By midday they reached a region more rugged than the one they had come out of.  The path they followed zigzagged up steep ascents and descended into crumbling valleys and plains filled with split stones, rubble and sand, a desert truly, without sign of a living thing till the shadow of an eagle’s wings passed over the hot stones.  Jesus told Paul that the birds nested up among the clefts yonder and were most destructive in the spring when the ewes were lambing.  Having to feed three or four eaglets, he said, the birds would descend on the flocks, the she-eagle, the larger, stronger and fiercer, will attack and drive off even the dog that does not fear a wolf, yet I have seen, he continued, a timid ewe, her youngling behind her in a coign in the hill, face the bird fiercely and butt it till she lost her eyes, poor ewe, for I came up too late with my staff.  And the lamb?  Paul inquired:  was far away, Jesus answered, aloft among the eaglets.

Jesus had stories of wolves and hyenas to beguile the way with, and he pointed with his staff to the narrow paths above them up which they would have to climb.  But be not discouraged, he said, we shall be in a better country presently; as soon as we pass the hill yonder we shall begin to descend into the plain, another three leagues beyond yon hill we shall be where we bid each other farewell.  Paul answered he was leaving Palestine for ever.  His way was first to Italy and then to Spain and afterwards his life would be over, his mission fulfilled, but he was glad to have been to Jericho to have seen the Jordan, the river in which John had baptized Jesus.  He was sorry now when it was too late that he had never been to Galilee, and Jesus told of wooded hills rising gently from the lake shore, and he took pleasure in relating the town of Magdala and the house of Dan of Arimathea, Joseph’s father, and the great industry he had established there; he continued talking, showing such an intimate and personal knowledge of Galilee that Paul could not doubt that he was what he professed to be, a Nazarene.  There were hundreds of Nazarenes, many of which were called Jesus:  but there was only one Jesus of Nazareth.  He did not say this to Jesus; but after Jesus had asked him how it was that he who had travelled the world over had never turned into Galilee, he replied that the human life of Jesus in Galilee concerned him not at all and his teaching very little.  He taught all the virtues, but these were known to humanity from the beginning; they are in the law that God revealed to Moses.  Even pagans know of them.  The Greeks have expounded them excellently well.  A teacher Jesus was and a great teacher, but far more important was the fact that God had raised him from the dead, thereby placing him above all the prophets and near to God himself.  So I have always taught that if Jesus were not raised from the dead our teaching is vain.  A miracle, he said, and he looked into Jesus’ face just as if he suspected him to be