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

“By the splendor of God!” he cried, impulsively, “the judgment does away with all custom. The ways of the world are fixed, and cannot be changed. There must be a leader in every community clothed with power, else there is no reform.”

Balthasar received the burst gravely.

“Thy wisdom, good sheik, is of the world; and thou dost forget that it is from the ways of the world we are to be redeemed. Man as a subject is the ambition of a king; the soul of a man for its salvation is the desire of a God.”

Ilderim, though silenced, shook his head, unwilling to believe. Ben-Hur took up the argument for him.

“Father⁠—I call thee such by permission,” he said⁠—“for whom wert thou required to ask at the gates of Jerusalem?”

The sheik threw him a grateful look.

“I was to ask of the people,” said Balthasar, quietly, “ ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’ ”

“And you saw him in the cave by Bethlehem?”

“We saw and worshipped him, and gave him presents⁠—Melchior, gold; Gaspar, frankincense; and I, myrrh.”

“When thou dost speak of fact, O father, to hear thee is to believe,” said Ben-Hur; “but in the matter of opinion, I cannot understand the kind of king thou wouldst make of the Child⁠—I cannot separate the ruler from his powers and duties.”

“Son,” said Balthasar, “we have the habit of studying closely the things which chance to lie at our feet, giving but a look at the greater objects in the distance. Thou seest now but the title⁠—King of the Jews; wilt thou lift thine eyes to the mystery beyond it, the stumbling-block will disappear. Of the title, a word. Thy Israel hath seen better days⁠—days in which God called thy people endearingly his people, and dealt with them through prophets. Now, if in those days he promised them the Savior I saw⁠—promised him as King of the Jews⁠—the appearance must be according to the promise, if only for the word’s sake. Ah, thou seest the reason of my question at the gate!⁠—thou seest, and I will no more of it, but pass on. It may be, next, thou art regarding the dignity of the Child; if so, bethink thee⁠—what is it to be a successor of Herod?⁠—by the world’s standard of honor, what? Could not God better by his beloved? If thou canst think of the Almighty Father in want of a title, and stooping to borrow the inventions of men, why was I not bidden ask for a Caesar at once? Oh, for the substance of that whereof we speak, look higher, I pray thee! Ask rather of what he whom we await shall be king; for I do tell, my son, that is the key to the mystery, which no man shall understand without the key.”

Balthasar raised his eyes devoutly.

“There is a kingdom on the earth, though it is not of it⁠—a kingdom of wider bounds than the earth⁠—wider than the sea and the earth, though they were rolled together as finest gold and spread by the beating of hammers. Its existence is a fact as our hearts are facts, and we journey through it from birth to death without seeing it; nor shall any man see it until he hath first known his own soul; for the kingdom is not for him, but for his soul. And in its dominion there is glory such as hath not entered imagination⁠—original, incomparable, impossible of increase.”

“What thou sayest, father, is a riddle to me,” said Ben-Hur. “I never heard of such a kingdom.”

“Nor did I,” said Ilderim.

“And I may not tell more of it,” Balthasar added, humbly dropping his eyes. “What it is, what it is for, how it may be reached, none can know until the Child comes to take possession of it as his own. He brings the key of the viewless gate, which he will open for his beloved, among whom will be all who love him, for of such only the redeemed will be.”

After that there was a long silence, which Balthasar accepted as the end of the conversation.

“Good sheik,” he said, in his placid way, “tomorrow or the next day I will go up to the city for a time. My daughter wishes to see the preparations for the games. I will speak further about the time of our going. And, my son, I will see you again. To you both, peace and good night.”

They all arose from the table. The sheik and Ben-Hur remained looking after the Egyptian until he was conducted out of the tent.

“Sheik Ilderim,” said Ben-Hur then, “I have heard strange things tonight. Give me leave, I pray, to walk by the lake that I may think of them.”

“Go; and I will come after you.”

They washed their hands again; after which, at a sign from the master, a servant brought Ben-Hur his shoes, and directly he went out.

Up a little way from the dower there was a cluster of palms, which threw its shade half in the water, half on the land. A bulbul sang from the branches a song of invitation. Ben-Hur stopped beneath to listen. At any other time the notes of the bird would have driven thought away; but the story of the Egyptian was a burden of wonder, and he was a laborer carrying it, and, like other laborers, there was to him no music in the sweetest music until mind and body were happily attuned by rest.

The night was quiet. Not a ripple broke upon the shore. The old stars of the old East were all out, each in its accustomed place; and there was summer everywhere⁠—on land, on lake, in the sky.

Ben-Hur’s imagination was heated, his feelings aroused, his will all unsettled.

So the palms, the sky, the air, seemed to him of the far south zone into