Each age has its illusions—illusions which succeeding ages with a recovered sense of sanity are often apt to record as the most incomprehensible of crazes. ‘That poor will-o’-the-wisp mistaken for a shining light! Oh, purblind race of miserable men!’ is the quick, contemptuous comment of a later, clearer-sighted generation. But one may question if such comment be always just. May not the narrow vision, too unseeing to be deceived, betoken a yet more hopeless sort of blindness than the wide-eyed gaze which, fixed on stars, blunders into quagmires? ‘Where there is no vision,’ it is written, ‘the people perish’; and though stars may prove mirage and quagmires clinging mud, yet a long rank of shabby, shadowy heroes, who, more or less wittingly, have had the hard fate to lead a multitude to destruction, seems to suggest that such deluded multitudes are no dumb, driven cattle, but, capable of being led astray, have also the faculty of being led into the light. And if this, to our consolation, be the teaching of history anent those whom it impartially dubs impostors, then wasted loves and wasted beliefs lose something of their hopeless sadness, and in the transfiguration even failures and false prophets are seen to have a place and use.

No more typical instance could be found of the heights and depths of a people’s power of illusion—and that people one which in its modern development might be lightly held proof against most illusions—than the suggestive career of a Messiah of the seventeenth century supplies to us. Undying hope, it has been said, is the secret of vision. When hope is dead the vision perchance takes unto itself the awful condition of death, corruption, for thus only could it have come to pass that that same people, which had given an Isaiah to the world, under the stress of inexorable and inevitable circumstance brought forth a Sabbathai Zevi.

‘Of all mortal woes,’ so declared the weeping Persian to Thersander at the banquet, ‘the greatest is this: with many thoughts and wise, to have no power.’ Under the crushing burden of that mortal woe the Jewish race had rested restlessly for over sixteen weary centuries. Power had passed from the dispossessed people with the fall of their garrisoned Temple, and under dispersion and persecution their ‘many thoughts and wise’ had grown dumb, or shrill, or cruelly inarticulate. The kingdom of priests and the kinsmen of the Maccabees had dwindled to a community of pedants and pedlars. Into the schools of the prophets had crept the casuistries and subtleties of the Kabbalists; and descendants of those who had been skilful in all manner of workmanship now haggled over wares which they lacked skill or energy to produce. East and west the doom of Herodotus was drearily apparent, and to an onlooker it must have seemed incredible that these poor pariahs, content to be contemned, were of the same race which had sung the Lord’s songs and had fought the Lord’s battles. In the seventeenth century the fires of the Inquisition were still smouldering, and Jewish victims of the Holy Office, naked and charred, or swathed and unrecognisable, were fleeing hither and thither from its flames, across the inhospitable continent of Europe. Nearer to the old scenes was no nearer to happiness; the farthest removed indeed from any present realisation of ancient prosperity seemed those wanderers who had turned their tired, sad faces to the East. The land on which Moses had looked from Pisgah; for which, remembering Zion, the exiles in Babylon had wept; for which a later generation, as unaided as undaunted, had fought and died—this land, their heritage, had passed utterly from the possession of the Jews. ‘Thou waterest its ridges: Thou settlest the furrows thereof.’ Seemingly out of that ownership too the land had passed, for His ridges had run red with blood, and in His furrows the Romans had sown salt. From the very first century after Christ, Jews had been grudged a foothold in JudÆa, and from the date of the Crusades any dwelling-place in their own land was definitely denied to the outcast race. A new meaning had been read into that ancient phrase, ‘the joy of the whole earth.’ The Holy City had come, in cruel, narrow limitation, to mean to its conquerors the Holy Sepulchre, all other of its memories ‘but a dream and a forgetting.’ And now, although the fervour of the Crusades had died away, and the stone stood at the mouth of the Sepulchre as undisturbed and almost as unheeded of the outside world as when the two Marys kept their lonely vigil, yet enough still of all that terribly wasted wealth of enthusiasm survived to make the Holy Land difficult even of approach to its former rulers. Through all those centuries, for over sixteen hundred slow, sad, stormy years, this powerless people had borne their weary burden, ‘the greatest of all mortal woes.’ Occasionally, for a moment as it were, the passions of repulsed patriotism and of pent-up humanity would break bounds, and seek expression in a form which scholars could scarce interpret or priests control. With their law grudged to them and their land denied, ‘their many thoughts and wise,’ under cruel restraint, were dwindling into impotent dreams or flashing out in wild unlikeness of wisdom.

