Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians. Elizabeth Miller
Priest's health."
"He continues in health, God be thanked, but his spirit was sorely tried—" He stopped abruptly to look, as if in question, at the man sitting apart in the shadows.
"Who is that?" he asked suspiciously.
"A pupil," was Eleazar's impatient reply. The Levite looked again, but, the twilight thwarting him, he hitched a slant shoulder and, passing to one of the windows, drew aside its heavy hanging. Instantly, a great golden beam shot into the cold chamber and illuminated it gloriously. Saul threw his hand over his eyes to shut out the blinding radiance. But the pupil, helped at his reading by the admitted light, straightened himself, glanced up a moment, and turned to his scroll without a word.
"A stranger," Joel whispered, coming back to the rabbis.
"What burden of mystery dost thou conceal, Joel?" Eleazar exclaimed. "Yonder man is an Essene; look about; the stones will take tongue and betray thee, sooner than he."
"Let me be sure, let me be sure!" Joel insisted stubbornly.
As if obedient to Eleazar, he cast an eye about the chamber.
The light which came in at the west was straight from the spring sun, moted and warm with benevolence. That which entered at the east was only a quivering reflection from the marble walls and golden gates of the Temple. The chamber was immense, shadowy and draughty, the floor of stone, the walls of Hermon's rock, relieved by massive arcades supported on pilasters, and friezes of such images as were hieratically approved. The ceiling was so lost in height and cold dusk that its structure could not be defined. At the end opposite the doors was the lectern of ivory and ebony, embellished with symbolical intaglios and inlaid with gold. Beside it stood the reader's chair, across which the rug had been dropped as he had put it off his knees. Before the lectern, across and down the great chamber, were ranges of carven benches, among which were lamps of bronze, darkened and green about the reliefs and corrugations on the bowls, depending from chains or set about on tripods.
But besides the three already noted, the Levite saw and expected to see no others. Eleazar regarded his ostentatious inspection of the room with disgust.
"Thou hast a burden on thy soul, Joel," Saul urged mildly. "Let us bear it with thee."
The Levite came close and bent over the rabbis.
"Question your souls, brethren," he said. "Hath Judea more to lose than it hath lost?" he asked in a lowered tone.
"Its identity," Eleazar responded shortly.
But the Levite looked expectantly at Saul.
"Its faith," Saul suggested quietly.
The Levite nodded eagerly.
"Its faith," Saul continued, as if speaking to himself, "and after that there is nothing more. Yea, restore unto it its kings and its dominions, yet withhold the faith and there is no Judea. Desolate it until the land is sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, so but the faith abide, Judea is Judea, glorified!"
"What then, O Rabbi," the Levite persisted, "if the land be sown in salt and the people bound to the mills of the oppressor, if the faith be abandoned—what then?"
"God can not perish," Eleazar put in. "Fear not; it can not come to pass."
"Nay, but evil can enter the souls of men and point them after false prophets so that God is forgotten," the Levite retorted. His lean figure bent at the hips and he thrust his face forward with triumph of prophecy on it. Saul looked at him.
"What hast thou to tell, Joel?" he asked with command in his voice. The Levite accepted the order as he had worked toward it—with energy.
"Listen, then," he began in a whisper. "Dost thou remember Him whom they crucified at Golgotha, a Passover, four years ago?"
Eleazar nodded, but Saul made no sign.
"Know ye that they killed the plant after it had ripened," the Levite hastened on. "The seed of His teaching hath spread abroad and wherever it lodgeth it hath taken root and multiplied. Wherefore, there is a multitude of offspring from the single stem."
Saul stood up. He did not gain much in stature by rising, but the temper of the man towered gigantic over the impatience of Eleazar and the craft of the Levite.
"What accusation is this that thou levelest at Judea?" he demanded.
"A truth!" Joel replied.
"That Israel hath a blasphemer among them, which hath been spared, concealed and not put away?" questioned Saul.
"Dare ye?" the Levite cried.
"Dare ye not!" Saul answered sternly. "It is the Law!"
The Levite came toward him. "Go thou unto the High Priest Jonathan," he whispered evilly; "he hath work for thee to do!"
Eleazar doubled his huge hand and whirled his head away. There was tense silence for a moment.
"Is there a specific transgression discovered?" Saul demanded.
The Levite weighed his answer before he gave it.
"Rumor hath it," he began, "that certain of the sect are in the city preaching—"
"Rumor!" Saul exclaimed. "Hast rested on the testimony of rumor?"
"Can ye track pestilence?" he asked craftily.
"By the sick!" was the retort. "Go on!"
"It is the High Priest's vow to attack it," Joel declared. "He hath no other thought. It is said that one of the disputants, who yesterday troubled them in the Cilician synagogue with an alien doctrine, preached the Nazarene's heresy."
"In the Cilician—in mine own synagogue!" Saul repeated, in amazement.
"In thine, in the Libertine, the Cyrenian and the Alexandrian."
"And they suffered him?" Saul persisted with growing earnestness.
"They did not understand him, then; he is but a new-comer from Galilee."
"And I was not there; I was not there!" Saul exclaimed regretfully. "What is he called?"
"Stephen."
There was a sound from the direction of the silent pupil. They looked that way to see that he had dropped his scroll and had sprung to his feet. The Levite dropped his head between his shoulders and scrutinized him sharply. But the young man had fixed his eyes upon Saul, as if waiting for his answer.
"Stephen of Galilee," the Levite added, watching the young man. "A Hellenist; and he wrapped his blasphemy so subtly in philosophy that none detected it until after much thought."
The young man turned his face toward the speaker and a glimmer of anger showed in his black eyes.
"It is bold blasphemy which ventures into a synagogue," Saul said half to himself.
"Ah! thou pointest to the sign of peril," the Levite resumed. "Boldness is the banner of strength; strength is the fruit of numbers; and numbers of apostates will be the ruin of Judea and the forgetting of God!"
Saul caught up his scrip which lay beside him, but Eleazar continued to gaze at the beam of light penetrating the chamber.
"Wherefore the High Priest is troubled, and, laying aside all his private ambitions, henceforward he will devote himself to the preservation of the faith," the Levite continued.
"Which means," Eleazar interrupted, "the persecution of the apostate."
The Levite spread out his hands and lifted his shoulders. The Rabbi Eleazar forged too far ahead.
"It is our duty, Eleazar," Saul said, "to discover if this Galilean preaches heresy. Let us go to the synagogue."
Eleazar arose, a towering man, broad, heavy and slow, but his rising was as the rising of opposition.
"I am enlisted in the teaching