g his blessing, sat down beside him.

'Thou art provided as for a journey, father,' said he: 'wilt thou leave
us yet?'

'My son,' replied the old man, 'the days in store for me on earth are
few and scanty; I employ them as becomes me travelling from place to
place, comforting those whom God has gathered together in His name, and
proclaiming the glory of His Son, as testified to His servant.'

'Thou hast looked, they tell me, on the face of Christ?'

'And the face revived me from the dead. Know, young proselyte to the
true faith, that I am he of whom thou readest in the scroll of the
Apostle. In the far Judea, and in the city of Nain, there dwelt a
widow, humble of spirit and sad of heart; for of all the ties of life
one son alone was spared to her. And she loved him with a melancholy
love, for he was the likeness of the lost. And the son died. The reed
on which she leaned was broken, the oil was dried up in the widow's
cruse. They bore the dead upon his bier; and near the gate of the city,
where the crowd were gathered, there came a silence over the sounds of
woe, for the Son of God was passing by. The mother, who followed the
bier, wept--not noisily, but all who looked upon her saw that her heart
was crushed. And the Lord pitied her, and he touched the bier, and
said, "I SAY UNTO THEE, ARISE," And the dead man woke and looked upon
the face of the Lord. Oh, that calm and solemn brow, that unutterable
smile, that careworn and sorrowful face, lighted up with a God's
benignity--it chased away the shadows of the grave! I rose, I spoke, I
was living, and in my mother's arms--yes, I am the dead revived! The
people shouted, the funeral horns rung forth merrily: there was a cry,
"God has visited His people!" I heard them not--I felt--I saw--nothing
but the face of the Redeemer!'

The old man paused, deeply moved; and the youth felt his blood creep,
and his hair stir. He was in the presence of one who had known the
Mystery of Death!

'Till that time,' renewed the widow's son, 'I had been as other men:
thoughtless, not abandoned; taking no heed, but of the things of love
and life; nay, I had inclined to the gloomy faith of the earthly
Sadducee! But, raised from the dead, from awful and desert dreams that
these lips never dare reveal--recalled upon earth, to testify the powers
of Heaven--once more mortal, the witness of immortality; I drew a new
being from the grave. O faded--O lost Jerusalem!--Him from whom cam