- end_line
- 12005
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.931Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11903
- text
- Bright flowers smile:
Full urns, rose-heaped, these valleys bloom.
Hail! voyagers, hail!
Be not deceived; renounce vain things;
Ye may not find
A tranquil mind,
Though hence ye sail with swiftest wings.
Hail! voyagers, hail!
Time flies full fast; life soon is o’er;
And ye may mourn,
That hither borne,
Ye left behind our pleasant shore.
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
They Land
The song was ended; and as we gained the strand, the crowd embraced us;
and called us brothers; ourselves and our humblest attendants.
“Call ye us brothers, whom ere now ye never saw?”
“Even so,” said the old man, “is not Oro the father of all? Then, are
we not brothers? Thus Alma, the master, hath commanded.”
“This was not our reception in Maramma,” said Media, “the appointed
place of Alma; where his precepts are preserved.”
“No, no,” said Babbalanja; “old man! your lesson of brotherhood was
learned elsewhere than from Alma; for in Maramma and in all its
tributary isles true brotherhood there is none. Even in the Holy Island
many are oppressed; for heresies, many murdered; and thousands perish
beneath the altars, groaning with offerings that might relieve them.”
“Alas! too true. But I beseech ye, judge not Alma by all those who
profess his faith. Hast thou thyself his records searched?”
“Fully, I have not. So long, even from my infancy, have I witnessed the
wrongs committed in his name; the sins and inconsistencies of his
followers; that thinking all evil must flow from a congenial fountain,
I have scorned to study the whole record of your Master’s life. By
parts I only know it.”
“Ah! baneful error! But thus is it, brothers!! that the wisest are set
against the Truth, because of those who wrest it from itself.”
“Do ye then claim to live what your Master hath spoken? Are your
precepts practices?”
“Nothing do we claim: we but earnestly endeavor.”
“Tell me not of your endeavors, but of your life. What hope for the
fatherless among ye?”
“Adopted as a son.”
“Of one poor, and naked?”
“Clothed, and he wants for naught.”
“If ungrateful, he smite you?”
“Still we feed and clothe him.”
“If yet an ingrate?”
“Long, he can not be; for Love is a fervent fire.”
“But what, if widely he dissent from your belief in Alma;—then, surely,
ye must cast him forth?”
“No, no; we will remember, that if he dissent from us, we then equally
dissent from him; and men’s faculties are Oro-given. Nor will we say
that he is wrong, and we are right; for this we know not, absolutely.
But we care not for men’s words; we look for creeds in actions; which
are the truthful symbols of the things within. He who hourly prays to
Alma, but lives not up to world-wide love and charity—that man is more
an unbeliever than he who verbally rejects the Master, but does his
bidding. Our lives are our Amens.”
“But some say that what your Alma teaches is wholly new—a revelation of
things before unimagined, even by the poets. To do his bidding, then,
some new faculty must be vouchsafed, whereby to apprehend aright.”
“So have I always thought,” said Mohi.
“If Alma teaches love, I want no gift to learn,” said Yoomy.
“All that is vital in the Master’s faith, lived here in Mardi, and in
humble dells was practiced, long previous to the Master’s coming. But
never before was virtue so lifted up among us, that all might see;
never before did rays from heaven descend to glorify it, But are Truth,
Justice, and Love, the revelations of Alma alone? Were they never heard
of till he came? Oh! Alma but opens unto us our own hearts. Were his
precepts strange we would recoil—not one feeling would respond;
whereas, once hearkened to, our souls embrace them as with the
instinctive tendrils of a vine.”
- title
- Chunk 2