and the scentless blossoms breathed fragrance into my nostrils. I became
a woman without a tainted memory, and I was free, and my head was no
longer bowed down.
RAFCA THE BRIDE OF CANA
THIS HAPPENED BEFORE HE WAS KNOWN TO THE PEOPLE.
I was in my mother's garden tending the rose-bushes, when He stopped at
our gate.
And He said, "I am thirsty. Will you give me water from your well?"
And I ran and brought the silver cup, and filled it with water; and I
poured into it a few drops from the jasmine vial.
And He drank deep and was pleased.
Then He looked into my eyes and said, "My blessing shall be upon you."
When He said that I felt as it were a gust of wind rushing through my
body. And I was no longer shy; and I said, "Sir, I am betrothed to a man
of Cana in Galilee. And I shall be married on the fourth day of the
coming week. Will you not come to my wedding and grace my marriage with
your presence?"
And He answered, "I will come, my child."
Mind you, He said, "My child," yet He was but a youth, and I was nearly
twenty.
Then He walked on down the road.
And I stood at the gate of our garden until my mother called me into the
house.
On the fourth day of the following week I was taken to the house of my
bridegroom and given in marriage.
And Jesus came, and with Him His mother and His brother James.
And they sat around the wedding-board with our guests whilst my maiden
comrades sang the wedding-songs of Solomon the King. And Jesus ate our
food and drank our wine and smiled upon me and upon the others.
And He heeded all the songs of the lover bringing his beloved into his
tent; and of the young vineyard-keeper who loved the daughter of the lord
of the vineyard and led her to his mother's house; and of the prince who
met the beggar maiden and bore her to his realm and crowned her with the
crown of his fathers.
And it seemed as if He were listening to yet other songs also, which I
could not hear.
At sundown the father of my bridegroom came to the mother of Jesus and
whispered saying, "We have no more wine for our guests. And the day is
not yet over."
And Jesus heard the whispering, and He said, "The cup bearer knows that
there is still more wine."
And so it was indeed-and as long as the guests remained there was fine
wine for all who would drink.
Presently Jesus began to speak with us. He spoke of the wonders of earth
and heaven; of sky flowers that bloom when night is upon the earth, and
of earth flowers that blossom when the day hides the stars.
And He told us stories and parables, and His voice enchanted us so that
we gazed upon Him as if seeing visions, and we forgot the cup and the
plate.
And as I listened to Him it seemed as if I were in a land distant and
unknown.
After a while one of the guests said to the father of my bridegroom, "You
have kept the best wine till the end of the feast. Other hosts do not
so."
And all believed that Jesus had wrought a miracle, that they should have
more wine and better at the end of the wedding-feast than at the
beginning.
I too thought that Jesus had poured the wine, but I was not astonished;
for in His voice I had already listened to miracles.
And afterwards indeed, His voice remained close to my heart, even until I
had been delivered of my first-born child.
And now even to this day in our village and in the villages near by, the
word of our guest is still remembered. And they say, "The spirit of Jesus
of Nazareth is the best and the oldest wine."
A PERSIAN PHILOSOPHER IN DAMASCUS
I CANNOT TELL THE FATE OF THIS MAN, NOR CAN I SAY
what shall befall His disciples.
A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. Yet
should that seed fall upon a rock, it will come to naught.
But this I say: The ancient God of Israel is harsh and relentless. Israel
should have another God; one who is gentle and forgiving, who would look
down upon them with pity; one who would descend with the rays of the sun
and walk on the path of their limitations, rather than sit for ever in
the judgment seat to weigh their faults and measure their wrong-doings.
Israel should bring forth a God whose heart is not a jealous heart, and
whose memory of their shortcomings is brief; one who would not avenge
Himself upon them even to the third and the fourth generation.
Man here in Syria is like man in all lands. He would look into the mirror
of his own understanding and therein find his deity. He would fashion the
gods after his own likeness, and worship that which reflects his own
image.
In truth man prays to his deeper longing, that it may rise and fulfil the
sum of his desires.
There is no depth beyond the soul of man, and the soul is the deep that
calls unto itself; for there is no other voice to speak and there are no
other ears to hear.
Even we in Persia would see our faces in the disc of the sun and our
bodies dancing in the fire that we kindle upon the altars.
Now the God of Jesus, whom He called Father, would not be a stranger unto
the people of Jesus, and He would fulfil their desires.
The gods of Egypt have cast off their burden of stones and fled to the
Nubian desert, to be free among those who are still free from knowing.
The gods of Greece and Rome are vanishing into their own sunset. They
were too much like men to live in the ecstasy of men. The groves in which
their magic was born have been cut down by the axes of the Athenians and
the Alexandrians.
And in this land also the high places are made low by the lawyers of
Beirut and the young hermits of Antioch.
Only the old women and the weary men seek the temples of their
forefathers; only the exhausted at the end of the road seek its
beginning.
