The Epic of Saul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

Saul felt the breath of human power that blew
Round Stephen like a morning wind, he felt
The light that lifted and transfigured him
And glorified, that bright auroral ray
Of genius which forever makes the brow
It strikes on from its fountain far in God
Shine like the sunrise-smitten mountain peak—
Saul felt these things in Stephen by his tie
With Stephen in the fellowship of power;
Kindred to kindred answered and rejoiced.
But that in Stephen which was more and higher
Than Stephen at his native most and highest,
The inhabitation of the Holy Ghost—
This, Saul had yet no sense to apprehend.
The Spirit of God, only the Spirit of God
Can know; the natural man to Him is deaf
And blind. Saul, therefore, seeing did not see,
And hearing heard not. But no less his heart,
In seeing and in hearing Stephen speak,
Leapt up with recognition of a peer
In power to be his meet antagonist
And task him to his uttermost to foil.
Beyond Saul's uttermost it was to be,
That task! though this of Stephen not, but God.

Still goaded day by day with such desire
As nobler spirits know, to feel the strain
And wrestle of antagonistic thews
Tempting his might and stirring up his mind,
Saul felt, besides, the motion and ferment
And great dilation of a patriot soul,
Magnanimous, laboring for his country's cause.
He thought the doctrines of the Nazarene
Pernicious to the Jewish commonwealth,
Not less than was his person base, his life
Unseemly, and opprobrious his death.
He saw, or deemed he saw, in what was taught
From Jesus, only deep disparagement
Disloyally implied of everything
Nearest and dearest to the Hebrew heart.
The gospel was high treason in Saul's eyes;
Suppose it but established in success,
The temple then would be no more what erst
It was, the daily sacrifice would cease,
The holy places would with heathen feet
Be trodden and profaned, the middle wall
Of old partition between Jew and Greek
Would topple undermined, the ritual law
Of Moses would be obsolete and void,
Common would be the oracles of God,
To all divulged, peculiar once to Jews—
Of Jewish name and nation what were left?
Such thoughts, that seemed of liberal scope, were Saul's,
Commingled, he not knowing, with some thoughts,
Less noble, of his own aggrandizement.

It came at length to pass that on a day
The spacious temple-court is thronged with those
Come from all quarters to Jerusalem,
Or dwellers of the city, fain to hear
Once more the preacher suddenly so famed.
Present is Saul, but not as heretofore
To hearken only and observe; the hour
Has struck when his own voice he must uplift,
To make it heard abroad.
He dreamed it not,
But Rachel too was there, his sister. She
Had, from sure signs observed, aright surmised
That the ripe time to speak was come to Saul.
In her glad loyalty, she doubted not
That he, that day, would, out of a full mind,
Pressed overfull with affluence from the heart,
Pour forth a stream of generous eloquence—
Stream, nay, slope torrent, steep sheer cataract,
Of reason and of passion intermixed—
For such she proudly felt her brother's power—
Which down should rush upon his adversaries
And carry them away as with a flood,
Astonished, overwhelmed, and whirled afar;
Rescued at least the ruins of the state!
So glorying in her high vicarious hope
For Saul her brother, Rachel came that morn
Betimes and chose her out a safe recess
For easy audience, nigh, and yet retired,
Between the pillars of a stately porch,
Where she might see and not by him be seen.

Thence Rachel watched all eagerly; when now
The multitude, expecting Stephen, saw
A different man stand forth with beckoning hand
As if to speak. The act and attitude
Commanded audience, for a king of men
Stood there, and a great silence fell on all.
Some knew the face of the young Pharisee,
These whispered round his name; Saul's name and fame
To all were known, and, ere the speaker spoke,
Won him a deepening heed.
Rachel the hush
Felt with a secret sympathetic awe,
And for one breath her beating heart stood still;
It leapt again to hear her brother's voice
Pealing out bold in joyous sense of power.
That noble voice, redounding like a surge
Pushed by the tide, on swept before the wind,
And all the ocean shouldering at its back,
Which seeks out every inlet of the shore
To brim it flush and level from the brine—
Such Saul's voice swelled, as from a plenteous sea,
And, wave on wave of pure elastic tone,
Rejoicing ran through every gallery,
And every echoing endless colonnade,
And every far-retreating least recess
Of building round about that temple-court,
And filled the temple-court with silver sound—
As thus, with haughty summons, he began:
"Ye men of Israel, sojourners from far
Or dwellers in Jerusalem, give heed.
The lines are fallen to us in evil times:
Opinions run abroad perverse and strange,
Divergent from the faith our fathers held.
A day is come, brethren, and fallen on us—
On us, this living generation, big
With promise, or with threat, of mighty doom.
Which will ye have it? Threat, or promise, which?
Yours is the choosing—choose ye may, ye must.

