Victor Serenus

CHAPTER XXV

A PSYCHICAL JOURNEY

Saulus and Amoz advancing into the cave found it dry and capacious, and also well lighted for some distance from the entrance. A long-continued cleft upward in the face of the rock freely admitted the outer air and daylight, and also sunlight at certain hours. The walls on either side gave evidence of previous human habitation, being marked with various inscriptions, symbolic characters, and drawings. In the deeper recesses the darkness increased, and various intricate passage-ways opened into curious ramifications and apartments of indefinite extent. The temperature was comfortable, and the atmosphere pleasant.

“Behold a favored habitation already prepared for us!” said Amoz. “The wisdom of the Voice is now made manifest!”

“Yea, of a surety it hath guided us to this place, and here we will abide!”

Amoz returned for the camel, and soon led him to the entrance, where he was unladen, and after a little delay a convenient place in the cave was selected for him. Before the shades of evening fell everything was well arranged for a stay of indefinite length.

The silence and seclusion seemed delightful, and even paradisaical to the restless and depressed soul of Saulus. The world, with its unending strifes and jealousies, its warring creeds and religious persecutions, and all the surge and sweat of human passion, was far away.

Often, above all things, man needs a face-to-face interview with his real self, in order that he may interpret the hidden springs of his own being, sound the intricate deeps of his primal nature, study ideals, and survey foundations. A life devoted entirely to the Objective, even if its ends be worthy, lacks an understanding of those subjective mental and spiritual reservoirs which is indispensable to harmonious development.

No one can avoid companionship. But objective personalities supply but a small part of the innate craving for intimate good cheer and friendliness. Whether or not consciously chosen, the ego must have a supremely close communion with its own thought-forms,—its veritable creations. As a duplicate selfhood it is firmly linked to them. If man must carry this secondary man with him, what sort of a character shall he be? His fellow-men, with whom he daily mingles, though seemingly near, are infinitely distant when compared with his own self-made mental environment,—his real world.

Every man is like an artist who is sentenced to dwell with his own pictures, so hung that they continually stare him in the face. But especially when from choice or necessity one for a season turns aside from his accustomed Objective, he finds intimate relationship with his subjective structures of the past. He is forced to a careful inspection of his own stored-up images, and it is woeful if they frown upon him. All the hates, envies, and antagonisms that he has ever projected are turned in upon himself. They surround and threaten him, and their growls are disquieting. He thought they had been sent away, but their accumulated recoil was only postponed.

On the other hand, all the loves, harmonies, and hopes that have been sent out, now possibly forgotten, rise up out of the misty deep and send back a smile, and return affection with added interest. They are lived over again.

Heavens and hells are stored up in the chambers of the soul, and if perchance diversion for a time may seem to bury them, their resurrection and visitation surely follow in due course.

But as Saulus looked in upon himself, he found that he could increasingly choose and control those things that should mentally dwell with him. With all his cruel impetuosity of the past, his life had not been devoid of good thoughts and deeds, and these he struggled to keep in review. But vastly greater than all else, when the dark Past marshalled itself before him, he turned to the Present God. How unlike was the God he found in Horeb to the tribal Deity he had served in the Holy City! The difference was in his own vision.

Often he would sit for hours with eyes closed and body relaxed, in silent communion with the felt Presence. At such times he realized a positive influx of sweetness and strength from the Universal, which thrilled him in mind and body.

The crust of his former hardness was breaking up, and his soul was growing childlike and plastic. The rigid dogmatism and intolerance in him, which for so long had been impenetrable to the Spirit of Truth, were dissolving, and love and wisdom were opened up, as water from a fountain whose seal had been newly unloosed.

Saulus marvelled as much at the seeming change in his God as in the transformation in himself. That Deity who had rejoiced in persecution, and been angry and jealous, was now the Author of love, peace, and concord. It was clear that his former concept of God had been but a telescopic likeness of himself.

The cave at Horeb proved to be a most agreeable place of abode, and Saulus found in his seclusion some of the happiest days of his life. Though the evening experiences of weakness and trembling seemed to have become a fixed habit, and scars and strains in soul and body were present as the legacy of the past, there was a gradual gain of vigor. The expanding soul was coming into a knowledge of its intrinsic divinity and oneness with the Father, and this reflected and expressed a growing wholeness.

Amoz, with the camel, made some explorations in the adjacent region; and about two hours distant, at a crossing of some of the more important paths, he found a small station of a few huts, where supplies could be replenished, and occasional communication had with the outside world.

