Three Days Journey to Damascus - Done in Two

The first serious fall-out among the Excursionists occurred as the caravan- serai left Baalbek. It was a Friday morning. Damascus was some sixty hot and ragged miles away. The dragomen Abraham and Mohammed told them it would take three days. The New Pilgrims counted on their fingers: Friday, Saturday, Sunday - and declared that would be impossible as it would mean travelling on the Sabbath; they would all have to complete the journey in two days to retain their saintliness.

Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three days’ journey to Damascus. It was necessary that we should do it in less than two. It was necessary because our three pilgrims would not travel on the Sabbath day. We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We pleaded for the tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their faithful service deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot compassion. But when did ever self-righteousness know the sentiment of pity? What were a few long hours added to the hardships of some over-taxed brutes when weighed against the peril of those human souls? It was not the most promising party to travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for religion through the example of its devotees. We said the Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled a forced march like this. We said the “long trip” was exhausting and therefore dangerous in the blistering heats of summer, even when the ordinary days’ stages were traversed, and if we persisted in this hard march, some of us might be stricken down with the fevers of the country in consequence of it. Nothing could move the pilgrims. They must press on. Men might die, horses might die, but they must enter upon holy soil next week, with no Sabbath-breaking stain upon them. Thus they were willing to commit a sin against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve the letter of it. It was not worth while to tell them “the letter kills.” I am talking now about personal friends; men whom I like; men who are good citizens; who are honorable, upright, conscientious; but whose idea of the Saviour’s religion seems to me distorted. They lecture our shortcomings unsparingly, and every night they call us together and read to us chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of charity, and of tender mercy; and then all the next day they stick to their saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged mountains, and clear down again. Apply the Testament’s gentleness, and charity, and tender mercy to a toiling, worn and weary horse?—Nonsense—these are for God’s human creatures, not His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I should allow to pass—but I would so like to catch any other member of the party riding his horse up one of these exhausting hills once!

The Futility of a Good Example

We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that might benefit them, but it is virtue thrown away. They have never heard a cross word out of our lips toward each other—but they have quarreled once or twice. We love to hear them at it, after they have been lecturing us. The very first thing they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was to quarrel in the boat. I have said I like them, and I do like them—but every time they read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in print.

Keeping the Sabbath

Strathcarron provides a good discussion of Twain's interpretation of "keeping the Sabbath" and how its meaning changes depending on where in the Bible one looks.

But back on the road to Damascus Mark Twain held his peace; he could hardly do otherwise. Mile after mile they trudged through the scrub under the scorching sun to complete their journey in two days. One can imagine Twain composing to himself: “It was not the most promising party to travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for religion through the example of its devotees. We said the Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled a forced march like this. Nothing could move the pilgrims. They must press on. Men might die, horses might die, but they must enter upon holy soil next week, with no Sabbath-breaking stain upon them. Thus they were willing to commit a sin against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve the letter of it.”

As Twain was to explain in later life the New Pilgrims’ observance of the Sabbath was anyway dependent on which of the three versions of the commandment was mentioned in the Old Testament. In Exodus the fourth commandment instructs all believers and their slaves to refrain from any work on the day. (A chapter later God instructs Moses about how to buy and sell slaves - having bored their ears through with an awl - before offering guidance on how to sell one’s daughters.) In the Deuteronomy myth the Sabbath becomes not a day of rest after six days of creation but as an anniversary of God leading the chosen ones out of Egypt.

Mark Twain was yet to know the interpretation of the Sabbath in Judges or the matter might have been settled. Here the observance of the Sabbath touches on humanity, not to say productivity, for masters and slaves alike: “Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.” In the meantime he could only reflect, along with Thomas Paine: “These Books are spurious, Moses is not the author of them; and still further they were not written in the time of Moses, that they were a much later attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, written by some very ignorant pretenders long after his death.” It might sound harsh on ignorance but for the modernist technocrat Mark Twain: “back then everyone was ignorant, ignorance was their dollars and cents, why nobody knew anything about anything."