I0 



THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



and therefore cannot stand. Men who hate each 

 other, and have nothing otherwise in common, will 

 combine for some wicked purpose, like Herod and 

 Pilate, who became friends over the condemnation of 

 Jesus, or like the chief priests and the traitor Judas, 

 who conspired together to take Him. But the un- 

 hallowed alliance has in it a principle of schism, and 

 Herod speedily accuses Pilate to his imperial master, 

 and the chief priests say to the conscience-stricken 

 traitor who has come to them with the price of blood, 

 "What is that to us? See thou to it." 



But widely different was the stone, which symbolized 

 the kingdom of heaven. It was a homogeneous sub- 

 stance. All its particles were of the same nature, and 

 they were held together by the law of mutual cohesion 

 and chemical affinity. The same force that united 

 these particles into this compact form, changing the 

 mud at the bottom of the ocean, or the sand on its 

 .shore, by pressure under massive rocks, or by the 

 induration of volcanic outbursts into stone, still held 

 these particles together because of their similarity, and 

 resisted the processes of weathering to which they 

 were exposed. The stone of the vision was no con- 

 glomerate or breccia in which pebbles or fragments 

 of different minerals were held together by mechanical 

 force, but in all likelihood, judging from the geological 

 formation of the region where the vision occurred, a 

 mass of limestone or marble, whose substance was 

 homogeneous composed of the same calcareous sedi- 

 ment, which fire and pressure had metamorphosed 