"Abolish Moses, if ye will; destroy
The great traditions of your fathers; say
Abraham was naught, naught Isaac, Jacob, all
The patriarchs, heroes, martyrs, prophets, kings;
That Seed of Abraham naught, our nation's Hope,
Foretold to be an universal King;
Make one wide blank and void, an emptied page,
Of all the awful glories of our past—
Deliverance out of Egypt, miracle
On miracle wrought dreadfully for us
Against our foes, path cloven through the sea,
Jehovah in the pillar of cloud and fire,
And host of Pharaoh mightily overthrown;
The law proclaimed on Sinai amid sound
And light insufferable and angels nigh
Attending; manna in the wilderness;
The rock that lived and moved and followed them,
Our fathers, flowing water in the waste—
Obliterate at a stroke whatever sets
The seal of God upon you as His own,
And marks you different from the heathen round—
Shekinah fixed between the cherubim,
The vacant Holy of Holies filled with God,
The morning and the evening sacrifice,
Priest, altar, incense, choral hymn and psalm,
Confused melodious noise of instruments
Together sounding the high praise of God;
All this, with more I will not stay to tell,
This temple itself with its magnificence,
The hope of Him foreshown, the Messenger
Of that eternal covenant wherein
Your souls delight themselves, Who suddenly
One day shall come unto His temple—blot,
Expunge, erase, efface, consent to be
No more a people, mix and merge yourselves
With aliens, blood that in your veins flows pure
All the long way one stream continuous down
From Abraham called the friend of God—such blood
Adulterate in the idolatrous, corrupt
Pool of the Gentiles—men of Israel!
Or are ye men? and are ye Israel?
I stand in doubt of you—I stand in doubt
Of kinsmen mine supposed that bide to hear
Such things as seems that ye with pleasure hear!

"Say, know ye not they mean to take away
Your place and name? Are ye so blind? Or are
Ye only base poor creatures caring not
Though knowing well? Oft have ye seen the fat
Of lambs upon the flaming altar fume
One instant and in fume consume away;
So swiftly and so utterly shall pass,
In vapor of smoke, the glorious excellency,
The pomp, the pride, nay, but the being itself,
Of this our nation from beneath the sun,
Let once the hideous doctrine of a Christ
Condemned and crucified usurp the place
In Hebrew hearts of that undying hope
We cherish of Messiah yet to reign
In power and glory more than Solomon's,
From sunrise round to sunrise without end,
And tread the Gentiles underneath our feet."

Indignant patriot spirit in the breast
Of Rachel mixed itself with kindred pride
And gladness for her brother gleaming so
Before her in a kind of fulgurous scorn
Which made his hearers quail while they admired;
She could not stay a sudden gush of tears.

But Saul's voice now took on a winning change,
As, deprecating gently, thus he spoke:
"Forgive, my brethren, I have used hot words
Freely and frankly, as great love may speak.
But that I love you, trust you, hope of you
The best, the noblest, when once more you are
Yourselves, and feel the spirit of your past
Come back, I had not cared to speak at all.
I simply should have hung my head in shame,
Worn sackcloth, gone with ashes on my brow,
And sealed my hand upon my lips for you
Forever. Love does not despair, but hopes
Forever. And I love you far too well
To dream despair of you. Bethink yourselves,
My brethren! Me, as if I were the voice
Of your own ancient aspiration, hear.
Bear with me, let me chide, say not that love
Lured me to over-confidence of you.

"Be patient now, my brethren, while I go,
So briefly as I may, through argument
That well might ask the leisure of long hours,
To show from Scripture, from authority,
From reason and from nature too not less,
Why we should hold to our ancestral faith,
And not the low fanatic creed admit
Of such as preach for Christ one crucified.
Be patient—I myself must patient be,
Tutoring down my heart to let my tongue
Speak calmly, as in doubtful argument,
Where I am fixed and confident to scorn."

As when Gennesaret, in his circling hills,
By wing of wind down swooping suddenly
Is into tempest wrought that, to his depths
Astir, he rouses, and on high his waves
Uplifts like mountains snowy-capped with foam;
So, smitten with the vehement impact
And passion of Saul's rash, abrupt
Beginning, that mercurial multitude
Had answered with commotion such as seemed
Menace of instant act of violence:
But, as when haply there succeeds a lull
To tempest, then the waves of Galilee
Sink from their swelling and smooth down to plane
Yet deep will roll awhile from shore to shore
That long slow undulation following storm;
So, when, with wise self-recollection, Saul,
In mid-career of passionate appeal,
Stayed, and those gusts of stormy eloquence
Impetuous poured no longer on the sea
Of audience underneath him, but, instead,
Proposed a sober task of argument,
The surging throng surceased its turbulence,
And settled from commotion into calm;
Yet so as still to feel the rock and sway
Of central agitation at its heart,
While thus that master of its moods went on:
"What said Jehovah to the serpent vile
Which tempted Eve? Did he not speak of One,
Offspring to her seduced, Who should arise
To crush the offending head? No hint, I trow,
Of meekness and obedience unto death
Found there at least, death on the shameful tree,
Forsooth, to be the character and doom
Of that foretokened Champion of his kind,
That haughty Trampler upon Satan's head!