Part 53 (1/2)
”Thou scrawled'st 'I mean' in rocks and men, in trends and streams; the prophets raved, to sages' ken Thou shewed'st dreams; Thou shrouded'st dark the How and When in starry schemes, and trends and streams.”
”The jungles blare, the glebe-lands low and bleat for Thee; the generations rage and go, agaze for Thee; creation travaileth in woe, with groans for Thee, agaze for Thee.”
”Adonai, come! with cras.h.i.+ng rote of chariots come; or moonlight-mild, alone, afloat, Messussah, come; with floods of lutes, or thundering throat, but come! O, come! Messussah come.”
”The Arctics hawk-up their haunted heart, and raucous, spue; and north-winds, wawling calls, outstart, to droop anew; the clouds like scouts updart, depart, and truceless do, and droop anew.”
”How long! They breeds have waited fain what sibyls ween; Thou scribbled'st in their secret brain 'I scheme; I mean'; the constellations stray and strain: Break out! be seen what sibyls ween”.
”The pampas stamp and, nomad, low, reposeless, lone; raging the generations trow, and drudge, and drown; a anguished glance this latter woe throws to Thy Throne, reposeless, lone”...
Before them, above them, as they sang stood--a man.
Hard by a wall of that Moslem mosque, once a chapel which marked the supposed spot of ”the Ascension”, he stood, in an att.i.tude of suspense, astonishment, his body half-twisted--Spinoza.
An instant, and he was aware of Jerusalem lying ”as a city that is compact” before him--not to the east--to the west! Yet another instant, and he realized that the whole tract of humanity--man, woman, child--was on its face before him.
A faintness overcame him, shame, dismay; then, his blood now rus.h.i.+ng to his brow, his mouth sent out the pa.s.sionate shout:
”Not to _me!_ Not to _me! I am the Lord of the Sea....!_”
But when the people heard this, saw him, knew him, they remained in adoration....
By a special s.h.i.+p they had sent him a pet.i.tion to come; here he was weeks sooner than s.h.i.+p or airs.h.i.+p could have conveyed him: and they took him as the answer to their supplication, the answer which Heaven willed, in the sure and certain faith that he would cure their ache, and the ache of the world.
An acclamation like the voice of many waters arose and rolled below him, and on the bosom of that tumult he moved among them into the Holy City, as darkness covered all.
He took the t.i.tle of Shophet, or Judge, and for sixty years ruled over Israel.
It has been said that the initial ”pull” over other nations possessed by Israel (in respect of the sea-forts remaining in the Gulf of Aden, Yellow Sea, Western Pacific) was the cause of his rise as of some thrice-ardent Star of the Morning and asterisk dancing in the dawn's dark: for the other nations, timorous of one another, made never an attempt to build; but, for our share, we insist that anyway Judaea was bound to become what she became--indeed, sea-rent after the Regency collapse was decreased at the three forts, and suddenly in the twelfth year of his judges.h.i.+p Spinoza ordered its stoppage.
By which period the University of Jerusalem had become the chief nerve-centre of the world's research and upward effort: for in creating a ”civilized State”--”proud and happy”--Spinoza did it with that spinning rapidity of the modernization of j.a.pan, so that in whatever respects it was not a question of months, it was a question of not many years.
For, as in the soul of the Jewish people abode as before that genius for righteousness which wrote the Bible, and as the soul of righteousness lies even in this; Thou shalt not steal, therefore Israel with some little pain attained to this: whereupon with startling emphasis was brought to pa.s.s that statement: ”Righteousness exalteth a nation”.
For the promise says: ”I will put a new spirit within them”; and this--very rapidly--found fulfilment.
Whereupon others fast, faster, found fulfilment, so that a stale and bitter word was in Pall Mall, saying: ”The lot of them seem to have formed themselves into a syndicate to run the prophecies”.
Again the promise has it: ”I shall be with them”; and again: ”They shall be a cleansed nation”; and again: ”They shall fear Him”.
