  Krishna, much wrought upon in his secret mind, seeks a private interview with Paul. The two converse at large, Paul expounding his doctrine of sin and of salvation through faith in Christ. Krishna resists, feeling nevertheless an impulse in himself responsive to Paul's words. They part with nothing concluded between them, but Krishna meditating alone is finally brought to obedience of faith. He seeks the company of the Christian disciples and declares himself a believer. He expressing eager desire to testify as soon as possible in some outward act commanded by Jesus his readiness to obey Him, Paul tells him of the command "Be baptized," and Krishna accordingly is baptized by Aristarchus, Paul giving the new disciple appropriate counsel and exhortation. BAPTISM OF KRISHNA. As the days passed, the prisoner Paul, allowed The freedom of his ways about the isle, Would often, musing by himself alone— Or haply his shadow Stephen following so As never to be seen yet ever see In jealous loving watch and ward of him— Walk in seclusions well to Julius known Where, held by all the islanders in awe And sentried as if sentried not the while, He could be safe in sense of solitude And easement from the fret of custody. He walking thus one sunny afternoon, The Indian met him at the hither goal And entrance to his wonted rounding ways, And with such salutation greeted him As seemed to seek access for mutual speech. Paul, out of insulation and himself Emerging wholly at his fellow's call, Rallied at once to be a social man; He welcomed Krishna frankly to his side, "O Paul," said Krishna, "I am not at rest; Thou, and that Mary's story of her Lord, Have deeply shaken my repose in me. There must have been, lodged in me from the first, A witness ready to speak up and say, 'Hearken, O Krishna!' when the name of 'God' Fell on my ear. For since that word from thee, I have not ceased to hear within me cry Reverberant through the chambers of my soul— Like a voluminous echo shouting round Reduplicated images of voice— Clamor and attestation vehement Confirming what thou saidst that day of God, And of our orphanhood without Him. Oh, My friend, that I might find Him, I, even I!" Such passion in passivity moved Paul To pity, which he hid, while thus he spoke: "It is the answer of the infinite Within thee to the infinite above Thee and beneath thee and about thee round. God made thee for Himself, and Himself is The only good that can content thy mind. Drawn nigh and drawing nigh, in Jesus Christ. Not to believe in Him, God's Son made flesh— He once revealed to thee—this, this, is sin; And sin is death; but to believe is life. Believe and live, O Krishna." "Thy word 'sin,' O Paul," said Krishna, "it perplexes me. What is sin? Evil, I guess. Now evil I know In many forms—forms many, essence one— Misery all. But sin to thee, I trow, Is something else than simple misery." "O, yea," said Paul, "and measurelessly more. No misery is like sin, but sin is evil Not to be told in terms of misery. The sinner is an enemy of God; God is against him, and the wrath of God Abides upon him; such is the evil of sin. For sin is the transgression of the law, That law which is the will of God express In precept, or that law more broad, more deep, Higher, which is the will of God inwrought Into the substance of the human heart. And be at peace; God is too merciful To suffer it. For mercy it is in God Which wrath we call; against the sinner, wrath; But toward the man, mercy eager to save: The wrath of God is as the shepherd's crook Which with threat drives the foolish flock to fold. Hasten, obey, be folded, thou, by Him, The shepherd and the bishop of thy soul. Within is safety, life, and peace, and joy; Ruin, without, and wretchedness, and death." "A living Will," said Krishna, "in the waste, The wild waste, of a world of chance and fate— A Will amid it, nay, much more, a Mind, A Heart, present, presiding over all The blind whirl of the things we see, whereof We seem ourselves a petty part, impelled Helpless—whither, who knows?