We have your swords, and we are ready now to draw them and strike for freedom; and so is Galilee.

Be it for freedom, O son of Judah, for freedom! and we will meet you at the tree of the cross." The sovereign moment of his life was upon Ben-Hur.

Could he have taken the offer and said the word, history might have been other than it is; but then it would have been history ordered by men, not God--something that never was, and never will be.

A confusion fell upon him; he knew not how, though afterwards he attributed it to the Nazarene; for when the Nazarene was risen, he understood the death was necessary to faith in the resurrection, without which Christianity would be an empty husk.

The confusion, as has been said, left him without the faculty of decision; he stood helpless--wordless even.