"WAKE up, Joel! Wake up! I bring you good tidings, my lad!" It was
Abigail's voice ringing cheerily through the court-yard, as she bent
over the boy, fast asleep on the hard stones.
All the long Sabbath day after the burial, he had sat listlessly in the
shady court-yard, his blank gaze fixed on the opposite wall. No one
seemed able to arouse him from his apathy. He turned away from the food
they brought him, and refused to enter the house when night came.
Towards morning he had gone over to the fountain for a long draught of
its cool water; then overcome by weakness from his continued fast, and
exhausted by grief, he fell asleep on the pavement.
Abigail came in and found him there, with the red morning sun beating
full in his face. She had to shake him several times before she could
make him open his eyes.
He sat up dizzily, and tried to collect his thoughts. Then he
remembered, and laid his head wearily down again, with a groan.
"Wake up! Wake up!" she insisted, with such eager gladness in her voice
that Joel opened his eyes again, now fully aroused.
"What is it?" he asked indifferently.
"_He is risen!_" she exclaimed joyfully, clasping her hands as she
always did when much excited. "I went to His tomb very early in the
morning, while it was yet dark, with Mary and Salome and some other
women. The stone had been rolled aside; and while we wondered and wept,
fearing His enemies had stolen Him away, He stood before us, with His
old greeting on His lips,--'All hail!'"
Joel rubbed his eyes and looked at her. "No, no!" he said wearily, "I am
dreaming again!"
He would have thrown himself on the ground as before, his head pillowed
on his arm, but she would not let him. She shook his hands with a
persistence that could not be refused, talking to him all the while in
such a glad eager voice that he slowly began to realize that something
had made her very happy.
"What is it, Mother Abigail?" he asked, much puzzled.
"I do not wonder you are bewildered," she cried. "It is such blessed,
such wonderful news. Why He is _alive_, Joel, He whom Thou lovest! Try
to understand it, my boy! I have just now come from the empty tomb. I
saw Him! I spoke with Him! I knelt at His feet and worshipped!"
By this time all the family had come out. Reuben looked at his daughter
pityingly, as she repeated her news; then he turned to Phineas.
"Poor thing!" he said, in a low tone. "She has witnessed such terrible
scenes lately, and received such a severe shock, that her mind is
affected by it. She does not know what she is saying. Did not you
yourself help prepare the body for burial, and put it in the tomb?"
"Yes," answered Phineas, "and helped close it with a great stone, which
no one man could possibly move by himself. And I saw it sealed with the
seal of Caesar; and when I left it was guarded by Roman sentinels in
armor. No man could have opened it."
"But Abigail talks of angels who sat in the empty tomb, and who told
them He had risen," replied her father.
Joel, who had overheard this low-toned conversation, got up and stood
close beside them. He had begun to tremble from weakness and
excitement.
[Illustration: "'THE STONE IS GONE!'"]
"Father Phineas," he asked, "do you remember the story we heard from the
old shepherd, Heber? The angels told of His birth; maybe she _did_ see
them in His tomb."
"How can such things be?" queried Reuben, stroking his beard in
perplexity.
"That's just what you said when Rabbi Lazarus was brought back to life,"
piped Jesse's shrill voice, quite unexpectedly, at his grandfather's
elbow. He had not lost a word of the conversation. "Why don't you go and
see for yourself if the tomb is empty?"
Abigail had gone into the house with her mother, and now the summons to
breakfast greeted them. She saw she could not convince them of the truth
of her story, so she said no more about it; but her happy face was more
eloquent than words.
All day snatches of song kept rising to her lips,--old psalms of
thanksgiving, and half whispered hallelujahs. At last Joel and Phineas
were both so much affected by her continued cheerfulness, that they
began to believe there must be some great cause for it.
Finally, in the waning afternoon, they took the road that led from
Bethany to the garden where they firmly believed that the Master still
lay buried.
As they came in sight of the tomb, Joel clutched Phineas by the arm, and
pointed, with a shaking finger, to the dark opening ahead of of them.
"See!" he said, pointing into its yawning darkness. "She was right! The
stone is gone!"
It was some time before they could muster up courage to go nearer and
look into the sepulchre. When at last they did so, neither spoke a word,
but, after one startled look into each other's eyes, turned and left the
garden.
It was growing dark as they hurried along the highway homeward. Two men
came half running towards the city, in great haste to reach the gates
before they should be closed for the night. They were two disciples well
known to Phineas.
He stopped them with the question that was uppermost in his mind.
"Yes, He is risen," answered one of the men, breathlessly. "We have seen
Him. Hosanna to the Highest! He walked along this road with us as we
went to Emmaus."
"Ah, how our hearts burned as He talked with us by the way!"
interrupted the other man.
"Only this hour He sat at meat with us," cried the first speaker. "He
broke bread with us, and blessed it as He always used to do. We are
running back to the city now to tell the other disciples."
Phineas would have laid a detaining hand on them, but they hurried on,
and left him standing in the road, looking wistfully after them.
"It must be true," said Joel, "or they could not have been so nearly
wild with joy."
Phineas sadly shook his head. "I wish I could think so," he sighed.
"Let us go home," urged Abigail, the next day, "the Master has bidden
His brethren meet Him in Galilee. Let us go. There is hope of seeing Him
again in our old home!"
