and my wife and
children will have to be fishing for themselves; but we hope they'll
manage to get somehow a bite and a sup of something till the Kingdom
comes, which we hope will not be delayed much longer, for we like not
Jerusalem, and being mocked at in the Temple. But say ye, Master, that
we've done wrong in leaving our wives and children to fish for
themselves? It seemed hard at first, and you were weak, Master, and
stayed with your father; but after all he has money and could pay for
attendance, whereas our wives and little ones have none; ourselves will
be in straits to get our living if the Kingdom be delayed in its coming,
for what good are fishermen except along the sea coast or where there is
a lake or a river, and here there isn't enough water for a minnow to
swim in. Our wives and our children are better off than we are, for
they'll be getting someone to fish for them, and will stand at the doors
at Capernaum waiting for the boats to return, praying that the nets
weren't let down in vain; but we aren't as sure of the Kingdom as we
were of a great take of fishes in Galilee when the wind was favourable
to fishing. Not that we'd have you think our faith be failing us; we be
as firm as ever we were, as John and James will be telling you. And
Peter, interrupting them again, reminded Joseph that if they lacked
faith the promised Kingdom would not come.

It was Jesus' faith that upheld us, John said, pushing Peter aside, and
the promises he made us that we might hear the trumpets of the cherubims
and seraphims announcing the Kingdom at any moment of the day or night.
And making himself the spokesman of the five, John told Joseph and
Nicodemus that Jesus now looked upon the arrival of the Kingdom as a
very secondary matter, and his own death as one of much greater import.
He says that he'll have to give his blood to the earth and his flesh to
the birds of the air else none will believe his teaching. He says that
God demands a victim; and looks upon him as the victim; but if that be
so, the world will get his teaching and we shall get nothing, for we
know his teaching of old.

As Peter has told you, James interrupted, there be no water here, not a
spring nor a rivulet, nothing in which a fish could live; we're
fishermen stranded in a desert without boats or nets, which would be of
no use to us, nor am I gainsaying it; but if he gives himself as a
victim how shall we get back to Galilee? He now talks not of these