Seeing the wave of panic sweep over her, he put out a soothing hand.
"Yet, do not fear. For such as you the Redeemer died; for your kind
the Kingdom of Heaven is built, and the King whom the earth did not
receive is for ever Lord of it."
The veiled reference to the tragedy which Philadelphus had recounted
stood out with more prominence than the promise in his words.
"Whom the earth did not receive?" she repeated. "O prophet, as thou
boasteth truthful lips and a hoary head, tell me what hath befallen
us."
"Hear it not as a calamity," he said reassuringly. "Thou canst make it
of all things the most profitable, if thou wilt. Forget the city. I,
who would forget it but can not, bid thee do this. Behold, there is
another Jerusalem which shall not fall. Look to that and be not
afraid."
Her lips, parted to protest against the vague answer, closed at the
final sentence and the Christian pressed his advantage.
"Of that Jerusalem there is no like on earth. Against its walls no
enemy ever comes; neither warfare nor hunger nor thirst nor suffering
nor death. This which David builded is a poor city, a humble city
compared to that New Jerusalem. There the King is already come; there
the citizens are at peace and in love with one another. There thou
shalt have all that thy heart yearneth after, and all that thy heart
yearneth after shall be right."
In that city would it be right that she love Hesper instead of
Philadelphus, and that she should have her lover instead of her lawful
husband?
While she turned these things over in her mind, he wisely went on with
his story. Shrewdly sensing the young woman's anxiety, the old
Christian guessed the interest to her of the Messiah's history before
His teaching and began with prophecy to support the authenticity of
the wonderful Galilean's claim to divinity. It was no fisherman or
weaver of tent-cloth who brought forth the declarations of the
comforter of Hezekiah, the captive prophet and the priest in the land
of the Chaldeans. His was no barbarous manner or slipshod tongue of
the market-place and the wheat-fields, but the polish and the
clean-cut flawless language of the synagogues and the colleges.
Laodice saw in the gesture and phrase the refinement of her father,
Costobarus, of the gentlest Judean blood.
"I saw Him," he went on in a low voice.
Laodice with her intent gaze on the beatified face put her hand to her
heart.
"Forty years ago," the old voice continued, "I saw Him first in
Galilee. There He was disbelieved and cast out. 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.