But what was the world of the past to Saulus? It seemed as if he was severed from everything that had gone before, and had built a new world for himself. His own transformation was vastly greater than the change from the Holy City to the cave. But he had no intention of becoming a hermit. He would, for a time, gather his resources, and firmly knit the sinews of his soul, in preparation for future conquests for the truth among men. The mistakes and enmities of the past he would bury beneath a mountain of love and good-will which should brighten the world.

But what of past personal ties and obligations? First of all, what of little Cassia? What of his ardent affection and faithful promises to her? Was his love, which formerly was so consuming, yet alive and burning brightly? Did she stand out in lifelike proportions in his new world, or had her image largely faded out of his heart? What had she heard of him? and what would she think?

There were hours when these and similar questions thrust themselves upon Saulus with terrible force. The intense and all-absorbing love of Cassia, her unbounded confidence in him, and his former rapt devotion to her in return, stood out before him in letters of fire.

One evening his period of suffering, which he had already named “a stake in the flesh,” left him in a strange condition of unrest and uncertainty. The thought of Cassia filled him with something like its old-time intensity. Questions crowded themselves upon him, and clamored for an answer. But while the little maiden of the Sheepmarket still occupied a very warm place in his heart, with it was mingled a peculiar sense of ever-widening distance.

He put himself on the witness-stand,—

“Am I not a different Saulus from he who aforetime loved Cassia, and to whom she was so devoted?”

“Has this new and larger love driven out my affection, or only for a time overshadowed it?”

“Is she really fair and good, or did I deceive myself?”

“Can my love ever again be so all-absorbing?”

Yes and no were both echoed as responses through the troubled mind of Saulus. Opposing emotions marshalled themselves, and in confusing alternation took possession of him. For a little time he forgot the cave and all its associations in the fierce play of the contending forces.

But as the hours of the eventful evening wore away, the thought of Cassia gained the ascendency. The very inscriptions of ancient lore upon the walls seemed to melt into her name, and yield a fragrance of her personality.

At length a peculiar quietude slowly settled upon him, but he felt that it was not sleep. An unwonted lightness of soul and an ethereal consciousness subtly crept in and possessed his senses. The solid walls of the cave became unsteady, as if about to dissolve, but there was such a charming naturalness in the change that it did not much surprise him.

“Surely I am not dreaming!”

“Of a verity, I believe that I am out of the body!”

“What lightness! what freedom!”

Soon he found himself standing beside his own prostrate form. He clearly looked down upon the features—his features! The eyes were lightly closed, the lips slightly parted, and the breast rose and fell but feebly with the movement of the breath. Otherwise the body was still.

“What a mystery!”

“Have I died?”

“No! that cannot be, for I—no, not I, for I am here—but my body yonder is manifestly animate. How easily I can move!”

All feeling of strangeness soon wore off. Simply from force of desire he rose in the air for a short distance, and looked down upon his material counterpart as one would view a sleeping comrade. What wonderful liberty and power before unknown! No wings were needed to move through the air as he might choose.

Amoz, wide awake, was sitting quietly near the dim lamp, but saw nothing unusual, believing that Saulus was asleep. Though the little lamp gave but a feeble light, the cave, to Saulus, seemed filled with a soft but brilliant illumination. Considering the unwonted powers and resources at his command, he was surprised at his own lack of surprise. His senses were extended and sublimated to a wonderful degree. He then tried to attract the attention of Amoz, but received no recognition. Not to be baffled, he took hold of him, and finally shouted in his ear, but with no effect.

Then Saulus began to wonder. He could see and hear, but not be seen or heard. He moved about the cave and made some further exploration, and found that the solid walls were no obstruction. They were not solid. He could not only see through them, but pass through.

Then the thought of Cassia, which had been so strongly present before, again became uppermost. But something of the same uncertainty within himself regarding her still remained.

Realizing that desire was all that was now needed for propulsion, he came to a sudden determination.

“I will go up to the Holy City, and once more behold Cassia, and all the things that I left behind.”

With the speed of thought, he left his own body, Amoz, and the cave behind him, and passed out from the mountain over the desert, and on, on, unerringly, by the power of simple volition. Space and time were limitations of the past.

How “cabbin’d, cribb’d, and confined” is man when weighted down with the little load of dust which he has picked up, moulded, and for a brief season carried about! To him chasms of time and space are wide and unbridgable, and he travels his little round with barriers on every hand, and an ever-present sense of servitude.

