Chapter 12

‘I never have had any respect for people who pretend to work wonders, but the things that happened out there yesterday, if not miraculous, need quite a lot of explaining…But it was what the Carpenter said, even more than what he did, that has disposed me to write you at such length of this strange business.

‘After he had apparently given sight to a dozen or more blind ones, he went on to say that the entire population of the earth was groping in darkness; and that went for everybody, kings and peasants, philosophers and fools. He had been sent, he said, to give sight to these blind people. “I am the light of the world!” he declared; and, strangely enough, nobody laughed, nobody sneered.

‘Of course an assertion of this character sounds like the boasting of a crack-brained fanatic; and if I were to read of it in a letter, instead of hearing it from the man’s own lips, I should marvel how the writer could have taken so much nonsense seriously.

‘I confess I gasped a little when the Carpenter committed this outrageous audacity, but I couldn’t help remembering what you said, one day, about your belief in a “Torchbearer”.

‘I was still further stirred to remembrance of your remarks on that matter when the Carpenter added that the light he carried would reflect from those who received it: they too would illumine the path for those who were lost in the dark, even as a lighted city on a hill-top.

‘Whoever had his lamp lighted at the Nazarene’s torch was in duty bound to let it shine. The lamp was not to be hidden where it would benefit only the possessor in his little corner. The lamp was the property of the man who held it, but the light belonged to the public!…(I hope I am doing the Carpenter’s speech justice. You should have been there, Mencius. It was the sort of thing you would have enjoyed—and understood.)

‘It is unlikely that the political and religious pundits will permit this Jesus to continue his present course very long. He has the whole province by the ears. Many well-to-do employers of farm and vineyard labour are protesting that their men have been absent whole days from their duties. Presently they will arrest the Carpenter, as a disturber of the peace—which, of course, he is—and if he gets a long term in prison he will be lucky… He may be—as he says—the light of the world, but it is doubtful whether the world wants light…I wish I might hear what you think about this.

‘I remain in Caesarea until spring. Then I shall return—without much hope, I admit—to Tiberias for further talk with Fara. If she still refuses to go back to Arabia, I may have no inclination to return alone. I cherish the memory of your kindness…’

‘VOLDI.’