The black ship: with other allegories and parables

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

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THE Temple was in ruins, and the Priestess sat, a captive in chains, among its broken and scattered fragments.

It had been a temple of the most ancient form, open to the sky, beautiful beyond any temple upon earth, beautiful and sacred, and some remnants of its beauty hung about it still—fragments of exquisite carvings and broken shafts of graceful columns. But everything was shattered and out of place, the window tracery shivered in a thousand fragments and strewn on the ground, columns prostrate, sacred vessels lying rusted among the weeds, the pure spring which had gushed from beneath the altar choked up and dry, and instruments of sacred music mute and broken on the ground.

On the walls in some places were the traces of violence, but it was remarkable that they seemed to have been assaulted only from within. Indeed, the temple had been a fortress, so impregnably situated and built, that except from within, not one stone could ever have been displaced.

This was, in fact, the saddest part of its history. The temple had been desecrated before it had been ruined, and in its ruin it was a temple still, but, alas! no longer sacred to Him in whose honour it had been reared.

Many senseless or loathsome idol-images were carved on the walls, strangely contrasting, in their shapelessness or deformity, with the symmetry of every fragment of the original structure. On the broken altar in the centre stood an image of the Priestess herself. This was the earliest idol which had entered there, and with the entrance of this, the ruin had begun. The Enemy who had, with subtle flatteries, introduced this idol, had ever since had access to the temple, and step by step the Priestess had sunk beneath his power. He had led her into wild orgies, in which she herself had defaced the delicate tracery and torn down the walls; and when she awoke from the frenzy and wept, as sometimes she would, he silenced her tears with blows or with mocking threats of the vengeance of Him to whom the temple had been consecrated.

Sometimes, however, she woke to a moment's full consciousness of the desolation around her, and then she would wail and lament until he seemed to fear some unseen Friend would hear; and at such seasons he grew more gentle, and renewed the old persuasions and flatteries by which he had misled her first. He would even encourage her at times, when all other methods failed, to try and collect the scattered stones, and repair the breaches in the shattered walls and re-string the broken harp, for he knew well her puny efforts must fail, and that no hands but those of the builder could ever restore the ruin she had wrought.

So, after a few faint endeavours, she, as he expected, would give up in despair, and sit cowering hopelessly on the ground afraid of him, afraid of Him whose priestess she was, afraid of her own voice.

In such bitter hours, he would again grow bold, and mock her with the memory of the past, until the spirit of indignant resistance seemed roused within her, when, once more softening his tone, he would point her with flattering words to her own image on the broken altar. He would shew her the beauty still lingering in its marred and weather-worn features, and help her to decorate it with gay colours and tinsel ornaments, placing in her hands the golden censer, with the sweet incense which had been made in happier days for far other uses; and she would wave the fragrant compound before the idol image of herself.

But with the pure spices which made it sweet, the enemy had mixed a narcotic poison, and as she languidly swung the censer to and fro, her brain would become intoxicated with the voluptuous sweetness, until, in a dream of vain delight, she would fall asleep, and forget all her miseries. And ever, as she slept, he would rivet faster the chain which, unperceived by her, was being bound around her, every year making her range of action narrower and her movements less free.