The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Easter Disciple, by Arthur Benton Sanford

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Title: An Easter Disciple

Author: Arthur Benton Sanford

Release Date: June 21, 2004 [eBook #12671]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN EASTER DISCIPLE***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

AN EASTER DISCIPLE

The Chronicle of Quintus, the Roman Knight

By

ARTHUR BENTON SANFORD

1922

IN MEMORY OF ABSENT ONES

WHO HAVE ENTERED INTO LIFE

CONTENTS

An Opening Word

I. A Roman Quest

II. In Solomon's Porch

III. Christ Himself the Witness to Immortality

IV. Cicero or Christ?

V. The Vision of the Risen Christ

VI. Christ's Witnesses at Rome

AN OPENING WORD

Many voices had been speaking of eternal life, before the days of
the Son of man. Especially pronounced had been the teachings of
the Egyptians that there is another world. In their Acadian hymns
the Chaldaeans had dimly foretold a future life. The belief of the
Parsees, as expressed in their Zend-Avesta, had included a place of
darkness for the evil soul and a reward for the good in the realm
of light. The Hindus had declared, in their Rig-Veda, their
beautiful conception of the immortality of the soul, and had
written of a future "imperishable world, where there is eternal
light and glory." The Grecian and Roman mythologies had voiced
their hope of blessedness for the shades of the departed.
Everywhere serious men had been asking as to the experiences beyond
the grave. It was as if the Eastern world had become a vast
parliament chamber, wherein the nations were proclaiming their
different doctrines as to a future life.

In the midst of these varying and uncertain voices, Christ spoke
his authoritative message. There was no wavering in his tone.
What the Oriental philosophers were guessing, he revealed; what the
Hebrew prophets had foreshadowed in their holy writings, he
unfolded in full light. The ancient Vedic hymns, the oracles of
Greece, the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, anticipating by two
thousand years the Hebrew exodus--all these are naught compared
with the words of that in