Great Lion of God Read Online Free Page B

the music of Eden, the hand that raised up obscenities and blasphemies. Man was the pariah dog, the moral leper in this translucent mirror of Heaven. He was the muddier of crystal waters, the despoiler of forests, the murderer of the innocent, the challenger against God. He was the assassin of the saints and the prophets, for they spoke of what he would not hear, in the darkness of his spirit.
    Hillel preferred to think well of his fellow man, being compassionate and often reflecting on the sorrows and the murky predicament of humanity, but he could not always delude himself that man was worthy to be alive. When he found himself in this crepuscular misery—as he did this evening—a misery mysterious in its source—he would remind himself of the prophecies concerning the Messias, and quote the words of Isaias regarding Him: “He will deliver His people from their sins.”
    The few Sadducees whom Hillel knew and whom he welcomed in his house, smilingly laughed at him when he confessed—after an extra cup of wine—that he “felt” something divine had “moved” upon the world, that a powerful event had already taken place which would change the face of history and revitalize man with the Voice of God. “It is your voluntary seclusion,” they would tell him, with fondness. “This world is of rock and substance and the power of Rome, and it is reality, fixed in space, and only madmen deny reality. Abandon the stars, my friend, and the Kabalah, and prophecies made by ancient prophets smelling of dung and goat’s-hair garments and sweat. They lived in a simpler day. Today the world is complex and civilized and filled with great cities and commerce and the arts and the sciences. Man has come of age. He is a sophisticated being, a citizen of the Roman world, at least by existence if not by fiat. He knows all that there is to be known. He is no longer the prey of jejune fantasies and hopes and delusions. He knows what the stars are. He knows what matter is. He knows his place in the universe. He is no longer superstitious, except in a mild manner, like the Romans. He feels no terror for natural phenomena—he understands it. He has his universities, his schools, his wise teachers. Few Jewish maidens there are, these days, who dream of giving birth to the Messias, for they know there will be no Messias, and that that delusion was only the wistfulness of innocent, ancient men. We still honor those men’s childish wisdom, and find it remarkable, considering that they had no access to our libraries and our schools. But it was the wisdom of most ingenuous men, who knew nothing of the cities and the roaring world of today.”
    “A virgin shall give birth—” But no one spoke of that these days, except a few old Pharisees among Hillel’s friends, and even they spoke of it as an event still shrouded in time and possibly only a mystical hope. Hillel felt alone. At midnight, he found himself pondering on his peculiar surety that something had, indeed, moved on the face of the world and that all creation was holding its breath.
    Once Hillel said to an old man whom he honored in Tarsus, an old Jew bent with years but with the mind of a leaping youth, “I have heard from my female cousin in Jerusalem, who is—I do not regret to say—married to a burly Roman centurion. A good man; I have dined in his house; he adores my cousin and defers to her, which, in some minds makes him less a man, but I have never believed that it was a proof of manhood to despise women. In many ways he possesses a rough wit and much shrewdness, and contrary to popular belief that all Romans are monsters, he is very kindly and has much humor.” Hillel spoke diffidently, while his guest frowned at this doubtless exaggerated view of the Roman conquerors of God’s Holy Land.
    “He is also superstitious,” Hillel continued. “He had been married to Hannah for six years, but God had not seen fit to bless them with a son though they have four rosy little