heart and spirit and will, declined alarmingly. In vain Lucanus urged him not to strive so vigorously, and to rest between journeys. “If I am to bring order out of stubborn and doctrinal chaos then I must press on,” he said. “There is a time to die and I would that death will not find me sleeping, in luxurious ease and forgetfulness. My task is not complete.”