Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Directly under the Dome of the Rock, protruding through the floor and surrounded by an iron railing, is the red rock said to be that on which Abraham offered up Isaac (although who first said so is not so clear). Underneath it is a cavern (conceivably a cistern once) lit by one small lamp, and the guide points out corners in which David, Solomon, Elijah, and Mohammed habitually prayed. There is a hollow in the low roof , which they tell you receded to let the Prophet of Islam stand upright when he rose from prayer, and they also permit you to stand on the very spot from which he rode to heaven on his horse Barak.

  The floor of the cavern sounds hollow, and there have been many attempts to burrow secretly and discover ancient treasure there — the true Tomb of the Kings perhaps, or the hiding-place of ancient treasures. Some say that when Jerusalem was taken everything of value, chronicles included, was hidden down there. But the Moslems believe, or at any rate say, that underneath that cavern is a hole which reaches to the center of the earth, and thither the souls of dead men come once a week. So they guard all approaches carefully, and he who seeks to dig a tunnel does so at his own risk, which is imminent and not to be withstood by argument.

  There is another story that the Rock of Abraham is the identical “threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite” that David purchased for the site of the temple his son should build. But there is nothing mentioned in the Old or New Testament whose exact location has not been identified by some enthusiast and accepted as authentic by others. Within the city-walls they show you Pilate’s judgment-hall, the tomb of David, the upper room in which the Last Supper was held; and he who wishes may believe. Most of the city that Pilate knew lies seventy feet below the present level, smothered under the debris of centuries; but there are excavations now proceeding that are likely to throw wholly new light on history.

  There are people in Jerusalem who have come there from the earth’s ends to await the last blast of Gabriel’s trumpet. The valleys are crowded with the graves of Jews, whose bones are expected to arise reclad with flesh and clothing when the time comes. Moslems declare that on the last day a hair will be stretched across the Valley of Jehosaphat, and over that the resurrected True-believer will be required to walk, to save himself from hell-fire. Christians have sent their hearts in hundreds to be buried near the Holy City. There is a profession, decidedly profitable, whose members receive steady remittances from oversea in return for prayers prayed in Jerusalem. It is a city of frauds, faith, fanaticism, and sudden death.

  Easter is the riot season. Then, as is so well known, the Christians fly at one another, while the Moslem hot-heads are encouraged to attend a rival ceremony that takes them in procession to the reputed tomb of Moses, near the Dead Sea, an affair that lasts a week and gives the Christians time to control themselves. Nothing, not even danger, brings the Christians into unity; there is quite likely to be a fight in the Holy Sepulcher on any Easter morning, and troops are kept well within hail. The Moslems have their differences, too, and have learned these latter days, the art of accusing everybody else; but religion unites them at a touch, and they are one at the first suggestion of danger to Islam.

  Zionism is regarded as a danger, and for the first time in history has found Moslem, Christian, and orthodox Jew making common cause. The Zionists base their claim to a national home in Palestine on Old Testament history. In fact, they have no other basis for their claim. The Moslems meet them on that ground and reply, that if the story of the conquest of the ‘Promised Land’ is true, as stated in the Jewish records, then that is reason enough for not admitting Jews today. They point to the accounts of butchery of the inhabitants, of intolerance, and of ruthless destruction of cities. They claim that they, the Arabs, too, are descendants of Abraham, and were there first, with prior right of inheritance. They declare, and the Christians and orthodox Jews admit it, that under Moslem rule there has been tolerance of other men’s religions; and that, whether or not the Jews once owned Palestine, confessedly they took it by the sword, and by the sword were turned out.

  Nowhere on earth stands the law so plainly written as in Jerusalem, that “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.” It is a city whose Karma has overtaken her before the eyes of all the world, and again and again.

  And Jerusalem stands “beautiful upon a mountain,” recleaned, rebuilt, rerising like a Phoenix from the ashes of her past, as a symbol that something survives in spite of all men’s treachery and hatred. Dome, minaret, convent roof, and synagogue stand crowded there; and among them and within them rivalries persist like worms in a camel’s carcass. But the stars smile down on all of it — yet greater symbols, each in its appointed place. The flowers bloom and blow in league-long carpets. City of Peace is the meaning of the word Jerusalem. And there is peace for him who earns it, even there, as everywhere.

  ON KENNETH MORRIS

  March 27, 1923

  Dear Madame Tingley:

  SINCE I first began to read Professor Kenneth Morris’s poems and historical works I have found it impossible to speak of them without enthusiasm; and it has been a surprise to me to learn that some enterprising publisher has not pounced on Professor Morris long ago.

  If only Wells could have gone to school to Morris before he wrote that Outline!

  Of course, the day must come when we shall all see history in more nearly true proportion and perspective; but why not hasten the day, as it would be hastened, if the works of Professor Morris were more widely read?

  Some of his poems, too, are magnificent. All of them are so far above the ordinary that, in my judgment, he is in the front rank of modern poets; and, at that, I do not know whom I would rank with him.

