CHAPTER XIX.
THEY went back to their simple lives again,--those hardy fishermen, thebusy carpenter, and the boy. Phineas was silent and grave. For him, hopestill lay dead in that garden tomb near Golgotha; but Joel sang as heworked.
The appointed time was nearing when the Master was to meet them on themountain. As often as he could, Joel stole away from the moody man atthe work-bench, and went down to the beach for more cheerfulcompanionship.
One morning, seeing a fishing-boat that he recognized pulling in quicklyto shore, he ran down to see what luck his friends had had during thenight.
He held up his hands in astonishment at the great haul of fish the boatheld.
"We have been with the Master," explained one of the men. "We toiled allnight, and took nothing till we met Him."
Joel listened eagerly while they told him of that meeting in the earlydawn, and of the meal they ate together, while the sun came up over theGalilee, and the blue waves whispered their gladness to the beach, asthey heard the Master's voice once more.
"Oh, to think that He is in Galilee again!" exclaimed Joel. That thoughtadded purpose and meaning to each new day. Every morning he woke withthe feeling, "Maybe I shall see Him before the sun goes down." Everynight he went to sleep saying, "He is somewhere near! No telling howsoon I may be with Him!"
When the day came on which they were to go to the mountain, Joel was upvery early in the morning. He bathed and dressed himself with the careof a priest about to enter the inner courts on some holy errand.
When he started to the mountain, Abigail noticed that he wore his finestheaddress of white linen. His tunic was spotless, and, from the cornersof his brown and white striped mantle, the blue fringes that the Lawprescribed hung smooth as silk.
He did not wait for Phineas or any of his friends. Long before the time,he had climbed the rocky path, and was sitting all alone in the deepshadowed stillness.
The snapping of a twig startled him; the falling of a leaf made himlook up hopefully. Any minute the Master might come.
His heart beat so loud it seemed to him that the wood-birds overheadmust surely hear it, and be frightened away.
Imagine that scene, you who can,--you who have just seen the earth closeover your best-beloved; who have awakened in the lonely night, with thatsudden sickening remembrance of loss; who have longed, with a longinglike a constant ache, for the voice and the smile and the footstep thathave slipped hopelessly beyond recall.
Think of what it would mean, if you knew now, beyond doubt, that allthat you had loved and lost would be given back to you before thepassing of another hour!
So Joel waited, restless, burning, all in a quiver of expectancy.
Steps began to wind around the base of the mountain. One familiar faceafter another came in sight, then strange ones, until, by and by, fivehundred people had gathered there, and were sitting in reverent,unbroken silence. The soft summer wind barely stirred the leaves; eventhe twitter of nestlings overhead was hushed.
After awhile, thrilled by some unseen influence, as a field of grain isswayed by the passing wind, they bowed their heads. The Master stoodbefore them, His hands outspread in blessing.
Joel started forward with a wild desire to throw himself at His feet,and put his arms around them; but a majesty he had never seen before inthat gentle face restrained him.
He listened to the voice as it rose and fell with all its old winningtenderness. As you would listen could the dead lips you love move again;as you would greedily snatch up every word, and hide it in your heart ofhearts, so Joel listened.
"I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you untomyself, that where I am there ye may be also.... Peace I leave withyou.... Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart betroubled, neither let it be afraid."
As the beloved voice went on, promising the Comforter that should comewhen He was gone, all the dread and pain of the coming separation seemedto be lost.
Boy though he was, Joel looked down the years of his life feeling it wasonly a fleeting shadow, compared with the eternal companionship justpromised him.
He would make no moan; he would utter no complaint: but he would take uphis life's little day, and bear it after the Master,--a cup of lovingservice,--into that upper kingdom where there was a place prepared forhim.
It was all over so soon. They were left alone on the mountain-sideagain, with only the sunshine flickering through the leaves, and thewood-birds just beginning to trill to each other once more. But the warmair seemed to still throb with the last words He had spoken: "Lo, I amwith you alway, even unto the end of the world."
Phineas came down the mountain with his face all ashine; at last hiseyes had been opened.
"He and the Father are one!" he exclaimed to the man walking beside him."That voice is the same that spake from the midst of the burning bush,and from the summit of Sinai. All these years I have followed theMaster, I believed Him to be a perfect man and a great prophet; Ibelieved Him to be 'the rod out of the stem of Jesse' who throughJehovah's hand was to redeem Israel, even as the rod in Aaron's handsmote the floods and made a pathway for our people.
"When I saw Him put to death as a felon, all hope died within me; evento-day I came out here unbelieving. I could not think that I should seeHim. How blind we have been all these years! God with us in the flesh,and we did not know Him!"
Joel walked on behind the two, sharing their feeling of exaltation. Asthey came down into the valley and entered Capernaum, the work-a-daysights and noises seemed to jar on their senses, in this uplifted mood.
A man standing in an open doorway accosted Phineas, and asked when hecould commence work on the house he had talked to him about building.
Phineas hesitated, and looked down at the ground, as if studying somedifficult problem. In a few minutes he raised his eyes with a look ofdecision.
"I cannot build it for you at all," he answered.
"Not build it!" echoed the man. "I thought you were anxious for thejob."
"So I was," answered the carpenter; "but when I asked for it, I had nobelief that the Master could rise from the dead. Just now, on themountain yonder, I have been with Him. His command is still ringing inmy ears: 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to everycreature!'
"Henceforth I give my life to Him, even as He gave His to me. My daysare now half spent, but every remaining one shall be used to proclaim,as far and wide as possible, that the risen Christ is the Son of God!"
The man was startled as he looked at Phineas; such a fire of love andpurpose seemed to illuminate his earnest face that it was completelytransformed.
