The Return from Rome

133:8.1An­ti­och was the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Syria, and here the im­pe­rial gov­er­nor had his res­i­dence. An­ti­och had half a mil­lion in­hab­i­tants; it was the third city of the em­pire in size and the first in wicked­ness and fla­grant im­moral­ity. Gonod had con­sid­er­able busi­ness to trans­act; so Je­sus and Ga­nid were much by them­selves. They vis­ited ev­ery­thing about this poly­glot city ex­cept the grove of Daphne. Gonod and Ga­nid vis­ited this no­to­ri­ous shrine of shame, but Je­sus de­clined to ac­com­pany them. Such scenes were not so shock­ing to In­di­ans, but they were re­pel­lent to an ide­al­is­tic He­brew.

133:8.2Je­sus be­came sober and re­flec­tive as he drew nearer Pales­tine and the end of their jour­ney. He vis­ited with few peo­ple in An­ti­och; he sel­dom went about in the city. Af­ter much ques­tion­ing as to why his teacher man­i­fested so lit­tle in­ter­est in An­ti­och, Ga­nid fi­nally in­duced Je­sus to say: “This city is not far from Pales­tine; maybe I shall come back here some­time.”

133:8.3Ga­nid had a very in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in An­ti­och. This young man had proved him­self an apt pupil and al­ready had be­gun to make prac­ti­cal use of some of Je­sus’ teach­ings. There was a cer­tain In­dian con­nected with his fa­ther’s busi­ness in An­ti­och who had be­come so un­pleas­ant and dis­grun­tled that his dis­missal had been con­sid­ered. When Ga­nid heard this, he be­took him­self to his fa­ther’s place of busi­ness and held a long con­fer­ence with his fel­low coun­try­man. This man felt he had been put at the wrong job. Ga­nid told him about the Fa­ther in heaven and in many ways ex­panded his views of re­li­gion. But of all that Ga­nid said, the quo­ta­tion of a He­brew proverb did the most good, and that word of wis­dom was: “What­so­ever your hand finds to do, do that with all your might.”

133:8.4Af­ter prepar­ing their lug­gage for the camel car­a­van, they passed on down to Sidon and thence over to Da­mas­cus, and af­ter three days they made ready for the long trek across the desert sands.