Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Volume 1 (of 2): A picture of Judaism, in the century which preceded the advent of our Savior.Strauss, Friedrich
History
Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Volume 1 (of 2): A picture of Judaism, in the century which preceded the advent of our Savior.
Strauss, Friedrich
Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D. -- Fiction
The translator may perhaps be singular in regarding the Jewish people,
even in the last days of their national independence, as objects rather
of commiseration than abhorrence; but surely there can be no question,
that the language in which they are perpetually spoken of must tend to
retard the event, which every true Christian earnestly desires, the
removal of that veil of prejudice which hides from them the evidence of
the divine origin of the Gospel. Beneath the exterior appearance of
passive submission, which fear and oppression have taught the Jew to
assume, and the habits of sordid worldliness to which our unjust laws
condemn him, lurks a deep-seated animosity against the Christian name—a
name associated in his mind with the brutal outrages of fanatic mobs,
the extortion and cruelty of tyrannical rulers; and though last, not
least in bitterness, the harsh and contumelious language with which his
nation is assailed, as if they were branded with the curse of heaven,
and a perpetual memorial of its vengeance. While the feeling continues
which such reproaches necessarily perpetuate, the efforts of Christians
for the conversion of the Jews will probably be as fruitless as they
have hitherto been. It would well become the disciples of the religion
of love, to set the example of conciliation; and to renounce the use of
language which is equally unfavourable in its influence on those who
employ and those who endure it.
Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HELON'S PILGRIMAGE
TO
JERUSALEM.
[Illustration]
BOOK I. CHAP. I.
ALEXANDRIA.
The whole house was in commotion. The camels were receiving their load
in the inner court, and drinking, before their journey, from the
fountain beneath the palm trees. The slaves ran this way and that way:
in the apartments of the women the maid-servants were busily preparing
the farewell meal for the son of their mistress, who, while she hurried
in different directions and issued her commands, was repeating the words
of the forty-second Psalm.—
As the hart panteth for the water-brooks,
So panteth my soul after thee, O God!
My soul thirsteth for God,
The living God!
When shall I return
And appear before the face of God!
She had been born in the Holy Land, and her deceased husband had brought
her to Egypt. The country in which her youthful days had been spent, and
the journies to Jerusalem, in which she had borne a part, rose up to her
remembrance, and with overflowing eyes she proceeded:
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say unto me continually
“Where is thy God?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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