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TO 
 
 Nazareth Or Tarsus? 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 Not On Calvary," " The First Millennial Faith," Etc. 
 
 (Copyright 190: 
 
 06iivK PoBusHiNG Company.) 
 
 JCA LIFO^ 
 
 New York: 
 
 J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 57 Rose Street. 
 
APOLOGY. 
 
 So LONG as orthodoxy believes that its wisest 
 course is to ignore the results of the higher criti- 
 cism, he who would appeal to the occupants of the 
 pews — nay more, desires to persuade that "man 
 in the street" whose relation to the divine testa- 
 mentary gifts is that of residuary legatee to the 
 man in the pew — must follow the example of the 
 pulpit, and allow himself no participation in the 
 fruits of critical scholarship. 
 
 84195 
 
Nazareth or Tarsus? 
 
 I. 
 
 An open volume. 
 
 Of The Man who stands before it courtesy per- 
 mits the phrase "in the prime of life." 
 
 The Book, like Shakespeare, "is more praised 
 than read" — thoughtfully. 
 
 The Man is strangely alone. 
 
 He was most unfairly handicapped in that 
 midnight footrace; for his competitor was en- 
 cumbered with but a single garment, and that 
 of the lightest material. 
 
 The starting post was the bedside of an un- 
 faithful wife. 
 
 Then he went out into the still, clear night, 
 thanking God that the reflected shame was his 
 alone to bear. Thankful that to no child-life 
 would come the overshadowing ignominy of a 
 mother's sin. 
 
 Alone; without even the memory of mother, 
 sister, brother, child. 
 
 84195 
 
13 yAZAliETH OR TARHUH? 
 
 Not but that he had experienced a mother's 
 love, — ou its reverse side. For the women — 
 saintly women, if you will take their funeral ser- 
 mons at their face value — whom he was obliged 
 to call by that blessed name, had taught him 
 that the maternal instinct in a woman is no ho- 
 lier, though wiser, than if it were endued with 
 hoofs and horns to defend its own young, or to 
 secure for its own offspring daintier pastures 
 and sweeter waters. 
 
 There are oases in the desert ; — but where the 
 waters of Marah have fructified. Blessed are 
 they who may abide under the beneficent shade 
 that they foster. 
 
 This is not a story we are telling you. Come 
 with us, as step by step we walk by the side of 
 this man, learning his strength and weaknesses; 
 and so, knowing his limitations, we may detect 
 .any mistake in his reasoning, any error in his 
 conclusions. 
 
 But we cannot rightly judge whether we 
 should allow him to influence our opinions till 
 we measure the sincerity of his purpose: and 
 equally important it is to judge whether the iso- 
 lating conditions of his life have made liim hard 
 and bitter or have fostered a calm, self-poised, 
 judicial temperament. 
 
 Yet we may be sure of this; that if he is not 
 
'NAZARETH OR TIRHVB? 13 
 
 hard and uncharitable he will possess a tender- 
 ness, morbidlj^ sensitive throngh retrospect of 
 his own suffering, which will make him vulner- 
 able to the attacks of those who could not vic- 
 timize him through anj^ low or selfish appeal. 
 
 Once a gang of blackmailers had found the 
 way to move his pity, knowing that he would be 
 fearless and unguarded if his sympathies were 
 aroused and his confidence won. When their 
 masks were thrown off and he saw that they had 
 him in their power — through the apj)earance of 
 evil motive which they had skilfully woven about 
 him — with no chance of escape, he Avould have 
 drawn them into his power, by a pretended de- 
 sire for a conference, and would have taken their 
 lives as calmly as he would have destroyed any 
 other kind of vermin. And to the spiritual com- 
 forter who would have visited him in his conse- 
 quent confinement, with an appeal for contrition 
 and repentance, he would have answered that he 
 could not ask God's forgiveness for what he 
 would do again under the same circumstances; 
 that it was the only gentlemanly way out of his 
 dilemma ; and if it was the choice of going to hell 
 a gentleman or to heaven a poltroon and with a 
 cruel wrong unavenged, then he must ask to be 
 excused from taking the heavenly road ; and that 
 he could not reconcile God's pity and justice with 
 any regret on God's part that any of this most 
 
14 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 merciless class of beings should be removed be- 
 yond any possibility of further prosecuting their 
 brutal calling. 
 
 Perhaps there may have been some of the old 
 heathen Norse blood in his veins; and surely he 
 was better fitted for Valhalla than for Heaven. 
 
 But between his overpowering desire for a re- 
 venge that seemed almost sacred — ^because per- 
 haps morbidly exaggerating the crime of work- 
 ing a great injury through an appeal to pity — 
 there came the thought of her, "half child, half 
 woman," who looked to him for that love and 
 care and provision Avhich he had pledged to her, 
 in her loving dependence on him. He could not 
 leave her to struggle alone and unloved. So his 
 enemies' lives were spared. How close they 
 came to death they never knew ; while he calmly 
 bowed to the shame and loss which the male- 
 factors fastened on him. 
 
 Too late he had met that warning of a most ac- 
 complished student of human nature : 
 
 "Kindnesses which can be reciprocated foster 
 friendship; kindnesses beyond the power of re- 
 payment engender hatred." 
 
 Later, when he had become as conversant with 
 his Bible as with Tacitus he never ceased to 
 wonder that divine wisdom liad not conveyed 
 this warning; had loft it to tlio lion then pliil(!«- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 15 
 
 opher alone to place this beacon light, searching 
 the soul as merely human light has seldom done. 
 A light which — if it had lighted the Man's path 
 in early life — would have saved him from the 
 pitfalls that ingratitute had dug, and in which 
 he had encountered his keenest sorrows. 
 
16 NAZARETU OR TARSUSf 
 
 II. 
 
 Six months ago he stood as he stands to-day, 
 reverently closing the volume before him. 
 
 To-day his face is firm and hard. A warrior's 
 helmet would be a fit setting. Then it was se- 
 rene and benignant; a calm restfulness pos- 
 sessed it. 
 
 It matters not how the impulse came : it may 
 have been aroused by that eloquent and persua- 
 sive preacher, Death : it may have been through 
 retrospect of the treachery and ingratitude of 
 those whom he had loved and trusted ; there came 
 into his heart the longing to learn if there was 
 a stable foundation for the hope of another ex- 
 istence; where to exultant, eternal youth there 
 was presented an ever developing knowledge: 
 where the beautiful in myriad forms would ap- 
 peal to such sublime virility that satiety would 
 never stay the flow of endless enjoyment. 
 
 It was his good fortune to have the friendship 
 of one of those rare characters, whose evenly 
 balanced intellects and generous impulses make 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSVSf lY 
 
 them the confidants and helpers of any who are 
 in doubt or trouble. 
 
 But, crossing the threshold of that friend's li- 
 brary, he saw that the simple breakfast was un- 
 tasted and that some grave problem oppressed 
 him. 
 
 'You are busy — hard at work — I will come 
 again.' 
 
 'No,' was the answer; 'stay, I need you. You 
 of all men in the world I am most gratified to 
 see. Here,' and he almost thrust into his visit- 
 or's hand the photograph he had been studying. 
 Then, turning to some papers, he seemed to re- 
 gard them carefully that he might in no way dis- 
 turb his visitor's analysis of the "counterfeit pre- 
 sentment." 
 
 At length the Man laid down the picture. 
 'Well, it ought not to be hard to trap him if 
 he is within reach. He is vain, and that will 
 make it easier ; he is brutal, and would be merci- 
 less; it will require no fine work; it will be 
 through his lower nature that you will trap him.' 
 
 'You are right in your reading of his face,' 
 the host replied. 
 
 'It is the old story. A foolish girl was carry- 
 ing on a romantic correspondence with a sup- 
 posed attach^ of a foreign embassy. He had im- 
 pressed on her that she must destroy his letters, 
 and he assured her that he destroyed hers. 
 
18 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 'She obeyed; so we have no evidence against 
 him. Her letters were carefully preserved, and 
 when he had secured a sufficient number he be- 
 gan to ask her for loans. After he had obtained 
 all that she could give he threw off the mask and 
 demanded that she sell her jewelry, that she ob- 
 tain money to pay her bills and send it to him, 
 or he would use her letters to injure her. 
 
 'All of these demands were typewritten and 
 unsigned. So they are not evidence. 
 
 'At last, every resource exhausted, confronted 
 with bills she had obtained money to pay, half 
 sick from fear of the scoundrel, she confessed all 
 to her parents. 
 
 'Last night they came to me. I am not on their 
 visiting list. I am never invited to their func- 
 tions. It was just a little amusing to observe 
 the embarrassment they labored under as they 
 appealed to one whom they regarded as their so- 
 cial inferior for aid in a crisis that might seri- 
 ously affect their daughter's social prospects. 
 Any public prosecution they naturally dreaded. 
 Indeed, there was no evidence to support it. Thoy 
 only desired to recover the compromising let- 
 ters.' 
 
 'There is only one way to recover those let- 
 ters,' said the Man. 
 
 'I know it,' was the answer, and the host's 
 face showed the keen chagrin of one who knows 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 19 
 
 the methods he should employ, yet is powerless 
 to command them. 
 
 'The Woman?' Intently the two men looked 
 into each other's faces as the visitor asked this 
 simple question. He, calm and impassive; the 
 face of the other appealing mutely for help. 
 Presently the visitor's face relaxed into a faint 
 smile, and a slight gesture told of his ability to 
 help. 
 
 'You have relieved me from what I was re- 
 garding as an almost hopeless position. For the 
 parents I cared nothing. The mental sufferings 
 of the girl had enlisted my interest, yet till you 
 offered to help me I was humiliated by my power- 
 lessness. But tell me — this woman, do you hold 
 her by fear or through affection?' 
 
 'Neither; through gratitude.' 
 
 Then followed a short conversation that would 
 have been unintelligible to a listener ; words ap- 
 parently with no relation to each other ; half sen- 
 tences such as only those can employ who know 
 each other's hearts, and each so intent that words 
 are almost needless, with each face fully in the 
 light of the other's eyes. So the two men ar- 
 ranged the details for the rescue of the girl from 
 the power of her oppressor. 
 
 As the visitor rose to leave he said: 'I value 
 this woman's loyalty too highly to permit a need- 
 less risk. Disagreeable as is the work, I must 
 
20 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 take "close shadow." I would entrust no one else 
 with her protection. Give me Hart for "outside." ' 
 And at whatever sacrifice on his part the lojal 
 woman would have been protected in her peril- 
 ous mission. 
 
 His hand was almost on the door when his 
 host recalled him. 
 
 'How can I apologize for my thoughtlessness? 
 You have given me all that I could have asked; 
 yet to you I have not given one thought. Tell 
 me what service I can render to you.' 
 
 'One can safely give advice to a hungry man/ 
 and the visitor laughingly called attention to the 
 untasted breakfast; 'but to ask advice from an 
 unbreakfasted man is a temerity that I trust I 
 have the good sense not to be guilty of.' 
 
 'If you were not so modest that you are blind 
 to the intense relief you have brought to me you 
 would know that my heart is so light that I 
 could Avork for hours on the strength of that re- 
 lief ; but' — and here he touched the bell — 'I will 
 order a warm breakfast for two, and while it is 
 preparing let me share any interest or any anxi- 
 ety that you entertain. Now settle yourself in 
 this easy-chair and let me have the pleasure of 
 making myself just a little less your debtor.' 
 
 The lightheartedness and cordiality were so 
 evident that they made it easy for tlie Man to 
 
IfAZARETH OR TARSUS f 21 
 
 reveal that longing which, next to Love, is hard- 
 est for one soul to unbosom to another. 
 
 Then the host answered: 'You esteem me, I 
 fear, more highly than I deserve when jou say I 
 am the one whose comprehensive, unbiased study 
 has made me, in your view, the safest counsellor 
 on a theme the importance of which I concede 
 unreservedly. But its truths are of such a na- 
 ture that each student of them must regard their 
 evidences largely through the media of his own 
 temperament. So I can only offer to you that 
 which I feel will appeal most effectively to you.' 
 
 He arose, and, taking from his desk a little 
 book, he said: 'Here is a gift from a dear old 
 lady who feels that she is responsible for my spir- 
 itual welfare. To tempt me to read it she writes 
 to me that it is the Index Expurgatorius of 
 orthodox religious bookstores. Its brevity at- 
 tracted me more. That the author is in earnest 
 is evident. That he has struggled up — 
 as he believes — to a light that he wishes to im- 
 part to others is equally clear. He is too rev- 
 erent to destroy where he does not try to recon- 
 struct on lines that he believes to be true and 
 natural. I give it to you, this little "Not on Cal- 
 vary," knowing that you will weigh it care- 
 fully, confident that you will detect any false 
 reasoning, if such it contains.' 
 
22 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 Not many days after this consultation there 
 came to tlie home of the foolish virgin a woman 
 whose cultivation and refinement were evident. 
 Her demand for an immediate interview she 
 apologized for, 'because moments may be pre- 
 cious. Examine this package,' she said. 'If any 
 letters are lacking it is best that I should receive 
 these again and restore them at once, that I 
 may recover all.' 
 
 Presently the girl's face told her without 
 words, by the look of relief that suffused it, that 
 the number was evidently complete. 
 
 'Believe me, dear child, mj relief that my 
 work is ended is little less than your joy that 
 you have escaped from his power.' 
 
 But now the visitor saw a look of mingled con- 
 tempt and fear on the mother's face. 'My dear 
 madam, I understand you perfectly, since you 
 take no pains to conceal your thoughts. Our 
 low estimate of others is largelj^ a reflex of our 
 own characters — unless we have been terribly 
 unfortunate in our experiences. No. You have 
 not exchanged one danger for a new one. Your 
 secret is safe with me, for the sake of the man 
 for whom I have made this sacrifice — greater 
 and more repugnant than you can understand. 
 But' — and here she held out her hand to the 
 girl — 'I believe that you trust me.' 
 
Nazareth or tarsus? 23 
 
 'Indeed I do, and I shall never forget your 
 kindness. Come again and see me; I want you 
 to be my friend.' 
 
 'Thank you, dear child. And I am sure that 
 when a true and loyal love comes to you you will 
 value it all the more for the counterfeit that you 
 have received.' Then, holding her hand, she im- 
 pressed the willing girl into such sincere cour- 
 tesy in leave-taking that the mother was silently 
 but emphatically rebuked. 
 
24 in AZ ARETE OR TARSUS f 
 
 III. 
 
 Self-reliant^ shrinking from taking others 
 into his confidence — even when it was a matter 
 of small moment — it was only a sense of duty 
 which impelled the Man to give publicity to his 
 new convictions. 
 
 Perhaps he was not fortunate in his choice of 
 the clergyman through whom he desired to make 
 a public avowal of his newly found faith. 
 
 Simply and unreservedly as a little child he 
 told the story of his weariness with the humiliat- 
 ing and contemptible conditions of living; of his 
 hope that there was irrefragable proof — at least 
 presumptive evidence of the validity of the claim 
 of the ]\Ian of Galilee that he came with power to 
 reveal a future life of happiness; telling, too, of 
 his longing for fitness for such an exalted and 
 restful existence. 
 
 Kindly, tactfully, the clergyman drew from 
 him the history of the methods of reasoning nud 
 the influences that had led him to recognize the 
 truth of the beneficent mission of the life begun 
 in Bethlehem. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 25 
 
 'Let me see the little book that has been the 
 means of convincing you that there is a future 
 worth the attaining to and which has guided you 
 into the knowledge of the way that leads to that 
 life.' 
 
 Prepossessed in its favor, the clergyman re- 
 ceived the book. But his face became ominously 
 clouded as he glanced over its pages. Slowly 
 closing the book, he handed it back to his visitor. 
 For a moment he sat in silence. Then, as if im- 
 pelled to the performance of a painful duty, he 
 said: 
 
 'My friend, saddest of all error is that which 
 misleads through the glamour of sincerity. Such 
 I believe is the ignis fatiius that you have fol- 
 lowed. False light I believe it to be, although 
 it has led you to a peaceful faith. But that 
 faith is wrongly founded. Covertly, yet none 
 the less intently, this little book attacks the 
 teachings of Paul the Apostle. Reverently its 
 author regards the mission of our Lord. But I 
 appeal to your good^ sense — rather let me say to 
 that skill in the analysis of evidence with which 
 you are so justly credited. 
 
 'On the one hand, St. Paul supernaturally con- 
 verted by a revelation of the risen and reigning 
 Christ — and divinely called to be an apostle of 
 Christianity, especially commissioned to preach 
 the Gospel to the Gentile world. Under divine 
 
26 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 inspiration lie wrote the epistles "svliich bear his 
 name. The doctrines set forth in these writings 
 have stood the test of the most rigid investiga- 
 tion and were the inspiration of those great ref- 
 ormations which eliminated many of the errors 
 which had crept into the church. 
 
 'Surely if St. Paul's doctrines had been con- 
 ceived in error — founded on falsities — the 
 searching intellects of those great reformers 
 would have discovered the fallacies of his prop- 
 ositions. 
 
 'Is it within the bounds of probability, I might 
 almost say of possibility, that errors — so rad- 
 ical and so profound as this little book implies 
 are incorporated by the canon of St. Paul in the 
 universal Christian faith — could have escaped 
 the critical acumen of those intellectual giants, 
 Calvin, Luther, and the Westminster divines? 
 
 'On the other hand, we have opposed to them 
 an obscure writer, admitting himself to be un- 
 skilled in theology, inveighing against the doc- 
 trines that have stood the test of nearly two 
 thousand years; doctrines that have survived 
 through all those centuries the attacks of athe- 
 ists and founders of schismatic sects; yet stand- 
 ing to-day as firmly grounded in the basic faith 
 of Catholics as of Protestants; and not less of 
 the Greek church, of the Armenian, and of all 
 other Christian communions. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 37 
 
 'Let me ask you to apply to this investigation 
 that law of probabilities on which, I presume, 
 you have founded your success in your profes- 
 sion.' 
 
 *I acknowledge the force of your argument ; I 
 admit the weight that is due to the consensus of 
 belief throughout the Christian world. But you 
 are not so wise in your personal appeal. 
 
 'So far from my successes being based on — as 
 you say — the law of probabilities, let me remind 
 you that most successful men do not run with 
 the multitude in the easy grooves of probabilities. 
 Parallel with them, perhaps; or it may be coun- 
 ter to them; but never adown them is a great 
 success overtaken. But my profession has taught 
 me to hold lightly, — that I may drop readily, if 
 faulty, — any thread of investigation; nay more, 
 to be ready to couple with it, even if promising 
 a, success, any new one that possesses any ap- 
 pearance of leading to the truth. So I ask you 
 to tell me where I can best learn of the teaching 
 of Paul the Apostle. I assure you that I will 
 enter on the study unprejudiced by that which 
 I have previously read. In my daily life I am 
 constantly impressed with the fact that truth is 
 many sided; and its brightest facets may be un- 
 recognized till that is cleared away which ob- 
 scures them. Unreservedly I yield to your ar- 
 guments ; and I am allowing no protests from my 
 
38 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 "superior ignorance"; an ignorance which, I 
 assure you, I will overcome if you will teach me 
 how to do so.' 
 
 'Certainly — and it is always a joy to me to 
 aid anyone who is willing to learn the true 
 guide to such knowledge ;' and as the clergyman 
 spoke he handed to his visitor the Book, often at 
 the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. 
 'Were all else lost, this one letter would have 
 given to Christianity that which has enshrined 
 St. Paul in the hearts of all believers. Then turn 
 back to St. Luke's story of his great Master's 
 life, a life that was so full of privations ; so glori- 
 fied by his devotion to his mission. Then go for- 
 ward and read his fervent appeals to the con- 
 verts; his devoted love to his children in Christ. 
 You cannot fail to give him your reverent ad- 
 miration.' 
 
 'You have described a great preacher, but you 
 have told me nothing of his doctrines,' was the 
 calm reply. 'Will you please outline them, that 
 I may know what the church of to-day demands 
 as the foundation of belief?' 
 
 And the clergyman answered: 'I know that 
 your analytical mind will recognize as irrefrag- 
 able this chain of argument by which St. Paul 
 maintains his doctrines: 
 
 'First : That God created man into a state of 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSVSf 29 
 
 innocence and gave him a commandment, which, 
 if broken, brought the penalty of eternal death. 
 
 'Second: That man broke the law and thus 
 fell into a state of guilt which exposed him to 
 the wrath of God in this life and throughout 
 eternity. With the first man all mankind fell 
 and were brought under the same condemnation. 
 
 'Third: The sin being infinite, an infinite sac- 
 rifice must be offered to appease the Divine jus- 
 tice. 
 
 'Fourth : That this infinite sacrifice was of- 
 fered in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, 
 who, being the second person of the Trinity, be- 
 came man, and shed his blood for the sin of man ; 
 thus satisfying the claims of Justice. 
 
 'Yet, better than answer of mine, are the 
 words of the blind Milton, who was compensated 
 for his loss of vision by a clearer spiritual in- 
 sight : 
 
 "i/frn^ losing all, 
 To expiate his treason hath naught left, 
 But to destruction sacred and devote 
 He icith his ivhole posterity must die: 
 Die he or justice must; unless for him 
 Some other able, and as ivilUng, jmy 
 The rigid satisfaction: death for death" 
 
 And their inspiration was in St. Paul's fearless, 
 
30 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 unqualified insistence on the doctrine of atone- 
 ment through the blood of Christ. Read his 
 epistles and you will learn the truth of the mis- 
 sion of the Christ.' 
 
 The enquirer listened respectfully, yet re- 
 solved to find and to follow the truth ; whether it 
 led him with the multitude or alone into the wil- 
 derness. 
 
 Perhaps there was a degree of chagrin at his 
 discomfiture in the impulse that led him — before 
 he entered on these studies — to read again the 
 little book; but this time side by side with the 
 words of those who had been chosen by the Life 
 to be the historians of His acts, the recorders of 
 His utterances. 
 
 'Reverently its author regards the mission of 
 our Lord' — he remembered that the clergyman 
 had said of the little book. And as he compared 
 the book with their teachings he found no in- 
 justice had been done by its author to the evan- 
 gelistic writers. 
 
 And now there came before him a condition, 
 which in a mind less self-reliant and analytical 
 would have produced one of two results. Possi- 
 bly a yielding of the judgment to the asserted 
 authority of the church ; but far more likely to 
 have sent him to join that groat body of semi- 
 unbelievers Avho put aside Ihe consideration of 
 divine truth because they claim that they can- 
 
NAZARETH OR TAR8USf 31 
 
 not understand its complexity; the fault theirs 
 equally with those public teachers who have 
 placed before them the temptation to thus avoid 
 their duty. 
 
 Let us then consider the condition which con- 
 fronted him. There seemed to be a choice be- 
 tween two conclusions only. First, that the Life 
 had purposely omitted to convey a system of 
 theology to those whom he had chosen as His 
 historians; and that later He had revealed this 
 system to Paul the Apostle, and through him to 
 the world; or, secondly, that the Life did not 
 comprehend its mission, and so did not recog- 
 nize while on earth the need of revealing to man- 
 kind that system of theology and that theory of 
 his office — a knowledge of Avhicli was essential to 
 an availing of the benefits of His life and death ; 
 and so a later revelation was needed, and this 
 knowledge was conveyed through St. Paul. Then 
 — in either case — the little boolv was grossly in 
 error, or worse, in suppressing these important 
 truths of later revelation. That there might be 
 another proposition; that neither of these was 
 true, did not occur to him, so perfect was his 
 confidence in his teacher. 
 
 Desiring to devote all of his attention to the 
 study of the evidence presented to him, there 
 ■were appeals made to him which he could not 
 resist; there came demands on his time which 
 
32 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 engrossed him in behalf of others. But one 
 evening, too weary for study, he had taken up 
 the Gospel of St. John to beguile the hour with 
 the beauty of its presentation of the love of our 
 Lord. He read on uncritically till he came to 
 the words : "But now ye seek to kill me. . . . 
 Ye do the will of your father. ... Ye are of 
 the father, the devil ... he was a murderer 
 from the beginning." 
 
 Carefully he reread these sentences, studiously 
 he examined the intervening words to see if he 
 had done violence to the meaning of these sen- 
 tences by grouping them together; critically he 
 examined the context to find if it modified the 
 apparent continuity of thought. Assured that 
 the grouping did no violence to the meaning of 
 the words, he closed the book. For a long time 
 he sat overcome by the thoughts that crowded. 
 Fatigue was forgotten now in the absorbing con- 
 sideration of the vista that these words opened. 
 By the side of them he placed the words 
 of the clergyman : "Without shedding of blood 
 there is no remission of sins." A less robust in- 
 tellect would have been appalled at the complex- 
 ity of thought Avhich this juxtaposition engen- 
 dered, as he questioned with himself as to what 
 were the relations to one another, of these trnn- 
 Rcendent personalities that were to be paHlci- 
 pants in this impending shedding of blood. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 33 
 
 Were the two divine personalities unable to 
 effect the atoning sacrifice without the co-opera- 
 tion of that fallen angel whom they had deposed 
 from heaven? Or had he intruded his partici- 
 pancy, and the Divine were unable to repel him? 
 And why did he take a part in this shedding of 
 blood if that sacrifice was to be the means by 
 which the Christ would overcome him? Why 
 should he be so earnest in his purpose to effect 
 the undoing of his own undoing of the race? 
 Surely not through ignorance, for in the desert 
 and on the pinnacle of the temple he had recog- 
 nized and battled with the Divine. 
 
 The midnight hour bade the Man to rest. But 
 for days thereafter these questions were the un- 
 dercurrent of his thoughts. 
 
 And then there came into his heart the longing 
 for peace. Why not seek it in the Roman com- 
 munion? It forbade such vain searching after 
 truth; it asserted its possession of authoritative 
 revelation of truth. To those who succeeded him 
 there had been handed down by him to whom the 
 Christ had delivered the keys of his church the 
 poAver to distinguish truth from error. So it 
 claimed : and why not seek the peace it offered 
 through this claim? But the proof? What is 
 the evidence that the Christ did not complete the 
 Messianic message, but had left important truths 
 for those later revelations on which the Roman 
 
34 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 church founded so much of its claims to unques- 
 tioning credence? Why, St. Paul! Yes, St. Paul. 
 He must be the corner-stone of that church's 
 claims, for to him — first of all — there came the 
 vision of heaven and the bestowal of revelations 
 that the Lord could not or would not communi- 
 cate to His chosen twelve: revelations on which 
 are founded the basic doctrines of the Christian 
 church in its entirety — so the clergyman had told 
 him. 
 
 In unmistakable terms the Lord had thus pro- 
 claimed through St. Paul the incompleteness of 
 his teachings on earth. So the Roman church 
 was logical in its claim that all down the ages 
 it had received fresh revelations of the Divine 
 will. Then he recalled that twice within his cen- 
 tury the Roman church had received such evi- 
 dences of the Divine favor ; revelations that were 
 the complement, the natural sequence, of those 
 of which St. Paul had, at the outset, been the 
 medium. Yes, there is rest, if the evidences of 
 revelations are unassailable ; and if they are as- 
 sailable, the corner-stone, St. Paul, must first 
 be found to be unsound. Yet this power (hat the 
 church claimed — what if that should fall into 
 over-zealous or even unscrupulous hands? 
 
 Vainly and long he sought the test for this. 
 Yet the more intently he pursued it the more it 
 eluded him. He was convinced that his reason 
 
NAZARETH O'R TARSUSf 35 
 
 could not compreliend the methods of this test. 
 There seemed no alternative but to subscribe to 
 belief in that which Avas beyond his comprehen- 
 sion; and the maze became more bewildering at 
 each step. Grimly there came to his mind the 
 Hibernian definition of faith : "The gift of God 
 that enables you to believe what joii know isn't 
 true." But at last he rose and took a volume* 
 from his shelves and read : 
 
 " ^Yes/ said the tall and solemn elder, 'it is 
 indeed nothing less than a revelation received 
 by the head of the church last night. It con- 
 cerns both you and your daughter.' 
 
 " 'My daughter,' gasped the woman, in 
 scarcely audible tones, and I saw one hand grasp 
 the back of a chair convulsively. 
 
 " 'Your daughter, who has now grown to wo- 
 manhood,' continued the elder, 'and owes her 
 allegiance to the church.' 
 
 " 'What is the revelation?' the woman forced 
 her drawn lips to ask. 
 
 " 'Through the grace of the all-wise Father 
 it has been revealed to his disciple, Brigham 
 Young, that your daughter Clarissa should be- 
 come the third wife of Elder W , here present 
 
 with us.' 
 
 "An awful silence ensued, and then a con- 
 
 *Mrs. J. K. Hudson, in T/ie Nezc Lippincott. 
 
36 ^^AZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 vulsive movement in the woman's throat, as if 
 her voice refused to utter a sound, attracted tlie 
 attention of all, and the men bowed their heads 
 that they might not see." 
 
 The Man gave a sigh of relief. That danger 
 is past. If brutal lust can successfully simulate 
 divine revelation; can invoke its semblance to 
 sanction its outraging of all that is pure in wo- 
 manhood ; then I demand of the faith that I ac- 
 knowledge that it be untainted by the slightest 
 suspicion that any revelation to which it lnya 
 claim is soiled by sordid motive. It must give 
 me indubitable evidence that he, through whom 
 the revelation came, was a prophet of pure vision, 
 of clear and judicial intellect which did not re- 
 fract truth through vanity or prejudice. 
 
 'Now to the study of St. Paul. I have faith in 
 my teacher. Yet with an earnestness that I 
 never before employed I will analyze the evi- 
 dence of St. Paul's fitness to be the prophet who 
 revealed our Lord's true mission to mankind.' 
 
 Never before had he attempted to solve a prob- 
 lem that had so perplexed him — because never 
 before had he been shut in between two opposing 
 truths. Truths they must be ; for God's ministei- 
 bad endors(Ml "esseutinl to salvation" across the 
 dicta of Paul, while to the lieloved disci]>le was 
 attributed the seemingly conflicting words of his 
 
NAZARETH OB TARSUS t 37 
 
 Master. 'Could it be/ he asked himself, 'that there 
 is demanded an insight superior to mere mental 
 vision, to reconcile these? For surely no human 
 intellect can bring order out of the chaos that 
 these create. Perhaps, after all, the Catholic dev- 
 otee is right when he surrenders individual 
 judgment and admits the claims of his church 
 that it possesses a divinely endowed power to 
 recognize truth: a power mysterious and incom- 
 prehensible except to those through whom God 
 has made His revelation.' 
 
