MEMORIALS AT BOZRAH.
“I’m footsore and very weary,
But I travel to meet a Friend;
The way is long and dreary,
But I know it soon must end.
He is traveling swiftly as whirlwinds,
And though I creep slowly on,
We are drawing nearer and nearer,
And the journey is almost done.
I know He will not fail me,
So I count every hour a chime,
Every throb of my heart’s beating
That tells of the flight of TIME.
I will not fear at His coming,
Although I must meet Him alone,
He will look in my eyes so gently
And take my hand in His own.”
An uneventful year passed over the missioners, but it was followed
quickly by eventful times.
Two messages came, one after the other, and not far apart, to Jerusalem,
which moved all the Christian colony at the latter place, but especially
Cornelius and his consort. The first was from Father Adolphus and as
follows:
“Your parents, Sir Charleroy and Rizpah, have departed
Bozrah. They went out together, and their end was peace. They
compensated themselves for the needless miseries they had
wrought in their younger days by keeping out of all shadows
during their journey after their reconciliation by the tomb of
their children, even until sunset. I could not summon you, for
they passed away quickly, only a few days coming between their
goings.”
Shortly after the foregoing, came the other message, and that
accidentally, for the link between Jerusalem and Bozrah being broken
by death, there was none left in the Giant City to send after or for
comforting to the missioners. “Father Adolphus is dead.” That was the
report brought by chance to the Christians at Zion. Hundreds in Jerusalem
had heard of him, and hearing of his death sighed mildly. The missioners
were his mourners—really, solely.
Ere long Dorothea left Jerusalem of Syria for the New Jerusalem, and this
event not only brought sorrow but also perplexity. Miriamne realized
that she could not now continue in the house of her betrothed, simply as
his betrothed, even if it were possible for the household to continue,
the head being absent. Whither should she go, orphan and kinless as she
was? Love protested mightily against any thought of going far from her
affianced, and then she felt profound pity for the man who mourned and
felt a mother’s loss deeply, as did Cornelius. He entreated for a speedy
wedding, and she, seeing then no alternative, consented thereto; but
as she assumed love’s yoke, she believed that the ambition of her life
was frustrated. She was not disconsolate, neither was she tearless. She
thought she discerned the leadings of God and submitted promptly, making
it thenceforth her duty cheerfully to engage in the, to her, seemingly
commonplace works of a missionary pastor’s wife. Her husband was a “man
of the people,” and found acceptance with the lowly. He was wont to call
himself “a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.” Said he anon
to his flock: “Like that mysterious man who flits across your sacred
histories am I! You of the Jews, self-elect, as God’s elect, though
disgrafted, would put me, intending to do so or not, by the unknown and
unheralded Melchisedec. You think me, without father, without mother,
beginning of days, or end of life, because you do not find my name in the
chronologies of your high families nor myself in the covenants of the
Hebrews. You Christians doubt my authority because no ghostly ordaining
hands have been laid upon my head. But I’m the child of a King, and a
towel, such as my Master wore as He ministered, is robing enough for me!”
Old people, women and children, gave the young man unquestioning love,
and thus was well indorsed the choiceness of his ministerings. Miriamne
beheld these manifestations with secret joy, for she knew that through
the one she loved she was, in part, expressing her own thoughts and
sympathies. Once wed, she was too honest, too tender-hearted, too noble
to be less than all that wifehood implied, and yet she felt at times
as if the ambitions and hopes of her life, nursed through many years,
had not been compassed. She tried to settle down and humbly do the work
of a missionary’s helpmate, and to overcome, through Divine grace, the
ambition to do seemingly grander things than she was doing. Sometimes,
smiling through tears, she would say to her husband as he sought to
satisfy her heart’s yearnings with mention of the good work they were
doing:
“Well, a man has come between me and the ‘grail.’ I’m following him, may
he follow it, and God guide both.”
After a time Cornelius and Miriamne made a pilgrimage to Bozrah, drawn
thither by a desire common to both to honor their loved ones departed.
They found the Giant City all pervaded by the spirit of the moribund
past. Even the Christian church, once a light, a joy and a promise of a
better day, had fallen into decline at Bozrah. The edifice had become
dilapidated, the congregation was depleted.
