Visionaries Part 13

"Yet how beautiful, for if the eternal recurrence be truth, then must the great drama of the Redemption be repeated. Then will our foes be convinced of Christianity and its reality. But shall we be conscious in that far-off time of our anterior existence? Ah! hideous, coiling doubt.

What a demon is this Nietzsche to set whirring in the brains of poor, suffering humanity such torturing questions! Better, far better for the world to live and not to think. Thought is a disease, a morbid secretion of the brain-cells. Ah! materialist that I am, I can no longer think without remembering the ideas of Cabanis, that gross atheist. Why am I punished so? What crimes have I committed in a previous existence--Karma, again!--that I must perforce study the writings of impious men? Yet I submitted myself as a candidate for the task, to save my brethren in Christ from soiling their hearts. Heaven preserve me from the blight of spiritual pride, but I believe that I am now a scapegoat for the offences of my fellow-monks, and, thus, may redeem my own wretched soul. Ah! Nietzsche--Antichrist."

He arose and threw the volume across his cell. Then going to the window regarded with humid gaze the world that sprawled below him in the voluptuous suns.h.i.+ne. But so sternly was the inner eye fixed on the things of the spirit that he soon turned away from the delectable picture, and as he did so his glance rested upon a crucifix. He started, his perturbed imagination again touched.

"What if Nietzsche were right? The first Christian, the only Christian, died on the cross, he has said. What an arraignment of our precious faith, Jesus Christ, our Lord G.o.d! What sweet names are Thine! How could Nietzsche not feel the music of that Hebrew-Greek combination? Perhaps he did; perhaps he masked a profound love behind his hatred. Jesus our Lord! Hebrew-Greek. But why Greek? Why ...?" Another pause in this sequestered chamber where the buzzing of an insect could a.s.sume a thunderous roar. "The eternal return. Why should Christ return? Must the earth be saved again and again and a billion times again? Awful thought of a G.o.d descending to a horrible death to cleanse the nameless myriads from sins which they seek ever as flies treacle. More ghastly still is the thought that the atheist Scandinavian put into the mouth of his Julian the Apostate: When our Christ is not saving this earth from eternal d.a.m.nation then he may be visiting remote planets or inaccessible stars, where coloured double suns of blinding brilliancy revolve terrifically in twin harness. There, too, are souls to be rescued. What a grand idea! It is Ibsen's, as is the interpretation of the Third Kingdom. It should have been Nietzsche's. Why this antinomianism? Why this eternal conflict of evil and good, of night and day, of sweet and sour, of G.o.d and devil, of Ormuzd and Ahriman?"

The exotic names transposed his thoughts to another avenue. If Christ is to come again, and the holy word explicitly states that He will, why not Buddha? Why not Brahma? Why not ...? Again a hiatus. This time something snapped in his head. He sank back in his chair. Buddha! Was there ever a Buddha? And if there was not, was there ever such a personality as Christ's? Scholar that he was he knew that myth-building was a pastime for the Asiatic imagination, great, impure, mysterious Asia--Asia the mother of all religions, the cradle of the human race. To deny the objective existence of Christ would set at rest all his doubts, one overwhelming doubt swallowing the minor doubts. He had never speculated at length upon the Christ legend, for did not Renan, yes, that silky heretic, believe in the personality of Jesus, believe and lovingly portray it? The Nietzsche doctrine of the eternal recurrence had so worked upon his sensitive mental apparatus that he could have almost denied the existence of Christ rather than deny that our universe repeats itself infinitely. Eternity is a wheel, earthly events are the spokes of this whirring wheel. It was the seeming waste of divine material that shocked his nerves. One crucifixion--yes; but two or two quintillions and infinitely more!

Brother Hyzlo stared at the crucifix. Was it only a symbol, as some learned blasphemers averred? The human figure so painfully extended upon it was a G.o.d, a G.o.d who descended from high heaven to become a s.h.i.+eld between the wrath of His Father and humanity. Why? Why should the G.o.d who created us grow angry with our shortcomings? We are His handiwork. Are we then to blame for our imperfections? Is not Jesus, instead of a mediator, rather a votive offering to the wounded vanity of the great Jehovah? Was not Prometheus--a light broke in upon Hyzlo.

