Philochristus: Memoirs of a Disciple of the LordAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Religion
Philochristus: Memoirs of a Disciple of the Lord
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Christian fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
from the house.
When I was come to Baruch again, I held my peace concerning Raphael, lest
I should stir up melancholy in my cousin, since he was freshly recovered
from his disease. But, when we went on board the vessel, the sailors were
not yet ready to sail. So I lay down on the sleeping‐cushion: but no sleep
fell upon my eyes. For there appeared ever before me the image of the
demoniac Raphael and his sorrowful father; and my heart was weighed down
with the thought of their affliction. But I grieved not for them alone,
but also for the daughter of Sion; who seemed to be, in a manner,
possessed with an evil spirit, and to cry aloud for some one that should
cast it out. All the deliverers of old seemed to be even as Theudas the
son of Eleazar; and even as the demon had returned into Raphael, so that
his last state was worse than the first, even so it seemed with Israel;
therefore I besought the Lord to hasten the time of the coming of the true
Redeemer of Sion.
As I mused, I began to consider with myself what would be the manner of
the true redemption. Beside the demoniac, there appeared unto me the face
of Matthew the publican and the faces of the sinners. It was borne in upon
my mind that, even though every legionary in Syria were slain or driven
out, and though the borders of Israel should be enlarged from the Nile to
the Euphrates, yet if we still had amidst us sinners unforgiven, and
Priests and Rulers with no power to forgive nor to convert, then of a
surety the evil spirit would not depart from us save only for a season.
By this time, as I remember, we were but just putting out into the deep,
and the sun was risen. And there came down certain fishermen to the beach
to prepare their tackling for fishing: and with them there came one that,
as I noted, was no fisherman (for he was not girt as a fisherman): and he
walked down to the brink of the waters and looked out steadfastly to the
deep. And so it was that, as he looked, the sun even that instant rising
above the eastern mountains, shone suddenly upon his face so that I could
see it clearly (though we were by this time a full furlong from the
shore); and behold, it was the countenance of the stranger that I had seen
that same morning in the house of Joazar. So I called to Tobias
straightway and asked him who the stranger might be: and Tobias raised
himself upon his elbow where he lay on the sleeping‐cushion, and he
looked, and knew him, and told me his name. And then first I heard the
name of Jesus of Nazareth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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