ated
the same thing over and over, he told them it was the Lord's command,
and if they obeyed it, that was enough.

Traditions alone tell of St. John's death. One claims that as his
brother James was the first of the Apostles to suffer martyrdom, he was
the last. Others tell of miraculous preservation from death;--that he
was thrown into a caldron of boiling oil, and drank hemlock, without any
effect upon him. Sometimes he is pictured as holding a cup from which a
viper, representing poison, is departing without doing him any harm.

There is still another story concerning his death. On the last Lord's
Day of his life, after the Holy Communion, he told some of his disciples
to follow him with spades. Leading them to a place of burial, he bid
them dig a grave into which he placed himself, and they buried him up to
the neck. Then in obedience to his command they placed a cloth over his
face and completed the burial. With weeping they turned away and
reported what had been done. But his disciples felt that, not the grave,
but the great church was the fitting place for his burial. So with
solemn service they went to bring his body thither. But on reaching the
grave they found it empty, as he and Peter had found the tomb of their
Lord on Easter morning. Then they remembered the words of Christ to
Peter concerning John, "If I will that he abide till I come, what is
that to thee?"

But there is another tradition stranger still. People refused to believe
that St. John was dead, even though he had been supposed to be, and had
been buried. For centuries his grave was shown at Ephesus. Pilgrims
visiting it beheld a wonderful sight. The ground above it rose and fell,
as if the great Apostle were still breathing as he had done for one
hundred years, while treading the earth which now guarded his immortal
sleep.

Such stories seem strange to us when we remember the chapter he wrote to
correct a mistake made by those who misunderstood his Master's word, and
believed that he would not die until the Lord returned to the earth.

He probably escaped martyrdom which befell his fellow-Apostles. Dying,
probably in Ephesus, we think of him as peacefully entering the mansions
of which he had heard his Lord tell in far-off Jerusalem nearly seventy
years before.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Life of St. John for the Young
by George Ludington Weed

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LIFE OF ST. JOHN FOR THE YOUNG