“Well, then, if I might believe this letter, he, old Hermas, lying dead on the couch before my eyes, was not really dead, but only on the way to a beautiful city of justice and truth, to which all the just, honourable, and truthful might attain, Roman, Greek, Jew, Scythian, rich and poor, bond and free, high-born and low-born. No franchise was needed except a patient and laborious pursuit of virtue. In this city no one citizen was greater than another. If anyone could be called greatest, it was the one that made of least account his own pleasures, his own wealth, fame, and reputation, serving the state and his fellow-citizens in all things. Yet it was not a republic, for it had a king. But this king was not a despot like the kings of the east, abhorred by Greeks and Romans. The kingdom was a family at unity with itself, the citizens being closely bound by affection to their king as father and to their fellow-citizens as brethren. ‘And if,’ said Hermas, ‘you desire to be drawn towards that king and to become one with all the fellow-citizens of the City of Truth, I beseech you, my dear lord and benefactor—being, as you are, a lover of truth—to study with all patience those books of my dearest mistress Domitilla, which I saw before you on that day on which you spoke to me your words—your last words to me, so God wills it—words of kindness following deeds of kindness, for which may the Father in heaven be kind to you for ever and ever.’ “A postscript added a further request, that I would search for other papyri, which contained the epistles of Paul, and which, he said, belonged to Domitilla’s library, though he had been unable to find them. ‘These,’ he said, ‘give a clue to the meaning of many things that are obscure in the gospels; for in the gospels traditions derived from different documents or witnesses, are sometimes set down without uniform arrangement, and without proportion; so that, in Mark, a whole column of forty lines might be given, for example, to the exorcism of some evil spirit, and only three or four lines to some principal and fundamental saying of Christ. But Paul, though he was neither an eye-witness nor an ear-witness, understood spiritual things, according to his saying, _We have the mind of Christ_.’