 But these were only passing thoughts. The 
 Man's intellect was too virile — perhaps intellec- 
 tual pride may have been a potent influence — to 
 permit him to accept any solution to which his 
 judgment did not assent. Yet, turn which way 
 he would, like the angel with the flaming sword, 
 this question barred the way: 'If the Divine 
 sacrifice was essential to the salvation of the 
 race, why was the devil impelling his "children" 
 to effect the atoning death?' and 'Was it from 
 choice or necessity that God admitted the devil 
 as co-worker in the plan of salvation?' And — 
 though less important than the first — there came 
 another question : 'Why did the Lord denounce 
 those who were necessary instruments in carry- 
 ing out the Divine plan of salvation?' Yet till the 
 iNIan had read all that his teacher had indicated 
 to him he would suspend judgment. 
 
38 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 IV. 
 
 'I THANK you for the lesson you have given 
 me to-day.' 
 
 The speaker was a splendid specimen of man- 
 hood. The Man admired handsome animals ; and 
 it was the torso and limbs of an athlete that 
 commanded favorable regard when the vacant 
 place in his employ was applied for. He had 
 accepted the applicant, partly because there was 
 a "black mark" opposite his name, for the Man 
 knew that in this lay the possibilities of devel- 
 oping a fides Achates. 
 
 And the lesson. 
 
 Ten miles behind them they had left the 
 county jail, and now they are nearing the home 
 of the Man. Almost silently they had watched 
 the noble bay as he swayed from side to side, 
 breasting the storm and breaking his way 
 through the heavily gathering snow, never slack- 
 ening his gait, though from time to time an ear 
 was turned backward in that silent appeal for 
 encouragement which only an intelligent horse 
 will make and which only a true lover of horses 
 can interpret. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSU8? 39 
 
 As they had entered the heavy doors of the 
 prison it was evident that the Man was not a 
 stranger there and that he was regarded with re- 
 spect. 
 
 'Let me see the man who was committed on 
 the 7th. I would like to talk with him, with 
 your permission.' This to the official who had 
 received him with such marked deference. 
 
 With an expression half cowed, half brazen, 
 and wholly suspicious, the prisoner shambled 
 through the door that opened from a double tier 
 of cells. 
 
 His visitor met him more than half vray, then 
 led him to a chair and sat by his side. 'Thank 
 you for coming out to meet me.' The voice had 
 a cheery, distrust-dispelling ring. 'Now, we are 
 going to be good friends ; and I will help you if 
 you will let me.' 
 
 As he spoke he dropped from his own knee to 
 that of the prisoner a slab of tobacco. Lying 
 there, it served as a drawbridge on which a new- 
 born confidence was timidly venturing to meet 
 the visitor. 
 
 Presently the prisoner placed the gift in his 
 pocket; but the expression of his face showed 
 that he was apprehensive lest it might possess 
 some of the qualities of the Trojan horse: that 
 it might include some secret power that could 
 open the gates of his soul to a watchful enemy. 
 
40 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 'Your old pal said it was just your size.' 
 
 The prisoner's face lighted up as his visitor 
 named the associate. But this 'slang' name, as 
 well as the thieves' vernacular in which the pris- 
 oner spoke — and which his visitor used so far as 
 was needed to establish confidence — it would be 
 an affectation to repeat here. 
 
 'But I thought that he was keeping shady.' 
 
 'So he is; but you know that we must trust 
 
 some one ; and by the way, the gang are 
 
 boasting that they have put you out of harm's 
 way for at least ten years.' 
 
 Then there burst from the lips of the inmate 
 an exuberant efflorescence of profanity that evi- 
 dently had its roots in his soul, and these were 
 fructified by the intensest hate. 
 
 With seeming carelessness the visitor had 
 made the remark ; yet he knew that the success or 
 the failure of his important mission depended 
 upon how the apparently indifferent remark was 
 received. The prisoner was too much absorbed 
 in his 'cursory remarks' to observe the deep 
 #breath of relief and the faint smile that assured 
 success had elicited. 
 
 'Now, my dear fellow,' and the visitor laid 
 his hand on the inmate's shoulder — rising as he 
 spoke — 'my friend here is all right, but you and 
 I can chat more freely at Ihe foot of the corri- 
 dor. Come;' and together they went to the end 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 41 
 
 of the long passage. As they stand there silhou- 
 etted against the clear light let us regard them 
 for a moment. One, erect, with a military bear- 
 ing that made soldiers instinctively salute as 
 they passed him. The other, cringing yet reck- 
 less; manhood gone, but defiant, as if fate had 
 done its worst. 
 
 Presently the Man extends his hand. The pris- 
 oner's is half outstretched to meet it, only to be 
 withdrawn in the vaccilation of a spirit that has 
 learned the lesson of distrust through falseness 
 to itself. But in another moment as he reads 
 truth and honor in the face of the Man the re- 
 luctant hand is impelled, as if by an impulse of 
 distrust of his own distrust. So the weak thief 
 and the strong man pledged faith to each other. 
 
 A short conversation follows, the visitor mak- 
 ing a few notes in his tablets, showing them to 
 the prisoner lest he might fear that confidence 
 had been strained ; then they are ready to return. 
 
43 NAZARETH OR TARfiUS? 
 
 Some weeks later the press was loud in the 
 praises of the alertness of the police of a small 
 city because it had thwarted the attack on the 
 home of a bank cashier whom it ^ as intended to 
 force into revealing the combination of the safes 
 of his bank. 
 
 Yet apparently the condition could not have 
 been more favorable for successful entering. The 
 policeman on that beat was evidently asleep. The 
 window of the house yielded without a sound to 
 the jimmy; the operator had no diflQculty in un- 
 fastening the street door that his fellows might 
 enter. But immediately the hall where he stood 
 was flooded with light and at the head of the 
 stairway he saw the form of the cashier crouch- 
 ing motionless in the shadow. 
 
 Lightly bounding up the stairs, the burglar 
 drew his revolver and covered the unmoved form, 
 which maintained that serenity which one has a 
 right to expect from a lay figure which has never 
 done anything to shatter its nerves. 
 
 Tlie 'drowsy' policeman's Winchester glit- 
 tered chillily as the burglar turned at the 'hands 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 43 
 
 up!' that came from the doorway Avhich he had 
 left open for his pals. But they were detained 
 outside. For two noisy roysterers who would 
 not 'go home till morning,' and had to cling to 
 each other for mutual support, had suddenly been 
 sobered and passed noiselessly up to the pals and 
 gave each a wrenching grip on arm and shoulder 
 which made each stand quietly, bending over 
 with pain, in an attitude as if looking for lost 
 valuables; while a most disreputable looking 
 tramp crawled out from under the veranda 
 where he had been asleep, growling because he 
 had been awakened from his nap, and was shuf- 
 fling away. But when ordered to assist in secur- 
 ing the burglars he applied the bracelets with a 
 deftness and celerity that was remarkable in a 
 novice. 
 
 Behind the foliage on the other side of the 
 street crouched a woman. Her rigid face and 
 staring eyes were like those of the dead as she 
 watched the silent procession. For there was 
 one man there to whose aid she would have gone 
 had he been wounded ; though the devotion would 
 have cost her commitment. 
 
 She had been a most faithful servant — 'such 
 a treasure! — so superior to her class!' 
 
 In a safer hiding-place than her trunk she had 
 carried away blue-prints and drawings of the 
 interior ; while her faithful heart had carried all 
 
44 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 of the details of the complete piping off of the 
 house of the cashier. 
 
 And now the faint tinkle of the steel links 
 seemed like a far-off knell ; for dead to her for ten 
 long years at least would be the man she loved. 
 
 The prisoner and his visitor have returned to 
 the main corridor of the jail and have joined the 
 Man's attendant. 
 
 'We owe my friend here something for leaving 
 him alone/ said the Man. 'Come, now, tell him 
 some of your experiences.' 
 
 'Experiences — nothing,' and the prisoner 
 turned away half sullenly, leaning his head on 
 his hands. 
 
 'Doesn't it pay?' The words came slowly 
 and with a shade of taunt in the tone. The Man 
 was intent on drawing him out. The lesson must 
 be taught. 
 
 'Pay? Pay? Pay hell ! Say, do you believe in 
 a devil? I do !' And the prisoner sat erect and 
 faced his hearers, his manner almost defiant. 
 'He draws us on ; he stirs up all the recklessness 
 and false pride in us. And then, when he has 
 ruined and betrayed us, he laughs at us. T mean 
 it. I have seen him come into my cell and gloat 
 over me; and when T struck at him my fist went 
 through him into empty air.' It was a the- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 45 
 
 ory of the Man that no healthy mind consents to 
 crime. 
 
 ^And back again to prison we go after a few 
 weeks — at most a few months — of freedom. 
 
 ^Bnt what is there for us but crime when we get 
 out? We know that we have the i>rison pallor; 
 we fear we have the lock-step to further betray us 
 as criminals. If kind hearts secure work for us 
 our past must be told. He may begin well ; but 
 we get tired of being regarded with pity at the 
 best; perhaps with contempt. The reckless 
 devil in us is waked up, perhaps by reading of a 
 successful crime — successful till the sleepless vig- 
 ilance of the police run it down. 
 
 'Then we are at it again ; and in we go again. 
 That settles it ; Ave are "professionals" then, and 
 we have no place to go when our time is up but 
 into the haunts of thieves. We have longed 
 for time-up, and we mean to be more cautious. 
 Society, we feel, is our enemy, and we will make 
 it "life against life" if we get in a tight place. 
 But we don't. We get caught again, and we curl 
 up like whipped dogs — if the odds are not in 
 our favor. 
 
 'Maybe it's the women Avho pull us down. 
 They are kind to us when Ave come out. Maybe 
 it isn't all selfishness on their part. We are men 
 and they are all the women we have; and when 
 they welcome us and expect nothing from us — 
 
46 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 for a time at least — we lay our heads in their 
 laps like Samson, and we listen to their stories 
 of how different gangs have made big hauls and 
 how generous they were to their women. And 
 as the days go by, and we are idle, they rally us 
 on our lost nerve. 
 
 'Then our false pride is aroused and we go 
 out to win — perhaps. And if we win we are 
 proud if it ; and we boast of our success to them 
 — in acts, maybe, more than words ; and they be- 
 tray us. Not intentionally ; they have a woman's 
 love of gossip; they love, like other women, to 
 show their knowledge of what is going on in 
 their world; and hoAV can they be truer to us 
 than they are to themselves? And soon the gos- 
 sip filters down to where the police have their 
 lines out to catch any bits of information. And 
 we are run in. 
 
 'Do you think that we confess to the police? 
 Not much ! Our lawyers have taught us to keep 
 our mouths closed — if no one else has — and we 
 have learned by experience that the police can- 
 not get us shorter terms if we confess. But they 
 have the game in their own hands. There is no 
 one to dispute them; but usually they are right. 
 We travel beaten paths, and it is easy to follow 
 our path once they are on it, and that path 
 usually leads through a gambling house. The 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 47 
 
 "confession" shields some one who has peached 
 on us — and jurymen read the newspapers. 
 
 'But I could tell you stories of the devotion of 
 the wives of thieves; how they grow gray and 
 worn supporting themselves and trying to lay by 
 something till their men are free: how their 
 women's eyes see through the weakness or the 
 treacherous nature of the men their husbands 
 intend to make their pals; how their women's 
 love sharpens their wits to find the safest ways 
 to work or to elude the police. Often they could 
 save their men from detection if the husbands 
 would only be guided by their wives.' 
 He stopped awhile, then cynically added : 
 'Yes. If a few days of wild pleasure is 
 enough for years inside of prison walls then it 
 pays.' 
 
 'There is a storm gathering, and we have a 
 long ride before us ; else we would stay and chat 
 longer with you.' 
 
 The lesson had been taught and the Man was 
 ready to go. 'And now a word of advice. Listen 
 attentively to the chaplain. If he observes you 
 and seeks 3'ou out personally do me the favor to 
 show him that you value his counsels. I am not 
 advising you to play the hypocrite. You can be 
 sincere if you choose, and I hope you will be.' 
 
 'I will promise to do the best I can to follow 
 
48 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 your advice.' Needlessly long the prisoner held 
 his visitor's hand as he bade him good-bye. It 
 was more than parting with the man who was the 
 first in manj years whom he had trusted. He 
 felt that he was parting from honesty and honor. 
 As the visitor passed out he asked for and re- 
 ceived the address of the chaplain. 
 
 The office of public prosecutor is one in which 
 many a travesty or miscarriage of justice is 
 effected. That is inevitable where the 'one- 
 man power' has no check. In a wiser jurispru- 
 dence this needless temptation as well as danger 
 will be guarded against. But, on the other hand, 
 there can be such discriminative skill in using 
 leniency as a means to acquire important evi- 
 dence that the arbitrary power of that office may 
 make it a safe repository of information ; so that 
 the otherwise impracticable methods of justice 
 will be made effective. 
 
 To such a wisely administered office there 
 came the knowledge of what the prisoner had 
 done to prevent a great crime. 
 
 So when the kind chaplain bore witness to the 
 prisoner's penitence the public prosecutor had 
 pretext for asking that the greatest possible len- 
 iency be shown to the penitent. 
 
 And when the judge gave only a liglit sentence 
 l])e good chaplain came forward and grasped the 
 
'NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 49 
 
 prisoner's hand, certain tliat it was through his 
 ministrations — and these alone — that the miti- 
 gation was established. 
 
 But the prisoner looked, through eyes dimmed 
 by gratitude, beyond the clergyman wondering 
 at the strange indifference, to the Man whom he 
 knew has kept his word, and had unobtrusively 
 wrought the mitigation of his sentence. 
 
 Then he, for whose sake the lesson had been 
 elicited, resumed: 
 
 'I am not afraid to tell you that more than 
 you know — more, perhaps, than I know — I have 
 taken your lesson to heart. 
 
 ■^When I applied to you for employment I 
 came believing what your enemies had said of 
 you ; and I came prepared to throw that in your 
 face if you had refused me because you had 
 heard bad reports of me. I saw that you looked 
 me through and through; and I felt that you 
 cared only for what your eyes told you. They 
 who hated you, because they had found out that 
 you had a heavy hand for those who were cruel 
 or unjust, had taught me that your home was a 
 fit place for a man who has made such a slip as 
 I have made.' 
 
 *I saw all of that plainly,' was the answer, 
 ^and I saw that beneath it were the possibilities 
 of a faithful member of my household.' 
 
50 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 'By degrees I saw that your enemies had lied 
 about you. Then surprise changed to admira- 
 tion ; and before I knew it I was growing to love 
 your home. 
 
 'There was not there one of the things I had 
 been taught a home needs. Not one person in it 
 who has not the right to leave at any moment. 
 Not one tie to fix any one there. Yet each one is 
 thoughtful of the comfort of the others. Never 
 a cross word or a word of command ; and there is 
 no fear there except the fear of failing to please 
 you. 
 
 'When I was a boy I used to visit my grand- 
 father. Each morning I had to listen to his long 
 reading and longer prayers ; but I was comforted 
 by thinking about the waffles and maple syrup 
 that would follow. I remember that one morn- 
 ing he read how the Hebrew servant, when his 
 time was up — I mean when his freedom came, 
 but loving his master so well that he did not wish 
 to leave him — would let his master run an awl 
 through his ear and fasten him to a doorpost of 
 the house; and then he was a part of the house- 
 hold as long as he lived. If it was the custom 
 now I would furnish the ear if you would furnish 
 the awl and the doorpost.' 
 
 Then, more seriously, he added : 
 
 'I never before knew what the word home 
 meant. I can't expect you to trust me so soon ; 
 
"NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 51 
 
 but I shall be glad when you can tell me you 
 have confidence in me and will let me feel that 
 it is my home. I will work hard for this.' 
 
 In the Man's voice and manner there was more 
 of the comrade than of the master as he gave 
 assurance of how deeply the expression of devo- 
 tion had moved him. 
 
 'And now you are part of our home. Its 
 honor is yours to protect ; and more, it will pro- 
 tect you. Whoever, from this time forward, re- 
 flects on you attacks our home. You are not 
 built in such a way that you need to take a gross 
 insult from any man. But you will have the 
 good sense not to proceed to extremities.' 
 
 'You need not fear — if the insult is to me 
 alone. If to you or to our home there is likely to 
 be an accident that will need hospital treat- 
 ment.' 
 
 'Well, here we are; home at last. I will send 
 out a cup of hot milk to you ; for I know that you 
 will not leave Don while there is a moist hair on 
 him.' 
 
 'Trust me for that ; every hair will be "as dry 
 as a drunkard's morning throat" before I close 
 the stable door.' 
 
 "Unto whom much is forgiven, the same lov- 
 eth much," — and long and faithfully — if the hand 
 of him who forgives has iron under the velvet. 
 
52 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 VI. 
 
 Most cordial was the clergyman's welcome. 
 All his experience assured him that the coming 
 again of the truth-seeker could have but one mo- 
 tive — the admission of the truth of the accepted 
 Christian theology. 
 
 But in the full light of his study as the two 
 men faced each other there was an ominous 
 hardness in the visitor's face. 'With sorrow I 
 observe that you are not at peace.' 
 
 And the Man answered : ^4nd why peace? Did 
 not He say: "I come not to bring peace, but a 
 sword?" Over your door I saw no warning leg- 
 end : "Who enters here leaves peace behind ;" but 
 here I left the peace that was like a child's trust, 
 and I have not regained it nor found its sem- 
 blance in the line of study that you marked out 
 for me, though I have faithfully followed it.' 
 
 The clergyman recognized the challenge and 
 mentally girded himself for the struggle. 
 
 *I have studied tliat man, Saul of Tarsus, as 
 I have never searched the life of any other man. 
 It is a most absorbing subject.' 
 
 *And you find that he is ' 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 53 
 
 'The most complex character that I have in- 
 vestigated. Unreservedly I concede him to be, 
 facile prUiceps, the Christian poet of the first 
 century. Poet surely, and with all of the "divine 
 madness" of the poet. The "divine" in a poetical 
 sense. The "madness" we will consider in this 
 analysis.' As he said this he laid a roll of manu- 
 script on the study table. 
 
 'Yet I beg that you will recognize that in this 
 attempt to prove that Paul's mind was disor- 
 dered, and also in that which I shall say to you 
 here to the same effect, my only sentiment is pity 
 for his sufferings — which are so apparent. 
 Wherever I express contempt or indignation it is 
 only nominally directed against him. My con- 
 tempt is for those who have refused to recognize 
 Paul's incapacity to develop a system of Chris- 
 tian theology; who have accepted his vagaries 
 as divine truth, and have demanded their general 
 acceptance. It is against these alone that I 
 make my complaint. For I recognize in him 
 an earnest seeker after righteousness. Nay, 
 more; he highly attained to righteousness; for 
 his innate revulsion to that which v>'as unright- 
 eous was an integral part of his nature. Yet 
 he seems to me to have been saturated with an 
 intense egotism that gave its color to his beliefs 
 and utterances.' 
 
 'But surely if you concede his innate love of 
 
54 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 righteousness you cannot but admit his fitness 
 to be a teacher of divine truth?' 
 
 'A teacher — no. A preacher — a most elo- 
 quent preacher — j^es. There is a vast differ- 
 ence between the two. But the innate desire for 
 righteousness does not include all that is essen- 
 tial to the leading of men into a true faith. 
 Teachers most unlike him have been possessed by 
 this desire. "Would you know," says Epictetus, 
 "the means to perfection which Socrates fol- 
 lowed? They were these: In every single mat- 
 ter which came before him he made the rule of 
 reason and conscience his one rule to follow." 
 So, too, with Mohammed. The unity, spiritual- 
 ity, presence and power of God, the necessity of 
 righteousness, were truths clear to him.' 
 
 ^But surely you would not compare Moham- 
 med with St. Paul?' 
 
 'Compare them? Certainly. Attempt to draw 
 a parallel? — surely not. That would be mani- 
 festly unfair — to IMohammed. He fell before the 
 temptations that he, evidently standing alone, 
 encountered in his short life. Nay more; he 
 encountered those temptations in almost as few 
 years as through centuries the church — in its en- 
 tirety, with its strength of numbers and organ- 
 ization — battled; and it, too, fell. And both fell 
 before the same temptations. Ilis purity of pur- 
 pose — ^^ hether you call it divinely implanted or 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSVSf 55 
 
 only a natural revulsion to the evil about him — 
 fell; just as the church at that time had fallen 
 before the temptations of self-gratiflcation and 
 love of power. And the last of these was doubt- 
 less, in both instances, the parent of the other. 
 If his self-indulgence was animal it was not less 
 debasing than was that form which possessed 
 the church. "Faith had evaporated in worship 
 of images ; still more in discussion of metaphys- 
 ical subtleties about God; had given way to a 
 worldliness and corruption that could not be 
 hidden." And the intellectual pride which had 
 substituted these metaphysical subtleties for the 
 pure faith bequeathed to the simple Galilean 
 fisherman was clearly traceable to the malign in- 
 fluence of an intellectual pride, which clearly 
 had its impulse, at least its excuse, in the scho- 
 lastic vanity of Saul of Tarsus ; who held in such 
 unmistakable contempt the message given to 
 those humble attendants whom our Lord had 
 chosen as his apostles. 
 
 'Could there have percolated down to Moham- 
 med — rather let us say, if his then pure spirit 
 had possessed the opportunity to draw up to it — 
 a genuine Christianity ; if, too, the power of evil 
 had not taken away Khadijeh, his true wife, his 
 consoler in his spiritual despair, his guardian 
 against temptation — who can forecast the power 
 for good that Mohammed would have wrought 
 
56 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 in rebuking the debased Christianity of his day, 
 in "provoking" it to resume its apostolic purity?' 
 
 'Do you consider Mohammed equally inspired 
 with St. Paul?' the clergyman asked. 
 
 'Why not? St. Paul was always a Pharisee; 
 with all of the bad and all of the good qualities 
 of the Pharisee. He never abandoned that atti- 
 tude. Mohammed heard his call while en- 
 gaged in earnest, humble searching after 
 God, and he eagerly followed what he believed 
 to be the voice of Gabriel. Saul of Tarsus 
 was terrorized out of an antagonism to 
 the Christ that he was persecuting. Far more 
 wonderful miracles than the light that shone at 
 noonday and the voice that spoke to him on the 
 way to Damascus had attested the divinity of the 
 Christ. To these greater miracles he was indif- 
 ferent, though doubtless he knew of them. Per- 
 sonal fear, the blinded eyes; these overpowered 
 him. Yet they had sufficiently their raison d'etre 
 in the deliverance of the Damascus believers 
 from his persecutions. There was no precedent 
 in the acts of our Lord for such methods of 
 choosing and dedicating an apostle.' 
 
 'Then you believe that IMohammedanism had 
 possibilities that could have developed it into 
 being the peer of Christianity in true spiritual- 
 ity?' the clergyman asked, 
 
 'Surely not; for it did not possess the ele- 
 
2^ AZ ARETE OR TARSUS f 57 
 
 ments of intellectual strength with which a pure 
 spirituality must be allied; for there were in- 
 herent weaknesses that made impossible even the 
 maintaining of the wonderful intellectual tri- 
 umphs of the Moslems in the Middle Ages. But 
 its fatal weakness is that in it there is no place 
 for the Divine love. It taught only God's sov- 
 ereignty. 
 
 'In missing the love of God it failed to attain 
 to that which is the only foundation of pure al- 
 truism, on which alone must rest a true spirit- 
 uality — as well as a progressive civilization — 
 and no other can be abiding. 
 
 'And yet how beautiful was the calling of 
 Mohammed. "Thou art the messenger of God, 
 and I am Gabriel." Such was the message that 
 he believed had come to him. 
 
 'Disappointments, mockery, insults, persecu- 
 tions were given to him in as full measure as to 
 Paul; but unflinchingly he bore them; and his 
 faith failed not. 
 
 'We admire Paul's attacking the worship of 
 Diana in Ephesus. Mohammed's motive and ex- 
 periences in Mecca were almost parallel. 
 
 'The appeal of his hunted followers is as beau- 
 tiful as if from the lips of Christian devotees: 
 "Oh, King, we lived in ignorance, idolatry and 
 unchastity; the strong oppressed the weak; we 
 spoke untruth; we violated the laws of hospi- 
 
58 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 talitj. Then a prophet arose, one whom we 
 knew from our youth; with whose conduct and 
 good faith and morality we were well acquainted. 
 He taught us to worship one God, to speak truth, 
 to keep good faith, to assist our relations, to 
 fulfill the rites of hospitality, and to abstain 
 from all things impure, ungodly, unrighteous. 
 We believed him, and followed him. 
 
 * "But our countrymen persecuted and tortured 
 us, and tried to cause us to forsake our religion. 
 And now we throw ourselves upon thy protec- 
 tion. Wilt not thou protect us?" Then one of 
 them recited a part of the Koran that spoke of 
 Christ; and the king and the Christian bishops 
 wept upon their beards. And the king dis- 
 missed the Ambassador of the Koreysh, and 
 would not give up the refugees. Thereupon per- 
 secution waxed hotter in Mecca; and Moham- 
 med answered it with: "While God commands 
 me, I will not renounce my purpose." ' 
 
 ^But you admit that St. Paul was possessed 
 by a real love of righteousness. The fruit of 
 that must be a noble exemplification of the moral 
 law; and if he was filled with revulsion to the 
 Law, because . it had failed to establish the 
 moral precepts, then the general influence of 
 his teachings must be to establish moral con- 
 ditions — even if sometimes he is led away, by 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 59 
 
 his intensity, into hyperbole and poetical exag- 
 geration.' 
 
 To this the Man replied: 'Any really great 
 leader must be the master of himself ; and noth- 
 ing could be more confusing, in our attempts to 
 establish the moral responsibility of each indi- 
 vidual, than is Paul's statement that he was pos- 
 sessed by an influence, independent of himself, 
 that impelled him to do wrong contrary to his 
 intent.* 
 
 'Hence if we were to allow, generally, this 
 shifting of moral responsibility — through the at- 
 tributing the culpability for sin to an external 
 power, either personal or impersonal ; which was 
 not simply an influence, but an irresistibly im- 
 pelling power — we should lower moral stand- 
 ards through weakening of individual responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 'Thus Paul's influence did not make for moral 
 conditions. Paul's influence was certainly bad in 
 this respect. I do not forget that elsewhere — 
 indeed almost immediately — Paul takes an en- 
 tirely contradictory attitude; but this is an- 
 other instance of that vacillation which adds to 
 our confusion; and adds to our distrust of the 
 man, of his doctrines, and of the validity of his 
 
 * Rom. vii. i : " So it is no more I that do it (evil), but sin 
 that dwelleth in me." Rom. vii. 25 : "So then I myself with 
 the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of 
 sin." 
 
(30 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 claims to inspiration. Paul may have caused — 
 surely furnished the palliation of — the Mani- 
 chiEan tenet of inherent evil in the flesh. In our 
 estimate of what constitutes moral reponsibility 
 nothing could be more confusing than are these 
 statements of Paul. 
 
 'Plato was not only nearer right, but he was 
 clearer and more convincing in his strong, incis- 
 ive reasoning — so sharply contrasting with 
 Paul's vacillation, and with his impulsive, emo- 
 tional utterances. "God is not the author of evil. 
 Moral evil is the result of the abuse of .free agen- 
 cy, and God stands justified in creating beings 
 liable to both;" i.e., liable to exposure to good 
 and evil.' 
 
 Then you do not believe in an actual personal 
 devil?' the clergyman asked. 
 
 'Most assuredly I do. Else I could not justify 
 my belief in the Gospel according to St. John. 
 
 'Througli a form of what might be called Spir- 
 itualism I have been forced to one of two conclu- 
 sions. First, that I — in common with every 
 friend who has co-operated with me in my inves- 
 tigations — am possessed of an eidolon, or daemon, 
 its existence wholly unsuspected till souglit and 
 questioned; which is coarse, lying, profane, fond 
 of giving pain through false statements; more- 
 over, it can use our muscles as it wills, and this 
 control is without the consciousness of that part 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 61 
 
 of our intelligence which we call our minds. Or 
 else I must believe that there are actually lost 
 spirits which come and tell of intimacy with and 
 submission to the devil. I was obliged to end 
 my investigations because they were evidently so 
 unwelcome that they provoked only profane and 
 abusive manifestations. Of this alone I am sure: 
 that spiritualism is simply a revelation of that 
 which is wholly bad within us or external to us ; 
 and surely I wish to believe that there is a 
 devil and his angels, rather than to think that 
 the coarseness, maliciousness and profanity 
 which were invariably expressed, were not the 
 outward and visible sign of a debased inward 
 spirit, Avhich was an inherent part of the mind 
 and soul of my friends and of myself. I regret 
 that I could not investigate further, and yet I 
 can conceive of no scientific test that could have 
 been applied to demonstrate either theory. Yet 
 I shall never forget the expressions of self-con- 
 tempt for life misspent on earth, whatever their 
 source may have been. Hence I do not challenge 
 Paul's statement that he was attacked by a 
 power wholly external to himself. 
 
 ^But it is incredible that this malign power 
 could enter and dominate a soul that, as Paul 
 claims, had been consecrated by a divine call to 
 apostleship and by a special revelation of the 
 Christ will and teachings, and yet these divinely 
 
62 VAZ ARETE OR TARSUS? 
 
 endowed influences be so powerless to resist the 
 demon that they snccumbed and left Paul a pris- 
 oner in the hands of the power of evil. 
 
 'One or the other of these statements is un- 
 true; yet presenting an incongruity that is thor- 
 oughly Pauline. I do not forget Judas; but he 
 voluntarily entertained the tempter. 
 
