The Return from Rome

133:4.1Je­sus and Ga­nid had many more in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in Corinth. They had close con­verse with a great num­ber of per­sons who greatly prof­ited by the in­struc­tion re­ceived from Je­sus.

133:4.2The miller he taught about grind­ing up the grains of truth in the mill of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence so as to ren­der the dif­fi­cult things of di­vine life read­ily re­ceiv­able by even the weak and fee­ble among one’s fel­low mor­tals. Said Je­sus: “Give the milk of truth to those who are babes in spir­i­tual per­cep­tion. In your liv­ing and lov­ing min­istry serve spir­i­tual food in at­trac­tive form and suited to the ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity of each of your in­quir­ers.”

133:4.3To the Ro­man cen­tu­rion he said: “Ren­der unto Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and unto God the things which are God’s. The sin­cere ser­vice of God and the loyal ser­vice of Cae­sar do not con­flict un­less Cae­sar should pre­sume to ar­ro­gate to him­self that homage which alone can be claimed by De­ity. Loy­alty to God, if you should come to know him, would ren­der you all the more loyal and faith­ful in your de­vo­tion to a wor­thy em­peror.”

133:4.4To the earnest leader of the Mith­raic cult he said: “You do well to seek for a re­li­gion of eter­nal sal­va­tion, but you err to go in quest of such a glo­ri­ous truth among man-made mys­ter­ies and hu­man philoso­phies. Know you not that the mys­tery of eter­nal sal­va­tion dwells within your own soul? Do you not know that the God of heaven has sent his spirit to live within you, and that this spirit will lead all truth-lov­ing and God-serv­ing mor­tals out of this life and through the por­tals of death up to the eter­nal heights of light where God waits to re­ceive his chil­dren? And never for­get: You who know God are the sons of God if you truly yearn to be like him.”

133:4.5To the Epi­curean teacher he said: “You do well to choose the best and es­teem the good, but are you wise when you fail to dis­cern the greater things of mor­tal life which are em­bod­ied in the spirit realms de­rived from the re­al­iza­tion of the pres­ence of God in the hu­man heart? The great thing in all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al­iza­tion of know­ing the God whose spirit lives within you and seeks to lead you forth on that long and al­most end­less jour­ney of at­tain­ing the per­sonal pres­ence of our com­mon Fa­ther, the God of all cre­ation, the Lord of uni­verses.”

133:4.6To the Greek con­trac­tor and builder he said: “My friend, as you build the ma­te­rial struc­tures of men, grow a spir­i­tual char­ac­ter in the simil­i­tude of the di­vine spirit within your soul. Do not let your achieve­ment as a tem­po­ral builder out­run your at­tain­ment as a spir­i­tual son of the king­dom of heaven. While you build the man­sions of time for an­other, ne­glect not to se­cure your ti­tle to the man­sions of eter­nity for your­self. Ever re­mem­ber, there is a city whose foun­da­tions are righ­teous­ness and truth, and whose builder and maker is God.”

133:4.7To the Ro­man judge he said: “As you judge men, re­mem­ber that you your­self will also some day come to judg­ment be­fore the bar of the Rulers of a uni­verse. Judge justly, even mer­ci­fully, even as you shall some day thus crave mer­ci­ful con­sid­er­a­tion at the hands of the Su­preme Ar­biter. Judge as you would be judged un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, thus be­ing guided by the spirit of the law as well as by its let­ter. And even as you ac­cord jus­tice dom­i­nated by fair­ness in the light of the need of those who are brought be­fore you, so shall you have the right to ex­pect jus­tice tem­pered by mercy when you some­time stand be­fore the Judge of all the earth.”

133:4.8To the mis­tress of the Greek inn he said: “Min­is­ter your hos­pi­tal­ity as one who en­ter­tains the chil­dren of the Most High. El­e­vate the drudgery of your daily toil to the high lev­els of a fine art through the in­creas­ing re­al­iza­tion that you min­is­ter to God in the per­sons whom he in­dwells by his spirit which has de­scended to live within the hearts of men, thereby seek­ing to trans­form their minds and lead their souls to the knowl­edge of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of all these be­stowed gifts of the di­vine spirit.”

