Her lips, parted to protest against the vague answer, closed at the final sentence and the Christian pressed his advantage.
"Of that Jerusalem there is no like on earth. Against its walls no enemy ever comes; neither warfare nor hunger nor thirst nor suffering nor death. This which David builded is a poor city, a humble city compared to that New Jerusalem. There the King is already come; there the citizens are at peace and in love with one another. There thou shalt have all that thy heart yearneth after, and all that thy heart yearneth after shall be right."
In that city would it be right that she love Hesper instead of Philadelphus, and that she should have her lover instead of her lawful husband?
While she turned these things over in her mind, he wisely went on with his story. Shrewdly sensing the young woman's anxiety, the old Christian guessed the interest to her of the Messiah's history before His teaching and began with prophecy to support the authenticity of the wonderful Galilean's claim to divinity. It was no fisherman or weaver of tent-cloth who brought forth the declarations of the comforter of Hezekiah, the captive prophet and the priest in the land of the Chaldeans. His was no barbarous manner or slipshod tongue of the market-place and the wheat-fields, but the polish and the clean-cut flawless language of the synagogues and the colleges. Laodice saw in the gesture and phrase the refinement of her father, Costobarus, of the gentlest Judean blood.
"I saw Him," he went on in a low voice.
Laodice with her intent gaze on the beatified face put her hand to her heart.
"Forty years ago," the old voice continued, "I saw Him first in Galilee. There He was disbelieved and cast out. He came then unto Jerusalem and I saw Him there heal lepers, cast out evil spirits, cure the blind and the sick and the palsied. And in the house of Jairus and at Nain, I saw Him raise the dead.
"I saw Him come to Jerusalem. Multitudes followed Him and accompanied Him, casting their mantles and palm-branches in the way that His mule might tread upon them."
The old man pointed south toward the single summit from which Christ approaching could overlook Jerusalem.
"On that hill," he said, "while the multitudes hailed Him and the sound of Alleluia shook the air, He reined in His meek beast and looked upon this city, and wept over it. When He spoke, He said, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.