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CHAPTER VI
WHEN Joel went out on the streets next morning, although it was quite early, he saw a disappointed crowd coming up from the direction of Simon's house on the lake shore.
"Where have all these people been?" he asked of the baker's boy, whom he ran against at the first corner.
The boy stopped whistling, and rested his basket of freshly baked bread against his knee, as he answered: —
"They were looking for the Rabbi who healed so many people last night. Say! do you know," he added quickly, as if the news were too good to keep, "he healed my mother last night. You cannot think how different it seems at home, to have her going about strong and well like she used to be."
Joel's eyes brightened. "Do you think he'll do anything for me, if I go to him now?" he asked wistfully. "Do you suppose he could straighten out such a crooked back as mine? Look how much shorter this leg is than the other. Oh, do you think he could make them all right?"
The boy gave him a critical survey, and then answered, emphatically, "Yes! It really does not look like it would be as hard to straighten you as old Jeremy, the tailor's father. He was twisted all out of shape, you know. Well, I'll declare! There he goes now!"
Joel looked across the street. The wrinkled face of the old basket-weaver was a familiar sight in the market; but Joel could hardly recognize the once crippled form, now restored to its original shapeliness.
"I am going right now," he declared, starting to run in his excitement. "I can't wait another minute."
"But he's gone!" the boy called after him. "That's why the people are all coming back."
Joel sat down suddenly on a ledge projecting from the stone-wall. "Gone!" he echoed drearily. It was as if he had been starving, and the life-giving food held to his famished lips had been suddenly snatched away. Both his heart and his feet felt like lead when he got up after awhile, and dragged himself slowly along to the carpenter's house.
It was such a bitter disappointment to be so near the touch of healing, and then to miss it altogether.
No cheerful tap of the hammer greeted him. The idle tools lay on the deserted workbench. "Disappointed again!" he thought. Then the doves cooed, and he caught a glimpse of Ruth's fair hair down among the garden lilies.
"Where is your father, little one?" he called.
"Gone away wiv 'e good man 'at makes everybody well," she answered. Then she came skipping down the path to stand close beside him, and say confidentially: "I saw Him – 'e good man – going by to Simon's house. I peeped out 'tween 'e wose-vines, and He looked wite into my eyes wiv His eyes, and I couldn't help loving Him!"
Joel looked into the beautiful baby face, thinking what a picture it must have made, as framed in roses it smiled out on the Tender-hearted One, going on His mission of help and healing.
With her little hand in his, she led him back to hope, for she took him to her mother, who comforted him with the assurance that Phineas expected to be home soon, and doubtless his friend would be with him.
So there came another time to work by himself and dream of the hour surely dawning. And the dreams were doubly sweet now; for side by side with his hope of revenge, was the belief in his possible cure.
They heard only once from the absent ones. Word came back that a leper had been healed. Joel heard it first, down at the custom-house. He had gotten into the way of strolling down in that direction after his work was done; for here the many trading-vessels from across the lake, or those that shipped from Capernaum, had to stop and pay duty. Here, too, the great road of Eastern commerce passed which led from Damascus to the harbors of the West. So here he would find a constant stream of travellers, bringing the latest news from the outside world.
The boy did not know, as he limped up and down the water's edge, longing for some word from his absent friends, that near by was one who watched almost as eagerly as himself.
It was Levi-Matthew, one of the officials, sitting in the seat of custom. Sprung from the same priestly tribe as Joel, he had sunk so low, in accepting the office of tax-gatherer, that the righteous Laban would not have touched him so much as with the tip of his sandal.
"Bears and lions," said a proverb, "might be the fiercest wild beasts in the forests; but publicans and informers were the worst in cities."
One could not bear witness in the courts, and the disgrace extended to the whole family. They were even classed with robbers and murderers. No doubt there was deep cause for such a feeling; as a class they were unscrupulous and unjust. There might have been good ones among their number, but the company they kept condemned them to the scorn of high and low.
When a Jew hates, or a Jew scorns, be sure it is thoroughly done; there is no half-way course for his intense nature to take.
So this son of Levi, sitting in the seat of custom, and this son of Levi strolling past him, were, socially, as far apart as the east is from the west, – as unlike as thorn and blossom on the same tribal stem.
Matthew knew all the fishermen and ship-owners that thronged the busy beach in front of him. The sons of Jonah and of Zebedee passed him daily; and he must have wondered when he saw them throw down their nets and leave everything to follow a stranger.
He must have wondered also at the reports on every tongue, and the sights he had seen himself of miraculous healing. But while strangely drawn towards this new teacher from Nazareth, it could have been with no thought that the hand and the voice were for him. He was a publican, and how could they reach to such depths?