The transformation was rapid for the reason that it was natural, seeing that it had been Europe only that, like a Circe, had bewitched them into b.e.a.s.t.i.a.l shapes, ”sharks”, and ”bulls”, and ”bears”, mediaeval Jews, for example, having been debarred from every pursuit save commerce: so that Shylock was obliged to turn into a Venetian; and, in ceasing to be a Hebrew, became more Venetian than the Venetians, for the reason that he had more brains, ready to beat them at any game they cared to mention; but the genuine self of Shylock was a vine-dresser or sandal-maker, as Hillel was a wood-chopper, David a shepherd, Amos a fig-gatherer, Saul an a.s.s-driver, Rabbi Ben Zakkai a sail-maker, Paul a tent-maker: so that the return to simplicity and honesty was quickly accomplished.
And now, that done, behold a wonder: at the whirling of a wand the swine of Circe converted back to biped man; whereupon without fail whatsoever he does it shall astonis.h.i.+ngly prosper: that succession of wits, seers, savants, Heines, Einsteins, inspired mouths, pens of iridium, brushes from the archangel's plumage, discoveries, new Americas, elations, sensations--in therapeutics--in aero-nautics-beyond-the-atmosphere--in the powers involved in sub-atoms--in the powers, latent till now, involved in soul...for now each of millions was free to think, free to manifest his own particular luck and knack in discovery, having a country, foothold, not hovering like Noah's dove, urging still the purposeless wing not to pitch into nowhere: for the promise says: ”Ye shall not sow and another reap, ye shall not plant and another garner”, but in a land of gentlemen ye shall live, as it were to swellings of music, while a n.o.ble height grows upon your smooth foreheads, and the sum-total of the blending movements of your bodies and brains shall, as seen from heaven, appear the minuet of a people.
Within forty years mighty works had been done: forts, irrigation of deserts, reclamation of the Dead Sea, pa.s.sionate temples clapped to the lower clouds about the perpetual lamp, and that baroque Art of the Orient which at the Judges progresses in Summer through the country would draw mult.i.tudes of foreigners to gape at so great pomp, at Corinthian cities full of grace and riches which had arisen to crown with many crowns that plain of Mesopotamia, and where desolate Tyre had mourned her purples, and old Tadmor in the Wilderness (Palmyra) had sat in dirt; to gape, too, at a Jerusalem which in twenty years had crossed the Valley of Jehosophat, and might really then be called ”the Golden”, a purged Babylon, a London burnt to ashes and rebuilt somewhere else: for the Shophet proved true Duke and Leader, born mountaineer, climbing from pinnacle to wild pinnacle, becking his people after him with many a meaningful gesture skyward and suggesting smile; and Israel followed his thrilling way, hearing always the Excelsior of his calling as it were the voice direct of Heaven. What no merits of his could give, the land which he had chosen gave, Mesopotamia pretty soon proving herself a treasury of mineral riches: here is bdellium and the onyx-stone; and where the streaming Pison, dawdling, draws his twine of waters over that happy valley of Havilah, there is gold--h.o.a.rd stored from before the Eozoic, as misers bury for their heirs, in mine and friable quarry, rollick rain: ”and the gold of _that_ land is good”.
Here was not merely progress, but progress at increasing speed--acceleration--finally resembling flight, as of eagle or phoenix, eye fixed on the sun: Tyre by the fiftieth year having grown into the biggest of ports, her quays unloading 6,700,000 tons a year, mart of tangled masts, felucca, galiot, junk, cargoes of Tars.h.i.+sh and the Isles, Levantine stuffs, spice from the Southern Sea; while Jerusalem had grown into the recognized school of the wealthier youth of Europe, Asia and America.
For it says: ”The Kings of the earth shall bring their honour and glory unto her”; and again: ”She shall reign gloriously”.
And not Israel alone reaped the fruits of his own fine weather, but his dews fell wide. For it says: ”They shall be as dew from the Lord”; and again: ”They shall fill the face of the earth with fruit”; and again: ”All nations shall call them blessed”.
And so it was: for the example of Israel, his suasive charm, proved compelling as suns.h.i.+ne to shoots, so that that heart of Spinoza lived to see the spectacle of a whole world deserting the gory path of Rome to go up into those uplands of mildness and gleefulness whither invites the smile of that lily Galilean.