Boy though he was, Joel looked down the years of his life feeling it was only a fleeting shadow, compared with the eternal companionship just promised him.
He would make no moan; he would utter no complaint: but he would take up his life's little day, and bear it after the Master,—a cup of loving service,—into that upper kingdom where there was a place prepared for him.
It was all over so soon. They were left alone on the mountain-side again, with only the sunshine flickering through the leaves, and the wood-birds just beginning to trill to each other once more. But the warm air seemed to still throb with the last words He had spoken: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
Phineas came down the mountain with his face all ashine; at last his eyes had been opened.
"He and the Father are one!" he exclaimed to the man walking beside him. "That voice is the same that spake from the midst of the burning bush, and from the summit of Sinai. All these years I have followed the Master, I believed Him to be a perfect man and a great prophet; I believed Him to be 'the rod out of the stem of Jesse' who through Jehovah's hand was to redeem Israel, even as the rod in Aaron's hand smote the floods and made a pathway for our people.
"When I saw Him put to death as a felon, all hope died within me; even to-day I came out here unbelieving. I could not think that I should see Him. How blind we have been all these years! God with us in the flesh, and we did not know Him!"
Joel walked on behind the two, sharing their feeling of exaltation. As they came down into the valley and entered Capernaum, the work-a-day sights and noises seemed to jar on their senses, in this uplifted mood.
A man standing in an open doorway accosted Phineas, and asked when he could commence work on the house he had talked to him about building.
Phineas hesitated, and looked down at the ground, as if studying some difficult problem. In a few minutes he raised his eyes with a look of decision.