ABIGAIL sat just inside the door, turning the noisy hand-mill that
ground out the next day's supply of flour. The rough mill-stones grated
so harshly on each other that she did not hear the steps coming up the
path. A shadow falling across the door-way made her look up.
"You are home early, my Phineas," she said, with a smile. "Well, I shall
soon have your supper ready. Joel has gone to the market for some honey
and--"
"Nay! I have little wish to eat," he interrupted, "but I have much to
say to you. Come! the work can wait."
Abigail put the mill aside, and brushing the flour from her hands, sat
down on the step beside him, wondering much at his troubled face.
He plunged into his subject abruptly. "The Master is soon going away,"
he said, "that those in the uttermost parts of Galilee may be taught of
Him. And He would fain have others beside the twelve He has chosen to go
with Him on His journey."
"And you wish to go too?" she questioned, as he paused.
"Yes! How can I do otherwise? And yet how can I leave you and the little
ones alone in these troubled times? You cannot think how great the
danger is. Remember how many horrors we have lately heard. The whole
country is a smouldering volcano, ready to burst into an eruption at any
moment. A leader has only to arise, and all Israel will take up arms
against the powers that trample us under foot."
"Is not this prophet, Jesus, He who is to save Israel?" asked Abigail.
"Is He not even now making ready to establish His kingdom?"
"I do not understand Him at all!" said Phineas, sadly. "He does talk of
a kingdom in which we are all to have a part; but He never seems to be
working to establish it. He spends all His time in healing diseases and
forgiving penitent sinners, and telling us to love our neighbors.
"Then, again, why should He go down to the beach, and choose for His
confidential friends just simple fishermen. They have neither influence
nor money. As for the choice of that publican Levi-Matthew, it has
brought disgrace on the whole movement. He does not seem to know how to
sway the popular feeling. I believe He might have had the support of the
foremost men of the nation, if He had approached them differently.
"He shocks them by setting aside laws they would lay down their lives
rather than violate. He associates with those they consider unclean; and
all His miracles cannot make them forget how boldly He has rebuked them
for hypocrisy and unrighteousness. They never will come to His support
now; and I do not see how a new government can be formed without their
help."
Abigail laid her hand on his, her dark eyes glowing with intense
earnestness, as she answered: "What need is there of armies and human
hands to help?
"Where were the hosts of Pharaoh when our fathers passed through the Red
Sea? Was there bloodshed and fighting there?
"Who battled for us when the walls of Jericho fell down? Whose hand
smote the Assyrians at Sennacherib? Is the Lord's arm shortened that He
cannot save?
"Why may not His prophet speak peace to Jerusalem as easily as He did
the other night to the stormy sea? Why may not His power be multiplied
even as the loaves and fishes?
"Why may not the sins and backslidings of the people be healed as well
as Joel's lameness; or the glory of the nation be quickened into a new
life, as speedily as He raised the daughter of Jairus?
"Isaiah called Him the Prince of Peace. What are all these lessons, if
not to teach us that the purposes of God do not depend on human hands to
work out their fulfilment?"
Her low voice thrilled him with its inspiring questions, and he looked
down into her rapt face with a feeling of awe.
"Abigail," he said softly, "'my source of joy,'--you are rightly named.
You have led me out of the doubts that have been my daily torment. I see
now, why He never incites us to rebel against the yoke of Caesar. In the
fulness of time He will free us with a breath.
"How strange it should have fallen to my lot to have been His playmate
and companion. My wonder is not that He is the Messiah; but that I
should have called Him friend, all these years, unknowing."
"How long do you expect to be away?" she asked, after a pause, suddenly
returning to the first subject.
"Several months, perhaps. There is no telling what insurrections and
riots may arise, all through this part of the country. Since the murder
of John Baptist, Herod has come back to his court in Tiberias. I dislike
to leave you here alone."
Abigail, too, looked grave, and neither spoke for a little while. "I
have it!" she exclaimed at length, with a pleased light in her eyes. "I
have often wished I could make a long visit in the home of my girlhood.
The few days I have spent in my father's house, those few times I have
gone with you to the feasts, have been so short and unsatisfactory. Can
I not take Joel and the children to Bethany? Neither father nor mother
has ever seen little Ruth, and we could be so safe and happy there till
your return."
"Why did I not come to you before with my worries?" asked Phineas. "How
easily you make the crooked places straight!"
Just then the children came running back from the market. Abigail went
into the house with the provisions they had brought, leaving their
father to tell them of the coming separation and the long journey they
had planned.
