father and mother, brother and sister, wives and children to live and die by themselves, which is as we have done.  Yes, Sir, Peter continued, freeing himself from John and turning to Joseph, we’ve left this world behind us, or if not this world itself, the things of this world:  our boats and nets, our wives and our children.  All that Jesus calls our ghostly life we have thrown into the lake.  My wife and children and mother-in-law are all there, and John and James have left their mother, Salome.  But, said James, the neighbours will not be lacking to give her a bite if she wants something when she is hungry.  She’ll be getting men to fish for her, for we’ve left her our boats and nets.  They’ve done this, Peter chimed in, and my wife and children will have to be fishing for themselves; but we hope they’ll manage to get somehow a bite and a sup of something till the Kingdom comes, which we hope will not be delayed much longer, for we like not Jerusalem, and being mocked at in the Temple.  But say ye, Master, that we’ve done wrong in leaving our wives and children to fish for themselves?  It seemed hard at first, and you were weak, Master, and stayed with your father; but after all he has money and could pay for attendance, whereas our wives and little ones have none; ourselves will be in straits to get our living if the Kingdom be delayed in its coming, for what good are fishermen except along the sea coast or where there is a lake or a river, and here there isn’t enough water for a minnow to swim in.  Our wives and our children are better off than we are, for they’ll be getting someone to fish for them, and will stand at the doors at Capernaum waiting for the boats to return, praying that the nets weren’t let down in vain; but we aren’t as sure of the Kingdom as we were of a great take of fishes in Galilee when the wind was favourable to fishing.  Not that we’d have you think our faith be failing us; we be as firm as ever we were, as John and James will be telling you.  And Peter, interrupting them again, reminded Joseph that if they lacked faith the promised Kingdom would not come.

It was Jesus’ faith that upheld us, John said, pushing Peter aside, and the promises he made us that we might hear the trumpets of the cherubims and seraphims announcing the Kingdom at any moment of the day or night.  And making himself the spokesman of the five, John told Joseph and Nicodemus that Jesus now looked upon the arrival of the Kingdom as a very secondary matter, and his own death as one of much greater import.  He says that he’ll have to give his blood to the earth and his flesh to the birds of the air else none will believe his teaching.  He says that God demands a victim; and looks upon him as the victim; but if that be so, the world will get his teaching and we shall get nothing, for we know his teaching of old.