Ben Hur by Lew Wallace (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

and to my listening faith, which is never moved except by yearning of love⁠—I say he is not dead, but lost; and, his work remaining undone, he will come again. There you have the reasons for my belief. Are they not good?”

Ilderim’s small Arab eyes were bright with understanding, and Ben-Hur, lifted from his dejection, said heartily, “I, at least, may not gainsay them. What further, pray?”

“Hast thou not enough, my son? Well,” he began, in calmer tone, “seeing that the reasons were good⁠—more plainly, seeing it was God’s will that the Child should not be found⁠—I settled my faith into the keeping of patience, and took to waiting.” He raised his eyes, full of holy trust, and broke off abstractedly⁠—“I am waiting now. He lives, keeping well his mighty secret. What though I cannot go to him, or name the hill or the vale of his abiding-place? He lives⁠—it may be as the fruit in blossom, it may be as the fruit just ripening; but by the certainty there is in the promise and reason of God, I know he lives.”

A thrill of awe struck Ben-Hur⁠—a thrill which was but the dying of his half-formed doubt.

“Where thinkest thou he is?” he asked, in a low voice, and hesitating, like one who feels upon his lips the pressure of a sacred silence.

Balthasar looked at him kindly, and replied, his mind not entirely freed from its abstraction,

“In my house on the Nile, so close to the river that the passersby in boats see it and its reflection in the water at the same time⁠—in my house, a few weeks ago, I sat thinking. A man thirty years old, I said to myself, should have his fields of life all ploughed, and his planting well done; for after that it is summertime, with space scarce enough to ripen his sowing. The Child, I said further, is now twenty-seven⁠—his time to plant must be at hand. I asked myself, as you here asked me, my son, and answered by coming hither, as to a good resting-place close by the land thy fathers had from God. Where else should he appear, if not in Judea? In what city should he begin his work, if not in Jerusalem? Who should be first to receive the blessings he is to bring, if not the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in love, at least, the children of the Lord? If I were bidden go seek him, I would search well the hamlets and villages on the slopes of the mountains of Judea and Galilee falling eastwardly into the valley of the Jordan. He is there now. Standing in a door or on a hilltop, only this evening he saw the sun set one day nearer the time when he himself shall become the light of the world.”

Balthasar ceased, with his hand raised and finger pointing as if at Judea. All the listeners, even the dull servants outside the divan, affected by his fervor, were startled as if by a majestic presence suddenly apparent within the tent. Nor did the sensation die away at once: of those at the table, each sat awhile thinking. The spell was finally broken by Ben-Hur.

“I see, good Balthasar,” he said, “that thou hast been much and strangely favored. I see, also, that thou art a wise man indeed. It is not in my power to tell how grateful I am for the things thou hast told me. I am warned of the coming of great events, and borrow somewhat from thy faith. Complete the obligation, I pray thee, by telling further of the mission of him for whom thou art waiting, and for whom from this night I too shall wait as becomes a believing son of Judah. He is to be a Savior, thou saidst; is he not to be King of the Jews also?”

“My son,” said Balthasar, in his benignant way, “the mission is yet a purpose in the bosom of God. All I think about it is wrung from the words of the Voice in connection with the prayer to which they were in answer. Shall we refer to them again?”

“Thou art the teacher.”

“The cause of my disquiet,” Balthasar began, calmly⁠—“that which made me a preacher in Alexandria and in the villages of the Nile; that which drove me at last into the solitude where the Spirit found me⁠—was the fallen condition of men, occasioned, as I believed, by loss of the knowledge of God. I sorrowed for the sorrows of my kind⁠—not of one class, but all of them. So utterly were they fallen it seemed to me there could be no Redemption unless God himself would make it his work; and I prayed him to come, and that I might see him. ‘Thy good works have conquered. The Redemption cometh; thou shalt see the Savior’⁠—thus the Voice spake; and with the answer I went up to Jerusalem rejoicing. Now, to whom is the Redemption? To all the world. And how shall it be? Strengthen thy faith, my son! Men say, I know, that there will be no happiness until Rome is razed from her hills. That is to say, the ills of the time are not, as I thought them, from ignorance of God, but from the misgovernment of rulers. Do we need to be told that human governments are never for the sake of religion? How many kings have you heard of who were better than their subjects? Oh no, no! The Redemption cannot be for a political purpose⁠—to pull down rulers and powers, and vacate their places merely that others may take and enjoy them. If that were all of it, the wisdom of God would cease to be surpassing. I tell you, though it be but the saying of blind to blind, he that comes is to be a Savior of souls; and the Redemption means God once more on earth, and righteousness, that his stay here may be tolerable to himself.”

Disappointment showed