Italy

80:7.11An­other great colony set­tled on the Med­i­ter­ra­nean near the later site of Carthage. And from north Africa large num­bers of And­ites en­tered Spain and later min­gled in Switzer­land with their breth­ren who had ear­lier come to Italy from the Aegean Is­lands.

130:8.3At Messina they stopped for only one day, but that was long enough to change the life of a small boy, a fruit ven­dor, of whom Je­sus bought fruit and in turn fed with the bread of life. The lad never for­got the words of Je­sus and the kindly look which went with them when, plac­ing his hand on the boy’s shoul­der, he said: “Farewell, my lad, be of good cour­age as you grow up to man­hood and af­ter you have fed the body learn how also to feed the soul. And my Fa­ther in heaven will be with you and go be­fore you.” The lad be­came a devo­tee of the Mith­raic re­li­gion and later on turned to the Chris­tian faith.

130:8.4At last they reached Naples and felt they were not far from their des­ti­na­tion, Rome. Gonod had much busi­ness to trans­act in Naples, and aside from the time Je­sus was re­quired as in­ter­preter, he and Ga­nid spent their leisure vis­it­ing and ex­plor­ing the city. Ga­nid was be­com­ing adept at sight­ing those who ap­peared to be in need. They found much pov­erty in this city and dis­tributed many alms. But Ga­nid never un­der­stood the mean­ing of Je­sus’ words when, af­ter he had given a coin to a street beg­gar, he re­fused to pause and speak com­fort­ingly to the man. Said Je­sus: “Why waste words upon one who can­not per­ceive the mean­ing of what you say? The spirit of the Fa­ther can­not teach and save one who has no ca­pac­ity for son­ship.” What Je­sus meant was that the man was not of nor­mal mind; that he lacked the abil­ity to re­spond to spirit lead­ing.

130:8.5There was no out­stand­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in Naples; Je­sus and the young man thor­oughly can­vassed the city and spread good cheer with many smiles upon hun­dreds of men, women, and chil­dren.

130:8.6From here they went by way of Ca­pua to Rome, mak­ing a stop of three days at Ca­pua. By the Ap­pian Way they jour­neyed on be­side their pack an­i­mals to­ward Rome, all three be­ing anx­ious to see this mis­tress of em­pire and the great­est city in all the world.

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.”

133:1.1A very in­ter­est­ing in­ci­dent oc­curred one af­ter­noon by the road­side as they neared Tar­en­tum. They ob­served a rough and bul­ly­ing youth bru­tally at­tack­ing a smaller lad. Je­sus has­tened to the as­sis­tance of the as­saulted youth, and when he had res­cued him, he tightly held on to the of­fender un­til the smaller lad had made his es­cape. The mo­ment Je­sus re­leased the lit­tle bully, Ga­nid pounced upon the boy and be­gan soundly to thrash him, and to Ga­nid’s as­ton­ish­ment Je­sus promptly in­ter­fered. Af­ter he had re­strained Ga­nid and per­mit­ted the fright­ened boy to es­cape, the young man, as soon as he got his breath, ex­cit­edly ex­claimed: “I can­not un­der­stand you, Teacher. If mercy re­quires that you res­cue the smaller lad, does not jus­tice de­mand the pun­ish­ment of the larger and of­fend­ing youth?” In an­swer­ing, Je­sus said:

