In Both Worlds

by William H. Holcombe

Magistus was astounded, and perhaps pained, on finding that his own child had been crucified with Jesus. It was too late to do aught but bury the whole matter with the other painful things in his memory. He said nothing to Ulema on the subject, who was of course unconscious of it all in her waking state.

A strange thing, however, now took place. The moment she passed into her trance state, she began to weep and wail over her lost child. Her clairvoyance put her in full possession of all the facts of his life and death. The mother’s heart broke under the immense sorrow. She pined rapidly, and her white hands were soon folded in that sweet sleep which precedes the celestial waking.

We have a life within our life, like a wheel within a wheel!

With no knowledge of his parentage, no friend in whom to confide, no heart to receive and give a last adieu, the Son of the Desert bore his own cross up Calvary, and was nailed upon it by the Roman soldiers.

He had never seen Jesus before. He had heard of him only through enemies. He supposed him to be some fanatic or impostor, or perhaps some political maniac who aspired to the crown of Judea. At first he joined [pg 300]his fellow-sufferer on the other side of Christ in railing against the king and miracle-worker, whose sceptre and miraculous powers seemed so useless to himself and others in his last extremity.

But the conduct and words of Jesus smote him to the heart. Through that secret affiliation and sympathy by which one brave and good man recognizes another in the hour of sternest trial, the Son of the Desert, educated only in heart, perceived with the heart that the kingdom of Christ was a spiritual kingdom. Divining intuitively the mission of infinite love in which the Lord was engaged, he confesses his own sin, rebukes and silences his fellow-sinner, and pleads for remembrance in the hour of triumph which he sees is approaching for the King of kings.

Brave, repentant soul! Jesus is everywhere; in heaven; in earth; in hell. And shortly thou wast with Him and He with thee, in that paradise or garden of the soul, in which the new life, forgetful of the old, begins to bud and blossom!

The great tragedy was enacted. The disciples at first stood afar off. But as the death-scenes drew nearer, and the curiosity of the crowd increased, military discipline was somewhat relaxed, and the people were permitted to press closer, and those who had special claims were allowed to come up and stand very near the dying sufferers. It was thus that the Apostle John, and Mary the mother of the Lord, were in speaking distance in his last moments. It was then that He gave each of them so tenderly to the other.

Aside from this awful central scene, which will shine [pg 301]in all history as the pivotal event of the world, a pathetic side-scene was enacted, of which there is no historian but myself; and even I was not present, but relate it at second-hand. My authority, however, was a man of truth, John the Apostle, the exile of Patmos.

Far off in the crowd was a solitary being whose eyes were fixed continually on the Son of the Desert. He stood with his brawny arms folded spasmodically across his chest. Great tears ran slowly down his cheeks. That man was poor and ignorant and ragged and black, but he had a noble soul. It was Anthony, the Ethiopian, who, exiled by Pilate into the desert, had there met Barabbas and his band. He soon attached himself by a certain instinct to the only noble spirit in the party. He followed the fortunes of this man; and, true to his African genius, he imitated his character. The Son of the Desert was not ashamed of his humble disciple.