Great Lion of God (66 page)

He flung out his hands. “What He has spoken of among us is not womanish nor resigned nor meek nor flaccid. It is a call to battle, as the prophets called, and Moses. Our faith is not a faith for the eccentric and timorous and unthinking and placid and shy. It is muscular and powerful; it calls for banners and trumpets and drums and battlements and all the strength a man can give it, and not soft words and hesitant manners and mild preachments. It is strong drink, not milk. While it is tender and merciful toward the weak and the unsheltered lambs and ewes, and for those oppressed by man and hopeless, it demands that even those must gird up their loins after their wounds are healed and stand fearlessly before enemies and lies and Godlessness. It demands an ‘Aye!’ to the face of God, regardless of persecution or death or exile, and a joyful noise before the Lord. Let not those who fear, come to us, nor those who would dilute the power of our certitude, nor those who would say, ‘This may be so, but on the other hand that may be so, and should we not be men of kindly reason who not only can give answers but can listen tolerantly to questions and weigh them judiciously, remembering that perhaps those questions pose a truth of their own?’

“The truth is of one piece,” said Stephen, and now his face glowed with that unearthly light which so many found fascinating and exultant. “It is true in all things or it is false entirely. It must command all that a man is, or it can command nothing. That is what the prophets have told us, and which our Redeemer and our Savior has told us: ‘He who is a friend of this world is an enemy of God.’ In short, the world is black error and you cannot serve error in the morning and serve Him at night.” He smiled at his friends. “‘He who is not with Me is against Me.’”

Rabban Gamaliel plucked at his bearded lips and regarded Stephen with thoughtful concern. “Still,” he said, “the ages will be plagued by commentators who will interpret in a novel fashion or reinterpret, leading to the confusion of the faithful and causing them to fall away, or to dilution and the uproar of many tongues and many opinions. Every man is a mirror unto himself and reflects himself even in his faith.”

“Truth is so pure and so simple,” said the young Stephen. “The angels have no difficulty accepting it. Only man casts his own shadow upon it.”

“If I remember correctly,” said Joseph, smiling, “there were quite a multitude of angels who did not find truth so simple. You are asking almost too much of man to find it so.”

Stephen laughed. He applied himself with hearty appreciation to the fine viands before him in Rabban Gamaliel’s luxurious hall, and the old men watched him fondly. The young man said, “When I say that truth is simple and pure I do not mean that it is always obvious, for there is nothing so mysterious and sublime as simplicity. A man must indeed be born again of water and the Holy Spirit to comprehend truth, for then his eyes are without film, he hears but one Voice and not disputatious comments, all irrelevant and contentious. He sees things wholly and he sees them clear and in their oneness. It is only error that is intricate and forever open to change. A man who knows the truth is not dogmatic as we know the word, not sealed like one of Solomon’s vessels. He is merely aware of error, but he is far from it, and he advances the truth he knows with dedication of soul and gentleness of mien but with stern resolution. He sees the mountain, rooted in granite and immovable, while those in error say, ‘You declare it to be a mountain, but it may be a mirage or a wall or an illusion. It is a matter of opinion.’”

“Your path, I fear, will not be a sunny one,” said Joseph.

“It has all the brightness of eternity,” said Stephen. His face changed again and he sank into thought. Finally he continued:

“There are some among us, even those who walked with Him, who say that we need no ritualism. But ritual is necessary, desirable, in that it is the visible symbol of the holy invisible Thing it symbolizes. However, when it exists as a formal and complete entity in itself, the Thing it symbolizes and explains forgotten or unheeded, then it is an empty form. With that, I agree. Such ritual can even be dangerous, for the people come to believe that ritual alone is worship. But it is valuable only when, like the shell of a nut, it reminds of and intimates the delectable and life-sustaining Kernel within. The Kernel forgotten or lost, the shell is worthless, however gilded. It contains no life. That is what the Lord meant when He attacked the ritualistic Pharisees who thought form, itself, was enough.”

He drank the fine wine with appreciation, and examined the beautiful and jeweled crystal of the Alexandrine goblet with admiring attentiveness. The Rabban said, “I think I detect a Hellenistic shine upon your words, Stephen.”