In name, Father Adolphus had a successor, younger, more learned, more
eloquent in his way, than the saintly man now sleeping. But the infidels,
the very ones who were wont to confess that they could not, if they
would, make headway against the old priest’s godly life, now laughed to
scorn the stately and scholarly arguments of the new leader. The converts
under the new regime were few, the common people did not from him hear
the word gladly; and the regular congregation was rent by schisms.
One chapel service sufficed both Miriamne and Cornelius. They found in it
nothing but cold formality and the memory of what had been, but was now
no more.
“Oh, Cornelius,” Miriamne cried, “reverently I say it, but is it not
strange that our faith edges its way over the world so slowly, with such
heralds?”
“Leastwise, you may say, you do not see your ‘Grail’ here, Miriamne?”
“Oh, now, I realize the worth of Von Gombard as I never did before.”
“Are you not sorrowed at his absence, Miriamne?”
“Sorrowed! Truly not; but unspeakably glad that he walks with the sons
of God; a very king, I know, amid the greatest. Oh, how sad I’d be to
see the poor, dear, tired old man with his overfull heart and trembling
limbs now going about in painful ministries here! God was twice good;
in leaving him so long, then in taking him. Ah, if there were more like
that old saint, those that there are would not need to tarry till their
twilight.”
“Shall we prolong our stay?”
“No! I’ve listened long enough to the lull of eternity here. Bozrah’s
past has taught me its all. I’m ready to go home.”
“Home! When, to-morrow?” ardently questioned Cornelius, anxious himself
to depart the Giant City.
“After to-morrow; the coming day, at my instance, the memorial of my
parents is to be set up.”
The following morning, just before sunrise, the husband and wife repaired
to the tomb of their loved ones, to witness, by pre-arrangement, the
unveiling of a memorial. It consisted of two figures carved from whitest
marble; a woman’s form with a face expressive of tenderness and beauty,
marked with deepest grief, but not with hopelessness. Across her lap
there lay the form of a young man, the rigors of death plainly marked
on his face and limbs. There was no mistaking the representation, and
Cornelius quickly exclaimed:
“I know the one that sits thus holding that crucified body! ’Tis real!
Impressive! Awful!”
“It is fitting, think you?”
“I’m too much moved to judge, perhaps; though I do wonder that you
have not had carved upon the pedestal the names of your dead, or some
explanation.”
“Names? What matter, to the stranger passing, who lie beneath the stone?
As for the meaning, let those who come and go question till it appear.”
“I’m the first questioner, Miriamne. The application?”
“Remember that my mother, in her almost solitary grief, held her dead
children for a time against her broken heart, but it was a heart filled
with a mother-love which never faltered. There is nothing in love
surpassing such on earth. Then at last, when her life work was done, her
cup full, my mother, as her final consolation, held to her heart the Son
whose death gives life, as yon Madonna holds the Christ.”
“I bow to Miriamne’s judgment; the creation is appropriate; Glorious
Madonna!”
“I have a hope that it may stand here in the Hauran an enduring sermon to
the varied races who pass. They who come and go here, reminded that the
Nephalim with all their arrogant might left little but their crumbling
tombs; that Astarte, once the potent, dangerous goddess of the groves,
here faded from the love of her fevered hosts, who themselves in turn
faded from the face of the earth, may pause to question what the meaning
and power of this last, new, fresh presentment! Perhaps they will hear
from those made wise, and in time learn to tell one another, that
these two figures speak of the Deathless Kingdom, its white loves, its
wondrous rewards and its Spirit of might expressed by all who are in it
through the power of an endless life, and through the agency of immortal
influence.”
“Miriamne, I see thee a palpitating angel in the flesh! I can say no
more!”
As the young missioner thus spoke he stretched out his arms toward the
woman he loved as if he would restrain her. The motion came from his
heart, which was anxiously saying within: “She is growing upward and away
from her consort.” But he had neither courage nor words to voice the
vague thought which brought admiration mixed with fears.