  To those (and they must be many) who want to know what history is all about, instead of how it can be twisted into parish-pump and town-hall insignificance, the collected writings of Professor Morris should be the most welcome light — in a darkness, in which we otherwise grope amid the bellowing of Gibbon and his imitators.

  The world-vision — the universal vision, is the need. Professor Morris holds a light that we may see by; he disperses historical shadows, and the present, in view of the past, becomes intelligible as a pulse-beat in the endless, law-obeying process of Evolution. I know of no authority now living whose public utterances on the subjects he has chosen I would dare to prefer to his.

  The fact, of course is that Professor Morris has gone with open eyes to sources that are available to all of us, but which most of us have been taught to overlook. Then, not caring greatly for the prejudices of the parish-pump spell-binders, he has written honestly of what he knows, and in exquisite English.

  The only fault I find with him is, that he does not write more, and oftener. Please persuade him to have his works published. It is a public duty.

  Yours faithfully and friendly,

  Talbot Mundy

  HISTORY

  Tides in the ocean of stars and the infinite rhythm of space;

  Cycles on cycles of aeons adrone on an infinite beach;

  Pause and recession and flow, and each atom of dust in its place

  In the pulse of eternal becoming: no error, no breach,

  But the calm and the sweep and swing of the leisurely, measureless roll

  Of the absolute cause, the unthwarted effect — and no haste,

  Neither discord, and nothing untimed in a calculus ruling the whole;

  Unfolding, evolving; accretion, attrition; no waste.

  Planet on planet a course that it keeps, and each swallow its flight;

  Comet’s ellipse and grace-note of the sudden fire-fly glow;

  Jewels of Perseid splendor sprayed on summer’s purple night;

  Blossom adrift on the breath of spring; the whirl of snow;

  Grit on the grinding beaches; spume of the storm-ridden wave

  Cast on the blast of the north wind to blend with the tropic rain;

  Hail and the hissing of torrents; song where sapphire ripples lave —

  Long lullabies to coral reefs unguessed in a sleepy main
.

  Silt of the ceaseless rivers from the mountain summits worn,

  Rolled amid league-long meadows till the salt, inflowing tide

  Heaps it in shoals at harbor-mouth for continents unborn;

  Earth where the naked rocks were reared; pine where the birches died;

  Season on season proceeding, and birth in the shadow of death;

  Dawning of luminous day in the dying night; and a Plan

  In no wit, in no particle changing; each phase of becoming, a breath

  Of the infinite karma of all things; its goal, evolution of Man.

  UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD

  THE THEME of Universal Brotherhood is one that seems to grow as we consider it; since, being universal, there is nowhere, no circumstance, in which its essence is not evident. As a teaspoonful of earth may be shown to contain forty millions of demonstrably living and intelligent organisms, every one of which suggests from the mere fact of its existence undiscoverable hordes of even smaller ones, so every human action is alive with countless and immeasurable causes and results. A finger’s gesture throbs with undying, if forgotten, history; its movement is a consequence, again productive of results, however insignificant to us; and we may safely depend on it that nothing — not one thought or thing or action — can be without an absolutely infinite relation to the universe.

  But generalities, however accurate, are too vast for human comprehension. The imagination reels, or else the mind’s inert unwillingness to think, fogs, as it were, the picture. As precept must be taught by parable, the measureless and omnipresent fact of Brotherhood can only be brought home to us by concrete illustration, and then only provided we remember that, in the words of Job, these are [but] parts of His ways.

  The smallest instances suffice. The rarest are least useful. It is from the point at which we are that we begin to grasp realities, and only as the theme grows real to us can we hope to understand it. Experientia docet* is a proverb that was old incalculable centuries before the Romans gave it currency and, being absolutely true, is just as true today as then. In day-by-day experience, and nohow else, we learn. Unless in day-by-day experience we practise that which we have learned, we have no part as yet in self-directed evolution, which, as Katherine Tingley† has told us, is the way.

  I remember a dying Chinaman, in the swamps of the Umbuluzi River near Lourenço Marquez — an unlicensed dealer in illegal drink — who crawled from his sick-bed to help me because he had heard I had fever. We had never met until he staggered into my tent, and he died that evening without having accomplished anything — except to change one individual’s whole concept of the Chinese race. Since that day it is impossible for me to think of Chinamen without remembering that one man’s kindness; I remember it in spite of all the accusations of a hostile press, in spite of all-too-authentic fact, and in the face of frenzied prejudice. It is not in me to believe that the act of that unmoral, unrepentant ‘Chink’ (for he died quite proud of his disgraceful traffic) was, as Shakespeare hints, interred with his bones. I know the kindness multiplied and has more than once borne fruit.

  Another man comes to memory — a coal-black, fuzzy-headed Sudanese, who had been a slave under the Mahdi* and whose back was a mass of scars where his owners had flogged him. He understood Brotherhood better than most of us, although he was not a Christian and used to grow offended at the mention of the word. He found his way down to Uganda, where he was enlisted in the local troops. I remember his grin when he was patted on the back and told to be a credit to the company. He straightened himself, and went on straightening himself until he could hardly get his heels down on the floor; but it was weeks before he realized he was not dreaming. When it dawned on him at last that his white-skinned officer actually did regard him as a fellow human being he wakened to a new sense of responsibility. It happened quite suddenly; he fell lame on a long march, and his officer, dismounting from the only mule, ordered him gruffly and without a trace of sentiment to mount and ride. It was funny to watch the awakening consciousness of something he had never understood before.

