last few minutes
to have become opposed to Jesus, and Joseph wondered at the change that
had come over them and lent an ear to their discourse so that he might
discover a reason for it. And it was not long before he discovered that
their objection related to the Book of Daniel, for they were of the sort
that receive no Scriptures after the five Books of the Law.

Joseph knew the book less perhaps than any other book of the Scriptures;
he had looked into it with Azariah, but for a reason which he could not
now discover he had read it with little attention; and since his
schooldays he had not looked into it again. Peter and Andrew and John
and James were listening intently to the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream
for the sake of the story related and without thought of what might be
Jesus' purpose in relating it. But to Joseph Jesus' purpose was the
chief interest of the relation; and the purpose became apparent when he
began to tell how the great statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar in his dream,
whose head was gold, whose arms and breast were silver, whose belly was
brass, and whose legs and feet were iron and clay intermingled, was
overthrown by a stone that hand had not cut out of the mountain. This
stone became forthwith as big as a mountain and filled the whole earth,
and Joseph fell to thinking if this stone were the fifth kingdom which
the Messiah would set up when the Roman kingdom had fallen to dust, or
whether the stone were the Messiah himself. And while Joseph sat
thinking he heard suddenly that when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the
furnace and saw the four men whom he had ordered to be thrown into it
walking through the flames safely, he said: and the form of the fourth
is like the son of God.

The story wholly delighted the disciples; and they asked Jesus to tell
them the further adventures of Daniel, and as if wishing to humour them
he began to relate that a hand had appeared writing on the wall during
the great feast at Babylon, a story to which Joseph could give but
little heed, for his imagination was controlled by the words, "whose
form is like the son of God"--an inspiration on the part of the
Babylonian king. If ever a man had seemed since to another like the son
of God, Jesus was that man; and Joseph asked himself how it was that
these words had passed over the ears of the disciples--over the ears of
those who knew Jesus' mind, if any could be said to know Jesus' mind.
Jesus, though he lived near them and lov