Prometheus, a myth, Buddha a myth. All myths. There were other virgin-born saviours. Krishna, Mithra, Buddha. Vishnu had not one but nine incarnations. Christianity bears alarming resemblances to Mithraism. Mithra, too, was born in a cave. The dates of Christ's birth and death may be astronomical: the winter and vernal equinoxes. But the conflict of the authorities regarding these dates is mortifying. The four gospels are in reality four witnesses warring against each other.

They were selected haphazard at a human council. They were not composed until the latter part of the second century, and the synoptic gospels are compilations from unknown writers, while the fourth gospel is a much later work. And how colourless, imitative, is the New when compared to the Old Testament,--echoing with the antiphonal thunders of Jehovah and his stern-mouthed Prophets! The pa.s.sage in Josephus touching on Christ is now known to have been interpolated. Authentic history does not record the existence of Christ. Not one of His contemporaries mentions him. That tremendous drama in Galilee was not even commented upon by the Romans, a nation keen to notice any deviation from normal history. The Jewish records are doubtful, written centuries after His supposed death.

And they are malicious. What cannot happen in two centuries? Hyzlo reflected sadly upon Moslemism, upon Mormonism, upon the vagaries of a strange American sect at whose head was said to be a female pope.

The similarity of circ.u.mstances in the lives of Buddha and Christ also annoyed him. Both were born of virgins, both renounced the world, both were saviours. There were the same temptations, the same happenings; prophecies, miracles, celestial rejoicings, a false disciple, the seven beat.i.tudes--a reflection of the Oriental wisdom--an expiatory death and resurrection. The entire machinery of the Christian church, its saints, martyrs, festivals, ritual, and philosophies are borrowed from the mythologies of the pagans. Sun-wors.h.i.+p is the beginning of all religions. To the genius of the epileptic Paul, or Saul,--founders of religions are always epilepts,--a half Greek and disciple of the Pharisee Gamaliel, who saw visions and put to the sword his enemies, to Paul, called a saint, a man of overwhelming personal force, to this cruel anarchist, relentless, half-mad fanatic and his theological doctrines we owe the preservation and power of the Christian Church. At first the Christians were the miserable offscourings of society, slaves, criminals, and lunatics. They burrowed in the Catacombs, they fastened themselves upon a decaying and magnificent civilization like the parasites they were. A series of political catastrophes, a popular uprising against the rotten emperors of decadent Rome, and the wide growth of the socialist idea--these things and an unscrupulous man, Constantine the Great, put the Christians firmly in the saddle. And soon came cataracts of blood. If the tales of the imperial persecutions are true, then hath Christianity been revenged a million fold; where her skirt has trailed there has been the cruel stain of slaughter. It must not be forgotten, too, that immorality of the grossest sort was promised the deluded sectarians, compared with which the Mahometan paradise is spiritual. And the end of the world was predicted at the end of every century, and finally relegated to the millennial celebration of Christianity's birth. When, in 1000 A.D., this catastrophe did not occur, the faith received its first great shock.

He summoned to his memory a cloud of witnesses, all contradictory.

Josephus was barred. Philo Judaeus, who was living near the centre of things, an observer on the scent of the spiritual, a man acquainted with the writings of Rabbi Hillel, and the father of Neoplatonism--never mentions Jesus, nor does he speak of any religious uprising in Judea.

The pa.s.sage in Virgil, which has through the doubtful testimony of monkish writers been construed into a prophecy of a forthcoming Messiah, Hyzlo, who was a scholar, knew to have been addressed to a son of Virgil's intimate friend. Tacitus, too, has been interpolated. Seneca's ideal man is not Jesus, for Jesus is Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Mithra, Hercules, Adonis,--think of this beautiful young G.o.d's death!--Buddha.

