18. CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH.
THE MANUSCRIPT OF BROTHER ANSELM.
THE PROPHECY OF THE PEASANT.
“Embody the history of the Carpenter's Son, let the Spirit of his life
become the Soul of our Organization, and I—a rude Peasant man, born
of the humble People—can predict to you the Future of mankind!
“Not fifty years from this hour, the voice of our Brotherhood will
reach the heart of a young man, in the city of Paris. Even as he sits
amid a band of boon companions, the cup in his hand, and his ruddy English
face contrasted with the faces of the brown Frenchmen, the voice
will reach him, and he will dash the cup to the floor, and feel the impulses
of his great mission stir his soul.
“His great mission? Yes—this young Englishman, encircled by the gay
youth of Paris, is destined by Almighty God to conquer the New World,
armed with an olive branch instead of a sword. He will cross the Ocean, he
will rear a People in the Wilderness, he will send forth his voice to the
oppressed of all the earth, saying to them all—`Come! Here is a Home
for the down-trodden, here is an Altar for the exile and the wanderer. We
know neither Priest nor King, in our New World at home. We are
Brothers—our Father is God.'
“And the exile and the wanderer will come, and, with this Apostle to
the New World, rear the Altar of Brotherhood in the wilderness.
“Indian! The Apostle will be just to you, and to your race! Even
now, as the mists which cloud the Future roll aside, I behold him standing
amid the red men, near a calm river's shore,—I hear the words of
the Covenant which they make with each other; a Covenant made without
oath, or priest, or sword, and yet it will live when oaths, and priests,
and swords are known no longer upon the face of the earth.
“After the Apostle has done his work, he will pass away. Years roll
on—the colonists, the emigrants, the exiles of the New World begin to
grow into a People. That New World, which the Almighty has reserved
for the down-trodden of all nations and races, strengthens rapidly into an
Empire, such as the world has never seen before—not of Kings, or of
Priests—but an Empire of Men.
“That New World, which the Almighty has destined to be the young
Heart and the young Brain of a decrepit Earth, thinking for all Peoples,
the bold thoughts of freedom; feeling for the wrongs of all races, and armed
with the power to right those wrongs—the New World is assailed by all
the infamies of the Old World, incarnate in the person of a King.
“He would enslave the young Empire with those customs and laws,
which have drained the sap and the blood from the veins of the old, and
turned an Eden into a Hell.
“But lo! The same God who sent an Apostle of Peace to plant the
Olive Branch of Brotherhood on the shores of the New World, now
sends a Deliverer to assert the sanctity of the New World from all
Kings, in the face of God and Man, and carve out a way for Brotherhood
with his battle-sword.
“Among his legions I behold him, armed for the fight, and with the
consciousness of a good cause flashing from his eyes, and investing his
bold forehead with a sublime resolve.
“The Deliverer will come in the year 1775. He will combine in his
own person, all those qualities which the world has never yet seen combined
in one man. He will be a man of vigorous passions, fiery blood,
temper as ardent as the southern sky. He will learn first to govern his
passions, and rule his own soul, and therefore be fitted for the government
of men, and the sway of an Empire. Years of danger and toil in
the untrodden forests, will harden him into iron manhood. He will serve,
he will suffer, so that he may always feel with those who are enslaved,
and know the anguish which falls to the lot of the poor man, who never
ceases to suffer and endure.
“This Deliverer will rise in the darkest hour of Despotism—he will
achieve the freedom of the New World, and then—
“But hold! There the cloud overcasts the Future; I cannot read
the Future of his life after the hour when he has won the battle for
freedom.
“He may repeat the story of Cromwell, who saved his country from
Kings, by usurping the power without the name.
“Yes, he may descend from his calm grandeur, as the Father of his
Country, and mingle in the herd of Kings, of Tyrants, of Conquerors,
bartering immortal glory for the bauble of an hour.
“Then woe to America, and woe to Man!
“The New World will become the theatre of battles without an
object, bloodshed without an aim. It will become a land of robbers, and
of graves. The freedom, which the Deliverer might have achieved in all
its details, in the year 1783, will be postponed until 1890. A terrible
postponement, a fearful delay, only marked by murder in various forms—
by petty Kings, conflicting with each other under various names.
“Let it therefore be our care, my brethren, to leave to our children as
a holy trust, the Life of this Deliverer! Yes, his life! A Brother of our
Order will go to him, as he prepares for battle, and confront him with a
Dagger and a Sword. `This Sword is consecrated for thy defence, so
long as thou art true to thy country, and to man. This Dagger is consecrated
for thy Death, the moment thou art false!'