—this is to me A thought greater than the great universe; Yet does it less than that oppress, appal; I feel my spirit in me quickened too While overwhelmed. O were it true indeed! And were this Being whom thou namest God I feel that I could love Him if I could Believe Him—in the teeth of all that seems To swear against Him in this dreadful world!" "The whole creation groaneth, yea," said Paul, "And travaileth under the curse of sin. But the blind-bondman universe awaits With earnest expectation a new day When he shall be delivered from his thrall, To share, we know not how, that liberty Which is the birthright of the sons of God. Meantime the discord and the perjury Thou seest of a distracted universe Forsworn against its Maker! Yet even so Enough abides unshaken from the firm Fair order of the first all-wise design, To testify His everlasting power Who framed it. But, beyond that perjury Thou findest in the janglings of the world Browbeating faith herself to disbelieve, Is the blaspheming atheous spirit in man Which will not God. O strife and warfare strange Within us! Godward-springing instinct fain And all the while rebellion muttering, 'Nay!' O wretched, wretched creatures that we are! Who, who is able to deliver us Out of the clinging body of this death? I thank my God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! "Christ's voice against the clamor of the world, His still small voice, heard by the inner ear Of whosoever will heed and obey, Makes music of this roaring dissonance Which dins and deafens every one besides. Hush the gainsaying of the heart within, O Krishna, the dull heart of unbelief, And hearken if thou shalt not presently Hear Him say, Come. It is a heavenly sound, Heard never save by the anointed ear Of true obedience; but once heard thereby It ever after lingers in the sense A haunting invitation still obeyed. And still as we obey it, drawing near And nearer to that Voice forevermore, Forevermore we hear the harmony Evolved from the confusions of the world Like as a human father pitieth His children, so Jehovah God Most High Pitieth them that fear Him. This long since We heard through one inspired from God to sing It cadenced in our sweet and solemn psalms." Krishna could not but speak his froward thought: "It looks such contradiction to the fact Staring us in the face from round about Us wheresoever in the world we turn Our eyes and see the seeming pitiless Ongoing of the blind necessity That, deaf and blind and irresistible, Rides like a Juggernaut upon his car Crushing beneath the wheels the hearts of men And spirting up their blood to splash his feet!" Unwonted passion heaved the Indian's breast, And shook the tones in which he said these things. Paul gently made reply as one that knew: "Yea, such the spectacle that sight beholds; Nor ever other had the mind of man Guessed, had the voice of God not spoken clear The blatant falsehood of the seeming fact Failed in the ear of Faith hearing that word. She said: 'It must be true; how otherwise Than because God Himself who cannot lie Declared it could such gospel come to men? Not from the world of sense; that world instead Gainsays it with all clamor of perjury; Not from the heart of man averse from God And full of alien fear through hate of Him: For filial fear it is, begot of love, Not alien fear, of conscious hate begot, That God desires from men and will reward With pity like a father's for their state. Yea, such a gospel must from God have come; Let God be true and the whole world a liar.' So Faith cried out in passionate protest Against appearance, and clasped fast her creed. "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent a mighty succor down to Faith Faint with her fasting in the wilderness. From His own bosom He His only Son, Only and well-belovÉd, the express Effulgence of the Father's glory, tore And bade Him, joyful at the mission He: 'Empty Thyself of thine equality With Me in Godhead; take the lowly form Of a bondservant; fashioned like a man Humble Thyself to be obedient Through all degrees of all obedience Unfaltering down to that extreme degree Of death, yea even of death upon the cross!' For God so loved the world, with pity loved, That He His own Son and His only gave That whosoever should on Him believe Might perish not, but have eternal life. "A paradox divine of love and pity— God sparing not His own coequal Son, But, last impossible proof of love to men, Giving Him freely up to suffer so, The just for the unjust, if haply He Might bring us unto God! His father's heart Of tenderness toward His obedient Son Breaking, while He that Son delivered up— Father and Son together overcome Apostate, disobedient, rebel, lost! Well spake that Savior Son while yet He lived A heavenly exile here on earth—He now About to suffer at the hands of whom He came to save—making the sum of sin Consist in not believing upon Him. Not to believe on such as Jesus Christ Seen living, the exemplar of all good, That, that, was sin indeed. Yet greater sin, Yea, sin