Such a mock trial and death could not have taken place under the Roman or Jewish laws. The sacraments derive from the Greeks, from the Indians--the mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus, from the _Haoma_ sacrifice of the Persians, originally Brahmanic. The Trinity, was it not a relic of that ineradicable desire for polytheism implanted in the human bosom?

Was the crucifixion but a memory of those darker cults and blood sacrifices of Asia, and also of the expiating goats sent out into the wilderness? What became of that Hosanna-shouting crowd which welcomed Christ on Palm Sunday? And there never were such places as Gethsemane and Calvary. Alas! the Son of Man had indeed no spot to lay his head.

And why had He made no sign when on earth! Brother Hyzlo wept bitter tears.

But he wiped them away as he considered the similarity of the ma.s.sacre of the Innocents in Judea and the ma.s.sacre of the male children ordered by the wicked Indian Rajah of Madura, who feared the Krishna, just conceived by divine agency. Yes, the chronicles were full of these G.o.ds born of virgins, of crucifixions,--he could remember sixteen,--of these solar myths. He caught tripping in a thousand cases the translations of our holy books. The Ox and a.s.s legend at the Nativity he realized was the Pseudo-Matthew's description to Habakkuk of the literal presence: "In the midst of two animals thou shalt be known;" which is a mistranslated Hebrew text in the Prayer ascribed to Habakkuk. It got into the Greek Septuagint version of the Prophet made by Egyptian Jews before 150 B.C. It should read, "in the midst of the years,"

not "animals." "Ah!" cried Hyzlo, "in this as in important cardinal doctrines have the faithful been the slaves of the learned and unscrupulous pious forgers. Even the notorious Apollonius of Tyana imitated the miracles of Christ--all of them. And what of that wicked wizard, Simon Magus?"

The very repet.i.tion of these miracles in all races, at all epochs, pointed to the doctrine of recurrence. But back of all the negations, back of the inexpugnable proof that no such man or G.o.d as Christ existed, or was known to his contemporaries, Jewish and Roman, there must have been some legend which had crystallized into a mighty religion. Was He an agitator who preferred His obscurity that His glory might be all the greater? There _must_ have been a beginning to the myth; behind the gospels--though they are obviously imitated from the older testaments, imitated and diluted--were unknown writings; previous to these there was word of mouth and--and ...?

The day had advanced, the sun was very warm. A shaft of light fell upon the cold stone floor, and in its fiery particles darted myriads of motes. Hyzlo followed their spiral flights, thinking all the while of humanity which flashes from out the dark void, plays madly in the light, only to vanish into the unknown night. His gaze was held by the smoothness of the flagging at his feet. Then it became transformed into marble, the walls of his cell widened, and he closed his eyes, so blinding were the long ladders of light....

II

TWO DREAMERS

He opened them ... the harbour with its army of galleys and pleasure craft lay in the burning suns.h.i.+ne, its surface a sapphire blue. Overhead the sky echoed this tone, which modulated into deeper notes of purple on the far-away hills whose tops were wreathed in mist. Under his sandalled feet was marble, back of him were the gleaming spires and towers of the great city, and at his left was a mountain of s.h.i.+ning marble, the Pharos.

"Alexandria?" he called out as he was jostled by a melon-seller, and startled by the fluted invitations of a young girl--an antique statue come to life.

"Of course it is Alexandria," replied a deep, harsh voice at his elbow.

He turned. It was his friend Philo.

"You have at last emerged from your day-dream, Hyzlo! I thought, as our bark clove the water, that you were enjoying visions." And it seemed to Hyzlo that he had just awakened from a bizarre dream of a monastic cell, to more beautiful sights and shapes and sounds. The pair now traversed the quay, past the signal masts, the fortified towers, pus.h.i.+ng through the throng of sailors, courtesans, philosophers, fruitsellers, soldiers, beggars, and idle rich toward the s.p.a.cious city. Past the palace to the wall of the Ca.n.a.l, along the banks of the Royal Port, they finally struck into a broad, deserted avenue. At its head was a garden wall.

