From time to time Joel brushed his hand across his eyes; but a deep calm fell over him as John's voice went on, slowly repeating the words the Master 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 for you. 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 I said, I go unto the Father.... These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
Joel made an exclamation as if about to speak, and then stopped. "What is it?" asked John.
"How could He mean that He has overcome the world? Cæsar still rules, and Jerusalem is full of His enemies. I can't forget that they killed Him, 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 begin to see how blind we were. Once He called Himself the Good Shepherd who would give his life for his sheep, and said, 'Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.'"
They walked on in silence a few paces, then John asked abruptly, "Do you remember about the children of Israel being so badly bitten by serpents in the wilderness, and how Moses was commanded to set up a brazen serpent in their midst?"
"Yes, indeed!" answered Joel. "All who looked up at it were saved; but those 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 I remember one of the answers He gave him. 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' We did not understand Him then at all. Not till I saw Him lifted up 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 had that day, kneeling at the foot of the cross; then he stopped still in the road, with his hands clasped in dismay. There suddenly seemed to rise before him the scenes of daily sacrifice in the Temple, when the blood of innocent lambs flowed over the altar; then he thought of the great Day of Atonement, when the poor scape-goat was driven away to its death, laden with the sins of the people.