“Thou didst not tell me of the meaning of that black and red pendant,” said Ichabod, interrupting.
“Oh, Gethsemane, Jesus, the intercessor for the world, ‘who ever lives to intercede.’ The black sign is of that.”
“Then I’ve a Saviour in glory praying for me. Oh, this is balm and water to me! Why do I dare to think of myself as a poor Jew! God pity; no, forgive me! I, repining sometimes and yet defended in glory; honored by royal adoption, elected of God, called to kingship!”
“How we do go up and down; sometimes thou, sometimes I. Now I’m leading, awhile ago ’twas thou. Yea, we are all dependants; but this is healthful meditation, Ichabod, and thy confession rebukes me as well.”
“Is this all of the feast?”
“Oh, no. Here are some tokens to remind us of Mary’s life; so brief, so useful. See, here, five gems that remind us of the wounds of her son; her wounds as well, for the sword that pierced Him pierced through to her soul also. At each of these emblems we ‘Rosary Brothers’ repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Last of all, reverently clasping this crucifix, we sacredly repeat the Apostle’s Creed, the same as I taught thee at Jericho.”
“I remember, as I do the water courses, when thirsty.”
“What think’st thou of all this formality? Is it like the Arabic mummeries?”
“No, they are mocking devils, are they not?”
“I am not to judge of their sincerity, nor their needs, nor art thou.”
“Master, I wish I could be a Rosary Brother. Methinks it would help my ambling faith sometimes, if I could touch a token.”
“He above is all tender of baby faiths that can do no better than amble. Remember the words of thy own Hosea: ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, I taught Ephriam to go; taking them by the arms; just as a mother teaches her babe to walk,’ is it not?”
“Even so. Does the Rosary help some to walk?”
“I believe it does.”
“Tell me more about it.”
“The Crusaders were the first to call Mary ‘The Rose.’ To almost all mankind that flower has ever been the emblem of pure, unselfish love, and when the soldiers of the Cross grew to understand the character of her that gave the world its Saviour, they could think of no title more fitting for that queenly woman.”
“I’ve an Egyptian rosary, knight. See, I wear it on this golden chain, next my heart, for its safety——”
“To ward off witchcraft?”
“Bah! ’Tis a toy in usefulness. I keep it, thinking it may work incantation with the money-lender, and so save me sometime from starvation.” Then the Jew laughed aloud at his own wit. It seemed very ridiculous to him to liken his talisman to the real rosary or its saint.
“Wouldst thou let me examine it, Jew?”
The latter handed to the knight a chain and image.
“Egyptian?”
“An image of Neb-ta, sister of Isis, the wife of the Sun God Osiris. It was given me by a Copt priest, whom I saved from drowning in the Nile.”
“A Copt?”
“A Copt. He was a professed Christian; but, like some of the ancestral Egyptians, sought to be right by being a little of every thing. He was very superstitious, though he thought himself very broad-minded. He was quite certain that Coptic Christianity was true, though not equally certain that his pagan ancestors were in faith all false. He thought he’d be on the safe side by mixing a little of all creeds with his own, and so he prayed in Christ’s name and also Neb-ta’s.”
“A pretty fool, Jew.”
“Yea. He had a story about the goddess, very pretty when not absurd, running somehow thus: When Osiris was cut to pieces by Set, a type of day slain by night, I think, Neb-ta went round the world with her widowed sister, Isis, to gather up the fragments of her spouse. Isis is the moon above; below, reproduction. She is pictured in Egypt, as all the female deities, with two eggs and a half-circle at the side, to express the latter idea. Isis has in her hand also this sign—a cross supporting an egg, to typify immortality. The old Egyptian priest told me this sympathetic Neb-ta, if I trusted her, would reward me for saving his life, by defending my case in Hades. There is a good deal of mysticism in all this, but I rather prize the gift, since it reminds me that I once saved a man.”
“But, Nourahmal? Since thou knew of Mary thou hast saved a woman, Jew.”
The Jew was silent. The knight continued:
“These philosophic, inseeing, sign-writing, symbol-making Egyptians were pilgrims, too; a nation of graal-seekers; after an idea, example. I see always the huge Sphinx coming before me when I think of them.”
“The Sphinx! Well, that’s strange. I’d never think of that, unless I happened upon something very big and very meaningless!”
“No, no; the people that rocked the cradle of religions in their infancy, wrought all their theology into that one mighty symbol, to endure and challenge compare with all that man should find beside.”
“I do not see how!”
“The Sphinx faces the East—light!”
“True!”
“It can not reach that light toward which it looks, neither could the Nubians.”
“All true.”
“It was part man, part beast; but the upper part was man, and this is what we think we know, and all of man?”
“Oh, knight, Phthah, the ‘beautiful-faced,’ ‘secret-opener’ of the Nile gods has touched thee.”
“The Sphinx was like man’s thought; too great for words; at least such words as men can now fit to their lips.”
“I see; it’s all coming into my mind, master.”
“It sat still and was silent, but the world went on; the thought it expressed reached hearts after the men that formed the image had passed away. The truth lives ever, and can not die until it completes its purpose.”
“Thou art a magician, who pleases, astonishes, excites, instructs, and at the same time plays with me as if I were a pigmy!”
“It’s not I, but the truth. The Sphinx again! Its hugeness, truth expressed, appears mighty when placed by our sides.”
“Tell me where I am! Shall I fling Neb-ta away as a bauble, or beg its pardon for hanging so much meaning to a fool’s neck?”
“Vehement! The sun is in thy head!”
“But shall I sit and look as a Sphinx, or run mad because I can’t?”
“Be calm, and let me tell thee that the dwellers by the mighty Nile plagued themselves with lasting darkness when they banished the people whose leader’s face shone from communion with Jehovah. They clung to some half truths, left them by the progeny of Joseph, but the half was dimmed by courted lusts.”
“But my people had no Neb-ta, no women divinities to leave in Egypt.”
“No, yet Egypt, aiming to exalt the tender, the beautiful, the mother, incarnated certain virtues, and lo, a woman deity! It was an effort to find the ‘Rose.’ The nation was in a vast, serious pilgrimage through all their dynasties after an idea, a pattern; an opportunity to reach and to express the best things. I tell thee, Jew, the heathen nations sit in darkness; this side and that, along the track of time, holding here and there a torch, waiting through the night whose hours are tolled off at century intervals, for something, Some One. There have passed before them like phantoms, gods and gods; man invented,