Mystery of the golden cloth : the story of the Christ; a book of the ages

Chapter I

Upon the living-room table in my father's house had lain from my earliest recollections an ancient manuscript book, about which the most fascinating traditions had gathered.

It was known as the Golden Cloth, or Cloth of Gold, and wrought into its fibers were interpreted certain promises that to its possessor some day would come a great reward.

This cloth was an heirloom to my father, as it had been to his father, and so on back from father to son to a period beyond the point we were able to trace our family tree. Just why it had been so closely preserved and so carefully handed down was never rationally accounted for.

In my father's day it was sometimes referred to as the " Rosetta," referring to the famous Rosetta Stone, because it resembled it in having the appearance of having be^n written upon in three different languages, and also because it implied a possibility that the mystery it held should some day be revealed. The fabric itself and the characters bore unmistakable marks of antiquity and of an oriental origin. It differed from the Rosetta Stone in being written upon cloth instead of engraved in stone, and the figures, embracing nearly all the great objects in nature, were worked in relief upon its face and cunningly made of the same threads or strands that composed the fabric itself. It also differed from the Rosetta Stone in having its three languages braided together or inwoven ingeniously, instead of each having a space of its own. And though the languages seemed to convey one and the same message, their mechanical arrangement had led into confusion all who had attempted its interpretation.

This fact was supposed to render it impossible to be understood. The innumerable efforts of the great and learned who had carefully examined true copies of it, had failed, and many concluded that it was the work of some idle monk or ingenious person, without any meaning of importance, and but the carrying out of a mere fancy to dispose of idle time by weaving a trackless maze which no one might ever unravel, or, if he should, would be ill rewarded for so great pains. But all agreed that in view of so many failures, it was a great presumption for anyone to attempt the secret. There grew around the cloth, therefore, a thick veil of superstition for its mysteries, and a reverence for its antiquity, as well as for a vague interest felt in the groups of characters themselves, so strangely worked into it and spread all over its surface.

This strange old book fell to me, and was preserved with the same reverence, though not without certain mental questionings, as it had been in the hands of my ancestors, through a long line, even jealously, though I could not tell a reason why. Being a little venturesome, I had once cherished the ambitious design of some day finding at least some part of its long-hidden secret, and being myself an unordained evangel, I had even ventured a few years before to interest my listeners, who had all seen copies of the Cloth of Gold.

I had postponed the undertaking, and might never have begun it again, but for the saddest possible calamity that befell me. Upon my lovely home, which I held in my heart to be the most perfect Eden since that one from which the four rivers went out long ago, there fell the shadow of the darkest cloud that ever lowered over a spot which perfect love had made happy from our bridal day. My dear Emily sank abruptly into the pit of black melancholia from a previous life of continued good health. My own bitterness of spirit that resulted, became unbearable and incapacitated for the duties of life, I was compelled to seek something to divert my thoughts. But my efforts were entirely unavailing, and in whatever direction I sought diversion and interest or oblivion from my thoughts, it proved of no avail. I sought some sea great enough and deep enough to drown my all-consuming grief, and after some months it came to me that on my table there lay a labyrinth of mystery no man had ever threaded and where I might surely lose my thoughts and bury my grief. I determined to do so, remembering, however, that it was commonly believed that most, or many, at least, had become insane in this venturous attempt, and a proverb had often been spoken that "he who attempts to find the secret of the Cloth of Gold is either insane when he begins it or will be when he ends." My distress helped on my usual venturesome disposition and urged me to the attempt.

The Cloth of Gold had always been kept within the lids of the old family bible, as in some way akin to it or at least to the family record, and never left its place of lying next to the back lid, folded to fit. As avast body of tradition had gathered round the author of the Cloth of Gold, of little value as affecting either the invention or the author of it, I intended that all claims for the character of both should rest upon what I might find by searching the Cloth itself. Here and there on the Cloth are to be found patches of neat and well written sentiments in Greek, showing all the marks of care and painstaking possible, and bearing marks of literary value, but they are meshed together in an order of hieroglyphic misrule to which neither the Rosetta Stone nor any other relic of antiquity has yet furnished a parallel or the key to unlock.

