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The feast of the Passover was ended. The multitude had returned to their homes, or resumed their occupations in the city. The ashes on the altar of burnt-offering, whose gradual accumulation, during the week of the Passover, had raised them at last into a lofty pyramid, had been cleared away. The days of unleavened bread were past; the people had returned to their ordinary food, and all the glory of the festival seemed to have disappeared from the city.
Helon stood on the roof, on the following morning, contemplating the rising sun. His eyes turned towards the temple, and he remembered, with a feeling of disappointment and regret, that on this as on the preceding day, only a single customary sacrifice would be presented there. He looked down upon the streets—the exhilarating commotion of the festival had vanished, and all was solitary and still, save where a Tyrian merchant was seen hastening through the gate with his empty sacks, or a Galilean dealer in cattle, driving before him the remnant of his herd, for which he had been unable to find a purchaser. No pilgrim from Hebron or Libna, no stranger of the Diaspora was to be seen.
A deep melancholy took possession of Helon’s mind, and this day seemed likely to pass even more gloomily than the preceding. The dejection of mind which for several years past had been his habitual companion, had suddenly vanished during the paschal week. The enthusiasm which began at Beersheba, when he knelt down to greet the land of his fathers, had gone on constantly increasing; and he had felt within himself a resolution, which it seemed as if nothing could daunt, to keep the law of Jehovah. But now, though still in the Holy Land and in the city of God, his spirits sunk at every moment; his feelings had been too highly excited, and this depression was the natural consequence. He could not descend to the ordinary occupations of life in Jerusalem, in which, as the city of Jehovah, it seemed to him that a perpetual festival ought to prevail.
In the preceding days only the psalms, with their tone of cheerful and exulting piety, or the joyous prophecies of Isaiah, had been in his heart and on his lips; now the plaintive strains of Jeremiah, his former favourites, recurred to his mind, and he began to feel how removed he still was from that inward peace for which he longed, and which he thought that he had found in the first days of the festival. When he looked down upon the streets, whose compatative emptiness seemed to him absolute desolation, the beginning of the Lamentations came to his mind,
How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! How is she become as a widow!
And he could scarcely forbear adding from the same prophet,[1]
My soul is removed from peace, And I said my confidence is perished And my hope in Jehovah.
With such feelings he wandered up and down on the roof, in the cool air of morning. Suddenly the smoke of the morning-sacrifice arose on mount Moriah, and the sound of a solitary trumpet was heard from the hill of the Lord. All Helon’s feelings returned with the associations of this sight and sound. “There is then,” he exclaimed, “one occupation in Jerusalem, which is a perpetual festival. It is theirs who dwell in the house of the Lord and minister at his altar. Why do I delay my resolution?”
At this moment the door of the Alijah opened, and the venerable Elisama issued from it. He had been performing there his morning devotions. Helon went up to him, wished him peace, and with kindling looks thus addressed him; “My uncle, often hast thou told me that Israel is Israel only in the Holy Land, yet even here I cannot remain, unless I become a priest.”
“Restless youth,” said Elisama smiling; “is it not enough for thee that thou art in the city of Jehovah?”
“But,” replied Helon, “even in the city of Jehovah, the priests alone keep a perpetual festival; and I fain would keep it with them.”
Elisama looked at him in joyful surprise. It had been his own wish that Helon, whose dislike of commerce he perceived, should become a priest, but wishing that it should be his spontaneous choice, he had forborne to suggest it to him; and he had not hoped for so speedy and so decisive a declaration. Scarcely able to repress his joy, he replied, “In a son of Levi the wish is natural; but what has suggested it?”
Helon related to him what he had felt on the second day of the Passover, when offering the burnt-offering; how the desire of entering into the sacerdotal order had ripened into resolution, and how ever since that time the words of the prophet,[2] “the priest is an angel of the Lord,” had been perpetually before his mind, till at length his painful feelings on seeing the deserted city, and the joy which had revived in him on hearing the trumpet from Moriah, had convinced him that he could be happy only by entering into the priesthood.