 'But to return to Paul. Thoroughly arbitrary 
 are his assumptions in regard to the relations of 
 free will to God, Is what men do the result of 
 their own choice or is it determined for them, 
 and if the latter, how can they justly be pun- 
 ished? (Rom. iii. 5; ix. 19.) The answer is given 
 in the form of an antinomy, of which the thesis 
 is the sovereignty of God and the antithesis the 
 responsibility of men. He states that the sov- 
 ereignty of God is absolute; that God has no 
 moral obligation to men; there is no qualifica- 
 tion of God's power, no moral rights of men. He 
 quotes the Law and the prophets to show that 
 only a remnant, an elect remnant, of Israel 
 would be saved; and that all others should be 
 blinded. But when he finds himself involved by 
 the statement that God has blinded and repro- 
 bated other men so that they shall not reach this 
 blessing, Paul can escape only by the arbitrary 
 and literal use of the poetical imagery of Jere- 
 miah and of the son of Sirach : the figure of the 
 clay and the potter. "He hath mercy on whom 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 63 
 
 he will, and whom he will he hardeneth" (Rom. 
 ix. 18-23). The "vessels of wrath fitted unto de- 
 struction" ; "vessels of mercy prepared unto 
 glory." Yet elsewhere Paul attempts to vindi- 
 cate God by attributing to man an entire respon- 
 sibility, but makes no attempt to reconcile the 
 conflicting theories. He further defines God's 
 plan of bringing the knowledge of salvation to 
 the Gentiles as including the purpose thus to 
 "provoke to jealousy" the Jews, and that the 
 Gentiles "now have obtained mercy" by the dis- 
 obedience of the Jews; "even so have these also 
 now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to 
 you they also may now obtain mercy." The 
 crowning absurdity of these utterances is (Rom. 
 X. 32) : '.'For God hath shut up all unto disobe- 
 dience, that he might have mercy upon all." And 
 then, in one of those periods of lucidity that 
 only emphasize his aberration, in the next two 
 verses, Paul says: "How unsearchable are his 
 judgments, and his ways past tracing out. For 
 who hath known the mind of the Lord?" This 
 calm, consistent flow of thought and language 
 is as if another writer had taken up the pen of 
 Paul to rebuke him for that looseness and ex- 
 travagance of expression which would be blas- 
 phemy from one who was sane. 
 
 'Most repugnant — and in no way authorized 
 by the words of our Lord — are Paul's statements 
 
64 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 that Christ (Gal. iii. 13) was "made a curse for 
 us"; and "He made him to be (II. Cor. v. 21) 
 sin for us." 
 
 'His theology is so different from that of 
 John. "He was manifested to take ( I. John iii. 
 5-6) away our sin. For this purpose the Son 
 of God was manifested, that he might destroy 
 the works of the devil." In this epistle, as in the 
 Fourth Gospel, we see the rejection of Christ ex- 
 plained, not as a casual outcome of individual 
 caprice or wickedness, but as an inevitable result 
 of the eternal antagonism between light and 
 darkness. 
 
 Taul further adds to his confusion of doc- 
 trine by: "But if our Gospel is veiled . . . 
 the god of this world hath blinded the minds of 
 unbelievers" (II. Cor. iv. 4). Yet he has re- 
 peatedly stated that God is the cause of this 
 blindness. 
 
 'Here, as frequently elsewhere, ho furnishes to 
 modern Unitarianism and (I. Cor. xx. 24-28) to 
 the heretical sects of the early church, their au- 
 thority for believing in the inferiority of the 
 Son to the Father. 
 
 ' ( I. Cor. XV. 29. ) He does not rebuke, but re- 
 cords with seeming approval the baptizing of the 
 living for the dead. How can we condemn the 
 doctrine of purgatory and the saying of masses 
 for the dead so long as we make no protest 
 •against these words of Paul? 
 
NAZARETH O'B TARSU8? 65 
 
 '(Eph. i. 20.) Here, as elsewhere, he states 
 that the Father raised Christ from the dead. 
 That is, that Christ did not rise by his own inher- 
 ent power; and then clearly implies that the 
 power which Christ subsequently' held was not 
 previously existent, as poAver co-equal with that 
 of the Father, but a lesser power, and that it was 
 not bestoAved in its fullness till after the ascent 
 to heaven. 
 
 'What matters it that these assumed limi- 
 tations of our Lord are directly opposed to His 
 positive and repeated claims to co-equal power — 
 claims that include the asserting of a power over 
 life (John x. 18), that is equal to the power 
 which the Father possesses. Theology demands 
 that the dicta of Paul be unquestioned. 
 
 '(I. Cor. viii. 6.) "The Father of whom are 
 all things and Jesus Christ through whom are 
 all things," is like the Logos of Plato. That 
 Paul does not refer to the Johannean Logos was 
 perhaps because he was imbued with the theory 
 of Philo: for Paul refers (Col. iii. 16) to the 
 spirit of Christ, in terms so like the conceptions 
 of Philo and so unlike the Johannean conception, 
 that the omission suggests the question whether 
 his antagonism to the apostles made him ready 
 to accept, or was caused by, his Platonic views 
 on this important doctrine.' 
 
66 tJAZARETH OR TARSUB? 
 
 VII. 
 
 In support of his criticism the Man quoted: 
 "Who can measure the evil that came from 
 Paul's practical denial of the true Logos? That 
 he still held to his Jewish theological ideas is 
 shown by his urging the universality of death as 
 proof of universality of sin, 'for it was a fixed 
 Jewish belief that God created all men to be 
 immortal.' Yet that all men died Paul claimed 
 was evidence that all men had sinned. But he 
 gives no explanation of how he deduces this, or 
 how revealed to him. He states that sin is uni- 
 versal, and that it is so inevitably. He attempts 
 to prove this by stating that sin is inseparable 
 from human nature, but gives no evidence to sup- 
 port the statement that mankind as a race was 
 involved in the sin of Adam (Rom. v. 12-19; 
 I. Cor. XV. 21, 22). Through the one man's dis- 
 obedience the many were made sinners (Rom. v. 
 19), is an alternative expression with 'through 
 the trespass of one the many died' (Rom. v. 15). 
 But as to the mode in which the 'trespass' or 'dis- 
 obedience' of Adam affected the wliole human 
 race, no information is given, and it has puzzled 
 Christian theology for centuries.'^ 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 67 
 
 "Paul favors the theory of sin being inherent, 
 or has obtained a permanent lodgment — as it 
 suits him for the moment." 
 
 "Paul's theology has two elements, the logical 
 and the mystical, which are seldom wholly sep- 
 arated from each other, and it is these elements 
 that have permitted his ideas to be so readily 
 modified or construed or combined as to form 
 the foundation of varied systems of theology; 
 for Paul's variety and complexity of expression, 
 his varying metaphors permit such varied con- 
 struction that they are readily adaptable to any 
 interpretation in favor of which the student is 
 prepossessed." 
 
 "So, too, the liberty that Paul takes, in di- 
 rectly opposed statements, as Phil. iii. 6, 'a right- 
 eousness that is in the law,' and Gal. ii. 16, 'By 
 the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.' " 
 
 "So, also, the reasons for the giving of the 
 law, when — as he asserts — it was destined to 
 failure.* These passages allow the conclusion 
 that the law was promulgated to make the sinful- 
 ness of sin more apparent; or they may be con- 
 strued to mean to make sin more heinous, though 
 in no way restraining it. Preconceived ideas 
 and temperament of the student leading to 
 either — or any intermediate — conclusion." 
 
 * Gal. iii. ig; Rom. iii. 20; v. 20, and vii. 13; I. Cor. xv. 56, 
 
68 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 "Again his complexity of ideas, in his concep- 
 tion of Christ's mission, is so involved that no 
 consistent reasoner can be guided by them.* 
 
 "Equally involved and complex — though 
 naturally less contradictory — are Paul's descrip- 
 tions of the changes in man through the power 
 of Christ." 
 
 'Noble are his exalted ideas and his descrip- 
 tions of faith; but these are no indications that 
 he had received a special revelation of the office 
 of Christ; and furnish no justification for ac- 
 cepting, as a teacher of doctrine, a man whose 
 poetic enthrallment leads him to use any terms 
 that serve the moment; terms that illustrate or 
 vivify the emotion — not conviction — that ab- 
 sorbs him; till a new impulse leads him to an- 
 other flight of sentiment. 
 
 'His intense love of polemics, his intellectual 
 pride, were constantly leading him away from 
 his really dominant conviction, that righteous- 
 ness, "a conscience void of offense towards God 
 
 *As Sacrifice, I. Cor. v. 7; Rom. v. 25. (i) Reconciliation, 
 Rom. V. TO, 11; II. Cor. v. 18, 19. (2) Saved from the wTath 
 of God, Rom. i. 16 and v. 9; Rom. iii. 24; I. Cor. i. 30; Ei)h. i. 
 7; Col. i. 14. (3) Lans?ua.c:e of purchase of a slave, I. Cor. v\. 
 20 and vii. 23. Free from bondaj^e to the law. Gal. iv. 5. 
 (4) Bondage to the elements of the universe or material thinc^s. 
 Gal. iv. 3, 9; Col. ii. 15. (5) To the varied ideas of 'acquittal,' 
 not justification by God's favor, Rom. iii, 24; by Blood of 
 Christ, Rom. v. 0; Gal. ii. 17; by Faith, Rom. xi. 28 and v. i; 
 Gal. xii. 8, 24. Mvstical union of Christ and men, so that they 
 died with him and rose with him, Rom. vi. 3-10; Gal. ii. 20; 
 Eph. ii. 5, 6; Col. ii. 12. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS t 69 
 
 and man," is the basis of a true religious life; 
 led him into wild vagaries and illogical reason- 
 ings, which have furnished the pretext for count- 
 less errors in belief.' 
 
 From the Pauline quiver the clergyman drew 
 another shaft. 
 
 'You have admitted the beauty of St. Paul's 
 poetic conceptions. But more than poetical 
 imagery is his demonstration of (Gal. iv. ) the 
 glorious freedom of the Christian under the 
 gospel and of the Hebrew bondage under the law ; 
 using as illustration Isaac, the son of the free- 
 woman, and Ishmael, the sou of the bondwoman. 
 Clearly — except to those who are unwilling to 
 be convinced — he demonstrates that the lower 
 plane of genesis of the law must be followed by 
 failure to attain to other than bondage, because 
 it was of that which the bondwoman was a fit- 
 ting type; Avhile freedom waited on the later 
 birth that came of the liberty in Christ Jesus 
 which the free woman represented.' 
 
 And the Man answered : 
 
 'Let me complete Paul's illustration, "Now" 
 this Hagar, is Mount Sinai." But it was on 
 Mount Sinai that the commandments were di- 
 vinely delivered which included "Honor thy 
 father and thy mother." Surely that which Paul 
 denounced as the bondage of the law ought not 
 
70 KAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 to be the system of ethics which God gave on 
 Siani, and which our Lord sanctioned so clearly. 
 That which oppressed Paul was — or ought to 
 have been — the accretions of tradition. But 
 why did not Paul denounce these? Why did he 
 not join our Lord in His denouncing the tradi- 
 tions of which the brutality of the immunity 
 from filial obligation in "Corban" was the na- 
 tural result? 
 
 'Paul was so steeped in Pharisaical perver- 
 sity that he could not dissociate all that was ethi- 
 cal and humane in the law as divinely given, from 
 the perversions which had been made by those 
 whose works of the law had been instituted 
 solely to foster their pride of exclusiveness and 
 to display their supercilious sense of spiritual 
 superiority. 
 
 'Hence his figure was poetical — and only that ; 
 in no sense an apt illustration. 
 
 'But if you insist on taking Paul seriously 
 in his reasoning from those premises, I must 
 ask you to regard first its inconsistency, and 
 secondly its consequences. 
 
 'The reasoning is illogical, for to Isaac's pos- 
 terity — the descendants of the freewoman — was 
 given the law that was to put them — not the 
 children of Ishmael — in bondage. The latter 
 were to be free from the condemnation of sin, 
 because Paul had established — to his own satis- 
 
NAZARET,H OR TARSUS f 71 
 
 faction at least — that only by the knowledge of 
 the law could sin be imputed. 
 
 'But I have dwelt so much on Paul's inabil- 
 ity to reason logically that I will not continue 
 this topic, but pass to the consideration of that 
 which is of far graver moment than were his 
 futile attempts at logical demonstration ; namely, 
 the consequences of his misdirected reasoning. 
 
 'Already I have called your attention to Paul's 
 habit of introspection, and to his consequent 
 viewing through the refracting media of his own 
 convictions the presumed motives and methods 
 of reasoning of those to whom he appealed. 
 
 'Unfortunately for Paul's thesis of bondage 
 under the law, and of glorious freedom under the 
 gospel, the consequence was drawn by the Greek 
 and Grecized converts that the immunity from 
 temptations — to which the law alone had given 
 rise and poAver, and had made sinful the yield- 
 ing to — had been so established by dying to the 
 law, and being a new creature in Christ Jesus, 
 that sense could no longer wield a seductive 
 power.' 
 
 * "The shock to Paul when he learned of the 
 dreadful immoralities practiced in his cherished 
 church at Corinth must have been a terrible one. 
 Thenceforth it ought to have been clear to him, 
 as probably it was to unimpassioned on-lookers, 
 * J. Warschauer in "New World." 
 
73 NAZARETH OR TARDUS? 
 
 that faith conferred no immunity from vices of 
 the gTOSsest description; nay, more, that the 
 fatal doctrine of the abrogation of the moral 
 law was bound to lead to the most sinister conse- 
 quences, and would actually be taken as an en- 
 couragement to every kind of license. In vain 
 the apostle Svrithed and twisted' to escape the 
 difficulty he had himself created; in vain did 
 he reason that faith, emancipation from the law, 
 not only produced, but h(/.s, a state of emancipa- 
 tion from sin, and that they in whose members 
 sin still bore dominion had not real faith. Who 
 was to gainsay the fervid self-assurance of any 
 one who chose to protest his faith, together with 
 his conviction that he was superior to the restric- 
 tions of the law? Had not Paul himself plainly 
 hinted that sin is not imputed where there is no 
 law (Rom. v. 13), and that he himself 'had not 
 known sin, except through the law' (Rom. vii. 
 7)? He might lay down, as indeed he did, the 
 most explicit ethical injunctions, commending 
 a godly, righteous and sober life; but what 
 more natural than that his liearers preferred the 
 part of his teaching which deprecated righteous- 
 ness by works and described the law as the 
 strength of sin? 
 
 "The Corinthian scandals were only the fitting 
 prelude to a series of phenomena which, through 
 the whole history of Christianity, never failed 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 73 
 
 to manifest themselves where the Pauline doc- 
 trine obtained a serious hold. *'A hideous shad- 
 ow of antinomianism has dogged it throughout 
 all time. It was manifest in the immoral sects 
 of the apostolic period; ... it lingered on 
 through the Middle Ages; it burst into febrile 
 heat at the Reformation among the Anabaptists 
 of Munster, and the Adamites and other obscene 
 sects, and all these appealed to the argument of 
 Paul and away from his injunctions.^ In the 
 canon itself we are told of some who wrested the 
 teachings of Paul 'to their own destruction' (II. 
 Pet. iii. 16) ; of some who turned 'the grace of 
 God into lasciviousness' ( Jude 4) ; of a proph- 
 etess who taught believers 'to commit fornica- 
 tion and eat things sacrificed unto idols' (Rev. 
 ii. 20).' 
 
 "Must we not read these passages in the light 
 of Paul's own sorrowful admission (I. Cor. v. 
 1), that there reigned in that church such im- 
 morality as was not even among the Gentiles. 
 The charges of shameless debauchery constantly 
 made against the early church — and occasion- 
 ally admitted by writers like pseudo-Clement, 
 Tertullian, and Iren?eus — all point equally to 
 the widespread mischief wrought by the doc- 
 trine of justification by faith; and well might 
 the writer whom we have been quoting observe: 
 
 * Baring-Gould, "Study of St. Paul." 
 
74 'NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 ^The church trembled on the verge of becoming 
 an immoral sect. It was high time that the <jos- 
 j)eh should appear, and show that Christ had 
 given His sanction to the moral law; nay, had 
 extended its application.' " 
 
 'Yet all the more willingly/ the Man added, 
 'I pay heartfelt tribute to Paul's attempts to 
 free himself from these sad complications. 
 "Paul's faith that worketh through love" is the 
 perfect definition of exalted Christian character. 
 Still, if his dying with Christ to the law of the 
 fiesh, to live with Christ to the law of the mind, 
 is regarded as other than poetical— is taken liter- 
 ally, and not as dying to sin in absorbing love to 
 Christ — we make Him anthropomorphic, and lay 
 the foundation for misconceptions. For it is 
 impossible to accept Paul's thesis of divinity 
 dying to sin.' 
 
 'Then you practically deny that Paul was 
 divinely called to apostleship,' the clergyman 
 said. 
 
 'Not quite so strongly as that; for the evi- 
 dence is only negative. "Not proven," I would 
 say, since the evidence is not consistent with it- 
 self in its various and differing repetitions. 
 Especially questionable is his last account of 
 it; for tliere he attributes to our Lord language 
 and metliods of thougl)t which are so unmistak- 
 ably Pauline that they establish a profound dis- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 75 
 
 trust of the accuracy of this account ; moreover, 
 it is unlike the previous accounts — and these do 
 not agree with each other. 
 
 'Again : it was inconsistent with the wordsjfof 
 our Lord ; inconsistent too with the tenor of His 
 life — if I rightly understand them — that He 
 should have chosen such a man as Saul of Tar- 
 sus to be the chief apostle. 
 
 'To me there is nothing more pathetically ap- 
 pealing in His history than His washing of the 
 disciples' feet; and also His appeal not to put 
 the new wine of His revelations of divine love 
 into the old wine skins of rabbinical theology. 
 He doubtless foresaw that pride of power and 
 intellectual vanity would be the rocks on which 
 his church would be wrecked. 
 
 'Powerless to avert this He doubtless saw He 
 v/ould be ; opposed, as he recognized that he was, 
 by the malign influence of him whose "kingdom 
 is ... of this world"; Avhile His calm en- 
 durance of that humiliating powerlessness can- 
 not but inspire a loftier regard for the loveliness 
 of the divine motive that accepted this added 
 humiliation. 
 
 'But Saul of Tarsus was foremost in this con- 
 fining of the new Christ wine in the old Hebrew 
 theological wine skins. And they burst, as the 
 Lord foretold : and all through the pages of the 
 
76 'NAZARETH OR TARDUS? 
 
 history of the church tlie splashes fell. There 
 they have left their red stains: and we call one 
 "St. Bartholomew's night," one "the reign of 
 Bloody Mary," and so on.' 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 77 
 
 VIII. 
 
 ^BuT in making this charge you forget how 
 zealous St. Paul was that the Law, at once and 
 with no reservation, should be superseded by the 
 faith in Christ. He was insistent that the Law 
 had been tried and had been found powerless to 
 establish a true religious life,' the clergyman 
 interposed. 
 
 'No, I do not forget, but here again I appeal 
 for faith in a consistent Christ, as against credu- 
 lity in an impetuous and inconsistent Paul. 
 Where has our Lord left any evidence that He 
 wished that the Mosaic law should beiibruptly 
 abrogated? Almost His last act before His 
 death was the observance of the Passover. And 
 although it was instituted as a type of Himself, it 
 would have been natural that He should have 
 wholly substituted for it the Last Supper — if He 
 had desired that at once the law should be made 
 a nullity. 
 
 'But we have the direct testimony of our 
 Lord: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit in 
 Moses' seat : all things whatsoever they bid you 
 
78 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 these do and observe" ; and you knov»' that this is 
 by no means the only positive utterance of our 
 Lord which Paul acted contrary to Avhen he 
 made such violent attacks on the law. The para- 
 ble of the tares and the wheat — the danger of 
 violently uprooting the tares — would seem to re- 
 fer to the peril of making attacks on the law; 
 if Ave construe "the tares" to mean the unauthor- 
 ized accretions of tradition. 
 
 'But to go back to the figure of the wine skins 
 of Hebrew theology ; into which Paul proposed to 
 force the untheological message of our Lord. 
 
 'Why does the Church pretend to be blind, for 
 really blind it cannot be, to the coarse material- 
 ism of the rabbinical theology which possessed 
 Paul and which he has infused into the Christian 
 faith? 
 
 'Rabbinical theology had lost, if it ever really 
 possessed, a real knowledge of the essential spirit 
 of sacrifice. The giving up of the best that we 
 possess ; the rendering back to God of the life that 
 vivified it, in token of our recognition that all we 
 have is from His hand: this true inward dedica- 
 tion Paul could not comprehend ; and so he could 
 only teach an asserted potency in the material 
 sacrifice; in the actual shedding of blood. That 
 this erroneous sacrificinl spii'it possessed him, 
 that there was no recognition by Paul of the spir- 
 itual devotion of a true sacrificial motive, are evi- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 79 
 
 denced by his making no allusion to that most 
 beautiful and impressive instance of absorbing 
 self-renunciation that the Old Testament records. 
 
 'But in Abraham's sacrifice of his only son 
 there was none of that actual outpouring of blood 
 which Paul demanded in the idea of completed 
 sacrifice, Paul's silence in this is all the more 
 startling, when we recall that the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews refers to it. 
 
 'Nor could Paul recognize the spiritual figure 
 of that other impressive form of sacrifice, in 
 which the scapegoat was driven out into the wil- 
 derness : a type so suggestive of our Lord's being 
 driven out into the wilderness to combat with the 
 power of darkness, that we can well believe it was 
 thus foreshadowed. His omission of reference to 
 the smiting of the rock in the wilderness is also 
 suggestive. Here were symbols so striking, so 
 full of poetical analogy that, it would seem as if 
 Paul's highly poetical spirit could not fail to rec- 
 ognize the beauty and appropriateness of the 
 similitudes. 
 
 'Yet if one is a careful student of Paul he can- 
 not fail to find in Paul's blood blindness to any 
 sacrifice which was not material, the reason of his 
 blindness to the impressive appositeness of 
 these types. That in sacrifice tliere appealed to 
 Paul only wiiat the "outward man" could recog- 
 nize ought to be almost conclusive evidence that 
 
80 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 his inspiration existed only in his own imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 'It is Paul's coarse view of sacrifice which has 
 degraded the theology of the chiircli ; tliat has 
 doubtless laid the foundation of much of its ter- 
 rible cruelties, through its imputing to the 
 Father a satisfaction in the shedding of the blood 
 of his divine Son.' 
 
 'But St. Paul recognizes the need, the trans- 
 forming power of a true sacrificial spirit, when 
 he exhorts us to present our bodies a living sac- 
 rifice,' the clergyman suggested. 
 
 'I admit that he presents this most beautifully 
 and appealinglj^ — as a preacher. But as a theo- 
 logian, as a teacher of the relations of the divine 
 to the human, he is not able to comprehend a 
 true sacrificial spirit, because he possesses no de- 
 gree of inspiration to incite him to rise above his 
 rabbinical education. 
 
 'Do not think me insensible to the beauty and 
 sincerity of Paul's appeals for Cliristlikenoss, 
 for self-consecration, for identification with 
 Christ through dying with Him. Let me forget 
 his intrusive personality, and no one more tliau 
 I will praise the lofty sentiments that lu' gave 
 expression to in his best moments. 
 
 'You will comprehend mo when T charncterize 
 St. Paul as intensely fond of color. In his bi'il- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 81 
 
 liant thought painting he was an impressionist. 
 His artistic sense was so dominating that it im- 
 pelled him to vivify his theme through every 
 tint that he could employ. He delighted in the 
 varying shades that each color afforded. A strik- 
 ing illustration of this we find at the close of the 
 first chapter of Romans; the latter part of the 
 fifth chapter of Galatians is yet another. Yet 
 his artistic taste was so pure that his brilliancy 
 never approached bizarre effects. But to expect 
 accurate drawing, a true sense of proportion, cor- 
 rect perspective, would be unnatural: and most 
 of all would we be disappointed if we looked for 
 historical accuracy. 
 
 'For he who would enter into judgment on 
 St. Paul, and yet cannot enter into St. Paul's 
 artistic heart and view his glowing pictures 
 from that coign of vantage, in earnest sympathy 
 with his aesthetic emotions, must do St. Paul 
 a grave injustice; and — more gravely important 
 — will lose the rapport through which will be 
 illuminated for him St. Paul's limitations. 
 
 'And yet, over against this idealizing imag- 
 ination, we find its unexpected antithesis in 
 the hard, unyielding literalness — the fruitage 
 of his rabbinical education. While that literal- 
 ness is not the resultant of scientific analysis, 
 but is the product of his intense introspection, 
 yet it is all the more dangerous — and all the 
 
82 VAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 more tenaciously held then as now — because it 
 is a moss-irrown error that demands reverence 
 for its antiquity. 
 
 *It is just here that we find the overpowering 
 influence of his false education. 
 
 'In spite of his true poetic instincts, in the 
 face of a really earnest desire to reform his the- 
 ological views into the mold of Christ revela- 
 tion, thej had ceased to be plastic; and so his 
 subsequent convictions must be bent, — no matter 
 with what violence and unnaturalness, — to meet 
 the conformations of his old rabbinical theology. 
 This is strikingly evident in his treatment of 
 the Jewish scriptures, when cited for the pur- 
 pose of illustration. 
 
 'We would expect that his own strong poetic 
 instincts would recognize and intensify the po- 
 etic idealism of their thought. Instead of that, 
 he invests them with a cold, hard realism which 
 our judgment tells us is utterly foreign to the 
 true poetic sentiment of those who uttered them 
 in the groping after truth in the early dawn. 
 
 'But to view it scientifically, why should we 
 expect that anj^ naturalness would result from 
 such a conversion as was his? It saved the 
 church at Damascus from persecution, it filled 
 Paul with terror : but it appealed neither to his 
 intellect nor to his heart.' 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 83 
 
 The clergyman made no direct reply, but said : 
 
 'Then you regard St. Paul as adding nothing 
 to the power and evidences of Christianity?' 
 
 'To the evidences — most assuredly. Even the 
 materialness of Paul's conception of the res- 
 urrection of our Lord has historical value. That 
 a man so thoroughly a Pharisee; contemptuous 
 of the chosen of our Lord; absorbed in admira- 
 tion of his own intellectuality; his thoughts so 
 self-centered that they admitted nothing from 
 without unless irresistibly forced upon his rec- 
 ognition; that such a man was compelled to ac- 
 knovrledge the divinity of our Lord makes him 
 a most valuable witness to the validity of the 
 claims of the founder of Christianity: a wit- 
 ness all the more convincing because his whole 
 mind and soul rebelled against surrendering 
 to the conviction to which he gave expression. 
 
 *I conceive that the constant struggling of this 
 revulsion was the cause of "what I would not 
 that I do/' which brought to him the depressing 
 feeling that his assertive individuality was dom- 
 inated and that he was only an impassive bat- 
 tleground on which two opposing forces — wholly 
 outside of himself — were contending. It would 
 be a charitable view of Paul's idiosyncrasies, 
 and perhaps as just as it is charitable, to con- 
 sider his contradictions — both those of doctrine 
 and of sentiment — to be the revulsion of his in- 
 
84 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 dividuality against his powerlessness to rid 
 himself from the subjugating influences of his 
 new belief. This revulsion doubtless had its 
 origin in the intellectual vanity that refracted 
 all external evidence out of its natural plane, 
 and so made his thought morbid. 
 
 ^Thus the key to Paul's abnormal mental con- 
 dition may be indicated in his humiliating admis- 
 sion that he was possessed by uncontrollable im- 
 pulses. His standard was noble, but his im- 
 pulses dominated him, and he was swayed by his 
 self-centered thoughts which were the results of 
 his intense conviction of his own importance. In 
 Phariseeism this conviction found congenial 
 exercise; the passivity of self-renunciation in 
 Christ was wholly foreign to his nature. 
 
 'It was Christ's sinlessness that found in Paul's 
 love of righteousness the interpreter to him of 
 Christ's divinity; but no such conviction could 
 have come to Paul through that which was ex- 
 ternal to himself. So his conversion was through 
 that which was purely personal to himself. 
 
 'Hence, too, the law of sin in his members — 
 through his intense self-absorption — made sin 
 seem universal to him ; and thus the doctrine of 
 original sin was for him a natural evolution, 
 
 'Again: while he was ready to yiokl to super- 
 natural influences that appealed primarily to his 
 own mind (Acts xxi. 4), he readily disregarded 
 
NAZARETH OR TARi:iUi^r 85 
 
 whatever other minds presented as revelation. 
 He was one of those men who are so convinced 
 that they are children of destiny, so self-assured 
 that they are born to preponderate and to domi- 
 nate, that tolerance of the opinion of others is 
 impossible to them. 
 
 'Such a mind cannot be consistent even with 
 itself. Consequently the impulse of the moment 
 led Paul — led him to establish his theses by half 
 truths and by illustrations that were not even 
 consistent with his own previous utterances. 
 
 'Paul's utter disregard for consistency is 
 evidence of his unbalanced mind. He advanced 
 the thesis of the saving grace being extended to 
 only a few elect; led up to it through a course 
 of false reasoning, which no clear intellect would 
 sanction. But when a different mood possesses 
 him he clearly states that, "whosoever shall call 
 on the name of the Lord shall be saved," and, 
 "God is the Savior of all men, especially of those 
 that believe." It is needless to point out that 
 every shade of belief, from Calvinism to Uni- 
 versalism, can find its vindication in such con- 
 tradictory statements of doctrine.' 
 
 Here the clergyman suggested that every 
 great leader in thought, who has commanded 
 the homage of men, has been invested with a 
 strong personality which arrested attention, yet 
 could not have retained it unless he was actu- 
 
86 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 ated by sincere motive in delivering his message, 
 and asked : 
 
 'How, then, do you account for the perma- 
 nency of St. Paul's power if you deny his in- 
 spiration?' 
 
 To this the Man replied : 
 
 'I think that opportunity had much to do 
 with this, for I cannot concede that St. Paul pos- 
 sessed an attractive personality — exce])t so far 
 as an assertive boldness attracts a certain class 
 of minds. He was fortunate in his historian ; 
 fortuitous circumstances, doubtless, contrib- 
 uted to the preservation of Paul's writings. 
 
 'The very boldness of Paul's claims to 
 special revelations is calculated to carry convic- 
 tion. His doctrine of sacrificial atonement ; the 
 defining of all that made it necessary, all that 
 limits its efficacy, all that determines the bounds 
 of its manifestations ; these Avere advanced with 
 such positive claiius that they were divinely re- 
 vealed to him that they commanded belief by 
 their boldness. Hence we must regard them as 
 blaspliemous impositions or else accept them as 
 the teachings of one divinely inspired — regard- 
 less of the contradictory terms in which they are 
 expressed. There is no escape from accepting 
 one or the other of these conclusions, except by 
 demonstrating that Paul was mentally irre- 
 sponsible. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 87 
 
 'He had few of the elements of a noble char- 
 acter. Courage can hardly be attributed to an 
 apostle who ten times fled from danger. Con- 
 sistency and courage both were absent when, in 
 the face of his contempt for the law, he shifted 
 his principles in his last visit to Jerusalem, 
 boasting that he was a Pharisee and the son of a 
 Pharisee, and readily accepting the suggestion 
 that he show that "thou also walkest orderly and 
 keepest the law." Thus princij^le was laid aside 
 for caution — that was too tardy to secure safety. 
 
