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"And three days later, I saw the Rock of David and all that multitude
follow Him unto the Hill of the Skull and there His enemies crucified
Him!"
After a paralyzed silence, Laodice whispered with frozen lips,
"In God's name, why?"
But he wisely did not pause with the calamity. He had the whole of the
beginnings of Christianity to tell, a long narrative that contained as
yet no dogma. Paul had seen the great light on the road to Damascus,
and accepting apostleship to all the world had fought a good fight and
had come unto his crown of righteousness; Peter had established the
Church and had fed the sheep and had been offered up by the Beast who
was Nero; John the Divine was seeing visions of the Apocalypse in the
Island of Patmos; Herod Antipas, "that fox," had passed to his own
place, prisoner and exile, sacrifice to a mad Caesar's imaginings;
Judas had hanged himself; Pilate had drowned himself; thousands of the
saints had died for the faith by fire and sword and wild beasts; kings
had been converted and of the believers in Rome it was said, _Your
faith is spoken of throughout the whole world_.
Laodice sat with clasped hands, intent on each word as it fell from
the lips of the aged teacher, seeing at one and the same time the
Kingdom of Heaven constructed and her dream of an earthly empire
falling.
"He said," the Christian continued, "_They that are whole need not a
physician; but they that are sick.
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