THE “KNIGHT OF ST. MARY” AND RIZPAH AT THE GRAVE OF THEIR SONS. “Courage, for life is hasting
To endless life away;
The inner fires unwaiting,
Transfigure our dull clay.”
...
“Lost, lost are all our losses;
Love set forever free;
The full life heaves and tosses
Like an eternal sea;
One endless, living story;
One poem spread abroad,
And the sun of all our glory
Is the countenance of God.”
—George McDonald.
 
“I am ascending unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.”—Jno. xx. 17.
 
The Teutonic knight was standing in silent contemplation of a pile of ruins, from the center of which rose a number of stately columns like so many mourners about a grave. These were all left of a stately old temple. Art had done nobly here once; now desolation was master, even the name of the structure being forgotten. The priest approached, questioning within himself as to how he would address Sir Charleroy, when[454] they met. As he drew nearer, he thought here are two temples in decay. There came to his mind out of the distant past a vision of Sir Charleroy as he was when he stood erect, ruddy-cheeked and every wit a man by his bride’s side, the time of the wedding at Damascus. The priest, contrasting the man before him, now aged and solemn faced, with what he was then, thought “of the two ruined temples, the man is the sadder one. A quarter of a century slipping over a life, though with noiseless feet, generally leaves its tracks; if pain and passion have been the companion of the years, havoc is wrought.” Solemnly, and in measured tones, the priest’s meditations having given him free utterance, he spoke, quoting the words long before sadly pronounced by the Savior concerning Jerusalem’s holy place: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
 
Sir Charleroy slowly, very slowly, turning his eyes upon the speaker, observed him from head to foot, but uttered not a word.
 
Again the priest spoke: “Time has so changed both knight and priest, that they forget themselves; nor is it therefore wonderful, they should not remember each other.”
 
“Father Adolphus! Miriamne’s work?”
 
“What matter whose act if we see God back of the actor. I’ve a message from on high!”
 
“Why, thou dost astound me!”
 
“Methinks no man more needs astounding. May righteousness enter the gates opened by wonder, and so move thee into Rizpah’s home and thine; death is there!”
 
“Is there? has been! When love was slain, I shut[455] out its bleeding form with the mourning robes of a long forgetfulness.
 
“There are hopes that die to live no more; so there are homes which bereft of their household Penates are doomed to grim ruin forever. See these giant dwellings. They tell it all.
 
“Thou art a Christian, I believe; but like the disciples, Cleopas and Luke, with eyes holden; not discerning the Lord.
 
“Just as some, having embalmed the body, looked into the tomb at a napkin only, seeing merely the place where He lay. Though puzzled that the grave’s seal was broken, they were still blind to the miracle of a new dawn, simultaneous with the unclasping of night’s grim arms. They had heard of the resurrection to be, yet they reasoned that the Promiser was surely dead. Love alone, in the person of Mary Magdalene, most loving because most forgiven, overleaped all doubts, disappointments and fears, to hie away in the thinning darkness, in an utter abandonment to her trust in the words of Him, to whom her heart was given. That was love indeed.”
 
“Oh, priest, ’tis so. A woman; a woman; leading in religion! I do not much bepraise her, for she, being a woman, easily could believe, where men doubted.”
 
“It would have been cruel to have crossed her faith, would it not, Sir Charleroy?”
 
“Yes, on my soul, yes!”
 
“Then go to the bier of thy boys. Let love overleap all obstacles.”
 
“But let me rest, priest. I’ve had the full draught of trouble’s cup. I’m quit of further conflict.”
 
[456]
 
“Thou believest? Listen:
 
“To whom also he shewed himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God——
 
“Christian Cross-bearing knight, hear me! The suffering Savior could never have revealed Himself, as the Almighty, Risen Christ, if there had been no cross. By what He suffered He had gain of power. Thy wrinkles, disciplines and all such like, fit thee now to minister in the chamber of death; even where now of all places on earth, thou art needed.”
 
“But my case is so peculiar, my home so unnatural!”
 