133:4.9Je­sus had many vis­its with a Chi­nese mer­chant. In say­ing good-bye, he ad­mon­ished him: “Wor­ship only God, who is your true spirit an­ces­tor. Re­mem­ber that the Fa­ther’s spirit ever lives within you and al­ways points your soul-di­rec­tion heav­en­ward. If you fol­low the un­con­scious lead­ings of this im­mor­tal spirit, you are cer­tain to con­tinue on in the up­lifted way of find­ing God. And when you do at­tain the Fa­ther in heaven, it will be be­cause by seek­ing him you have be­come more and more like him. And so farewell, Chang, but only for a sea­son, for we shall meet again in the worlds of light where the Fa­ther of spirit souls has pro­vided many de­light­ful stop­ping-places for those who are Par­a­dise-bound.”

133:4.10To the trav­eler from Britain he said: “My brother, I per­ceive you are seek­ing for truth, and I sug­gest that the spirit of the Fa­ther of all truth may chance to dwell within you. Did you ever sin­cerely en­deavor to talk with the spirit of your own soul? Such a thing is in­deed dif­fi­cult and sel­dom yields con­scious­ness of suc­cess; but ev­ery hon­est at­tempt of the ma­te­rial mind to com­mu­ni­cate with its in­dwelling spirit meets with cer­tain suc­cess, not­with­stand­ing that the ma­jor­ity of all such mag­nif­i­cent hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences must long re­main as super­con­scious reg­is­tra­tions in the souls of such God-know­ing mor­tals.”

133:4.11To the run­away lad Je­sus said: “Re­mem­ber, there are two things you can­not run away from—God and your­self. Wher­ever you may go, you take with you your­self and the spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther which lives within your heart. My son, stop try­ing to de­ceive your­self; set­tle down to the coura­geous prac­tice of fac­ing the facts of life; lay firm hold on the as­sur­ances of son­ship with God and the cer­tainty of eter­nal life, as I have in­structed you. From this day on pur­pose to be a real man, a man de­ter­mined to face life bravely and in­tel­li­gently.”

133:4.12To the con­demned crim­i­nal he said at the last hour: “My brother, you have fallen on evil times. You lost your way; you be­came en­tan­gled in the meshes of crime. From talk­ing to you, I well know you did not plan to do the thing which is about to cost you your tem­po­ral life. But you did do this evil, and your fel­lows have ad­judged you guilty; they have de­ter­mined that you shall die. You or I may not deny the state this right of self-de­fense in the man­ner of its own choos­ing. There seems to be no way of hu­manly es­cap­ing the penalty of your wrong­do­ing. Your fel­lows must judge you by what you did, but there is a Judge to whom you may ap­peal for for­give­ness, and who will judge you by your real mo­tives and bet­ter in­ten­tions. You need not fear to meet the judg­ment of God if your re­pen­tance is gen­uine and your faith sin­cere. The fact that your er­ror car­ries with it the death penalty im­posed by man does not prej­u­dice the chance of your soul to ob­tain jus­tice and en­joy mercy be­fore the heav­enly courts.”

133:4.13Je­sus en­joyed many in­ti­mate talks with a large num­ber of hun­gry souls, too many to find a place in this rec­ord. The three trav­el­ers en­joyed their so­journ in Corinth. Ex­cept­ing Athens, which was more renowned as an ed­u­ca­tional cen­ter, Corinth was the most im­por­tant city in Greece dur­ing these Ro­man times, and their two months’ stay in this thriv­ing com­mer­cial cen­ter af­forded op­por­tu­nity for all three of them to gain much valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence. Their so­journ in this city was one of the most in­ter­est­ing of all their stops on the way back from Rome.

133:4.14Gonod had many in­ter­ests in Corinth, but fi­nally his busi­ness was fin­ished, and they pre­pared to sail for Athens. They trav­eled on a small boat which could be car­ried over­land on a land track from one of Corinth’s har­bors to the other, a dis­tance of ten miles.