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SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXII

DECEMBER, 1897

NO. 6

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HRISTMAS-DAY was dawning over Antioch fifteen hundred years ago. The curtain of night drew softly upward along the edge of the sky, and the ragged crests of Mount Silpius stood outlined with pale light. In the darker vault of the central heaven large stars still glimmered drowsily. The great city lay halfasleep. But multitudes of Christians, robed in white garments, and bearing lighted torches in their hands, were hurrying down the dusky streets to the basilica of Constantine, to keep the newly appointed festival of the Church, the birthday of the Christ.

father's house two years before, to join the Christian fellowship. There was no face so beautiful, so intelligent as his, and on that day none so cold, so dissatisfied, so unresponsive to the expectant joy of the festival.

He could look over the heads of his companions and survey the vast white sea of people, stretching away through the columns, under the shadow of the high dome, as the tide flows on a calm day into the pillared cavern of Staffa, quiet as if the ocean hardly dared to breathe, yet heaving with deep life. Innumerable flambeaux cast their flickering rays over the assembly. At the end of the vista there was a circular space of clearer, steadier light. Hermas could see the bishop in his great chair, encircled by the presbyters; the high desks on either side for the readers of the Scripture; the communion-table, and the table of offerings in the middle of the church. At the call to prayer all who had been Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons. All rights reserved.

The long building was soon crowded with the congregation of the faithful, and the younger converts, who had passed their years of probation, but had not yet been baptized, found it difficult to come to their place between the first two pillars of the house, just within the threshold. The tallest and the fairest of that serious, youthful throng was Hermas, the son of the rich pagan Demetrius, who had forsaken his

seated stood up, and thousands of hands were joyously lifted in the air, as if the sea had blossomed into waving lilies; and the "Amen" was like the murmur of countless ripples in an echoing place. Then the singing began, led by the choir of a hundred trained voices which the bishop Paul had founded in Antioch. Timidly, at first, the music felt its way, as the people joined with a broken and uncertain cadence, the mingling of many little waves not yet gathered into rhythm and harmony. Soon the longer, stronger billows of song rolled in, sweeping from side to side as the men and the women answered in the clear antiphony. Hermas had often been carried on those

Tides of music's golden sea Setting toward eternity;

but to-day his heart was a rock that stood motionless. The flood passed by and left him unmoved.

Looking out from his place at the foot of the pillar, he saw a man standing far-off in the lofty bema. Short and slender, wasted by sickness, gray before his time, with pale cheeks and wrinkled brow, he seemed at first like a person of no significance-a reed shaken in the wind. But there was a look in his deep-set, poignant eyes, as he gathered all the glances of the multitude to himself, that belied his mean appearance, and prophesied power. Her mas knew very well who it was the man who had drawn him from his father's house, the teacher who was instructing him as a son in the Christian faith, the guide and trainer of his soul-John of Antioch, the golden-mouthed preacher, whose fame filled the city and began to overflow Asia.

Hermas had felt the magic of his eloquence many a time; and to-day, as the tense voice vibrated through the stillness, and the sentences moved onward, growing fuller and stronger, bearing argosies of costly rhetoric and treasures of homely speech in their bosom and drawing the hearts of men with a resistless current, Hermas knew that the preacher had never been more potent, more inspired. He played on that immense congregation as a master on an instrument. He rebuked their sins, and they trembled. He touched their sorrows, and they wept. He spoke of the conflicts, the triumphs, the glories

of their faith, and they broke out in thunders of applause. He hushed them into reverent silence, and led them tenderly, with the Wise Men of the East, to the lowly birthplace of Jesus.

"Do thou, therefore, likewise leave the Jewish people, the troubled city, the bloodthirsty tyrant, the pomp of the world, and hasten to Bethlehem, the sweet house of spiritual bread. For though thou be but a shepherd, and come hither, thou shalt behold the Young Child in an inn. Though thou be a king, and come not hither, thy purple robe shall profit thee nothing. Though thou be one of the wise men, this shall be no hindrance to thee; only let thy coming be to honor and adore, with trembling joy, the Son of God, to whose name be glory, on this His birthday, and forever and forever."

The soul of Hermas did not answer to the musician's touch. The strings of his heart were slack and soundless; there was no response within him. He was neither shepherd, nor king, nor wise man ; only an unhappy, dissatisfied, questioning youth. He was out of sympathy with the eager preacher, the joyous hearers. In their harmony he had no part. Was it for this that he had forsaken his inheritance and narrowed his life to poverty and hardship? What was it all worth?

The gracious prayers with which the young converts were blessed and dismissed before the sacrament, sounded hollow in his ears. Never had he felt so utterly lonely as in that praying throng. He went out with his companions like a man departing from a banquet, where all but he had been fed.

"Farewell! Hermas," they cried, as he turned from them at the door. But he did not look back, nor wave his hand. He was alone already in his heart.

When he entered the broad avenue of the Colonnades, the sun had already topped the eastern hills, and the ruddy light was streaming through the long double row of archways and over the pavements of crimson marble. But Hermas turned his back to the morning and walked with his shadow before him.

The street began to swarm and whirl and quiver with the motley life of a huge city: beggars and jugglers, dancers and musicians, gilded youths in their chariots,

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He opened his heart to the old man, and told him the story of his life.-Page 668.

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