The quenchless light

by Agnes C. Laut

It was the glad season now known as Easter, some fifty years after the death and ascension of our Lord. The sunshine of the Ægean Sea was a luminous glory that clothed all the world of spring in garments of pure light. The city square swam in a transparent gold that dazzled the eye. Across the square, the aërial arches between the columns of the Great Temple to Diana gave glimpses of a sea that was by turns turquoise blue and emerald green, with a fret of snowy waves whose mermaid hair danced rainbows in the sunlight. Between the arcades of the Temple columns, the Bishop could catch hints of the surrounding circle of snowy mountains; and they, too, swam opal jewels in a mirage of morning light. The years had touched Onesimus lightly. He was stouter, stronger, more robust; but few silver hairs intermingled with his gold curls, though an austere strength now stamped face and figure, as of a man, whose shoulders had grown the broader for their load. But the gladness of the day brought back memories of his youth, this morning.

What wonder—he mused—the Greeks’ frieze across the top of the Temple columns represented their huntress Deity as driving the wild horses of the waves with the wind in their tossing manes out to the pasture grounds of the ocean deeps? The Bishop dreaming in the garden between his little Christian church and his house smiled; for though he was Christian, he was also Greek; and never the sun came over the snowy mountains in spring but he felt the wild lure of the huntress, Diana, with her silver horn winding through the woods and caves, leading youth captive in pursuit of the fleet-foot rainbow hours.

Something there was in the glad spring day of the beginning of time, “when the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy.”

So sitting in the garden across the city square from the vast marble Temple to Diana, he could not but smile gently to himself. Spite of statue in silver like a spire to sky, and domes that vied in beauty the opals of the snowy peaks, and friezes that were the glory of Grecian art for two hundred years—not so many worshipers came from the seas and hills to the Great Diana’s Temple. Especially, not so many worshipers came to the Temple now that the Roman conqueror persisted in setting up images of the Emperors to be worshiped equal with Diana. That very year, vestal virgins had suffered death for refusing to offer incense to the figure of the Roman Emperor—“Beast worship” it was now called among the Greeks; and after the martyrdom of these vestals, the young Christian Bishop reflected, his own little church had been crowded with new adherents to the new faith.

The three vestal virgins had been accused of breaking their girdle vows; but Onesimus knew the real cause of their death had been—they had laughed at the Goddess Roma set up beside the Great Diana; and when the Great Diana had failed to protect them, faith in her power had fallen off. The people knew the Temple was a cheat to barter gain for sacrifice and hold allegiance to Rome.

Books of Black Magic to the value of more than £2,000 had been burned at Ephesus after Paul’s labors there; and what Paul had preached, Apollos had confirmed, speaking from the very shrine of Diana, herself. Truly what Paul “had planted, Apollos had watered, and God had given the increase.” He thought of Ephesus, the third greatest city in the known world, with its theater holding fifty thousand pleasure seekers, where his little old half-blind, deformed Master, Paul, with the lion heart and sword of the spirit had conquered the Prince of the Powers of the Air—whether Black or White Magic, Onesimus did not know. He only knew the Invisible King had conquered.

Aquila and Priscilla had won Apollos, the Gnostic, to Christ, and had accompanied Paul to Ephesus; and when Paul had left Ephesus to go on to Rome, it was Apollos who had driven the Christ message home; so that now Ephesus, rather than Antioch, was the rallying point for the followers in Asia. The fall of Jerusalem had dispersed all followers there to the deserts of Asia and Egypt. The incursions of the victorious Roman Army had driven the Jews from Antioch. At Ephesus must be the final stand of the followers for the Christ against pagan god and Jewish legalism and the Black Magic of the sorcerers, now a scourge over all the world.

Was Apollos an Apostate, “a wandering star,” as Peter and the others had feared? Certainly, he had failed to come to the rescue of Paul, in Corinth and Rome, when Paul’s need had been sore; but then, he had defied the pagan gods in their own temples, while Paul always spoke from Jewish synagogue, or from market place; and John had reported the Master’s words—that those not against Him, were for Him; and Apollos had one message and Paul another; and both led like Jacob’s ladder to God.

Fewer and fewer animals from the mountain herds went to the Temple as sacrifices; and the trade in little silver images of Diana had fallen away so that the silversmiths had removed their booths from the Temple columns. The space, where the silversmiths’ booths used to stand, now was taken up with aged and infant ragged beggars, imploring alms from the worshipers by day and by night, huddling to sleep behind the shelter of the columns. He could see these poor shipwrecks of port life this morning, shaking off their drowsiness and tatters to begin another dull round of another dull day; and yet—and yet—the legend of Diana’s silver hunting horn winding divine music through the mountain passes to the sea was in the young Greek Bishop’s very soul.

The perfume of the morning flowers had no drugged night bloom. It was clean, dew-washed, elusive as light. Dewdrops still lay on the lips of the purple iris, the white narcissus, the voluptuous flaunting tulips. Spider webs spun with diamonds of light and dew hung in the acacia and oleander hedges. The great Easter lilies lifted royal spears of gold and cups of nectar to greet the rising sun—easterly always pointed the spears and cups to the sun god; and on the stone edge of the garden fountain, a bird with a dash of sapphire blue and ruby red on his throat was caroling love notes to burst his little palpitating heart.