The Return from Rome

133:0.1When prepar­ing to leave Rome, Je­sus said good-bye to none of his friends. The scribe of Da­mas­cus ap­peared in Rome with­out an­nounce­ment and dis­ap­peared in like man­ner. It was a full year be­fore those who knew and loved him gave up hope of see­ing him again. Be­fore the end of the sec­ond year small groups of those who had known him found them­selves drawn to­gether by their com­mon in­ter­est in his teach­ings and through mu­tual mem­ory of their good times with him. And these small groups of Sto­ics, Cyn­ics, and mys­tery cultists con­tin­ued to hold these ir­reg­u­lar and in­for­mal meet­ings right up to the time of the ap­pear­ance in Rome of the first preach­ers of the Chris­tian re­li­gion.

133:0.2Gonod and Ga­nid had pur­chased so many things in Alexan­dria and Rome that they sent all their be­long­ings on ahead by pack train to Tar­en­tum, while the three trav­el­ers walked leisurely across Italy over the great Ap­pian Way. On this jour­ney they en­coun­tered all sorts of hu­man be­ings. Many no­ble Ro­man cit­i­zens and Greek colonists lived along this road, but al­ready the progeny of great num­bers of in­fe­rior slaves were be­gin­ning to make their ap­pear­ance.

133:0.3One day while rest­ing at lunch, about half­way to Tar­en­tum, Ga­nid asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion as to what he thought of In­dia’s caste sys­tem. Said Je­sus: “Though hu­man be­ings dif­fer in many ways, the one from an­other, be­fore God and in the spir­i­tual world all mor­tals stand on an equal foot­ing. There are only two groups of mor­tals in the eyes of God: those who de­sire to do his will and those who do not. As the uni­verse looks upon an in­hab­ited world, it like­wise dis­cerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not. Those who can­not know God are reck­oned among the an­i­mals of any given realm. Man­kind can ap­pro­pri­ately be di­vided into many classes in ac­cor­dance with dif­fer­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions, as they may be viewed phys­i­cally, men­tally, so­cially, vo­ca­tion­ally, or morally, but as these dif­fer­ent classes of mor­tals ap­pear be­fore the judg­ment bar of God, they stand on an equal foot­ing; God is truly no re­specter of per­sons. Al­though you can­not es­cape the rec­og­ni­tion of dif­fer­en­tial hu­man abil­i­ties and en­dow­ments in mat­ters in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, and moral, you should make no such dis­tinc­tions in the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of men when as­sem­bled for wor­ship in the pres­ence of God.”