Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, would have been among the earliest to arrive. Perhaps by special dispensation he had entered before the multitude and by another gate.
The keeper at the Gate Beautiful glanced at the young man's snow-white Essenic garments and at the stamp of Jewish blood on his face, and passed him without a word.
The Temple from the city had been a great glittering unit. But on approaching its details, they became bewildering.
Within was a tremendous inclosure, floored with agate, galleried with immense chambers which were screened with grills of beaten brass. The army of worshipers was reduced, in comparison to the space they entered, to a mere handful of pygmy, indistinct shapes, prostrate, kneeling, upright, silent, infinitesimal, moveless. At the extreme inner end of the men's court was a flight of fifteen semicircular steps which led up to the Gate Nicanor, now wide. It was hung in the middle of an open arcade—an altar screen no less a grace to the Temple because it might have embattled a fortress. Beyond it as the eye pierced the holy gloom, was a second tier of courts, less spacious than the first, but no less magnificent; after it, yet a third, and then a massive pile of ancient brass, stained and smoked, arose above all else before it. A tongue of clean blue unilluminating flame wavered in the center of its summit.
Beyond that, Marsyas' gaze did not travel.
Spiritual subjection surrounded him; from behind the lattice which screened the women's court in the lofty galleries, there came no sound. The twilight of early morning and the hush of a sanctity were supreme.
He crossed his hands upon his breast and let his head fall as the elders had taught him.
Others came to stand beside him, the order of worship proceeded, and the singing Levites ranged themselves on the steps before Nicanor, but he was plunged in his spiritual difficulty and oppressed by the care for himself and his own.
Finally there came a long, rich trumpet note above middle register; the voice of a brazen tongue singing through a horn of silver. It was not sudden. Beginning as the sound of wind on a fine wire, it ripened in tone as it grew in volume till it achieved the color, the shape of harmony, the very fragrance of music. As it diminished, those who listened caught the sound of a second note—the voice of a twin trumpet, save that the tones issued in the molds of enunciation. It was one singing among the Levites, as impossible to discover as to pick out the inspirited pipe in an organ.
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein—"