A caravan had just stopped. The pack-animals were being unloaded, bales and packages opened, private letters pried into. The insolent officials were tossing things right and left, as they made a list of the taxable goods.
Joel was watching them with as much interest as if he had not witnessed such scenes dozens of times before, till he noticed a group gathering around one of the drivers. He was telling what he had seen on his way to Capernaum. Several noisy companions kept interrupting him to bear witness to the truth of his statements.
"And he who but a moment before had been the most miserable of lepers stood up before us all, cleansed of his leprosy. His skin was soft and fair as a child's, and his features were restored to him," said the driver.
Joel and Levi-Matthew stood side by side. At another time the boy might have drawn his clothes away to keep from brushing against the despised tax-gatherer. But he never noticed now that their elbows touched.
When he had heard all there was to be told, he limped away to carry the news to Abigail. To know that others were being cured daily made him all the more impatient for the return of this friend of Phineas.
The publican turned again to his pen and his account-book. He, too, looked forward with a burning heart to the return of the Nazarene, unknowing why he did so.
At last Joel heard of the return, in a very unexpected way. There were guests in the house of Laban again. One of the rabbis who had been there before, and a scribe from Jerusalem. Now there were longer conferences in the upper chamber, and graver shakings of the head, over this false prophet whose fame was spreading wider.
The miracle of healing the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, when he had gone down to Jerusalem to one of the many feasts, had stirred Judea to its farthest borders. So these two men had been sent to investigate.
On the very afternoon of their arrival, a report flew through the streets that the Rabbi Jesus was once more in the town. Their host led them with all the haste their dignity would allow, to the house where He was said to be preaching. The common people fell back when they saw them, and allowed them to pass into the centre of the throng.
The Rabbi stood in the doorway, so that both those in the house and without could distinctly hear Him. The scribe had never seen Him before, and in spite of his deep-seated prejudice could not help admiring the man whom he had come prepared to despise. It was no wild fanatic who stood before him, no noisy debater whose fiery eloquence would be likely to excite and inflame His hearers.
He saw a man of gentlest dignity; truth looked out from the depths of His calm eyes. Every word, every gesture, carried with it the conviction that He who spoke taught with God-given authority.
The scribe began to grow uneasy as he listened, carried along by the earnest tones of the speaker.
There was a great commotion on the edge of the crowd, as some one tried to push through to the centre.
"Stand back! Go away!" demanded angry voices.
The scribe was a tall man, and by stretching a little, managed to see over the heads of the others. Four men, bearing a helpless paralytic, were trying to carry him through the throngs; but they would not make room for this interruption.
After vainly hunting for some opening through which they might press, the men mounted the steep, narrow staircase on the outside of the building, and drew the man up, hammock and all, to the flat roof on which they stood.
There was a sound of scraping and scratching as they broke away the brush and mortar that formed the frail covering of the roof. Then the people in the room below saw slowly coming down upon them between the rafters, this man whom no obstacle could keep back from the Great Physician.
But the paralyzed hands could not lift themselves in supplication; the helpless tongue could frame no word of pleading, – only the eyes of the sick man could look up into the pitying face bent over him, and implore a blessing.
The scribe leaned forward, confidently expecting to hear the man bidden to arise. To his surprise and horror, the words he heard were: "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee!"
He looked at Laban and his companion, and the three exchanged meaning glances. When they looked again at the speaker, His eyes seemed to read their inmost thoughts.
"Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" He asked, with startling distinctness. "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins," here He turned to the helpless form lying at His feet, "I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way unto thine house."
The man bounded to his feet, and picking up the heavy rug on which he had been lying, went running and leaping out of their midst.
Without a word, Laban and his two guests drew their clothes carefully around them, and picked their way through the crowd. Phineas, who stood at the gate, gave them a respectful greeting. Laban only turned his eyes away with a scowl, and passed coldly on.
"The man is a liar and a blasphemer!" exclaimed the scribe, as they sat once more in the privacy of Laban's garden.
"Only God can forgive sins!" added his companion. "This paralytic should have taken a sin-offering to the priest. For only by the blood of sacrifice can one hope to obtain pardon."
"Still He healed him," spoke up the scribe, musingly.
"Only through the power of Satan!" interrupted Laban. "When He says He can forgive sins, He blasphemes."
The other Pharisee leaned forward to say, in an impressive whisper: "Then you know the Law on that point. He should be stoned to death, His body hung on a tree, and then buried with shame!"
