. He came then unto
Jerusalem and I saw Him there heal lepers, cast out evil spirits, cure
the blind and the sick and the palsied. And in the house of Jairus and
at Nain, I saw Him raise the dead.

"I saw Him come to Jerusalem. Multitudes followed Him and accompanied
Him, casting their mantles and palm-branches in the way that His mule
might tread upon them."

The old man pointed south toward the single summit from which Christ
approaching could overlook Jerusalem.

"On that hill," he said, "while the multitudes hailed Him and the
sound of Alleluia shook the air, He reined in His meek beast and
looked upon this city, and wept over it. When He spoke, He said, _If
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things
which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For
the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench
about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,
and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee;
and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou
knewest not the time of thy visitation._

[Illustration: "And there His enemies crucified Him."]

"And three days later, I saw the Rock of David and all that multitude
follow Him unto the Hill of the Skull and there His enemies crucified
Him!"

After a paralyzed silence, Laodice whispered with frozen lips,

"In God's name, why?"

But he wisely did not pause with the calamity. He had the whole of the
beginnings of Christianity to tell, a long narrative that contained as
yet no dogma. Paul had seen the great light on the road to Damascus,
and accepting apostleship to all the world had fought a good fight and
had come unto his crown of righteousness; Peter had established the
Church and had fed the sheep and had been offered up by the Beast who
was Nero; John the Divine was seeing visions of the Apocalypse in the
Island of Patmos; Herod Antipas, "that fox," had passed to his own
place, prisoner and exile, sacrifice to a mad Caesar's imaginings;
Judas had hanged himself; Pilate had drowned himself; thousands of the
saints had died for the faith by fire and sword and wild beasts; kings
had been converted and of the believers in Rome it was said, _Your
faith is spoken of throughout the whole world_.

Laodice sat with clasped hands, intent on each word as it fell from
the lips of the aged teacher, seeing at one and the same time the
Kingdom of Heave