"Even now," exclaimed Phineas, "will I commence my mission. You are thefirst one I have met, and I must tell to you this glad new gospel. Hedied for you! 'God so loved the world, that He gave His only begottenSon, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but haveeverlasting life!' O my friend, if you could only believe that as Ibelieve it!"
The man shrank back into the doorway, strangely moved by the passionateforce of his earnestness.
"I must go up to Jerusalem," continued Phineas, "and wait till power isgiven us from on high; then I can more clearly see my way. I do not knowwhether I shall be directed to go into other lands, or to come back hereto carry the news to my old neighbors. But it matters not which path ispointed out, the mission has been already given,--to tell the messageto every creature my voice can reach."
"And you?" asked the man, pointing to the companion of Phineas.
"I, too, received the command," was the answer, "and I, too, am ready togo to the world's end, if need be!"
"Surely there must be truth in what you say," muttered the man. Then hisglance fell on Joel. "You, too?" he questioned.
"Nay, he is but a lad," answered Phineas, before Joel could find wordsto answer him. "Come! we must hasten home."
Joel talked little during the next few days, and stole away often tothink by himself, in the quiet little upper chamber on the
roof.
Phineas was making his preparations to go back to Jerusalem; and heurged the boy to go back with him, and accept Simon's offer. Abigail,too, added her persuasions to his; and even old Rabbi Amos came down oneday, and sat for an hour under the fig-trees, painting in glowing colorsthe life that might be his for the choosing.
It was a very alluring prospect; it had been the dream of his life totravel in far countries. He pictured himself surrounded by wealth andculture; he would be able to do so much for his old friends. He couldgive back to Jesse and Ruth a hundred fold, what had been bestowed onhim; and the poor--how much he could help them, when he received a son'sportion from the wealthy Simon! O the hearts he could make glad, all upand down the land!
The old day-dreams he used to delight in danced temptingly before him.As he stood idly beside the work-bench one afternoon, thinking of such afuture, a soft step behind him made him turn. The hammer fell from hishand to the grass, as he saw the woman who came timidly to meet him.
"Why, Aunt Leah!" he cried. "What brought _you_ here?"
He had not seen her since the night his Uncle Laban had driven him fromhome.
She drew aside her veil, and looked at him. "I heard you had beenhealed," she said, "and I have always wanted to come and see you, andtell you how glad I am; but my husband forbade it. Child!" she criedabruptly, "how much you look like your father! The likeness isstartling!"
The discovery seemed to make her forget what she had come to say, andshe stood and stared at him; then she remembered. "Rabbi Amos told me ofthe offer you have had from a rich merchant in Bethany, and I came downhere, secretly, to beg you to accept it. In your father's name I begyou!"
Joel looked perplexed. "I hardly know what to do," he said. "Every oneadvises me just as you do; but I feel that they are all wrong. Surelythe Master meant me as well as father Phineas and the others, when Hecharged us to go and preach the gospel to every creature."
A sudden interest came into the woman's face; she took a step forward."Joel, did _you_ see Him after He was risen?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Oh, I believe then that He is the Christ!" she cried. "I have thoughtall the time that it might be so, and the children are so sure of it."
"And Uncle Laban?" questioned Joel.
She shook her head sadly. "He grows more bitterly opposed every day."
"Aunt Leah," he asked, coming back to the first question, "don't youthink He must have meant me as well as those men?"
"Oh, hardly," she said, hesitatingly, "you are so young, and there areso many others to do it; it would surely be better for you to go toBethany."
After she had gone home, he put away his tools, and, like one in adream, started slowly towards the mountain.
The same summer stillness reigned on its shady slopes as when the fivehundred had gathered there. He climbed up near the summit, and sat downon a high stone.
To the eastward the Galilee glittered like a sapphire in the sun;Capernaum seemed like a great ant-hill in commotion. No wonder he couldnot think among all those conflicting voices; he was glad he had come upwhere it was so still.
Phineas was going away in the morning. If Joel went also, maybe he wouldnever look down on that scene again.
Then almost as if some living voice broke the stillness, he heard thewords: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to everycreature!" It was the echo of the words that had fallen from theMaster's lips. Nothing once uttered by that voice can ever die; it liveson and on in the ever-widening circles of the centuries, as a ripple,once started, rings shoreward through the seas.
In that instant all the things he had been considering seemed so smalland worthless. He had been planning to give Simon's gold and silver tothe poor; but the Master had given them His life, Himself! Could he doless?
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done itunto me," something seemed to say to him. Yes; he could do it for theMaster's sake, for the One who had healed him, for the One who had diedfor him.
Then and there, high up in the mountain's solitudes, he found the pathhe was to follow; and then he wondered how he could have thought for aninstant of making any other choice. It was the path the Master's ownfeet had trod, and the boy who had followed, knew well what a weary wayit led.
For his great love's sake, he gave up the old ambitions, theself-centred hopes, saying, in a low tone, as if he felt the belovedPresence very near, "Oh, I want to serve Thee truly! If I am too youngnow to go out into all the world, let me be Thy little cup-bearer hereat home, to carry the story of Thy life and love to those around me!"
The west was all alight with the glory of the sunset; somewhere beyondits burnished portals lay the City of the King. Joel turned from itsdazzling depths to look downward into the valley. He had chosenpersecution and sacrifice and suffering, he knew, but the light on hisface was more than the halo of the summer sunset.
As he went down the mountain to his life of lowly service, a deep peacefell warm across his heart; for the promise went with him, a staff tobear him up through all his after life's long pilgrimage: "LO, I AM WITHYOU ALWAY, EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE WORLD!"
THE END