The third element of the Cloth is a sort of psalmody of an entirely unearthly and supernal type, as from the spell of some enchanted dreamer or transcendental philosopher. One thing of most importance to me was that all traditions agreed in saying that the author of this antique was an exile, and the Cloth contains the statement by the author himself that it was while there he wrought out the fabric. I said, here is a man who can sympathize with me. He, too, was heartbroken, in exile, and separated from his sweet home, and here he sought and found diversion for his mind.

I will study this fabric.

Then, too, he was not a modern tobacco fiend and did not read the daily papers for his mental diet, nor engage in modern politics, and being an exile, presumably for life, I would pledge my honor he will be good company and will tell the truth if he speaks and that will be luxury enough for me, and so help me I will be his companion. If it prove a condescending choice I alone hold the secret.

Near the beginning, at the top of the left hand corner, I find worked in plain Greek, these words:

" Happy is he who reads these words of teaching and they also who hear and keep the things written herein."

Well, really, that looks a little like a modern advertising scheme, but it is not. There may be nothing in it, but the man is honest and this world is not worth a fig to me any more since my sweet Emily languishes in the sanitarium and her love turned from all* she had ever cherished, and as there is nothing else I can do, I will listen to this strange old man as the lover listens to the lute. I will take the slightest clue to the secret of the soul of him who made this old fabric and wrote into it a charm that has carried it through the ages in which all has perished except that which has some sort of merit. Let one banished man speak to another across eighteen centuries. Here am I, so speak on old exile. I am ready, I will listen. Give me one thread of light, or let me touch one string of your harp and I will follow it to the end and not let go till I feel your soul throbs beat against mine. No one else need know it, but thy secret shall be mine. I will follow thee, for I, too, am out of fashion with my age as thou with thine, and my Eden is broken up and my heart also. I will search for thy blessing as for hidden treasure, for thy far-away exile is not half so distant to me as the mercenary, earthly world of nothings and nobodies about me.

But, second thought, now I am presumptuous. Great minds have tried to disclose this secret.

Scholars without number have searched and toiled and failed aud despaired and have only written glosses and proposed such problems as they knew how to answer, to save their credit with the multitude, and have themselves written "Caution" above the Golden Cloth; tacit confession of failure. Caution to all not to be presumptuous to suppose any mortal mind can ever follow the threads inwrought by this old hermit of the Agean. But whose business is it if he and I can find company together. What if I do have my own mind about this? But I will first have enough respect to our great learning to consult its oracles as to the direction in which I shall turn my inquiry. This I proceeded to do and found that they all agreed that he would indeed be a "blest" and happy man who should ever read the secret of the Golden Cloth written by the old hermit; but I could not find one of them who claimed to enjoy the blessing promised, though all gave warning to the curious that suit at this oracle is vain. But it was a chilling and labyrinthian road to travel, to follow their glossaries, and tired and discouraged I halted to rest. It then came to me that it was thought by many that the fabric in some way contained a prophetic construction; a forecast of coming times, as the pyramids are said to contain in their construction a guide to ancient astronomy. So I fumbled over history a little, keeping one eye on the Cloth; but this was spiritless and without profit, and I found that I had again wandered away from my old friend. It then came to me that I had often said in my "tellingtalks/' which I call my lectures, that "in all questions of conscience the first answer is always the best, while in all questions of judgment the last answer is best," and now said my heart "you have promised this poor old hermit exile that you believe in him and love him more than all the world. Now you and he have it out all alone." True, that was my first thought. It was best. I will do it. Then I read his words again and this time I noticed the text in Greek did not say "happy is he who reads these words and then goes to some other man to find out what they mean." Ah, yes, I see. If I am to follow you I am not to run off after some one else, nor care for their opinions, just we two. We are outcasts. Good. If he is an exile from home he will speak of that and tell me the grief he bore and how he bore it.

That is my ground of hope. For that secret which he learned to bear I search this familiar yet strange old Cloth of Gold all alone.

I will listen to him because he put into his Cloth that which kept it from oblivion; that is it, and yet no one can understand exactly why?

That there is some kind of a reason in it is manifest or it could not have survived, and this reason, if I can but find it, may be the goal, and not a description of hidden treasures or gems he may have concealed and here tries to tell of in a last will and testament of chattels.

