Joel: A Boy of Galilee

Joel looked perplexed. "I hardly know what to do," he said. "Every one advises me just as you do; but I feel that they are all wrong. Surely the Master meant me as well as father Phineas and the others, when He charged us to go and preach the gospel to every creature."

A sudden interest came into the woman's face; she took a step forward. "Joel, did you see Him after He was risen?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Oh, I believe then that He is the Christ!" she cried. "I have thought all the time that it might be so, and the children are so sure of it."

"And Uncle Laban?" questioned Joel.

She shook her head sadly. "He grows more bitterly opposed every day."

"Aunt Leah," he asked, coming back to the first question, "don't you think He must have meant me as well as those men?"

"Oh, hardly," she said, hesitatingly, "you are so young, and there are so many others to do it; it would surely be better for you to go to Bethany."

After she had gone home, he put away his tools, and, like one in a dream, started slowly towards the mountain.

The same summer stillness reigned on its shady slopes as when the five hundred had gathered there. He climbed up near the summit, and sat down on a high stone.

To the eastward the Galilee glittered like a sapphire in the sun; Capernaum seemed like a great ant-hill in commotion. No wonder he could not think among all those conflicting voices; he was glad he had come up where it was so still.

Phineas was going away in the morning. If Joel went also, maybe he would never look down on that scene again.

Then almost as if some living voice broke the stillness, he heard the words: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature!" It was the echo of the words that had fallen from the Master's lips. Nothing once uttered by that voice can ever die; it lives on and on in the ever-widening circles of the centuries, as a ripple, once started, rings shoreward through the seas.

In that instant all the things he had been considering seemed so small and worthless. He had been planning to give Simon's gold and silver to the poor; but the Master had given them His life, Himself! Could he do less?

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me," something seemed to say to him. Yes; he could do it for the Master's sake, for the One who had healed him, for the One who had died for him.

Then and there, high up in the mountain's solitudes, he found the path he was to follow; and then he wondered how he could have thought for an instant of making any other choice. It was the path the Master's own feet had trod, and the boy who had followed, knew well what a weary way it led.

For his great love's sake, he gave up the old ambitions, the self-centred hopes, saying, in a low tone, as if he felt the beloved Presence very near, "Oh, I want to serve Thee truly! If I am too young now to go out into all the world, let me be Thy little cup-bearer here at home, to carry the story of Thy life and love to those around me!"

The west was all alight with the glory of the sunset; somewhere beyond its burnished portals lay the City of the King. Joel turned from its dazzling depths to look downward into the valley. He had chosen persecution and sacrifice and suffering, he knew, but the light on his face was more than the halo of the summer sunset.

As he went down the mountain to his life of lowly service, a deep peace fell warm across his heart; for the promise went with him, a staff to bear him up through all his after life's long pilgrimage: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world!"

THE END