On the Way to Rome

130:3.1It had been an event­ful visit at Cae­sarea, and when the boat was ready, Je­sus and his two friends de­parted at noon one day for Alexan­dria in Egypt.

130:3.2The three en­joyed a most pleas­ant pas­sage to Alexan­dria. Ga­nid was de­lighted with the voy­age and kept Je­sus busy an­swer­ing ques­tions. As they ap­proached the city’s har­bor, the young man was thrilled by the great light­house of Pharos, lo­cated on the is­land which Alexan­der had joined by a mole to the main­land, thus cre­at­ing two mag­nif­i­cent har­bors and thereby mak­ing Alexan­dria the mar­itime com­mer­cial cross­roads of Africa, Asia, and Eu­rope. This great light­house was one of the seven won­ders of the world and was the fore­run­ner of all sub­se­quent light­houses. They arose early in the morn­ing to view this splen­did life­sav­ing de­vice of man, and amidst the ex­cla­ma­tions of Ga­nid Je­sus said: “And you, my son, will be like this light­house when you re­turn to In­dia, even af­ter your fa­ther is laid to rest; you will be­come like the light of life to those who sit about you in dark­ness, show­ing all who so de­sire the way to reach the har­bor of sal­va­tion in safety.” And as Ga­nid squeezed Je­sus’ hand, he said, “I will.”

130:3.3And again we re­mark that the early teach­ers of the Chris­tian re­li­gion made a great mis­take when they so ex­clu­sively turned their at­ten­tion to the west­ern civ­i­liza­tion of the Ro­man world. The teach­ings of Je­sus, as they were held by the Mes­o­po­ta­mian be­liev­ers of the first cen­tury, would have been read­ily re­ceived by the var­i­ous groups of Asi­atic re­li­gion­ists.

130:3.4By the fourth hour af­ter land­ing they were set­tled near the east­ern end of the long and broad av­enue, one hun­dred feet wide and five miles long, which stretched on out to the west­ern lim­its of this city of one mil­lion peo­ple. Af­ter the first sur­vey of the city’s chief at­trac­tions—uni­ver­sity (mu­seum), li­brary, the royal mau­soleum of Alexan­der, the palace, tem­ple of Nep­tune, the­ater, and gym­na­sium—Gonod ad­dressed him­self to busi­ness while Je­sus and Ga­nid went to the li­brary, the great­est in the world. Here were as­sem­bled nearly a mil­lion manuscripts from all the civ­i­lized world: Greece, Rome, Pales­tine, Parthia, In­dia, China, and even Japan. In this li­brary Ga­nid saw the largest col­lec­tion of In­dian lit­er­a­ture in all the world; and they spent some time here each day through­out their stay in Alexan­dria. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at this place. And they dis­cussed again and again all the re­li­gions of the world, Je­sus en­deav­or­ing to point out to this young mind the truth in each, al­ways adding: “But Yah­weh is the God de­vel­oped from the rev­e­la­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the covenant of Abra­ham. The Jews were the off­spring of Abra­ham and sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied the very land wherein Mel­chiz­e­dek had lived and taught, and from which he sent teach­ers to all the world; and their re­li­gion even­tu­ally por­trayed a clearer rec­og­ni­tion of the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in heaven than any other world re­li­gion.”

130:3.5Un­der Je­sus’ di­rec­tion Ga­nid made a col­lec­tion of the teach­ings of all those re­li­gions of the world which rec­og­nized a Uni­ver­sal De­ity, even though they might also give more or less rec­og­ni­tion to sub­or­di­nate de­i­ties. Af­ter much dis­cus­sion Je­sus and Ga­nid de­cided that the Ro­mans had no real God in their re­li­gion, that their re­li­gion was hardly more than em­peror wor­ship. The Greeks, they con­cluded, had a phi­los­o­phy but hardly a re­li­gion with a per­sonal God. The mys­tery cults they dis­carded be­cause of the con­fu­sion of their mul­ti­plic­ity, and be­cause their var­ied con­cepts of De­ity seemed to be de­rived from other and older re­li­gions.

130:3.6Al­though these trans­la­tions were made at Alexan­dria, Ga­nid did not fi­nally ar­range these se­lec­tions and add his own per­sonal con­clu­sions un­til near the end of their so­journ in Rome. He was much sur­prised to dis­cover that the best of the au­thors of the world’s sa­cred lit­er­a­ture all more or less clearly rec­og­nized the ex­is­tence of an eter­nal God and were much in agree­ment with re­gard to his char­ac­ter and his re­la­tion­ship with mor­tal man.

130:3.7Je­sus and Ga­nid spent much time in the mu­seum dur­ing their stay in Alexan­dria. This mu­seum was not a col­lec­tion of rare ob­jects but rather a uni­ver­sity of fine art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Learned pro­fes­sors here gave daily lec­tures, and in those times this was the in­tel­lec­tual cen­ter of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. Day by day Je­sus in­ter­preted the lec­tures to Ga­nid; one day dur­ing the sec­ond week the young man ex­claimed: “Teacher Joshua, you know more than these pro­fes­sors; you should stand up and tell them the great things you have told me; they are be­fogged by much think­ing. I shall speak to my fa­ther and have him ar­range it.” Je­sus smiled, say­ing: “You are an ad­mir­ing pupil, but these teach­ers are not minded that you and I should in­struct them. The pride of un­spir­i­tu­al­ized learn­ing is a treach­er­ous thing in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The true teacher main­tains his in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity by ever re­main­ing a learner.”

130:3.8Alexan­dria was the city of the blended cul­ture of the Oc­ci­dent and next to Rome the largest and most mag­nif­i­cent in the world. Here was lo­cated the largest Jew­ish syn­a­gogue in the world, the seat of gov­ern­ment of the Alexan­dria San­hedrin, the sev­enty rul­ing el­ders.

130:3.9Among the many men with whom Gonod trans­acted busi­ness was a cer­tain Jew­ish banker, Alexan­der, whose brother, Philo, was a fa­mous re­li­gious philoso­pher of that time. Philo was en­gaged in the laud­able but ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult task of har­mo­niz­ing Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy. Ga­nid and Je­sus talked much about Philo’s teach­ings and ex­pected to at­tend some of his lec­tures, but through­out their stay at Alexan­dria this fa­mous Hel­lenis­tic Jew lay sick abed.

130:3.10Je­sus com­mended to Ga­nid much in the Greek phi­los­o­phy and the Stoic doc­trines, but he im­pressed upon the lad the truth that these sys­tems of be­lief, like the in­def­i­nite teach­ings of some of his own peo­ple, were re­li­gions only in the sense that they led men to find God and en­joy a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in know­ing the Eter­nal.