“Her eyes are homes of silent prayer, No thought her mind admits;
But ‘He was dead and there he sits!
And He that brought him back is there!’
“All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete;
She bows, she bathes the Savior’s feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.”
—Alfred Tennyson.
 
“In the day time He was teaching in the temple, and at night He went out and abode in the mount that is called the Mount of Olives.”—Luke xxi., 37.
 
“Gethsemane on one side, Bethany on the other ... where He was wont to pray for His people and weep for a sinful world; where His feet stood on the eve of His ascension and where His wondering disciples received from white-robed angels the promise of His second advent. It will be admitted that above and beyond all places in Palestine Olivet witnessed ‘God manifest in the flesh.’”—Porter’s “Giants of Bashan.”
 
After Jesus had been driven from His native Nazareth, He found a home in the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, in the village of Bethany, on the eastern slope of Olivet. That was sweet, memorable Bethany of the Gospels; “the perfection of repose,” amid the palm and oak-covered[521] slopes of Olivet; hidden by its quiet life, as well as its sequestering mountain, from Jerusalem, that great, throbbing heart of Palestine.
 
Thither, down the east steps of the Temple, through the “Golden Gate,” along camel paths that wound past Gethsemane and across fitful Kedron, the Son of Man often went when worn out by His love ministries, or harassed by the gainsayings of the great city. So, preaching His new kingdom, He exalted its cornerstone, the godly home, by electing one such, that of Lazarus and his sisters, as a rest and a refuge for Himself. Beyond this He proved His own humanity by seeking earthly friendships, at the same time exhibiting Himself, though the favored of heaven, the object of constant angelic regard, as needing, because He was human, that which humanity ever needs—congenial human fellowships.
 
The history of that ancient Bethany family, gathered from various sources, but chiefly from the simple and touching narrative of the Evangelist John, is full of interest. The mother of that home, to us nameless, was dead. Yet she was not fameless; that circle of children in their several relationships witnessed full well of a finest mother-culture, that had been theirs. The father of that family was worse than dead; he was a leper, buried alive in the Lazar keeps of the plague-stricken, and the husband of Martha, the elder sister, early had left his bride widowed.
 
That was a circle cut through its center; but affliction had knit together in deepened affection the few left. The fatherly brother, Lazarus, well fulfilled his double obligation, and wins admiration, as do ever those sons and brothers who faithfully take the place[522] of dead fathers. That he was such a brother, the grief of his sisters when he died fully proclaimed.
 
With a few fine sentences John depicts those sisters. Martha, widowed in life’s morning, but surmounting all morbidness by giving herself to motherly ministries in her home; and then was Mary, a clinging, trusting, pious maiden; a poem of faith, a tear-bedewed rose-wreath. When Christ joined that circle there was presented the finest conceivable ideal of a home. They served and He blessed, and though their bereavements could never be forgotten, while His banner of love was over them, they were able to alleviate the poignancy of their griefs through the hope of a blessed resurrection and a final, eternal reunion.
 
The sacred associations gathering about the village of Olivet made it a place peculiarly attractive to Cornelius and Miriamne; for they, too, were bereaved; neither in all the world having a single living kinsman of whom they knew.
 
They determined, shortly after their final farewell to Bozrah, to take up their abode at the “House of Dates,” and were unmeasurably delighted in being able to secure for themselves a house reputed to have been the identical one occupied by Christ and His choice friends. If it were not the same, there seemed good reason to believe it was at least on the site of that ancient sacred domicile.
 
One day they conversed of their work, their hopes, and the needs of their field of labor.
 
“I’m led to think that we should establish a refuge for Magdalenes, Miriamne.”
 
“If we did attempt the founding of an asylum for outcasts we would not belie the memory of a noble[523] woman, who was never a harlot, by applying to it her name. But my ‘grail’ does not lead me that way. I’d go mad working for the utterly lost only! No; no, our work must be more radical, by beginning back of the falling so as to prevent it.”
 
“Something must be done to educate the women of this country to better living and higher conceptions of womanhood. We need a school of some kind.”
 
“A school? Good, if it be of the right kind; but there have been schools and schools for men, such as they were, and they have effectually proven that education alone is not a savior. Learning does not transform the soul, else God would have given Moses the pattern of a college instead of that of a tabernacle. My mother used often to tell me that the devil is superbly educated. The more he knows the prouder and more dangerous he becomes. I do not despise learning, but since it is impotent to transform men, why try it as the savior of woman? She who takes counsel less of the intellect than of the conscience and affections! We must seek for those we aim to help something surpassing in direct efficacy any thing yet attempted;” so saying, Miriamne paused.
 
“Shall we organize a church, ‘fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?’”
 
“There have been churches and churches. It would be vain for me to attempt to prove to you, a theologian and a churchman, that this you call the ‘Bride of Christ’ is imperfect or lacking in any energy of reform; but, though I heartily confess ’tis the choicest institution this side of the stars, yet I see it professing to have heavenly charity, abounding light, and measureless joys, leaving the needy without hospitals, the heathen[524] in ignorance, and most of the world, including many churchmen, famishing for happiness. The trouble is, it infolds too many wolves and repels too many lambs. Your flocks are too much given to atoning for lean living by fat believing; memorizing huge creeds instead of incarnating them; putting their faith-confessions into themselves rather than themselves into their faith professions. You churchmen shut your ears to friendly criticism, sneer at those that censure, and in branding such heretics proclaim yourselves infallible. I’d not be a vaporing railler, but I hear within your ecclesiastical bodies of warring factions, of ambitious and multitudinous leaders, a proof that they are of the church militant; though theirs is an internecine militating. I doubt if there has existed Christ’s ideal of a church since Pentecost. He gave a glimpse of its true outlines there, and it will yet come in its power and splendor; ............