On the Way to Rome

130:2.1Je­sus and his friends tar­ried in Cae­sarea be­yond the time ex­pected be­cause one of the huge steer­ing pad­dles of the ves­sel on which they in­tended to em­bark was dis­cov­ered to be in dan­ger of cleav­ing. The cap­tain de­cided to re­main in port while a new one was be­ing made. There was a short­age of skilled wood­work­ers for this task, so Je­sus vol­un­teered to as­sist. Dur­ing the evenings Je­sus and his friends strolled about on the beau­ti­ful wall which served as a prom­e­nade around the port. Ga­nid greatly en­joyed Je­sus’ ex­pla­na­tion of the wa­ter sys­tem of the city and the tech­nique whereby the tides were uti­lized to flush the city’s streets and sew­ers. This youth of In­dia was much im­pressed with the tem­ple of Au­gus­tus, sit­u­ated upon an el­e­va­tion and sur­mounted by a colos­sal statue of the Ro­man em­peror. The sec­ond af­ter­noon of their stay the three of them at­tended a per­for­mance in the enor­mous am­phithe­ater which could seat twenty thou­sand per­sons, and that night they went to a Greek play at the the­ater. These were the first ex­hi­bi­tions of this sort Ga­nid had ever wit­nessed, and he asked Je­sus many ques­tions about them. On the morn­ing of the third day they paid a for­mal visit to the gov­er­nor’s palace, for Cae­sarea was the cap­i­tal of Pales­tine and the res­i­dence of the Ro­man procu­ra­tor.

130:2.2At their inn there also lodged a mer­chant from Mon­go­lia, and since this Far-East­erner talked Greek fairly well, Je­sus had sev­eral long vis­its with him. This man was much im­pressed with Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life and never for­got his words of wis­dom re­gard­ing “the liv­ing of the heav­enly life while on earth by means of daily sub­mis­sion to the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther.” This mer­chant was a Taoist, and he had thereby be­come a strong be­liever in the doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal De­ity. When he re­turned to Mon­go­lia, he be­gan to teach these ad­vanced truths to his neigh­bors and to his busi­ness as­so­ciates, and as a di­rect re­sult of such ac­tiv­i­ties, his el­dest son de­cided to be­come a Taoist priest. This young man ex­erted a great in­flu­ence in be­half of ad­vanced truth through­out his life­time and was fol­lowed by a son and a grand­son who like­wise were de­vot­edly loyal to the doc­trine of the One God—the Su­preme Ruler of Heaven.

130:2.3While the east­ern branch of the early Chris­tian church, hav­ing its head­quar­ters at Phil­a­del­phia, held more faith­fully to the teach­ings of Je­sus than did the Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren, it was re­gret­table that there was no one like Pe­ter to go into China, or like Paul to en­ter In­dia, where the spir­i­tual soil was then so fa­vor­able for plant­ing the seed of the new gospel of the king­dom. These very teach­ings of Je­sus, as they were held by the Philadel­phi­ans, would have made just such an im­me­di­ate and ef­fec­tive ap­peal to the minds of the spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry Asi­atic peo­ples as did the preach­ing of Pe­ter and Paul in the West.

130:2.4One of the young men who worked with Je­sus one day on the steer­ing pad­dle be­came much in­ter­ested in the words which he dropped from hour to hour as they toiled in the ship­yard. When Je­sus in­ti­mated that the Fa­ther in heaven was in­ter­ested in the wel­fare of his chil­dren on earth, this young Greek, Anaxand, said: “If the Gods are in­ter­ested in me, then why do they not re­move the cruel and un­just fore­man of this work­shop?” He was star­tled when Je­sus replied, “Since you know the ways of kind­ness and value jus­tice, per­haps the Gods have brought this erring man near that you may lead him into this bet­ter way. Maybe you are the salt which is to make this brother more agree­able to all other men; that is, if you have not lost your sa­vor. As it is, this man is your mas­ter in that his evil ways un­fa­vor­ably in­flu­ence you. Why not as­sert your mas­tery of evil by virtue of the power of good­ness and thus be­come the mas­ter of all re­la­tions be­tween the two of you? I pre­dict that the good in you could over­come the evil in him if you gave it a fair and liv­ing chance. There is no ad­ven­ture in the course of mor­tal ex­is­tence more en­thralling than to en­joy the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of be­com­ing the ma­te­rial life part­ner with spir­i­tual en­ergy and di­vine truth in one of their tri­umphant strug­gles with er­ror and evil. It is a mar­velous and trans­form­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to be­come the liv­ing chan­nel of spir­i­tual light to the mor­tal who sits in spir­i­tual dark­ness. If you are more blessed with truth than is this man, his need should chal­lenge you. Surely you are not the cow­ard who could stand by on the seashore and watch a fel­low man who could not swim per­ish! How much more of value is this man’s soul floun­der­ing in dark­ness com­pared to his body drown­ing in wa­ter!”

