Jesus should never have gone to the Temple nor come to Jerusalem, Joseph said.  But in this Nicodemus could not agree with him, for if Jesus were the Messiah his mission was nothing less than to free Jerusalem from the Roman yoke.  But he should have brought a larger body of disciples with him—­some thousands, instead of a few hundreds—­not enough to bring about the abolition of the Temple, which, according to Nicodemus, was the Galilean’s project—­one more difficult to accomplish than he thinks for.  The Romans support the Temple, he cried, because the Temple divides us.  I say it myself, Sadducee though I am.

It was these last words that proved to Joseph that the ringlets and bracelets did not comprise the whole of this young man’s soul, and he was moved forthwith to confide the story of his father’s sickness to him, dwelling on all its consequences:  he had not been elected an apostle, and Jesus consequently had no one by to tell him that he must not speak of the abolition of the law in Jerusalem.  But if he did not come to incite the people against the Temple, for what did he come?  Nicodemus asked.  You’ve heard him preach in Galilee, tell me who he is, and in what does his teaching consist?—­a direct question that prompted Joseph to relate his associations with the Essenes, Banu, John, the search for Jesus in Egypt and among the Judean hills—­a long story I’m afraid it is, Joseph mentioned apologetically to Nicodemus, who begged him to omit no detail of it.  Nicodemus sat with his eyes fixed on Joseph while Joseph told of the discovery of Jesus in Galilee among his father’s fishermen; and as if to excuse the almost immodest interest awakened in Nicodemus, Joseph murmured that the story owed nothing to his telling of it; he was telling it as plainly as it could be told for a purpose; Nicodemus must judge it fairly.  Resuming his narrative, Joseph related the day spent in the forest and Jesus’ interpretation of the prophecies.  Nicodemus cried:  he is the stone cut by no hand out of the mountain; the idol shall fall, and the stone that felled it shall grow as big as a mountain and fill the whole earth.

CHAP.  XVII.

As they sat talking the servant brought in a letter which, he said, has just arrived from Galilee.  The messenger rode the whole journey in two days, Sir, and you’ll have to do the same, Sir, and to start at once if you would see your father alive.  If I would see my father alive! if I would see my father alive!  Joseph repeated, and, seizing Nicodemus by the hand, he bade him farewell.