“That may be true,” said Stephen, “but then, have not Greece and Greek philosophy always had a deep influence on our faith since the first Greek entered Israel? What is beautiful has verity. And variety. To reject the verity of beauty is to reject a profound mysticism, for God, blessed be His Name, is all beauty and all glory and all joy. I am immediately suspicious and repelled by a man who finds our faith grim and joyless and life-denying, instead of a song of rapture sung in the morning in the sun.”

“Do you encounter these?” asked Joseph with surprise.

“Too many,” said Stephen. “I also encounter the weak who see in the Savior of His people a refuge from their petty adversities, from which they seek to flee, instead of a Temple in whose sacred precincts they can find the strength to endure the world and take up their burden without quailing or complaint. The weak have brought down more temples, and more nations, than we can know, and their self-serving voices have drowned out the very Voice of the Almighty. Life is not a purse from which prayers can draw treasures. It is, as the Greeks say, truly the Great Games, where only courage and strength and faith can win the prize, and fortitude crown the victor.”

“As you have said,” remarked Rabban Gamaliel, “the new Covenant is not for men of timidity and demands and uncertainty. I recall the words of the Prophet: Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not to your own understanding
. In all your ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct your paths.’” (Proverbs 3:5-6)

“But, there will be arguments,” said Joseph of Arimathaea.

Stephen laughed gently. “There already are,” he said. “They began even before He was crucified.”

He was so brimming with vitality and youthful certitude that the old men sighed and silently prayed for him, and he guessed this for he regarded them with respectful affection. He said, before he took his leave of them, “I will encounter your Saul of Tarshish yet, and then we shall have our argument, and it will be a marvelous day!”

It was only, thought Joseph of Arimathaea, a sharp autumn night wind on old bones that made him suddenly shiver as at an awful portent.

One day a centurion came to Saul and said, “Lord, there is a Hellenist among the people of great repute whom we have not taken because he is of a notable and wealthy house, and a man of nobility, and his family are friends of the High Priest, Caiphas, and even of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. We have overlooked his inflammatory speeches in the Temple of the Jews, and the synagogues, but now an uproar is among the Jews, and they fight each other and shout and even smite each other, in the purlieus of the Temple, itself.”

Stephen ben Tobias,” said Saul, and his face took on the expression of dark flame. “I have heard of him.”

The centurion nodded, and said, “I have news that at this moment ne is in the synagogue of what is called the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of Cilicians and of Asia, and the people are listening to this Stephen and are disputing furiously with him, or listening and hailing him. There is a crowd without the synagogue which cannot enter as it is overflowing, and struggles and blows and bloodletting is rife among it. Two of my legionnaires attempted to bring order, and they are now bleeding and wounded in our hostel. What shall I do?”

Saul rose from his desk in the fine house which Pilate had given him, and he took up his woolen cloak and fastened, for the first time the sword which he had been given about his waist, and his manner was quietly grim and resolute. His thick red hair flowed unkempt to his shoulders and his eyes glittered in his pale and freckled face. “Bring with us ten legionnaires,” he said to the centurion. “We go to the synagogue.” He paused a moment and his red thick brows wrinkled like the brows of the lion he was growing more and more to resemble. “Send a messenger to the Little Sanhedrin and ask, in my name, that they meet at the house of the High Priest, Caiphas, immediately, to judge a heretic, a blasphemer.”

“And not in the great Court of the Hewn Stones in the Temple?” asked the centurion, who had lived long in Israel and knew that powerful and wealthy malefactors and criminals and celebrated men were usually brought to the Court of Hewn Stones, before the full Sanhedrin, as befitted their station in life, for even judges must defer to rank.

Saul looked at him with his haughty contempt. “Is not that Stephen a Nazarene, a follower of Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth, who was himself brought before the Little Sanhedrin in the house of the High Priest? Shall a servant be greater than his master? What was judged sufficient for Yeshua ben Joseph is sufficient for this Stephen ben Tobias, who has lost the respect of praiseworthy and distinguished men, and is not higher than the carpenter he serves.”

The centurion went to seek a messenger and order the extra soldiers and then Saul joined him and his men, who had come to fear him in spite of lewd jests behind his back. It was known that he sought no women, therefore, it was hinted, he sought men, though there was no evidence to support this.