It was in the summer of the year 1666 that some such incomprehensible craze seemed to possess the ancient city of Smyrna. The sleepy stillness of the narrow streets was jarred by a thousand confused and unaccustomed sounds. The slow, smooth current of Eastern life seemed of a sudden stirred into a whirl of excited eddies. Men and women in swift-changing groups were sobbing, praying, laughing in a breath, their quick gesticulations in curious contrast with their sober, shabby garments, and their patient, pathetic eyes. And strangest thing of all, it was on a prophet in his own country, in the very city of his birth, that this extraordinary enthusiasm of greeting was being expended, and the name of the prophet was Sabbathai, son of Mordecai. Mordecai Zevi, the father, had dwelt among these townsfolk of Smyrna, dealing in money and dying of gout, and Sabbathai Zevi, the son, had been brought up among them, and not so many years since had been banished by them. In that passionately absorbed crowd there must have been many a middle-aged man old enough to remember how this turbulent son of the commonplace old broker had been sent forth from the city, and the gates shut on him in anger and contempt; and some there surely must have been who knew of his subsequent career. But if it were so, there were none sane enough to deduce a moral. It was in the character of Messiah and Deliverer that Sabbathai had come back to Smyrna, and long-dead hope, quickened into life at the very words, was strong enough to strangle a whole host of resistant memories, though, in truth, there was a great deal to forget. It had been at the instance of the religious authorities of the place, whose susceptibilities were shocked by the utterance of opinions advanced enough to provoke a tumult in the synagogue, that the young man had been expelled from the city. To young and ardent spirits in that crowd it is possible that this early experience of Sabbathai bore a very colourable imitation of martyrdom, and the life in exile that followed it may have appealed to their imaginations as the most fitting of preparations for a prophet. But then unfortunately Sabbathai’s life in exile had not been that of a hermit, nor altogether of a sort to fit into any exalted theories. Authentic news had certainly come of him as a traveller in the Morea and in Syria, and rumours had been rife concerning travelling companions. Three successive marriages, it was said, had taken place, followed in each instance by unedifying quarrels and divorce. Of the ladies little was known; but it came to be generally affirmed, on what, if sifted, perhaps amounted to insufficient evidence, that each wife was more marvellously handsome than her predecessor. And then, for a while, these lingering distorted sounds from the outside world had died out in the sordid stillness of their lives, to rise again suddenly, after long interval, in startling echoes. The wildest of rumours was all at once in the air, heralding this much-married, banished disputant of the synagogue, this turbulent, troublesome Sabbathai, as Messiah of the Jews. What he had done, what he would do, what he could do, was repeated from mouth to mouth with an ever-growing exactness of exaggeration which modern methods of transmitting news could hardly surpass. One soberly circumstantial tale was of a ship cruising off the north coast of Scotland (of all places in the world!), with sail and cordage of purest silk, her ensign the Twelve Tribes, and her crew, consistently enough, speaking Hebrew. A larger and certainly more geographically minded contingent of converts was said to be marching across the deserts of Arabia to proclaim the millennium. This host was identified as the lost Ten Tribes, and Sabbathai, mounted on a celestial lion with a bridle of serpents, was, or was shortly to be—for the reports were sometimes a little conflicting—at the head of this imposing multitude, and about to inaugurate a new and glorious Temple, which, all ready built and beautified, would straightway descend from heaven, and in which the services were likely to become popular, since all fasts were forthwith to be changed into festivals.

