thinking that the
world was right to defend itself against those that would repudiate it.
For the world, he said to himself, cannot be else than the world, a
truth that was hidden from me in those early days. The world does not
belong to us, but to God. It was he that made it, and it is for him to
unmake it when he chooses and to remake us if he chooses. Meanwhile we
should do well to accept his decrees and to talk no more of destroying
the Temple and building it up again in three days. Nor should we trouble
ourselves to reprove the keepers of the Temple for having made
themselves a God according to their own image and likeness, with
passions like a man and angers like a man, thereby falling into
idolatry, for what else is our God but an Assyrian king who sits on a
throne and metes out punishments and rewards? It may be that the priests
will some day come into the knowledge that all things are equal in God's
sight, and that he is not to be won by sacrifices, observances or
prayers, that he has no need of these things, not even of our love, or
it may be that they will remain priests. But though God desires neither
sacrifices, observances, nor even love, it cannot be that we are wholly
divorced from God. It may be that we are united to him by the daily
tasks which he has set us to perform.

Jesus was moved to put his pipes to his lips, and the sheep returned to
him and followed him into the cavern in which they were to sleep that
night.

CHAP. XXIX.

It is a great joy to return to thought after a long absence from it, and
Jesus was not afraid, though once his conscience asked him if he were
justified in yielding himself unreservedly to reason. A man's mind, he
answered, like all else, is part of the Godhead; and at that moment he
heard God speaking to him out of the breeze. My beloved son, he said, we
shall never be separated from each other again. And Jesus replied: not
again, Father, for thou hast returned to me the God that I once knew in
Nazareth and in the hills above Jericho, and lost sight of as soon as I
began to read the Book of Daniel. How many, he asked himself, have been
led by reading that book into the belief that they were the precursors
of the Messiah? We know of Theudas and the Egyptian, and there were many
others whose names have not reached us. But I alone believed myself to
be the Messiah. He was astonished he could remember so great a sin and
not fear God. But I cannot fear God, for I love