They turned toward their temporary home in the Giant City. As they went,
the rising sun flooded the marble forms by the graves with a golden
light, and the twain, beholding the glory of that morning benediction,
felt an illumining in their hearts that some way made heaven seem very
near.
“And now, darling, we’ll return to Jerusalem, and quietly pursue our work
until we join those loved ones gone on before,” spoke the husband the day
after the monument’s unveiling.
“I trust we shall work in future with better plans and grander results
than we have had before.”
“Are you discontented with what we accomplish?”
“No, and yes,” was her measured reply.
Cornelius turned his eyes full upon her, lifting inquiringly his eyebrows.
She continued: “I’m satisfied, if God so will, to blend my work into my
husband’s; I know this is my duty as a wife, but I long to echo nobler
music. Can you make it?”
“Annata, the Assyrian goddess, was content to be the echo of her spouse,
the mighty Ammon. I’d be an Ammon if I could to be worthy being echoed by
Miriamne. But, little wife, your words sound almost Delphic; and yet you
are no such ambiguous oracle. Is there any wish unmet?”
“I’ve a misgiving.”
“Why, wife of mine, see how strong you’ve been, each year adding health!
See the shadows over our people. We are sent to chase these away with
Gospel truth. We’ve hitherto only learned how to work efficiently, and
in the future will do braver, greater things than ever. We’ll tarry, as
Adolphus, ay, and by grace renew strength, turning back the dial pointer,
as with prayer, did Hezekiah of old.”
“I’ll not go, I know, until my work is done. None go before such time.”
“Oh, but we must go together everywhere, even to death.”
“Ah, beloved, I know your meaning. It’s the lover, not the consecrated
missionary, who speaks now.”
“I can’t help it! I’ll be useless without you. I’m useless now, except as
you sustain me; as Abishag, the Shunnamite, the fairest young maiden of
all Israel, brought heart to the bosom of David, old and shaken by years,
so you put into me all the ambition I have. To my trembling heart you are
what Deborah was to Barak’s.”
“God help you, Cornelius; I believe you, because I know your trusting
nature and have joyed in the fullness of your lavish love, but let us
bravely face this matter as it comes. For God, I know, I must quickly do
my work and be gone.”
“Oh, say not so, if I’m to be left alone! That must not be! By your love
for me I entreat you to stay; a thousand ties bind my life to thine; it
will kill me by inches to have them severed!——
“Miriamne, my own, nearer to God by far than am I; plead with Him to
spare us this agony!”
“In spirit, my loyal spouse, we shall ever be near each other, but I
feel that in the body we shall not be together long. I shall finish my
course and then——”
“No, not that,” vehemently exclaimed the husband. “Say not that! I’ll
work for you, with you, for God. Help me to the end and let me so help
you, beloved!”
“You may help me while I tarry.”
“I’ll joy to realize the prophet’s vision, who saw the hands of a man
under the wings of an angel. Here are the hands and Miriamne is the
angel.”
“But your imagination glows, kindled by the torch of a human heart almost
idolatrous.”
“Nay, not idolatrous; for the fire rises to things holy. I only plead
that God let me walk with Miriamne; I know she will walk nigh Him. Go
where you will my feet will bear me thither, undertake what you may,
my heart and hand will help; point out any goal of darling desire and
thither I’ll carry you, if need be. For you I’ll gladly die, if, at the
dying, I have the comforting assurance that soon my other self will join
me in the overshadowed land of life.”
“How it would brighten the world, if all who take the holy vows of
marriage on their souls were as truly wed in heart as we.” As the twain
stood by the white marble figures at sunrise the next morning, equipped
for departure, they made a striking picture. The living and the dead; the
exemplars of the purest, deepest wedded love committed to serving their
fellow man; they rose grandly above the ruins of the place builded by
those mighty self-seeking devotees of Astarte.
Bozrah sat in desolation, knowing no hope and having a bitter past only
and forever to contemplate; the youthful gospel heralds had all life,
rising to new life—hope beyond hope, joy beyond joy, and then life,
hope and joy in endless unfoldments, stretching way through measureless
eternities, all before them. Miriamne was pensive; Cornelius was
chastened by the remembrance of the words she had spoken the day before,
and both subdued by the presence of the majestic monument before them.