“No, your highness,” said Nathaniel, “but I would have it serve as my apology for not giving such an answer. The father of these youths caused the three rings to be made expressly that no examination might be able to detect any dissimilarity between them; and I will venture to assert, that not even the Sublimest of Mankind, the Sultan Sal-ad-Deen himself, could, unless by accident, have placed his hand on the true one.”
“Thou triflest with me, Nathaniel,” said the sultan; “a ring is not a religion. There are, it is true, many modes of worship on the earth: but has not Islamism always remained a distinct system of faith from the false creeds? Look at its dogmas, its ceremonies, the modes of prayer, the habits, yea, the very food and raiment of its professors! What sayest thou of these?”
“Simply,” returned the Jew, “that none of them are proofs of the truth of Islamism. Nay, be not wroth with me, your highness, for what I say of your religion I say equally of all others. There is one true religion, as there was one true ring in my parable; but you must have perceived that all men are not alike capable of discovering the truth by their own unassisted efforts, and that a certain degree of trust in the good faith of others as teachers is therefore essential to the reception of religious belief at all. In whom, then, I would ask, is it most natural for us to place our trust? Surely in our own people—in those of whose blood we are—who have been about us from our childhood, and given us unnumbered proofs of love—and who have never been guilty of intentionally practising deception upon us. How can I ask of you to abandon the prepossessions of your fathers before you, and in which, true or false, you have been nurtured? Or how can you expect, that, in order to yield to your teachers the praise belonging solely to the truth, I should virtually declare my ancestors fools or hypocrites?”
“Sophistical declamation!” said the sultan, “which will avail thee little on the Judgment Day. Is thy parable ended?”
“In point of instruction it is,” replied Nathaniel, “but I shall briefly relate the conclusion to which the disputes among the brothers conducted. When they found agreement impossible, they mutually cited one another before the tribunal or the law. Each of them solemnly swore that he had received a ring immediately from his father’s hand—as was the fact—after having obtained his father’s promise to bestow it on him, as was also the fact. Each of them indignantly repudiated the supposition that such a father could have deceived him; and each declared, that, unwilling as he was to think uncharitably of his own brethren, he had no alternative left but that of branding them as impostors, forgers, and swindlers.”
“And what said the judge?” demanded Sal-ad-Deen; “I presume the final decision of the question hung upon his arbitration?”
“Your highness is correct: the judge at once pronounced his award, which was definitive. ‘You want,’ said he, ‘a satisfactory adjudication on this question, which you have contested among yourselves so long and so fruitlessly. Summon then your father before me: call him from the dead and let him speak; it is otherwise impracticable for me to come at the knowledge of his intentions. Do you think that I sit here for the purpose of expounding riddles and reconciling contradictions? Or do you, perhaps, expect that the true ring will by some miracle be compelled to bear oral testimony here in court to its own genuineness? But hold: I understand that the ring is endowed with the occult power of rendering its wearer amiable and faultless in the eyes of men. By that test I am willing to try it, and so to pronounce judgment. Which of you three, then, is the greatest object of love to the other two? You are silent. What! does this ring, which should awaken love in all, act with an inward influence only, not an outward? Does each of you love only himself? Oh, go! you are all alike deceivers or deceived: none of your rings is the true one. The true ring is probably lost; and to supply its place your father ordered three spurious ones for common use among you. If you will abide by a piece of advice instead of a formal decision, here is my counsel to you: leave the matter where it stands. If each of you has had a ring presented to him by his father, let each believe his own to be the real ring. Possibly your father might have grown disinclined to tolerate any longer the exclusiveness implied in the possession of a single ring by one member of a family; and, certainly, as he loved you all with the same affection, it could not gratify him to appear the oppressor of two by favouring one in particular. Let each of you therefore feel honoured by this all-embracing generosity of your parent; let each of you endeavour to outshine his brothers in the cultivation of every virtue which the ring is presumed to confer—assisting the mysterious influence supposed to reside in it by habits of gentleness, benevolence, and mutual tolerance, and by resignation in all things to the will of God; and if the virtues of the ring continue to manifest themselves in your children, and your children’s children, and their descendants to the hundredth generation, then, after the lapse of thousands of years, appear again and for the last time before this judgment seat! A Greater than I will then occupy it, and He will decide this controversy for ever.’ So spake the upright judge, and broke up the court. Your highness now, I trust, thoroughly comprehends my reason for not answering your question in a direct manner?”
“Is that the end of thy story?” asked Sal-ad-Deen.
“If it please your highness,” said the Jew, who had by this time arisen, and was gradually, though respectfully, proceeding to accomplish his retreat.
“By my beard,” said the sultan, after a considerable pause, “it is an ingenious apologue that of thine, and there may be something in it too; but still it does not persuade me that thou art excusable in thy pertinacious rejection of Islamism. I own I tremble for thee after all. Go thy ways, however, for the present, with this purse of tomauns, by way of premium for thy mother-wit; but I shall shortly send for thee again; and as I do not much fancy remaining in any man’s debt, thou shalt then, as a wholesome counterpoise to thy sophistry, obtain from me in reply either a parable of my own, or one from the Koran, upon which I will argue with thee to thy signal confusion!”