all the other listeners, I believed from the first that the dust of that cavern was the dust of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, and that the manuscript contained something of genuine value to the Church and the world.

The opinion of the old curate and the echo of the young chaplain did not weigh a feather in my estimation. Young as I was, I had acquired that rare faculty of thinking for myself. Besides, I had had learned enough of human nature to know that legal reforms are rarely suggested by lawyers; that doctors always make war on a system of medicine better than their own; and that priests instinctively repudiate anything which demands a re-examination of the fundamental doctrines of their theological systems.

I had an inextinguishable desire to possess that manuscript, and set myself earnestly about it. I cultivated the acquaintance of the genial old surgeon, and contrived to render myself useful to him on more than one occasion. When he sailed for England I extorted from him a promise that he would send me the manuscript of Lazarus which his orthodox uncle has so flippantly condemned.

A good many years passed away, and I heard nothing from him. At length came a package, and a letter from England couched in very handsome terms, a part of which ran thus:

“My beloved father on his deathbed made up the parcel which I now send you, and requested me to transmit it to you with the following message, which he made me write down as the words fell from his lips:

“ ‘Forgive your old acquaintance for neglecting until death [pg 16]the matters of the dead. Read what Lazarus says, while I go in person to verify or invalidate his story. I have lived passably well, and I die comparatively happy. Good-bye!’ ”

I drew a deep sigh to the memory of the old surgeon, and set immediately to work studying and translating the manuscript. I found that a difficult task. It was not written in very classical Greek, and besides, was full of Hebraisms, which sometimes obscured the sense. There were not only many obscure things, but many things irrelevant, and many which would be regarded as absurd and even childish in the present age.

It soon became clear that a literal translation of the manuscript would not be of any great interest to the general reader. I determined to take the astounding facts narrated, as a skeleton or framework around which to build up a story of my own. This book is therefore a modern romance founded upon ancient facts. The original might be called a prose poem. Indeed, much of it is in the poetical form; the description of Helena, for instance, in the eleventh chapter.

The key to the whole book is, that here are the views and experiences of a man who, by what we may call a supernatural accident, was led into states of thought two thousand years in advance of his contemporaries.

I present it to the public in a dress of the nineteenth century, hoping it will reverse the decision of the old curate, who understood Greek and whist better than he did the inappeasable hunger of the soul after the unknown, and perhaps, alas! the unknowable.