 'And while he could rebuke Peter unstintedly 
 for showing consideration for the commands of 
 the law, Paul did not hesitate to circumcise Tim- 
 othy, that he might win the favor of Judean 
 Christians; although he said (Gal. v. 2), "Be- 
 hold I, Paul, say unto you that if you receive 
 circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing." 
 and he performed vicarious vows to conciliate 
 the unbelieving Jews.' 
 
 Here the clergyman interrupted, saying: 
 
 'Most strenuously I protest against your as- 
 sumption that St. Peter was necessarily in the 
 right, and that St. Paul alone was to blame. 
 That which you are pleased to call St. Paul's 
 egotism and self-sufiiciency was only his nat- 
 ural and just indignation because his work had 
 been interfered with by the Judaizers with whom 
 Peter appears to have been in sympathy.' In 
 
88 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 the silence that followed this protest by the 
 clergyman he was sanguine that he had gained 
 the advantage. 
 
 At length, slowlj^ and with an effort at self- 
 command, the Man resumed: 
 
 'I know that you are conversant with all of 
 the conditions of this incident. On the other 
 hand, I would not wish to think that you had in- 
 tentionally suppressed any of the related cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 'That all of the elder apostles gave no encour- 
 agement to the Judaizers at Antioch but rather 
 rebuked them — when Paul and Barnabas went 
 up to Jerusalem — is prima facie evidence that 
 PauFs complaint was unjust, or that he took an 
 exaggerated view of whatever favor Peter may 
 have shown to converts from Judaism. 
 
 'But the crux of the whole matter — the cause 
 of inevitable antagonism to Peter — would seem 
 to be evidenced by Paul's assertion that Peter 
 and Barnabas did "not walk uprightly according 
 to the gospel." 
 
 'Now we know that Paul always meant by 
 "gospel" that which he called "my gospel," and 
 that he was opposed to what he called "another 
 gospel." Surely, "another gospel," from tliat 
 which Paul preached is the gospel which is re- 
 vealed by the evangelists. Collision was inevi- 
 table between Peter, who bore this gospel, and 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS.? 89 
 
 Paul, who boasted of "my gospel and the preach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ." 
 
 'Now, if it is orthodox to recognize that there 
 is only one personage worthy of credence in the 
 New Testament, namely, Paul, and only one in 
 the Old Testament, Isaiah, then you are doubt- 
 less theologically correct. For Paul's "my gos- 
 pel" of purchase of divine favor and of the ap- 
 peasing of divine wrath by the sacrificial death 
 of the Christ had its first intimation in Isaiah — 
 and not with him, till the post-exilian period. 
 
 'If Paul was right, then the record of the 
 Evangelists was imperfect. If Isaiah was right, 
 we ought to relegate the other prophets to an 
 obscurity merited by their ignorance. And let 
 us eliminate all of the joyous psalms, whose de- 
 light in the law of the Lord reflected the almost 
 universal Hebrew love for, as well as pride in, 
 the law. 
 
 'It is theologically convenient, but it is not 
 historical, to attribute to the whole Jewish na- 
 tion the morbid view of the law which Paul and 
 his sect possessed; and held with it, such con- 
 tempt for those who did not share their distorted 
 views, that the treatment which Paul received 
 at Jerusalem clearly indicates that his carica- 
 ture of the law was resented, and that it also 
 made him powerless to win any of his nation to 
 believe in his caricature of the true gospel. You 
 
90 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 know that Paul was not representative of the 
 Jewish nation, or of its faith. Representative 
 of those who held censorious pride in the tradi- 
 tional accretions of the law Paul was — and this 
 alone. And who knows but that our Lord had 
 prophetically in mind that Pharisee who guard- 
 ed the garments of those who slew His first mar- 
 tyr, when he denounced the moral blindness of 
 that sect.' 
 
 'With strange inconsistency he used the syna- 
 gogues of Asia, till he was compelled to go else- 
 where, although he claimed precedence as an 
 apostle to the Gentiles. 
 
 'I think that we have the key to much that 
 otherwise would be obscure in the personality of 
 Paul, if we will regard the many evidences of 
 how little of affectionate regard he commanded 
 (I. Cor. xvi. 17). At Ephesus he did not com- 
 mand the affection of the Christian converts; at 
 least his support there — surely to a great de- 
 gree — came from without. 
 
 'He lays much stress on his lack of local sup- 
 port, and he tries to have this indifference to 
 himself regarded as an evidence of his devotion 
 to duty. But is it not more natural to regard 
 it as evidence that he could not command the 
 affectionate regard of the converts? 
 
 'Not till after Titus had done his own mis- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 91 
 
 sionary work in Corinth was Paul hospitably re- 
 ceived (II. Cor. vii. 7). Then, on his third visit, 
 he was able to command a hospitable welcome, 
 following Titus' preaching. And he emphasizes 
 this when he says : "This thou knowest ( II. Tim. 
 i. 15), that all that are in Asia turned away from 
 me," and (iv. 16 and 10), "At my first defence no 
 one took my part ; but all forsook me." "For De- 
 mas hath forsaken me and Crescens and Titus; 
 only Luke is with me." And he asks for Mark, 
 "for he is profitable unto me." His self-centered 
 thought is shown in his phrasing of this last sen- 
 tence. 
 
 ^His inability to attach to himself faithful as- 
 sistants is further shown in Phil. ii. 21: that 
 excepting Timotheus and Epaphroditus "all seek 
 their own, not the things which are Jesus 
 Christ's." And Epaphroditus was "nigh unto 
 death," "to supply your lack of service unto me" ; 
 yet he writes (Phil. iv. 18) of having received at 
 the hands of Epaphroditus the gifts of the Phil- 
 ippians which were "a sacrifice, acceptable, well 
 pleasing to God" (Phil. iv. 10), but received after 
 much delay, and no other church (Phil. iv. 15) 
 had given to him "in the beginning of the gos- 
 pel." 
 
 * "The success and steadfastness of the Tlies- 
 salonian church came with the preaching of 
 Timothy," whom Paul had sent when he was 
 
93 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 "Satan hindered" — a term that his intense con- 
 viction of his own importance prompts him to use 
 repeatedly. 
 
 'We would have a right to expect that the 
 scholarly acquirements which are claimed for 
 St. Paul would have wrought some permanent 
 results at Athens. Later, when a true scholar- 
 ship had added its philosophical appeals, the 
 Greek mind elsewhere was attracted to Chris- 
 tianity. But PauFs scholasticism could not 
 arouse their interest. 
 
 'If Paul had been divinelj' inspired he would 
 not have held such erroneous views of the near- 
 ness of the Parousia, as shown in 1st Thessa- 
 lonians; and which he, or some wiser writer, had 
 to correct in the next epistle. 
 
 'As poetical — only imaginative, in no way in- 
 spired — can we regard Paul's description of the 
 second coming of our Lord, so variously are de- 
 scribed the conditions attending that event. 
 So, too, after the Advent. The statement, "in 
 Christ shall all be made alive," cannot be recon- 
 ciled with the "eternal destruction from the face 
 of the Lord." And while in places it is taught 
 that the destruction will be immediate, it is else- 
 where taught by him thnt our Lord will reign 
 as the longed-for Jewish ^Messiah; and during 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 93 
 
 this reign he would "put all enemies under his 
 feet." 
 
 'His claim to be the apostle to the Gentiles is 
 in opposition to St. Peter's statement (Acts xv. 
 7), that "a good while ago God made choice 
 among us that the Gentiles hj my mouth," etc., 
 and St. Peter's evidently extended journeyings 
 would seem to sustain his claim.' 
 
 Then earnestly the clergyman urged in St. 
 Peter's behalf: 
 
 'It occurs to me that 3'ou wilfully ignore the 
 noble characteristics of St. Paul. Was he not 
 heroic? Read the record of his labors and his 
 sufferings. He had nothing to gain, but every- 
 thing to lose, by his devotion to Christ. Noth- 
 ing but a firm faith in the truth he proclaimed 
 and an intense love for its founder could have 
 inspired and sustained him. Is not this deserv- 
 ing of honor? A man who for love of country en- 
 dures hardship, suffers loss, and if needful sheds 
 his blood- on tlie battle field, would be by you 
 deemed worthy of all admiration. Why with- 
 hold it from Paul, who, whether mistaken or 
 otherwise, did choose to suffer the loss of all 
 things for Christ.' 
 
 And the Man replied: 
 
 'I fail to see where your appeal can have much 
 force. As I have previously observed, his fre- 
 quent avoiding of danger — so strikingly in con- 
 
94 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 trast to the true courage shown by the apostles 
 — and his pusillanimity at Jerusalem, are v.hat 
 we have a right to expect from a man who 
 through fear was impressed with the power of the 
 Christ whom he was persecuting. But we have 
 wandered away from our subject, for we are not 
 discussing the impulses of a zealot, but the claim 
 of Paul that he was the medium of those special 
 revelations which have led the church to formu- 
 late its doctrines on the supposed sanctity of his 
 statements. 
 
 'But before we leave the subject of the per- 
 sonality of Paul, let me advance a related prop- 
 osition. 
 
 'No religious leader can be thoroughly com- 
 prehended — at least his doctrines and his mo- 
 tives justly considered — till he reappears, di- 
 vested of his own personality, in the persons 
 of his disciples. 
 
 'In such relation Luke* stood to his master, 
 Paul. He reveals unconsciously, and so all the 
 more indisputably, PauTs intense egotism. 
 
 "The very opening of his gospel displays this. 
 The vanity of his master is shown in a like fond- 
 ness for long and sonorous words." 
 
 'Luke's adopting of Paul's inaccuracy is shown 
 
 * Modern scholarship is not here ip^nored. Luke is used for 
 brevity, in place of repetitions of " the writer of the third gos- 
 pel, who appears to have been a disciple of St. Paul." 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 95 
 
 in the parable of the unjust steward; the unjust 
 judge; the friend persuaded by importunity; and 
 in attributing to our Lord, "If any man hate 
 not father," etc. We cannot believe that our 
 Lord ever expressed such sentiments. 
 
 'Luke's Pauline contempt for the apostles is 
 shown in his attributing to our Lord the calling 
 of his apostles "unprofitable servants," who "have 
 done that which was your duty to do." We can- 
 not conceive that our Lord used such language, 
 unless we eliminate much of St. John's gospel. 
 
 'So, too, the affectionate solicitude for the 
 twelve, on their return — as given by Mark — 
 Luke associates with the departure and the re- 
 turn of the seventy. 
 
 'His omission of other evidences, given by 
 Matthew and Mark, of the affection of our Lord 
 for the twelve, are additional testimony to his 
 inheritance of Paul's antagonism to the twelve. 
 
 'We cannot believe Luke's statement that on 
 the very day of His resurrection, our Lord ap- 
 plied the epithet "O, fools" to the disciples with 
 whom he walked and talked — even if we soften 
 the term in translation. The time was too solemn 
 for such impatience, even if no contempt was 
 implied. 
 
 '(Luke xxiii. 24-27.) It is not probable that 
 a dispute in regard to superiority — evidently of 
 superiority after our Lord should be taken away 
 
96 NAZARETH OR TARSViJ? 
 
 — was indulged in by the twelve during the Last 
 Supper. "All of his account of the Last Supper 
 is meager and disjointed, and some things im- 
 probable — as the command to buy swords." 
 
 'The parable of the Prodigal Son is unsatis- 
 fying, as Luke records it. Beneath that triad of 
 the insensate lost silver; of the low intelligence 
 of the wandering sheep, for both of which there 
 was eager solicitude, though no responsive love 
 or effort to return was disi^layed by them; and 
 the highest intelligence of the son, whose full 
 knowledge of wrongdoing must prompt the peni- 
 tential return, if forgiveness was to be extended ; 
 beneath this triad there was a deep spiritual 
 truth, probably that divine love and justice re- 
 gard opportunity. But Luke had not the spir- 
 itual insight to perceive the truth which our 
 Lord was illustrating, or he would not have ended 
 the parable as he did. 
 
 'In marked contrast to this looseness of ex- 
 pression, which often approaches indifference 
 in Luke's writings, is the absorbing reverence 
 Avhich the fourth gospel displays. 
 
 'Its careful details of the inmost thoughts 
 of our Lord — so far as the human mind can com- 
 prehend the divine — makes most significant the 
 omission of all reforonce to the doctrine of atone- 
 ment. "And while the synoptists explain the sac- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 97 
 
 rifice of our Lord as the giving of His life as 
 a ransom for many, the fourth gospel presents 
 only the metaphor of the Good Shepherd giving 
 His life for His sheep, and attempts no solution 
 of the mystery," 
 
 ' "The intense spirituality of the fourth gospel," 
 "the whole Gospel breathing a supernatural at- 
 mosphere," "its instinctive perception of sym- 
 metry in thought and expression," the tender- 
 ness with which it displays the love of our Lord, 
 these do not become any less attractive to us 
 through doubts of its authorship. It not only 
 tells us of Christ, it is Christ. And if its elevated 
 spirituality was attained by one who had not 
 actually known our Lord, had never been in- 
 fluenced by His divine personality, it is all the 
 more a tribute to His divinity; all the more an 
 evidence of His absorbing love to mankind that 
 such rapt devotion, such living in Christ, could 
 be possessed hj one who never had witnessed 
 personally the divine charm of that intense blend- 
 ing of the human and the heaven-born love which 
 filled the soul of the author of the fourth gospel, 
 as it has vivified no other human heart before or 
 since. 
 
 'In the message of that gospel I place my hope 
 of heaven. 
 
 'It is a noble casket in which are displayed 
 
98 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 the words which are radiant above all others 
 with the love of our Lord. "I go to prepare a 
 place for you . . . that where I am je may 
 be also," 
 
 'Before these words I stand appalled. I can 
 express it in no other way. 
 
 'Eternity of loving prevision ; eternity of shar- 
 ing a beatitude that can satisfy divinity. Had 
 He come on earth and delivered only this mes- 
 sage, it would have sufficed for the perfect rev- 
 elation of a love that passes human comprehen- 
 sion. 
 
 'I would not minimize the faith that the 
 Church reposes on Calvary. Yet most emphati- 
 cally I would refuse to follow the church's ex- 
 ample in its ignoring of the plain doctrinal teach- 
 ings of the Spirit, when it led our Lord out to the 
 temptations of tha wilderness. 
 
 'Some time the church will have the courage 
 to accept those teachings of the Spirit — which 
 our Lord repeatedly and so plainly emphasized 
 — and will relegate the poet Paul, to his own 
 sphere of brilliant irresponsibility,' 
 
 Confidently the clergyman demanded : 
 ^Surely you will not deny that the wonder- 
 ful vision of another world that was granted to 
 St. Paul was evidence of the divine favor, such 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 99 
 
 evidence as was granted to no other apostle, and 
 that it entitles him to reverence. More than 
 that, it was confirmation of apostleship so con- 
 vincing that it places his divine calling beyond 
 question.' 
 
 ^Granted to no other apostle,' the Man re- 
 plied; 'I admit that. I could almost say that I 
 rejoice — for their sakes — that it Avas not given 
 to others. But I do not wish to think you to 
 be so ignorant of the history of monasticism that 
 you do not know how constantly those zealots 
 — underfed with bread and ideas — were seeing 
 and hearing "unspeakable things," which they 
 promptly showed to be exceedingly utterable in 
 the eagerness with which they published the — 
 believed — evidences of the divine favor shown to 
 them. Mohammed, equally with Paul, was 
 favored with visions. 
 
 'But I am very glad that you introduced this 
 event, for I frankly admit that I have not had 
 the time to study it as I would wish to do, and 
 most earnestly I beseech you to supplement my 
 imperfect knowledge; I will be a most atten- 
 tive scholar. 
 
 'It is evident that in its introduction the 
 author of the fourth gospel w^as rebuking a nas- 
 cent spirit of Gnosticism. The modern Martin- 
 ist system is the offspring of that Gnosticism 
 
100 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 and it teaches that "the Being of Beings, who is 
 the supreme First Cause, is manifested only by 
 his Word, through whom everything was made," 
 yet "Satan is the rebellious spirit Avhose lust for 
 personal independence brought about his sepa- 
 ration from God." Now, we can follow him thus 
 far; but when the Martinist adds the claim that 
 Satan corresponds to the Word of God, the cre- 
 ating thought of God, we must diverge — even 
 though our Lord so plainly admits Satan's claim 
 to power in this world; and further, by His 
 silence, seemed to acquiesce to this claim, when 
 Satan offered to confer on Him that power, if 
 He would worship him. 
 
 'Now these Martinist views include much that 
 was taught in the apocalyptic literature which, 
 in the last centuries before Christ, passed under 
 the name of Enoch; for Enoch refers to angels 
 being cast down from the fifth heaven to the sec- 
 ond heaven. 
 
 'It is most significant that in Paul's descrip- 
 tion of his vision he claims to have entered the 
 third heaven. So, too, Paul speaks of Christ's 
 reconciling to himself "the things which are in 
 heaven" (Col. i. 20). It does not necessarily 
 follow that Paul was imbued with the beliefs of 
 the Gnostics, the theories of the secrets of Enoch, 
 or that he was in sympathy with those early her- 
 
NAZARETH OB TARSUS f 101 
 
 esies which have their modern expression in the 
 modern Martinist system. Yet it behooves his 
 defenders to present some reasonable theory for 
 his evident belief in conditions which were essen- 
 tial elements in these systems; and which have 
 no warrant in the teachings of our Lord. So we 
 have a right to ask, Why did Paul assert the 
 plurality of heavens, and that in them — at least 
 in one of them — were spirits that needed to be 
 reconciled to Christ? It is not proven by these 
 instances that Paul accepted Plato's and Pin- 
 dar's beliefs in the fall of man's soul from the 
 Deity, or that the secrets of Enoch colored his 
 imagination. Yet it presents a reasonable basis 
 on which to begin investigation of his erratic 
 theological views.' 
 
 To this inquiry the clergyman replied that he 
 was not convinced that the chain of reasoning 
 was continuous, and that he Avould give it further 
 thought, adding: 
 
 'Do you wish it to be understood that you re- 
 gard as mentally incompetent or intellectually 
 dishonest all who hold St. Paul to be an inspired 
 man, and his teachings as worthy of accept- 
 ance?' 
 
 And the Man replied: 
 
 'I disclaim any such discourteous intent. 
 But I do claim that they are not so courageous 
 as the issues at stake demand. It is a charac- 
 
log l^'AZ ARETE OR TARSUS f 
 
 teristic of fear that it eliminates other motives. 
 And worse than that, it persuades its captives to 
 dignify it with all sorts of Latin derivatives, 
 which represent recognized virtues. You theo- 
 logians do not dare to trust the divinely im- 
 planted impulses that create the soul's need to 
 acquire divine truth. It flatters your sense of 
 self-importance to indicate that the only path 
 which leads to divine truth passes over the arti- 
 ficial way which you have elaborated; and that 
 this way is a trestle work; and you fear that if 
 from this there be taken one brace or chord or 
 sill, your complex structure will collapse, and 
 the chasm between man and divine truth will 
 never be bridged again. 
 
 'But there is no chasm — only the phantasm 
 of one, which you have created. 
 
 'And when science comes and points out that 
 this beam or that string piece is decayed or cross- 
 grained, and can support no weight and is weak- 
 ening the structure, you shut your ears to its 
 warning, just as you disregard the multitude of 
 thoughtful men who know that science speaks 
 truly; and these 3'ou are turning back, just as 
 you would have turned me back if my profession 
 had not taught me to think for myself; had not 
 my great need impelled me to seek the truth in 
 the face of your discouragement. 
 
 'Shutting your eyes, too, to that lesson which 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf IQJJ 
 
 history has continued to teach — from Amos down 
 to St. Francis d'Assisi, and from him to Wesley 
 — that out from the people God must send the 
 prophet to rebuke the priest, and to teach him his 
 tendency to error or to apathy. 
 
 'Will 3 ou never learn to look within your own 
 hearts; that you may recognize the dangers that 
 lie in the entrenched solitude of your studies? 
 
 'From all sides — even from sects most tena- 
 cious of the Pauline doctrine — there comes the 
 plaint that clergy and laity are denying those 
 fundamental truths of Christian doctrines: the 
 faith in the immaculate conception of our Lord, 
 and in His resurrection. You and I know that 
 such denial is unscientific, since the ability' to 
 make such denial implies, at the outset, a 
 thorough knowledge of the fundamental princi- 
 ples of biology. Moreover, only he may make 
 such denial who carries in his brain the dyna- 
 mometric power which enables him to measure 
 the Divine creative dynamics and to ascertain 
 their utmost power; and next, by a course of 
 reasoning which is incomprehensible to the or- 
 dinary mind — and only reasoning, since actual 
 test of that degree of power is apparently im- 
 possible — he must demonstrate that the ultimate 
 extent of this creative power falls short of the 
 degree of creative energy needed to establish the 
 
104 NAZARETH GR TARSUS? 
 
 germ of life primarily in a woman. While in- 
 telligent denial of the resurrection of our Lord 
 is impossible, till man possesses the knowledge 
 that the portals by which the soul leaves the body 
 are so irrevocably closed in death that He who 
 placed the soul within those portals cannot con- 
 duct it back again to its former dwelling place; 
 while a knowledge of how the soul originally en- 
 tered the body would seem essential to succss- 
 fully asserting that the body cannot again receive 
 it after a brief separation. 
 
 'But these men are as earnest thinkers as you 
 and I are. Hence you and I have no right to 
 condemn them — surely not you tlieologians who 
 have put before them the temptations to doubt.' 
 
 The clergyman was loyal to the faith that he 
 had received. 
 
 'It seems most unjust that you should charge 
 us with tempting men to doubt, when we devote 
 our lives to teaching the truths that have been 
 tested for centuries and have never been found 
 wanting. Would you renew the heresies of the 
 early church, heresies that doubtless wr<'ugh<" 
 its downfall, at least in the eastern church V. 
 
 'Heresy is a word of such varied meaning — 
 as you study it subjectively or objectively — that 
 I must ask you to excuse me from answering 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 105 
 
 your question in a direct way; yet I still believe 
 that the encouragement to much of what you call 
 heresy is to be found in the writings of Paul. 
 
 *Yet if I have no quarrel with those who re- 
 ject the doctrines which we regard as essential 
 — doctrines which my limited studies have led 
 me to believe in, which my experience in evidence 
 permits me to recognize as natural and consist- 
 ent — it is because these men demand nothing 
 from me. They recognize that their investiga- 
 tions are made in that same imperfect light in 
 which the science of chemistry groped a century 
 ago. 
 
 'The advocates of the higher criticism recog- 
 nize that they are in the period of the phlogiston ; 
 of chemical decomposition; and that there will 
 come the period of chemical combination, when 
 the fires of a pure devotion will not burn with 
 less of warmth because they are fed intelligently. 
 
 'As I said, these men make no demands on 
 me. They do not tell me that I can find the way 
 to heaven only by accepting the guidance of the 
 disordered mind of Saul of Tarsus, one-half of 
 whose utterances it is necessary to ignore in 
 order to believe the other half. 
 
 'In considering the arguments and conclu- 
 sions of those who seek truth by what is known 
 as higher criticism, I am impelled to a choice of 
 one of two positions. First, that they possess 
 
106 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 intellects so vastly superior to mine that they 
 can recognize as conclusive proof that A\hich 
 seems to me to be only arbitrary denial on their 
 part. I frankly admit it possible that Q.E.D. 
 may some time be written against that proposi- 
 tion. The second ix)ssible condition is that, hav- 
 ing grown to be hypercritical, they are too aca- 
 demic, and do not regard the practical conditions 
 that modify all evidence; do not recognize that 
 probabilities are all that we can attain to in 
 most of our attempts at demonstration; and 
 most of all, do not favorably regard as 
 collateral evidence that responsiveness to the 
 needs of mankind which is afforded by those in- 
 fluences which have their seat in beliefs that are 
 founded on evidences which the higher criticism 
 alleges are without adequate historicity. 
 
 'Slow enough has been the advance in ethical 
 and altruistic conditions. Yet, justly it seems 
 to me, there may be demanded of the higher 
 criticism that its keen, incisive reasoning demon- 
 strate that through all the centuries of Christian- 
 ity these conditions would have been more widely, 
 more highly developed, if critical scholarship had 
 eliminnted at the outset all that is not demon- 
 strable in the foundation of those beliefs that 
 apparently have promoted the advance in tliose 
 ethical and altruistic oonclitions. I am ready 
 to regard the possible objections that these de- 
 
'NAZARETH OR TARSUS? IQ? 
 
 velopments of beneficent influences are neither 
 proofs of the truth of those beliefs that are 
 claimed as the source of those beneficent influ- 
 ences, and also that their coincidence does not 
 prove their relation to each other. 
 
 'The conditions of the demand are unchanged. 
 It seems a just demand that higher criticism dem- 
 onstrate what would be the present status of 
 ethical and altruistic conditions, if the beliefs 
 which scholarly criticism foster had been prev- 
 alent and potent, its negations established ever 
 since Christianity was demonstrated. The ordi- 
 nary mind entertains such profound respect for 
 the mental capacity of the advanced thinkers 
 that the latter would be regarded as avoiding a 
 fair test if this demand is ignored. 
 
 There would be, however, one consistent ex- 
 cuse for avoiding the test ; namely, that religion 
 should not be held responsible for the ethical 
 and altruistic conditions that are coincident with 
 it, since coincidence does not prove relationship ; 
 and in taking this position scholarship would 
 be correct academically. 
 
 'Xevertheless, the ordinary mind is not in- 
 clined to oppose itself to that practical appeal 
 — the probability of the truth of the opposite 
 of this contention ; nor can it reconcile with the 
 law of probabilities that the sacpitfcial Life 
 should have created for itself so i&Tperfect and 
 
108 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 SO indistinct a recollection that they who were 
 its witnesses did not convey a reasonably cor- 
 rect account of both His acts and language — 
 even if that account was at first only oral. 
 
 'It is "the man in the street" to whom I shall 
 make my appeals for a just recognition of the 
 divinity of the Man of Galilee. I Avish to be 
 equipped to meet his methods of estimating the 
 value and the truth of evidence in general. 
 Moreover, he is the man Avho would augment 
 your church, if you would take the trouble to 
 study him. 
 
 'But this man is eminently practical. He de- 
 mands of religion tliat it guide its possessor safe- 
 ly past the dangers of moral shipwreck in a horse 
 trade; and when it conveys consolation to the 
 widow and the fatherless that it put a bag of 
 potatoes under the wagon seat. 
 
 'He cannot make the nice distinctions between 
 dogma and doctrine, and so he is unable to 
 understand how tlie gospel according to St. John 
 "was written with a dogmatic purpose," while its 
 language is opposed to the prevalent Pauline doc- 
 trine. 
 
 'He cannot successfully argue the proposition, 
 but, if yon have enlisted his heart on your side, 
 he cannot be convinced that the early martyrs 
 gave their lives in devotion to one whose divinity 
 vras oidv dubiously attested: and though no 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 109 
 
 student of history he will not believe it probable 
 that the malignity of Roman emperors would 
 have been directed against the followers of one 
 whose claims to divinit}^ had no sound historical 
 attestation — who was only the carpenter of 
 Nazareth. 
 
 'This man will recognize that these perse- 
 cutors had at their command sources of infor- 
 mation other than Galilean fishermen, and were 
 too much absorbed in pleasure and in the mo- 
 mentous interest of their ^ast empire to make 
 it probable that they would give any attention 
 to a band of fanatics who were eminently non- 
 resistant, unless those emperors felt that a real, 
 though invisible, danger lurked beneath that non- 
 resistance. Cruel enough by nature were those 
 persecutors; but it was fear — prophetic fear, as 
 time soon proved — that actuated them. Fear 
 that doubtless had its source in the knowledge 
 of the supernatural power of the Master of those 
 fanatics; and that knowledge of His power was 
 frequently recognized by those whom those em- 
 perors had placed in power in Judea. 
 
 'That this "man in the street" does not possess 
 the scholarship v/hich enables him to stamp any 
 alleged fact as improbable, solely because it can- 
 not command an unbroken train of historical 
 evidence, can be regarded as a defect which time 
 may correct, Yet, on the other hand, he Iiul^ 
 
no NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 seen — perhaps painfully experienced — the de- 
 ceptiveness of circumstantial evidence and of 
 inferences, so that he will place little value on the 
 deductions of scholars when the}' urge nega- 
 tions which are the result of reasonings which 
 are academic. 
 
 'This man, whom you ought to seek to win, is 
 not inclined to honor demands on his credu- 
 lity, but he has not the mental capacity to recog- 
 nize the force of the argument of the higher 
 criticism against the probability of miracles, that 
 the question is not "What can God do?'' but 
 "What does He do?" 
 
 'But when this practical man sees plant life 
 change all the form, structure, development, 
 which it has inherited through countless genera- 
 tions, that it may stretch itself up to the sun- 
 light from the pit where it has been unnatu- 
 rally placed; developing with an effectiveness 
 which indicates the exertion of adaptive intel- 
 ligence — within itself or from without ; or when 
 he regards the expansion by cold, of that ele- 
 ment which is the most expansive by heat, and 
 studk'S the disastrous results if ice were to fol- 
 low the general law that heat expands and cold 
 contracts; this practical man has not the acu- 
 men to comprehend the asserted limitations of 
 the divine adaptive power, for he cannot under- 
 stand the claim that this exercise of adaptive in- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSU8P HI 
 
 telligence is exerted for material results only, 
 and that it cannot, or will not, be used in dem- 
 onstrating — through miracles — that the limita- 
 tions of divine power are incomprehensible by 
 the human intellect. Consequently he cannot 
 intelligently follow that course of induction by 
 which the student of advanced theology can con- 
 vince himself that miracles are improbable. 
 Yet this student is consistent in his negations. 
 
