GEORGE MOORE
51
MANAHEM: It was not in the Scriptures that Paul discovered that faith in the Lord Jesus is enough, but on the road to Damascus.
MATHIAS: On the road to Damascus!
pauL: Whither I went twenty years ago, bringing letters from the High Priest, Hanan, which would give me right to arrest the Saints and lead them back in chains to Jerusalem.
MATHIAS: The Saints!
ELIAKIM: The Saints are those who follow the new doctrine that faith in Christ is enough.
SHALLUM (to Paul): And thou didst go with chains to bind them, but wast stricken with a vision of the Lord Jesus.
MANAHEM (to Mathias): The Jews of Damascus laid plans to kill him.
pauL: But their plans were made known to me and to my disciples in Damascus, who let me down from the wall at night in a basket.
sHALLUM: From a window?
PAUL: Yes, from a window, in a drenching rain and in darkness, and many times the wind carried me against the walls. But why dost thou put these questions to me?
caLEB: We have in mind the cliffs above us and the caves in them, and those we let down in baskets for repentance.
pauL: For repentance!
MATHIAS: Should an Essene leave us and return, he must first repent his sins in one of the caverns above, receiving food daily from us, enough to sustain life, and if we are convinced that he is truly repentant he becomes one of us again.
caLEB: It was thirty years ago that Brother Shalmaneser withdrew from us to a small cave thirty feet above the ledge on which we live, and for ten years his wont was to come down to us on feast-days; but now he comes down no more, we know not whether from too great piety or that he dare not trust himself to the ladder, for it sways not a little if there be any wind about.
HAZAEL: Nay, brethren, is it for us to relate the ways our brother took to seek favour with God? Let Paul speak his Gospel, for the sake of which it would seem that some of our brethren would forgo their oaths.
PAUL (looking round): My Gospel, Essenes, was not taught to me