But it is not the grosser body per se which is so much his real encumbrance as his false consciousness concerning it. He is steeped in a prevailing and ever-ruling materialism. He is enslaved because he is ignorant of the laws of his own independence. He not only lives in the thought that it—the body—is I, but also bows in subjection to those ever-varying conditions, which with chameleon-like accuracy shadow forth, in exact expression, the quality of his past composite of thought. The consciousness which he has carelessly or ignorantly taken on, both racially and individually, makes it his tyrannical master. Sometimes, smarting under its rule, he has turned and denounced it as bad, and hence a gloomy and destructive asceticism. This is no less a mistake than a garish and overwrought materialism.

Everything is useful, and everything good, when not misplaced. Evil is therefore not made up of the real quality of things, but of their misplacement in the mind of man. But the very misplacement is educative. So rapidly as the human mentality through evolutionary friction is rectified, the whole cosmos falls into line. Then the nothingness of evil, as an entity, will be made manifest. At present it is the name of a condition of relativity.

Psychical experiences, unshackled by the supposed necessary limitations of body in past ages, having been exceptional, have been counted as supernatural, abnormal, or only imaginary. The present age, with its scientific spirit, its broad toleration, and its recognition of the reign of law in every realm, increasingly finds that they are merely subtle links or aspects of the Universal Order. When their causation is traced, their normality observed, and their utility understood, the weirdness and seeming abnormity which have been put upon them will be removed from the human lens, and the true place and use of uncommon phenomena become evident. So long as they are regarded as strange, uncanny, or in some degree unsound in scope or tendency, they are made gratuitously harmful through the quality of thought concerning them.

With desert and mountain left behind in his flight, Saulus found himself at the portal of the Sheepgate of the Holy City, ready to enter.12

The city lamps flickered here and there, the gates were still open, and the throng passing in and out as was wont. The shifting panorama of people of various races, dialects, and costumes, pouring through the massive arched portal with the general din and confusion, were all so familiar, that Saulus almost forgot himself in the midst of an environment so long habituated. He stood for a few moments in a retired corner, striving to recall the strange thread of his eventful past, and then joined the current which was entering the city. His sense of ethereal lightness continued, and he walked by mere easy desire without effort. Quickening his pace, he accidentally came in sharp contact with a Roman guard who had charge of the gate, and who was rapidly going in the opposite direction to order it closed for the night. He involuntarily stopped to apologize, but was momentarily surprised to find himself utterly unrecognized. Then, halting for a moment, he surveyed his own bodily proportions, and they seemed as usual. But anon a sense of his newly recognized powers flashed upon him, and he passed on without further hindrance or obstacle.

What security and immunity!

He could see and hear everything, but did not attract attention, and could not if he would. Following the well-worn thoroughfare, he soon came to the inn, and turned and entered. He passed by Almon, who with some companions were in the courtway, and continued to the family apartment, but seeing nothing of Cassia he ascended to the roof, thinking that she might be in her wonted corner. The moon was shining brightly, and every well-known object stood out in bold relief, but Cassia was not there. Then he bethought himself that she was presumably in her own apartment. He hurried down the stairway, where every step was like an old acquaintance, and coming to the entrance, easily passed in without any movement of the closed door.

Cassia was seated upon a low divan, and near by, upon a small table, stood a lamp which had burned out for lack of oil. But, as in the cave, a strange soft light made everything clear to Saulus.

Her lithe, shapely form was wrapped in the ample folds of an easy négligé robe, and her long tresses fell behind in careless profusion over her comely white neck. She sat with one hand pressed against her childlike face, which was paler than was wont, her elbow resting upon the small table at her side. Her downcast eyes were swollen and red from weeping, her heart beating quickly, and a long-drawn sigh escaped from her lips as Saulus entered. He was distressed by her changed appearance. The happy smile which formerly played upon her delicate features had been replaced by a sorrowful, drawn expression, and the erstwhile full ripe red lips, so carelessly parted, were pale and compressed.

“How changed! Is this really you, Cassia dear?”

He seated himself by her side, and taking her hand in his, pressed it to his lips, and then, with a reverent air, gave her a kiss upon the forehead. She felt it not. Then he gazed into her eyes, hoping in vain that once again there might be reflected some image of himself.

Her manner was abstracted, and soon, with deep emotion, she began talking to herself,—

“O my Saulus! Where art thou? and what evil hath befallen thee? Behold thy Cassia weeps for thee and cannot be comforted. Shall I mourn thee as dead?”

Saulus listened in agony, but could not make his presence known. Every word cut him to the heart.

“I will not believe the tidings that have come to me. Some say that thou hast become a lunatic, and some that thou wast smitten by the sun and died, and others that thou hast joined the hated Nazarenes. Peradventure they are all lies! O Saulus! I am persuaded that thou art still faithful. I wot not but that thou art sick or in peril! O Saulus! why dost thou not return?”