A week later, Phineas stood at the city gate, watching a little company
file southward down the highway. He had hired two strong,
gayly-caparisoned mules from the owner of the caravan. Abigail rode on
one, holding little Ruth in her arms; Joel mounted the other, with Jesse
clinging close behind him.
Abigail, thinking of the joyful welcome awaiting her in her old home,
and the children happy in the novelty of the journey, set out gayly.
But Phineas, thinking of the dangers by the way, and filled with many
forebodings, watched their departure with a heavy heart.
At the top of a little rise in the road, they turned to look back and
wave their hands. In a moment more they were out of sight. Then Phineas,
grasping his staff more firmly, turned away, and started on foot in the
other direction, to follow to the world's end, if need be, the friend
who had gone on before.
It was in the midst of the barley harvest. Jesse had never been in the
country before. For the first time, Nature spread for him her great
picture-book of field and forest and vineyard, while Abigail read to him
the stories.
First on one side of the road, then the other, she pointed out some spot
and told its history.
Here was Dothan, where Joseph went out to see his brothers, dressed in
his coat of many colors. There was Mount Gilboa, where the arrows of the
Philistines wounded Saul, and he fell on his own sword and killed
himself. Shiloh, where Hannah brought little Samuel to give him to the
Lord; where the Prophet Eli, so old that his eyes were too dim to see,
sat by the gate waiting for news from the army, and when word was
brought back that his two sons were dead, and the Ark of the Covenant
taken, here it was that he fell backward from his seat, and his neck was
broken.
All these she told, and many more. Then she pointed to the gleaners in
the fields, and told the children to notice how carefully Israel still
kept the commandment given so many centuries before: "When ye reap the
harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy
field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou
shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of
thy vineyard, thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger."
At Jacob's well, where they stopped to rest, Joel lifted Jesse up, and
let him look over the curb. The child almost lost his balance in
astonishment, when his own wondering little face looked up at him from
the deep well. He backed away from it quickly, and looked carefully into
the cup of water Joel handed him, for more than a minute, before he
ventured to drink.
The home to which Abigail was going was a wealthy one. Her father,
Reuben, was a goldsmith, and for years had been known in Jerusalem not
only for the beautifully wrought ornaments and precious stones that he
sold in his shop near the Temple, but for his rich gifts to the poor.
"Reuben the Charitable," he was called, and few better deserved the
name. His business took him every day to the city; but his home was in
the little village of Bethany, two miles away. It was one of the largest
in Bethany, and seemed like a palace to the children, when compared to
the humble little home in Capernaum.
Joel only looked around with admiring eyes; but Jesse walked about,
laying curious little fingers on everything he passed. The bright
oriental curtains, the soft cushions and the costly hangings, he
smoothed and patted. Even the silver candlesticks and the jewelled cups
on the side table were picked up and examined, when his mother happened
to have her back turned.
[Illustration: "'WE TALKED LATE'"]
There were no pictures in the house; the Law forbade. But there were
several mirrors of bright polished metal, and Jesse never tired of
watching his own reflection in them.
Ruth stayed close beside her mother. "She is a ray of God's own
sunshine," said her grandmother, as she took her in her arms for the
first time. The child, usually afraid of strangers, saw in Rebecca's
face a look so like her mother's that she patted the wrinkled cheeks
with her soft fingers. From that moment her grandmother was her devoted
slave.
Jesse was not long in finding the place he held in his grandfather's
heart. The old man, whose sons had all died years before, seemed to
centre all his hopes on this son of his only daughter. He kept Jesse
with him as much as possible; his happiest hours were when he had the
child on his knee, teaching him the prayers and precepts and proverbs
that he knew would be a lamp to his feet in later years.
"Nay! do not punish the child!" he said, one morning when Jesse had been
guilty of some disobedience. Abigail went on stripping the leaves
from an almond switch she just had broken off.
"Why, father," she said, with a smile, "I have often seen you punish my
brothers for such disobedience, and have as often heard you say that one
of Solomon's wisest sayings is, 'Chasten thy son while there is hope,
and let not thy soul spare for his crying.' Jesse misses his father's
firm rule, and is getting sadly spoiled."
"That is all true, my daughter," he acknowledged; "still I shall not
stay here to witness his punishment."
Abigail used the switch as she had intended. The boy had overheard the
conversation, and the cries that reached his grandfather as he rode off
to the city were unusually loud and appealing. They may have had
something to do with the package the good man carried home that
night,--cakes and figs and a gay little turban more befitting a young
prince than the son of a carpenter.