It was not long after that Joel, just back from a trip to Tiberias in a little sailing-boat, came into the garden. He had been away since early morning, so had heard nothing of what had just occurred; he had had good luck in disposing of his wares, and was feeling unusually cheerful. Hearing voices in the corner of the garden, he was about to pass out again, when his uncle called him sternly to come to him at once.
Surprised at the command, he obeyed, and was questioned and cross-questioned by all three. It was very little he could tell them about his friend's plans; but he acknowledged proudly that Phineas had always known this famous man from Nazareth, even in childhood, and was one of his most devoted followers.
"This man Phineas is a traitor to the faith!" roared Laban. "He is a dangerous man, and in league with these fellows to do great evil to our nation."
The scribe and the rabbi nodded approvingly.
"Hear me, now!" he cried, sternly. "Never again are you to set foot over his threshold, or have any communication whatsoever with him or his associates. I make no idle threat; if you disobey me in this, you will have cause to wish you had never been born. You may leave us now!"
Too surprised and frightened to say a word, the child slipped away. To give up his daily visit to the carpenter's house, was to give up all that made his life tolerable; while to be denied even speaking to his associates, meant to abandon all hope of cure.
But he dared not rebel; obedience to those in authority was too thoroughly taught in those days to be lightly disregarded. But his uncle seemed to fear that his harsh command would be eluded in some way, and kept such a strict watch over him, that he rarely got beyond the borders of the garden by himself.
One day he was all alone in the grape-arbor, looking out into the streets that he longed to be in, since their freedom had been denied him.
A little girl passed, carrying one child in her arms, and talking to another who clung to her skirts. It was Jerusha.
Joel threw a green grape at her to attract her attention, and then beckoned her mysteriously to come nearer. She set the baby on the ground, and gave him her bracelet to play with, while she listened to a whispered account of his wrongs through the latticed arbor.
"It's a shame!" she declared indignantly. "I'll go right down to the carpenter's house and tell them why you cannot go there any more. And I'll keep watch on all that happens, and let you know. I go past here every day, and if I have any news, I'll toss a pebble over the wall and cluck like a hen. Then if nobody is watching, you can come to this hole in the arbor again."
The next day, as Joel was going in great haste to the baker's, whither his aunt had sent him, he heard some one behind him calling him to wait. In another moment Jerusha was in speaking distance, nearly bent double with the weight of her little brother, whom she was carrying as usual.
"There!" she said, with a puff of relief, as she put him on his own feet. "Wait till I get my breath! It's no easy thing to carry such a load and run at the same time! How did you get out?"
"There was an errand to be done, and no one else to do it," answered Joel, "so Aunt sent me."
"Oh, I've got such news for you!" she exclaimed. "Guess what has happened! Your Rabbi Jesus has asked Levi-Matthew to be one of His followers, and go around with Him wherever He goes. Think of it! One of those horrid tax-gatherers! He settled his accounts and gave up his position in the custom-house yesterday. And he is getting ready for a great feast. I heard the butcher and the wine-dealer both telling about the big orders he had given them.
"All the publicans and low common people that are his friends are invited. Yes, and so is your friend the carpenter. Think of that, now! He is going to sit down and eat with such people! Of course respectable folks will never have anything more to do with him after that! I guess your uncle was right about him, after all!"
Both the little girl's face and manner expressed intense disgust.
Joel was shocked. "Oh, are you sure?" he cried. "You certainly must be mistaken! It cannot be so!"
"I guess I know what I see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears!" she retorted, angrily. "My father says they are a bad lot. People that go with publicans are just as unclean themselves. If you know so much more than everybody else, I'll not trouble myself to run after you with any more news. Mistaken, indeed!"
With her head held high, and her nose scornfully turned up, she jerked her little brother past him, and went quickly around the corner of the street.
The indignation of some of the rabbis knew no bounds. "It has turned out just as I predicted," said the scribe to Laban, at supper. "They are nothing but a set of gluttons and wine-bibbers!"
There was nothing else talked of during the entire meal. How Joel's blood boiled as he listened to their conversation! The food seemed to choke him. As they applied one coarse epithet after another to his friend Phineas, all the kindness and care this man had ever given him seemed to rise up before him. But when they turned on the Nazarene, all the stories Joel had heard in the carpenter's house of His gentle sinless childhood, all the tokens he had seen himself of His pure unselfish manhood, seemed to cry out against such gross injustice.
It was no light thing for a child to contradict the doctors of the Law, and, in a case of this kind, little less than a crime to take the stand Joel did.
But the memory of two faces gave him courage: that of Phineas as it had looked on him through all those busy happy hours in the carpenter's home; the other face he had seen but once, that day of healing in the synagogue, – who, having once looked into the purity of those eyes, the infinite tenderness of that face, could sit calmly by and raise no voice against the calumny of his enemies?
