As he threw himself back, gazing upon the sky with his grand form buoyant with vigor and his arm raised, he looked like one to whom height or depth could offer no obstacle. His mantle flew out along the blast, like the unfurling of a mighty wing. There was something in his look and voice that gave irresistible conviction to his words. Conscious mastery was in all about him. I should not have felt surprise to see him spring up into the clouds!
My mind grew inflamed by his presence. My blood burned with sensations for which language was no name—a thirst of power—a scorn of earth—a proud and fiery longing for the command of the hidden mysteries of nature. I felt as the great ancestor of mankind might have felt when the tempter told him, “Ye shall be even as gods.”
“Give me your power!” I exclaimed; “the world to me is worthless; with man all my ties are broken; let me live in the desert, and be even as you are; give me your power.” “My power?” he repeated, with a ghastly laugh that was echoed round the wilderness by what seemed voices innumerable until it died away in a distant groan. “Look on this forehead!”—he threw back the corner of his mantle. A furrow was drawn round his brow, covered with gore, and gaping like a fresh wound. “Here,” cried he, “sat the diadem. I was Epiphanes.”[12]
Which Antiochus Promises
“You, Antiochus! the tyrant—the persecutor—the spoiler—the accursed of Israel!” I bounded backward in sudden horror. I saw before me one of those spirits of the evil dead who are allowed from time to time to reappear on earth in the body, whether of the dead or the living. For some cause that none could unfold, Judea had been, within the last few years, haunted by those beings more than for centuries. Strange rites, dangerously borrowed from the idolaters, were resorted to for our relief from this new terror: the pulling of the mandrake at the eclipse of the moon—incantations—midnight offerings—the root of Baaras, that was said to flash flame and kill the animal that drew it from the ground. Our Sadducees and skeptics, wise in their own conceit, declared that possession was but a human disease, a wilder insanity. But, with the range and misery of madness, there were tremendous distinctions, which raised it beyond all the ravages of the hurt mind or the afflicted frame—the look, the language, the horror, of the possessed were above man. They defied human restraint; they lived in wildernesses where the very serpents died; the fiery sun of the East, the inclemency of the fiercest winter, had no power to break down their strength. But they had stronger signs. They spoke of things to which the wisdom of the wisest was folly; they told of the remotest future, with the force of prophecy; they gave glimpses of a knowledge brought from realms of being inaccessible to living man; last and loftiest sign, they did homage to HIS coming, whom a cloud of darkness, the guilty and impenetrable darkness of the heart, had veiled from my unhappy nation. But their worship was terror—they believed and trembled.
“Power,” said the possessed, and his large and unmoving eyes seemed lighting up with fire from within; “power you shall have, and hate it; wealth you shall have, and hate it; life you shall have, and hate it; yet you shall know the heights and depths of man. You shall be the worm among a nation of worms; you shall be steeped in ruin to the lips; you shall undergo the bitterness of death, until——” His brow writhed; he gnashed his teeth, and convulsively sprang from the ground, as if an arrow had shot through him.
The current of his thoughts suddenly changed. Things above man were not to be uttered to the ear unopened by the grave. “Come,” said he, “son of misfortune, emblem of the nation that living shall die, and dying shall live; that, trampled by all, shall trample upon all; that, bleeding from a thousand wounds, shall be unhurt; that, beggared, shall wield the wealth of nations; that, without a name, shall sway the councils of kings; that, without a city, shall inhabit in all kingdoms; that, scattered like the dust, shall be bound together like the rock; that, perishing by the sword, by the chain, by famine, by fire, shall yet be imperishable, unnumbered, glorious as the stars of heaven.”
Salathiel Overpowered
Overwhelmed with sensations, rushing in a flood through my heart, I had cast myself upon the ground; the flashing of the fiery eye before me consumed my blood; and, fainting, I lay with my face upon the sand. But his words were deeply heard; with every sound of his searching voice they struck into my soul. He grasped me; and I was lifted up like an infant in his clutch. “Come,” said he, “and see what is reserved for you and for your people.”
He darted forward with a speed that took away my breath; he ran—he bounded—he flew. “Now, behold,” he uttered in an accent as composed as if he had not moved a limb. I looked, and found myself on one of the hills close to the great southern gate of Jerusalem. Years had passed since I ventured so nigh. But I now gazed on the city of pomp and beauty with an involuntary wonder that I could have ever deserted a scene so lovely and so loved.