Philo introduced himself and his companion through a low door and presently they were both in an apartment full of parchments, glittering bra.s.s and gold instruments all reposing on a wide, long table.

"Hyzlo," said the Jewish philosopher, in his slightly accented Greek, "I have long promised you that I would reveal to you my secret, my life work. I am downcast by sadness. Rome is full of warring cults, Greek, African, Babylonian, Buddhistic; the writings of the great teachers, the masters, Herac.l.i.tus, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Plato, Socrates, Epictetus, Seneca, are overlaid with heretical emendations. The religion of my fellow-countrymen is a fiery furnace, Jerusalem a den of warring thieves. The rulers of earth are weary and turn a deaf ear on their peoples. The time is ripe for revolt. Sick of the accursed luxury and debauchery, fearful of the threatening barbarians from Asia and the boreal regions, who are hemming the civilized world, waiting like vultures for the first sign of weakness to destroy everything, the slaves in revolt--all these impending terrors a.s.sure me that the end of the old order is at hand. But what will become of the new if there is no central belief to steady the ensanguined hands of furious mobs? For years I have bethought me of a drama, a gigantic world-drama which shall embody all the myths of mankind, all the n.o.blest thoughts of the philosophers. I shall take the Buddha myth, surely the supreme myth, and transpose its characters to Jerusalem. A humble Jew shall be _my_ Buddha. He shall be my revenge on our conquerors; for my people have been trampled upon by the insolent Romans, and who knows--a Jewish G.o.d, a crucified G.o.d, may be wors.h.i.+pped in the stead of Jupiter and his vile pantheon of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses! _One_ G.o.d, the son of Jahveh who comes upon earth to save mankind, is crucified and killed, is resurrected and like Elijah is caught up to heaven in a fiery chariot. But you know the usual style of these Asiatic legends! They are all alike; a virgin birth, a miraculous life, and transfiguration. That sums up myths from Adonis to Krishna, from Krishna to Buddha; though Monotheism comes from the Hebrews, the Trinity from the Indians, and the _logos_ was developed by Plato. Where I am original is that I make my hero a Jew--the Jews are still half-cracked enough to believe in the coming of a Messiah. And to compa.s.s a fine dramatic moment I have introduced an incident I once witnessed in Alexandria at the landing of King Agrippa, when the populace dressed up a vagabond named Karabas as a mock king and stuck upon his head papyrus leaves for a crown, in his hand a reed for a sceptre, and then saluted him as king. I shall make my Jew-G.o.d seized by the Jews, his own blood and kin, given over to the Romans, mocked, reviled, and set aside for some thief who shall be called Karabas. Then, rejected, he shall be crucified, he a G.o.d born of a virgin, by the very people who are looking for their Messiah. He is their Messiah; yet they know it not. They shall never know it. That shall be their tragedy, the tragedy of my race, which, notwithstanding the prophecies, turned its back upon the Messiah because he came not clothed in the purple of royalty. Is that not a magnificent idea for a drama?"

"Excellent," answered Hyzlo, in a critical tone; "but continue!"

"You seem without enthusiasm, Hyzlo. I tell you that aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides never conceived a story more infinitely dramatic or pathetic, or--thanks to my Hebraic blood--so suffused with tragic irony. I shall make a very effective tableau at the death; on some forbidding stony hill near Jerusalem I shall plant my crucified hero, and near him a converted courtesan--ah! what a master of the theatre I am!--in company with a handful of faithful disciples. The others have run away to save their cowardly skins in the tumult. The mobs that hailed him as King of the Jews now taunt him, after the manner of all mobs. His early life I shall borrow outright from the Buddha legends. He shall be born of a virgin; he shall live in the desert; as a child he shall confute learned doctors in the temple; and later in the desert he shall be tempted by a demon. All this is at hand. My chief point is the philosophies in which I shall submerge my characters.

