ed them, lived in the world of
his own thoughts, which, so it seemed to Joseph, he could not share with
anybody. Not one of the men he had gathered about him, neither Peter,
nor John, nor James, had noticed the notable words: "And the form of the
fourth is like the son of God." It was for these words, Joseph felt
sure, that Jesus had related the story of Daniel in the furnace. But his
disciples had not apprehended the significance; and like one whose
confidence was unmoved by the slowness or the quickness of his
listeners, almost as if he knew that the real drift of his speech was
beyond his hearers, Jesus began to tell that Darius' counsellors had
combined into a plot against Daniel and succeeded in it so well that
Daniel and his companions were cast in a den of lions. But there being
nothing in the story that pointed to the setting up of the Kingdom of
God upon earth, Joseph was puzzled to understand why Jesus was at pains
to relate it at such length. Was it to amuse his disciples? he asked
himself, but no sooner had he put the question to himself than the
purpose of the relation passed into his mind. Jesus had told the
marvellous stories of Daniel's escapes from death so that his disciples
might have no fear that the priests of Jerusalem would have power to
destroy him: whomsoever God sends into the world to do his work, Jesus
would have us understand, are under God's protection for ever and ever;
and Joseph rejoiced greatly at having discovered Jesus' intent, and for
a long time the glen, the silent forest and the men sitting listening to
the Master were all forgotten by him. He even forgot the Master's
presence, so filled was he by the abundant hope that his divination of
the Master's intent marked him out as one to be associated with the
Master's work--more than any one of those now listening to him, more
than Peter himself.

And so sweet was his reverie to him that he regretted the passing of it
as a misfortune, but finding he was in spirit as well as in body among
realities, he lent his ear to the story of the four winds that had
striven upon the great sea and driven up four great beasts. These beasts
Joseph readily understood to be but another figuration of the four great
empires; the Babylonian, the Persian, and the Grecian had been blown
away like dust, and as soon as the fourth, the Roman Empire, was broken
into pieces the kingdom of the whole world would be given to the people
of the saints of the Most High