given for it. Meanwhile an angel appeared to the high priest and told him that that day the lost stone would be brought to him by a man to whom he was to give a great sum of money, and then smite him lightly on the face and say to him, "Be not doubtful in thy heart, and disbelieve not the Scripture that says, 'He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord.'" So it was done. The man left all the wealth in the Temple, and went home, to doubt no more.
This story has made its way into Christian books—the Ethiopic romance of Clement (ed. Budge, Contendings of the Apostles), where it is told of Clement's father; and it may be read, rendered from Latin, in S. Gaselee's Stories of the Christian East. Cedrenus tells it, as I said, under Hezekiah's reign,[1] and along with the story of Tobit. I infer that he took it from a Jewish apocryphon—not impossibly that of Ezekiel, which its parable-character would suit well enough.
- ↑ In the Chronicle of Georgius Hamartohis (ed. de Muralt, 1859: lii. p. 154) the story is also given: it is there placed between the reigns of Joash and Amaziah.