I indulge the fancy and supposition even when I know from long knowledge it does not hint at lost treasure. But whatever it does it beguiles his attention and on that ground mine also, and on this the highest ground, my soul now seeks to know.

Chapter II

What could be of more effect than to find after search that the theme of his story was not at all about his own affairs, not a dirge over a lost home, nor a pining to return to his country, nor anything about it. Nothing in common with what had driven my cowardly soul to seek diversion, and now I seemed to intrude upon one who had risen vastly superior to myself.

He was absorbed and in ecstacy over another person whom he may have sought under conditions similar to those that led me to seek out his company, or for whose sake perchance he suffered exile. But neither home, nor friends, nor solitude, had the least of his attention, but one who stood to him all and even more than Emily had been to me if that could be possible.

Now I have made a vulgar mistake in supposing this old hermit beneath my company. I am to envy him. He is above the reach of the care and worry of this world. It may be he has wrought the story of his friend into this old cloth, and as I suspect it I will look for it.

With this thought I remembered that I knew this was true before, and when I said, imagining I was now coming for the first time to study the Golden Cloth, I will love this old hermit, who has a hero. Here he has wrought his likeness and I will see how he understood him. That will show me himself.

What if his hero should turn out to be the one I loved before I loved Emily and to whom I referred when I honestly told her at our engagement that she held the highest place in my heart any one could hold on earth, emphasizing the last two words

She understood the emphasis and said nothing, as she always held back somewhat, but I nothing.

And though my first friend was further removed from me than the Agean, he was always imaged in my memory sinee my baptism in the stream near Clinton Station. What if this Cloth of Gold bore some reference to him? Tradition and history have said it does, but I have turned away from them and from the Commentaries, and must not presume anything nor accept anything save what I may find here all alone with the Cloth in hand. The wonderful pictures of animals, of clouds, rivers, cherubs and monsters, etc., here wrought in relief work upon the surface seemed at first to prevent my looking deeper into its meshes and mechanism. But I will begin at the base. So I began to inspect the cloth most leisurely. My earnest careful gaze convinced me I had done well in following my heart promptings rather than any fine reasoning or learned veneering. In other words, it came to me that this work is not a fragment of some other work, not a supplement, but that it is a complete and finished fabric, composed of many parts, but all having reference to a simple and therefore a great matter, and in taking the old exile to be sincere, I did well to place my confidence in his simple promise that he should be a happy man who should read the teachings of the Golden Cloth.

Here I was strengthened in my first impulse and my sympathy was increased, and I began to get interested in the thought that I should find a place to lose my trouble already in part experienced, and I will persist and pay no attention to what others say or think, and will dismiss my own preconceived and early imbibed impressions, and simply follow again and again any clew that gives promise of progress. First, then, I will carefully inspect the threads or strands that compose the body of cloth. They are not so very numerous. Here I take hold of a golden thread, pure unalloyed gold, carefully and regularly twisted and woven in here, now rising, then sinking into the fabric and disappearing, to rise again further on. I will follow it. But though I did follow I found that I had lost it a little later and went back and began and followed again till I discovered after several trials that by some means, I could not understand, I always lost my thread, and could not tell how I had lost it. Well, as I have nothing else to do, I will find where the trouble lies. Thousands maybe have trod this path before me, and I am but repeating their failure, and I must give myself a reason why I lost my strand and was not able to tell how. That I will fathom. What is it that diverts my attention? What is this, this mystic labyrinth whose unseen mouth yawns and engulfs me at the threshold? I have at least discovered that there is some mystery about my losing my attention and letting go my golden strand unconsciously and finding myself in a state of absent-mindedness or absorption, my strand not yet followed to the end.

