MAXIMUS THE MYSTIC.
Courage, Julian! He who wills, conquers.
THE EMPEROR JULIAN.
And what does the conqueror win? Is it worth while to
conquer? What has the Macedonian Alexander, what has Julius Caesar won? Greeks
and Romans talk of their renown with cold admiration,—while the other, the
Galilean, the carpenter’s son, sits throned as the king of love in the warm,
believing hearts of men.
Where is he now?—Has he been at work elsewhere since that
happened at Golgotha?
I dreamed of him lately. I dreamed that I had subdued the
whole world. I ordained that the memory of the Galilean should be rooted out on
earth; and it was rooted out.—Then the spirits came and ministered to me, and
bound wings on my shoulders, and I soared aloft into infinite space, till my
feet rested on another world.
It was another world than mine. Its curve was vaster, its
light more golden, and many moons circled around it.
Then I looked down at my own earth—the Emperor’s earth,
which I had made Galileanless—and I thought that all that I had done was very
good.
But behold, my Maximus,—there came a procession by me, on the
strange earth where I stood. There were soldiers, and judges, and executioners
at the head of it, and weeping women followed. And lo!—in the midst of the
slow-moving array, was the Galilean, alive, and bearing a cross on his back.
Then I called to him, and said, “Whither away, Galilean?” But he turned his
face toward me, smiled, nodded slowly, and said: “To the place of the skull.”
Where is he now? What if that at Golgotha, near Jerusalem,
was but a wayside matter, a thing done, as it were, in passing, in a leisure
hour? What if he goes on and on, and suffers, and dies, and conquers, again and
again, from world to world?
Oh that I could lay waste the world! Maximus,—is there no poison, no consuming fire, that could lay creation desolate, as it was on that day when the spirit moved alone over the face of the waters?
[translated by William Archer]