IT was so much later than he had intended, when Joel awoke next morning,
that without stopping for anything to eat, he hurried out of the city,
and took the road by which the Master had made such a triumphal entry a
few days before.
Faded branches of palms still lay scattered by the wayside, thickly
covered with dust.
All unconscious of what had happened the night before, and what was even
at that very moment taking place, Joel trudged on to Bethany at a rapid
pace, light-hearted and happy.
For six days he had been among enthusiastic Galileans who firmly
believed that before the end of Passover week they should see the
overthrow of Rome, and all nations lying at the feet of a Jewish king.
How long they had dreamed of this hour!
He turned to look back at the city. The white and gold of the Temple
dazzled his eyes, as it threw back the rays of the morning sun. He
thought of himself as he had stood that day on the roof of the
carpenter's house, stretching out longing arms to this holy place, and
calling down curses on the head of his enemy, Rehum.
Could he be the same boy? It seemed to him now that that poor, crippled
body, that bitter hatred, that burning thirst for revenge, must have
belonged to some one else, he felt so well, so strong, so full of love
to God and all mankind.
A little broken-winged sparrow fluttered feebly under a hedgerow. He
stopped to gather a handful of ripe berries for it, and even retraced
his steps to a tiny spring he had noticed farther back, to bring it
water in the hollow of a smooth stone.
He did not find Rehum at the place where Buz had told him to inquire.
His father had taken him to his home, somewhere in Samaria.
Joel turned back, tired and disappointed. He was glad to lie down, when
he reached Bethany again, and rest awhile. A peculiar darkness began to
settle down over the earth. Joel was perplexed and frightened; he knew
it could not be an eclipse, for it was the time of the full moon.
Finally he started back to Jerusalem, although it was like travelling in
the night, for the darkness had deepened and deepened for nearly three
hours, and the mysterious gloom made him long to be with his friends.
His first thought was to find the Master, and he naturally turned toward
the Temple. Just as he started across the Porch of Solomon, the darkness
was lifted, and everything seemed to dance before his eyes. He had never
experienced an earthquake shock before, but he felt sure that this was
one.
He braced himself against one of the pillars. How the massive columns
quivered! How the hot air throbbed! The darkness had been awful, but
this was doubly terrifying.
The earth had scarcely stopped trembling, when an old white-bearded
priest ran across the Court of the Gentiles; his wrinkled hands, raised
above his head, shook as with palsy. The scream that he uttered seemed
to transfix Joel with horror.
"_The veil of the Temple is rent in twain!_" he cried,--"_The veil of
the Temple is rent in twain!_"
Then with a convulsive shudder he fell forward on his face. Joel's knees
shook. The darkness, the earthquake, and now this mighty force that had
laid bare the Holy of Holies, filled him with an undefined dread.
He ran past the prostrate priest into the inner court, and saw for
himself. There hung the heavy curtain of Babylonian tapestry, in all its
glory of hyacinth and scarlet and purple, torn asunder from top to
bottom. No earthquake shock could have made that ragged gash. The wrath
of God must have come down and laid mighty fingers upon it.
He ran out of the Temple, and towards the house where he had slept the
night before.
The earthquake seemed to have shaken all Jerusalem into the streets.
Strange words were afloat. A question overheard in passing one excited
group, an exclamation in another, made him run the faster.
At Reuben's shop he found Jesse and Ruth both crying from fright. The
attendant who had them in charge told him that his friends had been gone
nearly all day.
"Where?" demanded Joel.
"I do not know exactly. They went out with one of the greatest
multitudes that ever passed through the gates of the city. Not only
Jews, but Greeks and Romans and Egyptians. You should have seen the
camels and the chariots, the chairs and the litters!" exclaimed the man.
A sudden fear fell upon the boy that this was the day that the One he
loved best had been made king, and he had missed it,--had missed the
greatest opportunity of his life.
"Was it to follow Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth?" he demanded eagerly.
The man nodded.
"To crown Him?" was the next breathless question.
"No; to crucify Him."