Well, here is a bewitchment, and again I tried and failed and so on till I said there is no use, if I can not follow one thread through the cloth of gold I never can get another step. That is the least thing I can do and it must be the first. I found later that it seemed to be the figures wrought upon the cloth that diverted my thought and swallowed me in dreams and lost me my thread. When the thread passes through I turn the cloth, which has a reverse side with figures, which bear a kind of correspondence to the right side and seem to contain some explanatory suggestion of those, and which constantly tempts my thoughts away from my golden thread. So I sought and later found a sort of familiarity with these figures that permitted me at last, after very many trials, to follow to its end at the further side of the cloth one of the threads. But what have I accomplished? I have simply followed one thread through to its end. Well, why could I not do it the first time? What kind of bewitchery caught away my attention? I am curious. If my friend, the hermit, is simply some great artist lost in his art, he is in his place, and proves himself already a most interesting person; for no other artist I ever knew could so completely cheat me out of my purpose to inspect his work. Well, then, maybe he is a master artist, so great and original that he has hidden by his art the secret of his Cloth of Gold so that at the very door all men are caught away like himself into exile. But, now, what about my thread of gold?

Well, I take it again and follow it to the end, and now I will mark its track so I can identify it by these antique figures on the surface, if I should chance want it again. Well, there it goes now, and it passes right throught the golden girdle of that angelic creature and then it passes right through the golden crowns of that circle of dignitaries wearing robes, and strange enough it exactly strikes the gold crown of a seraph that rides a cloudy chariot and ends in the pavement of a city where the streets are laid in gold. Accident? Yes, of course, but still interesting. It seems to have started from the other end where gold is plentiful enough to make paving for the streets. It may be this means something. I will keep the facts for the love I have for the sincere old exile. I will try another strand. Here is a white one, composed of white silk, or linen, and I will follow it. Again I realize the same old trouble about holding to my thread, for in turning the cloth I lose it and then have to find it in such different surroundings of strange figures as makes it nearly impossible to follow it, for on the reverse side it always plays a part in forming some object of another color. But having succeeded in following it to the end, I now try to identify it also by its relations to the figures on the fabric, so as to use it easily if I wish it for measurements or for data of any kind. Well, my white thread passes through the white hair of the first named angelic-looking creature; and, yes,

H MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN CLOTH.

it strikes the white surplice of that company of reposed pilgrims at their altar and it passes through a white cloud and ends in a white throne at the other end. This may all be accidental, but they are parallel strands and coincident also in this feature. Let us turn the cloth over and see how these threads are on the reverse side. Well, the gold strand strikes no other golden thing, but only once an inferior looking metal in a position that forbids its being gold and the white linen has no connection with anything white on the reverse side, but black, or red, or other color. A green thread followed out in the same way led to the same results. Well, here is an accumulation of suggestive circumstances, too great to call mere accident or coincidence. Here is another strand, it is red at this end, it passes through a red horse and a red dragon, a red beast, a red dress on a tawdry-looking woman, and it ends in a red flame at the other end.

I begin to feel it is a little too familiar to call this man my brother. If he can ever forgive me for my first patronizing approach and the mean thought that it was a condescension for me to leave this world to seek his company when I had nothing to leave, all that I loved having been taken from me. If he will do this, I will try to forgive the vulgarity of myself so common to my countrymen, among whom the worst men and worst manners are so often best esteemed, and where they have not the consideration to pay an exile's expenses to some distant island. Long observation and study has failed to show any connection between the strange figures so clearly wrought upon this Golden Cloth. Here are two orderly rows of objects and creatures bearing some phenomenal suggestion. They are written between with short Greek texts, and bear some sort of resemblance to the objects on the other side of the Cloth. Beyond these toward the other end and beyond the middle of the Cloth is another double row, or parallel, which seem to hold some relation to each other.

Each of these four series are seven in number and are divided into groups of four and three respectively. Evidences of design multiply. Looking at these objects of the Cloth in a general way and comparing them, they wear the appearance of having once been parts of a mighty temple with menagerie attachments, and which had been carried by a cyclone and so strewn over a plane as to excite wonder what it might once have been. But advances on the embroidered surface is difficult and a return to the threads for study showed more promise of a developed plan. Some kind of connection is certainly to be found between the threads and the objects, which each thread contributes to the raised work in figures. But others have remarked appearance of design and felt moved with some sub-current of suggestion that left an aching wish to see the old exile's secret.