130:2.5Anaxand was might­ily moved by Je­sus’ words. Pres­ently he told his su­pe­rior what Je­sus had said, and that night they both sought Je­sus’ ad­vice as to the wel­fare of their souls. And later on, af­ter the Chris­tian mes­sage had been pro­claimed in Cae­sarea, both of these men, one a Greek and the other a Ro­man, be­lieved Philip’s preach­ing and be­came promi­nent mem­bers of the church which he founded. Later this young Greek was ap­pointed the stew­ard of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion, Cor­nelius, who be­came a be­liever through Pe­ter’s min­istry. Anaxand con­tin­ued to min­is­ter light to those who sat in dark­ness un­til the days of Paul’s im­pris­on­ment at Cae­sarea, when he per­ished, by ac­ci­dent, in the great slaugh­ter of twenty thou­sand Jews while he min­is­tered to the suf­fer­ing and dy­ing.

130:2.6Ga­nid was, by this time, be­gin­ning to learn how his tu­tor spent his leisure in this un­usual per­sonal min­istry to his fel­low men, and the young In­dian set about to find out the mo­tive for these in­ces­sant ac­tiv­i­ties. He asked, “Why do you oc­cupy your­self so con­tin­u­ously with these vis­its with strangers?” And Je­sus an­swered: “Ga­nid, no man is a stranger to one who knows God. In the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing the Fa­ther in heaven you dis­cover that all men are your broth­ers, and does it seem strange that one should en­joy the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of meet­ing a newly dis­cov­ered brother? To be­come ac­quainted with one’s broth­ers and sis­ters, to know their prob­lems and to learn to love them, is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing.”

130:2.7This was a con­fer­ence which lasted well into the night, in the course of which the young man re­quested Je­sus to tell him the dif­fer­ence be­tween the will of God and that hu­man mind act of choos­ing which is also called will. In sub­stance Je­sus said: The will of God is the way of God, part­ner­ship with the choice of God in the face of any po­ten­tial al­ter­na­tive. To do the will of God, there­fore, is the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like God, and God is the source and des­tiny of all that is good and beau­ti­ful and true. The will of man is the way of man, the sum and sub­stance of that which the mor­tal chooses to be and do. Will is the de­lib­er­ate choice of a self-con­scious be­ing which leads to de­ci­sion-con­duct based on in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.

130:2.8That af­ter­noon Je­sus and Ga­nid had both en­joyed play­ing with a very in­tel­li­gent shep­herd dog, and Ga­nid wanted to know whether the dog had a soul, whether it had a will, and in re­sponse to his ques­tions Je­sus said: “The dog has a mind which can know ma­te­rial man, his mas­ter, but can­not know God, who is spirit; there­fore the dog does not pos­sess a spir­i­tual na­ture and can­not en­joy a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The dog may have a will de­rived from na­ture and aug­mented by train­ing, but such a power of mind is not a spir­i­tual force, nei­ther is it com­pa­ra­ble to the hu­man will, inas­much as it is not re­flec­tive—it is not the re­sult of dis­crim­i­nat­ing higher and moral mean­ings or choos­ing spir­i­tual and eter­nal val­ues. It is the pos­ses­sion of such pow­ers of spir­i­tual dis­crim­i­na­tion and truth choos­ing that makes mor­tal man a moral be­ing, a crea­ture en­dowed with the at­tri­butes of spir­i­tual re­spon­si­bil­ity and the po­ten­tial of eter­nal sur­vival.” Je­sus went on to ex­plain that it is the ab­sence of such men­tal pow­ers in the an­i­mal which makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for the an­i­mal world to de­velop lan­guage in time or to ex­pe­ri­ence any­thing equiv­a­lent to per­son­al­ity sur­vival in eter­nity. As a re­sult of this day’s in­struc­tion Ga­nid never again en­ter­tained be­lief in the trans­mi­gra­tion of the souls of men into the bod­ies of an­i­mals.

130:2.9The next day Ga­nid talked all this over with his fa­ther, and it was in an­swer to Gonod’s ques­tion that Je­sus ex­plained that “hu­man wills which are fully oc­cu­pied with pass­ing only upon tem­po­ral de­ci­sions hav­ing to do with the ma­te­rial prob­lems of an­i­mal ex­is­tence are doomed to per­ish in time. Those who make whole­hearted moral de­ci­sions and un­qual­i­fied spir­i­tual choices are thus pro­gres­sively iden­ti­fied with the in­dwelling and di­vine spirit, and thereby are they in­creas­ingly trans­formed into the val­ues of eter­nal sur­vival—un­end­ing pro­gres­sion of di­vine ser­vice.”

130:2.10It was on this same day that we first heard that mo­men­tous truth which, stated in mod­ern terms, would sig­nify: “Will is that man­i­fes­ta­tion of the hu­man mind which en­ables the sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness to ex­press it­self ob­jec­tively and to ex­pe­ri­ence the phe­nom­e­non of as­pir­ing to be God­like.” And it is in this same sense that ev­ery re­flec­tive and spir­i­tu­ally minded hu­man be­ing can be­come cre­ative.