harshly, and fell to thinking how he ran to Jesus, his story on his lips.  But it all seemed to drift away from him the moment he looked upon Jesus, so changed was he from the Jesus he had seen in the cenoby, a young man of somewhat stern countenance and cold and thin, with the neck erect, walking with a measured gait, whose eyes were cold and distant, though they could descend from their starry heights and rest for a moment almost affectionately on the face of a mortal.  That was two years ago.  And the Jesus whom he met in rags by the lake-side one evening and journeyed with as far as Caesarea Philippi, to Tyre and Sidon, was no doubt very different from the severe young man he had seen in the monastery.  He had grown older, more careworn, but the first Jesus still lingered in the second, whereas the Jesus he was looking at now was a new Jesus, one whom he had seen never before; the cheeks were fallen in and the eyes that he remembered soft and luminous were now concentrated; a sort of malignant hate glowered in them:  he seemed to hate all he looked upon; and his features seemed to have enlarged, the nose and chin were more prominent, and the body was shrunken.  A sword that is wearing out its scabbard was the thought that passed through Joseph’s frightened mind; and frightened at the change in Jesus’ appearance, and still more by the words that were hurled out at him, when intimidated and trembling, he babbled out:  my father lay between life and death for eight days and came out of his swoon slowly.  He could say no more, the rest of his story was swallowed up in a violent interruption, Jesus telling him that there was no place among his followers for those who could not free themselves from such ghosts as father, mother and children and wife.

Jesus had flung his father’s wealth and his own in his face, and his own pitiful understanding that had not been able to see that this world and the world to come were not one thing but twain.  And whosoever chooses this world must remain satisfied with its fleshly indulgences and its cares and its laws and responsibilities, and whoso ever chooses the Kingdom of Heaven must cast this world far from him, must pluck it, as it were, out of his heart and throw it away, bidding it depart; for it is but a ghost.  All these, he said, pointing to his apostles, have cast their ghosts into the lake.  The apostles stood with eyes fixed, for they did not understand how they had despoiled themselves of their ghosts, and only Peter ventured into words:  all my family is in the lake, Master; and at his simplicity Jesus smiled, then as if to compensate him for his faith he said:  I shall come in a chariot sitting on the right hand of our Father, the Judgment Book upon my lap.  As the rocks of this world are shaken and riven by earthquakes, my words shall sunder father from son, brother from brother, daughter from mother; the ties that have been held sacred shall be broken and all the things looked upon as eternal shall pass