ew words, what a tumult would
follow! How many mouths performing the office of trumpets would
take them up and blow them abroad for the massing of armies!

Would he speak them?

And eager to begin the work, and answering in the worldly way,
Ben-Hur lost sight of the double nature of the man, and of the
other possibility, that the divine in him might transcend the human.
In the miracle of which Tirzah and his mother were the witnesses
even more nearly than himself, he saw and set apart and dwelt upon
a power ample enough to raise and support a Jewish crown over the
wrecks of the Italian, and more than ample to remodel society, and
convert mankind into one purified happy family; and when that work
was done, could any one say the peace which might then be ordered
without hindrance was not a mission worthy a son of God? Could any
one then deny the Redeemership of the Christ? And discarding all
consideration of political consequences, what unspeakable personal
glory there would then be to him as a man? It was not in the nature
of any mere mortal to refuse such a career.

Meantime down the Cedron, and in towards Bezetha, especially on
the roadsides quite up to the Damascus Gate, the country filled
rapidly with all kinds of temporary shelters for pilgrims to the
Passover. Ben-Hur visited the strangers, and talked with them; and
returning to his tents, he was each time more and more astonished
at the vastness of their numbers. And when he further discovered
that every part of the world was represented among them--cities
upon both shores of the Mediterranean far off as the Pillars of
the West, river-towns in distant India, provinces in northernmost
Europe; and that, though they frequently saluted him with tongues
unacquainted with a syllable of the old Hebrew of the fathers,
these representatives had all the same object--celebration of
the notable feast--an idea tinged mistily with superstitious fancy
forced itself upon him. Might he not after all have misunderstood
the Nazarene? Might not that person by patient waiting be covering
silent preparation, and proving his fitness for the glorious
task before him? How much better this time for the movement than
that other when, by Gennesaret, the Galileans would have forced
assumption of the crown? Then the support would have been limited
to a few thousands; now his proclamation would be responded to
by millions--who could say how many? Pursuing this theory to its
conclusions, Be