“For the great need I have to spare myself prolonged toil, I will further ask you, Is there a shorter road than that by Rabbath-Ammon?”
“A rougher route, but shorter, lies by Gerasa and Rabbath-Gilead.
It is the one I design taking.”
“I am impatient,” said Balthasar. “Latterly my sleep has been visited by dreams— or rather by the same dream in repetition.
A voice— it is nothing more— comes and tells me, ’Haste— arise!
He whom thou hast so long awaited is at hand.’”
“You mean he that is to be King of the JewsY’ Ben-Hur asked, gazing at the Egyptian in wonder.
“Even so.”
“Then you have heard nothing of him?”
“Nothing, except the words of the voice in the dream.”
“Here, then, are tidings to make you glad as they made me.”
From his gown Ben-Hur drew the letter received from Malluch.
The hand the Egyptian held out trembled violently.
He read aloud, and as he read his feelings increased; the limp veins in his neck swelled and throbbed.
At the conclusion he raised his suffused eyes in thanksgiving and prayer. He asked no questions, yet had no doubts.
“Thou hast been very good to me, O God,” he said. “Give me, I pray thee, to see the Saviour again, and worship him, and thy servant will be ready to go in peace.”
The words, the manner, the singular personality of the simple prayer, touched Ben-Hur with a sensation new and abiding.
God never seemed so actual and so near by; it was as if he were there bending over them or sitting at their side— a Friend whose favors were to be had by the most unceremonious asking— a Father to whom all his children were alike in love— Father, not more of the Jew than of the Gentile— the Universal Father, who needed no intermediates, no rabbis, no priests, no teachers.
The idea that such a God might send mankind a Saviour instead of a king appeared to Ben-Hur in a light not merely new, but so plain that he could almost discern both the greater want of such a gift and its greater consistency with the nature of such a Deity.
So he could not resist asking,
“Now that he has come, O Balthasar, you still think he is to be a Saviour, and not a king?”
Balthasar gave him a look thoughtful as it was tender.
“How shall I understand you?” he asked, in return. “The Spirit, which was the Star that was my guide of old, has not appeared to me since I met you in the tent of the good sheik; that is to say, I have not seen or heard it as formerly.
I believe the voice that spoke to me in my dreams was it; but other than that I have no revelation.”
“I will recall the difference between us,” said Ben-Hur, with deference. “You were of opinion that he would be a king, but not as C?sar is; you thought his sovereignty would be spiritual, not of the world.”
“Oh yes,” the Egyptian answered; “and I am of the same opinion now.
I see the divergence in our faith.
You are going to meet a king of men, I a Saviour of souls.”
He paused with the look often seen when people are struggling, with introverted effort, to disentangle a thought which is either too high for quick discernment or too subtle for simple expression.
“Let me try, O son of Hur,” he said, directly, “and help you to a clear understanding of my belief; then it may be, seeing how the spiritual kingdom I expect him to set up can be more excellent in every sense than anything of mere Caesarean splendor, you will better understand the reason of the interest I take in the mysterious person we are going to welcome.
“I cannot tell you when the idea of a Soul in every man had its origin.
Most likely the first parents brought it with them out of the garden in which they had their first dwelling.
We all do know, however, that it has never perished entirely out of mind.
By some peoples it was lost, but not by all; in some ages it dulled and faded, in others it was overwhelmed with doubts; but, in great goodness, God kept sending us at intervals mighty intellects to argue it back to faith and hope.
“Why should there be a Soul in every man?
Look, O son of Hur— for one moment look at the necessity of such a device.
To lie down and die, and be no more— no more forever— time never was when man wished for such an end; nor has the man ever been who did not in his heart promise himself something better.
The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.
The greatest of our Egyptian kings had his effigy cut-out of a hill of solid rock.
Day after day he went with a host in chariots to see the work; at last it was finished, never effigy so grand, so enduring: it looked like him— the features were his, faithful even in expression.
Now may we not think of him saying in that moment of pride, ’Let Death come; there is an after-life for me!’
He had his wish.
The statue is there yet.
“But what is the after-life he thus secured?
Only a recollection by men— a glory unsubstantial as moonshine on the brow of the great bust; a story in stone— nothing more.
Meantime what has become of the king?
There is an embalmed body up in the royal tombs which once was his— an effigy not so fair to look at as the other out in the Desert.
But where, O son of Hur, where is the king himself?
Is he fallen into nothingness?
Two thousand years have gone since he was a man alive as you and I are.