“Rude fragments now Lie scattered where the shapely column stood.
Her palaces are dust. In all the streets the sprightly chords
Are silent. Revelry and dance and show
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause;
While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of His own works His dreadful part, alone.”
—Cowper.
 
“Then shall ye know that I am the Lord, when their slain shall be among their idols, round about their altars ... upon every high place ... under every thick oak.”—Ezekiel vi.
 
Passing from Edrei toward Bozrah the pilgrim knight and his wife with their convoy reached Kunawat, the Kenath of Scripture, once the dwelling place of Job. Here for a time they abode. The number and variety of castles, temples, theaters and palaces in ruins, were sufficient to engage the attention of the travelers for many days. Rizpah was more cheerful than she was at Edrei, but yet restless to reach Bozrah, on which place her heart was set.
 
One day standing before an old Roman temple in Kunawat, Rizpah, somewhat interested by its well preserved Corinthian columns, and Sir Charleroy deeply engrossed in contemplation of an huge stone image, the former asks: “Has the knight recognized an old English[213] or a new Bashan love?” The woman was finding the oft-repeated and prolonged visits to this particular place monotonous. She was annoyed, but modified her rebuke into raillery.
 
“There is something very fascinating in the Cyclopean face.”
 
“A broken stone fascinate a man? But I see ’tis that of a woman; the brain part gone. Would that the English knight had wed such; then he might have been loyal to creed, and not a martyr!”
 
ASTARTE.
 
“Rizpah knows that I could never have loved a brainless face, nor any one akin to this Kunawat goddess.”
 
“Not if she echoed thy ‘aye’ and ‘nay’ consistently? Be careful; as many strong men have fallen by having their conceit gratified as there have fallen women through flattery.”
 
[214]
 
“How absurd to hint that I could be so lured.”
 
“But the knight says Astarte fascinates!”
 
“I said so, meaning that I’m fascinated by the train of thoughts that the image awakens. Think a moment; we, the living of to-day confronting the acme of the thought of the ages long gone. Looking at this, I seem to be seeing over rolling centuries, right into the hearts of humanity that lived thousands of years ago.”
 
“All this might have been taken in at a glance! Having seen it, what use is it?”
 
“Use? To aid in finding a key to life’s problems. I’m filled with questionings; do not yearnings, such as beat through the being of the ancients pulse in those of to-day? Are not humanity’s temptations and needs ever the same?”
 
“Since the ancients did not tarry to compare with us, I, being only a woman, of Gerash, of to-day, can give only the shallow answer, I suppose so.”
 
“Oh, I’m not questioning Rizpah; but the ruins, the air, time, my soul, God!”
 
“And their reply?”
 
“Bewildering echoes of each question?
 
“And it’s all a mystery to Sir Charleroy?”
 
“I know a little; something, next to nothing.”
 
“Possess curious me of that little, and I’ll help thee wonder why so much greatness came to naught.”
 
“That wondering is easily met; they had, as god, one whose head could be broken as this one’s was; they that would survive must be sheltered by the Invincible.”
 
Rizpah, meanwhile had drawn close to the huge stone face and placing one hand beneath the mouth, the[215] other on the portion of the head just above the moon crown, her arms stretched well nigh to their limits quizically remarked:
 
“Those that dined with her must have had pyramids for chairs. What dost thou think they were like?”
 
“Crusaders?”
 
“Now, I’m tantalized. Crusaders two or three thousand years ago? How absurd!”
 
“Oh, certainly they were not known by the name, Crusaders: but they that followed Astarte and such-like deities, whether called Kenaihites, Rephaim, Moslem, Christians, or by other appellation are all soldier-pilgrims, dominated by an ideal. There have been many female deities among the pagans and there is a deal of paganism left in humanity.”
 
“That’s because half the race are men. Astarte would be very popular to-day with thy sex, if she were here in living form, a whole woman, instead of a fragment and beautiful also—”
 
“Thou dost not care to hear more of the female deities?”
 
“Oh, yes; I’ll be fearfully jealous if thou dost keep any thing back. Tell me what madmen the ancients were?” She paused, slapped the face of the image, ejaculating “Virago!” then continued, “Why did they make their effigy both hideous and huge? Ugly things should be dwarfed!”
 
“The ancients, who knew not the grandeur of moral power, gave their deities terribleness in their physical proportions, and a mountain of flesh became their ideal of greatness—men ever try to make their objects of worship greater than themselves, thou knowest. Hast forgotten what Ichabod once told us of the Egyptians?[216] How they expressed their reverence by piling up pyramids and made that very diminutive which they would caricature? Oh, how our true religion, having at its heart an only, all-beautiful, Almighty God, rises above these human devices!”
 
“I wonder that it did not, at its first appearing on earth, instantly overthrow all others.”
 
“And it is a still more wonderful thing that those who embraced it, having known, should have sometimes gone back to paganism? Thou dost remember that God’s chosen people, after enjoying marvels of His Providence, plunged headlong into idolatry in the very presence of His splendor at Sinai?”
 
“With shame I remember it. I marvel as well that this record, which evokes the ridicule of the grosser heathen, was made part of our Holy writings.”
 
“God’s compensation! The people stripped themselves of their jewels to make the calf; then of their garments to worship it according to the lewd rites of Apis. God since has lashed them naked around the world, as it were, by giving their history to all times. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out,’ is a stern truth haunting the conscience of the evil doer; but though exposure is a bitter medicine it is a saving one. God as such applies it.”
 
“I think the devil crazed the people at Sinai.”
 
“Yes, Rizpah, but Human Desire was his name. The revelers made their devil as well as their calf, that day.”
 
“But it is said ‘they rose to play.’ If so disobedient and heaven-defying how could they have found heart to play?”
 
“Odious, significant word that one is, here. It was[217] a ‘play’ that engulphed all purity. No wonder they ceased to observe the ‘burning mountain!’ Only the pure in heart can see God.”
 
“Thank God! that thy people and mine have finally escaped, my husband.”
 
“So far as we have escaped, I thank Him; but, alas, the evangels of Egypt’s scarlet heresies still go about, and there are many, everywhere, led away in chains that seem of flowers at first, but are found to be of galling iron at last.”
 
“I did not know this?”
 
“Oh, these modern perverters disguise their horrible tenets with many refined phrases; yet He that overwhelmed gross Sodom and the jewelless, naked dancers about the golden bull, sees through all their thin drapings and will judge the free lover, corrupt socialist and libertine as He did those ancients. The Assyrian and Egyptian representations of Venus generally appeared holding a serpent; a sort of bitter admission of the curse in the hand of perverted love and the fierce lashings that follow it.”
 
“I fail to connect the ancient with the present heresies, my good teacher.”
 
“I pause to-day here, reminded of their common origin and consequences. God put it into the hearts of His creatures to love women, honor motherhood, and worship Him. Read Sinai’s law, and this is all manifest. There came a perversion; the love of woman was degraded, motherhood was denied its honor, and men became God-defying. There was a confusion worse than that of Babel, and the worshiping was transferred, first, to symbolized lust; then degraded. They that adored Venus, knowing how her adoration[218] had depraved themselves, came to believe that she scandalized the heaven they imagined. Then came a time when her earthly rites even scandalized the wiser pagans.”
 
“My husband leads me along strange ways. Is it wise to do so?”
 
“I see a grand end; follow me. There is a deep significance in the fact that among the pagans there constantly appeared this adoration of woman on account of her power of motherhood. I take this adoration as proof of a conscious need feeling after a vaguely discerned truth. The yearning is suggested by the paired gods.............