The rumours, it must be confessed, were all of a terribly materialistic sort, and one wonders somewhat sadly over Sabbathai’s proclamation, questioning if the promise of ‘dominion over the nations,’ or the permission ‘to do every day what is usual for you to do only on new moons,’ roused most of the long-repressed human nature in those weary pariahs, the ‘nation of the Jews,’ to whom it was roundly addressed. All the cities of Turkey, an old chronicler tells us, ‘were full of expectation.’ Business in many places was altogether suspended. The belief in a reign of miracle was extended to daily needs, and trust in such needs being somehow supplied was esteemed as an essential test of general faith in the new order of things. So none laboured, but all prayed, and purified themselves, and performed strange penances. The rich people grew profuse and penitent, and poverty, always honourable among Jews, came in those strange days to be fashionable.

And now, so heralded, and in truth so advertised, for what a bill-posting agency would do for similar worthies in this generation a certain Nathan Benjamin of Jerusalem seems to have done in clumsier fashion for Sabbathai, their hero was among them. Nathan, it is to be feared, was less of a convert than a colleague of our prophet, but to tear-dimmed eyes which saw visions, to starved hearts which by reason of sorrow judged in hunger and in weakness, prophet and partner both loomed heroic. It is curious, when one thinks of it, that the same race which had been critical over a Moses should have been credulous over a Sabbathai Zevi. Is it a possible explanation that the art of making bricks without straw, however difficult of acquirement, being at any rate of the nature of healthy, outdoor employment, was less depressing in its results on character than the cumulative effect of centuries of Ghetto-bounded toil? Something, too, may be allowed for the fact that the Promised Land lay then in prospect and now in retrospect. Altogether, perhaps, it may be urged in this instance that the idol does not quite give an accurate measure of the worshipper. A Deliverer was at their doors, a Deliverer from worse than Egyptian bondage; that was all that this poor deluded people could stop to think, and out they rushed in ludicrous, reverent welcome of a light that was not dawn. With a fine appreciation of effect, Sabbathai gently put aside the rich embroidered cloths that were spread beneath his feet; and this subtle indication of humility, and of a desire to tread the dusty paths with his brethren, gained him many a wavering adherent. For there were waverers. Even amidst all the enthusiasm, there was now and then an awkward question asked, for these shabby traders of Smyrna were all of them more or less learned in the Law and the Prophets, and though their tired hearts could accept this blustering, unideal presentment of the Prince of Peace, yet their minds and memories made occasional protest concerning dates and circumstances. And presently one Samuel Pennia, a man of some local reputation, took heart of grace, and preached and proclaimed with a hundred most obvious arguments that Sabbathai had no smallest claim to the titles he was arrogantly assuming. Law and logic too were on Pennia’s side; and yet, strange and incomprehensible as it seems to sober retrospect, he failed to convince even himself. After discussions innumerable and of the stormiest sort, Pennia began to doubt and to hesitate, and finally he and all his family became strenuous and, there is no reason to doubt, honest supporters of Sabbathai. Still the tumults which had been provoked, though they could not rouse the multitude to a doubt of their Deliverer, did awake in them a desire that he should deign to demonstrate his power to unbelievers, and a cry, comic or pathetic as we take it, broke forth for a miracle—a simultaneous prayer for something, anything, supernatural. It was embarrassing; and Sabbathai, one old chronicler gravely remarks, was ‘horribly puzzled for a miracle.’ But in a moment the cynical humour of the man came to his help, and where the true prophet, in honest humility, might have hesitated, with ‘Lord, I cannot speak; I am a child,’ on his lips, our charlatan was ready and self-possessed and equal to the occasion. With solemn gait and rapt gaze, which, as a contemporary record expresses it, he had ‘starcht on,’ Sabbathai stood for some seconds silent; then, suddenly throwing up his hands to heaven, ‘Behold!’ he exclaimed in thrilling accents, ‘see you not yon pillar of fire?’ And the expectant crowd turned, and in their eager, almost hysterical, excitement many believed they saw, and many, who did not see, doubted their sight and not the vision. Those who looked and looked in vain were silent, hardly daring to own that to their unworthy eyes the blessed assurance had been denied. So Sabbathai returned to his home in triumph. No further miracles were asked or needed, and doubters in his Messiahship were henceforth accounted by the synagogue as heretics and infidels and fit subjects for excommunication. In his character of prophet no religious ceremonial was henceforth considered complete without the presence of Sabbathai, and in his character of prince and leader unlimited wealth was at his command. Here, however, came in the one redeeming point. Sabbathai’s ambition had no taint of avarice about it. He took of no man’s gold and of no woman’s jewels, though both were laid unstintingly at his feet. And then, suddenly, at this period of his greatest success, subtly appreciating, it may be, the wisdom of taking fortune at the flood, Sabbathai announced his intention of leaving Smyrna, and the month of January, 1667, saw him embark in a small coasting-vessel bound for Constantinople. Here a reception altogether unexpected and unprophesied was awaiting him. There had been great weeping and lamentation among the disciples he left, and there was proportionately great rejoicing among the larger community his presence was to favour, for, by virtue of the curious system of intercommunication which has always prevailed among the dispersed race, the news of Sabbathai’s movements and intentions spread quickly and in ever-widening circles. It reached at length some ears which had not been reckoned upon, and penetrated to a brain which had preserved its balance. The Sultan of Turkey, Mahomet IV., heard of this expected visitor to his capital, and when, after nine-and-thirty days of stormy passage, the sea-sick prophet was entering the port, the first thing he saw was two State barges, fully manned, putting out to meet him. It may be hoped that he was too sea-sick to indulge in any audible predictions, or to put in sonorous words any bright dream born of that brief glimpse of a brother potentate hastening to greet his spiritual sovereign. For any such prophecy would have been all too rudely and too quickly falsified. It was as prisoner, not as prophet, that Sabbathai was to enter Constantinople, and a dungeon, not a palace, was his destination. The Sultan had indeed heard of the worse than mid-summer madness that had seized on his Jewish subjects throughout the Turkish Empire, and he proceeded to stay the plague with a prompt high-handedness which a Grand Vizier out of The Arabian Nights could hardly have excelled. For two long months Sabbathai was kept a close prisoner in uncomfortable quarters in Constantinople, and was from thence transferred to a cell in the Castle of Abydos. Of the effects of this imperial reception on the prophet himself we shall judge in the sequel, but its effects on his followers were, strange to say, not at all depressing. To these faithful deluded folks their hero behind prison bars gained only a halo of martyrdom. Was it not fitting that the Servant of Israel should be ‘acquainted with grief’? The dangerous sentiment of pity added itself to the passion of love and faith, and pilgrims from all parts—Poland, Venice, Amsterdam—hurried to the city as if it were a shrine. Sabbathai took up the rÔle, and by gentle proclamation bestowed the blessings and the promises which had been hitherto showered down in set speeches. And so the madness grew, till a sordid element crept into it, and at first, curiously enough, this also increased it. In the crowd, thus attracted to the neighbourhood, the Turks saw an opportunity for making money. The price of lodging and provision for the pilgrims was constantly raised, and by degrees a sight of Sabbathai or a word from him came to be quite a source of income to his guards. The necessary element of secrecy about such transactions acted, both directly and indirectly, as fuel to the flames. The Jews in the spread of the faith and in their immunity from persecution saw Divine interposition, while the Turks naturally favoured Sabbathai’s pretensions, and continued to raise their prices to each new batch of believers. But complaints were bound in time to reach headquarters. The overcrowding and excitement was a danger to the Turkish inhabitants of Constantinople, and among the Jews themselves Sabbathai’s success begat at length a more disturbing element than doubt. A rival Messiah came forward in a certain Nehemiah Cohen, a learned rabbi from Poland. A sort of twin Messiahship seems first to have suggested itself to these worthies. Nehemiah, under the title of Ben Ephraim, was to fulfil the probationary part of the prophecies on the subject, and Sabbathai, as Ben David, to take the triumphant close and climax. So much was agreed upon, when Sabbathai, who was still a prisoner, became a little apprehensive of a possible change of parts by Nehemiah, who was at large. Disputes ensued, and ended in an appeal by Sabbathai to the community. A renewed vote of confidence in their native hero was recorded, and Nehemiah’s claims to a partnership were altogether and summarily rejected. His own pretensions thus disallowed, Nehemiah at once turned round and hastened to denounce the insincerity of the whole affair to such of the Turkish officials as would listen to him. He was backed up by a very few of the wise men of his own community who had managed to keep their honest doubts in spite of the general madness; and presently by much effort a messenger was despatched to Adrianople, where Mahomet IV. was holding his Court, with full particulars of Sabbathai’s latest doings. The Sultan listened to the story, and was literally and ludicrously true to the strictest traditional ideal of what one may call the sack and bowstring system, and there is no doubt that, in this instance, substantial justice was secured by it.

