John. Are we to have a harder taskmaster than the Romans, before we are delivered?

Salome. No harder master than we now have.  The Roman is not our only or worst bondage.

Rebecca. What talk you of so earnestly?

Salome. Jesus of Nazareth.

Rebecca. He has come, it is said, to set up a new kingdom.

Salome. Rather to enlarge the kingdom already flourishing in heaven.

Rebecca. Call it what you may, he is slow in gathering his armies.

Salome. He needs no army for his conquests, but an army of loving hearts and pure spirits.

Rebecca. Then the nation’s hope is again blasted, and we are to remain yet longer subjects of a foreign king.

Salome. Not so.  This is the true Messiah:  he who joins his kingdom shall be free indeed.

Rebecca. But what freedom can there be greater than from Roman bondage?

Eudora. Unless it be a deliverance, such as mine, from idolatry and superstition.  Methinks there is no liberty to be compared with that; and, having that, slavery loses its power.

Jezebel. Or deliverance, such as mine, from an unholy temper.  Surely, Eudora, mine is the greater deliverance; for what is truth without goodness?  You were delivered from error; I from sin. Oh! since I have been from place to place with the Son of God, and listened to his gracious words, I have forgotten to be angry; and, I trust, my growing love for his Father and mine will cleanse me from all sin!

Mary. I, too, have felt his power, and am seeking to join his kingdom.  I first took him for a second David, who should glorify his people; then, when no army gathered around him, for a prophet sent to reform the nation.  But now I believe him to be greater than either,—­even the Son of God, and begin to think that he purposes to bless, not Jews alone, but Gentiles; not Palestine, but the world.

Rebecca. Why should we think him greater than the prophets? why, the Son of Jehovah?  Are the reports about his working miracles to be received as true?

Salome. Certainly; for I have witnessed them.  I have, at his mere word or touch, seen the leper cleansed; the blind receive sight; the lame walk; and, that last wonderful work, Lazarus of Bethany raised from the dead.

Rebecca. And what think you of all this?

Salome. Just what one of our rulers declared to him the other night, “No man can do these miracles and not come from God, and have God with him.”  When the Pharisees or the Scribes tell me I am immortal, I question; but when he, thus aided by Jehovah, asserts the truth, it is enough.

Rebecca (to Mary). And did this move you also?

Mary. How could I doubt any doctrine of his, after witnessing these works?