 'But you lay side by side the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles and the Epistle to the Galatians, and you 
 expect men to believe both. For, in your stern 
 determination to maintain the dicta of Paul^ 
 you are reckless of inviting distrust of botli 
 records — through the opposition of each to the 
 other. And then, when men have learned that 
 lesson of distrust, you wonder that they go on 
 to doubt essentials. 
 
 'Will the time ever come that you will be con- 
 tent to teach the simple creed of a natural God 
 and a consistent gospel? For that gospel can 
 never be consistent while you demand belief in 
 statements diametrically opposed to one another. 
 
 'Doubtless there are some comparisons and 
 analyses which demand a knowledge of the- 
 ology, at least of philology, and of the original 
 text. But it requires only a reasonable knowl- 
 edge of the principles of evidence to compare 
 
113 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 the testimony of Acts and of Galatians. The 
 account in tlie early part of Acts appears to be a 
 quotation from some other author by the his- 
 torian of St. Paul. An evident and convincing 
 consistency pervades that part. Its language 
 and thought are just what we have a right to 
 expect from men who had awakened to the great- 
 ness of their loss, simultaneously with their 
 awakening to the divine grandeur of the Master ; 
 awakened, too, to the responsibility that He had 
 laid upon them. 
 
 'Conscious of their human weakness, they are 
 full of conscious power in the strength that He 
 has bequeathed to them. This record of their 
 dignity, their rapt self abnegation, their noble 
 awe as they recognize their responsibility, bears 
 the impress of truth. 
 
 'By the side of this deep, placid stream of 
 thought you let run the wild, turgid flow of 
 uncurbed emotion that the early chapters of 
 Galatians display. It does not need either 
 scholar or scientific philologist to recognize that 
 this flow has no higher source than the heart of 
 a man who is chafing under keen personal dis- 
 appointment. Envy of the apostles has grown 
 almost to bate. Truth is no barrier in the un- 
 restrained rush of chagrin and evident jealousy. 
 
 'In other epistles he has shown a degr(>e of 
 chogrin and petulance because he had not re- 
 
NAZARETH OB TARSUSf US 
 
 ceived the personal devotion to which he felt 
 that he was entitled. It would be amusing, if 
 it were not so serious a matter, to witness in 
 those plaints how his personal pride recoils from 
 recognizing the neglect ; and hoAV he bestows ful- 
 some praise — which displays its tenuity in the 
 strained terms of a gratitude unnaturally simu- 
 lated, and which could not for a moment deceive 
 any one who has made a study of evidence. 
 
 'But in this epistle all caution is thrown aside. 
 Unimpeded by actual facts the unguarded 
 statements run. Yet he recognizes that these 
 statements will be sharply challenged — indeed 
 he gives us all the more reason for questioning 
 their truth by his oath, "Before God I lie not." 
 
 'Pity for the disordered mind is the highest 
 sentiment which these chapters should arouse. 
 
 'And yet the church has been so "falsely true" 
 to what it has construed as a divine message, that 
 it has practically told the world that it has so 
 little faith in the convincing power of the great 
 underlying truths of Christianity, that it does 
 not dare to eliminate these statements of a dis- 
 ordered mind ; statements that might be ignored 
 if they did not deny important truths. 
 
 'But in its challenge of the truth of the post- 
 resurrection history of the Church at Jeru- 
 salem Paul's language attacks statements which 
 are close to essential truths of Christianity. 
 
114 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 For if belief in the j)ost-resurrection history is 
 destroyed we must expect that the ante-resur- 
 rection history will be questioned. Consequent- 
 ly, to the unquestioning believer two conditions 
 are presented. 
 
 'First : That the doctrines which Paul pro- 
 mulgated are mysteriouslj^ essential to a true 
 faith in Christ. Second: That those essential 
 doctrines are inscrutably identified with the jjer- 
 sonality of Paul. So that all of his utterances 
 — even if involving no question of doctrine — 
 must be accepted as the truth, even if they con- 
 flict with the post-resurrection history, regard- 
 less of the fact that such conflict invites distrust 
 of the earlier basic history of Christianity. 
 
 'Now please tell me if I have stated the case 
 unfairly? 
 
 'Yet first let me examine with you that chain 
 of dogma on which, as you tell me, the Pauline 
 theology is dependent. 
 
 'As I recall it, it was in effect as follows — 
 that all mankind having merited eternal death, 
 through the disobedience of our first parents, 
 universal pardon could bo obtained only through 
 the sacrificial death of Christ. You elaborated 
 this in four propositions. 
 
 'I frankly admit that their sequence is natural, 
 that each succeeding link is the logical conclu- 
 sion from that which precedes it; and I have 
 
ifAZARETH OR TARSUS? US 
 
 only one objection to admitting its power to sus- 
 tain the dogma which is dependent upon it. 
 
 'The first link, like Mohammed's coffin, is 
 floating in the air, at least to my vision; and 
 when that first link falls the succeeding links 
 must collapse. Novxhere in the teachings of our 
 Lord does it have support, and nowhere in the 
 Old Testament can there be found a sustaining 
 power, though there are two or three sentences 
 of dubious meaning which may be wrested to a 
 semblance of support.' 
 
 'No; not a semblance of support,' the clergy- 
 man said. 'A divine hand reaches down and 
 grasps it, through the revelation vouchsafed to St. 
 Paul. That which you contemn — that "my gos- 
 pel" which he received, "not with flesh and 
 blood," but by direct inspiration, was his au- 
 thority.' 
 
 And to this the Man answered: 
 
 'When a INIormon elder can obtain an addi- 
 tional wife only by receiving a revelation ; when 
 to a Eoman pontiff a coveted additional power 
 can come only through a revelation; or when a 
 Paul must witness the collapsing of the chain 
 of reasoning upon which his whole system of 
 dogma is dependent, unless he can fasten its 
 
116 KAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 first link to a revelation, we have a right to con- 
 sider the frailty of human nature, and to recog- 
 nize that an intense and longing contemplation 
 of any object of absorbing interest makes the 
 mind — especially a mind so ready to entertain 
 visions as ^\as St. Paul's — unfitted to discrimi- 
 nate between actual revelation, and a conviction 
 founded on a believed need of establishing a 
 cherished theory. To my mind it is illogical to 
 claim that our Lord should have left any impor- 
 tant element of his mission to be developed at a 
 later period, by any method so unreliable — 
 through opportunities of decejjtion and dangers 
 of self-deception — as are revelations. For my 
 ■psiTt I find a sufficiency in that which our Lord 
 alone has taught, and I can find no compensation 
 for the undermining elfect of the fiood of revela- 
 tions which have their inception through Paul.' 
 
 The clergyman faced his visitor for the final 
 struggle. 
 
 'You have chosen to establish yourself in a 
 position which is not fortified b}' Christian ex- 
 perience. You eliminate all that Christian 
 scholarship has vindicated in the writings of St. 
 Paul. You deny the reliability of the gospel of 
 St. Luke. What will you or I gain by trying to 
 meet on any common ground? You choose to 
 deny so much. I challenge you to any proof of 
 
Nazareth or tarsus f ny 
 
 that to which you choose to pay a, quasi respect. 
 Define to me by what principles of electism you 
 reject as false or accept as true. You accuse 
 St. Paul of opening the door to heresies ; you who 
 are encouraging the atheist, by your denials, to 
 deny the essentials of Christianity. What can 
 you offer to him in j)roof of Christ's divinity?' 
 
 Then the Man calmly replied : 
 
 'I offer the evidence of His miracles; they are 
 testimony to the divine sanction of His claims 
 of sharing divinity.' 
 
 'And if the atheist chooses to follow your ex- 
 ample; if he denies the historic accuracy of all 
 of the four gospels, as you do that of the third 
 gospel, you are powerless to refute him?' the 
 clergyman replied. 
 
 'Not powerless, and you know it. I plant my 
 defense on the Toledoth Jeschu. By all prin- 
 ciples of evidence that attack of His enemies 
 never would have been written if the miracler^ 
 had not been supernatural beyond the power of 
 the human intellect to assign a natural cause; 
 indisputable proof it gave, too, that the record- 
 ing of them was historically reliable.' 
 
 The ]Man had risen v^hile making his answer, 
 prej)aring to end the interview. Each looked 
 
118 VAZ ARETE OR TARSUS? 
 
 into the other's face, and each face expressed 
 something akin to contempt. Surely the clergy- 
 man's face reflected his feelings. To defend his 
 position he had assumed the attitude of the 
 atheist. He felt that he was safe in his false 
 position. For twenty years he had taught the 
 accepted truths of Christianity to his charge, 
 and he had measured this man by the same stand- 
 ard that he applied to those to whom he minis- 
 tered. And now his visitor, who only six months 
 ago was like a little child in trust and submis- 
 sion, had proved him to be a dissimulator. Xo 
 wonder the clergyman was contemptuous — to- 
 wards himself — in his failure to use, success- 
 fully, the weapons of the atheist; yet ready to 
 have the contempt construed as anger because 
 his creed had been attacked. 
 
tJAZ ARETE OR TARSUS f 119 
 
 IX. 
 
 Soon after his return to his home, this letter 
 was delivered to the Man: 
 
 "Dear Sir: I fear that you have been actu- 
 ated not so much by a desire to discover truth, 
 as to weaken my own faith by your sophistries 
 and intemperate assaults on the authority of a 
 man whom the Church has regarded for centu- 
 ries as an inspired and able champion of the 
 Christian faith. Calmly I view that universal 
 and undimmed faith in St. Paul, as it stretches 
 out in a vista of nearly two thousand years. 
 
 "It will require more than you have advanced 
 in your conversations with me to shake that con- 
 fidence in him which I hold, in common with all 
 Christendom. In reverence for St. Paul Cath- 
 olic and Protestant stand together; the most 
 radical divisions on creeds and forms do not 
 weaken this unity. 
 
 "I grant that I cannot refute all of your state- 
 ments and inferences. St. Paul may have been 
 egotistical, imperious, proud of his intellectual 
 acquirements; but the impress which he has 
 
120 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 made on the Christian thought of the ages is not 
 to be obliterated by the charge of insanity. 
 
 "Temporarily your assertions and arguments 
 have clouded my mind ; l)ut my faith rises above 
 the mists you have called up, and I have peace, 
 as myriads of souls have had during the past 
 centuries, and in that I find rest. 
 
 "Had you succeeded in your evident purpose, 
 I would have been driven to acknowledge that I, 
 and all who teach the theology based on the doc- 
 trines of St. Paul, are teaching lies. What then 
 could I do? I must either continue to teach a 
 lie or withdraw from the ministry to which T 
 believe myself called of God, and to which 1 
 have devoted the best years of my life. 
 
 "Did it occur to you for even a moment what 
 such an uprooting of my faith would cost? If I 
 stood alone, it would be bitter, even agonizing. 
 
 "To deny my faith would be to make homeless 
 those whom God has given me to love and care 
 for. As I write T hear the sound of my crippled 
 daughter's crutch. Every tap of that crutch 
 3mites my heart like a blow. She is helpless, 
 shut out from most of the pleasures that should 
 delight her youth, deprived of the joy that should 
 crown her coming womanhood. The burden lies 
 heavily on that young heart. Shall I make it 
 heavier by depriving her of the comforts which 
 now — though I am only a poor clergyman — my 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 121 
 
 position enables me to command ? I have taught 
 hei' that it is a Father's hand which thus afflicts 
 her, and she is sustained by believing this. The 
 faith you despise is her strength and support, as 
 it is mine. At your bidding shall I surrender 
 this? No. My lips may not have a ready an- 
 swer to your arguments. But my heart tells me 
 that it is safer to cling to the teachings of 
 the revered instructors of my youth. I decline 
 to read your communication, because I will not 
 risk the weakening of my faith through that 
 which it may speciously advance. I believe 
 they knew the truth. I am content to follow 
 their instruction and not your reasonings, the 
 fallacies of which I shall find in due time. Mean- 
 while T shall pray for you, for I wish to believe 
 that you are sincere in your desire to find the 
 right way. 
 
 "Faithfully yours, 
 
 "James Underwood." 
 
 Deliberately the Man reread the letter, quot- 
 ing aloud, "I fear you have been moved . . . 
 by desire ... to weaken my own faith." 
 There was a trace of sarcasm in his voice as he 
 repeated : 
 
 '^OJi^ load some power the giftie gie us 
 To see oursels as itliers see us; 
 It toad frae mony a hlmider free us 
 And foolish notion." 
 
123 "NAZARETH OR TARHVH? 
 
 'It seems to me to be a clear case of "the pot 
 calling the kettle black." And siireh' it wasn't 
 I who began this fencing with creeds. It is posi- 
 tively refreshing — the coolness with which he ig- 
 nores his own attack on my faith. How indif- 
 ferent he was then to the consequences to me — 
 perhaps through eternity — of his attempt to de- 
 stroy my faith. And yet, how virtuously indig- 
 nant he is when I, in turn, attack his faith.' 
 
 Again he quotes from the letter: "I view that 
 universal and undimmed faith in St. Paul, as it 
 stretches out in a vista of nearly two thousand 
 years." 
 
 'Ah, my dear minister, how convenient is a 
 bad memory. For during that same "nearly two 
 thousand years" the fires of a material hell also 
 have been "undimmed"; have flashed as luridly 
 as at the beginning of those centuries. And al- 
 though so recently as is your own childhood that 
 material hell was preached, still you know that 
 to-day you would not presume to preach that doc- 
 trine to any intelligent congregation. Hence — 
 in the light of this radical change of belief dur- 
 ing your own lifetime — who are you to assert so 
 positively the permanence of that "blood doc- 
 trine" which St. Paul has engrafted onto the 
 Christian faith? 
 
 'The one error has died out, its lurid* fires pal- 
 ing before the light of the Sun of Righteousness. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 123 
 
 No visible power has dispelled the intervening 
 clouds, but silently tbey melted away. And since 
 within a half century these sulphurous flames 
 have ceased to be visible, bold beyond prudence 
 is he who can assert that those Pauline blood 
 stains on the garments of the Father will not 
 fade away in the light of those same pure rays 
 which subdued the baleful flames of God's im- 
 puted wrath.' 
 
 He read on, and the hard lines in his face 
 were fading; a gentler mood possessed him. 
 Once more he quotes : "Shut out from the pleas- 
 ures which should delight her youth." "It is a 
 Father's hand that has imposed the burden." 
 
 'No; it is not a"Father's hand." Every miracle 
 of healing from the hand of our Lord : within our- 
 selves every impulse of tenderness and of pity 
 for those who suffer, gives the lie to this. And 
 more plainly still, "whom Satan hath bound ; lo, 
 these fifteen years," is the direct and unqualified 
 refutation by our Lord of this calumny. 
 
 'In this attributing her suffering to a loving 
 Father he is not even consistent with his Pauline 
 teaching. For unqualifiedly Paul describes death 
 as an enemy — the last enemy — that Christ is to 
 conquer. 
 
 'We have a right to apply here the axiom that 
 "the greater includes the less ;" so it is logical to 
 consider that disease, and every disaster that 
 
124 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 produces death, originates with that "enemy"; 
 a power which cannot be an ally or instrumental- 
 ity of divinity, since it is so inimical that Christ 
 must conquer it. 
 
 'How Satan must rejoice in this attributing to 
 God the consequences of his own malignity ! Yet 
 what avails the positive statements of our Lord 
 rf they are opposed by the dicta of an established 
 theology? For religion is but the handmaid of 
 theology. 
 
 * "Bound, lo, these fifteen years," has been this 
 innocent child ; and for thrice fifteen years more, 
 perhaps, she will be in Satan's leash. Would 
 God that I could find some way to weaken 
 those bonds that make her "shut out from the 
 joys that should bless." ' 
 
 Lie rose and paced the room, as was his cus- 
 tom Avhen some grave problem tried him; then 
 he lay with his face in his hands, as he was wont 
 to do when the solution seemed almost hopeless. 
 
 'Mentally, emotionally, physically; these 
 bound the horizon of the possibilities.' He was 
 arguing Avith himself. 'The second must be 
 eliminated. That is a province which, now at 
 least, I have no right to enter. That is too 
 largely controlled by her father. The first is too 
 abstruse; T have not now the knowledge of the 
 conditions that would enable me to work intelli- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 125 
 
 gently. Let that be laid aside, at least for the 
 present. 
 
 'But the last possibility, '^physically"? 
 
 'Surgical skill has admitted its power lessness. 
 I cannot change that condition. To supplement 
 materially: that alone is left. But how?' 
 
 Presently he arose, his countenance showing 
 his sense of relief — at least of his hope of a 
 solution — and he rang the bell. Promptly the 
 maid would have answered the call, but a wom- 
 an anticipated her, herself answering the sum- 
 mons. 
 
 'You called me.' 
 
 'I rang.' 
 
 'But you called me.' 
 
 There was something triumphant in the tone; 
 something exultant in the pose and manner of 
 the woman, as she stood at the library threshold, 
 repeating her answer to his call. 
 
 But let us see who this woman is who awaits 
 his invitation to enter. 
 
 Not wife, not daughter. For there was an 
 archness and an expression half pleading, half 
 winning, to which assured position makes a 
 woman superior — or makes her indifferent to 
 please in little things — as you prefer. 
 
126 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 X. 
 
 "WANTED— The daughter of an army oflflcer desires a 
 position as housekeeper. Has had experience in her own 
 home. Would prefer a location other than in central New 
 England. Address," etc., etc. 
 
 Naturally, tlie last sentence of the advertise- 
 ment attracted attention, and the Man gave it 
 careful study. Pride as its motive he quickly 
 eliminated, for if merely loss of income had com- 
 pelled her to leave her home the entire wording 
 would have been different. It was evident that 
 she wished to remove herself from painful asso- 
 ciations, which financial losses alone would not 
 have made repugnant. Between the lines he 
 read a sense of shame which impelled her to seek 
 a position among strangers. But because the 
 lines were there he was sure that the shame was 
 a reflected one — not her own. He read, too, a 
 consideration for others ; an unwillingness to in- 
 vite replies which she would not wish to con- 
 sider. 
 
 Tie wrote briefly, stating his position, and that 
 entire responsibility and an independent author- 
 ity Tv^ould be given to any one who was placed' 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 127 
 
 at the head of his household. To this there came 
 the answer: 
 
 "Dear Sir: I thank you so much for your 
 reply. I like it — more than any reply I have 
 received. I dreaded taking this means of sup- 
 porting myself, because I feared I should be sub- 
 ject to another woman's whims. I am already 
 building castles in the air and wondering what 
 all will be like, if you will be so good as to give 
 me the position. And if I am at all impatient, it 
 is because I must consider other replies, which 
 I frankly tell you are not so welcome as yours. 
 Let me tell you at once — and have the shameful 
 story over — why I must support myself and why 
 I wish to leave old associations. 
 
 "My husband was recently committed to state 
 prison, for 'irregularities' in his accounts. He 
 was head bookkeeper in a bank here. Can I send 
 you any references? Please command me if you 
 wish me to tell you anything more about myself. 
 I will be only too glad to respond. 
 
 "Most respectfully yours, 
 
 "Edith Adams Marriner.^' 
 
 And thus the Man's analysis ran: 'Either 
 this is a somewhat impulsive young woman — 
 perhaps younger than Mrs. Grundy would per- 
 mit me to take into my household, if I and Mrs. 
 
128 NAZARETH OR TARSVSf 
 
 Grundy had mutual friends whose interest in 
 me was shown in other ways than, "thou shalt 
 not" — or else it's a good many years since she 
 "picked the shell," and yet is trying to pass her- 
 self off as a spring chicken. She is very ingenu- 
 ous and frank, or she is skilled in flattery. For- 
 tunatel}' there is no half way ground, and the 
 closing sentence of her advertisement tells me — 
 by its inner meaning — more than all that she has 
 written. So I will give her the benetit of the 
 doubt; and I will hope that she is young and 
 handsome, and vail make an attractive piece of 
 bric-a-brac, to put in this cabinet — my home. 
 That the "irregularities" were not in any degree 
 her own fault, that she did not tempt her hus- 
 band into extravagance, I am convinced — unless 
 she. is an old cat playing kitten — for conscious 
 guilt would have exemplified ^'qui s'excuse, s'ac- 
 Guse"; and she would have told a pretty fairy tale 
 of "deceived into liberal home expenditures by 
 his boasting of successful speculations, which 
 made her feel free to enjoy his seeming success." 
 So T will telegraph that I will come to-morrow.' 
 
 His hand was on the call. 'No, I will go un- 
 announced; a woman of character and true re- 
 finement is never placed at a disadvantage by 
 the unexpected.' 
 
 He found the conditions practically as he had 
 anticipated, in regard to the wife's innocence of 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? I29 
 
 any share in her husband's downfall. That hus- 
 band had been tempted by his vanity — his intense 
 personal vanity that made him oblivious to the 
 suffering and shame that would fall on his wife. 
 The bank had among its prominent patrons a 
 coterie of good fellows, who never neglected busi- 
 ness for pleasure — if they were liable to be 
 caught at it. And though "a good v«'orkman is 
 known by his chips," the "chips" to which they 
 devoted a large portion of their nights repre- 
 sented the debris of energies that were too much 
 wasted to permit competing successfully in busi- 
 ness with capacities that were unimpaired. So 
 they must have accommodation at the bank, 
 and more than their "limit" would allow. 
 
 Very much flattered was the struggling book- 
 keeper when these prominent men became so 
 friendly to him, offering him an opportunity to 
 add to his income by devoting his evenings to the 
 books and accounts of the club where they met 
 every night. Perhaps it was through the manip- 
 ulation of these men that complaint was made 
 that this income passed to one who was not a 
 member of the club, and so he Avas induced to 
 use part of his new income in the payment of 
 his dues — his entry fee generously paid by his 
 friends. It was so easy to cajole him into a 
 "quiet game," now that the club rules permit- 
 ted him to play. It was just as easy to let him 
 
130 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? ' 
 
 win, and still easier to flatter his vanity by ad- 
 miring his skill and coolness. And then, when 
 the time was ripe, the play was made heavy and 
 he lost, and lost again, then won, till at last he 
 lost his head — and half a year's income. Pity 
 he had not then some friend to go to who would 
 have shown to him the pitfall which his false 
 friends were digging under his feet. But his 
 captors did not demand any money; his note 
 would suffice, and "your old luck will come back." 
 And so it did ; and then went away faster than it 
 came — and farther. Then there was a birthday 
 dinner given, and, when the wine had made him 
 ripe for his fall, the generous hosts gave him back 
 his notes and drew from him the promise to give 
 them large accommodation at the bank, sub- 
 stituting notes that they knew to be valueless for 
 the bank's cash, and to falsify his books to cover 
 the deception. 
 
 He saved ' them from business failure. Tie 
 wrecked himself. It was the old story. A sud- 
 den sharp illness; a new man at the books. A 
 call at his house by the cashier of the bank. A 
 confession of that which was self-evident. 
 
 But his tempters were prompt in their offers 
 of help. They secured the best legal counsel, 
 who in a fatherly way convinced him that to 
 plead guilty would ligliten his sentence; that not 
 to implicate the influential men whom he had 
 
NAZARETH Ok TARSUS f 131 
 
 "accommodated" would command their influence 
 to secure a speedy pardon, and assure their aid to 
 put him on his feet again when his short term 
 was over, they meanwhile caring for his wife. So 
 the jjrison walls closed on him, the weak victim, 
 while his tempters were astounded and, with the 
 gravity of hypocrisy, regretted that so promis- 
 ing a young man should wreck his prospects. 
 
 Through it all his wife uttered no word of 
 reproach. His ^lonor' prevented him from tell- 
 ing her how he had disposed of his thefts. So 
 well had the able counsel done his work. 
 
 He was the man to whom she had given her- 
 self, both body and soul, in her first love. So she 
 could not hate him. 
 
 He was silent when she asked him where the 
 money had gone. So she could not pity him. 
 
 She had only one thought — to find some place 
 where every one did not regard her with either 
 pity or contempt. 
 
 Yes, she was young; and if not beautiful, no 
 man need fear, when he had friends to entertain, 
 that she would not lend grace to the head of the 
 table. 
 
 While waiting for her to respond to his an- 
 nouncement — and he carefully noted the minutes 
 that she required to make herself presentable — 
 he hastily examined the photographs in the room 
 
132 NAZARETH OR TARSVSf 
 
 till he found the face for which he had been 
 seeking. Just a trace of a smile played about 
 his lips as he regarded the face of a man of 
 thirty, 'Weak, vain, selfish; not the selfishness 
 of a mean nature, but of one who had been 
 petted and had grown to be thoughtless of others. 
 No Avoman Avho could admire true nobility of 
 character could love such a man. Let us hope' 
 — he said to himself — 'that she was only a girl 
 when she married ; maybe it was for the interest 
 of others to exhibit him to her in a too flattering 
 light. We will see.' 
 
 The Man had barely ended his analysis and in- 
 ferences when the door of the room opened. He 
 was just a little flattered by the eager expectancy 
 which lightened her face. Truly she had been 
 "building castles in the air," for she came for- 
 ward with hand extended, as if she were meeting 
 an old friend. 
 
 'It is a pleasant surprise. Rut wasn't T worth 
 just a little word that I might have the pleasure 
 of looking forward to your call? You can't un- 
 derstand what a pleasure it is to see a new face; 
 a face that hasn't followed me for months, al- 
 ways showing consciousness of my misfortune. 
 I hope that you never knew what it is to have 
 the fault of some one else to boar.' 
 
 The Man drew a little breath as if hit unex- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS t 133 
 
 pectedly. ^^ Arcades amho/' he said to himself. 
 'We have both tasted the same cup.' 
 
 'Do you believe in presentiments?' she con- 
 tinued, 'or inspirations, or angel's whispers, or 
 call them what you will? Well, when your let- 
 ter came my heart seemed to leap into my throat 
 before I opened it. I felt that it held my fate.' 
 
 She had turned impulsively, and as she looked 
 him full in the face and saw his eyes intently 
 regarding her, her voice wavered, and for a mo- 
 ment she was silent. Presently in more meas- 
 ured sentences, her eyes holding a far-off look, 
 she added in self-reproachful tones: 
 
 'I fear that I have made a grave mistake. I 
 cannot blame you if you have misunderstood me ; 
 if you have thought me bold and unwomanly.' 
 
 But the frank naturalness of her impulses 
 broke quickly through the constraint; and again 
 looking fully and calmly into the face that was 
 as free as her ovrn from false sentiment, she 
 added : 
 
 'I beg you to regard the oppressive burden of 
 these weeks of worse than widowhood. Put your- 
 self in my place — but without a man's resources; 
 only the choice between pity or contempt in every 
 face that you saw. And then you came. You 
 gave me no time to compose myself. I came to 
 you at once. My heart was full of hope. I had 
 not time to think. I could only feel; only long 
 
134 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 that you were to take me away from my humilia- 
 tion.' Then she waited in suppressed anxiety 
 for his answer. 
 
 'You asked me,' he said, 'if I believed in pre- 
 sentiments. Yes and no. I think there was 
 never a woman who cared for my welfare but 
 startled me with a strange, though imperfect, 
 insight into my actions. They were impressions 
 which could not have come by mortal knowledge. 
 Let me tell you the most striking. 
 
 'I was trying to find who was the writer of a 
 letter that was evidence of a crime. I had in- 
 advertently taken a car that was dropped at 
 a little city, so I there must remain for the next 
 train to the place where I thought it probable 
 that the author of the letter lived. 
 
 'To beguile the time I took some letters which 
 had been given to me and began to compare 
 them with the incriminating letter. I was doing 
 it idly almost ; for there seemed no possible mo- 
 tive for such a deed on the part of the person 
 who had written them. Suddenly the unexpect- 
 ed happened, and I was forced to believe that this 
 woman had written the incriminating letter. 
 
 'I immediately took a train for her home. She 
 answered my ring at her door and greeted me 
 with almost hysterical effusiveness. "It is such 
 a relief," she said; "I beg you to stay till I am 
 composed. I have a horror of being alone; 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 135 
 
 such a blow came to me to-day. I was in my 
 sewing room, when it seemed as if a great weight 
 fell on my head and was crushing me to the 
 floor, and I was filled with the horror of an un- 
 known but terrible danger." "When did the 
 blow fall?" I said. "It was just four o'clock," 
 she replied. That was exactly the hour when the 
 conviction of her guilt came to me. And yet she 
 welcomed me who had forged the bolt. So you 
 see why I said "Yes and no." ' 
 
 The story had accomplished its mission. The 
 tension was removed. 
 
 When a man who has little admiration for the 
 sex in general meets a woman whose character 
 commands his respect in spite of her womanhood, 
 he pays to her an earnest courtliness of admira- 
 tion that cannot fail to impress through the lofti- 
 ness of its sincerity. As the Man rose to leave, 
 his whole being showed how far removed were 
 his sentiments from the pity or contempt which 
 had been her daily "bread of affliction." 
 
 'May I ask you one or two questions?' he said. 
 
 'Most assuredly; a whole catechism, if you 
 will. I would be sorry — should you let me come 
 under your roof — if there was a question you 
 wished that you had asked, yet had not given 
 me an opportunity to answer.' 
 
 'You were married quite young?' 
 
13G NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 ^Oli, yes; I was only seventeen.' 
 'And your wedding was a quiet one?' 
 'Very quiet. You see, my aunt, who brought 
 me up, had daughters of her own, and she and 
 they made me jealous; made me think that my 
 Charlie was paying attention to some one else; 
 and so the wedding Avas hurried, so that we could 
 take our wedding trip in his holidays, and there 
 wasn't time to have an elaborate wedding.' 
 
 'Thank you for the answers,' he said, while a 
 half cynical smile — unobserved by her — passed 
 over his face. Then, handing her an envelope, he 
 added : 'I earnestly desire that you should avail 
 yourself of the references wliich this contains. 
 On the face of my card I write the names of those 
 who believe in me and trust me ; on its back, the 
 names of enemies. You will probably have the 
 good sense to accept neither good nor ill report 
 without qualifying it by its opposite. The "medm 
 via tntissima" of our copy books is as safe as it 
 is old.' 
 
 When he had gone a few feet from her door, 
 he turned as if mistaken in his way. But there 
 was a boy's roguishness in his heart as ho caught 
 her — by a sidelong glance from the tail of his eye 
 as he repassed her house — peeping through the 
 slats. Then the cynical look came back to his 
 face, as he said to himself: 'Those two answers 
 tell me all of the circumstances, all of the influ- 
 
NAZABETH OR TABSUS? 137 
 
 ences that made the child — not the woman — ac- 
 cept this weak man.' 
 
