God, unknown or unknowable, has been made manifest to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born like us all for a purpose, his death, which was to save the world from its sins, whereupon, greedy for a story, they began to listen to me, and I had their attention till I came to these words—­“And was raised by his Father from the dead.”  Paul, they answered, we will listen another day to the rest of this story of thy new divinity.

A frivolous people, Mathias, living in a city of statues in the air, and in the streets below a city of men that seek after reason, and would explain all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath by their reason, and only willing to listen to the story of a miracle because miracles amuse them.  A race much given to enjoyment, like women, Mathias, and among their mountains they are not a different race from what they are in the city, but given to milking goats and dancing in the shade to the sounds of a pipe, and dreaming over the past glories of Athens, that are dust to-day though yesterday they were realities, a light race that will be soon forgotten, and convinced of their transience I departed for Corinth, a city of fencing masters, merchants, slaves, courtesans, yet a city more willing to hearken to the truth than the light Athenians, perhaps because it has much commerce and is not slothful in business, a city wherein I fortuned upon a pious twain, Aquila and Priscilla, of our faith, and of the same trade as myself, wherefore we set up our looms together in one house and sold the cloths as we weaved them, getting our living thereby and never costing the faithful anything, which was just pride, and mine always, for I have travelled the world over gaining a living with my own hands, never taking money from anybody, though it has been offered to me in plenty by the devout, thinking it better to be under no obligation, for such destroys independence....

Once only was this rule broken by me.  In Macedonia, a dyer of purple——­ But Lydia’s story concerns ye not, therefore I will leave her story untold and return to Corinth, to Priscilla and Aquila, weavers like myself, with whom I worked for eighteen months, and more than that; preaching the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ to all who would hear us when our daily work was done, until the same fate befell us—­the intervention of the Jews, who sought to embroil us, as beforetimes, with the Romans.

We preached in the synagogues on the Sabbath and I upheld the faith I had come to preach:  that the Messiah promised to the Jews had lived and had died for us.  Whereupon there was a great uproar among the Jews, who would not believe, and so I tore my garments and said:  then I will go forth to the Gentiles, and find believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, and leave you who were elected by God as his chosen people, who were his by adoption, a privilege conferred upon you throughout the centuries, the race out of whom came the patriarchs, and Jesus Christ himself in the flesh.  I will leave you, for you are not worthy and will perish as all flesh perishes; will drift into nothingness, and be scattered even as the dust of the roads is scattered by the winds.  My heart is broken for you, but since ye will it so, let it be so.