who shall say that it is not so—­it came to me to understand that all striving was vain, and worse than vain.  The pursuit of a corruptible crown as well as the pursuit of an incorruptible crown leads us to sin.  If we would reach the sinless state we must relinquish pursuit.  What I mean is this, that he who seeks the incorruptible crown starts out with words of love on his lips to persuade men to love God, and finding that men do not heed him he begins to hate them, and hate leads on into persecution.  Such is the end of all worship.  There is but one thing, Paul, to learn to live for ourselves, and to suffer our fellows to do likewise; all learning comes out of ourselves, and no one may communicate his thought; for his thought was given to him for himself alone.  Thou art where I was once, thou hast learnt that sacrifices and observances are vain, that God is in our heart; and it may be that in years to come thy knowledge will be extended, or it may be that thou hast reached the end of thy tether:  we are all at tether, Paul.

Wouldst thou have me learn, Jesus, that God is to be put aside?  Again, Paul, thou showest me the vanity of words.  God forbid that I should say banish God from thy hearts.  God cannot be banished, for God is in us.  All things proceed from God; all things end in God; God like all the rest is a possession of the mind.  He who would be clean must be obedient to God.  God has not designed us to know him except through our conscience.  Each man’s conscience is a glimpse.  These are some of the things that I have learnt, Paul, in the wilderness during the last twenty years.  But seek not to understand me.  Thou canst not understand me and be thyself; but, Paul, I can comprehend thee, for once I was thou.  Whither goest thou?  Paul cried, looking back.  But Jesus made no answer, and Paul, with a flutter of exaltation in his heart, turned towards Caesarea, knowing now for certain that Jesus would not go to Jerusalem to provoke the Jews against him.  Italy would therefore hear of the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ that had brought salvation for all, and Spain afterwards.  Spain, Spain, Spain! he repeated as he walked, filled with visions of salvation.  He walked with Spain vaguely in his mind till his reverie was broken by the sound of voices, and he saw people suddenly in a strange garb going towards the hillside on which he had left Jesus; neither Jews nor Greeks were they, and on turning to a shepherd standing by he heard that the strangely garbed people were monks from India, and they are telling the people, the shepherd said, that they must not believe that they have souls, and that they know that they are saved.  What can be saved but the spirit?  Paul cried, and he asked the shepherd how far he was from the village of Bethennabrio.  Not more than half-an-hour, the shepherd answered, and it was upon coming into sight of the village that Paul began to trace a likeness between the doctrines that Jesus had confided to him and the shepherd’s story of the doctrines that were being preached by the monks from India.  His thoughts were interrupted by the necessity of asking the first passenger coming from the village to direct him to the inn, and it was good tidings to hear that there was one.