 'Oh, my!' and her fingers went up and played 
 an octave on the back of her head. 'I caught 
 him looking intently at my back hair. I hope it 
 is all right. But Avhat funny questions. What 
 difference will it make to him whether his house- 
 keeper had a quiet wedding or a swell one?' 
 
 "Ex pede Hcrculcm" would have been his an- 
 swer had she asked this question in his presence. 
 By and by, when she has gained his confidence, 
 and he uses her woman's eyes and wit to aid 
 him in his studies, she will learn that from 
 words, even more clearly than from more tangi- 
 ble things, there can be developed the spectrum 
 analysis which will reveal the true components of 
 the ideas that the words express, or that they may 
 be intended to conceal. 
 
 'But this fat envelope ; what a lot of references 
 it must contain! Does he expect me to write 
 to all of these people? I think I had rather not 
 open it, but take him for what I felt he was as 
 soon as I saw him.' 
 
 Her curiosity, however, triumphed over her 
 fear that maybe some one would write unfavora- 
 bly in reply, and tell her that he was a bad lot; 
 then she cautiously opened the envelojje. 
 
 Nothing had been said by either in regard to 
 
138 'NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 her salary-, yet here was a sum equal to the yearly 
 stipend that another had offered her. 
 
 Some way it did not seem indelicate for him 
 to place in her hands, or for her to receive, the 
 crisp, clean bills. It seemed as if it Avas an ear- 
 nest of the wish that his eyes had told to hers; 
 that he should be found worthy that she should 
 come under his roof. The manly thoughtfulness 
 of the words that he had placed in the envelope 
 made her wish to burn the list of references — at 
 least, to write only to those who believed in him 
 and trusted him. And that is just what she did. 
 He told her — each word and phrase presented 
 with consummate delicacy — that he liked her; 
 that perhaps there was a bit of selfishness in his 
 hope that against the dark background of her 
 sorrow it might be vouchsafed to him to develop, 
 in the home he knew she would adorn and bright- 
 en, such a picture that the old darkness would 
 be only a fading memory. That it would grieve 
 him if she came oppressed by the memory of ob- 
 ligations which the suddenness of the blow had 
 made her unable to discharge; obligations per- 
 haps to those who would suffer — or would speak 
 illy of her, if payment was not made. And mny- 
 be, too, there were keepsakes that she wished to 
 recover. This letter she laid away among tlie 
 few jewels that were left to her. 
 
 She wouldn^t have been a real, warm-hearted, 
 
'NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 139 
 
 impulsive woman if she hadn't curled up and 
 had a good cry ; then got just a little hysterical ; 
 quickly recovering, however, for she must pay 
 regard to the references. But she wrote to just 
 as few as propriety would permit, and waited 
 for the answers, oscillating between fear and 
 perfect trust, as influences came from without 
 or were from her own heart. 
 
2__[0 NAZARETH OR TARlSDSf 
 
 XL 
 
 Now that the step was irrevocably taken, now 
 that in only half an hour more the train would 
 stop at the station from which she would be 
 taken to his home, there came an irrepressible 
 longing to return. 
 
 She felt some influence, that seemed wholly 
 outside of herself, swaying her impulses. She 
 remembered vividly — too vividly for her present 
 peace of mind — the tenderness of the parting 
 with old acquaintances. 
 
 So long as she expected to remain at home 
 they were only formally cordial. But when they 
 found that she was really to leave; when they 
 knew that she would not continue to be a 
 social incubus; no longer would be one whose 
 presence was to be apologized for, the sense of re- 
 lief may have deceived even themselves into a 
 friendly interest, that made natural the warm ex- 
 pressions of regret at parting. The profuse 
 wishes that she might find happiness in her new 
 position, the emphatic approvals, to her face, 
 of the step that she was taking, had the impress 
 of sincerity; though behind her back each Phar- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 141 
 
 isee among them held up her hands in thank- 
 fulness that she herself was not making her 
 home, alone, with a man who was "so well pre- 
 served." A contrasting phrase that women are 
 fond of using — when they suspect that their own 
 youth is showing them its heels. 
 
 And worse than this: more serious than the 
 deceptive recollecting of the few bright closing 
 hours of the life which she had left behind — 
 the strange forgetfulness of the fear of ostra- 
 cism that had made every meeting with old 
 friends a source of anticipation of humiliation — 
 she began to dread the meeting with the man 
 whose happiness she had longed to have in her 
 keeping; the hope of winning whose approval 
 had made her so buoyant that her own joyous- 
 ness made the more indifferent farewells seem 
 considerate — even kind. 
 
 "In his power; in his power," the railway 
 wheels seemed to ring out continuously and 
 mockingly, and presently she would have worked 
 herself up into a most pronounced case of 'nerves' 
 — that would have impelled her to do something 
 absurd, so morbid was she becoming in her dread 
 of meeting him — had not the train soon reached 
 the station that was at the end of her journey. 
 
 Waiting on the platform till the bustle of ar- 
 rival and departure was over, she was making 
 her way toward the baggage truck when she 
 
143 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 heard her name called. Turning she saw two 
 extended hands and a countenance that had the 
 exquisite tenderness that only sorrow can mold 
 the features to. The face was set in rippling, 
 iron gray hair, and the motherly gentleness 
 of expression instantly won the confidence of the 
 distraught woman. 
 
 'Warmest welcome I bring to you.' The voice 
 was as earnest as it was tender. 'Our dear 
 friend is absent, but he has sent me to find you. 
 His man will take all the care of your luggage 
 if you will be so good as to point it out. Then 
 dismiss all anxiety and let me care for you.' 
 
 Strange perversity of womankind. The 
 woman so cordially welcomed ought to have 
 shown profound gratitude for the thoughtful- 
 ness. She ought to have given a sigh of relief 
 that the Man was conveniently out of the way, 
 for twenty-four hours at least. But she did no 
 such thing. She only answered: 'He is ab- 
 sent!' and relapsed into a quiet nursing of her 
 sense of neglect, because he had timed her ar- 
 rival on a day when he would be away from home. 
 By and by, when she had learned him better, 
 she recognized that it was a delicate thought- 
 fulness that substituted the motherly welcome. 
 But fortunately her curiosity came to the rescue 
 of her good manners — the lapse in which had 
 only amused her hostess — and she was quite her 
 
'MAZARETE OR TARSUSf 143 
 
 natural self again by the time the two women 
 had entered the carriage that was waiting for 
 them. 
 
 No distinguished visitor could have been re- 
 ceived with more consideration. The guest 
 chamber waited for her, daintily arranged and 
 fragrant with flowers. 
 
 As she looked at herself in the cheval glass, 
 she said to her reflection : 'Well, you were a 
 fool and no mistake; and I am ashamed of you; 
 and if you had any sense of decency you would 
 be ashamed of yourself. Go right downstairs 
 and tell that dear angel without wings that you 
 were a fool and deserved to be punished for the 
 bad manners that you showed at the railway 
 station.' And she did so; putting her arm 
 around the gentle woman's neck and kissing her 
 impulsively as she made her confession. 
 
 Everywhere she saw, and delighted in, the evi- 
 dences of his good taste. 'Guest I am to-night 
 in this lovely home,' she said to herself exult- 
 antly, 'and its mistress to-morrow and many to- 
 morrows, and maybe on and on till ' She 
 
 stopped and her face grew grave, — as many a 
 time thereafter the shadows fell on it, and fell 
 more darkly as the time approached when she 
 must cease to be free; because freedom would 
 come to 'him.' That was all the designation she 
 
144 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 ever gave in her heart when she thought of the 
 author of her sorrow. 
 
 But the call to tea happily came, breaking in 
 upon her gloomy forebodings. Her hostess — 
 who had promptly explained that she had come 
 only to teach a little of the tastes of the 
 master — placed herself at the tea tray. As 
 deftly as tastefully she made the function 
 a graceful offering up of incense to the new 
 priestess of the lares and penates of the house- 
 hold; and made it a dignified induction to her 
 new authority, with an impressment of defer- 
 ence that assured the respect of tliose over whom 
 the honored guest was to have authority. 
 
 Then memory went back and labeled as only 
 an ugly dream the wild vagaries that had op- 
 pressed her at her journey's close. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 145 
 
 XII. 
 
 'Now^ my dear child, sit right down by my 
 side on this comfortable sofa and look right into 
 this blazing wood fire, and build your castles in 
 Spain while I tell you about this man.' She 
 hesitated a moment and then added slowly and 
 piquantly, 'whom you love.' 
 
 'I ! I love! What do you mean?' 
 
 'You told me so. You put your arms around 
 my neck and confessed that you had told me so.' 
 
 'I did no such thing. I confessed that I had 
 been discourteous to you; that was all I said.' 
 
 'And you were discourteous — because! And 
 now, dear, I am asking no confession ; only giv- 
 ing you a little discipline for your own good ; 
 teaching you to be less impulsive, though I 
 would not have you less natural and sincere. I 
 believe that you will make our friend's home ever 
 so much brighter and happier. But I must beg 
 you to remember that there are other eyes just 
 as observant as mine, though not coupled with 
 lips so discreet, or hearts so loyal to him and to 
 you, too, for the sake of one who once prevented 
 a great sorrow from falling on me and mine. 
 
146 tiAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 'If I were to describe bim in one word, I 
 would say "cbivalrous." Had I a daugbter wbo 
 could bave filled tbe place you bave taken, 
 I would place ber bere, gladly. Hard and un- 
 relenting be is to bis enemies; and they are 
 those whose evil deeds or heartless acts his firm 
 hand has repressed or punished. The soul of 
 loyalty to bis friends, or to any cause that he 
 espouses, it may be that he is a shade too reek- 
 less as to consequences — but never unjust — to 
 win success ; for he is a stranger to fear. 
 
 'Himself untiring, giving his best, he expects 
 faithfulness; yet exacting less from others than 
 be does from himself; and he is considerate. 
 Frank, where frankness is due, yet by nature 
 secretive, he has no patience for curiosity, and 
 will not brook it. He regards it as among the 
 grossest of insults. 
 
 'His enemies will tell you that be is not a saint ; 
 but I am sure that no man or woman ever left 
 him with less of purity than he found them 
 possessed of; while more than one despairing 
 soul has taken hope and courage and has bad 
 tbe firmness to continue in tbe better way which 
 his kindliness prompted bim to provide. And 
 they were steadfast in that way, because they 
 knew that bis strength would supplomont their 
 weakness, and that they could regard bim ns; a 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 147 
 
 faithful protector. Can I tell you anything 
 more?' 
 
 'Oh, yes; lots. How can I make him happy?' 
 
 ^h, now! Did ever a woman really wish 
 to make any one happy, and her womanly in- 
 stincts not show her the way — if she is faithful 
 to them? But this single suggestion will per- 
 haps be inclusive of much. Let him see that you 
 wish to make home restful. The rest of quiet 
 — if he is oppressed with thought; the rest of 
 your real buoyancy, if he is only fatigued. And 
 above all, do not let him feel that you expect him 
 to be always entertaining.' So the evening 
 passed. 
 
 The sensations that come to us on our awak- 
 ening on the first morning of a new arranging 
 of our lives have decidedly the flavor of our 
 having become some one else. Out of these con- 
 fused sensations the new mistress of the house 
 was pleasantly called by the beauty and per- 
 fume of the flowers which he had so thought- 
 fully provided, and which she had placed by the 
 side of her pillow. 
 
 The first day was full of interest, in tactfully 
 taking the measure of the servants. She re- 
 membered, too, the advice of the evening before : 
 to make a division of duties to each, clearly 
 naming those that she reserved for herself; and 
 to do this promptly, before a degree of famil- 
 
148 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 iarity had made her authority less unquestioned. 
 
 IS'ight was falling and she felt a pleasant ex- 
 hilaration as she looked forward to welcoming 
 him. 
 
 'Home at last, and at last a home to look 
 forward to returning to.' He came in with a 
 breezy, eager way, like a school boy just in for 
 the holidays. He did not wait to remove his top 
 coat, but sought her out at once and extended 
 his hand with a sincere cordiality that made her 
 at ease. 'I'm hungry as a bear; and after din- 
 ner you must tell me all of the bad things that 
 our friend said about me, so that I can imme- 
 diately begin turning over a new leaf — any num- 
 ber of new leaves.' 
 
 She knew what he meant. 'Well, she was just 
 lovely, and so cordial, and gave me such good 
 advice that I am afraid I should have believed 
 her if she had said bad things about 
 you. But dinner is ready and you must go at 
 once and get ready, for you men will irot forgive 
 a cold dinner — even if the fault is yours.' 
 
 She listened till the sound of his steps ended 
 at his own room. "He never had a sister. He 
 shall know what a sister's love is if I have power 
 to bring it to him.' 
 
 As they were ready to part for the night he 
 led the way to his library and opened the safe. 
 
 'Here are duplicate keys for you. This 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 149 
 
 drawer is yours. From it make all disburse- 
 ments for the household — and deal with your- 
 self as generously as you would deal with me if 
 conditions were reversed. I shall ask no ac- 
 counting. Good night.' He took her hand in 
 both of his for a moment ; then left the room too 
 abruptly for any thanks. 
 
 The tears came into her eyes as she recalled 
 his exjn'ession of confidence — his delicate avoid- 
 ance of anything that would be like making 
 terms with a servant. But she was too happy 
 for tears, even of gratitude, to be lasting; and 
 tossing the keys in the air with a child's glee she 
 said, There's just one man in this w^orld, and if 
 I don't make him the happiest man that ever 
 lived in it, then — may I lose these keys, and to 
 another woman at that.' 
 
 As the months passed by, her recognition of 
 his strength grew apace ; and she grew into rest- 
 fulness in it. 'Maybe there will be no ending; 
 what he attempts he accomplishes. I will trust.' 
 It was trust only; for she did not dare — did not 
 
 care to consider how. She had learned to rest. 
 ****** 
 
 Was it something akin to weariness with 
 "Aristides the Just" that at last brought to this 
 placid home life a disturbing influence? Only 
 a woman's love of power. No wish to hold his 
 shorn locks in her lap. Only the desire to com- 
 
150 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 mand his admiration for her womanhood. Sim- 
 ply to dominate his calm, strong self-possession, 
 and sway it in yielding- recognition of her 
 charms. 
 
 These were the thoughts that prompted her to 
 burst upon him in all the loveliness that she 
 could command. 'Admire me ; tell me I am beau- 
 tiful.' This was what the snowy, heaving, "half 
 concealed, half revealed" bosom, and the grace- 
 ful outstretched arms were pleading for. Just 
 an hour of a woman's triumphant power, won 
 through his love of the beautiful, was all that 
 she asked, as she stood before him in the uncon- 
 scious temptation of her charms. 
 
 Oh, Temptation, subtlest when you come and 
 tell us that we are strong, and that we can safely 
 harbor you; bidding us the while show to our- 
 selves and to the world that we can treat you as 
 a plaything. 
 
 And she did win his admiration. Never could 
 he forget how radiant she was, standing between 
 the parted portieres, that made effective setting 
 of her loveliness. Never would she forget how 
 she swayed him. He stood silent a moment. 
 
 'You are beautiful to-night,' impressively, 
 calm and low. Then a deep gasp, a quivering of 
 the hands, their palms turned outward as if 
 pleading for possession. It was over in a mo- 
 ment. The tempter had passed; for before the 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf ISl 
 
 shadow came over his face, before the out- 
 stretched arms fell passively, before he had ut- 
 tered the words that filled her with shame for 
 many a day, his good angel had flashed out from 
 memory her warnings. He saw faces of men 
 who had "renewed their youth" and came to him 
 haggard and appalled at the povrer — and its 
 brutal use — that their temptresses held and ex- 
 erted ; beseeching him to interpose his iron hand 
 and deliver them. And clearer, perhaps because 
 nearer, the face of one — she seemed to his ripe 
 manhood hardly more than a child — who had 
 come to him, the bitterness of death swallowed 
 up in the terror of the shame she would bring 
 to her home, and in the horror of the curse in 
 her motherhood that she would inflict on the lit- 
 tle life to be. Again there came to him, sounding 
 like the funeral knell of hope, the stony, hard 
 appeal of her hopelessness — all the more pa- 
 thetic that its calmness was the icy strength of 
 a frozen heart : 'I have engaged a position as 
 companion to a lady going abroad. It will be 
 easy to reach too far over the stern to recover 
 my hat. The great deep ocean will never give 
 up my ugly secret. My belt of shot will save 
 me from rescue. I don't feel quite prepared to 
 die; but I have no choice — unless you can save 
 me. Will vou?' 
 
152 NAZARETH OR TAR8US? 
 
 'Three months' income for a life — two of 
 them' ; this to himself ; and to her he said, 'Yes.' 
 
 'Beautiful ! How your husband would admire 
 you!' Had the hands that had fallen that mo- 
 ment to his side been raised and struck her in 
 the face she would not have recoiled more from 
 the blow. Her face grew almost ashen from the 
 shock, as she clutched the portieres for support, 
 hiding her horror in their folds. Then suddenly 
 she relaxed her grasp, gave him one look that 
 was beseeching and reproachful, and Hed to her 
 room. 
 
 It was a cruel kindness. Perhaps the sur- 
 geon's knife need not have cut quite so deeply, 
 but it was an emergency case; there was no time 
 to calculate closely. 
 
 She almost tore her lovely costume to shreds 
 in her bitter haste to put it away from her. She 
 had planned with such care to make herself beau- 
 tiful in his eyes; his only. It had been such a 
 joy in its conception and execution. So many 
 times she had rearranged it. It must be perfect, 
 for it was for him, and now it lay before her, as 
 thorough a wreck as was the joy she had tasted 
 for a moment. Through that long night she lay 
 sleepless, bitterly moaning till too exhausted to 
 think, almost to feel. 
 
 'The wife of a thief. Bound "to love, honor 
 and obey till death us do part." Shut out from 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 153 
 
 human love, how can I believe even that God 
 loves me? Yes, "till death us do part"; not his 
 death, but mine. "Come, Lord Jesus, come quick- 
 ly." He, the only man I ever met that was worth 
 living for, he struck me with those cruel words. 
 Did he think that I am only a child? Did he 
 think that I hadn't power enough to command 
 myself, if those strong arms that longed for me 
 had really taken me? But he did love me; just 
 one little minute he loved me, and it cost him, 
 oh, such an effort! I'm glad it cost him such a 
 struggle. I can forgive him for the sake of that 
 inward battle where he had to strike me to end 
 this fight with himself.' 
 
 And so, between the brief flashes of the rays 
 of that one moment of triumph, and the dark, 
 pervading clouds of the humiliation which was 
 not of her own doing, the weary night passed 
 on. 
 
 And do you suppose he thought that she was 
 'only a child'? Well, that treacherous "little 
 god without breeches,'' the roguish child, Eros, 
 nestles so innocently, and you watch his baby 
 face in your bosom; and, lo, he has changed be 
 fore you know it; and he has grown to Amor, 
 and he takes you in his strong arms, bearing you 
 whither he listeth. 
 
 The thickest pall of sorrow must lose a degree 
 of its oppression when the exhilarating rays of 
 
154 VAZIRETU OR TARSUS? 
 
 the rising sun fall upon it; the sombre night is 
 at last ended. 
 
 She wondered why he left the house so early. 
 
 Presently he returned and she heard him come 
 softly to her door, and as she listened there came 
 a sound like a faint rap, but too soft to have 
 awakened the lightest sleeper; then she heard 
 him quietly returning to his library. 
 
 Curiosity suggested to Sorrow that it step 
 aside a moment till the cause of that sound had 
 been investigated. Curiosity opened the door a 
 little and in fell a box of flowers — a whole arm- 
 ful of them. And with them such a tender let- 
 ter. The blame was Avholly his. He had been 
 selfishly inconsiderate. Could she ever forgive 
 him? He had been so happy in his home; she 
 so buoyant, or so considerately unobtrusive, as 
 his mood or need required, that he had forgotten 
 the long, uneventful days filled with cares that 
 were only repetitions of each other. He won- 
 dered that the dreary monotony had not made 
 hor a candidate for a strait-jacket. He would 
 send hor off on a holiday^ hating Mrs. Grundy all 
 the while that ho could not go with hor, that he 
 might see all the bright things through her eyes. 
 She must drive out every pleasant day ; the horses 
 needed the exercise. She must 'go out' more. 
 And lie closed with more self-reproach, bogging 
 her to wear to breakfast a few sprays of his fa- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS t 155 
 
 vorite lily of the valley in token of her forgive- 
 ness. 
 
 This she did and entered the breakfast room, 
 very busy in arranging another bunch that she 
 might go straight to him and fasten it in his 
 button hole, thus sparing herself the embarrass- 
 ment of looking so high as his face in the morn- 
 ing greeting, while he read aloud, with apparent 
 intense interest, an item from the morning paper. 
 She knew the article was so foreign to his real 
 interest that the ludicrousness of his awkward 
 attempt to relieve the embarrassment of the situ- 
 ation appealed irresistibly to her appreciation 
 of the funny. She burst into such shouts of 
 laughter that he began to edge away towards his 
 hat and top coat, fearing a display of hysterics 
 would follow, but feeling even that would not be 
 too high a price for escaping the dreaded awk- 
 wardness of their meeting. 
 
156 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 XIII. 
 
 ' "How are the mighty fallen." Can it be that 
 this is the same man who rebuked me so piti- 
 lessly because I came to him and sought his ad- 
 miration? Was it not enough to have come be- 
 hind my chair and whisper to me to meet him at 
 ten o'clock to-night in his library — yet in not so 
 low a tone but that the handsome maid heard him 
 and looked her triumph over me? Was not this 
 enough, without his asking me to give him the 
 photograph of that pretty maid — and all this in 
 his own house?' Her idol was only a man after 
 all; he had fallen from his pedestal, and she did 
 not know whether most to pity him or despise 
 him. 
 
 But she obeyed him, and was chagrined beyond 
 measure that the contempt she felt — and em- 
 phatically expressed in her manner — was ap- 
 parently unobserved by him, though she noticed 
 his evident satisfaction as she gave him the girl's 
 picture. 
 
 'Please send Osborn to me. T almost forgot 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 157 
 
 to thank you for the picture.' He certainly was 
 very much absorbed in it. 
 
 As Osborn entered he said: 
 
 ^Now, my dear fellow, you said you wished to 
 go to your club to-night.' 
 
 'Yes, I would like to go; but if I can be of 
 service to you, I will gladlj^ give it up.' 
 
 'So far from your staying away for me, I 
 should be sorry if you did not go. You told me 
 that there was to be a little supper at your club. 
 At the proper time take this envelope from your 
 pocket, saying that it was received from a friend, 
 and you don't know what is in it. Open it and 
 pass its contents around for comments. Tell me 
 what you learn ; but don't come to me till morn- 
 ing.' 
 
 ****** 
 
 'Let me have a game of chess with you.' 
 She saw that the pieces were set and that the 
 Man was seated at the table, as she entered the 
 library at the hour he had named. He welcomed 
 her without looking up. It was so unlike his for- 
 mer self. 
 
 'I hope to show you some new moves to-night,' 
 he added. The play had lasted perhaps twenty 
 minutes, and she was sure that she held the ad- 
 vantage, when he almost hissed 'Checkmate.' 
 'But you needn't strike the table so hard and 
 nearly upset the pieces,' she said. 
 
158 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 He made no answer, softly rising; and as he 
 looked into lier strained face he was glad that the 
 test was over. Noiselessly approaching the 
 door, he quickly opened it. 
 
 'What are you here for?' The girl stood para 
 lyzed, but stammered out in reply : 
 
 'I thought you wished me to wait up till Os- 
 born came in.' 
 
 'Then sit there.' He pointed to the place 
 where — in the now unlighted hall — a chair usu- 
 ally stood, and quickly closed the door. As the 
 girl came to the floor with a heavy fall, he 
 I)ointed laughingly to the hall chair, now within 
 the library. 
 
 'And the last move of the game. Listen! I 
 was sure that the hard floor would astonish her 
 into the "flight that is confession." 
 
 The girl had picked herself up, groped her 
 way through the dark hall and was rushing to 
 her room, her noisy steps impelled by anger and 
 chagrin. 
 
 'The "last move"? Yes ; yet I feel that the last 
 move should be my going down on my knees, for 
 my distrust of you. For all the while that I 
 doubted you you were arranging a punishment 
 for her, because you saw that she was insulting 
 me by hor bnse suspicions.' 
 
 And he replied : 'Your heart is kneeling and 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS r 159 
 
 pleading so charmingly that I can ask for noth- 
 ing more.' 
 
 Through tears she looked up laughingly, as 
 she put out both her hands and said: 'Good 
 night ; and if you catch me again, base deceiver, 
 it will be I that will have "the last move." I will 
 find a way to checkmate you.' 
 
 'You have had your lesson?' he asked. 
 
 'Lesson? a whole curriculum; graduated and 
 entitled to a diploma.' 
 
 'I hope that you have recovered from your fall 
 of last night.' There was nothing mocking in the 
 Man's tones ; they were very business-like in their 
 greeting as the girl entered the library on the fol- 
 lowing morning. 
 
 'I leave your house to-day,' the girl replied 
 with bravado. 
 
 'And you will go to ?' He stopped, and 
 
 was drawing from his pocket her photograph. 
 
 'I don't know that it is any of your business 
 where I will go.' This even more defiantly. 
 
 As she spoke, he was coming close to her, and 
 placed her picture in her hands. Osborn had let 
 it run the gauntlet of the club, and it bore the 
 marks of the encounter. She glanced down at it 
 and saw an address at the bottom that had not 
 been there the day before. In an instant the 
 
160 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 bravado left her and she stood aghast. She hid 
 her face in her hands. 
 
 'Oh, my God, will my shame follow me wher- 
 ever I go? I meant to reform, I ' 
 
 'Stop, Do not insult that almost sacred sen- 
 timent with such a lie. You stood before my 
 door last night, a self-confessed blackmailer. I 
 saw, almost as soon as you came under my roof, 
 your base desire to entrap us, and I knew that 
 if I gave 3'ou the right kind of rope you would 
 hang yourself — and you did.' 
 
 'Don't; don't call me by the awful name you 
 just named me. I am not so bad as that. I 
 would not have taken a dollar from you. Had 
 any one else attacked your characters I would 
 have defended you. But I saw that she admired 
 you, and — you know the school; rather I hope 
 you don't know it, in which I have been taught ; 
 where we learn that all men are base and that all 
 women are weak. You were, both of you, kind 
 to me, and that very kindness made me long to 
 be on equal terms with you both. 
 
 'Consider what kind of a home I had — no, not 
 home, hutch. Rabbits know as much of what 
 home means as I did. My mother married my 
 father because he was a handsome animal, and 
 so he made her a beast of burden. There I 
 learned every foul word that a man can use to a 
 woman. Decency was a stranger there. Why 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 161 
 
 shouldn't I think every one was as bad as he 
 taught me?' 
 
 If to the Man's heart there came a degree of 
 pity, it was a pity that was not brightened by 
 hope. 
 
 'Come.' It was request rather than command 
 that his voice expressed as he led the way to the 
 looking glass. 'Look at the picture, as if it was 
 that of one who is a stranger to us. Those 
 largQ, roving eyes; the full, ripe lips; the de- 
 velopment of the lower face; all these tell men 
 that nature has won half the battle for them; 
 and so they will come again and again to the 
 contest, where your past has so little to offer in 
 aid of your weak impulse to do right.' 
 
 'But I pray you to give me one more oppor- 
 tunity to save myself.' 
 
 'No; not here at least. Here there would be 
 no incentive to follow in the better way. 
 
 'However, I will send you to a lovely old 
 lady, who will accept my statement that you 
 came out of a home that had only evil influences, 
 and she will be kind to you and will ask no fur- 
 ther questions. 
 
 'I will write to her and will also telegraph 
 her, so that by no chance will you come unan- 
 nounced. If you really desire to remain under 
 good influences you will have the opportunity to 
 save yourself from yourself.' 
 
162 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 *I will show you that I value your kindness,* 
 she said. 
 
 More in sorrow than in a spirit of cynicism the 
 Man continued: 'You will make her lonely 
 home very bright till the novelty of the new posi- 
 tion is past. Then — since you have no resources 
 within yourself — 3'ou will be wear}' of the un- 
 eventful life; 3'ou will be careless in your 
 duties; and when you are reproved you will be 
 petulant. This will grow as your ennui in- 
 creases, 
 
 'Then all that was dreary and wearisome and 
 repugnant in your stained life Avill be forgotten, 
 and you will remember only the brighter side — 
 and, oh, how winningly the devil will show that 
 to your weariness of goodness. You will go out 
 only to take a little look into the dark waters, 
 just out of curiosity, and your feet will slip on 
 the slimy bank and you will be engulfed. 
 
 'It is not a pleasant picture for me to draw — 
 for 3^ou to see yourself portrayed in. But I hope 
 for nothing better. Yet none the less will I 
 welcome j-our drawing a lovelier one — in tones 
 that will be permanent. Your letters can con- 
 tinue to come here. No one need know where 
 you are. I will provide amply for your journey. 
 You will do well to go to-day.' 
 
 And when she liad gone he mused : 'Is it 
 worth all the effort — not mine, but of that pure 
 
NAZARETH O'R TARSUS^ 163 
 
 soul to whom I am sending her? "Handsome 
 animal," she said of her father, and that is the 
 quality which he has bequeathed to her. No 
 moral impulse, no buttressing of purer motive 
 by the memory of home and loved ones. False 
 love, false friendships are most likely to come 
 to her in her loneliness ; and she has lost — rather 
 never acquired in the "hutch" she was reared in 
 — the delicacy that would warn her against such 
 insidious influences. Yet I am glad that she re- 
 coiled so sharply; glad that there was so much 
 of good in her that she rebelled against the ugly 
 charge I made when she entered here. 
 
 'But will the good impulse outlast the refine- 
 ment that God gives to early womanhood? 
 Probably not. And then, kind and ignorant 
 souls bent on doing good, and in their supreme 
 ignorance seeing all hearts as free from guile as 
 their own, will come to her and such as she; 
 will mistake the weariness with the slavery, the 
 chagrin of neglect to the fading charms, for sin- 
 cere repentance; will clothe the seeming peni- 
 tents with the garb of respectability, giving them 
 letters of marque to go out and invade homes and 
 work the silent injury which their ripened judg- 
 ment tells them can be effected safely — because 
 the victims will never dare to complain. 
 