Then she arose and paced to and fro in the little apartment, and Saulus beseechingly followed her. She spoke once more,—

“O my loved one! I feel almost that thou art here! Something like thy sweet breath came upon my cheek! Nay! my imagination doth deceive me!”

Then she sat down and buried her face in her hands, and burst into fresh weeping.

Saulus could endure the scene no longer. Thrilled and overwhelmed, he withdrew in like manner as he had entered. In the effort to calm himself he visited some of the other apartments.

After satisfying himself that his father, mother, and Rebecca were no longer in the Holy City, he again ascended to the roof and sat down, if possible to quiet his distress. Soon he grew more peaceful. He looked up into the starry firmament, far above the local and temporary scenes of turmoil and disappointment, and stillness came into his soul. The intensity of that which had been near and present was merged into a living sense of the broad, the Real, and the Universal. The personal affection which had been so narrowly centred, was submerged in a love that was all-embracing.

With a tranquil feeling of strength and inclination, and without any conscious passage of time, he found himself again in the cave at Horeb, and everything as he had left it. He sought his quiet, prostrate form, with which he had all the while been connected by an invisible spiritual cord, and with a quick but indescribable pang repossessed his corporeal frame, opened his eyes, and sat upright.

CHAPTER XXVI

A POWERFUL PULSE STIRRED

Truth, when stripped of the masks and stains that have been unwittingly put upon her, hath a fair countenance, and all who behold her inner beauty thus revealed, have a drawing in their hearts towards her.

The blue sparkling waves closed over the grave of the Salapiæ with no sigh of repentance, their sportive play having suffered but a moment of interruption. Tears filled the eyes of Vivian as she disappeared, but soon he regained his wonted composure. From long-continued intimacy she had seemed almost a living thing, and he had regard for every plank and spar which pertained to her. Now she was gone forever.

But mingled with the sense of loss there was a great joy, not only on account of the assured safety of every soul which had been under his care, but that the prophecy, for its own sake and that of Serenus, had been so signally verified. He hailed it as a positive sign and confirmation of the wisdom of his friend, and still more of the power of the New Faith which had been awakened within him. To his belief was added demonstration.

The weather being fine, the little group, at the invitation of Marcius, were seated under a canopy upon the upper deck of the Nereid, while refreshments were being prepared for them below. The graceful galley, with a favoring breeze and every sail set, was now speeding along towards Tarsus.

“The gods be thanked that I sought the sea to-day,” said Marcius.

“Verily we are thankful, and fully persuaded both of the wisdom and goodness of thy choice,” replied Vivian.

“By Pallas! it doth seem strange! I had already directed the oarsmen to make ready the small barge for an excursion up the Cydnus, and was almost in readiness to depart. But a mysterious impulse seized me to change the plan, and to order the Nereid to be manned for a day’s cruise instead. Something well nigh like a voice importuned me to ‘put out to sea,’ and I obeyed.”

“A truce to thy superstition,” said Leander. “Thou art always eager for mystery, and unable to believe thy senses. I rejoice in thine altered purpose, and that through it our friends can continue their sea voyage, instead of taking a rough one over the Styx; but verily, thy fancy hath become unruly.”

“O faithless Greek! thou believest nothing! Thou shouldst deny that the wind ever bloweth because thou canst not see its color and shape! I am persuaded that oracular voices are not alone in temples. Peradventure the gods whispered to me!”

Leander shrugged his shoulders, and good-humoredly smiled, with a derisive air.

“Shades of Pluto! only children and women believe the unbelievable!”

Marcius was undisturbed by the reckless sarcasm of his friend, and calmly continued,—

“He who limits his belief to the testimony of the senses is a fool, and only lightly skims the surface of life. What sayest thou, Master Vivian?”

The flight of years had wrought an important change both in the character and social position of Marcius, but the improvement in Leander was much more superficial.

The mysterious meeting face to face with Alethea in the adytum of the Temple proved to be an important event in the experience and pursuits of the Roman. After the weird night of that notable judgment and warning, which through beautiful but terribly earnest lips were wafted from the realm of the Unseen, he had become a man of higher ideals. Though fond of races, athletics, and sports in general, the overt vices of former years fell away, and he grew thoughtful, reserved, and even kindly in his disposition. Being of patrician lineage, and possessing excellent native ability as well as great wealth, he had, by the imperial edict of the Emperor Tiberius, recently been appointed Vice Legate of Tarsus and its outlying provinces, so that he was now next in rank to the Roman governor. After the reign of Tiberius he was continued in the same position by Gaius, and still afterwards by Claudius.