Students going to the Library, priests from the Serapeion, idlers from the Museum, patrons of the race-course, countrymen from the Rhacotis— a multitude— stopped to hear me.
I preached God, the Soul, Right and Wrong, and Heaven, the reward of a virtuous life.
You, O Melchior, were stoned; my auditors first wondered, then laughed.
I tried again; they pelted me with epigrams, covered my God with ridicule, and darkened my Heaven with mockery.
Not to linger needlessly, I fell before them.”
The Hindoo here drew a long sigh, as he said,
“The enemy of man is man, my brother.”
Balthasar lapsed into silence.
“I gave much thought to finding the cause of my failure, and at last succeeded,” he said, upon beginning again. “Up the river, a day’s journey from the city, there is a village of herdsmen and gardeners.
I took a boat and went there.
In the evening I called the people together, men and women, the poorest of the poor.
I preached to them exactly as I had preached in the Brucheium.
They did not laugh.
Next evening I spoke again, and they believed and rejoiced, and carried the news abroad.
At the third meeting a society was formed for prayer.
I returned to the city then.
Drifting down the river, under the stars, which never seemed so bright and so near, I evolved this lesson: To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty— to the poor and humble.
And then I laid a plan and devoted my life.
As a first step, I secured my vast property, so that the income would be certain, and always at call for the relief of the suffering.
From that day, O brethren, I travelled up and down the Nile, in the villages, and to all the tribes, preaching One God, a righteous life, and reward in Heaven.
I have done good— it does not become me to say how much.
I also know that part of the world to be ripe for the reception of Him we go to find.”
A flush suffused the swarthy cheek of the speaker; but he overcame the feeling, and continued:
“The years so given, O my brothers, were troubled by one thought— When I was gone, what would become of the cause I had started?
Was it to end with me?
I had dreamed many times of organization as a fitting crown for my work.
To hide nothing from you, I had tried to effect it, and failed.
Brethren, the world is now in the condition that, to restore the old Mizraimic faith, the reformer must have a more than human sanction; he must not merely come in God’s name, he must have the proofs subject to his word; he must demonstrate all he says, even God.
So preoccupied is the mind with myths and systems; so much do false deities crowd every place— earth, air, sky; so have they become of everything a part, that return to the first religion can only be along bloody paths, through fields of persecution; that is to say, the converts must be willing to die rather than recant.
And who in this age can carry the faith of men to such a point but God himself?
To redeem the race— I do not mean to destroy it— to redeem the race, he must make himself once more manifest; he must come in person.”
Intense emotion seized the three.
“Are we not going to find him?” exclaimed the Greek.
“You understand why I failed in the attempt to organize,” said the Egyptian, when the spell was past. “I had not the sanction.
To know that my work must be lost made me intolerably wretched.
I believed in prayer, and to make my appeals pure and strong, like you, my brethren, I went out of the beaten ways, I went where man had not been, where only God was.
Above the fifth cataract, above the meeting of rivers in Sennar, up the Bahr el Abiad, into the far unknown of Africa, I went.
There, in the morning, a mountain blue as the sky flings a cooling shadow wide over the western desert, and, with its cascades of melted snow, feeds a broad lake nestling at its base on the east.
The lake is the mother of the great river.
For a year and more the mountain gave me a home.
The fruit of the palm fed my body, prayer my spirit.
One night I walked in the orchard close by the little sea. ’The world is dying.
When wilt thou come?
Why may I not see the redemption, O God?’ So I prayed.
The glassy water was sparkling with stars.
One of them seemed to leave its place, and rise to the surface, where it became a brilliancy burning to the eyes.
Then it moved towards me, and stood over my head, apparently in hand’s reach.
I fell down and hid my face.
A voice, not of the earth, said, ’Thy good works have conquered.
Blessed art thou, O son of Mizraim!