and as fast as we raised up a new Temple the spirits would pull it down and rebuild it as it was before.  We are forbidden by the law of Moses to create any graven image of man, of bird or beast.  Would that Moses had added:  build no walls, for as soon as there are walls priests will enter in and set themselves upon thrones.  The priests have taken the place of God, and I have come, he said, to cast them out of their thrones, and to cut the knot of the bondage of the people of Israel.  I come, he said, with a sword to cut that knot, which hands have failed to loosen, and in my other hand there is a torch, and with it I shall set fire to the thrones.  All the world as ye know it must be burnt up like stubble, for a new world to rise up in its place.  In the beginning I spoke sweet words of peace, and they were of no avail to stay the sins that were committed in every house; so now I speak no more sweet words to anybody, but words that shall divide father from son, and mother from daughter, and wife from husband.  There is no other way to cure the evil.  What say I, he cried, cure!  There is none.  The evil must be cut down and thrown upon the fire, and whosoever would be saved from the fire must follow me.  The priests hate me and call me arrogant, but if I seem arrogant to them it is because I speak the word of God.

And then, seizing me by the shoulder, he said:  look into my eyes and see.  They shall tell thee that those who would be saved from the fire must follow me.  I am the word, the truth, and the life.  Follow me, follow me, or else be for ever accursed and destroyed and burnt up like weeds that the gardener throws into heaps and fires on an autumn evening.  Yes, he cried, we are nearing the springtime when life shall begin again in the world.  But I say to thee that this springtime shall never come to pass.  Never again shall the fig ripen on the wall and the wheat be cut down in the fields.  Before these things come to pass in their natural course the Son of Man shall return in a chariot of fire to make an end of things; or if thou wilt thou can say that he’ll come not to make an end but a new beginning, a world in which justice and peace shall reign.  And it is for this end I offer myself, a victim to appease our Father in heaven.  I’m the sacrifice and the communion, for it is no longer the fat of rams that my Father desires, but my blood, only that; only my blood will appease his wrath.  As I have said, I am the communion, and thou shalt eat my flesh and drink my blood, else perish utterly, and go into eternal damnation.  But I love thee and——­ And after a pause he said:  those that love God are loved by me, and willingly and gladly will I yield myself up as the last sacrifice.

Nicodemus stopped, for his memory died suddenly, and, unable to discover anything in the blank, he turned to Joseph and said:  he speaks with a strange, bitter energy, like one that has lost control of his words; he is hardly aware of them, nor does he retain any memory of them.  They are as the wind, rising we know not why, and going its way unbidden.  I have seen him like that in Galilee, Joseph answered.  Ah!  Nicodemus answered suddenly, I remember, but cannot put words upon it.  He said that before the world was, he and his Father were one, and that his great love of man induced him to separate himself——­