The Brook Kerith: A Syrian story

by George Moore

A sudden dryness in Paul's throat prevented him from finishing his sentence, and he asked for a cup of water, and having drained it he put down the cup and said, looking round, I was speaking to you about Corinth. The moment seemed a favourable one to Mathias to ask a question. How was it, he said, that you passed on to Corinth without stopping at Athens? I made stay at Athens, Paul answered, and I thank you, Mathias, for having reminded me of Athens, for the current of my discourse had borne me past that city, so eager was I to tell of the persecutions of the Jews. We are all Jews here! I speak only of the Hierosolymites who understand only that the law has been revealed, and we have only to follow it; though, indeed, some of them cannot tell us why we should follow any law, since they do not believe in any life except the sad life we lead on the surface of this earth.

But you asked me, Mathias, about Athens. A city of graven images and statues and altars to gods. On raising my eyes I always saw their marble deities—effigies, they said, of all the spirits of the earth and sea and the clouds above the earth and the heavens beyond the clouds. Whereupon I answered that these statues that they had carved with their hands could in no wise resemble any gods even if the gods had existence outside of their images, for none sees God. Moses heard God on Mount Sinai, but he saw only the hinderparts; which is an allegory, for there are two covenants, and I come to reveal—— Whereat they were much amused and said: if Moses saw the hinderparts why should we not see the faces, for our eyes see beauty, whereas the Hebrews see but the backside? At which I showed no anger, for they were not Jews, but strove, as it is my custom, to be all things to all men. The Jews require a miracle, the Greeks demand reason, and therefore I asked them why they set up altars to the unknowable God. And they said: Paul, thou readest our language as badly as thou speakest it; we have inscriptions "to unknown gods" but not to the unknowable God. Didst go to school at Tarsus, yet canst not tell the plural from the singular? To which I answered: then you are so religious-minded that you would not offend any god whose name you might not have heard, and so favour him by the inscription to an unknown God? But some of your philosophers, Athenians, call God unknowable. I knew this before I learnt how superstitious ye are. Ye are all alike ignorant since God left you to your sins for your idolatry; God, unknown or unknowable, has been made manifest to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born like us all for a purpose, his death, which was to save the world from its sins, whereupon, greedy for a story, they began to listen to me, and I had their attention till I came to these words—"And was raised by his Father from the dead." Paul, they answered, we will listen another day to the rest of this story of thy new divinity.

A frivolous people, Mathias, living in a city of statues in the air, and in the streets below a city of men that seek after reason, and would explain all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath by their reason, and only willing to listen to the story of a miracle because miracles amuse them. A race much given to enjoyment, like women, Mathias, and among their mountains they are not a different race from what they are in the city, but given to milking goats and dancing in the shade to the sounds of a pipe, and dreaming over the past glories of Athens, that are dust to-day though yesterday they were realities, a light race that will be soon forgotten, and convinced of their transience I departed for Corinth, a city of fencing masters, merchants, slaves, courtesans, yet a city more willing to hearken to the truth than the light Athenians, perhaps because it has much commerce and is not slothful in business, a city wherein I fortuned upon a pious twain, Aquila and Priscilla, of our faith, and of the same trade as myself, wherefore we set up our looms together in one house and sold the cloths as we weaved them, getting our living thereby and never costing the faithful anything, which was just pride, and mine always, for I have travelled the world over gaining a living with my own hands, never taking money from anybody, though it has been offered to me in plenty by the devout, thinking it better to be under no obligation, for such destroys independence....

Once only was this rule broken by me. In Macedonia, a dyer of purple—— But Lydia's story concerns ye not, therefore I will leave her story untold and return to Corinth, to Priscilla and Aquila, weavers like myself, with whom I worked for eighteen months, and more than that; preaching the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ to all who would hear us when our daily work was done, until the same fate befell us—the intervention of the Jews, who sought to embroil us, as beforetimes, with the Romans.

We preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath and I upheld the faith I had come to preach: that the Messiah promised to the Jews had lived and had died for us. Whereupon there was a great uproar among the Jews, who would not believe, and so I tore my garments and said: then I will go forth to the Gentiles, and find believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, and leave you who were elected by God as his chosen people, who were his by adoption, a privilege conferred upon you throughout the centuries, the race out of whom came the patriarchs, and Jesus Christ himself in the flesh. I will leave you, for you are not worthy and will perish as all flesh perishes; will drift into nothingness, and be scattered even as the dust of the roads is scattered by the winds. My heart is broken for you, but since ye will it so, let it be so.