The unexpected answer was almost a death-thrust. Joel stood a moment,
dumb with horror. The blood seemed to stand still in his veins; there
was a roaring in his ears; then everything grew black before him. He
clutched blindly at the air, then staggered back against the wall.
"No, _no_, _no_, NO!" he cried; each word was louder than the last. "I
will not believe it! You do not speak truth!"
He ran madly from the shop, down the street, and through the city gate.
Out on the highway he met the returning multitude, most of them in as
great haste as he.
Everything he saw seemed to confirm the truth of what he had just heard,
but he could not believe it.
"No, no, no!" he gasped, in a breathless whisper, as he ran. "No, no,
no! It cannot be! He is the Christ! The Son of God! They could not be
able to do it, no matter how much they hated Him!"
But even as he ran he saw the hill where three crosses rose. He turned
sick and cold, and so weak he could scarcely stand. Still he stumbled
resolutely on, but with his face turned away from the sight he dared not
look upon, lest seeing should be knowing what he feared.
At last he reached the place, and, shrinking back as if from an expected
blow, he slowly raised his eyes till they rested on the face of the dead
body hanging there.
The agonized shriek on his lips died half uttered, as he fell
unconscious at the foot of the cross.
A long time after, one of the soldiers happening to notice him, turned
him over with his foot, and prodded him sharply with his spear. It
partially aroused him, and in a few moments he sat up. Then he looked up
again into the white face above him; but this time the bowed head awed
him into a deep calm.
The veil of the Temple was rent indeed, and through this pierced body
there shone out from its Holy of Holies the Shekinah of God's love for a
dying world. It uplifted Joel, and drew him, and drew him, till he
seemed to catch a faint glimpse of the Father's face; to feel himself
folded in boundless pardon, in pity so deep, and a love so unfathomed,
that the lowest sinner could find a share. But while he gazed and gazed
into the white face, so glorified in its marble stillness, Joseph of
Arimathea stood between him and the cross, giving directions, in a low
tone, for the removal of the body.
It seemed to waken Joel out of his trance; and when the bloodstained
form was stretched gently on the ground, he forgot his glimpse of
heavenly mysteries, he saw no longer the uplifted Christ. He saw
instead, the tortured body of the man he loved; the friend for whom he
would gladly have given his life.
Almost blinded by the rush of tears, he groped his way on his knees
toward it. A mantle of fine white linen had been laid over the lifeless
body; but one hand lay stretched out beside Him with a great bloody
nail-hole through the palm,--it was the hand that had healed him; the
hand that had fed the hungry multitudes; the hand that had been laid in
blessing on the heads of little children, waiting by the roadside! With
the thought of all it had done for him, with the thought of all it had
done for all the countless ones its warm, loving touch had comforted,
came the remembrance of the torture it had just suffered. Joel lay down
beside it with a heart-broken moan.
Men came and lifted the body in its spotless covering. Joel did not look
up to see who bore it away.
The lifeless hand still hung down uncovered at His side. With his eyes
fixed on that, Joel followed, longing to press it to his lips with
burning kisses; but he dared not so much as touch it with trembling
fingers,--a sense of his unworthiness forbade.
As the silent procession went onward, Joel found himself walking beside
Abigail. She had pushed her veil aside that she might better see the
still form borne before them; she had stood near by through all those
hours of suffering. Her wan face and swollen eyes showed how the force
of her sympathy and grief had worn upon her.
Joel glanced around for Phineas. He was one of those who walked before
with the motionless burden, his strong brown hands tenderly supporting
the Master's pierced feet; his face was as rigid as stone, and seemed to
Joel to have grown years older since the night before.
Another swift rush of tears blinded Joel, as he looked at the set,
despairing face, and then at what he carried.
O friend of Phineas! O feet that often ran to meet him on the grassy
hillsides of Nazareth, that walked beside him at his daily toil, and led
him to a nobler living!--Thou hast climbed the mountain of Beatitudes!