The little cripple was white to the lips, and he trembled from head to foot as he stood up to speak.
The scribe lifted up both hands, and turned to Laban with a meaning shrug of the shoulders. "To think of finding such heresy in your own household!" he exclaimed. "Among your own children!"
"He is no child of mine!" retorted Laban. "Nor shall he stay among them!" Then he turned to Joel.
"Boy, take back every word you have just uttered! Swear you will renounce this man, – this son of perdition, – and never have aught to say well of Him again!"
Joel looked around the table, at each face that shone out pale and excited in the yellow lamplight. His eyes were dilated with fear; his heart thumped so in the awful pause that followed, that he thought everybody else must hear it.
"I cannot!" he said hoarsely. "Oh, I cannot!"
"Then take yourself out of my sight forever. The doors of this house shall never open for you again!"
There was a storm of abuse from the angry man at this open defiance of his authority. With these two cold, stern men to nod approval at his zealousness, he went to greater lengths than he might otherwise have done.
With one more frightened glance around the table, the child hurried out of the room. The door into the street creaked after him, and Joel limped out into the night, with his uncle's curse ringing in his ears.
CHAPTER VII
PHINEAS, going along the beach that night, in the early moonlight, towards his home, saw a little figure crouched in the shadow of a low building beside the wharf. It was shaking with violent sobs. He went up to the child, and took its hands down from its wet face, with a comforting expression of pity. Then he started back in surprise. It was Joel!
"Why, my child! My poor child!" he exclaimed, putting his arm around the trembling, misshapen form. "What is the meaning of all this?"
"Uncle Laban has driven me away from home!" sobbed the boy. "He was angry because you and Rabbi Jesus were invited to Levi-Matthew's feast. He says I have denied the faith, and am worse than an infidel. He says I am fit only to be cast out with the dogs and publicans! – and – and – " he ended with a wail. "Oh, he sent me away with his curse!"
Phineas drew him closer, and stroked the head on his shoulder in pitying silence.
"Fatherless and motherless and lame!" the boy sobbed bitterly. "And now, a homeless outcast, blighted by a curse, I have been sitting here with my feet in the dark water, thinking how easy it would be to slip down into it and forget; but, Rabbi Phineas, that face will not let me, – that face of your friend, – I keep seeing it all the time!"
Phineas gathered the boy so close in his arms that Joel could feel his strong, even heart-beats.
"My child," he said solemnly, "call me no more, Rabbi! Henceforth, it is to be father Phineas. You shall be to me as my own son!"
"But the curse!" sobbed Joel. "The curse that is set upon me! It will blight you too!"
"Nay," was the quiet answer; "for it is written, 'As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse, causeless, shall not come.'"
But the boy still shook as with a chill. His face and hands were burning hot.
"Come!" said Phineas. He picked him up in his strong arms, and carried him down the beach to Abigail's motherly care and comforting.
"He will be a long time getting over the shock of this," she said to her husband, when he was at last soothed to sleep.
"Ah, loyal little heart!" he answered, "he has suffered much for the sake of his friendship with us!"
Poor little storm-tossed bark! In the days that followed he had reason to bless the boisterous winds, that blew him to such a safe and happy harbor!
Over on the horns of Mount Hattin, the spring morning began to shine. The light crept slowly down the side of the old mountain, till it fell on a little group of men talking earnestly together. It was the Preacher of Galilee, who had just chosen twelve men from among those who followed Him to help Him in His ministry.
They gathered around Him in the fresh mountain dawn, as He pictured the life in store for them. Strange they did not quail before it, and turn back disheartened. Nay, not strange! For in the weeks they had been with Him, they had learned to love Him so, that His "follow me," that drew them from the toll-gate and fishing-boat, was stronger than ties of home and kindred.
Just about this time, Phineas and Joel were starting out from Capernaum to the mountain. Hundreds of people were already on the way; people who had come from all parts of Judea, and beyond the Jordan. Clouds of dust rose above the highway as the travellers trudged along.
Joel was obliged to walk slowly, so that by the time they reached the plain below, a great multitude had gathered.
"Let's get close," he whispered. He had heard that those who barely touched the garments of the strange Rabbi were made whole, and it was with the hope that he might steal up and touch Him unobserved that he had begged Phineas to take him on such a long, painful walk.
"There is too great a crowd, now," answered Phineas. "Let us rest here awhile, and listen. Let me lift you up on this big rock, so that you can see. 'Sh! He is speaking!"
