“I give it up. The problem of the Sphinx is too hard for my brains. Perhaps Destiny knows its own mind, and it may be a good mind—not my mind, but perhaps an infinitely better and wiser. Perhaps this Christian superstition is intended to found an empire after the Spirit, an empire of ‘the Son of man,’ like, but unlike, the empires of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome. Daniel dreamed this for Jewish Jews. It may come true for Christian Jews. If it should come, what a tyranny it will be—for those, at least, who are tyrants at heart! The yoke of the Imperium Romanum will be nothing to the yoke of the Imperium Romanochristianum. We Romans despotize over bodies: the Roman Christians will despotize over souls. ‘Debellare superbos’ is only one of our arts. ‘Pacis imponere mores’ is a second. ‘Parcere subjectis’ is a third. These Roman Christians will know how to crush, but not how to spare. What saints it will create—for the spiritual! What devils—for the carnal! And which will win in the end, saint or devil? I incline, with oscillation, to the saint. But I am sick and tired of inclinations and oscillations; I want to _know_. I _know_ that the sun shines. I want to _know_—just at this moment I feel very near knowing, nearer than I ever have been in my whole life—that the world has been made all of a piece, and is being shaped by the Maker to one end, and that, the best. “O, my dear Silanus, I am weary of these books. I must go out into the fresh air and see the sun. Books, books, books! I agree with Epictetus, who thinks that Chrysippus wrote some two hundred too many. I agree with John, too, who says, in effect, that not all the pens and paper in the world could draw the portrait of his master—or rather his friend, for ‘friend,’ not ‘servant,’ is the title at the end of the book. That reminds me, by the way, of a beautiful thought in this gospel—I mean that the author is ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’! As much as to say, ‘Do you want to know Jesus? Then get a _friend_ of his—some one _whom Jesus loved_—to introduce you. There is no other way. Not an impartial biographer—he is of no use—but a _friend_.’ And I think he means to hint, at the close of his little book, that there always will be, ‘tarrying,’ till Jesus comes again, a ‘disciple whom Jesus loved,’ to represent him to the world.