: It's Fun to Sew a Cotton School Dress by Johnson Theta - Sewing Juvenile literature; Machine sewing Juvenile literature

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

HEBREW HEROES.

FAITHFUL TO THE DEATH.

The fulfilment of that promise was still a subject for faith; and seldom had faith had to breast a fiercer storm of persecution than that which was sweeping over God's ancient people at the time when my story opens, about 167 years before the Christian era. The Roman had not yet trodden the soil of Palestine as a conqueror; but a yoke yet more intolerable than his lay on the necks of the sons of Abraham. Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, one of the most merciless tyrants that ever existed, bore rule in the city of David. He had deluged the streets of Jerusalem with blood, he had plundered and polluted the Temple, offered the unclean beast upon God's holy altar, and set up the image of Jupiter Olympus in the place dedicated to the worship of the Lord of Sabaoth. It was a time of rebuke and blasphemy, of fiery persecution against the one pure faith; and if some shrank back from the trial, other Hebrews showed that the spirit of Shadrach and his brethren still lived amongst the people of Judaea.

On the evening which I am describing, a young man was wandering among the clumps of hoary olive-trees which shaded a valley on the eastern side of Jerusalem. The red sunbeams pierced here and there between the grey branching stems and through the foliage, and shone full on the figure of Lycidas the Athenian. No one could have mistaken him for a Hebrew, even had the young man worn the garb of a Jew instead of that of a Grecian. The exquisitely-formed features of the stranger were those which have been made familiar to us by the masterpieces of antiquity treasured in our museums. Lycidas might well have served as model to Phidias for a statue of Endymion. His form was of faultless proportions, remarkable rather for symmetry and grace than for strength; and his face might have been deemed too feminine in its beauty, but for the stamp of intellect on it. That young brow had already worn the leafy crown in the Olympic contest for poetic honours; Lycidas had read his verses aloud in the arena to the critical ears of the Athenians, his fellow-citizens, and thousands from other parts of Greece, and had heard their plaudits ringing through the air at the close. That had been a proud moment for the youthful Athenian, but his ambition had not been satisfied by this his first great success. Lycidas was his own severest critic, and regarded himself as being rather at the starting-point than as at the goal. He had resolved on writing a poem, the fame of which should emulate that of the Iliad, and had chosen as the theme of his verse THE HEROISM OF VIRTUE. Lycidas would draw his pictures from history, choose his models from men, and not from the so-called deities with which superstition or fancy had peopled Olympus. The Athenian had an innate love of the pure and true, which made him intuitively reject fables, and which, amongst his countrymen, exposed him to the charge of scepticism. Lycidas could laugh with Aristophanes at legends of gods and demigods, whom their very priests represented as having more than the common infirmities and vices of mortal men. Had Lycidas reared an altar, it would have been like that which was seen two centuries later in his native city, with the inscription, To THE UNKNOWN GOD. The Greek knew of no being above earth whom he could intelligently worship; and his religion consisted rather in an intense admiration for virtue in the abstract, than in anything to which his more superstitious countrymen would have given the name of piety.

To collect materials for his poem on THE HEROISM OF VIRTUE, Lycidas had travelled far and wide. He had visited Rome, then a powerful republic, and listened with keen interest to her annals, so rich in stories of patriotism and self-devotion. The Athenian had then turned his course eastward, had visited Alexandria, ascended the Nile, gazed on the Pyramids, even then--more than two thousand years ago--venerable from their antiquity. After seeing the marvels of the land of the Pharaohs, Lycidas had travelled by the way of Gaza to Jerusalem, where he was now residing. He was an occasional guest at the court of the Syrian monarch, to whom he had brought a letter of introduction from Perseus, king of Macedonia.

It was not to indulge in pleasant poetic reveries that Lycidas had on that evening sought the seclusion of the olive-grove, if the direction of the current of his thoughts might be known by the index of his face, which wore an expression of indignation, which at times almost flashed into fierceness, while the silent lips moved, as if uttering words of stern reproof and earnest expostulation. No one was near to watch the countenance of the young Greek, until he suddenly met a person richly attired in the costume worn at the Syrian court, who came upon him in a spot where the narrowness of the path precluded the two men from avoiding each other without turning back, and so brought about a meeting which, to the last comer at least, was unwelcome.

"Ha! my Lord Pollux, is it you!" exclaimed Lycidas, with courteous salutation. "I missed you suddenly from my side to-day at that--shall I call it tragedy?--for never was a more thrilling scene acted before the eyes of man."

"I was taken with a giddiness--a touch of fever," replied the courtier addressed by the name of Pollux. He looked haggard and pale as he spoke.

"I marvel not--I marvel not if your blood boiled to fever-heat, as did mine!" cried Lycidas. "No generous spirit could have beheld unmoved those seven Hebrew brethren, one after another, before the eyes of their mother, tortured to death in the presence of Antiochus, because they refused to break a law which they regarded as divine!"

"Nay," replied Pollux, forcing a smile; "their fate was nothing to me. What cared I if they chose to throw away their lives like fools for an idle superstition!"

"Fools! say rather like heroes!" exclaimed Lycidas, stopping short . "I marvel that you have so little sympathy for those gallant youths--you who, from your cast of features, I should have deemed to be one of their race."

Pollux winced, and knitted his dark brows, as if the remark were unwelcome.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!