Thou hast walked the wind-swept waters of the Galilee! But not of this
is he thinking now. It is of Thy life's unselfish pilgrimage; of the
dust and travel stains of the feet he bears; of the many steps, taken
never for self, always for others; of the cure and the comfort they have
daily carried; of the great love that hath made their very passing by to
be a benediction.
It seemed strange to Joel that, in the midst of such overpowering
sorrow, trivial little things could claim his attention. Years afterward
he remembered just how the long streaks of yellow sunshine stole under
the trees of the garden; he could hear the whirr of grasshoppers,
jumping up in the path ahead of them; he could smell the heavy odor of
lilies growing beside an old tomb.
The sorrowful little group wound its way to a part of the garden where a
new tomb had been hewn out of the rock; here Joseph of Arimathea
motioned them to stop. They laid the open bier gently on the ground, and
Joel watched them with dry eyes but trembling lips, as they noiselessly
prepared the body for its hurried burial.
From time to time as they wound the bands of white linen, powdered with
myrrh and aloes, they glanced up nervously at the sinking sun. The
Sabbath eve was almost upon them, and the old slavish fear of the Law
made them hasten. A low stifled moaning rose from the lips of the women,
as the One they had followed so long was lifted up, and borne forever
out of their sight, through the low doorway of the tomb.
Strong hands rolled the massive stone in place that barred the narrow
opening. Then all was over; there was nothing more that could be done.
The desolate mourners sat down on the grass outside the tomb, to watch
and weep and wait over a dead hope and a lost cause.
A deep stillness settled over the garden as they lingered there in the
gathering twilight. They grew calm after awhile, and began to talk in
low tones of the awful events of the day just dying.
Gradually, Joel learned all that had taken place. As he heard the story
of the shame and abuse and torture that had been heaped upon the One he
loved better than all the world, his face grew white with horror and
indignation.
"Oh, wasn't there _one_ to stand up for Him?" he cried, with clasped
hands and streaming eyes. "Wasn't there _one_ to speak a word in His
defence? O my Beloved!" he moaned. "Out of all the thousands Thou didst
heal, out of all the multitudes Thou didst bless, not one to bear
witness!"
He rocked himself to and fro on his knees, wringing his hands as if the
thought brought him unspeakable anguish.
"Oh, if I had only been there!" he moaned. "If I could only have stood
up beside Him and told what He had done for me! O my God! My God! How
can I bear it? To think He went to His death without a friend and
without a follower, when I loved Him so! All alone! Not one to speak for
Him, not one!"
Groping with tear-blinded eyes towards the tomb, the boy stretched his
arms lovingly around the great stone that stopped its entrance; then
suddenly realizing that he could never go any closer to the One inside,
never see Him again, he leaned his head hopelessly against the rock, and
gave way to his feeling of utter loneliness and despair.
How long he stood there, he did not know. When he looked up again, the
women had gone, and it was nearly dark. Phineas and several other men
lingered in the black shadows of the trees, and Joel joined them.
Roman guards came presently. A stout cord was stretched across the
stone, its ends firmly fastened, and sealed with the seal of Caesar. A
watch-fire was kindled near by; then the Roman sentinels began their
steady tramp! tramp! as they paced back and forth.
High overhead the stars began to set their countless watch-fires in the
heavens; then the white full moon of the Passover looked down, and all
night long kept its silent vigil over the forsaken tomb of the sleeping
Christ.
* * * * *
Abigail had found shelter for the night with friends, in a tent just
outside the city; but Joel and Phineas took their way back to Bethany.
Little was said as they trudged along in the moonlight. Joel thought
only of one thing,--his great loss, the love of which he had been
bereft. But to Phineas this death meant much more than the separation
from the best of friends; it meant the death of a cause on which he had
staked his all. He must go back to Galilee to be the laughing-stock of
his old neighbors. He who they trusted would have saved Israel had been
put to death as a felon,--crucified between two thieves! The cause was
lost; he was left to face an utter failure.
When the moon went down that morning over the hills of Judea, there were
many hearts that mourned the Man of Nazareth, but not a soul in all the
universe believed on Him as the Son of God.
Hope lay dead in the tomb of Joseph, with a great stone forever walling
it in.