Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/256

248 and the like. Besides all this, John himself, a prophet, and one whom Jesus had called the greatest of the prophets, even he seemed to have wavered in his faith in Jesus; and when he had besought help in prison, Jesus had helped him not. Yea, and Jesus himself of late seemed to have cast off faith in himself. For when he had been challenged to work a sign in heaven, which seemed an easy thing for a prophet to do, he had refused to do it. Also, he had fled from the face of Herod and from the Pharisees, and seemed to have become a wanderer rather than a deliverer. Else, why were we, children of Abraham and inheritors of the Land of Promise, sitting there like exiles, looking on the temples of false gods in a foreign land? Even in the words wherein he had questioned us, Jesus had spoken of himself as the Son of man. Might it not be indeed that he was, and knew that he was, naught more than one of the common sons of man? When had he called himself the Redeemer? Never.

We seemed in that instant to have been brought by the hand of the Lord into a place where two roads met, and we had to choose one of the two. And if we went by the one, behold we had against us not only Rome and Greece and the whole inhabited world, but also the princes of our own people, and the priests and the patriots, and the traditions also of our forefathers handed down through many hundreds of years, and the Law given unto us by God for which many generations of our countrymen had fought and died; yea, even Moses himself seemed to be as an adversary if we went by that road. But on the other road no one stood against us; only we saw not Jesus there. So the conclusion seemed to be that we had in that instant to choose between Jesus and all the world.

And, as I judge, even for this cause did the Lord lead