When I came to myself, behold, I lay upon my back and looked upward, and the moon was shining high in the heavens above me. So I thought how the same moon had shone down with the same brightness yesternight upon my Master in Gethsemane. “And now where is he?” I ceased from that thought, and went back in my mind to thoughts of the past. Then I remembered what a splendour, even such as I now saw, had shone upon our Master’s face when he came down from Mount Hermon, and when he came up from Jericho to Bethany, and also when of late he gave us the bread and wine at our last supper together. Also there came into my mind the words that he had spoken, when this brightness had been upon his countenance: how he had then prophesied, and more than once, that he should be slain; but we had never believed him. Yet his words had come to pass. Then I asked within myself how it was that Jesus had foreseen his own death and prophesied it so oft, yet had never been dismayed nor even disturbed by the thought thereof; and I remembered that whensoever he had spoken of his death, he had spoken also of a certain rising again, or coming: and I said aloud, “If Jesus prophesied his death truly, why might he not also prophesy truly concerning his coming again?” But against this hope there set themselves those last words which had come from the mouth of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Now these words are the first words, and as it were the prelude, of one of our psalms. So I began to repeat to myself the words of the psalm; which beginneth with sadness, yea even from the depths of sorrow, but these words follow afterwards: “I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he cried unto him he heard.” So I wondered whether Jesus, in speaking those last words, had in his mind all the words of the psalm, and “Perchance,” I said, “in saying the first words, he signified (in his sore weakness when the breath was departing from him) that he desired to say the whole; for the first words are but as a title to the whole. Wherefore, perchance, beneath the sense of the forsaking, there was a deeper sense that God did not despise the affliction of the afflicted.” Then I mused again concerning the words of the Psalm, and especially on these, “When he cried unto him, he heard.” And I looked up to the moon and the stars in heaven, which are the work of the hand of God, and I asked whether it was possible that the Maker of so beautiful an order in heaven should suffer disorder to prevail upon the earth; and my heart said that it could not prevail for ever. “Therefore,” said I, “God must needs have heard Jesus of Nazareth when he cried unto Him. Yea, though He seemed not to hear, yet must He have heard indeed. Yea, even though Jesus be dead, yea, even though Jesus be not the Messiah,