Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/100

92 and I believed, and my mother also, and all our household.

On the morrow, when I would fain have accompanied Jesus to Capernaum (for he was journeying thither), he suffered me not, but said that he must needs go to Capernaum alone; but I was to remain for nine days at Sepphoris with my mother, and on the tenth day I might go down to Capernaum. But he suffered me to go with him about twelve or thirteen furlongs out of the town, and there I was to bid him farewell.

He did not speak many words to me by the way; but what I noted especially in him (as being that wherein he differed from all my former teachers) was that he spake not according to rule, nor out of any books nor traditions, but as it were out of himself. For he taught as one having authority. There was also yet another difference. For most of the Pharisees were wont to walk with their faces turned up to the sky, or else with their eyes half shut, repeating, as they went, certain passages of the Law, or prayers or precepts of the Elders; and if they met women they would avoid them; and of children also they took no note, except it were to instruct them or question them in the Law and the Traditions; moreover they walked with a sour and austere countenance. But Jesus was in all respects different from these. For he looked on all things, and in all things seemed to see joy and gladness, taking note even of the smallest matters, such as the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, and also of the trees, and the cornfields. Moreover, as often as we met women on the way, he saluted them courteously and shunned them not.

But most marvellous of all, in my judgment, was the manner of his dealing with children. For so it was, as I remember, that when we were passing by a hamlet, about