133:1.2“Ga­nid, it is true, you do not un­der­stand. Mercy min­istry is al­ways the work of the in­di­vid­ual, but jus­tice pun­ish­ment is the func­tion of the so­cial, gov­ern­men­tal, or uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tive groups. As an in­di­vid­ual I am be­holden to show mercy; I must go to the res­cue of the as­saulted lad, and in all con­sis­tency I may em­ploy suf­fi­cient force to re­strain the ag­gres­sor. And that is just what I did. I achieved the de­liv­er­ance of the as­saulted lad; that was the end of mercy min­istry. Then I forcibly de­tained the ag­gres­sor a suf­fi­cient length of time to en­able the weaker party to the dis­pute to make his es­cape, af­ter which I with­drew from the af­fair. I did not pro­ceed to sit in judg­ment on the ag­gres­sor, thus to pass upon his mo­tive—to ad­ju­di­cate all that en­tered into his at­tack upon his fel­low—and then un­der­take to ex­e­cute the pun­ish­ment which my mind might dic­tate as just rec­om­pense for his wrong­do­ing. Ga­nid, mercy may be lav­ish, but jus­tice is pre­cise. Can­not you dis­cern that no two per­sons are likely to agree as to the pun­ish­ment which would sat­isfy the de­mands of jus­tice? One would im­pose forty lashes, an­other twenty, while still an­other would ad­vise soli­tary con­fine­ment as a just pun­ish­ment. Can you not see that on this world such re­spon­si­bil­i­ties had bet­ter rest upon the group or be ad­min­is­tered by cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the group? In the uni­verse, judg­ment is vested in those who fully know the an­tecedents of all wrong­do­ing as well as its mo­ti­va­tion. In civ­i­lized so­ci­ety and in an or­ga­nized uni­verse the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice pre­sup­poses the pass­ing of just sen­tence con­se­quent upon fair judg­ment, and such pre­rog­a­tives are vested in the ju­ridi­cal groups of the worlds and in the all-know­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors of the higher uni­verses of all cre­ation.”

133:1.3For days they talked about this prob­lem of man­i­fest­ing mercy and ad­min­is­ter­ing jus­tice. And Ga­nid, at least to some ex­tent, un­der­stood why Je­sus would not en­gage in per­sonal com­bat. But Ga­nid asked one last ques­tion, to which he never re­ceived a fully sat­is­fac­tory an­swer; and that ques­tion was: “But, Teacher, if a stronger and ill-tem­pered crea­ture should at­tack you and threaten to de­stroy you, what would you do? Would you make no ef­fort to de­fend your­self?” Al­though Je­sus could not fully and sat­is­fac­to­rily an­swer the lad’s ques­tion, inas­much as he was not will­ing to dis­close to him that he (Je­sus) was liv­ing on earth as the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s love to an on­look­ing uni­verse, he did say this much:

133:1.4“Ga­nid, I can well un­der­stand how some of these prob­lems per­plex you, and I will en­deavor to an­swer your ques­tion. First, in all at­tacks which might be made upon my per­son, I would de­ter­mine whether or not the ag­gres­sor was a son of God—my brother in the flesh—and if I thought such a crea­ture did not pos­sess moral judg­ment and spir­i­tual rea­son, I would un­hesi­tat­ingly de­fend my­self to the full ca­pac­ity of my pow­ers of re­sis­tance, re­gard­less of con­se­quences to the at­tacker. But I would not thus as­sault a fel­low man of son­ship sta­tus, even in self-de­fense. That is, I would not pun­ish him in ad­vance and with­out judg­ment for his as­sault upon me. I would by ev­ery pos­si­ble ar­ti­fice seek to pre­vent and dis­suade him from mak­ing such an at­tack and to mit­i­gate it in case of my fail­ure to abort it. Ga­nid, I have ab­so­lute con­fi­dence in my heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care; I am con­se­crated to do­ing the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. I do not be­lieve that real harm can be­fall me; I do not be­lieve that my life­work can re­ally be jeop­ar­dized by any­thing my en­e­mies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no vi­o­lence to fear from our friends. I am ab­so­lutely as­sured that the en­tire uni­verse is friendly to me—this all-pow­er­ful truth I in­sist on be­liev­ing with a whole­hearted trust in spite of all ap­pear­ances to the con­trary.”

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

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.

80:8.3The tribes that dwelt in houses erected on piles or log piers over the lakes of Italy, Switzer­land, and south­ern Eu­rope were the ex­pand­ing fringes of the African, Aegean, and, more es­pe­cially, the Danu­bian mi­gra­tions.