I hurried through my work, dusted off the desk, locked the typewriter,
and at two o’clock mounted my bicycle, went straight out Seneca street,
over the iron bridge, on out the plank road, past Wendlings, through
Springbrook, and stopped then for the first time, and standing on
a rising slope of ground, I looked around in every direction. The
dandelions seemed to cover the earth as with a carpet, and great masses
of white hawthorn-trees in bridal array decked the landscape. The trees
were bursting into leaf, and through the silence there came the drowsy
hum of insects, and away off in the distance I could just detect the
tinkle of a cowbell. To the left, two miles away, I saw a dense wood
which seemed to transform the hill on which it stood into a great green
mound.
“Yes, that surely is the place,” I said. I followed the plank road a
mile further, then turned into a road which seemed like two paths side
by side, as a line of green sward filled the centre of the roadway. I
came to the wood, let down the bars, and back in the clearing was the
log house, and out under the spreading branches of a great oak sat The
Man. He smiled the same sweet smile and motioned me to a seat beside
him, and together we sat in silence. The calm and rest seemed complete.
“Let us sit here under the trees,” said The Man, “and I will explain
several things which you must understand before I make known the higher
truths which you are to give to mankind.
“Perhaps you have wondered why I do not go out into the world and teach
face to face; and my reason, friend, for not doing this, is because I
must needs disguise myself, if I go among the people. They would not
comprehend me, but would shout, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ as they
did in the days of old. If I should go into the city and teach as the
Master did, can you imagine the headlines in the Sunday papers? I
would have followers of course, but even they would misunderstand me
and quarrel among themselves about who should be the greatest in the
Kingdom of Heaven. Many of them would fall down and worship me, and
when I passed out of their sight there would be an ever-increasing
number who would deify me, confounding my personality with that of a
God, while the power I possess is possible for all men. They would
say I was not a man but a ‘supreme being.’ On my metaphor they would
construct a system of theology, and would use my words as a fence to
hedge in and limit truth, instead of accepting my principles as a
broad base on which they might build a tower to touch the skies.
“A modern prophet has said, ‘I am astonished at the incredible amount
of Judaism and formalism which still exists nineteen centuries after
the Redeemer’s proclamation.’ ‘It is the letter that killeth,’ after
his protest against the use of a dead symbolism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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