But the conduct and words of Jesus smote him to the heart. Through that secret affiliation and sympathy by which one brave and good man recognizes another in the hour of sternest trial, the Son of the Desert, educated only in heart, perceived with the heart that the kingdom of Christ was a spiritual kingdom. Divining intuitively the mission of infinite love in which the Lord was engaged, he confesses his own sin, rebukes and silences his fellow-sinner, and pleads for remembrance in the hour of triumph which he sees is approaching for the King of kings. Brave, repentant soul! Jesus is everywhere; in heaven; in earth; in hell. And shortly thou wast with Him and He with thee, in that paradise or garden of the soul, in which the new life, forgetful of the old, begins to bud and blossom! The great tragedy was enacted. The disciples at first stood afar off. But as the death-scenes drew nearer, and the curiosity of the crowd increased, military discipline was somewhat relaxed, and the people were permitted to press closer, and those who had special claims were allowed to come up and stand very near the dying sufferers. It was thus that the Apostle John, and Mary the mother of the Lord, were in speaking distance in his last moments. It was then that He gave each of them so tenderly to the other. Aside from this awful central scene, which will shine in all history as the pivotal event of the world, a pathetic side-scene was enacted, of which there is no historian but myself; and even I was not present, but relate it at second-hand. My authority, however, was a man of truth, John the Apostle, the exile of Patmos. Far off in the crowd was a solitary being whose eyes were fixed continually on the Son of the Desert. He stood with his brawny arms folded spasmodically across his chest. Great tears ran slowly down his cheeks. That man was poor and ignorant and ragged and black, but he had a noble soul. It was Anthony, the Ethiopian, who, exiled by Pilate into the desert, had there met Barabbas and his band. He soon attached himself by a certain instinct to the only noble spirit in the party. He followed the fortunes of this man; and, true to his African genius, he imitated his character. The Son of the Desert was not ashamed of his humble disciple. Anthony escaped death and capture on the terrible night of the riot. But his master was taken; and the faithful servant prowled about the suburbs and the prisons, risking detection and arrest in order to catch a glimpse, if possible, of him whom his soul loved. It was all in vain. He followed the vast crowd which went out to the crucifixion, pushed aside by the spears of the soldiers, and found himself on Calvary a witness of the last act in the great drama—an act which disclosed the mighty power of Love, and foreshadowed and meant the redemption of the world.