"Baal will not suffer me to want," replied the other. "Shall I, then, see my brother hunger and thirst, while I have enough and to spare? Are you not of our race and kindred? Are not your oppressors our ancient enemies? Do we not come of one lineage and worship the same God?"
The Israelite pointed upward to the stars, and shook his head.
"Our fathers have taught us otherwise," said he solemnly; "and I, Sadoc the son of Azael, standing here in the bonds of my captivity, protest against your idols, your temples and your worship, your gashes and drink-offerings, your winged monsters, your sacred tree, and all the thousand unworthy forms to which you degrade the majesty of the Omnipotent and the Infinite!"
Assarac smiled with the frank liberality of a disputant who in admitting his adversary's premises narrows, as it were, the field in which to do battle.
"Symbols," he answered, "symbols; the mere outward efforts of that inner spirit of worship which must find vent, like the mind of man, through the senses. He can see but with the eye, he can hear but with the ear, he can impart his thoughts only in those forms of speech that his tongue has learned to frame, and his fellows have skill to comprehend. How shall you express the principle of heat but by fire? How shall you comprehend the majesty of light but through the sun? How can you form a nobler ideal of spirits, gods, and departed heroes than in those serene and silent witnesses who never weary of their endless watches in the unfathomable night?"
"So you send a thousand labourers to the mountain," replied Sadoc, pointing scornfully at the sculptures on the palace wall, "and bid them rend the granite from its unyielding sides till they have hewn out a creature such as was never seen in earth or sea or sky—a creature of make and qualities in direct defiance to that nature you profess to reverence—winged like a bird, headed like a man, limbed like a bull—a monster, grotesque, impossible, imposing only from its gigantic size and truthful outline. You rear it up at a prince's doorway, and call on men to fall down and worship before the hoofs of that which is lower than the lowest of the brutes in the system of creation!"
"Are you a priest among your people?" asked Assarac quickly.
"Every head of a family is the priest of his own household," was the dignified reply. "There need no mysteries for a worship sublime as the eternal heavens, and clear as the light of day."
"Yet surely you cannot move the multitude without extraneous influences stronger and more tangible than those truths of the inner shrine which we the initiated know and accept at their real value," argued Assarac. "That very figure which you scorn speaks to the senses of the Assyrian nation far more forcibly than all the promptings from within that ever moved a prophet to leap and howl and gash himself with knives before an altar, while he foretold great actions and mighty events that should never come to pass. Not a spearman in the Great King's host but, when he looks on these carven blocks of granite, walks with a prouder step and shakes his weapon in a stronger hand. He sees in that mighty frame the over-powering forces that have made his race conquerors of the world; in that majestic face, calm and indomitable, the true spirit of victory marching unmoved over the ruins of an empire as over the ashes of a peasant's hearth; in those unfurled wings, the ubiquity of a dominion that can command ships for the sea, camels for the desert, and horsemen swarming like locusts to overrun the fertile plain. It is no representation of mere nature evoked by the toil, skill, and indeed the sufferings of countless labourers, but of that spirit which dominates and subdues nature for its own aggrandisement and fame. Where is the type of godlike dominion to be found, if not here, in this impersonation of conquest: strength, intellect, and audacity combined?"
Sadoc pointed to an Egyptian child sleeping a few paces off with a wild-flower grasped in its little hand.