Mary: The Queen of the House of David and Mother of Jesus. A. Stewart Walsh

all in wealth-getting, and yet is infinitely apart from the littleness of avarice. It is to him the advent of charity’s full-orbed day. It may be fancy in him, but it’s to him very real; the world about, as if having learned his secret, seems to be dressing for the wedding feast, while all things appear to be coming very confidentially to him to whisper the divine mandate, ‘marry and multiply.’ He is trusted, yet trusts; leads, yet follows. He is proud to display, a little, his conquest, but does so with a sort of alert charming selfishness, which gives notice to the world that he alone is to wear the chosen one upon his heart. He realizes the paradox of giving all and receiving all; the mystery of two lives merged into one by an utter surrender, each to each, which leaves both infinitely richer than the sum of all their ownings could make either if possessed by the one apart from the other. Oh, how almost imperiously each demands that the other shall surrender all and then how great the joy each feels in leading the chosen mate to surprises at the munificence and completeness of the giving up of all by the one who just now demanded all. I do not know the woman’s heart, but can readily believe it far surpasses the man’s in its consecration, enjoyment and aspiring. I know the man’s, but my words are ragged in description. I know that this grand passion makes him wondrously weak and wondrously strong. Sometimes these inner feelings come nigh overwhelming him; sometimes they fall upon his life like the musical ebb-waves on resonant shores. I can not word it all, nor is it strange, since I am speaking of a life of heavenly flights, and best expressed by voiceless signs, embraces. In love’s hour the man realizes, as never before, his lordliness and his pride and ambition are fed by a growing conviction that all the world is small beside himself and his; proud as a conqueror of untold wealth, he yields to the tender ties that unrelentingly bind him and crucifies his native roughness that he may be more like, more worthy her he rules and obeys. He is made finer; she stronger. Has she virtues, he appropriates them; at the same time, by the homage implied by his appropriation, makes them to shine more brightly on the brow and heart of his queen. He touches the fires on the altar she has erected within herself to love alone, and the altar-fires blaze until her whole being is illuminated as a temple on fête days. She puts on his best parts, and then he revels in delight as he beholds his virtues refined and so beautifully framed. There are times when, like a mighty anthem, his passion passes over and through him. Then is he nigh to madness, being in the mood to slay himself, or another doing aught to check the rapture of the mighty swellings of the music that pours over every nerve from head to heart, to limb. Then it is he embraces and kisses and embraces again; as an inspired artist of music, exhausting himself to prolong this joy, almost materialized. Indeed, I saw one who said ‘this is tangible music. I feel it; taste it; see it!’ It seems to thicken the air until I rise unwinged, and yet in a flight that seems to me as free and brilliant as that of the golden oriole’s. If the enchanted enchanter be pure and true, she leads her captive king, made tender and yet more manly by his captivity, surely upward from tumultuous passion’s sway to the ambrosial table-lands of higher affection where both may reign tenderly, bravely, hopefully, forever. I tell thee, knight, the finest spectacle on earth is a man in his prime, creation’s lord at his best, sincerely, completely in love with a queenly woman. Next after getting God into a man’s heart, the greatest blessing is the getting of a woman of genuine parts therein.”

      “Oh, child of the sunny palm land, thou hast imbibed wondrous eloquence. But thou sayest truly. Now, for the women that are so to queen us men. No woman that I ever knew of could so intoxicate, transform and translate me.”

      “One like Eve, the gift of God?”

      “The first woman, like the first man, was pure without virtue, until tried; then she fell. I think of her chiefly as being a splendid animal, yet, as Adam was not left for man’s example, neither was she. I still think Eve passed by in history to be only what she was full proof that love which rises no higher than to give all to and for that which was like the fruit of the tempting tree, good for food and pleasant to the eyes, is not like the love that at last hung on the tree of Calvary. Oh, child of Abraham, I hear the ‘voice of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,’ saying to a world of flitting, false ideals, and those yearning for pilots and patterns, ‘Where art thou?’ I don’t know, for one, exactly where I am, but I’m going forward and upward someway.”

      “Sir Charleroy thou dost dazzle me by thy correspondences and insights, if I do thee by my pictures. We are quits.”

      “But we’ll not quit. This pilgrim idleness has value. I never knew what I believed until, thus flung out of life’s hurly burly, I had little company but my thoughts. There was method of reason in God’s taking His prophets to lone places, to fit them for understanding the rapturing visions with which He filled them.”

      “ ’Tis so, true; but what thinks the knight of Esther, the beautiful Queen? She’s the idol and ideal in Israel in all times and places.”

      “Wondrous woman! A girl, petted, ill-trained, from poverty suddenly exalted, surrounded by the skilled intriguants of court, a jealous, exacting, conceited, harem-demoralized old king for a spouse, she was then burdened with the salvation of a nation. I’ve so pitied her that I’ve forgotten to admire how well she did in her trying lot.”

      “Can the world ever have a finer figure or presentment of all that is womanly? I do not challenge thy Mary, but may I not put the two side by side?”

      “Israel has two great women in their way. The one, Esther, exemplifying all sweetness and the mild strength of a suddenly developed woman, doing grandly in one emergency when great peril and great love aroused her from only being an entrancing, petted beauty, to be the heroine of an hour. But she was not tried by the searching test of a lifetime. She never meets the needs of mothers seeking an ideal. Rizpah, your other grand woman, was the mother, even the mother of sorrows, of the Old Testament. It takes these two to make an ideal, and yet the pattern is incomplete. God walks yet in the garden where men live, with only these two before them, and ever and anon they hear the unanswerable, ‘Where art thou?’ ”

      “Why, my mentor, master, thou hast touched our Scriptures with the rod that budded; the whole opens to me as if for the first time. Methinks, if I were permitted to lay hands now upon one of our sacred volumes, I’d be fairly overcome by the light that would break out on me from within it.”

      “ ‘The entrance of the word giveth light,’ Ichabod.”

      “I’m moved, master, along lines I can not turn from, to the one woman of all, Mary. She is thy ideal queen of hearts?”

      “I’m a pilgrim and follow her, seeing none better.”

      “Then thou wouldst be willing to wed such as Mary?”

      “Hold! This is sacrilegious! I’ll not think of Mary in any such comparison. Leave my patron saint upon her high pedestal. I save her for my soul’s health, as every man should save some noble woman, for an inner enshrining, to be all that woman may be at her best, his beloved, his inspirer, and yet touching no spring of his life save such as responds to things of moral grandeur.”

      “Ah, master, I’ve not yet been enamored fully of this woman. I feel a stranger to her, but I feel the meaning of the finer things thou hast just spoken. I have the need of which thou dost speak, and my life, like a babe, often now goes out crying, ‘Mother, mother.’ As we lay, yesterday night, beneath the quiet firmament, I gazed up and asked a sign of God in prayer. It was a baby cry I know, but I saw one star that staid and staid above me. It seemed to be warmed with reddish tintings, and I thought that its glitterings were proof that it was taking part in some anthem of the morning stars. Then I dreamed that my mother was in the star all luminous, holy, happy, looking down in constant guardianship of her outcast boy! Oh, can a child ever be outcast utterly to mother? Can it be that she, who so loved me and so loved God, can hate me now, loving her and loving God as I do? God knows my heart! Will he not tell her all? Her constant mandate to me was, ‘keep a loyal heart, an undefiled conscience.’ I’ve tried to do both, but then her soul loathed apostacy. Does she loathe me for leaving Israel’s fold? My heart all torn, cries to-day, ‘Mother, mother!’ I’m sure she can not hate me. To-morrow I hope I shall pray at her grave.”

      Then the vehement Israelite fell on