THE TASK OF TALUME.

Otago Witness, Issue 2130, 20 December 1894, Page 24

THE TASK OF TALUME.

(Speoially written for the Witness Christmas

Number of 18940

By JESSIE MACK AT.

Talume, the servant of God, lived in the rleßeit. Day by day he went to the Well of Kadra, and bore thence the pitcher of water tbat served him for drink, and in which he soaked the bard cakes of crushed meal whioh the pious travellers gave him for food. And by reason of much fasting and utter solitude bis soul waß tc±rce contained in the clay walls of the body he despised. Many times the earthly scales fell from his eyes, and when the sun lay like a ball of fire on the western border of the red stony waste he saw the swift, filmy forms of the Children of Light going too and fro on their celestial errands. Wherever their cool white feet glided over the hot sand Talume saw a soft trail of luminous greenery, such as the full moon sheds on the first leaves of the year, and his heart glowed in his breast, for he said: " The meadows of heaven are let down to me."

Moreover, the mu filings of sense fell from bis ears often and again ; when he rose for his orisons at dawn be heard not the shrill cry of the crane winging northward from Nyanea, but the faint paean of praise falling comet-wise from the vanishing stars. Then Talume would fall on his face transported, and rising, would beat his breast and say: " O flesh, pain-ridden and weary, why melt you Dot at the echoes of the celestial harmonies ? "

Thus, dwelling with eager intent on the Bpirit-border, the cares and passions of life fell from him as the brown, winter husk falls from a bud. For who can envy when there is none to behold ? or who can feel wrath where there is none to give offence ? and if the soft snare of earthly love have lost its power, neither can its black shadow, Jealousy, longer exist. Yet the t-oul of Talume was not perfect ; for one sin there is that perishes not for food in lonely de«ert places, but lives upon itself, like the camel in its journey ings — nay, it is like the rock-bound toad which grows rounder and blacker in the darkened solitude of the ages. This sin is Pride, and pride in Talume had filled all the cobweb corners of his spirit, and the man knew it not.

The soft voice that in supreme moments made a new Eden in the deEert called him in the twilight: " Talume, my servant, thou hast dewed the sand with tears of penitence, and filled the waste with the sweet odour of prayer. I have accepted all, but I ask of thee more than this." And the astonished hermit made answer :

" Lord, can I do more than this — to drag the body of a living death here in this wilderness 1 "

The bodiless voice came again : " Yea, more. Go north from the Well of Kadra at the rifling of the sun ; there is a life thou must save for me ere its setting."

Then Talume gladly communed with himself: " Great must be the man whose life the Lord setteth above discipline and prayer such as mine. Perchance he is an annointed king or a mighty prophet, ready to perish for food or for the lack of a skilled physician. And I, even I, am sent as the ininisteriDg angels are sent."

The first star had not faded in the silver track of the heavens when Talume arose and went to the Well of Kadra with a water skin upon his shoulder and a bag of dates to succour the sick man, with such herb remedies also as the dwellers in the wilderness had learned to use. The blood-red dawn saw him praying beneath the palms on its brink ere he plunged into the dry and trackless plain. The sun travelled slowly to the zenith. It was noon before Talume saw a living thing. A sick ibis lay beating its head against the sand as he passed. The holy man paused a moment and half lifted hie burden from his shoulder to give the bird water and food. "But what use is it," said he to himself, " to waste refreshment on a soulless creature

Dre.wrt by Win. Cooper & Nephews.

already as good as dead when every dro may be needed to restore that precious life ? And if I turn to refill my vessel at the Well of Kadra, might not the sick man, beloved of the Lord, perish by reason of my delay 7 " Yet, becaufre the *mall eyes of the ibis smote him with reproach, he hardened his heart with a bitter jest as he turned away. " Such ure the gods of the heathen. Once every feather of thy kind was sacred. Call now thy votaries, 0 godship of ancient Kaem ! "

The red sun hung low in the west, and yet the blistered feet ot the hermit paced vainly the naked wilderness. No living thing met bis gaze but the cranes wheeling above him. And now the sun was set ; and weary, belated, and heart sore, Talune retraced his Hiepa and fell on hi" face beneath the date trees by the Well of Kadra. " Lord," he prayed, " why hast thou mocked thy servant ? No life wan given me to save for Thee."

And tbe voice, subtle and low as the scent laden zephyr, flowed around him. "I sent tbee, Talame, to succour my creature, the ibis, and lo 1 she lies dead in the desert."

Then mistily came the sense of his sin upon the mind of the hermit, and he sighed. " I am weighed in the balance and tound wanting. Yeo did I go forth single-hearted to do Tny will, and in igaorance I failed." " Nay, Talume, but in pride, which is the handmaid of igaorance. Thy task was set before tfipe, lowly and easy and near at hand, but thou wouldst choose it in the path of the footsteps of tbe mighty. Know tbat the ladder of righteousness reacheth all the way from earth to heaven ; the rungs of it are the duties set to thy hand day by day. And if tby foot disdaineth the lower steps and would pass above them, great fear is there it will qever reach the higher, but slip back to earth. Small things were mean in thy sight; know henceforward that I am the Master of Life, and into whatever vessel I have poured My mystery of life, that veshel is sacred to Me, and precious to My people, I gave thee Mine ibis to tend, and she is dead."

Then the t«ars of Talume wet the sands bj the Well of Kadra.

" Righteous and searching are Thy judgments, Lord God. Thy word is the mirror in which I see the foulness of my face. For my pride reached to the gate of Heaven, and was not to be rebuked by man or angel, bat by the humblest of creatures in its death agony. Prayer and scourging avail not i£ the love that would flow God ward passes by God's creatures. Only wnen shod with humbleness shall a man reach the top of the Mount of God on this earth."