A COFFIN FULL OF FLOWERS AND A GIRDLE WITH WINGS.
“Behold thy mother!”—JESUS TO JOHN.
Two travelers journeyed slowly along Mount Olivet, pausing anon to
observe the flower-dells between them and Mount Zion, or to contemplate
the wilder prospects where the wilderness of Judea edged close up to the
hills they traversed. As the travelers passed, the natives looked after
them with curiosity; for the garments of the former, though dust-covered,
were those of personages above the ranks of the common people; also of a
fashion that betokened them strangers in that vicinity.
One of these men was a youth, stalwart and comely; the other was
gray-haired and bent as if by the weight of years, though a closer view
suggested premature blasting, rather than senile decline.
“Winfred, before entering Bethany, we’ll to the ‘Hill of Solomon,’ the
site of Chemosh, the black image of the Roman Saturn.”
Thereupon the twain turned away from the village and soon came upon a
company of revelers, each wearing a crown of autumn fruits, and all
gathered about a platform crowded with hilarious dancers.
“Saturnalia!” exclaimed the elder.
“The worship of Saturn ceased ages ago, did it not?”
“Of the image, yes; but the folly, little changed, continues.”
“This is strange enough; and yet it’s a relief to meet a few happy people
in this land of solemn faces; even if those happy ones do joy like fools.”
“They celebrate the passing of summer-heat and the coming of the rains
of autumn. Say not fools; they are trying to be glad about something
good, somehow coming from some one somewhere above them. Perhaps God can
resolve scraps of thanksgiving out of it all.”
“Theirs is the laughter of wine! the laughter of the goat-god, Pan, whose
face scared his mother and whose voice scared the gods!”
“We’ve a persistent custom here, son; and men do not play the fool for
generations after one manner, at least, without cause.
“These attempt to press into the court of Pleasure to cajole her; all
men do that; these have chosen merely an old way. They cling to the myth
of Saturn, the subduer of the Titan of fiction. They say that deity,
dethroned in the god-world, fled to Italy, where he gave happiness and
plenty through life, and the freedom of air and earth after death, which
latter he made to be only a little sleep.”
“That was not more than a mock golden-age; it never came, I think.”
“But very alluring to those that long for it; they dance half-naked,
typifying the primitive times when men had fewer cares, because fewer
wants.”
“Can one laugh hard fates out of countenance, and make his troubles run
with a guffaw?”
“The devotees of Saturn were wont to offer their children in his
altar-fires, and so ever more it happens; he that bends to the
materialistic solely, kindles altar-fires for his posterity.”
“After to-day what comes to these, peace?”
“Nay, a year all dark and colorless; then another spasm called a feast—a
brief lightning-flash revealing the darkness.”
“And so the years come and go; one generation of madmen, then another;
death the only variety?”
“Nay! I’d have you look upon pleasure of sense deified, taking its
pleasures under the shadows of Chemosh, for a purpose. You remember we
read together, under the palms at Babylon, how the holy Daniel saw in
vision the four winds of heaven striving on the sea?”
“I remember the prophet’s reverie or revel.”
“The four winds and the sea! the meaning, opened, is conflict on every
hand on earth! Out of the follies and turmoils David’s White Kingdom will
emerge at last. Listen to the words of the inspired seer:
“‘Behold one like the Son of Man! There was given Him a dominion and a
glory that all people should serve Him; an everlasting dominion!’
“It is coming; my poor faith, amid the conflicts and revels of man,
hears the voice of God crying through the night, as in Eden’s dark hour:
‘_Where art thou?_’ My last lesson to my son awaits us at Bethany; let’s
be going.”
Ere long Cornelius Woelfkin and his son Winfred stood silently, and with
uncovered heads, before, but a little apart from, a stately marble shaft
that rose up amid the olive trees of Gethsemane. It was night, and they
were alone. The father motioned the son back, and alone glided under the
shadowing trees, toward the pillar. There the elder one threw himself
down on the earth, close beside the monument; the youth, deeply moved,
but unwilling to intrude upon the scene of sacred, silent grief, stood
aloof. In a small way, there was a repetition of the grief of the Man
of Sorrows, who there, ages before, yearned in His humanity over a lost
world, over those from whom His heart was soon to part for life. To be
sure, the cross of Cornelius Woelfkin was infinitely less galling, less
heavy than that borne by his Master; and yet it was as heavy as he could
bear, and hence the pitifulness of his grief.