Joel, now nearly convinced of the truth of her belief, was also anxious
to go. But Phineas lingered; his plodding mind was slower to grasp such
thoughts than the sensitive woman's or the imaginative boy's. One after
another he sought out Peter and James and John, and the other disciples
who had seen the risen Master, and questioned them closely. Still he
tarried for another week.
One morning he met Thomas, whose doubts all along had strengthened his
own. He ran against him in the crowded street in Jerusalem. Thomas
seized his arm, and, turning, walked beside him a few paces.
"_It is true!_" he said, in a low intense tone, with his lips close to
his ear. "I saw Him myself last night; I held His hands in mine! I
touched the side the spear had pierced! He called me by name; and I know
now beyond all doubt that the Master has risen from the dead, and that
He is the Son of God!"
After that, Phineas no longer objected when it was proposed that they
should go back to Galilee. The story of the resurrection was too great
for him to grasp entirely, still he could not put aside such a weight of
evidence that came to him from friends whose word he had always
implicitly trusted.
The roads were still full of pilgrims returning from the Passover. As
Phineas journeyed on with his little family, he fell in with the sons of
Jonah and Zebedee, going back to their nets and their fishing-boats.
The order of procession was constantly shifting, and one morning Joel
found himself walking beside John, one of the chosen twelve, who seemed
to have understood his Master better than any of the others.
The man seemed wrapped in deep thought, and took no notice of his
companion, till Joel timidly touched his sleeve.
"Do _you_ believe it is true?" the boy asked.
There was no surprise in the man's face at the abrupt question, he felt,
without asking, what Joel meant. A reassuring smile lighted up his face
as he laid his hand kindly on Joel's shoulder.
"I know it, my lad; I have been with Him." The quiet positiveness with
which he spoke seemed to destroy Joel's last doubt.
"Many things that He said to us come back to me very clearly; and I see
now He was trying to prepare us for this."
"Tell me about them," begged Joel, "and about those last hours He was
with you. Oh, if I could only have been with Him, too!"
John saw the tears gathering in the boy's eyes, heard the tremble in his
voice, and felt a thrill of sympathy as he recognized a kindred love in
the little fellow's heart.
So he told Joel of the last supper they had taken together, of the hymn
they had sung, and of the watch they had failed to keep, when He took
them with Him into the garden of Gethsemane. All the little incidents
connected with those last solemn hours, he repeated carefully to the
listening boy.
From time to time Joel brushed his hand across his eyes; but a deep calm
fell over him as John's voice went on, slowly repeating the words the
Master had comforted them with.
"Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father's house are many mansions.... I go to prepare a place for
you. I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am,
there ye may be also.... If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I
said, I go unto the Father.... These things I have spoken unto you, that
in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but
be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
Joel made an exclamation as if about to speak, and then stopped. "What
is it?" asked John.
"How could He mean that He has overcome the world? Caesar still rules,
and Jerusalem is full of His enemies. I can't forget that they killed
Him, even if He has risen."
John stooped to tie his sandal before he answered.
"I have been fitting together different things He told us; and I begin
to see how blind we were. Once He called Himself the Good Shepherd who
would give his life for his sheep, and said, 'Therefore doth my Father
love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man
taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again.'"
They walked on in silence a few paces, then John asked abruptly, "Do you
remember about the children of Israel being so badly bitten by serpents
in the wilderness, and how Moses was commanded to set up a brazen
serpent in their midst?"
"Yes, indeed!" answered Joel. "All who looked up at it were saved; but
those who would not died from the poisonous bites."
"One night," continued John, "a learned man by the name of Nicodemus,
one of the rulers, came to the Master with many questions. And I
remember one of the answers He gave him. 'As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.' We did not understand Him then at all. Not till I saw Him lifted
up on the cruel cross, did I begin to dimly see what He meant."
A light broke over Joel's face as he remembered the vision he had had
that day, kneeling at the foot of the cross; then he stopped still in
the road, with his hands clasped in dismay. There suddenly seemed to
rise before him the scenes of daily sacrifice in the Temple, when the
blood of innocent lambs flowed over the altar; then he thought of the
great Day of Atonement, when the poor scape-goat was driven away to its
death, laden with the sins of the people.
"Oh, that must be what Isaiah meant!" he cried in distress. "'He was
brought as a lamb to the slaughter!' Oh, can it be possible that 'the
Lord hath laid on _Him_ the iniquity of us all'? What an awful
sacrifice!"
The tears streamed down his face as the thought came over him with
overwhelming conviction, that it was for _him_ that the man he loved so
had endured all the horrible suffering of death by crucifixion.
"Why did such a thing have to be?" he asked, looking up appealingly at
his companion.
John looked out and up, as if he saw far beyond the narrow, hill-bound
horizon, and quoted softly: "_For God so loved the world, that He gave
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life._"
Just as the feeling had come to him that morning by the Galilee, and
again as he gazed and gazed into the white face on the cross, Joel
seemed to feel again the love of the Father, as it took him close into
its infinite keeping.
"'Greater love hath no man than this,'" quoted John again, "'that a man
lay down his life for his friends.' He is the propitiation for our sins;
and not ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."
It was hard for the child to understand this at first; but this gentle
disciple who walked beside him had walked long beside the Master, and in
the Master's own way and words taught Joel life's greatest lesson.