“Hast thou attained unto all that thou makest known unto me?”
“No one can fully separate himself from his day and generation, even though the spiritual pattern be truly discerned. We have not overcome, but are overcoming. The Ideal is the inmost Real, but no one save Jesus of Nazareth hath made it fully manifest. We press forward toward the Christly mind as shown through him, and can count as already ours that measure of spiritual stature which filleth our desire.”
“Whence hast thou this wisdom, which my father, the famous teacher and Rabban, never found?”
“It cometh not through scholastic excellence and the logic of the head, but by simple openness to the Spirit of Truth. The power of God-likeness groweth through the earnest desire of at-one-ment, rather than by a reasoning philosophy concerning it.”
“Behold, as thy disciple, I now perceive how one may be in the seen and yet of the unseen!”
“They are one; yet the outer is only an aspect of the living realities which repose behind it.”
“O my dear husband and teacher!” exclaimed Amabel with delight; “Nature will be more beautiful than ever before, because I feel its spirit, and behold it as a visible revelation.”
“Yea, bride of my heart! Love is everywhere written in living characters! Our deeper vision must be open to read them!”
The shadows of evening were thickening, and the happy pair reluctantly bade adieu to their delectable vision upon the house-top, and descended again to mingle with their kind, and minister to human necessity.
Serenus had expected to find some vessel at Cæsarea bound directly for Italy, which would land at Puteoli or Brundusium, from either of which ports the journey to Rome would be made by land. But upon ascertaining that there was no immediate prospect for such an opportunity, and that the Salapiæ, a merchantman of good repute, was already laden for Tarsus, and to sail on the following day, he decided to embark for the Cilician capital. They would remain there for a time, [pg 252]until they were minded to take the rest of the proposed journey.