When the meal was ended they again ascended to the upper deck. With every stitch of canvas drawing the fresh breeze, and every spar bending gracefully with the pressure, the Nereid skimmed rapidly over the waves, and erelong the separate towers and roofs of Tarsus began to resolve themselves out of the broadening gray-and-white mass. The white sails of the ships of many nations also dotted the harbor in the distance.
As soon as the little group were again seated, Marcius expressed his desire to know yet more fully of the opinions and doctrines of Serenus.
“Thy philosophy seemeth so reasonable and pleasing that I would fain listen to thee further. The worship of Jupiter, Hercules, and all the gods of Rome and Tarsus hath not given me full satisfaction, and their former purity hath become degenerated. But I would have none of the Hebrew austerity and stiff ceremonialism. I have beheld their gall-and-wormwood faces in Tarsus, and their sackcloth and ashes, self-conceit and ugly circumcision, disgust me. But thou art no Hebrew! If thou wert born to them, thou art not of them, for thou beholdest good in all men.”
“I perceive that of a verity thou dost desire the truth,” replied Serenus. “Whosoever seeketh it for its own sake will come more and more into its light, and wax strong in its strength. Nothing less can break the [pg 326]shackles of superstition and bigotry, whether of Hebrew, Greek, or Roman fashioning, and set men free. Only he who seeth some good—yea, some Godlikeness—in all hath his eyes open to behold the oneness and allness of Truth, which includeth concord and love, and which is yet to be the great religion of the children of men. The self-sufficient and vain-glorious devotees of the many cults and theologies each believe themselves alone to be righteous; for their outward gaze is fastened upon the most evil and unreal aspects of all systems besides their own.”
“Thinkest thou that I have misjudged the Hebrew? Behold I have seen those things of which I have spoken in the very streets of Tarsus.”
“I doubt not the outward appearances which thou hast witnessed; but even in those hollow and ostentatious ceremonials there may be an inner good intent. All men are blindly feeling after God,—the chief Good; but they often lose themselves in the by-paths of external authority and unreasoning belief. Men have the utterance of the Spirit of Truth in their inmost being, but they fail to interpret its drawing, because they are listening to a confused chorus of voices outside. Behold the divine law, or the perfect guide, for the thought and conduct of men hath not been fully set forth by seers and philosophers, inscribed in creeds or voiced by oracles, neither hath the Israelitish Decalogue, which was engraven upon tables of stone, entirely contained it. But in man’s being, or real nature, it is written in living characters,—letters of fire.”
“Then if one be wayward and disobedient, he offend[pg 327]eth not so much external codes, as the laws and principles of his own constitution.”
“Thou couldst not have declared the truth more perfectly! There is a divine image, or Son of God, in man. He may be known as the Anointed One, or Christ, within. But commonly he remaineth unmanifested.”
“By Hercules!—pass over the custom,—that seemeth to be a hard saying. Sayest thou that the ignorant, the base, and all men have this Anointed One, the Son, hidden within the depths of their being?”
“Yea; it is the very corner-stone of their nature, though they know it not. They think and feel that all men—themselves included—are corrupt in their being, because the troubled waves upon the surface of their every-day consciousness are evil and rebellious. Therefore they yield themselves to the dominion of appearances, and become slaves to the seen, and to those things which their own thoughts have created, and their own sensuous faculties upreared.”