“Let us write it in our records, let us teach it in our solemn ceremonies,
that upon the Truth or Falsehood of this Deliverer, who will
come in the year 1775, hangs the destiny of mankind, for at least three
centuries.
“Does he prove true? Then the fire of Brotherhood lighted by the
Apostle, in the wilds of America, in 1682, and defended by the Deliverer
in 1775, will illuminate the world.
“The name of that Deliverer will become the universal word for
`Freedom.'
“Does he prove false to his great trust? Ah—the picture is too dark—
it spreads before me, but I dare not contemplate its incredible details—
“In case he faithfully fulfils the awful trust confided to his hands, then
behold the Future of America, and of the World!
“America, as I have said, will then in truth become the young Heart,
and the young Brain of a decrepit Earth. The pulsations of that Heart,
and the thoughts of that Brain, will shake the World.
“France, beautiful France—the land desecrated by religious wars
and saintly massacres,—will be the first to feel the throbbings of that
Heart, and echo the name of the New World Deliverer amid her songs
of Brotherhood.
“France will be chosen by God to fight the first battle on the soil of
Europe in the cause of Man.
The heart sickens and the eye grows dim, but to gaze upon the details
of that battle, fought by France in the name of Men, against the Priests
and Kings of an enslaved world.
“Even now I see it—it is there—that solitary glimpse—it is a river of
blood, swelling fast into an ocean, with a corse upon every billow. It is a
people, degraded by the slavery of centuries, suddenly transformed into a
horde of Demons, who not only sweep Priest and King into the bloody
wave, not only level palace and jail, beneath their crimsoned feet—but—
O God! can it be! they blot the name of God from the sky, and write
upon the grave—`There is no Immortality. Death is but a sleep.'
“At this period there will arise in France a Prophet of Blood. He is
there—I behold him standing amid millions of slaves, drunken with their
first breath of freedom. His throne, a strange engine of murder, erected
on a platform, with an axe gleaming from its timbers. A slender man,
with a haggard complexion, eyes filled with injected blood, features compressed,
as with the impulse of an unrelenting will, he stands upon the
platform, and shouts to the freed slaves in a shrill voice, as the rich, the
noble, and the beautiful, fall headless at his feet. `More heads,' he
shrieks, `more heads for the altar of the Revolution! More blood—more
blood to wash the record of the poor man's wrongs from the history of
ages! The Rich have had the world long enough—it is now the day of
the poor.'
“It will be a terrible day for Kings, and for the rich men, who believe
in Kings, when this Messiah of Carnage comes up from the cloud of
Revolution; a lurid Meteor, shining with a pale, gloomy grandeur over a
world of blood!
“He will arise in France, I say, he will arise after the Deliverer of the
New World hath done his work, and he will prepare the way for the
coming of a Crowned Avenger.
“And even he will feel the divine beauty of the Carpenter's Son, and
hope for a calm time of Brotherhood, after the tempest of infernal passion
is over.
“At last he will fall beneath the gory wheels of Revolution,—beneath
those wheels, which were hurled onward by his own arm—but in the
moment of his fall, he will foresee the coming of the blessed day of Brotherhood.
“Nay—he will die upon that unknown engine of murder, which was
his throne, by the very axe which has drunk the blood of royalty and
beauty—he will die a wretched and accursed thing, his last groan
chorused by the demon yells of that Mob, who were yesterday his
Brethren—but in his last moment, a Hope will brighten over his glassy
eyes, and his clotted lips will tremble with the accents of Prophecy—
“`After me a Crowned Avenger comes! When my body is in the
ditch, and my name given out to all the world as a Proverb of loathing,
the Crowned Avenger will start from the People—he will build himself a
palace from the Thrones of fallen Kings—he will write his name upon
the Globe in characters of fire. He will avenge me!
“`Without me, this Crowned Avenger could never have appeared. I
have prepared the way for him—I go to darkness, and no one pities me.
And he, too, will be crushed beneath the weight of his greatness, he too,
will prepare the way for another, and a Nobler Man.
“`And, when the day of that Nobler man, that Universal Liberator,
comes—when nations and empires, and dynasties, and sects and creeds
have crumbled into dust before the light of Brotherhood, and the freed
earth shall glow with gladness under the eye of God,—then shall justice
be done to my memory, and men shall no longer couple my name with
curses, but speak of me as of one who sacrificed, not merely life, but
fame, for the sake of the Poor.”'
