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Saladin
Published in the Agnostic Journal London, England 29 December, 1906 (pages 401-402)
"To-day the heart leaps o'er the land and the sea To a God's natal manger in Far Galilee; Oh, then, to the hungry one open thy door, And be, like that God, a friend of the poor; For thy brother lies low, in this merry Yule-tide, With the thorns on his brow, and the spear in his side; And thy sister's struck down on the pitiless sands With the iron nails struck through her feet and her hands. Think not what she is, but what she has been, For that God was a God to the soiled Magdalene. And while the high impulse your human heart warms, Leap forward and take the whole race in your arms."
Heart of hearts! O great and radiant spirit, thou hast left us; Eros hath taken thee, and no man knoweth whither thou hast gone. Far, far away across the dark waters of death; far into that mystic land untrod by mortal foot, with him whose ever-youthful hand unveils the living, and shrouds the dead. No pale and fearful gnome stood by thy side, as the light of the stars sank back into the gloom of death; but the form of Love—Eros! Christ of the ages, Saviour and Preserver, Torch-bearer of life, who lighteth us from the darkness of the womb, through the labyrinthine mysteries of this world, back into the mystic depths of Eternity.
Twenty-fours years gone by, since where I stood a few days ago mourning Saladin. Saladin himself stood sorrowing over the tiny coffin of a blue-eyed and yellow-haired little boy—his son: and prophetically he then wrote regarding that tearful day: "At what time I have to join my Bruno in that upper layer of yellow gravel I cannot tell; but men who elect to lead a forlorn hope do not usually live to a ripe old age." His prophesy has now been fulfilled.
Where lieth Pythagoras or Hermes? Where is the sacred spot where Orpheus or Christ made one with Mother Earth? No man knoweth, none can tell. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and the atoms of our atomy are, in the space of a few years, cast back into the æons from whence they sprang, to blush again once more perchance in the petal of a rose, or peradventure to throb 'twixt the kiss of two lovers' lips. Yet something lives on mystically, directing, guiding, and sustaining us, urging us on, unnamed and unnameable, the subtle spirit of a noble life well spent. Let the scoffer hold his peace. There, as he cold wind of December sang dirge among the memorials of the dead, there at my feet lay the stark form of a great adept, in the alembic of whose heart and through the athanor of whose affliction had been revealed the stone of the wise: that sparkling gem called—"Truth."
"Let us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each to its tether, Sleeping safe in the bosom of the plain, Cared for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row!
"Know or doubt." These two words sum up the creed of the Agnostic; but whether they sum up the life of Saladin I know not, neither do I care; for his nature seems to me to belong to those which find no expression in words. One of the few amongst the many; he was Saladin, Saladin only, Saladin and nothing more.
"He worked with no party," it has been said, and, also, "No party could work with him." Hail, Saladin! Perceval or Gareth neither worked with a party; bravely with lance in rest they rode away into the night of the world; unfettered by the petty ways of sects, and the simple doings of factions.
"I have churned into foam their gioes and ferries, And heaved the wild o'er the ridge of their skerries And yelled on the desolate shores of Lofoden The war-cry of storms in the regions of Odin."
So wrote Saladin twenty-two years ago, on the merry birthday of the man of sorrows.
"And the bolt of the lightning glared red in the gloom, And showed the berserker his fathomless tomb."
—and perhaps his fame.
If I had, however, to sum up Saladin's life in one word, I should choose "WORK."
For thirty years and more his keen sword was drawn in the cause of love, freedom, and justice; for thirty long years he drove its flashing blade through malice, cruelty, and lie. Toiling, ever toiling without rest, till the early hours of the dawn grew old and died away in the chime of the midnight bell. The great marvel is that he lived so long, not that he died whilst yet in middle age.
Five days before his death i saw him for the last time. Ill and worn he lay in bed still working, about him were littered proof-sheets for the forthcoming copy of this Journal, and I have since been told, that up to his last day, almost the last hour, he worked on and on.
" 'Now, master, take a little rest!'—not he! Caution redoubled, Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly! Not a whit troubled Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon."
As I sat by his side, he told me how he had given up the whole of his life for the welfare of the Journal he so dearly loved, and spoke to me about old friends, both living and dead, and how curious it was that so many of the former, quite unaware of his illness, had, nevertheless, visited him of late:—"There is some close relationship." he said, "between those hearts that are in tune," then he paused, "a close affinity," he added, "some subtle quality the ordinary person does not possess." And Saladin was right, he knew best as to what he said, what he meant and felt, in spite of those puritanic Freethinkers, who find but blasphemy in the mysteries of life, and the ridiculous in the mysteries of death; to whom the sacred is profane, and the divine inane; cast these "certain" men into the balance of Rhadamanthus, weigh them, O Minos, measure them, Aeacus! And their weight? The weight of Calvin, of Knox, and of Zwingli.
"He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by installment. He ventured neck or nothing—heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: 'Wilt thou trust death or not?' He answered, 'Yes': 'Hence with life's pale lure!' That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit."
Such also was this high man, this warrior of Truth, knight of the round table of Eternity, at which board sit the chosen great, those few beings who realize the divine in their manhood, those few elect who sit with Chaos, and Cosmos, and Chronos, who, as the Brahmin would say: Have realized their end, and have been made one with the Infinite.
"The Light shineth in the Darkness, and the Darkness comprehendeth it not." So with Saladin. Perhaps one of the most intensely religious men who have ever lived, he has ever been mistaken by the multitude. He chivalrously attacked evil, and more particularly evil under the guise of good. He publicly fought for over thirty years the corruptions of dogmatic Christianity; he fought the Christian Church and the erroneous conceptions it held regarding its founder, not the founded himself; and even then, when he had struck down his foe, with tears he would wash the wounds which his arrows had made.
His indeed was a noble soul, a great and pure spirit: few are his equals; few, few, very very few have ever surpassed him.
"Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know— Bury this man there? Here—here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying."
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