The distance to the synagogue was not far. The centurion rode in his chariot, and Saul stood beside him, his eyes fixed murderously ahead, his white lips a mere line between his flat cheeks. He had endured enough! Thinking of his own aristocratic kinsmen—and fearing for them—he had refrained from confronting this Stephen ben Tobias, as there was nothing more fatal than a precedent in law, as he knew. And Stephen was the only aristocrat among those now called the Nazarenes who mingled openly and incitingly among the common people, or harangued in the Temple or created disturbances. Still, once touch the proud patrician wall and none was safe, and even in his present mood of desperate determination and wild hatred Saul understood this, and he sweated under his cloak for his sister and her husband and their children. Lord, he addressed God in his agony, I am only of human flesh, and I love those of my house, though recalcitrant and blasphemers. Protect them, Lord, and bring them to repentance, lest they die, and I die of grief, for always You must be obeyed!

He thought particularly of his beloved nephew, Amos, so foully deceived and betrayed by those appointed as his natural guardians, and Amos’ brothers, and the beautiful young maid, their sister, who was like a carving in ivory. He ought of his sister, Sephorah, of his twin blood, whom he loved dearly, and his eyes closed on a spasm of anguish.

But above all God must be obeyed and served, even if a man died of it of a broken heart and a tormented spirit. And then in a twinkling Saul’s gorge and hatred reached a height that made him sway and stagger in the chariot: Stephen ben Tobias was the true threat against the house of Shebua ben Abraham, and the children of Sephorah bas Hillel! He, and he alone, had put them in this awful jeopardy, had broken down the gates between the market rabble and the patricians, and had placed the patricians at the mercy of rascals and thieves and yelling and mindless slavers! Stephen ben Tobias was the enemy of those of Saul’s flesh. He had called down the vengeance upon them. Therefore, he must die.

Those of power and influence and blood had a Godly imperative: They must uphold law and courtesy and order against the lustful rage of those who were hardly more than animals. They must lead judiciously and with temperate sanity and reason, for what were the people? Only wild and roaring beasts, such as the Romans confined in cages for the circuses, fang-toothed and milling, red of claw.

Now Saul cast his eyes on the people, who filled the streets, with overpowering detestation and felt an almost uncontrollable desire to ride them down and crush them under the wheels of the chariot. For, were they not destroyers of the holy places, the barbarians, the shriekers and blood-lusters, the hyena-laughers, the jackals, of every city under the sun? Why had God created these? Or, was man solely responsible for their being, or hell, itself? He suddenly thought of what his cousin, Titus Milo Platonius, had said of the rabble who had done Yeshua ben Joseph to death, and a cold finger, as of iron, touched Saul’s inflamed heart, and a cloudy confusion momentarily passed over his eyes. He thought, And Stephen ben Tobias consorts with these!

Jerusalem lay under the late winter sky in a strong but pale light, like silver struck by the sun. The air was clean and fresh and faintly chill, but exhilarating. The winding umber walls were almost colorless in the frank radiance. Many looked after the racing chariot and many there were who recognized the cloaked figure in it, and some faces darkened or glanced away in sorrow, and some merely smiled and raised eyebrows. These Pharisee heresy-hunters! Now they were in full cry after the members of that new cult founded by the Nazarene! Tomorrow they would discover another heresy and go roaring through the city, threatening scourgings and prisons and exile. But some, scenting excitement, halted their business to pursue the clanging vehicle and the men marching fast behind it. When Romans moved like this it was not to attend a dinner.

The chariot reached the synagogue, or rather it forced its horses through gesticulating and shouting mobs, and faces eloquent either with outrage or despair turned upon Saul. Some men sat on the stones, holding broken heads or noses, and here and there scufflings were under way, accompanied by roars and curses. Some vilified the exhorter within; some implored as passionately that he be heard, for who knew through whose lips God, blessed be His Name, would choose to speak? The centurion had to use his whip lavishly to disperse from his path some of the more engrossed in raging controversy, and they screamed imprecations upon him and shook fists in his direction. He laughed. His soldiers made a circle about the chariot and threatened the surging men with their drawn swords.