HE WAS A stranger in our midst, and His life was hidden with dark veils.
He walked not the path of our God, but followed the course of the foul and the infamous.
His childhood revolted, and rejected the sweet milk of our nature.
His youth was inflamed like dry grass that burns in the night.
And when He became a man, He took arms against us all.
Such men are conceived in the ebb tide of human kindness, and born in unholy tempests. And in tempests they live a day and the perish forever.
Do you not remember Him, a boy overweening, who would argue with our learned elders, and laugh at their dignity?
And remember you not His youth, when He lived by the saw and the chisel? He would not accompany our sons and daughters on their holidays. He would walk alone.
And He would not return the salutation of those who hailed Him, as though He were above us.
I myself met Him once in the field and greeted Him, and He only smiled, and in His smile I beheld arrogance and insult.
Not long afterward my daughter went with her companions to the vineyards to gather the grapes, and she spoke to Him and He did not answer her.
He spoke only to the whole company of grape-gatherers, as if my daughter had not been among them.
When He abandoned His people and turned vagabond He became naught but a babbler. His voice was like a claw in our flesh, and the sound of His voice is still a pain in our memory.
He would utter only evil of us and of our fathers and forefathers. And His tongue sought our bosoms like a poisoned arrow.
Such was Jesus.
If He had been my son, I would have committed Him with the Roman legions to Arabia, and I would have begged the captain to place Him in the forefront of the battle, so that the archer of the foe mmight mark Him, and free me of His insolence.
But I have no son. And mayhap I should be grateful. For what if my son had been an enemy of his own people, and my gray hairs were now seeking the dust with shame, my white beard humbled?
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