Joel: A Boy of Galilee Read online

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  "WAKE up, Joel! Wake up! I bring you good tidings, my lad!" It wasAbigail's voice ringing cheerily through the court-yard, as she bentover the boy, fast asleep on the hard stones.

  All the long Sabbath day after the burial, he had sat listlessly in theshady court-yard, his blank gaze fixed on the opposite wall. No oneseemed able to arouse him from his apathy. He turned away from the foodthey brought him, and refused to enter the house when night came.

  Towards morning he had gone over to the fountain for a long draught ofits cool water; then overcome by weakness from his continued fast, andexhausted by grief, he fell asleep on the pavement.

  Abigail came in and found him there, with the red morning sun beatingfull in his face. She had to shake him several times before she couldmake him open his eyes.

  He sat up dizzily, and tried to collect his thoughts. Then heremembered, and laid his head wearily down again, with a groan.

  "Wake up! Wake up!" she insisted, with such eager gladness in her voicethat Joel opened his eyes again, now fully aroused.

  "What is it?" he asked indifferently.

  "_He is risen!_" she exclaimed joyfully, clasping her hands as shealways did when much excited. "I went to His tomb very early in themorning, while it was yet dark, with Mary and Salome and some otherwomen. The stone had been rolled aside; and while we wondered and wept,fearing His enemies had stolen Him away, He stood before us, with Hisold greeting on His lips,--'All hail!'"

  Joel rubbed his eyes and looked at her. "No, no!" he said wearily, "I amdreaming again!"

  He would have thrown himself on the ground as before, his head pillowedon his arm, but she would not let him. She shook his hands with apersistence that could not be refused, talking to him all the while insuch a glad eager voice that he slowly began to realize that somethinghad made her very happy.

  "What is it, Mother Abigail?" he asked, much puzzled.

  "I do not wonder you are bewildered," she cried. "It is such blessed,such wonderful news. Why He is _alive_, Joel, He whom Thou lovest! Tryto understand it, my boy! I have just now come from the empty tomb. Isaw Him! I spoke with Him! I knelt at His feet and worshipped!"

  By this time all the family had come out. Reuben looked at his daughterpityingly, as she repeated her news; then he turned to Phineas.

  "Poor thing!" he said, in a low tone. "She has witnessed such terriblescenes lately, and received such a severe shock, that her mind isaffected by it. She does not know what she is saying. Did not youyourself help prepare the body for burial, and put it in the tomb?"

  "Yes," answered Phineas, "and helped close it with a great stone, whichno one man could possibly move by himself. And I saw it sealed with theseal of Caesar; and when I left it was guarded by Roman sentinels inarmor. No man could have opened it."

  "But Abigail talks of angels who sat in the empty tomb, and who toldthem He had risen," replied her father.

  Joel, who had overheard this low-toned conversation, got up and stoodclose beside them. He had begun to tremble from weakness andexcitement.

  "'THE STONE IS GONE!'"]

  "Father Phineas," he asked, "do you remember the story we heard from theold shepherd, Heber? The angels told of His birth; maybe she _did_ seethem in His tomb."

  "How can such things be?" queried Reuben, stroking his beard inperplexity.

  "That's just what you said when Rabbi Lazarus was brought back to life,"piped Jesse's shrill voice, quite unexpectedly, at his grandfather'selbow. He had not lost a word of the conversation. "Why don't you go andsee for yourself if the tomb is empty?"

  Abigail had gone into the house with her mother, and now the summons tobreakfast greeted them. She saw she could not convince them of the truthof her story, so she said no more about it; but her happy face was moreeloquent than words.

  All day snatches of song kept rising to her lips,--old psalms ofthanksgiving, and half whispered hallelujahs. At last Joel and Phineaswere both so much affected by her continued cheerfulness, that theybegan to believe there must be some great cause for it.

  Finally, in the waning afternoon, they took the road that led fromBethany to the garden where they firmly believed that the Master stilllay buried.

  As they came in sight of the tomb, Joel clutched Phineas by the arm, andpointed, with a shaking finger, to the dark opening ahead of of them.

  "See!" he said, pointing into its yawning darkness. "She was right! Thestone is gone!"

  It was some time before they could muster up courage to go nearer andlook into the sepulchre. When at last they did so, neither spoke a word,but, after one startled look into each other's eyes, turned and left thegarden.

  It was growing dark as they hurried along the highway homeward. Two mencame half running towards the city, in great haste to reach the gatesbefore they should be closed for the night. They were two disciples wellknown to Phineas.

  He stopped them with the question that was uppermost in his mind.

  "Yes, He is risen," answered one of the men, breathlessly. "We have seenHim. Hosanna to the Highest! He walked along this road with us as wewent to Emmaus."

  "Ah, how our hearts burned as He talked with us by the way!"interrupted the other man.

  "Only this hour He sat at meat with us," cried the first speaker. "Hebroke bread with us, and blessed it as He always used to do. We arerunning back to the city now to tell the other disciples."

  Phineas would have laid a detaining hand on them, but they hurried on,and left him standing in the road, looking wistfully after them.

  "It must be true," said Joel, "or they could not have been so nearlywild with joy."

  Phineas sadly shook his head. "I wish I could think so," he sighed.

  "Let us go home," urged Abigail, the next day, "the Master has biddenHis brethren meet Him in Galilee. Let us go. There is hope of seeing Himagain in our old home!"

