On the very afternoon of their arrival, a report flew through the streets that the Rabbi Jesus was once more in the town. Their host led them with all the haste their dignity would allow, to the house where He was said to be preaching. The common people fell back when they saw them, and allowed them to pass into the centre of the throng.
The Rabbi stood in the doorway, so that both those in the house and without could distinctly hear Him. The scribe had never seen Him before, and in spite of his deep-seated prejudice could not help admiring the man whom he had come prepared to despise. It was no wild fanatic who stood before him, no noisy debater whose fiery eloquence would be likely to excite and inflame His hearers.
He saw a man of gentlest dignity; truth looked out from the depths of His calm eyes. Every word, every gesture, carried with it the conviction that He who spoke taught with God-given authority.
The scribe began to grow uneasy as he listened, carried along by the earnest tones of the speaker.
There was a great commotion on the edge of the crowd, as some one tried to push through to the centre.
"Stand back! Go away!" demanded angry voices.
The scribe was a tall man, and by stretching a little, managed to see over the heads of the others. Four men, bearing a helpless paralytic, were trying to carry him through the throngs; but they would not make room for this interruption.
After vainly hunting for some opening through which they might press, the men mounted the steep, narrow staircase on the outside of the building, and drew the man up, hammock and all, to the flat roof on which they stood.
There was a sound of scraping and scratching as they broke away the brush and mortar that formed the frail covering of the roof. Then the people in the room below saw slowly coming down upon them between the rafters, this man whom no obstacle could keep back from the Great Physician.
But the paralyzed hands could not lift themselves in supplication; the helpless tongue could frame no word of pleading,—only the eyes of the sick man could look up into the pitying face bent over him, and implore a blessing.