With the chimes the chant of vespers from the grey old minster falls—

Sempiterni Fons amoris, Consolatrix tristium,

Pia Mater Salvatoris, ave Virgo virginum!

Softly rising, falling, mingling, dying, comes the solemn song,

And in dreamy undulations air and lake the tones prolong.

Still the oars, and still the heart in worship, as the sweet bells toll,

And I feel as though God’s angels bore to heaven a blessèd soul.

[54]

[54]

 THE THREE RINGS: A FABLE

From Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise”6

[Since Plato, no writer has understood better than Lessing the dramatic conduct of a philosophic dialogue. The following colloquy is a beautiful example of his art and of his thought.

Nathan is a Jew, famed for his wealth and for his wisdom, living in Jerusalem at the time of the Third Crusade. In the following scene he has just been summoned to the presence of the Sultan Saladin. He supposes that a loan of money is the Sultan’s object. Instead of this, he finds that it is his reputed wisdom which has gained him the interview. Nathan is a man who cannot have taken his beliefs in spiritual things without examination; here, then, says Saladin, are three faiths contending for mastery, the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahommedan. Each claims to be the true and only true religion. The claim cannot be true of more than one of them. Which of them, in his inmost soul, does Nathan hold to be justified? That he may have time to collect his thoughts, Saladin leaves the Jew alone for a while before he answers. Nathan, who does not yet know Saladin, is at first very doubtful of the bona fides of the Musalman prince in making this inquiry of him.]

 ACT III, Scene 6

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