"My lore!" repeated Sadoc, with a sad smile. "You would deem it beneath your understanding, as it would be above your practice. It is but to do justice, and to love mercy, dealing with man as before the face of God."
"But surely you have learned important secrets amongst the Egyptians?" urged Assarac, somewhat disappointed with this exposition of the Israelite's simple creed. "Surely they have taught you mysteries of magic and the art of divination, in which they boast their proficiency, handed down, as they profess, through scores of dynasties and hundreds of successive generations. Or is it true that your nation have been the teachers, and Egypt, with all her pride, is but the pupil of a people who took with them from this very land the art that we, its present inhabitants, have lost, the spells that compel gigantic spirits to work out their behests—rearing colossal buildings, causing wide tracts of desert to blossom like the rose, bidding the very waters of the great deep to subside and overflow at their will?"
"You know not our nation," answered Sadoc, "nor have you felt the iron hand of our oppressors, who practice the forbidden arts of which you speak, but with no result that hath ever spared groan or stripe to a single captive. The Israelite must toil under the scourge for his scanty morsel of bread. The great river indeed rises and falls at the command of one who is mightier than our task-masters, and who will not surely forget his people for ever in their bonds; but for the huge shapeless structures—the gigantic monster idols of the South—they are reared by a magic of which blood, sweat, and hunger constitute the spells, under the fierce eye that never sleeps, the cruel hand that is never raised but to urge, and smite and destroy. Yet when our fathers were driven by famine into Egypt they found there one of their own people, reigning wisely over a prosperous nation, and second only to Pharaoh on the throne; they found themselves honoured guests where now they are degraded prisoners, friends and allies where now they are hated and despised, masters, in truth, where they are slaves! And slaves to those who are themselves sunk in the degradation of a vile and brutal idolatry."
His eye blazed, and his very beard seemed to bristle with anger, while he spoke. It was in such flashes of indignation or excitement that the likeness of kindred races was to be noted on the features of Israelite and Assyrian.
"You scorn the gods of Nimrod," replied Assarac, with a sneer; "but the fathers from whom we claim a common descent have taught us, at least, a nobler impersonation of our worship than the goose, the serpent, the stork, the locust, and the cat! If we choose the lotus, the fir-cone, or the beetle to convey an idea of that reproductive power in nature, always existing even when dormant, as the flower in the bud, or the blade in the seed, at least we do not hang our temples with carvings of the humblest animals, the most loathsome reptiles, and the meanest utensils of our daily life! It is baser, I grant you, to adore the stars than the principle which gives them light, baser to kneel before the sculptured image than the god it represents; but basest surely of all worship is that practised by the cruel Egyptian, the enemy whom we have humbled, the master who is grinding your people into dust!"
"Our God will surely free us," said Sadoc, in a low mournful tone. "It cannot be that we, the lineal descendants of his favoured servant, are to remain for ever in the house of bondage, eating the bitter morsel of slavery, weeping tears of blood under the task-master's lash! But we have neither arms nor leaders; there is no proven harness in our dwellings, nor sword, nor shield, nor spear. How are we to go out from our enemies in the garb of peace, with our wives and children in our hands? And yet, I pray that it may come to this—I, for one, would march out fearlessly to die in the wilderness rather than gather another armful of straw, bake one more brick for the useless structures that only bear witness to our sorrows and our shame."
The pride of race, the intense consciousness of a peculiar destiny, in all ages an inheritance of the sons of Abraham, gave to the words of Sadoc a truth and bitterness, marked with no slight satisfaction by the scheming priest of Baal.
"Hands that have toiled so skilfully for their task-masters," said he, "can surely strike a blow in their own behalf. Courage that has borne long years of suffering and privation will not fail at the moment of liberation and revenge. You and yours are of our blood and lineage. You shall be no captives in Babylon, as you have been in Egypt. This very night I will take order for your food and lodging—nay, fear not, they shall be found you without the temple, if indeed you entertain any scruples as to entering the abode of Baal—and you shall return to your own people in safety and honour, as a son returns to the dwelling of his father with a gift in his hand. You will tell them that here, in the great city, our warlike Assyrians look on the Israelites as their kinsmen and friends; that when the oppressed rises against the oppressor, and the children of Terah resolve once for all to throw off the Egyptian yoke, they will see a cloud rising out of the desert from the trampling of horses, countless as locusts in a west wind—they will hear a thousand trumpets sounding far and wide from the hosts of the Great King!"
The Israelite's eye sparkled and his cheek glowed but he answered solemnly,
"It must be a mightier king than yours, who leads us forth into the wilderness out of the house of our captivity."