As, saying this, around he glanced, he saw,
With unintending eyes, a spectacle
Which well had awed him, but that he was Saul.
The frequence of spectators serried nigh
Had armed themselves with stones, and imminent stood,
A thunder-cloud of menace on each brow,
Ready those bolts of vengeance to let fly,
In hail-storm that no mortal might withstand,
At whoso dared defy their angry mood;
Portent so dire Saul could not but peruse.
"It was but question which should overawe,
Ye, or this rabble of sedition here,
And ye have solved it like the cowards ye are!"
So, with his passion humored to its height,
And javelin looks shot at his men in shower,
Cried Saul; "I had deemed otherwise of you.
And yet, even yet, once wake the dormant man
Within you, and, from hands through fear relaxed,
Harmless will drop those miscreant stones which now,
With your poltroonery, ye invoke to fall
In well-deservéd doom upon your heads!"
Upbraided thus, they, by that spokesman, said:
"Stoning may lightly be despised by men
Like us, whose trade it is at need to die;
And bloody death were meet for men of blood.
But we are of the people, as are these
Whom here thou seest around us, stone in hand;
And we, the people, love for cause those men,
Our benefactors, whom thou seekest to slay—
Wherefore, we know not, save perhaps it be
Some ill persuasion thine that slanders them
As enemies of our race, seditious men,
Conspiring to do evil and not good.
But, if we should as lief, as we should loth,
Offer them violence, and if we could,
As we could not, hope then to escape the stones
Here seen uneasy in so many hands
At only brandished threat of harm to them,
Know, there is more than mail enduing these
Inviolate against what human touch
Might mean them wrong. Something intangible,
Invisible, inaudible, unknown,
A might as irresistible as strange,
Not only arms them proof against assault,
But issues from them in dread strokes of doom,
Silent like lightning, and like lightning swift,
And instantaneous deadly more than that.
What prison-walls can prisoners hold these men?
Hast thou not heard how Ananias fell,
Sapphira too, his wife, dead at their feet,
Fell at their feet stone-dead, when they but charged
A lie unto the Spirit of the Lord
On those twain twinned in judgment as in crime?
A dreadful visitation, as from God;
But, whencesoever issuing, dreadful yet!
No panoply have we against such stroke,
Against the authors of such stroke, no power.
Slay us, or get us slain, we can but die;
But die like Ananias will we not!"
Saul listened with illimitable scorn;
And scorn incensed his rage thus crossed to be,
Hopelessly crossed, by crass perversity.
In rage and scorn, he scourged those men with words:
"There is no reasoning with minds like you!—
Too ignorant to guess how ignorant
Ye are, and self-conceited in degree
To match. Such ignorance, with self-conceit
Such, renders blind indeed. What boots it I
Should tell you superstition clouds your brain?
Your superstition would not let you hear.
Your very senses, given by God to be
The avenues of knowledge to your mind,
Satan has clogged to truth, and made of them
But open thoroughfares for lies from him
To enter by and capture you his own.
Mere Satan's lies those tales are that ye tell,
Of prison-doors thrown wide mysteriously
To let these men go free, and of deaths dealt
By magic sentence weaponless from them—
Mere Satan's lies those tales, or, were they true,
Yet tokens only of Satanic power
And craft permitted to disport them here
For their destruction who to be destroyed
Prove themselves greedy by such act as yours.
Dupes of the devil, go, I pity you!
This is your weakness, not your villainy.
I thought to make you helpers in my strife
To save the souls of others, but your souls
Themselves need saving first and most of all—
If souls like yours of saving worthy be,
Or capable! Some different make of men
From you, seems I must seek, to serve my need.
Yet you I thank at least for this, that ye
By your behavior show me what a sore,
How seated, and how wide, into the heart
Eats of my nation! Lo, I take the cup,
The full, the overflowing cup of shame
Which ye this day wring out for me, that cup
Take I with thanks from you, and to the dregs
Drain it, in pledge, in pledge and sacrament,
That I hereafter give myself more whole,
More absolute, more consecrate, to one,
One only, pure endeavor and desire,
The utter rooting out—at cost how dear,
No reckoning, mine or other's, toil, and tears,
And blood—wherever Jewish name be found,
Of this foul creeping rot and leprosy,
This blight, this blast, this mildew, on our fame!"
Saul, in the light of luminous wrath, foresaw
Nigh, and saluted, that career, which thence,
After Judæan cities overrun
With havoc at his hand to Jesus' name,
Will bear him ravening on Damascus road!