o the Essenes; tell them of my conversion? Paul repeated. Why
not? he asked himself, since he was here and could not leave till
nightfall. Festus had given him leave to go to Jericho to preach while
waiting for the ship that was to take him to Rome, and he had found in
Jericho the intolerance that had dragged him out of the Temple at
Jerusalem; circumcision of the flesh but no circumcision of the
spirit.... But here! He had been led to the Essenes by God, and all that
had seemed dark the night before now seemed clear to him. There was no
longer any doubt in his mind that the Lord wished his chosen people to
hear the truth before his servant Paul left Palestine for ever. He had
been led by the Lord among these rocks, perhaps to find twelve
disciples, who would leave their rocks when they heard the truth of the
death and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth and would carry the joyful
tidings to the ends of the earth.

CHAP. XXXIII.

The Essenes, ten in number, were seated in an embrasure. A reader had
been chosen (an elder) to read the Scriptures, and the attention of the
community was now engaged in judgment of his attempt to reconcile two
passages, one taken from Numbers in which it is said that God is not as
man, with another passage taken from Deuteronomy in which God is said to
be as man. He had just finished telling the brethren that these two
passages were not in contradiction, the second being introduced for the
instruction of the multitude and not because the nature of man is as
God's nature, and, on second thoughts, he added: nor must it be
forgotten that the Book of Deuteronomy was written when we were a
wandering tribe come out of the desert of Arabia, without towns or
cities, without a Temple, without an Ark--ours having fallen into the
hands of the Philistines. He continued his gloss till Mathias held up
his hand and asked Hazael's permission to speak: the words that had been
quoted from Deuteronomy, those in which the Scriptures speak of God as
if he were a man, attributing to him the acts and motives of man, were
addressed, as our reader has pointed out, to men who had hardly advanced
beyond the intelligence of childhood, whose minds were still simple and
unable to receive any idea of God except the primitive notion that God
is a greater man. Now the reason for my interruption is this: I should
like to point out that for those who have passed beyond this stage,
whose intelligence is not limited to their