Tarentum

• Tarentum

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

• Tarentum

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.

• Tarentum

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.”

• Jesus restrained bully attacking small lad at

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:

133:2.1While 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.