 'Better, far better, that she become the sodden 
 victim of alcoholism; and so, content in stupor, 
 
164 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 the world will be spared the ravages of that most 
 dangerous member of society — a reformed 
 woman. 
 
 'But where is the primal wrong of her environ- 
 ment — for she is a victim of conditions into 
 which she was born? Back of her coarse father, 
 back of the weak, soulless mother, presumably 
 we must look. 
 
 'Will a better civilization, a truer Christian- 
 ity, protect childhood from ante-natal curse?' 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSU8r 165 
 
 XIV. 
 
 At first the end seemed so far away that the 
 Tista appeared to be interminable. But at length 
 by years the prisoner counted no longer, for 
 months were the milestones that marked the 
 dreary procession of prison life. 
 
 And when there came the time when only 
 weeks intervened between him and freedom. 
 His heart grew lighter day by day. 
 
 When he was ready to leave the prison there 
 was given to him a package. It contained a let- 
 ter of advice, that bade him not to return to his 
 old home,, but to visit some large city; to see 
 everything that was bright and entertaining 
 there, so that he might have pleasant topics of 
 conversation when he returned to his wife. It 
 urged him to dress well, for a man does not re- 
 spect himself if he is not well dressed. The 
 writer kindly omitted "when he has nothing 
 within himself to respect." 
 
 The package contained sufficient money to en- 
 able him to avail himself of the advice. 
 
 It was sent from the city of his disgrace, and 
 there was no signature to the letter. 
 
 He immediately wrote his thanks to the men 
 
16g NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 who had effected his ruiu. They concluded that 
 it was best not to acknowledge his gratitude. 
 
 He wrote to his wife, telling her of their gen- 
 erosity and thoughtful suggestions. She had 
 already written to him, telling him to come to 
 her and that he would have a cordial welcome. 
 
 But in that home cheeks had grown paler and 
 lips more firmly pressed as the time for the part- 
 ing approached. Yet this only in aloneness. In 
 each other's presence each bore a brave front, 
 and with each the sorrow was hidden, that it 
 might not bring keener pain to the other. 
 
 When only the last few days of the home 
 life remained it was noticeable how much of his 
 work the Man found he could do at home; how 
 frequently he needed her advice. 
 
 At length there came the last evening of his 
 stay before his long deferred journey was begun. 
 
 In his constant thoughtfulness he had recog- 
 nized that a week of aloneness would make the 
 husband's home coming more welcome to the 
 wife, her greeting more sincere and cordial. But 
 she was too oppressed to recognize this consid- 
 eration. She had hoped that on this last evening 
 he would tell her — in words that even in their 
 calm constraint would show his pain — of the 
 loneliness to which he looked forward, when he 
 had returned and found her gone; would tell 
 her of the joy she had brought to his life, of the 
 
NAZARETH OB TARSUS? 167 
 
 great void that her absence would create — and 
 for which nothing could compensate. 
 
 Just like any other evening it passed, till she, 
 weary of waiting for the words she would have 
 treasured, made excuse and went to her own 
 room. 
 
 There her disappointment and vexation found 
 relief in tears, which only displaced these sor- 
 rows by bringing keener pain. Being a woman, 
 she put the worst possible construction on his 
 reticence, now that she had grown morbid in her 
 tears and solitary brooding. 
 
 It was all plain to her now. He had expressed 
 no sorrow because he felt none. He did not like 
 to be alone. That was why he had welcomed her. 
 He would miss her for a time, but probably he al- 
 ready had found someone else who would make 
 his home just as bright. 
 
 And she reasoned like a real woman : because 
 she admired him, every other woman would be 
 glad to fill the place she was vacating. 
 
 Not till early dawn did she fall asleep ; and as 
 the day was opening there came a faint knock 
 at her door and she heard the rustle of a note 
 passing over the threshold. 
 
 Her heart was too weary to regard these noises, 
 till a moment later she heard the outer door close 
 and saw him passing down the street. She 
 watched him till he passed out of sight. Then — 
 
168 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 having actually seen him alone; no evidence of 
 that dreaded woman near him — by some principle 
 of induction which no man can understand, she 
 dismissed her gloomy forebodings and opened 
 the note. 
 
 In it he begged her to regard his last request. 
 He told her of the comfort it would be to him in 
 his loneliness to feel that she had left the room 
 with every possible evidence remaining in it 
 that she had occupied it. 
 
 He begged her to arrange nothing; to leave it 
 exactly as this note found it; to take her little 
 ornaments, but to leave, just as it happened to 
 lie, everything that was associated with their last 
 evening together; then to lock the room and 
 place the key in her safe drawer, adding: 'x\.nd 
 neither room nor drawer will be opened till you 
 return — some time v\'ithin four years. Till then, 
 let me feel that your room is in the charming 
 disorder of the impress of your presence — just as 
 if you had left it for a moment's absence.' 
 
 She regarded his wish. Now she knew that 
 the indifference at parting was not real; that it 
 veiled regrets that could not be expressed under 
 the strange conditions of their leavetaking. 
 
 When at last she wns leaving their home, aud 
 with her husband had reached tlie street door, 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 169 
 
 she returned alone to her former room and fas- 
 tened on the door a card. Its inscription was : 
 
 ^Bluebeard's 
 Chamber of Horrors/ 
 
 'There, now; if that dreadful woman should 
 come, she will be just dying with curiosity to 
 know what it means — and he won't dare tell her. 
 And maybe then she will be jealous. Wish I 
 could see his face when he reads it.' 
 
 At the breakfast table she found another let- 
 ter. It told her to go with her husband to the 
 metropolis; to make themselves so well acquaint- 
 ed with its principal streets and buildings that 
 they could claim that city as their home. 
 
 'Be sure to be able to speak intelligently of 
 the theatres ; of the churches you will probably 
 be little questioned. You will take the name we 
 decided it was best for you to assume. When 
 ready, go to San Francisco. I enclose the card 
 of my attorney there. He will give you the direc- 
 tions for reaching the ranch that I will have ar- 
 ranged for your occupancy — leased with oppor- 
 tunity to purchase. You will see that it is located 
 so that there is no danger of meeting old ac- 
 quaintances.' Then there followed earnest as- 
 surances of the sorrow it would give to him, if 
 
irO NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 any need came — or even any opportunity for en- 
 joyment — and she did not avail herself of the 
 means that would be always at her command. 
 
 When her husband came to her she showed him 
 this letter. Dead to honor, he felt no humilia- 
 tion that one who had saved his wife from want 
 and from reflected shame should thus provide 
 for his comfort — thus providing because his life 
 was indissolubly bound up with his wife's hap- 
 piness. 
 
 On the other hand, she asked to see the letter 
 that had come to him in the prison. She glanced 
 at it hastily, then, forcing a composure, she asked 
 with assumed indifference: 'May I have it and 
 keep it?' She took it and hid herself. When 
 she reappeared her eyes had marks of tears and 
 much of the letter was illegible. 'Dear heart, 
 did you think I wouldn't find you in every line 
 of this? Did you suppose your tender thoughtful- 
 ness could be hidden from me? Poor sinner; let 
 him think it was done for his sake. But that big, 
 loving heart was regarding me, only me, when 
 this was written. It was all for my sake.' 
 
 Three years have passed. Even the balmy air 
 of Southern California could not bring a health- 
 ful glow to the cheeks that were whitened with 
 more than prison pallor. The prison physicians 
 
"NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 171 
 
 were correct. ''Not more than four years of 
 freedom can come to him — in this world.' 
 
 As the end drew nearer, and the strength of 
 manhood faded into the weakness of childhood, 
 that which might have developed into true man- 
 liness displayed itself. Like a little child he 
 pleaded for forgiveness, and asked her to teach 
 him to crave pardon from the Judge, whom he 
 feared might not regard his sin with the same 
 leniency which she had bestowed. Asking only 
 for tenderness to an erring child, it was easy to 
 give him the affection due to a repentant child, 
 and so, in peace, his life ended. 
 
 'Within four years. You were right. May I 
 come?' — so ran the telegram. 
 
 And when she comes, and they look into each 
 other's faces, each heart vibrant with fear and 
 with loving expectancy — fear that the years may 
 have made the other's heart less constant to the 
 old faithfulness — and she receives again the keys 
 in token that she is again the mistress of the 
 home ; and she leads him to the "chamber of hor- 
 rors" and shows him its disorder, on which the 
 gathered dust is evidence of how sacredly the 
 lares and penates have kept the place in a seclu- 
 sion devoted to her memory, then 
 
 Will the dignified serenity of the old life be 
 resumed? Will there still abide the old faith in 
 
i:3 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 each other which existed iinquestioninglj, be- 
 cause there was no right to resent a fancied vio- 
 lation of any pledge? Will each have no secrets 
 from the other, because neither will be oppressed 
 by the thought that each has the legal right to 
 look into the other's thoughts? Will there be the 
 same generous giving of self, because it was 
 wholly a free gift — no right to demand? And, 
 most of all, will there be the old-time thoughtful 
 courtesy that power delights to banish? 
 
 Or, will they go the way of the world, each 
 to be reduced to a fraction of two, sacrificing 
 that noblest condition of a self-poised, self-con- 
 trolled individuality? 
 
 If it is this, may it be vouchsafed that a little 
 child may lead them, its tiny hands blinding them 
 to the vista of the dignity and devotion of the old 
 life. 
 
'NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 173 
 
 XV. 
 
 Let us go back to where we left the woman 
 standing triumphantly at the threshold of the 
 library. 
 
 Triumphant her womanhood had the right to 
 be, since its "sixth sense" had penetrated his con- 
 sciousness and had read there that he wished 
 her to come to him. 
 
 'Yes, you are right.' Laughingly he yielded, 
 yet with a sort of awe, as he regarded that strange 
 power that he knew he could not himself com- 
 mand. 
 
 *I did want you. Now take this chair, which 
 I permit no one else to use — and so you are 
 always quasi present, though if you often exer- 
 cise such intrusive power as you have been guilty 
 of just now it will be banished, as something 
 eerie; something through which you have estab- 
 lished a weird power. 
 
 'Will you find out for me, as early as you can, 
 who is the regular physician in the family of the 
 Rev. James Underwood?' 
 
174 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 'I think that I can tell you now ; at least I have 
 twice seen the carriage of old Doctor Matthews 
 at the clergyman's door.' 
 
 *My dear old friend/ the Man replied, as his 
 face lighted up with satisfaction, and then 
 became thoughtful in reminiscence. 
 
 'Now, please remain seated, and do not feel 
 that I am dismissing you abruptly if I go out to 
 enter on some work that I have in hand.' 
 
 She obeyed him, but only till she heard the 
 outer door close; then she was at her old trick 
 of watching, through the blinds, his soldierly 
 bearing and buoyant step. But he never caught 
 her peeping again, as he had detected her after 
 their first meeting. He had rallied her so un- 
 mercifully on her maladroitness that she did 
 not permit him to have another opportunity to 
 turn the laugh on her. 
 
 'What use can such a picture of health and 
 vigor have for an old doctor? But welcome, most 
 hearty welcome, I give you ; come right into my 
 consulting room.' 
 
 'You are right,' the Man replied; 'not even 
 to a "mind diseased" can I ask you to minister. 
 Yet to a very puzzled mind perhaps you can af- 
 ford relief. I wish to ask you a few questions: 
 yet if I attempt to exceed the bounds of profes- 
 
"NAZARETH OR TARSUS? I75 
 
 sional secrecy do not hesitate to ignore my in- 
 quiries.' 
 
 'Oh, I have no fear of your transcending. I 
 can conceive of no question you may desire to ask 
 to which I could not give unreserved answer.' 
 
 'Thanks for the assurance; you and I need 
 have no prologues. So I v.ill ask you to tell me 
 about the oldest daughter of the Rev. James Un- 
 derwood. You have been his family physician for 
 a long time?' 
 
 'For over twenty years; ever since he came 
 here.' 
 
 'Then you can tell me of her lameness. Is 
 there any anchylosis of the knee ; any wasting of 
 the muscles below the knee?' 
 
 'Xone whatever, I can assure you.' 
 
 'And is the articulation at the hip reasonably 
 free?' 
 
 'Reasonably so. Indeed, except for the short- 
 ening of the limb, and a slight stiffness, her limb 
 is as good as any one's.' 
 
 'I am glad of this assurance ; you have relieved 
 my anxiety,' the Man replied. 
 
 'Not one-half so much as you once took the 
 weight off my heart when shame and sorrow were 
 impending to a family that was dear to me.' 
 The fighting face came and settled like a mask 
 on the Man's countenance, as he remembered the 
 
176 HiAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 details of the incident which the doctor had re- 
 called. 
 
 In parting, the old doctor was fairly overflow- 
 ing with hajDpiness. It was all clear to him. He 
 honored and trusted the Man, and assured him 
 how sincerely he wished him every success in 
 his efforts. 
 
 He loved the child — all the more because he had 
 been powerless to prevent her deformity. To be 
 sure there was some discrepancy in their ages, 
 but seventy regards a man of fifty years as com- 
 paratively young — in defense of its own growing 
 infirmities. 
 
 In the Man's perfect vigor ; in his power to pro- 
 vide a charming home for the penniless, crippled 
 girl, he felt that the advantage was thoroughly 
 on her side. lie would do all that he could to ad- 
 vance his friend's interest. Later, when he sang 
 his friend's praises in her home, he was grieved 
 to find that his tribute was received so coolly. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 177 
 
 XVI. 
 
 'Fair warning, sir knight! If you crush the 
 tiniest of my beloved flowers, you must dismount 
 and on bended knee sue for forgiveness.' 
 
 The Man knew that to carry out his plan he 
 must have a woman's aid; a woman who was 
 able to keep a secret. He had chosen this woman 
 as his ally, because she would not make a confi- 
 dant of the husband whom she had estranged 
 years ago; and the Man felt confident that his 
 plan would not be generally disclosed, because, 
 in a sympathy the husband had not sought, his 
 friends, especially those of the distaff sex, had 
 made her position almost isolated. 
 
 It was a theory of the Man that it is unsafe to 
 trust a woman who is liable to fall in love with 
 her husband. He felt sure that of such peril to 
 his confidence there was no danger here. 
 
 Beared in an atmosphere of selfishness, herself 
 the fruit of a marriage that had been established 
 for the sake of personal advantage — on either 
 side — the woman whom the Man had taken as his 
 ally had accepted the hand of the handsome 
 young physician, just as she would have acquired 
 
178 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 any other treasure that the world had appraised 
 as valuable. 
 
 Her high vitality, that bore with it a splendid 
 flow of spirits, at first had made unnoticeable 
 her vacuity of noble sentiment. In the hus- 
 band's own devotion he was not critical of her 
 lack of tenderness. 
 
 But at length that love of power which lies 
 sleeping in all of us till opportunity arouses it, 
 overcame whatever degree of tender considera- 
 tion she may have felt for him. It was a keen, 
 unholy pleasure that filled her soul as she saw 
 him turn pale, as if the blood had gone back to 
 his heart, while an appeal for pity jileaded in his 
 eyes when she first laid bare her selfishness and 
 displayed the emptiness of her heart. 
 
 It is not easy to give up an ideal : not readily 
 does a noble character release itself from its 
 pledge. 
 
 Had she been as skilled as she was pitiless in 
 marital torture, she would have healed the wound 
 and nursed the stricken love back to life, im- 
 pelled by self-interest and by the pleasant antici- 
 pation of again and again watching him quiver 
 under her stinging words. But she was lavishly 
 wasteful of her power; too engrossed with the 
 joy of its exercise to observe that the blows were 
 falling on deadening nerves. 
 
 At length — and before she had suspected how 
 
-^AZABETH OR TAR8V8r 179 
 
 rapidly her resources were waning — she found 
 herself bankrupt of power. 
 
 He had waited patiently, at first tenderly, hop- 
 ing that it was only a passing impatience; and 
 that the true woman whom he had believed he 
 had married would assert herself, and that she 
 would be a devoted wife when her better self had 
 conquered a passing impulse. 
 
 At last he ceased to hope ; and when she found 
 that he met her attacks with cynical calmness 
 her chagrin impelled her to unbridled bitterness. 
 This, and her, he regarded with amused indif- 
 ference. She was drawing against 'no funds.' 
 Her resources were exhausted. Then she came 
 and stood over him, and was fast forgetting her- 
 self in her passion of anger — at herself — because 
 she had squandered her power. 
 
 He rose and took her shoulders in a vise-like 
 grasp. 'Let this be the last time that you in- 
 dulge in such an exhibition. If in future your 
 language is other than respectful — other than 
 you would use to a man for whom you were only 
 housekeeper — I will give a lease of this house to 
 people who will enter it and remain here, and 
 who will meet your violence with its equal if you 
 
 try to remain. I will go to the Hotel. I 
 
 shall provide rooms for you adjoining mine, but 
 my man will see to it that you do not enter my 
 apartments unless you are sent for. While you 
 
180 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 remain here you will exercise every care in the 
 management of this house. If you fail to do 
 this, I will establish a housekeeper here who 
 will be sufficiently muscular to protect my rights 
 — and her own. I trust that you will recognize 
 that this house is large enough for each of us 
 to move in his or her own orbit, and that these 
 need not touch each other.' 
 
 Loving his profession, his sincerity impelling 
 him to loyalty to every obligation, he had always 
 been devoted to duty. Kow it was no longer 
 only duty that commanded him. Activity in the 
 way of duty was his 'surcease of sorrow.' The 
 tenderness that another might have lavished on 
 — at least divided with — all that home may in- 
 clude, he gave to those who suffered. No de- 
 mands were too frequent, none wearisome, and 
 more and more he grew to be 'the beloved physi- 
 cian.' 
 
 The poor found in him a considerate friend; 
 he had no motive to acquire money. 
 
 Strange and blessed alchemy that transmutes 
 sorrow into the soothing balm for others' pain. 
 
 Faithful to household duty she continued : yet 
 not from fear; but because with his asserting of 
 his masterful self-command she entertained a re 
 spect for him such as he had never before com- 
 manded. Then, again, cut off from most of h(M' 
 social enjoyments, her home became more im- 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 181 
 
 l)ortaiit to her; and, most of all, her delight and 
 pride were in the magnificent parterres through 
 which the Man was guiding his horse, Avhen the 
 fair challenger sounded her warning. Truth- 
 fully he could compliment her on the charming 
 picture that her face and figure made, set in the 
 window draperies that matched and heightened 
 her attractiveness. 
 
 *I have come to ask you to lend me those 
 handsome shoulders — fairest in all the country 
 side — that over them I may do a kindly act ; for 
 alone I would be powerless. I would fail utterly 
 if I were to come out into the open and show a 
 man's presence. With your "woman's wit" and 
 your ingenuity I am sure of success.' 
 
 Her face told him that the conditions were 
 opportune; and it delighted him, as he unfolded 
 his plan, that she was ready to co-operate with 
 him. 
 
182 VAZ ARETE OR TARSUS? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 One week later : the same scene ; the same pair 
 of kindly plotters. 
 
 'Well, I am sure that you are eager to know 
 all about how your plans have been executed.' 
 
 And the Man replied: 'I had no fears that 
 they would miscarry; I had confidence in your 
 skill and ingenuity.' 
 
 'And it required both to induce the mother 
 to allow her daughter to come to my house. I 
 think it was through piquing the mother's curi- 
 osity that I succeeded. 
 
 'When I invited the girl to take a drive with 
 me she wondered why I insisted on her putting 
 on one of my skirts. I had shotted it at the bot- 
 tom. My carriage was at the door and we drove 
 to Milburn's, where I had sent your beautiful gift 
 and my saddle; for I feared my girths were too 
 old and weak. I had no thought of old lame 
 Duncan, who was turning away from the curb, 
 having set the new giiths, just as I had helped 
 the girl to the pavement. 
 
 ' "Now go right up to him and put your arms 
 around his neck and tell him you love him," I 
 
Nazareth or tarsus? Ig3 
 
 said. But she shrank back to my side, and 
 whispered : 
 
 ' "Oh, I can't. He is old and ugly, and besides 
 every one would see me." 
 
 ' "Oh, you dear child ; I don't mean old Dun- 
 can; I mean your own beautiful horse. He is 
 yours, yours only ; from his soft brown muzzle to 
 the tip of his handsome tail." 
 
 'She looked at me in wonder a moment; then 
 threw aside her cane and went to him and wound 
 her arms around his neck, kissing him and call- 
 ing him all pet names. 
 
 'I explained to her why he was trying to find 
 her pocket; and when he drew out the sugar 
 that I had placed there she went wild with de- 
 light. It was evident, right then and there, that 
 they would be the best of friends. 
 
 ' "Oh, my ; but isn't it a long way down to 
 solid earth! He has grown two feet at least, 
 since I left the ground for his back," she said. It 
 was evident that she had never mounted a horse 
 before.' 
 
 'But had she no fear?' 
 
 'Fear? How could she have fear? In "the 
 perfect love that casts out fear" she thought only 
 of her newly found joy. 
 
 'I drove by her side, out into the country. She 
 would take no hints. I had to tell her plainly 
 that we must return; that her horse had been 
 
184 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 out of work for some time and she must not 
 overwork him at first. 
 
 *I had assured myself before we started that 
 her shortened limb had a firm grip on the pom- 
 mel of the saddle. She will learn quickly. I 
 seldom had occasion to correct her a second 
 time.' 
 
 'I can compliment you on your skill as a 
 teacher. I met her yesterday. A duchess could 
 not have been more haughty in her bearing when 
 I complimented her on good riding. The child's 
 manner told me that her father does not regard 
 that which passes in his study as a confidence to 
 be respected; and for this I am most sorry, for 
 his own sake.' 
 
 The woman's face grew grave as she resumed : 
 'But I must tell you of what followed and which 
 moved me deeply. 
 
 'On our return she had dropped off the skirt 
 that I had given to her, and as she placed her 
 hand on her own — as if it was the first link in a 
 chain of recollections — her face grew strangely 
 serious, then expressive of pain. Impulsively 
 she came to me and knelt with hor head on my 
 lap. And then she confessed to me! Think of 
 it; to me, who have never done one kindly act 
 except it amused me! To me that pure child 
 poured out her soul. She told me of what she 
 called her awful sin. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 185 
 
 *In childhood she had not recognized the bar- 
 ring from joys of young womanhood that her 
 imperfect limb would occasion. But of late she 
 has grown to this recognition.' 
 
 ^I understand/ the Man interposed. 'In her 
 father's religious philoso]3hy there was no com- 
 fort for her but to believe that a loving Father 
 had brought this darkening of her life to test 
 her faith; it taught her that it was done arbi- 
 trarily, with full power to prevent it, if He had 
 chosen ; but it was "part of His divine plan," and 
 so she must not murmur.' 
 
 'You are right; and her whole soul has risen 
 in rebellion. 
 
 ' "I was growing to hate God," the girl contin- 
 ued. "I could have borne it if I could have con- 
 sidered only myself; and could have regarded 
 Him as I would regard anyone else who had in- 
 jured me. But, for my father's sake, I must ap- 
 pear to love Him. This life of hypocrisy was 
 hardest of all. It made me hate God more be- 
 cause I had to wear a mask, for father's sake. 
 The time came when I must go to the comnij*- 
 nion seiwice. I pleaded illness and so avoided it. 
 But another communion service is close at 
 hand. My heart was growing harder. I knew 
 God would punish me — pernaps forever — if I 
 went to the communion table, even though I did 
 so to save my dear father from pain. And this 
 
186 "NAZARETH OR TARSU8? 
 
 made me hate God all the more. I would not 
 dare to take the sacred emblems. I could not 
 grieye my blessed father by refusal." 
 
 ^By this time the child was speaking through 
 sobs that the memory of the bitter struggles 
 had produced. She was silent for a while — per- 
 haps it was in prayer — and then she looked up, 
 smiling through her tears, as she calmly and 
 softly resumed : 
 
 ' '^But now, now it is all changed. God loves 
 me. Ue does love me; that thought was filling 
 my heart as I rode. And now I can love Him; 
 and I will love Him, and it may be that the best 
 way to show my love to Him is by enjoying His 
 gift all that I can ; keeping my heart full of grat- 
 itude to Him for the beautiful gift. His gift. 
 
 * "Next Saturday there is to be a tennis tour- 
 nament at Beatrice Malcolmson's; she invited 
 me, so kindly, but every word was a pain to me. 
 A nice easy-chair was to be arranged for me in 
 the best place, and I was to watch the sport in 
 which I could never take part. I intended to 
 stay away if I could find an excuse. Their sport 
 would be mockery of my weakness. There will 
 be no excuses now. Now I shall go — but I will 
 not go among them as a helpless girl to bo cod- 
 dled in an easy-chair, for on the back of my dar- 
 ling I will sit. There I am the equal of any of 
 them, for while he is just as gentle as can be, I 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 187 
 
 feel that I could sit tight if he was a bucking 
 bronco." 
 
 'Then her sweet face, that permits one to an- 
 ticipate every emotion that she will give ex- 
 pression to, became self-reproachful. "I have not 
 confessed everything," she said with penitent de- 
 mureness; "and I have learned a lesson. Never 
 again will I believe evil of any one. I believed 
 the evil that they told me of you. They told me 
 you were hard and selfish; that you made your 
 noble husband's life a miserable one; that you 
 did not love him. I know that it is false; God 
 would not have chosen you — you would not your- 
 self have obeyed His command — to save me from 
 my awful sin, if you had been so bad a woman 
 as they told me that you were. I know that you 
 are good and kind. I know that it is only those 
 who envy you who have said such cruel words. 
 I love you and trust you, and I will come every 
 day to you and will not be in your way; I will 
 take my work and sit in the stable with my dar- 
 ling." 
 
 ' "Smoother than oil, yet be they very swords," ' 
 the woman quoted. 
 
 'Every word that she spoke of love and trust 
 stirred my inmost spirit. I longed to throw off 
 the mask that you had placed on me. I would 
 have done so had I been free to act, could I have 
 
188 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 done so without thwarting your plans, and so 
 doing her a great injury. And then there came a 
 gentler mood. Who knows but that it was her 
 good angel that was calming and inspiring me? 
 I longed to tell her the truth; to tell her that 
 one who was really kind and unselfish, who 
 loved to relieve distress, to deliver the oppressed, 
 had given to her this new treasure. But that bet- 
 ter spirit bade me be silent. I looked into that 
 trustful face and a strange calm possessed me. 
 It was as if an intelligence above and beyond 
 myself was dominating my mind ; as if a better, 
 truer self — and more real than the self that I had 
 known ; that through all my life I had called my- 
 self — was telling my unworthy self that I was 
 not my own ; that I was not free to act as my im- 
 pulse was swaying me. Told me that in the fabric 
 of the child's new faith my uuworthiness had 
 been builded in, and that lie who builded had 
 chosen my unworthiness that He might glorify 
 it through FT is abounding grace. 
 
 'In the sweet serenity of this new-found con- 
 sciousness of a nobler self than ever I had longed 
 for I took the child in my arms and, resting her 
 head on my shoulder, drew her to my heart as I 
 had never folded any one. Then I said : "^/y 
 child, to each of us has come to-day a glorified 
 illumination of our better selves; with each heart 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 189 
 
 beating close to the other let each make dedica- 
 tion of that better self, in quiet self-com- 
 munion." ' 
 
 Then the woman was silent, her high resolve en- 
 nobling her face that was turned to him with an 
 expression of entreaty. Presently she resumed : 
 
 'I am not accustomed to asking favors; unac- 
 customed to seeking help. But it is not for my 
 own sake that I ask your aid. Help me to be 
 what this child believes me to be. I cannot live 
 a lie to her. Yet it is my thought for her that 
 makes me dread that I should be iconoclast, 
 and myself cast down the image that you and I 
 have permitted her to believe is worthy to repose 
 faith in. 
 
 'I am sadly conscious that it is only an image 
 of earth, earthy, yet you know that you are more 
 guilty than I for the setting up of it.' 
 
 Then, as the story of Pygmalion and Galatea 
 was recalled, archly she said: 'Can't you pray 
 to Aphrodite — your enemies say that you worship 
 her — and beseech her to make this graven image 
 become a real, true woman ? I would ask no fur- 
 ther parallel, for I am too good a friend of yours 
 to permit you to follow Pygmalion's example and 
 to marry — even if she were free — such "a bad 
 lot" as the graven image would be, if only 
 Aphrodite vivified her.' 
 
190 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 Trivial, insincere; the noble motive shown to 
 be only an impulse.' 
 
 Thanks, ingenuous reader, for your confession. 
 For you have told us that you have never experi- 
 enced the joy of rising to an exalted purpose; the 
 very purity of motive inspiring fear that a less 
 noble past may darken the lustre of the cause es- 
 poused. 
 
 You tell us, too, that in j^ou is no sympathy 
 with the sensitive recoiling of a new-born noble- 
 ness from any outward expression; and so you 
 cannot accept her play of fancy, as only the mod- 
 est sheltering of the purer motive, till she is sure 
 that it will meet a responsive sentiment. 
 
 Fortunately he whom she addressed was a skill- 
 ful student of expression, and so the lighter veil- 
 ing of her language made the sincerity of her mo- 
 tive only the more apparent. So he said : 
 
 'But, really, I cannot permit you to take no 
 credit to yourself for the peace that came to the 
 child through the joy that you and I have been 
 permitted to bring to her. Vividly and gratefully 
 I shall always remember your willingness to help 
 me in bringing that joy to her.' 
 
 Almost as warmly as if she were defending 
 herself — so eagerly her better nature was protest- 
 ing against any deception even through silence 
 — U\Q woman answered: 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 191 
 
 'And why shouldn't I have helped you? You 
 complimented me so tactfully ; you sat your horse 
 like a centaur ; you presented the plan with skill- 
 ful appeal to my love of acting a part which 
 Avould make my enemies admit that I had gen- 
 erous qualities — and you didn't suspect the pres- 
 ence of another ally that was aiding you. It was 
 my contempt for her mother. 
 
 'She is a Pharisaical old cat ; and I knew that 
 I would enjoy sending the child home, singing my 
 praises, daily, to the mother who must endure 
 them for the continuance of the happiness that I 
 would be bringing to her daughter.' This with 
 a warmth which was intenser than mere retrospect 
 would quicken to. 
 
