The old doctor stroked his gray beard in silence, and I exclaimed:
"Who do you suppose this unfortunate man to have been?"
"That was revealed in the manuscript, but unfortunately not one of our party could read Greek. I sent the case with its contents to an old uncle of my mother, who had a little curacy near Binghamton. He was a great Greek scholar, and devoted to his classical studies the little time he could spare from the game of whist. I had a good deal of curiosity on the subject, and wrote several times to my uncle from different parts of the world before he condescended to reply. His answer was in substance this: that the manuscript purported to be the autobiography of Eleazor or Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead; that it was probably the work of some heretic monk or crazy philosopher of the second or third century; that, interwoven with romantic incidents in this world and the other, it gave expression to many absurd and false doctrines; in fine, that it was not worth my reading, and that I had better devote myself dutifully to killing his Majesty's enemies on the high seas, than to searching old caverns for apocryphal documents which impugned the sacred verities of the Apostolic Church.
"And so," concluded the old surgeon, "I have never thought any more about it."
"Your uncle was no doubt right in his conjectures and wise in his advice," said the young chaplain. "The number and extent of the apocryphal impositions upon the early Christian Church are almost incredible."
"Were you satisfied," said I, "with your good uncle's opinion?"
"I have always believed," replied the doctor, evasively and with a roguish twinkle of his eye, "that if the manuscript had contained the Thirty-nine Articles by anticipation, my uncle would have pronounced it divinely inspired."
"Oh, it was sealed up again and sent to the nursery as a plaything for the children. It is probably still in the possession of one of my cousins."
The strange story of the old surgeon made a profound impression upon me; for in spite of the incredulity of all the other listeners, I believed from the first that the dust of that cavern was the dust of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, and that the manuscript contained something of genuine value to the Church and the world.