But this man Jesus, this Nazarene, He has spoken of a God too vast to be
unlike the soul of any man, too knowing to punish, too loving to remember
the sins of His creatures. And this God of the Nazarene shall pass over
the threshold of the children of the earth, and He shall sit at their
hearth, and He shall be a blessing within their walls and a light upon
their path.
But my God is the God of Zoroaster, the God who is the sun in the sky and
fire upon the earth and light in the bosom of man. And I am content. I
need no other God.
DAVID ONE OF HIS FOLLOWERS
I DID NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF HIS DISCOURSES OR HIS parables until He was
no longer among us. Nay, I did not understand until His words took living
forms before my eyes and fashioned themselves into bodies that walk in
the procession of my own day.
Let me tell you this: On a night as I sat in my house pondering, and
remembering His words and His deeds that I might inscribe them in a book,
three thieves entered my house. And though I knew they came to rob me of
my goods, I was too mindful of what I was doing to meet them with the
sword, or even to sa
y, "What do you here?"
But I continued writing my remembrances of the Master.
And when the thieves had gone then I remembered His saying, "He who would
take your cloak, let him take your other cloak also."
And I understood.
As I sat recording His words no man could have stopped me even were he to
have carried away all my possessions.
For though I would guard my possessions and also my person, I know where
lies the greater treasure.
LUKE
JESUS DESPISED AND SCORNED THE HYPOCRITES,
and His wrath was like a tempest that scourged them. His voice was
thunder in their ears and He cowed them.
In their fear of Him they sought His death; and like moles in the dark
earth they worked to undermine His footsteps. But He fell not into their
snares.
He laughed at them, for well He knew that the spirit shall not be mocked,
nor shall it be taken in the pitfall.
He held a mirror in His hand and therein He saw the sluggard and the
limping and those who stagger and fall by the roadside on the way to the
summit.
And He pitied them all. He would even have raised them to His stature and
He would have carried their burden. Nay, He would have bid their weakness
lean on His strength.
He did not utterly condemn the liar or the thief or the murderer, but He
did utterly condemn the hypocrite whose face is masked and whose hand is
gloved.
Often have I pondered on the heart that shelters all who come from the
wasteland to its sanctuary, yet against the hypocrite is closed and
sealed.
On a day as we rested with Him in the Garden of Pomegranates, I said to
infirm save only the hypocrite alone."
And He said, "You have chosen your words well when you called sinners
weak and infirm. I do forgive them their weakness of body and their
infirmity of spirit. For their failings have been laid upon them by their
forefathers, or by the greed of their neighbors.
"But I tolerate not the hypocrite, because he himself lays a yoke upon
the guileless and the yielding.
"Weaklings, whom you call sinners, are like the featherless young that
fall from the nest. The hypocrite is the vulture waiting upon a rock for
the death of the prey.
"Weaklings are men lost in a desert. But the hypocrite is not lost. He
knows the way yet he laughs between the sand and the wind.
"For this cause I do not receive him."
Thus our Master spoke, and I did not understand. But I understand now.
Then the hypocrites of the land laid hands upon Him and they judged Him;
and in so doing they deemed themselves justified. For they cited the law
of Moses in the Sanhedrim in witness and evidence against Him.
And they who break the law at the rise of every dawn and break it again
at sunset, brought about His death.
MATTHEW THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
ONE HARVEST DAY JESUS CALLED US AND His other friends to the hills. The
earth was fragrant, and like the daughter of a king at her wedding-feast,
she wore all her jewels. And the sky was her bridegroom.
When we reached the heights Jesus stood still in the grove of laurels,
and He said, "Rest here, quiet your mind and tune your heart, for I have
much to tell you."
Then we reclined on the grass, and the summer flowers were all about us,
and Jesus sat in our midst.
And Jesus said:
Blessed are the serene in spirit.
Blessed are they who are not held by possessions, for they shall be free.
"Blessed are they who remember their pain, and in their pain await their
joy.
"Blessed are they who hunger after truth and beauty, for their hunger
shall bring bread, and their thirst cool water.
Blessed are the kindly, for they shall be consoled by their own
kindliness.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall be one with God.
"Blessed are the merciful, for mercy shall be in their portion.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for their spirit shall dwell above the
battle, and they shall turn the potter's field into a garden.
"Blessed are they who are hunted, for they shall be swift of foot and
they shall be winged.
"Rejoice and be joyful, for you have found the kingdom of heaven within
you. The singers of old were persecuted when they sang of that kingdom.
You too shall be persecuted, and therein lies your honor, and therein
your reward.
"You are the salt of the earth; should the salt lose its savor wherewith
shall the food of man's heart be salted?
"You are the light of the world. Put not that light under a bushel. Let
it shine rather from the summit, to those who seek the City of God.