  Within twelve months of that he was a sergeant. Very shortly after his promotion, during a crisis, he was left with twenty-five men, all as black as himself and with almost equally humble origins, in a dangerous post about six days’ march from the nearest possible support. It was at a time of almost general uprising, when premonitory symptoms of the great war were beginning to be felt from end to end of Africa. He was without ammunition, and his orders were to keep the peace.

  There was naturally some anxiety among the handful of white officers, whose task it was to scatter themselves at strategic points over an enormous breadth of country, but it was three weeks before the chance came to visit his outpost, and in view of the fact that it was almost the first time he had been trusted out of sight, not too much was expected of him. Rumors spread in Africa like smoke in the wind, and there was a story that he and all his men had been massacred.

  But the flag was flying over the tree-tops when the relieving patrol arrived close on sunset. As the sun went down the flag descended with it to the music of a bugle, and the first the relief saw of the detachment they were standing at the salute with arms presented to the tree that did for flag-pole, all present and correct. He had done what few white men could have accomplished; not one man of all the twenty-five had any charge against him; without bloodshed, and with no more force than that prodigious one of strict example, he had ‘held down’ a district notorious for its savagery, and unquestionably saved the lives of hundreds.

  It was not thought wise to compliment him in the presence of his men; that might have led to the inference that they had done more than their duty. But he was led aside and complimented by an officer whom he had never seen before, and who expressed surprise that he should have behaved so splendidly. The man’s answer told the whole story in ten words: Am I a dog? Nay, I am one of you!

  It is easy to say that he was no Theosophist, and I am quite sure he had never heard the word; but as a man who proved his claim to be part and parcel of a universal brotherhood he stands out as a landmark in my memory.

  Life is crowded with similar instances, and there is no need to wander far for them. We can even read of them in books. It is the thrill that counts — that warning from within that we have touched the sacred, splendid chord that unifies all being. If the heart is touched, the intellect responds not too long afterwards; and no one who has thrilled to an ideal, however vague, can ever quite relapse into unrecognition of it, nor can fail to pass the regenerating thrill along, in some way, even if he does not know it.

  How much unselfishness and willingness to sacrifice for the benefit of others has been poured into the world through the pages of what is called profane history? The very color of my school-days — the whole flavor of my later life — was brightened by the story of the Plataeans at Marathon. There must be thousands who have felt the same thrill, generation after generation. When the hosts of the King, the great King Xerxes, lay between Athens and the sea, the Plataeans repaid a debt. The Athenians had helped them once, and now that the Athenians faced what seemed inevitable ruin the Plataeans marched to their aid with all they had. They left their old men and the women to guard Plataea’s walls and came eight hundred strong — a handful — hardly a battalion. But no quarrels of historians, nor all the sins of Athens, nor the mists of time, can drown the echo of the roar that went up on the heights of Marathon when dawn rose on the spears of those eight hundred marching down to die beside their friends. No matter whether Persians or Athenians had the right of it; the Higher Law takes care of that. The Plataeans let some light into the world by proving what they understood of brotherhood. If they had known more and done less, there are nations today that would be poorer for it — poorer, that is, in the elements that count. For in the long run nothing counts but Brotherhood. Its highest unselfish expression from day to day, by each individual in his degree, is the only Path by which we may ascend the ever-rising rounds of evolution.
There are more degrees of brotherhood, more phases of it, than there are living organisms in that spoonful of earth under the magnifying-glass.

  A NEMESIS

  What little wrong we do, and bury, lies

  No deeper than the wire-grass spaded o’er

  That under the smooth surface multiplies

  And, ten times thriftier than before,

  Crowds upward in the fertilizing rain.

  No virtue lies in long forgetfulness.

  The deed ill-done lives to be done again

  Or undone, or to rise anew and dress

  New difficulties in the graveyard hues

  Of habit and accusing dread —

  A nemesis — a phantom that pursues —

  A foe to fight again, and courage dead.

  BROTHERHOOD OR LEAGUE?

  IN EARLIER days, when Canada was hardly yet beginning to be won from the wilderness, it was the custom when sending a man on a long journey to supply him with three fish-hooks and a rabbit-snare. Those represented rations. It was his business to convert them into meat. When he failed, he perished. A great deal has been said and sung about the resourcefulness of the type of man evolved by that system, and there is considerable silence concerning those who found the fish-hooks and the rabbit-snare inadequate, and died. But it is noteworthy that the system, at any rate, has not survived. It has been found wiser to supply men in advance with adequate provision of the right kind, before expecting from them results worth mentioning.

  The men who devised the fish-hook and rabbit-snare system were probably quite familiar with the New Testament parable that mentions men asking for bread and being given stones; but, if they reasoned about it at all, they may have argued that with stones men might go forth and kill meat, which, as far as it goes, is a sound enough material argument.