Jesus wandered for a long,
long while--indeed, he paid no heed to time--along the banks of Jordan.
Then he climbed the rocks, and when in the twilight he came to himself
again and looked about, he saw that he was in the wilderness. The
revelation vouchsafed at his baptism had snatched him from the earth.
In that mysterious vision he had opened to him the new path which he
had chosen to follow. What eternal peace surrounded him. Yet he was
not alone among the barren rocks; never in his life had he been less
lonely than here in the dim terrors of the wilderness. A deep silence
prevailed. The stars in the sky sparkled and sparkled, and the longer
he gazed at them the more ardently they seemed to burn. Gradually they
seemed to sink downwards, and to become suns, while fresh legions
pressed ever forward from the background, flying down unceasingly, the
large and the small and the smallest, with new ones ever welling up
from space--an inexhaustible source of heavenly light.

Jesus stood up erect. And when he lifted up his face it seemed as if
his eye was the nucleus of all light.

So he forgot the world and remained in the wilderness. Each day he
penetrated deeper into it, past abysses and roaring beasts. The stones
tore his feet, but he marked it not; snakes stung his heels, but he
noticed it not. Whence did he obtain nourishment? What cleft in the
rocks afforded him shelter?--that is immaterial to him who lives in
God. Once he had regarded the world and its powers as hard
taskmasters, and now they seemed to him to be as nothing, for in him
and with him was eternal strength. The old traditional Jehovah of
Jewish hearts was no more; his was the all-embracing One, who carried
the heavens and the earth in his hand, who called to the children of
men: Return! and who stooped down to every seedling in order to awaken
it. He himself became conscious of God--and after that, what could
befall him?

One day he descended between the rocky stones to the coast of the Dead
Sea that lay dark and still, little foam-tipped waves breaking on the
shore. The expanse of water was lost in darkness in the distance, and
stretched away heavy and lifeless. Cleft blocks of stone were
scattered along the beach, and their tops glowed as red as iron in the
forge. It was the hour of sunset. The towering stones stood like
giant torches, and the bright colour was reflected on the bare pebbles
on which the water lapped. For many thousa