When the crowd was greatest and the excitement highest, our old enemy Magistus, assuming the garb of friendship, came to see me. He had heard of my death with great pleasure, for he expected to regain possession of the property and of my sisters. He was at heart greatly incensed at my return to life, and vowed to wreak his vengeance on the Divine Man who raised me from the dead.
He entered with affected friendliness of manner, and congratulated me on my happy escape from the world of shadows. He hoped, with sanctimonious earnestness, that after this solemn warning, I would discard all my pagan ideas and proclivities, and consecrate my whole soul to the service of the only true and living God.
I told him that I was rather to be pitied than congratulated on returning to a world so vastly inferior in beauty, [pg 268]peace, and joy to the one I had visited. I told him also that I had been instructed in the true doctrine of God in the world of spirits, and that I had seen the terrible dangers which were impending over the Jewish people and church on account of the blindness and wickedness of their hearts.
“You will be delighted to hear,” I continued, “that my guide and instructor was my beloved father, who passed from the wilderness into heaven, exchanging a poor leprous body for the radiant form of an angel.”
Whether my looks and tones displeased him, or my statements aroused his anger; or whether the sphere of truth, like the revealing light of heaven, compelled him to show himself in his true colors; Magistus dropped the mask, scowled upon me with a face full of hateful passion, and retired, turning at the door to exclaim:
“Beware, young man! lest this pretended resurrection prove the cause of your real death.”
I had hardly felt myself in full and healthful possession of my natural body again, when I made inquiries after that beautiful and fascinating woman, the love of whom, unrequited and consuming, had been the principal cause of my death. One might suppose that after my strange experience with Helena or her attendant demon—an experience seemingly designed to apprise me of her true character—she would have been the last person on earth I desired to see.
Alas! it was not so. The enchantments of the senses strike deep into the soul. The dream of love first engendered in the fervid brain of youth is not easily forgotten. Her beautiful face and bewitching figure were [pg 269]constantly before me. And it was with the deepest anguish that I heard she had fled from her father and friends, and had gone down into Egypt with Simon Magus.
I found it impossible to turn my thoughts from this Greek siren whose own evil passions had thus borne her out of my reach, and to concentrate them upon that other woman whom Providence had decreed to be my eternal partner, and who was silently, painfully, unconsciously, co-operating with me in building that palace in the architectural heaven of my tribe.
Mary Magdalen followed Jesus as usual, and came occasionally with the crowd into the front courtyard of our house. The love of Helena so preoccupied my thoughts and desires, that I could not make up my mind to speak to her forlorn rival, or to invite her into the guest-chamber with the other disciples. So the future wife of my soul stood without among the unwelcomed crowd, outcast, solitary, unfriended, patiently bearing the burden of life for both herself and me.