inclusive and conclusive, this— Not to believe on Christ raised from the dead!" Paul interrupted his discourse with pause. He eased the pressure on his heart with prayer, While Krishna slowly, softly, sadly said: 'Sin as transgression of a law supreme; Law as expression of a living Will; Nay, the existence of a living Will Sovereign over an ordered universe; Much more, a Heart behind the Will to feel Pity and love, such pity and such love, Not idle passion but at work to save, Save at vicarious cost so great—these thoughts, How strange! Sin, sin—and sinner I, for this, That I do not believe on him! "But thou, Tell me, What is it to believe on him? I willingly believe that he was good, Was wise, was gentle, gracious, merciful." "Believe that he was what he claimed to be," Said Paul, "absolute lord of life and thought To all men, and to thee. Acknowledge Him Thy Lord; believing is obeying here. To whom He Master is, to them is He Also a Savior; trust thyself to Him." "A fearful act of self-surrender thou, O Paul," said Krishna, "thus proposest to me. Take Jesus for my lord in life and thought, Absolute lord as thou hast strongly said it, That might be, for what were it but exchange Of masters, Buddha left for Jesus; true, Never such claim of mastership made he, Our Buddha, as thou sayest thy Jesus makes— But to commit myself into the hands Of any, whosoever he may be, With sudden turn on Paul, Krishna thus spoke, The gentleness which was his manner, now To almost fierceness changed, so vehement Was the revulsion and revolt expressed. "Am I so lost I cannot save myself?" He added, when he could command his tones To speak with full becoming courtesy— An inexpugnable repulsion yet Shown of the answer that he thus invoked. Calmly, but without effort to be calm, "O, yea," said Paul, "so lost, and worse than so; So lost thou dost not wish to save thyself; Nay, dost not know thou needest to be saved. It is the sad besotment deep of sin, Wherein not thou alone but all of us Since Adam, the first man, are sunk and lost. We are dead in sin, this even from our first breath, And, like the dead, know not that we are dead, And, like the dead, care not to live again, Nor, more than they, could, if we would, revive. A dreadful doom of helpless living death! Yea, there is hope, albeit not in ourselves; Christ is a power of life that overflows To all that will make ready a way for Him To enter by the gladsome gates of will. He quickens whom He will, but will not quicken Save who will say to Him, 'Lord, quicken me!' A paradox, sayest thou, hard to be solved? Yea, more, outright impossibility— With man impossibility, but not With God; with God, all things are possible." "Thou makest this thing 'sin,'" the Indian said, "Such evil as is more miserable far Than misery's self. Who taught thee this? 'Sin,''sin'— Is it not perhaps some specter of the mind Only, unreal as horrible, which thou Hast conjured up from nothing to thyself In thy lone brooding on the riddle of things?" Paul hearing this thought backward of the time When Porcius Festus brusquely said to him In public presence: 'Paul, thou art mad; thy long Deep pouring over books turns wild thy wits.' Thus to be judged distraught by those distraught!' He answered: "Yea, that is a wile I know Of Satan's playing on this human heart Of ours, deceitful as it is above All things and desperately wicked, yet Insanely cunning in complicity Against itself—a wile I know too well To cheat us into thinking naught of sin. A bugbear of the morbid conscience, sin! I might myself have been, I cannot know, Lulled by this lie into false fatal peace; But the Lord Christ Himself appeared to me In light like lightning though a hundred fold Keener, shot suddenly from out a clear Sky at midnoon, and called me by my name, The name that then I bore; 'Saul, Saul,' He said, 'Why dost thou persecute Me?' 'Thee,' said I, 'Who art thou, Lord?' And He, 'Jesus I am Whom thou dost persecute.' "That moment first, In its true hideous native aspect shown, Sin was revealed to me. I saw it wear Gnashing its teeth on Jesus, the One Man Who sinned not ever and yet died for sin, Died for the sin that slew Him, for my sin That slew Him on the bitter cross, that still Was slaying Him afresh—who died for me. I found the truth and meaning of those words By Jesus from the imminent verge of death Spoken, that not believing upon Him Was the one sin. When the ideal man Is shown us, then to know Him not for such Betokens us how besotted!