The Bishop closed his eyes in a prayer that was an inarticulate gloria to the gladness of Life, and it was to the Glad Kingdom of Life in Newness that he had dedicated his life long ago, when he had rushed as a boy from pursuit of the kidnappers of Rome right into the prison hut of Paul, the Apostle of Christ, who had opened the doors of that Glad Kingdom. A bird’s wing almost brushed the Bishop’s face. He opened his eyes to one of those common tragedies of garden life, seen every day if we have eyes that see. Some insect of an early butterfly sort had come out of winter chrysalis pale, faint, trembling with the effect of casting off the dead body of its winter shell of skin, and was fanning moist wings dry in the morning sun, when the little feathered songster with a dart past the Bishop’s face, snatched away the dead shell body, while the pale nymph rose in giddy circles in the dazzling light.
The Bishop Onesimus gave a start. The nymph didn’t seem to realize that it had died to one form of life and risen to another. It had thrown aside what the Greeks called its “coat of skin” just as the beggars yonder under the Temple arches were folding up their night rags and coming out in the sun on the city square.
The little drama of the garden had enacted his very prayer; for what was the bird singing but a gloria to glad new life? And what was the nymph doing but casting off the body of death for rebirth to new life? And was not this the very thought that had been puzzling him this morning of the ascension of his Lord on what we to-day call Easter?
He had been reading John, the Beloved’s, last message to the Christian Churches of the Great Roman Road with warnings against the Beast Worship and foreflashes of things to come down the long ages. Of all the first messengers of the Glad News, John only, the disciple of Christ, and Apollos, the disciple of John the Baptist, remained on earth. Paul, beheaded in Rome! Peter, crucified in Rome! Matthew, Mark, Luke lost to history in Egypt! James martyred in Jerusalem! Thomas buried in the Far East! Philip disappeared in Ethiopia!
All were what the world called—Dead!
Almost twenty years had passed since the Fall of the Holy City, when he and Apollos coming from Jordan Ford had passed through Antioch and rescued Thecla in the mountain caves.
Yet here was John’s letter from banishment on Patmos Island, his last message to the Seven Christian Churches of the Great Roman Road, declaring “there shall be no more death,” and here was Paul’s letter to the Corinthians sent forward to be read to his own flock in Ephesus, declaring death was but a change of garment, an awakening from shadowy dreaming sleep to an effulgent intensest reality of life!
The Bishop strode back to his cloister. As he passed from his garden, he noticed the ragged horde of beggars coming out from the night shelter of Diana’s Temple to range themselves in posture of mendicants whining for alms across the city square. There was a child—a little ragged Greek with no clothing but a torn belted shirt, with tousled head, bare of feet, not more than eight years old, with a baby in a sling on his back. The baby’s eyes had been blinded and one arm broken—to arouse pity among passers-by. Onesimus had noticed these children before; and it made his mountain blood boil, for had not his Lord said—“Let little children come unto me?” And had not the prophets predicted: “A little child shall lead them?” And did this look as if the Shepherd of little children were protecting them; as if the spirit of the child were leading men back to God? It was as if a cloud of doubt suddenly obscured the gladness of the Easter morning. For a moment, he watched the byplay on the city square—the little Greek had stolen a flower from some city hedge. A tall angular spare woman clad all in black had come out of the Diana Temple from an all-night vigil. The child beggar was running along with the blind baby on his back wobbling its head from side to side, trying to sell her the stolen flower for a farthing. He made a clutch at the tall woman’s skirts to try and force her attention. She turned on him with imperious gesture and snatched her skirt from his hand so roughly that the little beggar with the baby on his back fell face down on the Temple steps; then something seemed to clutch at the heart strings of the woman’s own memories; for she paused, turned back and from the wallet in her pocket girdle, threw the child a handful of coins that flashed bronze and gold in the sun. It was as if the cloud of sadness that had obscured the gladness of the Easter morning had vanished like mist in sun.
Onesimus entered the cloister off the side of his little Christian church. He was tall, thin and athletic from his active life and inheritance of mountain blood. Religion was to him not the old-age anodyne to jaded physical sensations dying of the fungus that kills a fly in frost. It was the essence compounded of more Life and more Light.