The Return from Rome

133:2.1While tar­ry­ing at the ship land­ing, wait­ing for the boat to un­load cargo, the trav­el­ers ob­served a man mis­treat­ing his wife. As was his cus­tom, Je­sus in­ter­vened in be­half of the per­son sub­jected to at­tack. He stepped up be­hind the irate hus­band and, tap­ping him gen­tly on the shoul­der, said: “My friend, may I speak with you in pri­vate for a mo­ment?” The an­gry man was non­plused by such an ap­proach and, af­ter a mo­ment of em­bar­rass­ing hes­i­ta­tion, stam­mered out—“er—why—yes, what do you want with me?” When Je­sus had led him to one side, he said: “My friend, I per­ceive that some­thing ter­ri­ble must have hap­pened to you; I very much de­sire that you tell me what could hap­pen to such a strong man to lead him to at­tack his wife, the mother of his chil­dren, and that right out here be­fore all eyes. I am sure you must feel that you have some good rea­son for this as­sault. What did the woman do to de­serve such treat­ment from her hus­band? As I look upon you, I think I dis­cern in your face the love of jus­tice if not the de­sire to show mercy. I ven­ture to say that, if you found me out by the way­side, at­tacked by rob­bers, you would un­hesi­tat­ingly rush to my res­cue. I dare say you have done many such brave things in the course of your life. Now, my friend, tell me what is the mat­ter? Did the woman do some­thing wrong, or did you fool­ishly lose your head and thought­lessly as­sault her?” It was not so much what he said that touched this man’s heart as the kindly look and the sym­pa­thetic smile which Je­sus be­stowed upon him at the con­clu­sion of his re­marks. Said the man: “I per­ceive you are a priest of the Cyn­ics, and I am thank­ful you re­strained me. My wife has done no great wrong; she is a good woman, but she ir­ri­tates me by the man­ner in which she picks on me in pub­lic, and I lose my tem­per. I am sorry for my lack of self-con­trol, and I prom­ise to try to live up to my for­mer pledge to one of your broth­ers who taught me the bet­ter way many years ago. I prom­ise you.”

133:2.2And then, in bid­ding him farewell, Je­sus said: “My brother, al­ways re­mem­ber that man has no right­ful au­thor­ity over woman un­less the woman has will­ingly and vol­un­tar­ily given him such au­thor­ity. Your wife has en­gaged to go through life with you, to help you fight its bat­tles, and to as­sume the far greater share of the bur­den of bear­ing and rear­ing your chil­dren; and in re­turn for this spe­cial ser­vice it is only fair that she re­ceive from you that spe­cial pro­tec­tion which man can give to woman as the part­ner who must carry, bear, and nur­ture the chil­dren. The lov­ing care and con­sid­er­a­tion which a man is will­ing to be­stow upon his wife and their chil­dren are the mea­sure of that man’s at­tain­ment of the higher lev­els of cre­ative and spir­i­tual self-con­scious­ness. Do you not know that men and women are part­ners with God in that they co-op­er­ate to cre­ate be­ings who grow up to pos­sess them­selves of the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal souls? The Fa­ther in heaven treats the Spirit Mother of the chil­dren of the uni­verse as one equal to him­self. It is God­like to share your life and all that re­lates thereto on equal terms with the mother part­ner who so fully shares with you that di­vine ex­pe­ri­ence of re­pro­duc­ing your­selves in the lives of your chil­dren. If you can only love your chil­dren as God loves you, you will love and cher­ish your wife as the Fa­ther in heaven hon­ors and ex­alts the In­fi­nite Spirit, the mother of all the spirit chil­dren of a vast uni­verse.”

133:2.3As they went on board the boat, they looked back upon the scene of the teary-eyed cou­ple stand­ing in silent em­brace. Hav­ing heard the lat­ter half of Je­sus’ mes­sage to the man, Gonod was all day oc­cu­pied with med­i­ta­tions thereon, and he re­solved to re­or­ga­nize his home when he re­turned to In­dia.

133:2.4The jour­ney to Nicopo­lis was pleas­ant but slow as the wind was not fa­vor­able. The three spent many hours re­count­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences in Rome and rem­i­nisc­ing about all that had hap­pened to them since they first met in Je­ru­sa­lem. Ga­nid was be­com­ing im­bued with the spirit of per­sonal min­istry. He be­gan work on the stew­ard of the ship, but on the sec­ond day, when he got into deep re­li­gious wa­ter, he called on Joshua to help him out.

133:2.5They spent sev­eral days at Nicopo­lis, the city which Au­gus­tus had founded some fifty years be­fore as the “city of vic­tory” in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the bat­tle of Ac­tium, this site be­ing the land whereon he camped with his army be­fore the bat­tle. They lodged in the home of one Jer­amy, a Greek pros­e­lyte of the Jew­ish faith, whom they had met on ship­board. The Apos­tle Paul spent all win­ter with the son of Jer­amy in the same house in the course of his third mis­sion­ary jour­ney. From Nicopo­lis they sailed on the same boat for Corinth, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Achaia.