“The harp the monarch minstrel swept, The king of men, the loved of heaven.
...
It softened men of iron mold;
No ear so dull, no soul so cold
That felt not, fired not to the tone,
Till David’s lyre grew mightier than the throne;
Since then, though heard on earth no more,
Devotion, and her daughter, love,
Still bid the bursting spirit soar,
To sounds that seem as from above,
In dreams that day’s broad light can not remove.”
—Byron.
 
“The king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, ... and caused a seat to be set for the king-mother, and she sat at his right hand.”—1 Kings, 2, 19.
 
“Miriamne, the heavenly host we imagined to be in bivouac about our Bethany home, methinks were really present, and gave color and form to my dreams. I was in a grail-quest all night.”
 
“What a golden day is such a night! But tell me of the color and form of your visions, Cornelius.”
 
“We fell asleep last night conversing of the Ascension; my dreams carried me on to Pentecost.”
 
“And what have you brought from the dream-land[530] to help in the stern and pressing waking hours?”
 
“A panting heart, as one having climbed mountain above mountain. I burn to know and feel the whole significance of Pentecost!
 
“I’ve determined to seek holy companionship and wise guiding by attendance at the next ‘Harvest Feast’ at Jerusalem. I think I’ll get peculiar help at the great city.”
 
“The Israelites will not welcome a Christian to their feast.”
 
“The one I aim to attend is that that will be observed by the Christian knights in an upper room, in the great city. They think they have possession of the identical apartment in which the disciples of our Lord met and witnessed the glories of Pentecost, after the Ascension.”
 
“In Joseph of Arimath?a’s house?”
 
“That is the accepted report. The Hospitaler, whom we believe to be a ‘Grail Knight’ of to-day, is quite earnest in so affirming.”
 
“Wondrous white-souled Arimath?a! Jewish and a priest, yet secretly a disciple of Jesus! I dare to liken myself unto that holy man, in a measure. He left an old faith for a new one, and followed the cup of the Passion, as I, my ideal.”
 
“A good man and a just,” says the Testament.
 
“We meet to-night in Arimath?a’s house,” said the Hospitaler to Cornelius, shortly after the arrival and welcome of the latter at Jerusalem.
 
“Can the uninitiated attend?” questioned Cornelius.
 
“Now, that’s the joy of it, they can; and more, we[531] are to have a number of Jews present, among them some once priests; but now like that Joseph of blessed memory, seeing the true light.”
 
“And the meeting?”
 
“The exalting of the Word, that’s the need of the hour, world-wide. I tell thee, young man, set to teach; the needs are not more religions but more religion, not more revelators or prophets but surer interpreters. The world blooms with truth on every hand; who will pluck the blossoms?”
 
And the disciples were again, all with one accord, in the holy upper chamber.
 
The Hospitaler, with an abruptness of John the Baptist, merely throwing back his tunic and exposing the golden sign of knighthood for a moment to his companions, as he entered, at once began to address the assembly;
 
“Jews and Gentiles, all children by creation of a common Father—greeting! The fires of Pentecost are kindled everywhere in Jerusalem, but they are the old fires and cold enough; sacrifices smoke on the altars, but the day of such offerings is past.
 
“Methinks, the offered bulls, goats and lambs, if they could speak, would cry out against the priestly hands that shed their blood; ‘How long, how long the blood of our flocks has pointed to the lamb of God, the All-Savior, who died to save men from sin and beasts from the altar; and yet we die as if our work were not finished!’
 
“The beasts join in the wailings of humanity.
 
“For centuries God’s chosen people celebrated this feast of the harvest, the joy of Jewry; and now the world’s harvest advenes. Yet, for the most part, the[532] multitudes see not the ripening. For years the first fruits were offered, and as yet, the people do not understand that first fruits mean chosen, choice fruits, the elect of God.
 
“For centuries, Israel offered the shoulder and heart of the lamb, and yet Israel waits under the overshadowing smokes of its burnt offering, not discerning the Lamb Priest, whose heart of eternal love and shoulder of power, are given for the salvation of the people.
 
“Israelites, hear me; out of the altar’s smoke emerges to view the kingdom of the house of David, refined, purified—the hope of the future. Ye have thought, hitherto, that David’s kingdom, whatsoever it might have been, is, in these ages, to be reckoned with the dynasties and forces of an antiquity, whose influences long ago ebbed away along the shores of the all-entombing past.
 
“Yet such conclusion is as fallacious as it is evidently superficial. The God who works in unbroken time cycles, though men remit their tasks at the beck of sleep or death, pushes forth His forceful, faultless projects with a tireless consistency that knows no cross purposes. A real and present kingdom is that with which this Pentecost we have to do. We are not, at that time when they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah and spread them before the sun. David’s throne is a verity, though long incrusted with neglects; it is a symbol of power in a dynasty that is ordained to overspread the earth. I’d summon my witnesses; first the weeping Jeremiah. ‘Thus said the Lord: David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.’ How bold! but amid the ruins about us, I cry never! never! Now call the God-nourished captive Daniel, who, sincere to the last, made all Babylon[533] glow with his prayers and his visions. Saith Daniel:
 
“‘The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.’ The dream is certain; the interpretation sure. He was proof against the alluring blandishments of his royal captors, and as pure to the last as a knight of San Grail.”
 
Cornelius saw a light on the Hospitaler’s face, and knew it was that that comes from a conscience clear before God. The latter went on with a voice suddenly become tenderer than it was before.
 
“Let us hear the reply of the converted pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar: ‘Whose kingdom is from generation to generation!’............