to the hills, for he wished you holy men who
live upon this ridge of rock in piety, in humility, in content, in peace
one with the other, fearing God always, to hear of Jesus and his
resurrection from the dead and the meaning thereof, which is that Christ
came to redeem us from the bondage of the law and that sense of sin
which the law reveals unceasingly and which terrifies and comes between
us and love of Jesus Christ, who will (at the sound of the last trump)
raise the incorruptible out of the corruptible. Even as the sown grain
is raised out of its rotten grave to nourish and rejoice again at the
light, so will ye nourish again in the fields of heaven, never again to
sink into old age and death if you have faith in Christ, for you have
all else, fear of God, and charity, piety and humility, brotherly love,
peace and content in the work that the day brings to your hands and the
pillow that the night brings to your head for reward for the work done.
God that knows all knew you were waiting on this margin of rock for the
joyful tidings, and he sent me as a shepherd might send his servant out
to call in the flock at the close of day, for in his justice he would
not have it that ten just men should perish. He sent me to you with a
double purpose, methinks, for he may have designed you to come to my
aid, for it would be like him that has had in his heart since all time
my great mission to Italy and Spain, to have conceived this way to
provide me with new feet to carry the joyful tidings to the ends of the
earth; and now I stand amazed, it being clear to me that it was not for
the Jews of Jericho that I was sent out from Caesarea but for you.

Paul waited for one of the Essenes to answer, and his eyes falling on
Mathias' face he read in it a web of argument preparing wherein to catch
him, and he prayed that God might inspire his answers. At last Mathias,
in clear, silvery voice, broke the silence that had fallen so suddenly,
and all were intent to hear the silken periods with which the Egyptian
thanked Paul for the adventurous story he had related to them, who, he
said, lived on a narrow margin of rock, knowing nothing of the world,
and unknown to it, content to live, as it were, immersed in God. Paul's
narrative was full of interesting things, and he regretted that Paul was
leaving them, for he would have liked to have given longer time to the
examination of the several points, but his story contained one thing of
such gre