“Why, these things are not hard! Can a man please God with these things?” said the man Obil, and a great trembling fell upon him.
“Was it not a Curse, then?” he asked himself, going back to that day of dumb agony when he stood, bereaved, before the uncle of his dead Miriam. Something in the pure blue peace of the sky above that Face made him think of her and see her once more, as with holy joy she lit her Sabbath candles and chanted from the sacred song that she loved: “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the Soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.” He had despised the words and the spirit of that sacred song in those wild years that lay so close behind him, hated them, trampled on them, called them a lie.
But now—Miriam cursed for “lifting the weight of the fig” on the day that she loved? For moving a bench in her home, or drying his coat beside the fire?
He pressed nearer, with a mighty hunger to hear of the real God, who loved and did not hate His world.
The maimed and the halt and the devil-possessed weltering there snarled at Obil, “Here, you lusty one! Get back! Nothing is the matter with you!”
For indeed his clear eyes were velvet and full of fire; his strong neck was like a column; his shoulders were massive as a good piece of gunwale timber out of Lebanon.
But Obil did not heed. A stern voice rose insistent in his soul: “Go, and delay not! The hour has come! Wilt thou avenge not the life of thy son?”
But with that horrible trembling upon him the man Obil stood. And the Lord bent his gaze upon Obil,—a gaze that was shorter than breath; yet it lifted his minutest past out from its veiling haze and pushed it before Obil’s agonized consciousness; all his failures, mistakes, misunderstandings, selfishness, blasphemies; all his cruelties and crimes, and the one long savage purpose to kill,—all arose, black, intolerable, before the flaming purity of the gaze of the Lord.
If the earth could only open to receive him in safe darkness and oblivion!