So did I speak, but my heart is often tenderer than my words, and I strove again to be reconciled with the Jews, and abode in Corinth proving their folly to them by the Scriptures till again they sought to rid themselves of me by means of the Romans, saying before Gallic: this fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law. But Gallic, understanding fully that his judgment seat had not been set up for the settling of disputes of the spirit, but of the things of this world, drove the Jews out of his court, and there was an uproar and Sosthenes, a God-fearing man, was beaten. Yet for the sake of the race of the patriarchs, the chosen people of God, I abode in Corinth till the close of the second year, when news reached me of the many dissensions that had arisen in Jerusalem.

The old questions always stirring: whether the Gentiles should be admitted without circumcision and if the observances of the law were sufficient; if salvation could be obtained by works without faith, and many other questions that I thought had long been decided; in the hope of putting an end to these discussions, which could only end in schism, I bade the brethren good-bye on the wharf, and, shaving my head as a sign of my vow to keep the Feast of Pentecost, I set sail with Aquila and Priscilla for Syria and left them at Ephesus, though there were many Christians there who prayed me to remain and speak to them; but pointing to my shaved head, I said, my vow! and went down to Jerusalem and kept the Feast of Pentecost and distributed money among the poor, which had been given to me by the churches founded by me in Macedonia, in Greece and Syria.

I hoped to escape from discussion with James, the brother of the Lord, for of what good could it be to discuss once again things on which it is our nature to think differently, but upheld by hope that the Jews might be numbered among the faithful at the last day I told him that the Jews were the root of the olive-trees whose branches had been cut, and had received grafts, but let not the grafts, I said, indulge in vainglory; it is not the branches that bear the root, but the root that bears the branches. And many other things of this sort did I say, wishing to be in all things conciliatory; to be, as usual, all things to all men; but James, the brother of the Lord, answered that Jesus had not come to abrogate the law but to confirm it, which was not true, for the law stood in no need of confirmation. James could do that as well as his brother and better, and Peter not being there to bear witness of the teaching of Jesus (he too had gone forth upon a mission with John Mark as an interpreter, for Peter cannot speak Greek), Silas, who was with me, was won over by James, and easily, for Silas was originally of the Church of Jerusalem; as I have already told you, he had been sent with us to Antioch.

But I would not weary you with such small matters as Silas' desertion of me to join Peter, who was preaching in Syria, and whose doctrine he said was nearer to Jesus' than mine, it having been given to him by Jesus, whom he had known in the flesh. So be it, I said to Silas, and went without him to Antioch, a city dear to me for that it was there the word Christian was spoken for the first time; my return thither was fortunate, for there I met Barnabas, whom it was pleasant after these many years to meet again, all memory of our dissension was forgotten, which was no great matter, it having arisen out of no deeper cause than my refusal to travel with John Mark, his cousin. Titus was there too, and we had much to tell each other of our travels and the conversions we had made, and all was joy amongst us; and our joy was increased by Peter, who appeared amongst us, bringing Silas with him, who must have been grieved though he said nothing to me of it; but who must have seen that the law to which he was attached was forgotten at Antioch; not by us only, but by his new leader, Peter, who mixed like ourselves with the Gentiles and did not refuse to eat with them.

A moment indeed of great joy this was, but it did not last longer than many other moments of the same kind with which my life has been sprinkled. James, the brother of the Lord, sent up agents to Antioch with letters signed by himself. They had come to tell the people that I had not authority to teach, and could not be considered by anybody as a true apostle, for I had not known the Christ, it was said: and when I answered them that my authority came straight from him, they began to make little of my revelation, saying: even if thou didst hear the Christ on the road to Damascus, as thou sayest, it was but for a few minutes, and he couldn't teach thee all his doctrine in a few minutes. A year or more would be required. Thou wast deceived. No vision can be taken as of equal evidence to the senses. Those that we see in a vision may be but the evil spirits that, if it were possible, would deceive the very elect. If we question an apparition it answers anything that we wish. The spectre shines for an instant and disappears quickly before one has time to put further questions; the thoughts of the dreamer are not under his control. To see the Son of God outside of the natural flesh is impossible. Even an angel wishing to be seen has to clothe himself in flesh. Nor were they satisfied with such sayings as these, but mentioned the vision of infidels and evil livers, and to support their argument thus quoted Scripture, proving that God sent visions when he was irritated. As in Numbers, murmured Eleazar. And likewise in Exodus, said Manahem, and he turned over the quires before him. These emissaries and agents asked me how it was that even if Jesus had appeared to me he could not have instructed me wrongly. If I wished to prove the truth of my vision it were better for me to accept the teaching of the apostles, who had received it directly from him; to which I made answer: my revelation was not from Jesus when he lived in the flesh, but from the spiritual Jesus; the spirit descended out of heaven to instruct me, and if God has created us, which none will deny, he has created our souls wherewith to know him, and he needs not the authority of other apostles who speak as men, falling into the errors that men must fall into when they speak, for every man's truth is made known unto him by God.