"My hero shall be the _logos_ of Herac.l.i.tus with the superadded authority of the Hebrew high priest. You may recall the fact that I greatly admire the Essenes and their system. My deity is a pure essence; not Jehovah the protector or avenger. The _logos_, or mediator, I have borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosophers. This _logos_ returns to the bosom of G.o.d after the sacrifice. Greek philosophy combined with Hebraic moral principles! Ah! it is grand synthesis; Seneca with his conception of a perfected humanity, Lucretius, Manlius--who called, rightfully too, Epicurus a G.o.d--and Herac.l.i.tus with the first idea of a _logos_: all these ancient ideas I have worked into my romantic play, including the old cult of the Trinities; the Buddhistic: Buddha, Dharma, and Saingha; the Chinese: Heaven, Earth, and Emperor; the Babylonian: Ea, the father, Marduk, the son, and the Fire G.o.d, Gibil, who is also the Paraclete. So my philosophy is merely a continuation and modification of that taught by Herac.l.i.tus and Plato, but with a Jewish background--for _mine_ is the only moral nation. The wisdom of the Rabbis, their Monotheism and ethics, are all there." His eyes were ablaze.

"You are very erudite, Philo Judaeus!" exclaimed his listener; "but, tell me, is there no actual foundation for your Jewish G.o.d?" Hyzlo eagerly awaited a reply, though he could not account for this curiosity.

"Yes," answered Philo, lightly, "there is, I freely acknowledge, a slight foundation. Some years ago in Jerusalem they arrested a poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess. His father was said to have been an indigent and aged carpenter. This Joshua, or Ieshua, was driven out of Jerusalem, and he took refuge among a lot of poor fishermen on Lake Gennesareth. There he joined a sect called the Baptists, because their founder, a socialist named Ioakanaan, poured water on the heads of the converted. Ieshua never married and was suspected of idolatrous practices, which he had absorbed from hermits of the Egyptian Thebad. Josephus, a wise friend and companion of my youth, wrote me these details. He said that Ieshua disappeared after his mad attempt to take Jerusalem by storm, riding--as is depicted the Bona Dea--on the back of a humble animal. Yet, if you wish to appeal to the common folk, make your hero a deposed king or divinity, who walks familiarly among the poor, as walked the G.o.ds at the dawn of time with the daughters of men. I depict my protagonist as a half-cracked Jew. I call him Iesus Christos--after Krishna; and this poor man's G.o.d proposes to redeem the world, to place the lowly in the seats of the mighty--he is an Anarchos, as they would say in Athens. He promises the Kingdom of G.o.d to those who follow him; but only a few do. He is the friend of outcasts, prost.i.tutes, criminals. And though he does not triumph on earth, nevertheless he is the spiritual ruler of earth; he is the Son of the Trinity which comprises the Father and Holy Ghost. The contending forces to my hero will be incarnated by Pontius Pilatus, the Roman governor, and Judas of Kerioth, a very dangerous and powerful Hebrew politician--a man of very liberal ideas, one who believed in the supremacy of the West. What a glorious play it will make! I have named it The Third Kingdom, Hyzlo. What a glorious idea it is, Hyzlo--the greatest drama the world has ever witnessed!"

III

THE DOVE

"The greatest drama the world has ever witnessed" ... mumbled his disciple.... The sun still shone on the cold stone flagging, and upon the wall facing him hung the crucifix. But the motes no longer danced merrily in the light. Evening was setting in apace, and Hyzlo, accepting one dream as equal in veracity with the other, crossed to the embrasure and, his elbows on the sill, watched the sun--looking like a sulphur-coloured cymbal--sink behind the sky-line. He was still in the same att.i.tude when the blue of the heavens--ah! but not that gorgeous, hard Alexandrian blue--melted into peac.o.c.k and cool saffron hues. He mused aloud:--