 Back again to earth you have fallen, fair peni- 
 tent. Icarus-like, your wings have failed you, 
 as again, and "time and again," they will fail 
 you. Not from a glowing warmth without will 
 the lesion come, but relaxed by unguarded fires 
 within, because — you are a daughter of Eve. 
 
 'You asked a little while ago that I help you to 
 be really what the child believes you to be. With 
 all my heart I will give you whatever aid I can 
 bring to you.' 
 
 At once he entered on the problem. 
 
 'Along the lines of least resistance; that is 
 
193 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 philosophical.' Unconsciously he was thinking 
 aloud. 
 
 'Oh, bother your philosophy and least resist- 
 ance. I am a woman!' 
 
 If in her words there was anything of self- 
 depreciation, because of her lack of power to phi- 
 losophize, her bridling pride in her womanhood 
 quickly entered its graceful and commanding pro- 
 test against anything that seemed like an admis- 
 sion of conscious inferiority — because she was a 
 woman. 
 
 "Between the lines" of her impatience his sym- 
 pathetic watchfulness read the noble eagerness to 
 know — the almost fear that he could not find — 
 the way she penitently sought to walk in. Then 
 he said : 
 
 'A woman's home is her natural kingdom. 
 There she best can command power if she is 
 to effect an influence for good. Fortunate be- 
 yond most women are you in that your siege can 
 be laid from without. 
 
 'All know that your noble husband is devoted 
 to the relief of suffering among the poor. Every 
 devoted physician experiences keen sorrow that 
 his best efforts are often fruitless, because his 
 skill cannot be supplemented by careful nursing. 
 
 'I will have some kiudlv "m(>ther in Israel'' 
 
NAZARETS OR TARSUS f 193 
 
 fiud from him where he would welcome such in- 
 telligent nursing. 
 
 'Into such homes of poverty you will go. You 
 will demand from those whom you aid that they 
 give him no idea who is their benefactor. He will 
 soon recognize the benefit of your assistance ; then 
 satisfaction in the better results of his attend- 
 ance may lead to a sincere interest in the woman 
 who is aiding him. 
 
 'Good deeds cannot long be hidden, and when 
 accident reveals them they will be all the more 
 effective through sincere unostentation. When he 
 discovers that the ministering angel is his wife 
 you will have your opportunity. But let a calm 
 self-respect wait on your penitence. For peni- 
 tence is all the more impressive if it bends from 
 an elevated pedestal of dignified self-respect. 
 Tears influence only a weak man — permanently. 
 A cringing self-abasement vv^ould never command 
 your husband's respect. Sincere contrition will 
 be all the more irresistible, if channeled in a dig- 
 nified sense of the claims of your womanhood ; if 
 its deep, pure current is borne along the heights 
 of consciousness of lofty and ennobled motive. 
 
 'Assiduously consider his comfort in his home, 
 yet do not discover this to him. But do not relax 
 your efforts — in either direction — when they 
 have accomplished their service to you. Let him, 
 
194 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 and the world, see that not for yourself alone 
 did you enter on this new life.' 
 
 AYithout delay she began her service to those 
 who were suffering. Equally studious she be- 
 came in adding to her husband's comfort. He ap- 
 preciated the thoughtfulness and thanked the 
 upper servant; who was too diplomatic to permit 
 herself to lose, through needless explanations, the 
 material expression of his appreciation. 
 
 Her splendid vitality was never overtaxed. 
 
 A little child of three years of age had won her 
 love. She was never weary of listening to its 
 struggles with elusive consonants and vowels. 
 But the struggles grew weaker as the days went 
 by, though its answering love was just as bright 
 and strong. 
 
 At last the new toys ceased to amuse. 
 
 'I want only you, auntie dear. Hold me close, 
 and sing to me soft and low. There, I'm so happy 
 now in your strong arms.' 
 
 But she must hear from the physician's own 
 lips if the case was as hoi)eless as it seemed. 
 When slie heard his footsteps she Imd lydden her- 
 self in the closet, the door ajar so that she could 
 hear his decision, 
 
 'Dear heart, you are very weary, are you not?' 
 she heard him say. 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 195 
 
 'Sometimes, but not when auntie holds me 
 close to her bosom.' 
 
 'And would you be very sorry if some time 
 you were to fall asleep and when you woke up 
 you were well and strong and with the angels?' 
 
 'Not if I can take mamma and auntie and baby 
 brother with me.' 
 
 'Not with you, dear child, but they will come 
 to you by and by; and when they come you will 
 be waiting for them and have everything ready 
 for them.' 
 
 'But can't I come back to comfort mamma and" 
 auntie and baby brother?' 
 
 'God grant that you can return; and, if you 
 can, to me too; for I need such comfort, and I 
 would gladly lay my head on your pillow and fall 
 asleep with you, and we would take each other's 
 hands and go through the pearly gates together.' 
 
 In an instant he was on his feet and looking 
 angrily about him. 'I have told you that there 
 must be the utmost quiet — no agitation of the 
 child.' He moved quickly towards the closet 
 from which the sharp, moaning cry had come. 
 As he threw the door open he saw two hands 
 shielding a woman's face, and on one of the 
 hands was a ring of peculiar form. His eyes 
 
196 'NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 seemed to regard only that, then he quietly 
 closed the door. 
 
 'But that is auntie. You mustn't scold auntie ; 
 I won't love you if you do ; 1 won't come back to 
 comfort you. I'll tell auntie you are sorry that 
 you scolded her, and then she will come and 
 comfort you when I am gone.' Truer prophet 
 than you could know yourself to be, dear heart. 
 
 "And a little child shall lead them." 
 
 That evening, as she sat at the tea table, he 
 came behind her and laid his hands on her shoul- 
 ders and said : 'Has it been all a dream — only 
 an ugly dream?' 
 
 'No, it has not been a dream. It has been a 
 hard, cruel reality. But that woman is dead. I 
 despise her memory. If years of loving devotion 
 can blot her baseness out of your memory, I will 
 give you that.' 
 
 She was tempted to cover her face and go 
 down on lier knees and ask his forgiveness. But 
 she remembered the Man's advice. 
 
 She rose and turned statelily to him with 
 graceful, outstretched arms; her white bosom 
 heaving, her snowy shoulders glistening, her 
 head thrown back, displaying ivory throat, while 
 half closed, ravishing eyes, and lips molded in 
 expectancy of kisses completed the grace that 
 waited on the penitence which she brought to 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 197 
 
 him — penitence none the less sincere because she 
 made her grace its ally. 
 
 She wound the shapely arms about him and 
 drew him to her. 'It shall always be leap year 
 in my heart, and I will woo you as sincerely as 
 you did me in the years ago. Then a heartless 
 Avoman took your heart and did not give you 
 hers in return ; yet she had none then to give. Oh, 
 my darling, that woman wasn't I. Think of her 
 as dead ; as some one I never even knew. She is 
 not worthy of thought, of even contempt from 
 you. But I come to you unsullied. In all these 
 years I have not had one sentiment of friendship 
 for any other man. I admired you, and you 
 alone; and yet it was a man who revealed to me 
 my better self. I will tell it all to you ; some time 
 when you hold me in your arms.' 
 
 He looked down at her, smilingly. 'How easy 
 it is to forgive a handsome woman. But if that 
 awful woman is dead, and this beautiful crea- 
 ture that I am entrapped by is to be my wife, 
 then we must be publicly joined. So, as it is 
 Sunday to-morrow, we will go to church together, 
 and thus, before all the world, I will take you as 
 my wife.' 
 
 She kissed him her thanks for the delicate con- 
 sideration that prompted him to thus demand 
 
198 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 from all of his friends their recognition of her as 
 once more his wife. 
 
 'You are a charming bride this morning.' A 
 deeper color came in acknowledgement of his ad- 
 miration. As they walked along she wanted to 
 see that every one observed that she was again 
 his wife. Yet she wanted to be constantly look- 
 ing into his face. 
 
 You have seen the same delightful failure to 
 do both successfully when the mother of a young 
 hero takes him out to show the world that it was 
 she who bore him and tended him and taught 
 him to be noble. 
 
 At the church door he left her, promising to 
 join her as soon as a pressing call was answered. 
 He thought it wisest that she should not see 
 again that dear child whose now glazing eyes and 
 pains of dissolution would displace the memory 
 of the sweet face that smiled so tenderly as the 
 thin lips told her: 'He is sorry that he was 
 cross to you, auntie, and he is so lonely ; he has 
 no one to love him, and you must go and comfort 
 him after I am gone. Oh, he is so kind.' 
 
 Later, when the child rested as if in sleep 
 among flowers that lay on soft clouds of mist- 
 like mull, he brought her to see its sweet repose. 
 Then she took her husband's hand, and in her 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 199 
 
 heart she said again — and this time so sincerely 
 • — the obligations of the marriage service. 
 
 For once the Man was wrong. She had fallen 
 in love with her husband; and himself had 
 wrought the undoing of his prophecy. 
 
200 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 Let us now regard the evidences of Paul's in- 
 sanity; the evidences contained in the manu- 
 script which the clergyman declined to consider. 
 
 In a spirit of candid inquiry — by no means 
 comprehensively, but in the hope of suggesting 
 scientific examination — the author presents these 
 views to skilled alienists, hoping that they can 
 differentiate the indications of insanity and state 
 whether the morbid condition of Paul's mind, 
 when he approaches the subject of sex, was a 
 primary condition of his insanity, or was the re- 
 sult of insanitv otherwise established. 
 
NAZARETH OR TlRSUSf 201 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 "The woman . . . tempted me." 
 
 "And Adam was not deceived ; but the woman 
 being deceived was in tlie transgression. Not- 
 withstanding, she shall be saved in child bear- 
 ing, if they continue in faith and charity and 
 holiness, Avith sobriety" (I. Tim. ii. 14, 15). 
 
 Would that Saul of Tarsus had shown no 
 graver evidence of a disordered mind than is 
 indicated by this confusing change from the sin- 
 gular to the plural — a plural which cannot in- 
 clude the husband, since her being "saved" can- 
 not be contingent on his joining her in practis- 
 ing the virtues named. 
 
 But let us consider the import of these sen- 
 tences. 
 
 The inference naturally drawn from the first 
 proposition is : Adam was not in the transgres- 
 sion; and the consequent conclusion is, that 
 Adam was unjustly driven from the Garden. 
 
 But how preposterous is the second statement ! 
 Surely no sane mind would thus imply the ex- 
 clusion of childless wives and unmarried women 
 from the saving power of the Christ. 
 
 But if we insist that Paul was inspired, "what 
 
203 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 further need have Ave of witnesses" to the benefi- 
 cence of Mormonism efforts for the salvation of 
 women? How heroic, truly so, become the sac- 
 rifices of the fading wives, who are supplanted; 
 since the souls of those who supplant "shall be 
 saved in child bearing," while the men who thus 
 assume the added responsibilities must no longer 
 be regarded as selfishly seeking their own pleas- 
 ure, but are ministers of grace to women, who 
 would remain in the transgression of Eve if these 
 noble, self-denying men did not open to them the 
 gates of heaven through conferred maternity. 
 
 If a wholly artificial yet conveniently arbi- 
 trary meaning is given to these words, and it is 
 assumed that ''child bearing" refers to the in- 
 carnation of the Christ, there can be shown no 
 appositeness in their application to women 
 only: while the discrimination against Avoman, 
 as shown in the first sentence, makes it improb- 
 able that the leading thought in Paul's mind was 
 of the incarnation. 
 
 But further on we find the impelling sentiment 
 of this denunciation of woman. For the pruri- 
 ent imagination which St. Paul shows in his com- 
 mands in regard to the care of widows (I. Tim. v. 
 8-10) is accompanied by the further evidence^ of 
 that cultivated contempt for women which mani- 
 fests itself so often in his writings. 
 
 No sane or pure mind could have written : "But 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 203 
 
 the younger widows refuse (to relieve?) ; for 
 when they begin to wax wanton against Christ, 
 they will marry ; having damnation, because they 
 have cast oiS their first faith." Surely such 
 neglect and sweeping denunciation would be an 
 incentive to wantonness. 
 
 So, too, is his bitter denunciation of widows of 
 any age under sixty years. 
 
 However, when another mood possesses him, he 
 says: "But if (I. Cor. vii. 39) her husband be 
 dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she 
 will, only in the Lord." 
 
 Again: his morbid imagination is shown in 
 I. Cor. xi. 2-16 : "But every woman praying or 
 prophesying with her head uncovered, dishon- 
 oreth her head. For this cause ought a woman to 
 have a sign of authority on her head, because of 
 the angels." It is hard for a sane mind to dis- 
 cover a reason why the angels should be dis- 
 turbed if a woman was not veiled, though it is 
 easy enough to fabricate fanciful explanations. 
 
 He adds : "For the man is not of the woman 
 but the woman of the man," and a few verses 
 later he says: "For as the woman is of the 
 man, so is also the man by the woman." A sense- 
 less attempt to depreciate womanhood. 
 ' I. Cor. xiv. 34-36 : Supercilious as he was 
 towards the law, he does not hesitate to quote the 
 law when he desires to express his contempt for 
 
204 NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 
 
 women; a contempt that is expressed in scorn 
 and sarcasm at the close of this quotation. 
 
 In these disdainful expressions he shows an 
 estimate of womanhood that is so thoroughly at 
 variance with the language and actions of our 
 Lord that — if we accept Paul's language as au- 
 thoritative, his sentiments as just — we must rec- 
 ognize that our Lord was strangely ignorant of 
 the true character of the sex. 
 
 In striking contrast is St. Peter's delicacy and 
 his respect for women when he refers to marital 
 obligations, and to the proper conduct of mar- 
 ried women; thus showin*]; that Paul's coarse- 
 ness was inherent with himself — not demanded 
 in rebuke — and St. Peter's intercourse with the 
 Gentiles seems to have been nearl}^ as great as 
 was Paul's. 
 
 Rather let us regard Paul's utterances as indi- 
 cating a soul that had vainly attempted to disci- 
 pline itself out of the realm of natural affection, 
 but had produced only a diseased intellect — that 
 saddest form of mental obliquity which refracts 
 any impulse into the plane of demonstrated 
 truth; and permits the end to justify the means 
 in producing a desired conviction. 
 
 Rom. i. 24: Even more convincing is the re- 
 volting account that Paul gives of the sensuality 
 of unbelievers. 
 
 While it may be a truthful picture of their 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 205 
 
 degradation, it has no appositeness here. He 
 opens the chapter by praising the faith of the 
 church at Rome; he acknowledges the purity of 
 the lives of those whom he addresses, with whom 
 he hopes to "be comforted by the mutual faith, 
 both of you and me." Only a morbid imagina- 
 tion, directing a mind which had become un- 
 sound, could have introduced this repugnant de- 
 scription — a description wholly foreign to the 
 conditions which he was regarding — and there is 
 nothing to indicate that he intended it as a warn- 
 ing. 
 
 Rom. ii. 1 : And although he says "Thou doest 
 the same things," he has clearly indicated that in 
 this he was denouncing idolaters ; for there is no 
 evidence that the revolting picture which he drew 
 (Rom. i. 23) was in any way applicable to par- 
 ticular members of the church at Rome; w^hich, 
 in its entiretj^, he had commended so warmly. 
 
 None of the other New Testament writers — 
 nor all — found it necessary to consider condi- 
 tions incident to sex to the extent that Paul has 
 done in a single chapter ( I. Cor. vii. ) . This chap- 
 ter is clearly the product of a mind which has 
 given undue thought to sexual relations ; that is, 
 fascinated by the contemplation of tendencies 
 which he counsels superiority to. Yet even this 
 fascination cannot long restrain that erratic 
 thought which is <^ coiisequent of insanity. For 
 
206 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 he here (18-24) digresses; only to be dominated 
 towards the end of the chapter, by the same mor- 
 bid impulses that directed its first half. 
 
 The contradictions of an unbalanced mind are 
 shown by (I. Cor. xi. 5) his giving permission to 
 women to pray or prophesy — evidently in public 
 gatherings; but soon (xiv. 34) he says: ''Let 
 3'our women keep silence in the churches," and 
 there seems to have been no lapse of time to per- 
 mit his opinion to be changed by further experi- 
 ence. 
 
 I. Cor. vi. 12-15 : Most difficult of all of Paul's 
 writings I conceive these verses to be. First he 
 states that "all things are lawful for me." But 
 there closely follows it such reference to sexual 
 impurity, and there precedes it a recounting of 
 grosser forms of impurity, so tliat one is per- 
 plexed in trying to fathom his intent in associat- 
 ing the comprehensive "all," in stating what is 
 allowable for him to do, when his mind is dwell- 
 ing emphatically on sexual relations. 
 
 But what apology, other than insanity, can be 
 offered for the next verse? That would seem to 
 be thv'^ only excuse for the strange perversion of 
 the words of our Lord. He says (Matt. xix. 5) : 
 "For this cause shall a man leave his father and 
 mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they 
 twain shall become one flesh." But Paul says: 
 "Know ye not that he that is joined to a harlot 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 207 
 
 is one body? for the twcain, saith He, shall be one 
 flesh." Had any one but Paul thus misquoted 
 the words of our Lord we would have called it 
 blasphemy. Paul's clouded, yet arrogant, intel- 
 lect made him indifferent to the perverting of our 
 Lord's language. But this degrading of His ut- 
 terances turned a phrase in a way that satisfied 
 the moment, and Paul was indifferent to the sac- 
 rilege. 
 
 Hence naturally we find that twice he gives 
 himself precedence of our Lord in "My gospel 
 and the preaching of Jesus Christ," yet the prece- 
 dence might not be so clear in its intent but for 
 the third instance (I. Cor. v. 5) : "Ye being gath- 
 ered together and my spirit, with the power of 
 our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan 
 for the destruction of the flesh." Although this 
 may be softened in translation, it does not qual- 
 ify Paul's arrogance, in his claiming a power to 
 command the aid of our Lord to deliver the of- 
 fender to Satan. 
 
 The easy and confidential relations which he 
 seems to have established with Satan are further 
 shown in (I. Tim. L 20) : "Of whom is Hyme- 
 nreus and Alexander, whom I delivered unto 
 Satan that they might be taught not to blas- 
 pheme." His ability to command the exercise of 
 divine wrath is asserted equally with his claim to 
 
208 
 
 NAZARETH OR TARSUSf 
 
 possess the power to employ Satan as an admin- 
 istrator of discipline. 
 
 (Gal. i. 8) : ''But though we, or an angel from 
 heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other 
 than that which we preached unto you, let him be 
 anathema." 
 
 Evidently Paul had learned to "sow beside all 
 waters." 
 
 And again he says : 
 
 II. Tim. xi. 8 : "IJemember that Jesus Christ 
 was raised from the dead according to my gos- 
 pel." 
 
 Kom. ii. 1.6 : "In the day when God shall judge 
 the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to 
 my gospel." 
 
 I. Cor. vi. 2, 3: "Or know ye not that the 
 saints shall judge the world? Know ye not that 
 ye shall judge angels?" 
 
 Could insane egotism lead to a greater pre- 
 sumption in assuming a knowledge of God's 
 plans? 
 
 What was Paul's authority that God's scrip- 
 tural plan of governing man — a plan so carefully 
 elaborated — was not only an utter failure but in- 
 herently so? In II. Cor. iii. 7, he calls its com- 
 mandments "the ministration of death." Only 
 the reckless temerity of a disordered mind im- 
 bued with arrogance wouhl have impelled to 
 such characterizing of the law — that its failure 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 209 
 
 was inevitable and predestined. This theory, so 
 boldly assumed, he attempts to vindicate by : "It 
 was added because of transgression" (Gal. iii. 
 9), a statement which admits of such varied in- 
 terpretations that it does not explain. 
 
 Boastfully he says (I. Cor. xv. 10) : "But I 
 labored more abundantly than they all" (the 
 twelve apostles) ; and later implies that this 
 "more abundantly" was because God's grace was 
 bestowed on him with a fullness which exceeded 
 that which was bestowed on all of the twelve. 
 
 II. Cor. xi. 15 ; xii. 11 :* Here, as elsewhere, he 
 parades his sense of equality with the other apos- 
 tles; and in this epistle there are frequently re- 
 curring "vain repetitions" of his obtrusive self- 
 exaltation, which he develops rather than con- 
 ceals by his attempt to veneer it with assumed 
 humility. 
 
 Paul made a statement directly opposed to the 
 account given in Acts, of his conference with the 
 apostles, and of that which led up to it. 
 
 Practically, too, he denies St. Peter's call to 
 apostleship to the Gentiles : the call that was so 
 clearly made through the vision of the great sheet 
 let down by the four corners. We must reject 
 
 * Fruitful as were the so-called Pauline churches — "the 
 garden of Christianity " — we must not forget the devoted ser- 
 vices of others, who are significantly suggested in his "all that 
 are in Asia are turned against me." 
 
2]0 NAZARETn OR TARSUS? 
 
 one side of this evidence. We cannot accept both 
 as true. 
 
 His writings bristle with the capital I, and he 
 describes general tendencies of the race as if they 
 were peculiarly personal to himself; so strongly 
 does self-consciousness overpower him. 
 
 I. Cor. ix. : This is a marked illustration of 
 the egotism that often accompanies insanity. 
 
 "The complex relations of faith, works, im- 
 puted righteousness, and the law as the revealer 
 of sin, gave to St. Paul that opportunity for the 
 display of scholastic reasoning in which he so 
 thoroughly delighted, for the sake of its intel- 
 lectual exercise, and which has a glittering sem- 
 blance of truth in monologue, though in pure 
 polemics its lapse from accurate reasoning, its 
 false deductions, its assumed premises, would 
 be exposed before his ingenious conclusions had 
 carried conviction." 
 
 "One phase of his intense self-absorption is 
 shown in the inappositeness of his quotations 
 from the Scriptures. It could not be from ig- 
 norance that he failed to quote them pertinently. 
 That he had them in mind is evident, for he was 
 constantly denouncing the law, and the denun- 
 ciatory passages would have eminently attracted 
 him." But his thoughts were so self-centered 
 that he must hnve been as averse to the guid- 
 ance of the Scriptures as he was eag'er to boast 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS f £11 
 
 that he was in no way indebted to the chosen of 
 our Lord. 
 
 Only a mind that was so unbalanced that it de- 
 lighted to reason from distorted truths or from 
 false premises could have presented the proposi- 
 tion (Eom. yi. 1-15) : "Shall we continue in sin 
 that grace may abound?" "Shall we sin because 
 we are not under law, but under grace?'' And 
 even these propositions are illogical deductions 
 from (verse 20) the evidently false premises that 
 the law was promulgated, not to be the "school- 
 master to lead us to Christ," but to intensify the 
 sinfulness of sin — or whatever Paul may have 
 meant by "that the offense may abound." Here, 
 for the sake of creating an illustration, he does 
 not hesitate to attribute an arbitrary and un- 
 natural motive, when he refers to God's inscruta- 
 ble plan of revealing His will in the Mosaic dis- 
 pensation. 
 
 Eambling, discursive, disjointed, his thoughts 
 run. 
 
 He abruptly drops the subject under considera- 
 tion and takes up a new and totally unconnected 
 thought; but presently — and as abruptly as he 
 changed — he returns to the previous thought. He 
 lays down certain propositions and elaborates 
 them. Then he propounds an etirely new thesis 
 and goes on to argue from it; as if it had been 
 
212 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 demonstrated by the previous reasoning — tliougli 
 in no way deducible from that which precedes. 
 
 One of the most serious of these hipses is 
 shown in Gal. v. 14 : ''For all the law is fulfilled 
 in this. Thou shalt lore thy neighbor as thyself." 
 The loA'e to God omitted ; as only an unbalanced 
 mind could forget to add. And it was Christian 
 duty he was exemplifying — not contrasting it 
 with the Mosaic law. 
 
 All these instances are proofs of a disordered 
 mind ; as is also Paul's nmnifestations of that in- 
 tense egotism which always attends certain forms 
 of mental aberration. It is this which leads him 
 to employ so largely the first person singular, 
 — even where a general or impersonal proposition 
 makes it inappropriate. 
 
 And this egotism takes a form more repug- 
 nant — though none the less instructive — in his 
 expressions of contempt for the twelve apostles, 
 and in his claim of a direct "revelation by Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 Gal. ii. 2-14: Here his sense of superiority to 
 and his contempt for the twelve is clearly shown, 
 and he boasts that he publicly denounced Peter 
 (verses 20-21) ; then extols his own righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 In marked contrast was St. Peter's charitable 
 construction of Paul's language; and also the 
 
NAZARETH OR TABSUSt 213 
 
 care that the apostles iook to save Paul from the 
 violence of the Jews in Jerusalem. 
 
 His intense intellectual pride impels him to 
 attempt scholastic argument. But the results are 
 illogical and involved (Rom. v. 12-21 and vii. 
 7-25), the thought becomes confused, the argu- 
 ment ceases to be sustained and coherent, conclu- 
 sive evidences of a distraught mind. Only such a 
 mind could have conceived: "For the creation 
 was subject to vanity (Rom. viii. 20-21) ; not of 
 its own will, but by reason of him who subjected 
 it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be 
 delivered from the bondage of corruption, into 
 the liberty," etc., etc. Now the consequent "in 
 hope," etc., is utterly senseless. To say that "the 
 creation was subject to vanity" "in the hope that 
 it shall be delivered" is thoroughly unmeaning. 
 In Paul's distraught mind there was an interme- 
 diate idea. But the flaccid will — which is a 
 marked feature of insanity — failing to control 
 the vagaries of his thought, allowed the conjunc- 
 tive phrase to be expelled from its place and to be 
 forgotten. This lapse may have been; neverthe- 
 less it continued "in hope that the creation itself 
 also shall be delivered." The observant reader 
 will find repeated instances of such lapses. 
 
 Later on, in Romans, his erratic attempts at 
 reasoning are exhibited in his stating that the law 
 
214 NAZARETH OR TARSUS f 
 
 cannot give to man power to lead a new life. It 
 commands, yet it does not give power to obey; 
 implying that man had not been divinely en- 
 dued with i)Ower to obey the commands laid 
 upon him ; and he teaches that, although good in 
 itself, it has for men only a pernicious effect, 
 since it incites to sinful desires. The conclusion 
 is directly opposed to the premises. 
 
 Kom. ix.-xi. : It is Israel's own fault to have 
 rejected salvation; on the other hand it was 
 God's will that it do so. No sane mind would in- 
 troduce such contradictions. 
 
 Israel is at present rejected in order that place 
 might be made for the heathen. But by this ad- 
 mission of the heathen, Israel is to be stirred to 
 jealousy. But he gives no reason why the sav- 
 ing grace is not so vast that Jews and Gentiles 
 could not have received it simultaneously. 
 
 "God gave them (the Jews) a spirit of stupor; 
 eyes that they should not see; ears that they 
 should not hear;" and elsewhere he attributes a 
 harsh arbitrariness to God. 
 
 From a sane mind these statements would be 
 blasphemous claims of familiarity with God's 
 purposes. Doublj^ sacrilegious are these claims 
 because contrary to his asserted "revelation in 
 Jesus Christ" ; yet of value as showing that Paul 
 was always at heart a Pliarisee, unable to free 
 himself from the rabbinical conception of God's 
 
NAZARETH OR TARSUS? 215 
 
 arbitrariness; and, as a consequence, clearly 
 proving that he had neither the intellectual per- 
 ception, nor the spiritual insight to recognize 
 the true mission of the Christ. 
 
 Observe his long sentences ; with attempts at il- 
 lustration and explanation by interjected matter ; 
 but which new matter is often discovered to be a 
 new proposition ; and not till we have traversed 
 laboriously these intermediate ideas do we find 
 the conclusions of his original propositions. 
 
 Such lapses and irrelevant additions plainly 
 indicate a disordered mind, unable to maintain 
 continuous and logically developed reasoning. 
 
 He gives us another instance of this in "But 
 before faith came (Gal. iii. 23) we were kept in 
 ward under the law ; shut up unto the faith which 
 should be afterwards revealed. So that the law 
 hath been our tutor to bring us to Christ;" not 
 regarding that — in Romans — he has taught that 
 the law has a pernicious effect, and incites to evil 
 desires. A few verses later he changes the figure, 
 and makes the world — not the law — the power 
 which restrains us. "So we also, when we were 
 children, were held in bondage under the rudi- 
 ments of the world," till the coming of Christ. 
 But he has previously said: "For as many as 
 are of the works of the law are under a curse" 
 (Gal. iii. 10). 
 
 While many a school boy thinks that his "tu- 
 
216 NAZARETH OR TARHUS? 
 
 tor" is a "curse," it is preposterous to assume 
 that any sane reasoner could argue that a 
 "curse" could be "our tutor to bring us to Christ." 
 No stretch of poetic license, nor fine distinctions 
 between the "law" and "the works of the law," 
 can excuse these extravagances ; nor permit these 
 impulsive utterances to be dignified witli the au- 
 thority of inspired truth. Xo well balanced mind 
 could fail to recognize the incongruitj^ of naming 
 "the rudiments of the world" and the "curse of 
 the works of law" as Avholesome and discipli- 
 nary influences to prepare the "children" to at- 
 tain the freedom of majority in Christ. 
 
 Most noticeable is his very frequent repetition 
 of the word 'for,' as if desiring to establish the 
 conclusions of previous propositions; yet those 
 previous propositions having no connection with 
 assumed deductions. 
 
 Instances illustrating every phase of Paul's 
 morbid and distraught mind are so numerous 
 that it is needless to quote them. But the reader 
 who encounters them in a spirit of candid in- 
 quiry cannot but recognize that Paul's unbal- 
 anced mind led him to believe that there were 
 natural sequence of ideas, when in reality his 
 assumed conclusions had no relation to his pre- 
 mises. There is a marked illustration of these 
 vagaries — and showing, too, tliat oven Paul 
 recognized, how little reliance could be placed on 
 
'NAZARETH OR TARSVSf 217 
 
 claims of special revelation, as evidence of in- 
 spiration — in (Col. ii. 18, 19) : "Let n.o man rob 
 you of your prize, by a voluntary humility, wor- 
 shipping of angels, dwelling in the things which 
 he hath seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly 
 mind." 
 
 Now this is senseless; compelling the reader 
 to indulge in arbitrary inferences as to the mean- 
 ing of "prize" and "voluntary" and "worship- 
 ping of angels" ; and by filling any hiatus from 
 his own fancy. 
 
 THE END.