Who can lift the curtain from his thoughts? The years roll back and
memory’s pictures pass through his brain, at first in joyful train. The
lovers in London; the betrothal at sea; the wedding at Jerusalem; the
ecstatic consummation in years of marriage. Then the painful, almost
awful separation by death, that never to be forgotten Christmas time.
And then, twenty years with leaden feet carrying the lone-hearted man
so painfully slow toward death’s portals, for which he longed with
unutterable yearning. “Oh, Miriamne, Miriamne, let me come,” he cried.
The youth, hearing the agonized utterings, was instantly by his father’s
side. But the old man, still oblivious to all but his sorrow and his
memories, moaned on with deepening fervor.
“Father,” called out the son. The father rose to his feet and calmly
said: “My boy, pity me. I’m weak. But oh, you never knew what it is to
have your life sawn in twain and be compelled then to drag your half and
lacerated being along the over-clouded vales of an undesired existence!”
“My mother’s tomb?”
“Yes. I promised, as my last service to you, to bring you to it. Its
study shall be the finish of your schooling.”
Just then the clouds broke away and the moonlight fell full upon the
monument. It was a shaft, terminating in a crucifix; by its side were
two forms, one that of St. John, with face turned toward the figure of
the dying Savior; the other that of a woman kneeling, her face buried
in her hands. On the base of the cross was the brief sentence: “Behold
thy mother.” As the youth gazed on the farewell charge of Jesus to John,
when He commended to the care of that beloved disciple His sorrowing
mother, he started. It seemed as if the words had grown out of the marble
suddenly while he was gazing, and for himself only. He felt as if he
could almost embrace the stone.
The two men were silent and heart full. After a long time, they
simultaneously turned away toward Bethany. They came to a turn in the
road that would shut out all view of the garden of sorrow, and the elder
paused, loath to leave the place where his heart was buried.
Presently he spoke again, as if unconscious of any other being with him:
“Oh, Miriamne, I failed to carry out the work thou left’st me! How could
I, alone? I was but half a man without thee, my other self! Miriamne,
Miriamne, I can be only nothing when I can not be with thee.” Then the
old man lifted his hands as in benediction or embrace, and continued:
“Farewell, a last farewell, sweet, white soul, until upon the tearless,
healing shores of light I say good morning!”
There was a mighty pathos in the display of this old, ripe, strong grief,
which lived on a love that could not die. The man was a study. He was of
fine fibre, almost effeminate, never firm, except in his affection for
that one woman. That was the one strong trend, the one anchorage of his
life. He need not study the man far, who strove to know him, to discover
that this tenacity was not natural to him always. It had been a growth
under the influence of the peerless wife.
“Shall we go on?” after a little asked the son. With a shudder and a
suppressed sob the elder moved on, but with laggard step, which soon
paused. Just now, the moon being beclouded, it was very dark about them,
and the father reached out his hand and drew the youth to his embrace. He
whispered: “Winfred, son of Miriamne, you bear her image in your face,
bear it ever in heart, as well. I’m glad you’re not so like me.” The son
tried to speak, but the elder interrupted:
“You’ll ere long be fatherless as well as motherless, but take your
mother for your guiding-star. You know what your birth cost her. By her
death you obtained life, as by the Christ’s, immortality. She saved
others, she could not save herself; but if you’re true to her memory
she’ll have a mother’s immortality, that life that lives in the life of
her child.”
* * * * *
Let us gather up the _last_ threads of our story. After the death of
Miriamne, the “Sisters of Bethany” soon ceased to congregate at the
“House of Bethesda,” in the city on Olivet. Cornelius Woelfkin attempted
for a time to carry forward the work of the mission, but, utterly
miserable himself, he did not know how to bestow comfort on others; a
man, without the intimate companionship of the woman who had been his
inspirer, he had no discernment of the needs of woman, nor power to
interpret the truths that were in the Book or in nature, those garners of
manna.
