‘Ah! you know all.’
‘Angels watch over us!’ said Tancred, ‘or my brain will turn. And who is this?’
‘One before whom the pilgrims of the world once kneeled. This is the Syrian goddess; the Venus of our land, but called among us by a name which, by her favour, I also bear, Astarte.’
CHAPTER LIII.
Fakredeen’s Plots
AND when did men cease from worshipping them?’ asked Fakredeen of Tancred; ‘before the Prophet?’ ‘When truth descended from Heaven in the person of Christ Jesus.’
‘But truth had descended from Heaven before Jesus,’ replied Fakredeen; ‘since, as you tell me, God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, and since then to many of the prophets and the princes of Israel.’
‘Of whom Jesus was one,’ said Tancred; ‘the descendant of King David as well as the Son of God. But through this last and greatest of their princes it was ordained that the inspired Hebrew mind should mould and govern the world. Through Jesus God spoke to the Gentiles, and not to the tribes of Israel only. That is the great worldly difference between Jesus and his inspired predecessors. Christianity is Judaism for the multitude, but still it is Judaism, and its development was the death-blow of the Pagan idolatry.’
‘Gentiles,’ murmured Fakredeen; ‘Gentiles! you are a Gentile, Tancred?’