y flourishing in heaven.

_Rebecca._ Call it what you may, he is slow in gathering his armies.

_Salome._ He needs no army for his conquests, but an army of loving
hearts and pure spirits.

_Rebecca._ Then the nation's hope is again blasted, and we are to
remain yet longer subjects of a foreign king.

_Salome._ Not so. This is the true Messiah: he who joins his kingdom
shall be free indeed.

_Rebecca._ But what freedom can there be greater than from Roman
bondage?

_Eudora._ Unless it be a deliverance, such as mine, from idolatry and
superstition. Methinks there is no liberty to be compared with that;
and, having that, slavery loses its power.

_Jezebel._ Or deliverance, such as mine, from an unholy temper.
Surely, Eudora, mine is the greater deliverance; for what is truth
without goodness? You were delivered from _error_; I from _sin._ Oh!
since I have been from place to place with the Son of God, and
listened to his gracious words, I have forgotten to be angry; and, I
trust, my growing love for his Father and mine will cleanse me from
all sin!

_Mary._ I, too, have felt his power, and am seeking to join his
kingdom. I first took him for a second David, who should glorify his
people; then, when no army gathered around him, for a prophet sent to
reform the nation. But now I believe him to be greater than
either,--even the Son of God, and begin to think that he purposes to
bless, not Jews alone, but Gentiles; not Palestine, but the world.

_Rebecca._ Why should we think him greater than the prophets? why, the
Son of Jehovah? Are the reports about his working miracles to be
received as true?

_Salome._ Certainly; for I have witnessed them. I have, at his mere
word or touch, _seen_ the leper cleansed; the blind receive sight; the
lame walk; and, that last wonderful work, Lazarus of Bethany raised
from the dead.

_Rebecca._ And what think you of all this?

_Salome._ Just what one of our rulers declared to him the other night,
"No man can do these miracles and not come from God, and have God with
him." When the Pharisees or the Scribes tell me I am immortal, I
question; but when he, thus aided by Jehovah, asserts the truth, it is
enough.

_Rebecca (to Mary)._ And did this move you also?

_Mary._ How could I doubt any doctrine of his, after witnessing these
works?

_Jezebel._ But this is not all. He moved our hearts to love, as well
as our minds to believe. With all my ill temper in the past, I have
ever