The Hospitaler was sent for as an aid. He came but once, and then spoke
as kindly as he could to the women of Bethany and Jerusalem, and took his
farewell of them all, in closing words like these:
“The blessed Miriamne, child of Jesus, and emulator of Mary, has passed
away, but Christ her Comforter and Savior may be such to each of you,
that wills Mary’s example, as the inspiration of all women, can never
die. The world has been a battle-ground, and each of you can here see
over the whole field of conflict. Shall all pleasures be found under the
leadership of Bacchus and Venus, or in Him that is the God of Joy? Shall
woman echo the passions of man or the ‘_Magnificat_’ of Mary? Shall the
strength that man seeks be that of the giants, brute force; the strength
of woman be, in her youth the bewitchings of personal beauty, in old age
the cunning of the witch-hag? Shall it not rather be in the girdle of her
moral worth?
“The world needs to seek and find love, beauty and light. Some go after
it, vainly, as did the Egyptian devotees of Phallic Khem; to whom, with
pitiful incongruity, were offered rampant goats and bulls, decorated
with most delicate flowers. They called Khem the ‘God of births,’ the
‘beautiful God,’ but we know to put mothers on the throne as the
beautiful; their flowers, their jewels, their glories being their
offspring!
“Women of Jerusalem, never forget the Savior’s own words to the women
that envied His mother, crying that the one that bore Him and nursed Him
was therefore peculiarly blessed! His reply was: ‘YEA, RATHER BLESSED ARE
THEY THAT HEAR THE WORD OF GOD AND KEEP IT.’”
Then the Hospitaler, bending his eyes upon the pale-faced, widowed
missioner, continued: “I’ll tell thee a tradition of our Lord’s mother.
Doubting Thomas, laggard because doubting, came late to the burial-place
of Mary. He begged to have her coffin opened, that once more he might
gaze on the face of his Savior’s mother. It was done. But there seemed to
be nothing in that coffin except lilies and roses, luxuriously blooming.
Then, looking up, he saw the spirit of the woman ‘soaring heavenward in
a glory of light.’ But as she soared, she threw down to him her girdle.
Here is a beautiful parable. The graves of the holy are to memory full
of the ever-blooming roses of love and the lilies of purity. If we may
not have them we loved with us always, we may have the virtues with which
they engirdled themselves, for our conflicts.”
The Hospitaler paused, cast a glance of yearning tenderness upon the
assembled women and the heart-stricken Cornelius; then exclaimed:
“Long partings are painful. Farewell!” He glided away ere any could
clasp his hand. Not long after this event the Sheik of Jerusalem,
Azrael’s putative son, raided Bethany, razing the “Temple of Allegory”
to the earth. He was maddened because, after the disappearance of the
Hospitaler, there came to him no stipend to buy immunity for the
“Bethesda House” of the “Sisters of Bethany.” He despoiled it, hoping to
find a treasure therein, but though there was in and about the place a
great wealth, it was all beyond his grasp or ken, for he knew naught of
the worth or power of precious truths and precious memories. Cornelius,
after this, taking his infant son, soon departed from Syria. His dream of
evangelizing the world and the great designs of Miriamne faded from his
hopes, as the vision of universal empire has faded often from the hopes
of dying conquerors. For years he devoted himself to being father and
mother to his child. At last we behold him, as in the foregoing pages,
looking toward sunset. He stands finally in Bethany, his dismantled
home and Miriamne’s ruined temple not far away, her tomb close at hand,
himself like the fragment of a wreck; altogether presenting a sad,
dramatic tableau. He stands there as the last of the new “Grail Knights,”
the last of those who in his time were devoted to the new grail quest. It
was Saturnalia-time, and it was night.
“VIRGIN AND MOTHER OF OUR DEAR REDEEMER
...
IF OUR FAITH HAD GIVEN US NOTHING MORE
THAN THIS EXAMPLE OF ALL WOMANHOOD,
SO MILD, SO STRONG, SO GOOD,
SO PATIENT, PEACEFUL, LOYAL, LOVING, PURE,
THIS WERE ENOUGH TO PROVE IT HIGHER AND TRUER
THAN ALL THE CREEDS THE WORLD HAD KNOWN BEFORE.”
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Jamison.
[2] The Magnificat.