Paul ended with a look toward Publius, then Also toward Julius present there, which these Felt as fixed firmness tempered with appeal. Publius took counsel with quick sounding eyes On the centurion bent, and answered thus, His own thought by that other's fortified: "O Paul, have thou thy will; no will have I In this thing; all is one to me; our gods Are our conventions, and we worship them In form, but not in spirit. Strange to us It seems, us more enlightened than the crowd, Us who have tasted of philosophy, To see thee thus engaged in earnestness On the behalf of things not seen, not known." Paul broke in with a burst of testimony: "But I have seen, but I have known. The Lord, The Lord Christ, Son of God declared, from heaven Flashed in a sudden vision once on me, Sudden and swift, for both my eyes went blind." "It was a stroke of lightning blinded thee," Said Publius. "Nay, the sky was cloudless clear," Paul answered, "and the hour was high midnoon; The Syrian sun was shining in his strength. I know whom I believe and I adore And bless Him, calling on my soul and all That is within me to adore and bless His holy name. Whether we eat or drink, Or whatsoever do, in word or deed, We His redeemed do all in our Lord's name, To God the Father giving thanks through Him." "Is this thy Lord to whom thou renderest thus Thy service, the whole service of a life," So interrupted Publius, "is this Lord The same as he whom Mary tells us of?" "The same, O Publius," answered Paul. "But he-- I thought that he was put to death," replied Publius. "Yea, but He burst the bands of death, He rose in power and glory from the grave, He thence ascended far above all height Into the heaven of heavens beyond all thought, Where He sat down enthroned forevermore By the right hand of God;" so Paul, enrapt And with his rapture aweing all who heard. Publius then said, for now with meat and drink The appetite to each was satisfied: "O Paul, what thou thus sayest quickens in me Desire to hear the rest of Mary's tale. That death of shame, however undeserved, Yet fallen on him as if inevitable-- He surely would have shunned it, if he could-- Had, I will own, induced in me some doubt Whether the man who suffered it could be Indeed the worker of such miracles As those that Mary thought she saw from him. But his triumphant rising from the dead, His after showing of himself to thee, That, this, if that, if this, did happen--why, Such conquest over death and Hades won And by such proof assured to us, were much. But let us listen to what Mary yet Will tell us of the last things to that life And of the shameful death that ended it."