These considerations to some extent met Scaurus’s next objection: “Now as to _authority to forgive sins_—what is meant by this? I can forgive you a _debt_ of a thousand sesterces. But I cannot forgive you a _theft_ of a thousand sesterces—except in the language of the people. Whether you stole them from me or from somebody else, that makes no difference. You remain a thief—a past thief of course—till the end of your days. Jupiter himself, as Horace in effect declares, cannot unthieve you.” This caused me a great deal of thought. It was logical, yet I felt it was not true. It seemed to me, for example, that if two sons had stolen money from two several fathers, one father might so deal with the child that he might feel himself forgiven, even though he had to pay the money back again; while another father, though not exacting the money, might make the boy feel that he was not forgiven, and that he would be a thief all his life long. Even Epictetus, I remembered, said about Diogenes, “He goes about like a physician feeling the pulses of his patients, and saying, ‘You have a fever; you, a headache; you, the gout. You must fast; you must eat; you must not bathe; you must have the knife; you must have cautery.’” He was talking of mental or spiritual diseases. Well, to be slavishly afraid of God—was not this a disease? And to one thus diseased, might not a healing Son of God come with a message from the Father, “He loves you, though He may punish. He will punish as a Father that loves. Steal no more; He will not treat you as a thief. Sin no more; He will not treat you as a sinner.” Epictetus once declared that Diogenes had been sent before us as a reconnoitrer into the regions of death and had brought back his report, “There is nothing terrible there.” I never could quite understand on what grounds our Teacher based this assertion, unless it was because the Cynic himself had absolutely no fear of death. It was more easy for me to understand—I do not say, to prove, but to understand—that a great prophet might bring a similar report from the Father of men, “I come from the House of God to tell you that there is nothing terrible there—except for the cruel and base. There is nothing but kindness and justice and true fatherhood.” About the alleged “report” of Diogenes, I had felt that—if I believed it—it would deliver me from bondage to the fear of death. Similarly I felt, about the message or gospel of this Jewish prophet, that—if I believed it—it might raise me above fears into a region of love and trust and loyalty to the righteous Father. This was only theory. I did not believe it. But I felt the possibility of believing and of being strengthened by the belief.