“Is there no balm in Gilead, Sir Charleroy? If thou and she have been great sinners, He’s a great Savior, and more, a patient one. Hast thou thought how He lingered near His followers in an overplus of love, lured from the triumphs of heaven, to personally deal, all comfortingly, all encouragingly, peculiarly with individuals? For thirty-three years in the flesh he wandered about, doing good, healing all those oppressed of the devil; but the finest hours of all His life lay in those forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. Well might He say to Mary: ‘Touch me not,’ when in love, she fain would have retarded Him by sentimental fondling. Listen now:
 
“‘I have not yet ascended: Go to my disciples, say to them: I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God!’ He was making a sublime accent along golden steps, and the number of those steps were ten and two, even as the number of Israel’s tribes.”
 
[457]
 
“I do not comprehend this mysticism, though the word-frame is beautiful.”
 
“Then know it. On the cross, Immanuel cried: ‘It is finished!’ Glorious salvation’s work was finished; but then He lingered still to bless, especially His friends. Count the steps. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast the seven devils and who doubtless clung to the Savior, her only hope, her only deliverance from the awful realities of the tragedy in her soul. Thy Rizpah was never so ill as Magdalene, yet surely she is worthy as much tenderness.”
 
“Secondly. Jesus appeared to His mother; love’s appearing. I see her now, in mind, by the record here unnamed—left in the sacred privacy of her grief; too stricken to minister, but close to the triumph, because all needful of its blessing. I see a third step—Jesus, by special appointment, meeting the backsliding fisherman of Tiberias, now gone away to his nets, persuading himself he had done and suffered enough, even as does Sir Charleroy to-day.”
 
“I’ve been called Pilate. Go on. Call me Peter; I can bear it.”
 
“Fourthly. The Christ joined Luke and Cleopas, the Greek proselytes, now doubters; but the chill of their misgivings was burned away in hearts inflamed, while they journeyed to Emmaus.”
 
“Now call me Luke-Cleopas, priest. I’ve the chill of the doubts, I’m sure.”
 
“Fifthly. He came to His own little church-of-the-upper-room, to breathe on it peace and to display His all-convincing body; then He waited a week for a special unfoldment to Thomas, the all-doubter, leaving him filled with all faith.”
 
[458]
 
“Oh, that He’d come to Sir Charleroy!” said the knight.
 
“He does, but the knight’s eyes are holden, and he starves while toiling for fish in a dead sea. Listen to these words by the shore of Tiberias:
 
“‘Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No.
 
“‘And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.
 
“‘Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.
 
“‘Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.’
 
“Oh, Sir Charleroy, cast in the net on the right side, then come and dine.”
 
“But I’m an odd man; not like others.”
 
“He that is All Fullness later appeared to multitudes of every clime, the representatives of the Church universal, ever full of odd people; again to the apostle of good works, James, called the pillar of faith. The tenth appearing was at Bethany, as the blesser and promiser to all. After that he showed himself to Paul, proof that he was a returning Christ, and, last of all, to John on Patmos. This the John that was care-taker of Mary, the mother; John, the all-loving. I read each page of the glowing Apocalypse as a love-letter from heaven to a mother, from a Son who carries eternally within His glorious heart the image of the woman great chiefly for her great love of Him. She loyally followed Him to the grave; He lovingly followed her[459] beyond it. When he set John to picturing heaven as a virgin-bride and His Church as a woman clothed with the sun, Christ had surely the choicest of women, Mary, in His heart.”
 
“And the Heart of Heaven might well lovingly remember the mystical Rose,” quoth the knight.
 
“As heaven loved Mary, so should noble men love ‘bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh,’ as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it.”
 
“Thou wert never wed, good priest?”
 
“No; perhaps ’tis well so. I’ve had a work in helping those who were wed unhappily, to peace; forgetting, in serving their need, my own joy.”
 
“Then thou hast no idea of what it is to deal with a Rizpah as a wife.”
 
“I know she’s a woman; a marvel in her fidelity to her children. She may have infirmities, but there was a woman, bowed grievously for eighteen years, fully restored by one kind touch of the man, Jesus, ever all-pitiful and tender toward women.”
 
“But that one was willing to be healed.”
 
“No; she was trying to hide, but the Savior called her out, just to heal her.”
 
“Now, then, let me cross swords at close quarters, since thou dost press me. I ask thee, as a Christian priest, wouldst thou have me tolerate the sins of heresy in my own home? Remember, Jezebel, she beguiled Ahab, her daughter, Athaliah, and her husband, Jehoram,............