But here is another order of things: patches of well-written Greek in the form of sentiments and descriptions, historic scraps and sacred texts and significant dramatic actions. Close observation from this suggestion led me to a happy discovery, namely, that the three languages which it had braided together instead of apportioning each to its own place as remarked about the Rosetta -Stone, were only forms of one language. That is, the story of the Cloth is written in good plain Greek, and most important of what was written was also dramatized, and what was written and dramatized was also chanted by a great chorus. And then it also appeared that all these old strange figures were a kind of alphabets to assist in the solution of the story what it was all about.

Here then is art, both the artisan who wove the Cloth and the artist who formed these various oriental and sacred emblems, in relief, and he is musician also, for there are seven chants as well as seven seals and seven trumpets and seven bowls, etc., etc. Further search made for numbers show that three and four are of frequent recurrence and fall into groups of their own, where three seems to identify one class and four another class, and in the series of seven, which are five in all, they are always in some way marked off into separate groups of three and four. Also twelve and ten seem to bear some mystic relation to the story, not at all in sight as yet.

Well, my old friend has gotten me interested, but a thousand busy persons before me have with pencil tried to figure out a meaning and failed. What of the happiness he promised? That none can yet tell; that no one claims to have found as yet.

Chapter III

Well, it was a reverie, and I am returned to myself again and to the Cloth. I have found a treasure, a balm at least for me; a place of exile from a world of his own, where lived a man who wrought and wrote and braided, and composed music and drama, and forgot his exile and got his mystic Golden Cloth, bound up with the sacred writings, as from heaven, but did not get himself understood as yet. What charms could so absorb, what fascination? He is lost in another, and I will find his hero, too, and find the secret he has inwrought into this Cloth of Gold. He is a seer, is given visions and words and songs, which he is told to write, and he follows and obeys and weaves his Cloth as he is told on the pattern seen in the mount of vision; and so weaves the Cloth and embroiders it with symbols and writes the drama of it, and chants it with harps and viols.

Well, this is a reverie at any rate, and there are depths beyond for me. I have found a home for my thoughts at least, in exile, pleasant enough, and here for my companion is a man who found occupation for his heart, also, as well as for his mind. I will linger here. I will abide with this strange, faithful, long ago exile. I feel sure there are other depths to this strange old Cloth.

Could it be that he, too, like myself, had sought some one else who should company his solitude and steal his thoughts from sorrow! There he was happy. Now, here is a considerable patch of plain Greek, near what may be the beginning of the story, if story it be, and translated it reads: "Your brother IcoawrjS in affliction partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and 2 17 patience, which are in Jesus, was in the isle called Patmos, for the word of His testimony. " A martyr for Him, for Him who was martyr for humanity, for all men. Yes, but then my solitude did not come that way, still I own to my own heart that I hold it against my own time; that, as an evangel, the more honestly I have spoken and acted against public corruption for the honor of His name, the weaker my support and the more rapid my descent, or ascent, into the ranks of the laity where I arrived several years ago, and where I took an invoice of my effects and found I had saved manhood and conscience and discovered the rest was not worth the contention, and for the age to come just as well off, and for this world nothing but Emily, and she — well, my consolers said, "far better she were dead."

My exile craved nothing but the solitude of the hermit.

The world, the same old world that had crucified the Lamb, and had banished Him, permits me yet to live in it or to go into exile, if I choose, if I will only pay my own way. But no free passes to Patmos for me nor any in this age as in that. And now we, if He could but tarry till I get there, might have it in solitude and together all to ourselves. I do remember that it was intimated he should tarry. To an inquiring follower who, referring to the seer, asked the great Hero before He became a martyr: "and what shall this man do?" replied: " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" This saying went forth among his followers that he should not die, and it floated down the stream of tradition till near our own day in some countries where "prester Yahonnes," as he is called, is fabled in folklore as still living, hidden from sight, but whose reappearance is always as imminent as his Master's. But Jesus did not say, he shall tarry till I come, but "what is it to thee if he, our seer, who calls himself our brother, what will ye if he tarry till I come." And here it is recorded as true as heaven by this exile: " I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and heard a great voice behind me and turned to see, and " he laid His right hand upon me, saying: Fear not, I am the First and the Last and the Living One and I was dead and am alive forever more and I have the keys of death and hadese." How startling and ominous the circumstance; how more so the announcement! Do I believe it? In what way and how?