  Joel, now nearly convinced of the truth of her belief, was also anxiousto go. But Phineas lingered; his plodding mind was slower to grasp suchthoughts than the sensitive woman's or the imaginative boy's. One afteranother he sought out Peter and James and John, and the other discipleswho had seen the risen Master, and questioned them closely. Still hetarried for another week.

  One morning he met Thomas, whose doubts all along had strengthened hisown. He ran against him in the crowded street in Jerusalem. Thomasseized his arm, and, turning, walked beside him a few paces.

  "_It is true!_" he said, in a low intense tone, with his lips close tohis ear. "I saw Him myself last night; I held His hands in mine! Itouched the side the spear had pierced! He called me by name; and I knownow beyond all doubt that the Master has risen from the dead, and thatHe is the Son of God!"

  After that, Phineas no longer objected when it was proposed that theyshould go back to Galilee. The story of the resurrection was too greatfor him to grasp entirely, still he could not put aside such a weight ofevidence that came to him from friends whose word he had alwaysimplicitly trusted.

  The roads were still full of pilgrims returning from the Passover. AsPhineas journeyed on with his little family, he fell in with the sons ofJonah and Zebedee, going back to their nets and their fishing-boats.

  The order of procession was constantly shifting, and one morning Joelfound himself walking beside John, one of the chosen twelve, who seemedto have understood his Master better than any of the others.

  The man seemed wrapped in deep thought, and took no notice of hiscompanion, till Joel timidly touched his sleeve.

  "Do _you_ believe it is true?" the boy asked.

  There was no surprise in the man's face at the abrupt question, he felt,without asking, what Joel meant. A reassuring smile lighted up his faceas he laid his hand kindly on Joel's shoulder.

  "I know it, my lad; I have been with Him." The quiet positiveness withwhich he spoke seemed to destroy Joel's last doubt.

  "Many things that He said to us come back to me very clearly; and I seenow He was trying to prepare us for this."

  "Tell
me about them," begged Joel, "and about those last hours He waswith you. Oh, if I could only have been with Him, too!"

  John saw the tears gathering in the boy's eyes, heard the tremble in hisvoice, and felt a thrill of sympathy as he recognized a kindred love inthe little fellow's heart.

  So he told Joel of the last supper they had taken together, of the hymnthey had sung, and of the watch they had failed to keep, when He tookthem with Him into the garden of Gethsemane. All the little incidentsconnected with those last solemn hours, he repeated carefully to thelistening boy.

  From time to time Joel brushed his hand across his eyes; but a deep calmfell over him as John's voice went on, slowly repeating the words theMaster had comforted them with.

  "Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.In my Father's house are many mansions.... I go to prepare a place foryou. I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am,there ye may be also.... If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because Isaid, I go unto the Father.... These things I have spoken unto you, thatin me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: butbe of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

  Joel made an exclamation as if about to speak, and then stopped. "Whatis it?" asked John.

  "How could He mean that He has overcome the world? Caesar still rules,and Jerusalem is full of His enemies. I can't forget that they killedHim, even if He has risen."

  John stooped to tie his sandal before he answered.

  "I have been fitting together different things He told us; and I beginto see how blind we were. Once He called Himself the Good Shepherd whowould give his life for his sheep, and said, 'Therefore doth my Fatherlove me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No mantaketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay itdown, and I have power to take it again.'"

  They walked on in silence a few paces, then John asked abruptly, "Do youremember about the children of Israel being so badly bitten by serpentsin the wilderness, and how Moses was commanded to set up a brazenserpent in their midst?"

  "Yes, indeed!" answered Joel. "All who looked up at it were saved; butthose who would not died from the poisonous bites."

  "One night," continued John, "a learned man by the name of Nicodemus,one of the rulers, came to the Master with many questions. And Iremember one of the answers He gave him. 'As Moses lifted up the serpentin the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, thatwhosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlastinglife.' We did not understand Him then at all. Not till I saw Him liftedup on the cruel cross, did I begin to dimly see what He meant."

  A light broke over Joel's face as he remembered the vision he had hadthat day, kneeling at the foot of the cross; then he stopped still inthe road, with his hands clasped in dismay. There suddenly seemed torise before him the scenes of daily sacrifice in the Temple, when theblood of innocent lambs flowed over the altar; then he thought of thegreat Day of Atonement, when the poor scape-goat was driven away to itsdeath, laden with the sins of the people.

  "Oh, that must be what Isaiah meant!" he cried in distress. "'He wasbrought as a lamb to the slaughter!' Oh, can it be possible that 'theLord hath laid on _Him_ the iniquity of us all'? What an awfulsacrifice!"

  The tears streamed down his face as the thought came over him withoverwhelming conviction, that it was for _him_ that the man he loved sohad endured all the horrible suffering of death by crucifixion.

  "Why did such a thing have to be?" he asked, looking up appealingly athis companion.

  John looked out and up, as if he saw far beyond the narrow, hill-boundhorizon, and quoted softly: "_For God so loved the world, that He gaveHis only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should notperish, but have everlasting life._"

  Just as the feeling had come to him that morning by the Galilee, andagain as he gazed and gazed into the white face on the cross, Joelseemed to feel again the love of the Father, as it took him close intoits infinite keeping.

  "'Greater love hath no man than this,'" quoted John again, "'that a manlay down his life for his friends.' He is the propitiation for our sins;and not ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

  It was hard for the child to understand this at first; but this gentledisciple who walked beside him had walked long beside the Master, and inthe Master's own way and words taught Joel life's greatest lesson.