Elisama embraced him, and both remained for a time weeping. At length Elisama, breaking silence, said, “We will go to-morrow to the high-priest; he knows our family and me. In truth,” he continued, “Jehovah has blessed our house with much wealth in a foreign land, and thou, alas, art its only heir. It is right that thou shouldest revive the priesthood in our family, in which it has slept for four hundred years. This is the curse which rests on Israel in foreign lands. The privilege to be anointed to Jehovah by birth, and to have the right of ministering before him, is despised, and a Levite becomes but like another man. This I have often thought; the pursuits of commerce have indeed prevented my acting on this conviction, but all my wealth has been an inadequate consolation to me.”
“My second father,” exclaimed Helon, “my heart overflows with joy to hear that you think so; and with gratitude, that you permit me to revive the priesthood in our family.”
“Yes, Helon,” said Elisama, “I feel, too, that the priest is an angel of the Lord of Hosts. In the hour in which thou didst resolve to make a journey to the Holy Land, I framed in my heart the blessing which my lips now pronounce upon thee. But let us go to the grave of thy father, that thou mayest receive his blessing.”
Without entering the house, they descended the staircase which led directly from the roof into the outer court, and so into the street. Passing along the Broad-street they came immediately from the Higher City into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and its cedars, and proceeded beneath their solemn shade, till they reached the well-known sepulchre of the Egyptian pilgrim.
Both stood before it awhile in silence, and seemed to expect that some voice should still issue from it, or that the spirit of the beloved father and brother should come forth.
“O! hadst thou lived to see this hour,” at length exclaimed Elisama, “how had thy paternal heart rejoiced!”
Helon wept, whether in joy or sorrow he himself scarcely knew—but such tears are of a higher kind. He threw himself upon the grave, and long remained there praying and weeping. Elisama too gave free vent to his tears. “Arise,” he said, at length, to Helon, “and let us repeat together the 90th psalm. Thy father will answer thee in this song of Moses, and bless thee in the words of the man of God.”
Helon arose, and they both said together,
Lord, thou hast been our refuge From generation to generation. Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou hadst fashioned the earth and the world, From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God! Thou turnest man to destruction, And sayest, Return ye children of men: For a thousand years are in thy sight As yesterday when it is past, And as a watch in the night. Thou sweepest them away; they sleep. In the morning they are as grass that groweth up, In the morning it is green and flourishing, In the evening it is cut down and withereth. For we are consumed by thine anger, And by thy wrath we are troubled. Thou settest our iniquities before thee, Our secret deeds in the light of thy countenance. Our days are wasted by thy anger, Our years are spent as a breath. The days of our years are threescore years and ten, And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, Yet is their strength labour and sorrow; For it is soon cut off and we flee away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger Which is terrible that thou mayest be feared? So teach us to number our days, That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return to us, O Jehovah—how long? Be again gracious to thy servants. O! satisfy us speedily with thy mercy, That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, And the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants And thy glory unto their children. May the favour of the Lord our God be upon us And prosper thou the work of our hands; Yea, the work of our hands may thy goodness prosper!
“Be that the blessing of thy father upon thee,” said Elisama when they had finished. “Does not this psalm seem to have been composed to suit our circumstances; beginning with lamentation on account of death, and confession of sin; yet even in the midst of these, calling on Jehovah, on him who has been our refuge from generation to generation? Yes, Helon, such has he been to the whole series of our ancestors even to him who, with the prophet Jeremiah, was compelled to flee into Egypt; and on this we found our prayer, Return to us O Jehovah! The Lord has heard thee, happy youth! Thou shalt behold the works of Jehovah! And from the sepulchre of thy father, from beneath these primeval cedars, his spirit blesses thee and says, The favour of the Lord thy God be upon thee. May he prosper all the work of thy hands, yea the work of thy hands may his goodness prosper. And now let us go. We will return home by Zion and by the spring of Siloah.”
At the south-east corner of Jerusalem, near the termination of the Kedron, lies the valley of Hinnom, where once sacrifices were offered to Moloch on Tophet. They bent their course around the Water-gate and went through this valley which lies on the southern side, along the aqueduct of Siloah, which had been erected by Solomon. They came first to the lower pool, then to the remains of a noble garden, and at last, opposite to the south-west side of the city to the upper pool, near which was the highly-prized fountain of Siloah, which Manasseh, on his return, had connected with the city by means of a well. Isaiah describes the waters of Siloah as “flowing softly.”[3]
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