Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/71

Rh : The Gospel he preaches is that the coming of the Messiah has freed the Jews from the bondage of the law. More than that I cannot tell. But I hope to entangle him in argument when he returns from the balcony with his converts, and his defeat will remind the brethren of their oaths.


 * Who is this who stands on my left hand? Saddoc! Is there but one Essene left true to his oath?


 * There is thyself—


 * Count me not, for I am already among the gone.

(going up the stage and returning a moment after): Manahem, Shallum, Eliakim, relinquish themselves like women. Paul persuades them, but I will crouch and cast a net. Hearken to me. Paul, why lingerest thou on the balcony?

(Paul and the Essenes come down the stage.)

Hazael our President, comes to meet thee.


 * I beg thy forgiveness for my delay; my great age compels me to rest long after the brethren are about. But tidings have reached me of thy escape from the Jews and of thy Gospel, which since thou camest among us thou hast not ceased to preach.


 * God forbid that I should withhold the truth from any who are eager to hear it. God led me hither; I knew not the cavern, nor the path.


 * But if it was God that led thee, why did he bring thee round by Jericho instead of straight to us?


 * The ways of God are unsearchable. He led me round by Jericho and through the waters of Jordan to the brook Kerith as he has led me always since my vision on the road to Damascus, through many countries that ye know of, Thessalonica, Macedonia, Bithynia, Phrygia, Greece, through a hundred cities, founding churches everywhere I went and everywhere persecuted by the Jews. On my first mission I was stoned and left for dead at Lystra by certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, and fled into Derbe, and at Philippi I was beaten and cast into prison. But my life has never been my concern but God's, a thing upheld by God for so many years that I shun danger no longer, and now it has even come to me that I am lonely in security, withdrawn from God in houses, and safe in his arms when clinging to a spar in the dark sea. God and our