"I can not forget Jerusalem."
"No one forgets Jerusalem--except one that falls in love by the
wayside," the man said.
Again the boy detected a ring of unexplained melancholy in his
patient's voice, and talked on as a preventive.
"Urban, the pastor, took me there. It was in the days of mine
instruction for baptism. He went to Jerusalem to trial, but there was
disorder in the city about the procurator, who was driven out that
day, and Urban was not called. But he remained, lest he be accused of
fleeing, and then it was he took me over the walks of Jesus."
"Jesus--that is the name," the Maccabee said to himself. "They are
born, given in marriage, fall or flourish, live and die in that name.
Likewise they pick up a wounded stranger and care for him in that
name. They are a strange people, a strange people!"
"They would not let us into the Temple," Joseph went on, "because I am
an Arab, born a Christian. So I could not see where Jesus was
presented, in infancy. But we went to the synagogues where He taught;
we went out upon Olivet to Gethsemane where He suffered in the Garden;
we climbed that hill to the south from which He looked upon the City
and wept over it, and prophesied this hour. Then we sought the ravine
where Judas betrayed Him with a kiss, and afterward Urban led me over
the streets by which He was taken first to Annas and to Caiaphas and
thence to Pilate and to Herod.
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