Food was placed before the strangers, Essene fare, bread and hyssop. [No women were to be seen]: for the Essenes on this Oasis belonged to the highest class, in which marriage was forbidden: it was allowed in the inferior classes, only with strict limitations and restraints. They must speedily have become extinct, had it not been that they received many children among them for education, and that many grown-up persons constantly joined their society, weary of the cares and vicissitudes of busy life. Thus they formed a society which never died out, although no child was born among them. They allowed no traffic in their community, because it must have been carried on through the medium of gold, which they considered as the root of all moral corruption; they had no servants, for each ministered to the other; and they took no oath, that which they had taken at their admission rendering every other superfluous.
Although our travellers were not admitted into the refectory of the Essenes, they were not alone. They found a multitude of sick persons assembled, who had come in hope of relief from the secret wisdom of the Essenes. They performed their cures by means of mysterious formularies, and recipes carefully preserved in their ancient books. These books had come to them in times of venerable antiquity from remote regions of the east, and were carefully studied by them, especially on the sabbath, which they held even more sacred than the other Jews. Their cures were wrought chiefly by enforcing temperance, self-command, and the dominion of the soul over the body; and with these means they performed wonders. The simplicity of their lives preserved their health to extreme old age, and not a few boasted that the spirit of prophecy had been wakened in them.
When Selumiel and Elisama had laid themselves down after the frugal repast, to rest beneath the palms, Helon went about to examine the whole arrangement and economy of this establishment. He would gladly have entered into conversation with some of the Essenes, but no one addressed him, and the determined taciturnity of their looks, and the profound stillness which reigned around these cottages, deterred him from making the attempt. He silently followed an aged man, who with his staff was making his round through the fields, when about noon every one was already again at his labour, and who seemed to be superintending their operations. The bending of the men, the prostration of the youths, as he approached them, showed to Helon that reverence for age was here inculcated and practised as a part of the duties of religion. Every thing here was done by command; no man followed a will of his own; indeed the will itself appeared to be social not individual, one thing only was excepted—beneficence. If those who were in need were not his own kindred, every one might assist and relieve them without asking permission or waiting for a command. The fields were covered with luxuriant crops, but the cultivators themselves were spare and pale.
Selumiel and Elisama had rested themselves, the heat of the mid-day was past, and there was no more to be discovered in a day than in an hour respecting the Essenes. The simple exterior of their habits and customs was easily seen. To learn any part of their secrets, it was necessary to listen in silence for years together. Our travellers therefore broke up immediately after the mid-day, and continued their tedious way through the desert to Jericho. Selumiel had requested his friend, the Essene, to be their guide, as the road was intricate even to those who had frequently travelled it. The Essene, at home amidst these solitudes, readily complied, and led them through ravines, amidst precipices, through sandy plains destitute of vegetation, and over naked hills. Always alert and ready to assist, he went before them, gave them his hand in difficult parts of the way, supported the elder men in the steeper ascents, and answered every question that was addressed to him, but so briefly that he seemed to weigh every word, and to be in perpetual apprehension of allowing one that was superfluous to escape his lips.
In answer to the question of Elisama, whence the name of Essene was derived, he informed them that it was Persian, and denoted the resemblance of their life to that of bees. “We learn from them to be unwearied in our diligence, to live in brotherly union, to be without distinction of sex in respect to desire, and to gather stores for the supply of others.” Their contempt for the female sex and aversion from matrimony displeased Elisama, who called the latter an ordinance of God, and pronounced it a vain and presumptuous thought of man, to wish to annihilate the distinction of sex, when the Creator had made the human race male and female.
Selumiel endeavoured to silence Elisama, by reminding him that nearly all the members of this community were old men. But the Essene himself would not accept this explanation; he maintained that this opinion was intimately and necessarily connected with the rest of their system. “The body as ye see,” said he, “is perishable and its elements for ever changing; the soul is immortal and unchangeable. Sprung from the purest ether, it is drawn down to the body by a certain natural impulse, and kept as it were imprisoned there while the body continues to exist. When freed from the fetters of the flesh, it rejoices like those delivered from a long and galling bondage, and wings its flight upwards. The souls of the just are conducted to an abode, beyond the ocean, of indescribable delight, where neither rain nor snow deforms the sky, and mild sea-breezes temper the rays of the sun. The wicked, on the contrary, are condemned to eternal thraldom and torment in a dwelling of frost and darkness. Should not then every soul abhor and shun intemperance and pleasure, as its worst enemies, and renounce every gratification which would give the body an ascendency over it, while it cultivates sobriety and chastity as the means of making its present captivity more tolerable, and of being ultimately delivered from it?”
The Essene spoke thus, animated in the defence of his doctrines, and almost forgetting the ordinary conciseness of his discourse. When he had ended, he turned abruptly round, after a brief salutation to the travellers. A hill higher than any in the desert, and equally bare, though on its verge, stood before them. They looked back, and saw the Essene vanishing among the intricacies of the path which they had just quitted, carefully holding his garments together, and hastening back to his brethren, without looking to the right hand or to the left. Helon seemed to breathe more freely as they emerged from this region of desolation. Selumiel, looking back towards the Oasis, and leaning on his staff, asked his companions, “Now, then, how like ye my Essenes?”
“Call them not thy Essenes,” said Elisama, “for, Jehovah be praised, there is a wide difference between them and thee.”
“Allow me this,” said Selumiel, “and I will in return allow thee to speak of thy Pharisees.”
“That,” said Elisama, very earnestly, “I shall never be; call me an Aramæan Jew, and I shall gladly accept the title.”