"Who lives across the street?" asked Joel, the morning after their
arrival.
"Two old friends of mine," answered Abigail. "They came to see me last
night as soon as they heard I had arrived. You children were all asleep.
We talked late, for they wanted to hear all I could tell them of Rabbi
Jesus. He was here last year, and Martha said He and her brother Lazarus
became fast friends. Ah, there is Lazarus now!--that young man just
coming out of the house. He is a scribe, and goes up to write in one of
the rooms of the Temple nearly every day.
"Mary says some of the copies of the Scriptures he has made are the most
beautifully written that she has ever seen."
"See!" exclaimed Joel, "he has dropped one of the rolls of parchment he
was carrying, and does not know it. I'll run after him with it."
He was hardly yet accustomed to the delight of being so fleet of foot;
no halting step now to hinder him. He almost felt as if he were flying,
and was by the young man's side nearly as soon as he had started.
"Ah, you are the guest of my good neighbor, Reuben," Lazarus said, after
thanking him courteously. "Are you not the lad whose lameness has just
been healed by my best friend? My sisters were telling me of it. It must
be a strange experience to suddenly find yourself changed from a
helpless cripple to such a strong, straight lad as you are now. How did
it make you feel?"
"Oh, I can never begin to tell you, Rabbi Lazarus," answered Joel. "I
did not even think of it that moment when He held my hand in His. I only
thought how much I loved Him. I had been starving before, but that
moment He took the place of everything,--father, mother, the home love I
had missed,--and more than that, the love of God seemed to come down and
fold me so close and safe, that I knew He was the Messiah. I did not
even notice that I was no longer lame, until I was far down the beach.
Oh, you do not know how I wanted to follow Him! If I could only have
gone with Him instead of coming here!"
"Yes, my boy, I know!" answered the young man, gently; "for I, too, love
Him."
This strong bond of sympathy between the two made them feel as if they
had known each other always.
"Come walk with me a little way," said Lazarus. "I am going up to
Jerusalem to the Temple. Or rather, would you not like to come all the
way? I have only to carry these rolls to one of the priests, then I will
be at liberty to show you some of the strange sights in the city."
Joel ran back for permission. Only stopping to wind his white linen
turban around his head, he soon regained his new-found friend.
His recollection of Jerusalem was a very dim, confused one. Time and
time again he had heard pilgrims returning from the feasts trying to
describe their feelings when they had come in sight of the Holy City.
Now as they turned with the road, the view that rose before him made him
feel how tame their descriptions had been.
The morning sun shone down on the white marble walls of the Temple and
the gold that glittered on the courts, as they rose one above the other;
tower and turret and pinnacle shot back a dazzling light.
It did not seem possible to Joel that human hands could have wrought
such magnificence. He caught his breath, and uttered an exclamation of
astonishment.
Lazarus smiled at his pleasure. "Come," he said, "it is still more
beautiful inside."
They went very slowly through Solomon's Porch, for every one seemed to
know the young man, and many stopped to speak to him. Then they crossed
the Court of the Gentiles. It seemed like a market-place; for cages of
doves were kept there for sale, and lambs, calves, and oxen bleated and
lowed in their stalls till Joel could scarcely hear what his friend was
saying, as they pushed their way through the crowd, and stood before the
Gate Beautiful that led into the Court of the Women.
Here Lazarus left Joel for a few moments, while he went to give the
rolls to the priest for whom he had copied them.
Joel looked around. Then for the first time since his healing, he
wondered if it would be possible for him to ever take his place among
the Levites, or become a priest as he had been destined.
While he wondered, Lazarus came back and led him into the next court.
Here he could look up and see the Holy Place, over which was trained a
golden vine, with clusters of grapes as large as a man's body, all of
purest gold. Beyond that he knew was a heavy veil of Babylonian
tapestry, hyacinth and scarlet and purple, that veiled in awful darkness
the Holy of Holies.
As he stood there thinking of the tinkling bells, the silver trumpets,
the clouds of incense, and the mighty songs, a great longing came over
him to be one of those white-robed priests, serving daily in the
Temple.
But with the wish came the recollection of a quiet hillside, where only
bird-calls and whirr of wings stirred the stillness; where a breeze from
the sparkling lake blew softly through the grass, and one Voice only was
heard, proclaiming its glad new gospel under the open sky.
"No," he thought to himself; "I'd rather be with Him than wear the High
Priest's mitre."
It was almost sundown when they found themselves on the road homeward.
They had visited place after place of interest.
Lazarus found the boy an entertaining companion, and the friendship
begun that day grew deep and lasting.