Jesus. He remembered with sorrow how he tried to explain to Jesus the
teaching of the Alexandrian philosophers regarding the Scriptures,
paining Jesus very much by his recital but he had continued to explain
for the sake of the answer that he knew would come at last. It did come.
He remembered Jesus saying that philosophies change in different men,
but the love of God is the same in all men. A great truth, Joseph said
to himself, for every school is in opposition to another school. But how
did Jesus come to know this being without philosophy? He had been
tempted to ask how he was able to get at the truth of things without the
Greek language and without education, but refrained lest a question
should break the harmony of the evening. The past was not yet past and
sitting on his bed in the moonlight Joseph could re-see the plain
covered with beautiful grasses and flowers, with low flowering bushes
waving over dusky headlands, for it was dark as they crossed the plain;
and they had heard rather than seen the rushing stream, bubbling out of
the earth, making music in the still night. He knew the stream from
early childhood, but he had never really known it until he stood with
Jesus under the stars by the narrow pathway cut in the shoulder of the
hill, whither the way leads to Capernaum, for it was there that Jesus
took his hands and said the words: "Our Father which is in Heaven." At
these words their eyes were raised to the skies, and Jesus said: whoever
admires the stars and the flowers finds God in his heart and sees him in
his neighbour's face. And as Joseph sat, his hands on his knees, he
recalled the moment that Jesus turned from him abruptly and passed into
the shadow of the hillside that fell across the flowering mead. He heard
his footsteps and had listened, repressing the passionate desire to
follow him and to say: having found thee, I can leave thee never again.
It was fear of Jesus that prevented him from following Jesus, and he
returned slowly the way he came, his eyes fixed on the stars, for the
day was now well behind the hills and the night all over the valley,