"Think not I came to destroy the laws of the scribes and the Pharisees;
for my days among you are numbered and my words are counted, and I have
but hours in which to fulfil another law and reveal a new covenant.
"You have been told that you shall not kill, but I say unto you, you
shall not be angry without a cause.
"You have been charged by the ancients to bring your calf and your lamb
and your dove to the temple, and to slay them upon the altar, that the
nostrils of God may feed upon the odor of their fat, and that you may be
forgiven your failings.
"But I say unto you, would you give God that which was His own from the
beginning; and would you appease Him whose throne is above the silent
deep and whose arms encircle space?
"Rather, seek out your brother and be reconciled unto him ere you seek
the temple; and be a loving giver unto your neighbor. For in the soul of
these God has builded a temple that shall not be destroyed, and in their
heart He has raised an altar that shall never perish.
"You have been told, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say
unto you: Resist not evil, for resistance is food unto evil and makes it
strong. And only the weak would revenge themselves. The strong of soul
forgive, and it is honor in the injured to forgive.
"Only the fruitful tree is shaken or stoned for food.
"Be not heedful of the morrow, but rather gaze upon today, for sufficient
for today is the miracle thereof.
necessity. For every giver himself receives from the Father, and that
much more abundantly.
And give to each according to his need; for the Father gives not salt to
the thirsty, nor a stone to the hungry, nor milk to the weaned.
"And give not that which is holy to dogs; nor cast your pearls before
swine. For with such gifts you mock them; and they also shall mock your
gift, and in their hate would fain destroy you.
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures that corrupt or that thieves may
steal away. Lay up rather treasure which shall not corrupt nor be stolen,
and whose loveliness increases when many eyes behold it. For where your
treasure is, your heart is also.
"You have been told that the murderer shall be put to the sword, that the
thief shall b
e crucified, and the harlot stoned. But I say unto you that
you are not free from the wrongdoing of the murderer and the thief and
the harlot, and when they are punished in the body your own spirit is
darkened.
"Verily no crime is committed by one man or one woman. All crimes are
committed by all. And he who pays the penalty may be breaking a link in
the chain that hangs upon your own ankles. Perhaps he is paying with his
sorrow the price for your passing joy.
Thus spake Jesus, and it was in my desire to kneel down and worship Him,
yet in my shyness I could not move nor speak a word.
But at last I spoke; and I said, "I would pray this moment, yet my tongue
is heavy. Teach me to pray."
And Jesus said, "When you would pray, let your longing pronounce the
words. It is in my longing now to pray thus:
"Our Father in earth and heaven, sacred is Thy name.
Thy will be done with us, even as in space.
Give us of Thy bread sufficient for the day.
In Thy compassion forgive us and enlarge us to forgive one another.
Guide us towards Thee and stretch down Thy hand to us in darkness.
For Thine is the kingdom, and in Thee is our power and our fulfilment."
And it was now evening, and Jesus walked down from the hills, and all of
us followed Him. And as I followed I was repeating His prayer, and
remembering all that He had said; for I knew that the words that had
fallen like flakes that day must set and grow firm like crystals, and
that the wings that had fluttered above our heads were to beat the earth
like iron hoofs.
JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE
YOU HAVE REMARKED THAT SOME OF US CALL Jesus THE CHRIST, and some THE
WORD, and others call Him the NAZARENE, and still others the SON OF MAN.
I will try to make these names clear in the light that is given me.
The Christ, He who was in the ancient of days, is the flame of God that
dwells in the spirit of man. He is the breath of life that visits us, and
takes unto Himself a body like our bodies.
He is the will of the Lord.
He is the first Word, which would speak with our voice and live in our
ear that we may heed and understand.
And the Word of the Lord our God builded a house of flesh and bones, and
was man like unto you and myself.
For we could not hear the song of the bodiless wind nor see our greater
self walking in the mist.
Many times the Christ has come to the world, and He has walked many
lands. And always He has been deemed a stranger and a madman.
Yet the sound of His voice descended never to emptiness, for the memory
of man keeps that which his mind takes no care to keep.
This is the Christ, the innermost and the height, who walks with man
towards eternity.
Have you not heard of Him at the cross-roads of India? And in the land of
the Magi, and upon the sands of Egypt?
And here in your North Country your bards of old sang of Prometheus, the
fire-bringer, he who was the desire of man fulfilled, the caged hope made
free; and of Orpheus, who came with a voice and a lyre to quicken the
spirit in beast and man.
And know you not of Mithra the king, and of Zoroaster the prophet of the
Persians, who woke from man's ancient sleep and stood at the bed of our
dreaming?
We ourselves become man anointed when we meet in the Temple Invisible,
once every thousand years. Then comes one forth embodied, and at His
coming our silence turns to singing.
Yet our ears turn not always to listening nor our eyes to seeing.
Jesus the Nazarene was born and reared like ourselves; His mother and