Joel looked up, and, for the second time in his life, listened to words that thrilled him like a trumpet call, – words that through eighteen hundred years have not ceased to vibrate; with what mighty power they must have fallen when, for the first time, they broke the morning stillness of those mountain wilds!
Joel forgot the press of people about him, forgot even where he was, as sentence after sentence seemed to lift him out of himself, till he could catch glimpses of lofty living such as he had never even dreamed of before.
Round by round, he seemed to be carried up some high ladder of thought by that voice, away from all that was common and low and earthly, to a summit of infinite love and light.
Still the voice led on, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'"
Joel started so violently at hearing his own familiar motto, that he nearly lost his balance on the rock.
"But I say unto you that you resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also… Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."
Poor little Joel, it was a hard doctrine for him to accept! How could he give up his hope of revenge, when it had grown with his growth till it had come to be as dear as life itself?
He heard little of the rest of the sermon, for through it all the words kept echoing, "Bless them that curse you! Do good to them that hate you! Pray for them which despitefully use you!"
"Oh, I can't! I can't!" he groaned inwardly.
"I have found a chance for you to ride home," said Phineas, when the sermon was over, and the people began to file down the narrow mountain paths. "But there will be time for you to go to Him first, for healing. You have only to ask, you know."
Joel took an eager step forward, and then shrank back guiltily. "Not now," he murmured, "some other time." He could not look into those clear eyes and ask a blessing, when he knew his heart was black with hate.
After all his weeks of waiting the opportunity had come; but he dared not let the Sinless One look into his soul.
Phineas began an exclamation of surprise, but was interrupted by some one asking him a question. Joel took advantage of this to climb up behind the man who had offered him a ride. All the way home he weighed the two desires in his mind, – the hope of healing, and the hope of revenge.
By the time the two guardian fig-trees were in sight, he had decided. He would rather go helpless and halting through life than give up his cherished purpose.
But there was no sleep for him that night, after he had gone up to his little chamber on the roof. He seemed to see that pleading face on the mountain-side; it came to him again and again, with the words, "Bless them that curse you! Pray for them that despitefully use you!"
All night he fought against yielding to it. Time and again he turned over on his bed, and closed his eyes; but it would not let him alone.
He thought of Jacob wrestling with the angel till day-break, and knew in his heart that the sweet spirit of forgiveness striving with his selfish nature was some heavenly impulse from another world.
At last when the cock-crowing commenced at dawn, and the stars were beginning to fade, he drew up his crooked little body, and knelt with his face to the kindling east.
"Father in heaven," he prayed softly, "bless mine enemy Rehum, and forgive all my sins, – fully and freely as I now forgive the wrong he has done to me."
A feeling of light-heartedness and peace, such as he had never known before, stole over him. He could not settle himself to sleep, though worn out with his night's long vigil.
Hastily slipping on his clothes, he tiptoed down the stairs, and limped, bare-headed, down to the beach. The lake shimmered and glowed under the faint rose and gray of the sky like a deep opal. The early breeze blew the hair back from his pale face with a refreshing coolness.
It seemed to him the world had never looked one half so beautiful before, as he stood there.
A firm tread on the gravel made him turn partly around. A man was coming up the beach; it was the friend of Phineas. As if drawn by some uncontrollable impulse, Joel started to meet Him, an unspoken prayer in his pleading little face.
Not a word was said. For one little instant Joel stood there by the shining sea, his hand held close in the loving hand of the world's Redeemer. For one little instant he looked up into His face; then the man passed on.
Joel covered his face with his hands, seeming to hear the still small voice that spoke to the prophet out of the whirlwind.
"He is the Christ!" he whispered reverently, – "He is the Christ!"
In his exalted feeling all thought of a cure had left him; but as he walked on down the beach, he noticed that he no longer limped. He was moving along with strong, quick strides. He shook himself and threw back his shoulders; there was no pain in the movement. He passed his hands over his back and down his limbs.
Oh, he was straight and strong and sinewy! He seemed a stranger to himself, as running and leaping, then stopping to look down and feel his limbs again, he ran madly on.
Suddenly he cast his garments aside and dived into the lake. Before his injury, he had been able to swim like a fish, now he reached out with long powerful strokes that sent him darting through the cold water with a wonderful sense of exhilaration.
Then he dressed again, and went on running and leaping and climbing till he was exhausted, and his first wild delirious joy began to subside into a deep quiet thankfulness. Then he went home, radiant in the happiness of his new-found cure.
But more than the mystery of the miracle, more than the joy of the healing, was the remembrance of that moment, that one little moment, when he felt the clasp of the Master's hand, and seemed wrapped about with the boundless love of God.
From that moment, he lived but to serve and to follow Him.
