I read on as follows: "'Behold, my Servant shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. He shall sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him. He shall lift up his hand to the Gentiles, and set up his standard to the people. Kings shall bow down to him with their faces to the earth, and lick up the dust of his feet!'"
"There! Such is our Messias!" exclaimed Saul.
"Yes, it is a Christ of power and dominion who is to redeem Israel," added Gamaliel; "not an unknown young man, scarcely thirty years of age, who came from whence no one knoweth, and hath gone as he came. As for the Christ, we shall know whence he cometh!"
At hearing this great and good man thus discourse, dear father, my heart sank within me, for Lazarus had already told us that his friend Jesus was of humble birth, a carpenter's son, and his mother a widow; that he had known him from boyhood, but known him only to love him. I now looked towards him, but I took courage when I saw that the words of Gamaliel did not in the least dim the light of faith and confidence which brightly sparkled in his eyes, that his friend Jesus was truly Messias of God. But my eye fell on what follows, and as I read it I gained more confidence: "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him."
"If the first part of this prophecy," said Lazarus, his fine eyes lighting up, as he looked at Saul, "be of the Christ, as you have just now confessed, then is this last of him; and the fact that you reject him is but the fulfillment of this part of the prophecy."
Hereupon arose a very warm discussion between Gamaliel and Saul on one side, and Rabbi Amos, John and Lazarus on the other.
"But let this be as it may," said John, after the arguments on both sides had been mainly exhausted, "how will you, O Gamaliel, and you, Saul, get over the extraordinary voice and fiery appearance which distinguished the baptism?"
"That must have been a phenomenon of nature, or done by the art of the famed Babylonish sorcerer, whom I saw prominent in the multitude," answered the philosopher.
"Did you not hear the words?" asked Rabbi Amos.
"Yes, Rabbi; nevertheless, they may have been thrown into the air from the lungs of this sorcerer; for they do marvelous things."