—beyond hope; But if the ideal man be Son of God And bring us out of heaven a word from Him, Not to receive the message, nay, to flout The messenger himself as I had done, Yea, was that moment doing when the light I spoke of fell on me—what height, what depth Of sin! O, sin's exceeding sinfulness! And yet, not so even is the measure full. For God in testimony of His Son Put forth the working of His mighty power And raised Him from the dead, exalting Him To the right hand of glory with Himself. And with Him reigning, victor over death And over him that had the power of death, The devil, sent thence the Holy Spirit down Hither to us to lead us into truth. The Holy Spirit in thy heart, O Krishna, Grieve Him not, send Him not away from thee! It was His secret prompting made thee take That spring toward God at mention of His name. Yield to Him, He desires thy good, consent To be convinced of sin—sin still committed Till thou believe on Jesus Christ as Lord; And now a sin against the Holy Ghost!" Solemn the words, spoken solemnly by Paul; They wrought an awe in Krishna hearing them. The sense indeed was half not understood; Yet not the less, almost it seemed the more, They touched him to the quickest in his soul. Paul too was awed and did not further speak, Thinking, 'Let me beware not to obtrude Myself untimely between God and man!' Nay, even he would that Krishna were alone, To wrestle in that solemn solitude Ever transact the awful mystery Of its own reconcilement with its God. Yet Paul so wishing still would not withdraw, He might inhospitable seem or seem Too conscious of his fellow's inward strife; He prayed in silence with unutterable Strong yearning of desire quickened with hope: 'Let Krishna win the victory of defeat!' The Indian soon with gesture of farewell Unspoken, which meant thanks and courtesy Habitual, but meant also not habitual Appeal for sympathy in felt helplessness, As who should say, 'Pray, pray for me,' retired. 'Impossible!' so he murmured to himself; 'I would have paid a hundred million years Of pain and patience and unceasing toil To buy escape from being and misery. Now to accept deliverance as a gift, Acknowledging that I cannot purchase it— I sicken within me at the very thought! Deliverance not from being but misery— If that could be! Fulness of life, not death! I do not wish to cease from consciousness If consciousness can be, apart from woe. O Thou who must be, Thou whom since I heard Thy name I cannot doubt more than I doubt Myself, Thou, God, is this thy word indeed, That I am lost in sin as not believing On that man Jesus for mine only Lord? Is he thy Son? Shall I trust all to him? All, all, as if I were a little child? 'What is it in my heart that answers, Yea? Is it Thou, O Holy Spirit? If it be Thou, and none other and naught else than Thou Then certify Thyself, give me a sign! Ah, but I know, I know. O heart within, Thou wilt not cheat thyself thus! Thou and I, We know full well when God speaks it is He, He and none other. Other none than Thou, Paul's God, and mine, and mine, and mine, O yea, Who but my God could speak thus closely to me? O Buddha, Buddha, trusted long in vain! In whom I took my refuge once, behold, My house of refuge then supposed in thee I am a naked soul, unhoused, disclad; O God, receive me, lo, I come to Thee; Forgive my sin that I have not believed Earlier in Christ thy Son, whom now I take To be my Lord henceforth. I trust to Him To save me and I cannot save myself. But He, He can and will, thanks to His name; Thanks to thy name, Lord Jesus, I am thine, And Thou art mine, my Savior as my Lord! 'Where is my pride, which was so dear to me, My pride, and my vain confidence of strength? Gone, yea, and my desire even gone to be Myself my own redeemer and not owe Redemption as a debt of gratitude To any; sense of debt is sweet to me Now, and my heart is meekly glad to know That I henceforth am not my own, but His Who died to save me from myself and sin. NirvÂna, which I erst befooled myself To deem desirable, what dreary doom Were it! Instead of life, and love, and joy, True peace, and ever-springing gratitude Increasing every moment to the sea With fresh floods from fresh tributaries poured— Instead of this, blank death and nothingness! End unattainable, I now can see, Even were it good. To lose this power to think And suffer and enjoy, to quench in night Utter, unending, reason's starry lamp, And hope's, and memory's, and be naught at all! I shudder backward from the crumbling brink Of such annihilation of myself Imagined only, and I eager