“Master,” exclaimed Simon, loudly, “I will go with you.”

Others who had followed Him along the bank heard the decision.  They marvelled at the words that had passed, and the erring woman whom He had protected would not leave Him.

In the distance the clamour could still be heard, but gradually the crowd dispersed.  Jesus then sought lodging for Himself and His disciples.

CHAPTER XV

A short time after, some of those who had formed the crowd at Magdala were gathered together in the house of the Rabbi Jairus.  They were watching the dead.  For in the centre of the room, on a table, lay the body of the Rabbi’s daughter shrouded in white linen.  Her father was so cast down with grief that his friends knew not how to console him.  Then someone suggested calling in Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had just seen resting with His followers under the cedars of Hirah.  They narrated the miracles that He had lately worked.  On the road leading to Capernaum a man was lying side by side with his little son, into whom had entered the spirit of epilepsy.  The child had fallen down and foamed at the mouth, and his teeth and hands were so locked together that his father, in his despair, all but strangled him.  He had already taken the child to the disciples of Jesus, but they had not been able to help him.  Then he sought the Master and exclaimed angrily:  “If you can do anything, help him!” “Take heed that we do not all suffer because of him,” the prophet said, and then made the child whole.  And they told yet more.  On the other side of the lake He had made a deaf-mute to speak, and at Bethsaida had made a blind man to see.  But, above all, every one knew how at Nain He had brought back a young man to life who had already been carried out of the house in his coffin!  A wine-presser was there who told something about an old woman who had vehemently prayed the prophet to cure her sickness.  Thereupon Jesus said:  “You are old and yet you wish to live!  What makes this earth so pleasing to you?” and she replied:  “Nothing is pleasing to me on this earth.  But I do not want to die until the Saviour comes, who will open the gates of Heaven for me.”  And He:  “Since your faith is so strong, woman, you shall live to see the Saviour.”  Thereupon she rose up and went her way.  These were the things He did, but He did not like them to be talked about.

Such was the talk among the people gathered round the little girl’s corpse.  Among the company was an old man who was of those who liked to display their wisdom on every possible occasion.  He declared that faith and love, nothing else, produced such miracles.  No miracle-worker could help an unbeliever; but a man whom the people loved could easily work miracles.  “They forget all his failures, and remember and magnify all his successes.  That’s all there is in it.”

A man answered him:  “It is important that he should be loved, but the love is compelled by some mysterious power.  No one can make himself beloved of his own accord, it must be given him.”