and Dan could find nothing better to say than: Joseph, there is gloom in
thy face; but be not afraid to tell me if thou art disappointed that
thou wert not with Jesus when his Father spoke to him out of heaven, and
thereby missed being among the apostles. For this suspicion Joseph
rebuked his father, but as it was his dearest wish to be numbered
amongst the apostles his rebukes were faint, and feeling he was making
bad worse, he put as bold a face upon it as he could, saying to his
father that he would have liked to have been numbered among the twelve,
but since it did not befall he was content; and to himself that he was
younger than any that were elected, and if one of them were to die he
would be called to fill his place.

So much admission was forced upon him, for it was important that his
father should accept his absence from the mountain that day as a
sufficient reason for his not having been elected an apostle, the real
reason being, not his absence from the mountain, but the fact that he
chose to turn aside from Jesus and leave him to attend his father's
sick-bed. That was the sin he was judged guilty of, an unpardonable act
in Jesus' mind, and one that discredited Joseph for ever, proving him
for good and all to be unworthy to follow Jesus, which might be no more
than the truth. He could follow Jesus' way of thinking, apprehending it
remotely; but to his father, Jesus present teaching, that one must learn
to hate one's father and one's mother, one's wife and one's children
before one can love God, would be incomprehensible; and he would be
estranged from Jesus for ever, as many of the disciples had been that
morning by such ultra-idealism. It would have been better to have
withheld the miracle, he said to himself, and then he lost himself
thinking how the election of the apostles had dropped from him, for it
had nothing to do with the miracle, and then awakening a little from his
reverie he assured himself that his father must never know, for Dan