spring Endeavoring upward toward that different good Assured to me and native now I know, The prospect of eternal life with joy.' So Krishna mused, was grateful, and aspired, Rescued from the abyss to hope of heaven. But the new life of love within his heart, Of love and love's delicious gratitude, Swelled with sweet pain to unappeasable Desire of vent and overflow in word Or deed to testify itself abroad. When, the next day, the daily trysting-time The Indian, who by fellow instinct now Divined the secret of those gatherings, came And sought to be admitted of the band. They welcomed him with hospitable joy, Which borrowed tears from sorrow to express Itself in silence when he spoke and said: "O friends, receive me, for I am of you, Redeemed by your Redeemer, Christ the Lord. I love Him, and I know it is because He first loved me and taught me how to love. This love that wells in me and overflows My being thus, it is not mine I know, But His, or only as He makes it, mine. I love you all in Him, and feel that ye In Him likewise love me. He has unlocked The gates of speech; He makes the dumb to speak. And now I pray you tell me, is there not Some thing ye know, some little thing perhaps, For I am meek and lowly like a child And I do not aspire to things above My measure, which indeed I know is small, Some little simple thing that I can do And for no other reason in the world Than only that, to testify to Him In act and testify to all that see How much I love Him, and how much desire To be henceforth His servant all in all? I should be glad to do this if I might With no delay at all, I am in haste. I know from all that I have learned through you And from the lovely feeling in my heart, This eager impulse to make haste and be The perfect image of your Lord and mine— I know thus that there is an endless joy Before me of obedience to His will In beautiful behavior like His own And all conformity to what is fair Whether in temper, thought, wish, word, or deed, Or whatsoever else is life or being— A boundless possibility of bliss Awaiting and inviting me—whereto All hail and welcome, be my footsteps fleet To run forever up this shining way!— Yet am I not contented till I hear Whether there be not bidden some thing besides Who love Him as I love Him, which such may, In the first freshness of new birth, at once Do for an ease and comfort to their love." Wonder with gladness filled all hearts that heard, When Krishna, he of words so slow and few, Flowed like a river thus from frost unbound. And Paul said: "'Be baptized,' Lord Jesus taught First privilege of obedience to His will In outward visible act offered to those Who have before invisibly obeyed Him inwardly and taken Him for Lord. Thou therefore, brother, if thou wilt, shalt be Forthwith baptized according to His word. Buried with Him by baptism into death Thou wilt be, that as Christ was from the dead Raised by the glory of the Father so Thou also mayst henceforth forever walk In a new life." Within the spacious halls Of Publius there was found a laver large Which, by the master of the mansion put At Paul's command, with water pure was filled; But not by Paul's hands. "For Christ sent me forth," He said, "not to baptize but to proclaim The gospel of obedience to mankind." So Aristarchus, for that office named By Paul, baptized the Indian. He went down Joyous into that liquid grave with Christ To rise with Him in resurrection thence. "Because thou art disciple now become," To Krishna speaking, Aristarchus said, "And because Christ hath so commanded us, Lo, I baptize thee thus into the name, The one name, of the Father, of the Son, And of the Holy Ghost. Amen!" "Amen!" Said Krishna, issuing from his watery tomb As one new-born like Lazarus from the dead. "If thou, then," Paul said, taking Krishna's hand For welcome, "If thou be indeed with Christ Risen from the dead, I charge thee seek those things Which are above where Christ ascended sits On the right hand of God the Father throned. Not suffer thine affection here to cling; We must not grovel where we ought to climb. Reckon that when Christ died thou diedst with Him, And that thy life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ our life shall manifested be, Then manifested thou shalt be with Him In glory. "For this life we live on earth Is as the insect's life in chrysalis. The creature shut in chrysalis awaits The promise of the sun's approach in spring; The sun is his true life, and when the sun
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