"By the very nature of his mental organs man can never grasp reality. It is always the sensation, never the real thing, he feels. The metaphysicians are right. We can never know the actual world outside of ourselves. We are imprisoned in a dream cage; the globe itself is a cage of echoes. Science, instead of contradicting religion, has but affirmed its truths. Matter is radiant energy--matter is electric phenomenon. The germ-plasma from which we stem--the red clay of Genesis--is eternal. The individual is sacrificed to the species. The species never dies. And how beautifully logical is the order of our ancestry as demonstrated by the science of embryology. Fish, batrachians, reptiles, mammals; in which latter are included the marsupials as well as lemurs, primates, Man. And after what struggles Man a.s.sumed an erect position and looked into the eyes of his mate! After Man? Nietzsche preaches that man is a link between the primate and Superman; Superman--the angels! But intelligence in man may be an accident caused by over-nutrition, the brain developing from rich phosphors. If this were so--how would fall to earth our house of pride! Are we so close to the animal? But Quinton proves that _after_ man in the zoological series comes the bird. Birds--half reptiles, half angels. Angels! Do evolution and revelation meet here on common ground?

Or was Joachim, the Abbot of Flores, inspired when he wrote of the Third Kingdom, that Kingdom in which the empire of the flesh is swallowed up in the empire of the spirit; that Third Kingdom in which the twin-natured shall reign, as Ibsen declares; the Messiah--neither Emperor nor Redeemer, but the Emperor-G.o.d. The slime shall become sap and the sap become spirit! From gorilla to G.o.d! Man in the coming Third Kingdom may say: "I, too, am a G.o.d." But is this not blasphemous? And after the wheel of the universe has again revolved, will I see, as foresaw Nietzsche, the selfsame spider, the same moonlight? There is nothing new under the sun, says Ecclesiastes. Wretched man is never to know the entire truth but will be always at daggers drawn with his destiny. After cla.s.sic Paganism came romantic Christianity; after the romantic will the pendulum swing back--or--alas! is there coming another horde of atheists with a new Attila at their head?"

He threw himself before the crucifix and sobbed.

"Lord Jesus, Our Christ! Thou art the real Christ and not the fiction of that supersubtle Greek-Jewish and boastful philosopher in Alexandria!

Make for me, O G.o.d, a sign! Give me back in all its purity my faith; faith, n.o.blest gift of all! Oh! to hear once more the thrilling of the harps divine, whereon the dawn plays, those precursors of the Eternal Harmony! _Gloria in Excelsis_." He remained prostrate, his heart no longer battered by doubts and swimming in blissful love for his crucified G.o.d. The celestial hurricane subsided in his bosom; he arose and again interrogated the heavens. The stars in the profound splendours of the sky stared at him like the naked eyes of _houris_. Suddenly a vast white cloud sailed over the edge of the horizon and as it approached his habitation a.s.sumed the shape of a monstrous dove, its fleecy wings moving in solemn rhythms. In the resurgence of his hopes this apparition was the coveted sign from the Almighty.

And flat upon the floor of his cell, his face abased in the dust, Hyzlo wors.h.i.+pped in epileptic frenzy, crying aloud, after the manner of the sad-tongued Preacher:--

"The thing that hath been, it _is_ that which shall be!"

XI

THE HAUNTED HARPSICHORD

[In the Style of Mock-Mediaeval Fiction]

I told Michael to look sharply to his horse. It was dusk; a few bits of torn clouds, unresolved modulations of nebulous lace, trembled over the pink pit in the west, wherein had sunk the sun; and one evening star, silver pointed, told the tale of another spent day.

Michael was surly, I was impatient, and the groom, who lagged in the rear, whistled softly; but I knew that both men were tired and hungry, and so were the horses. The road, hard and free from dust, echoed the resilient hoof-falls of our beasts. The early evening was finely cool, for it was the month of September. We had lost our way. Green fields on either side, and before us the path declined down a steep slope, that lost itself in huddled foliage.

Michael spoke up:--

"We are astray. I knew this d.a.m.nable excursion would lead to no good."

I gently chided him. "Pooh, you braggart! Even Arnold, who rides a brute a world too wide for him, has not uttered a complaint. Brave Michael, if her ladys.h.i.+p heard you now!"

His face grew hard as he muttered:--

"Her ladys.h.i.+p! may all the saints in the calendar watch over her ladys.h.i.+p! But I wish she had never taken you at your hot-headed word.

Then we would not have launched upon this madcap adventure."