Ganid

• first meeting with Jesus

129:2.9Be­fore the end of this Pass­over week, by ap­par­ent chance, Je­sus met a wealthy trav­eler and his son, a young man about sev­en­teen years of age. These trav­el­ers hailed from In­dia, and be­ing on their way to visit Rome and var­i­ous other points on the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, they had ar­ranged to ar­rive in Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing the Pass­over, hop­ing to find some­one whom they could en­gage as in­ter­preter for both and tu­tor for the son. The fa­ther was in­sis­tent that Je­sus con­sent to travel with them. Je­sus told him about his fam­ily and that it was hardly fair to go away for al­most two years, dur­ing which time they might find them­selves in need. Where­upon, this trav­eler from the Ori­ent pro­posed to ad­vance to Je­sus the wages of one year so that he could in­trust such funds to his friends for the safe­guard­ing of his fam­ily against want. And Je­sus agreed to make the trip.

• translated synopses of world’s religions

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.

• serious illness in Cyprus

133:7.3For two weeks the trio greatly en­joyed them­selves, and then, with­out warn­ing, young Ga­nid was sud­denly taken griev­ously ill. For two weeks he suf­fered from a rag­ing fever, of­ten­times be­com­ing deliri­ous; both Je­sus and Gonod were kept busy at­tend­ing the sick boy. Je­sus skill­fully and ten­derly cared for the lad, and the fa­ther was amazed by both the gen­tle­ness and adept­ness man­i­fested in all his min­istry to the af­flicted youth. They were far from hu­man habi­ta­tions, and the boy was too ill to be moved; so they pre­pared as best they could to nurse him back to health right there in the moun­tains.

• talk with disgruntled employee in Antioch

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.”

• worthy successor to eminent father

133:9.5In In­dia, Ga­nid grew up to be­come an in­flu­en­tial man, a wor­thy suc­ces­sor of his em­i­nent fa­ther, and he spread abroad many of the no­ble truths which he had learned from Je­sus, his beloved teacher. Later on in life, when Ga­nid heard of the strange teacher in Pales­tine who ter­mi­nated his ca­reer on a cross, though he rec­og­nized the sim­i­lar­ity be­tween the gospel of this Son of Man and the teach­ings of his Jew­ish tu­tor, it never oc­curred to him that these two were ac­tu­ally the same per­son.