"And now I bid you look within your breast
And answer, Does not your own heart rebel
Against the gospel of the Nazarene?
'Gospel,' forsooth! Has God, who made your heart,
Provided you for gospel what your heart
Rejects with loathing? Likely seems it, pray,
Becoming, fit, that He Who, on the mount
Of Sinai once the law promulging, there
Displayed His glory more than mortal eye
Could bear to look upon or ear to hear—
Who in the temple hid behind the veil
Shekinah blazed between the cherubim—
Nay, tell me, seems it tolerable even
To you, that your Jehovah God should choose,
Lover of splendor as He is, and power,
To represent Himself among mankind
Not merely naked of magnificence,
But outright squalid in the mean estate
And person of a carpenter, to die
At last apparent felon crucified?
Reason and nature outraged cry aloud,
'For shame! For shame!' at blasphemy like this."
A strange ungentle impulse moved the heart
Of Rachel to a mood like mutiny,
And almost she "For shame!" herself cried out
In echo to her brother's vehemence;
While murmur as of wind rousing to storm
Ran through the assembly at such words from Saul,
The passion of the speaker so prevailed
To stir responsive passion in their breasts.
This Saul perceiving said, in scornful pride,
Fallaciously foretasting triumph won:
"Ye men of Israel, gladly I perceive
Some embers of the ancient fire remain,
If smouldering, not extinguished, in your breasts.
I will not further chafe your noble rage.
You are, if I mistake not, now prepared
To hear more safely, if less patiently,
The eloquence I keep you from too long.
Let me bespeak for Stephen your best heed."
And Saul, as if in gesture of surcease,
A pace retiring, waved around his hand
Toward Stephen, opposite not far, the while
His nostril he dispread, and mobile lip
Curled, in the height of contumelious scorn;
And Rachel, where she stood, unconsciously,
The transport of her sympathy was such,
Repeated with her features what she saw.
BOOK IV.
STEPHEN AGAINST SAUL.
Stephen, following Saul, turns the tide of feeling overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. Saul, however, but he almost alone—for even his sister Rachel has been converted—stands out defiant against the manifest power of God. Shimei appears as an auditor watching with sinister motive the course of the controversy.