The Maccabaean

"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion."

THE gloom of the Babylonian captivity had fallen heavily upon the children of Jerusalem. “How shall we sing the Lord’s songs in a strange land?” they asked; and indeed how could they? How could they be joyous when there was every reason to be sorrowful? Little they knew that in the near future they would sing their songs in many strange lands and in strange lands only.

Among the exiles was a youth who tried to console his broken-spirited brethren and to lighten the burden of their hearts by confronting them with the thought that they would again return to their own land and sing the songs of the Lord there in peace and prosperity. But they were not easily comforted, not even by so gentle and appealing a nature as his.

He was tall, slender and lithe, his hair was dark and fell luxuriantly about his low brow. His eyes, too, were dark and strangely beautiful. Sometimes they bespoke sadıtess, sometimes a dormant joy; more often a fierce fire shone in them reflecting a mind of deepest thought, a soul of wildest emotion. By his side hung a sword and in his hand he carried a lyre; a child of nature, a child of song, above all a child of Israel. He had come among the slaves of Egypt, in the form of a youth, no one knew whence nor how. He had attracted little notice, for he liyed in the open fields and on the mountain tops, where the

ruggedness of nature harmonized with the longing of his soul. His strength was superhuman and he could run with the swiftness of a deer. Sometimes he was seen sitting on the banks of a river lost in thought; then of a sudden he would grasp his lyre, set the strings into vibration and sing such exquisite melodies with a voice of such unearthly sweetness that the hearts of those who heard it were melted to tears.

At times he was seen amidst the Israelites, whose minds and hearts had become calloused by the cruelty of the Egyptian bondage, giving utterance to beautiful thoughts and full sway to his delightful fancies. Often jealousy angered them against him, “Who art thou? What is they name?” they would say, “that thou livest on forever and we must die?” Solemnly he would answer them, “Jehovah is my Father as He is yours and I am one of you. I have no name; call me what you will. What I stand for, what I sing for, what I live for, that I am. I will live as long as my people live, that I may make of Israel a great nation.”

What did Israel mean to them but slavery and wretchedness. What cared they for a national life who had never tasted of it? What knew they of freedom whose souls they could not even call their own? And yet they began to dream. His songs could move stones, why not men? "How could he be one of us," they wondered, "and be immortal?" But that was to be answered in later years.

He crossed the Red Sea unnoticed