Without excuse or ceremonial of any sort, without farewell from the friends he left or greetings from the curious throng which awaited him, Sabbathai was hurried into Adrianople, and within an hour of his arrival, deposited, limp and apprehensive, in the presence-chamber. The giant’s robe seemed to be slipping visibly from his shaking shoulders as, sternly desired to give an account of himself, he, the glib cosmopolitan prophet, begged for an interpreter. Without comment on this sudden and surprising failure in the gift of tongues the request was granted; and patiently, silently, Court and Sultan stroked their beards and listened to the marvellous tale which was unfolded. Were they doubtful, or convinced? Was he after all to triumph? It almost seemed so as the story ended, and the expectant hush was broken by the Sultan quietly requesting a miracle. Wild thoughts of a lucky stroke of legerdemain, which should recover all, must have instantly occurred to this other-world adventurer. But no audaciously summoned pillar of fire would here have served his turn; the astute Sultan meant to choose his own miracle.

‘Thou shalt not be afraid ... of the arrow that flieth by day. A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh unto thee.’ In the most literal and most liberal meaning the pseudo-prophet was requested to interpret these words of his national poet. He was to strip, said the Sultan, and to let the archers shoot at him, and thus make manifest in his own flesh his confidence in his own assumptions.

Not for one moment did Sabbathai hesitate. A man’s behaviour at a supreme crisis in his life is not determined by the sudden need. It is not to a single, sudden trumpet-call that character responds, but to the tone set by daily uncounted matin and evensong. Sabbathai was as incapable of the heroic death as of the heroic life. It had been all a game to him; the people’s passionate enthusiasm, that pitiful power of theirs for seeing visions, were just points in the game—points in his favour. And now the game was lost; he was cool enough to realise this at a glance, and to seize upon the one move which he might yet make to his own advantage. With a startling burst of calculated candour he owned to it all, that he was no prophet, no Saviour, no willing ‘witness’ even; only a historical Jew, and very much at the Sultan’s service.

Mahomet smiled. The tragedy of the situation was for the Jews; the comedy, and it must have been irresistible, was his. Then after due pause he gravely proceeded, that insomuch as Sabbathai’s pretensions to Palestine were an infringement on Turkish vested rights in that province, the repentant prophet must give an earnest of his recovered loyalty as a Turkish subject by turning Turk and abjuring Judaism altogether. And cheerfully enough Sabbathai assented, audaciously adding that such a change had been long desired by him, and that he eagerly and respectfully welcomed this opportunity of making his first profession of faith as a Mahometan in the presence of Mahomet’s namesake and temporal representative.

And thus the scene, at which one knows not whether to laugh or cry, was over; and when the curtain rises again it is on the merest and most exasperating commonplace—on Sabbathai, fat and turbaned, living and dying as a respectable Turk. For the actors behind the scenes, there was never any call, neither to hail a Saviour nor to mourn a martyr. For them, this puzzling bit of passion-play was just a mirage in the wilderness of their lives; and for many and many a weary year foolish and faithful folk debated whether it was mirage or reality. For his dupes survived him, this sorry impostor of the seventeenth century; and their illusion, hoping all things, believing all things, withered into delusion and died hard. Such faculty perhaps, for all its drawbacks, gives staying-power to man or nation. It is where there is no vision that the people perish.