“No, Jew, I want to show that humanity is one. The very creed I’m trying to teach thee and would fain have all thy race, ay, all mankind fully understand, is full of love, joy, peace. These follow it as naturally as the flower the stem, the humming the flying wing made to fly and be musical.” “Oh, my dear light, with thee I’m in joy and wilderment. Thy presence seems to bring me hosts of crowned truths, all seeking to enter my being. I feel like a tired runner ready to faint when thou’rt absent, but when thou talkest the tired runner is plunged into a cooling ocean, whose circling waves, as it were charged with the stimulus of tempered lightnings, glowing with a million rainbows, overwhelm, lift up and rest him. I’m floating thereon now!” “Thy strange fancies make me wonder, Ichabod.” “Wonder; why my strength dies from over wonder. I was ill for hours yesterday. Light to my sweat-blinded, feverish eyes, all calm and healing, comes when I yield to thy will; but still all my joy is haunted by ghosts which rise in day-mare troops, pointing rebukingly to labyrinths into which I seem to be pushed. I sometimes wonder if I’m seeing real spirits or going mad.” “Dost pray, Jew?” “I dare not live without praying!” “Then tell the All Pitiful what thou hast this day told to me. He loves the sincere, down to the deepest hell of doubt, and from it all, at last, will lead tumulted souls safely. An honest doubt is a real prayer, well winged; quickly it reaches heaven, at whose portal it dies to rise again all peace.” CHAPTER VIII. FROM JERICHO TO JORDAN. “Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill Thy pitying Eye is on Thy creature still.” “Wilt Thou not make, eternal Source and Goal, In thy long years life’s broken circle whole, And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?”—WHITTIER. Jew and Crusader came to love each other after the manner of David and Jonathan, and they were both made stronger and happier men on account of this loving. “Sir Charleroy, a year gone to day, thou and I climbed to glory.” “Thou hast a prolific imagination or I a poor memory. I have no remembrance of either climbing or glory of a year ago.” “I may well remember the greatest day of my life; the day thou tookst me up yon hill over against Jericho; I saw, as Elisha, in the presence of his great master Elijah, the mountains, that day, full of the chariots and angels of God.” “But, Jew, the chariot separated Elijah and Elisha; we were, in thy ‘great day,’ made one.” “True, but I got the prophet’s insight and power. Oh now I see Shiloh coming in the redemption of Jew and Gentile.” “Radiant proselyte, give God, not me the glory.” “I’ll call thee, knight, Jordan—my Jordan.” “The Jew rambles amid strange conceptions. Why am I like that mighty stream?”