BOOK XIV.
FOR DAMASCUS.
Coming together again at Cæsarea Philippi (Paneas, Banias) after an interval of days, Saul and Sergius cross the southern spur of Hermon. A violent thunderstorm comes slowly up during the afternoon, which gives Sergius occasion, by way of mask to his own secret disquietude, to quote his Epicurean poet Lucretius on the subject of Jupiter's control of thunderbolts. As the storm increases in violence, the fears of Sergius overpower him, and he breaks down at last into a deprecatory prayer and vow to Jupiter. Saul then, the storm still raging, rehearses from Scripture appropriate fragments of psalm, timing them to the various successive bursts of tempest. The sound of a tranquil human voice has a quieting effect on Sergius, and even on the frightened steeds of the two travellers. The storm ceases, and they pass the night under a serene sky, ready to set out the next morning for the last stage of their journey to Damascus.
FOR DAMASCUS.
The splendor of the morning yet once more
Was a theophany in Syria,
When Saul and Sergius, met, from Paneas
Started, with mind to overpass that day
The spur of Hermon interposed between
Them and Damascus.
"Strange the human bent,"
Said Saul, "the universal human bent,
Toward worship of unreal divinities!
'Paneas!' The very sound insults the name
And solitary majesty of God,
Jehovah, Ever-living, Only True.
Think of it! 'Pan', forsooth! And God, who made
These things which we behold, these waters, woods,
And mountains, glens, and rocky cliffs, and caves,
Who these things made, and made the mind of man
Capacious of Himself, or capable
At least of knowing Him Creator, such
A God thrust from His own creation forth,
By His own noblest creature thus thrust forth,
That a rough, rustic, gross, grotesque, burlesque,
Goat-footed, and goat-bearded, horned and tailed
Divinity like Pan, foul caricature
At best of man himself who fashions him,
And out of wanton fancy furnishes him
His meet appendages of brute wild beast—
That this deform abortion of the brain
Might take the room, made void, of God outcast,
And, with his ramping, reeling, riotous rout
Of fauns and satyrs, claim to be adored!
I feel the Hebrew blood within me boil
At outrage such from man on God and man!
Phœbus Apollo seems an upward reach
Of human fancy in theogony;
Some height, some aspiration, there at least,
Toward what in man, if not the noblest, yet
Is nobler than the beasts that browse, or graze.
Apollo, too, I hate, but I loathe Pan!"
"We Romans are more catholic than you
Hebrews," said Sergius, "more hospitable
To different peoples' different gods. Our own
Synod of native deities we have,
But we make room for others than our own.
From Greece we have adopted all her gods,
And all the gods of Egypt and the East
Are domiciled at Rome—all save your god,
Jehovah, his pretensions overleap
The bounds of even our hospitality,
Who not on any terms of fellowship
Will sit a fellow with his fellow-gods.
Him sole except, it is our policy
To entertain with wise indifference
In brotherly equality all gods
Of whatsoever nations of the earth.
A temple at Rome have we, Pantheon called,
So called as to this end expressly built
That there no human god might lack a home.
Such is our Roman way; your Hebrew way
Is different; different races, different ways."
Sergius so spoke as if concluding all
With the last word of wisdom to be said;
He paused, and Saul mused whether wise it were
To answer, when thus Sergius further spoke:
"I marked late, when 'Neapolis!' I said,
'Sychar!' saidst thou, in tone as if of scorn;
'Hateful,' thou also calledst Samarian soil—
Wherefore? if I may know." "'Sychar,'" said Saul,
"Imports deceit, and there deceit abounds.
From the Samaritans we Jews refrain;
Corrupters they of the right ways of God.
Across their soil we either shun to go,
Or, going, hasten with unpausing feet."