“Oh, moist eyes,
And hurrying lips and heaving heart!
The world we’ve come to late is swollen hard
With perishing generations and their sins;
The civilizer’s spade grinds horribly
On dead men’s bones, and can not turn up soil,
That’s otherwise than fetid. All successes
Prove partial failure....
... All governments, some wrong;
The rich men make the poor who curse the rich,
Who agonize together, rich and poor,
Under and over in the social spasm.
...
Who being man and human, can stand calmly by
And view these things, and never tease his soul
For some great cure.”
—Mrs. E. B. Browning: “Aurora Leigh.”
“They went up into an upper room,
With the woman and Mary the mother of Jesus.”
“Many signs and wonders were done.
All that believed had all things common.”
—Acts.
 
“I’m anxious for the coming of the people to-day; Beulah said, a week ago, at her wedding, that she’d have the old Druse camel-driver at this service; though he ran away from her marriage feast.”
 
[582]
 
“I’ve heard that she and her grandmother had a convert to our faith, nearly ripe,” replied Cornelius to his wife.
 
At this instant one of the “Bethany Sisters” timidly approached the speakers, evidently anxious to deliver some communication.
 
“’Tis ‘Brightness’ by name and by nature,” remarked Miriamne.
 
“Well, sister Ziha, what is it?” questioned the chaplain.
 
“Pardon me; but there is waiting without, a grave and taciturn man who says he would speak with the ‘Prophetess.’ He means our Miriamne.”
 
“Of what flavor is he, Ziha?”
 
“Surely, I can not imagine, sister Miriamne! His countenance is that of a Persian Jew; his turban is Turkish; his tunic Christian. But his bearing is that of a prince, though all his belongings, except his gorgeously dressed camel, are those of a beggar!”
 
“I’ll see him, Ziha; bid him enter,” exclaimed Miriamne.
 
“That I did; but he says his haste is too great and his limbs too stiff for dismounting. In truth, his brow, bleached to the bone, tells of weighty years.”
 
“Let’s go to him,” said the chaplain.
 
The missioners going forth, at the easterly side of their temple, were confronted by a majestic figure, mounted on a splendidly caparisoned white camel, evidently a borrowed one.
 
“Ullah makum,” “God be with you,” said the man on the camel with great courtliness and dignity, at the same time extending to the chaplain a parchment roll.
 
[583]
 
“This for me?” questioned the latter.
 
“For thee,” replied the rider, bowing as before, but looking past the question with fixed, though reverent, gaze at Miriamne.
 
“But who are you?” again questions the chaplain.
 
“God knows,” was the sententious reply of the rider, his eyes still turning, not with curiosity, but with a deferential and affectionate interest, toward the chaplain’s wife.
 
“What message here, my father?” questioned again Cornelius, in the language of Galilee.
 
The aged man’s dark face lightened at the words, and turning his reverent gaze from Miriamne toward the questioner, he slowly responded:
 
“The ‘Angels of the Mount’ are not too proud to call a poor camel driver ‘my father?’ Age has respect here! I might have known this: Nourahmal is full of the odors of this new Bethany!”
 
“And do you come from Nourahmal?” quickly interrogated Miriamne.
 
“Nourahmal and I are one, by the voice of God spoken through the holy Hospitaler, who is alluring me daily from the secret faiths of my fathers to learn the prayers that Nourahmal learns here.”
 
“I see,” continued Miriamne; “I speak with Nourahmal’s consort. Pray dismount for refreshment. We bid you every welcome, Mahmood.”
 
“Mahmood! called by such fine people by my proper name; not ‘dog’ or ‘here you,’ or ‘old camel goad!’ Wonderful!”
 
“Will Nourahmal’s spouse dismount?”
 
“Blessed woman, I’ve had great refreshment in being thus permitted to see thee face to face, and[584] thank thee and thine for what thou hast done for me and mine; but I can not tarry; old age and poverty have bargained to make constant toil my master. I must keep moving or the swifter youths will take away my master and leave me to hire out to starvation;” so saying, the speaker smote his camel and the beast moved away, slowly, along the road toward Jerusalem.
 
Cornelius, recovering himself from his meditations, called after the departing Druse.
 
“What of this parchment?”
 
“The Hospitaler sent it! He said it would talk with ‘the Angels of the Mount.’”
 
The camel driver had stopped his beast to say this much. For a moment he looked at the missioners, then at their temple and its surroundings. There was a world of questioning, and wonder, and yearning in the old man’s countenance. Again his goad fell on the beast he rode and the latter bore him along.
 
“Shall we meet again, father?” Cornelius called after him.
 
“Stay master work! Go master want! ’Till good shade Death takes to the cool rest-land the holy Hospitaler, the Angels of the Mount, my Nourahmal, and may be me; even me the poor, old, camel-driver, Mahmood!” was the slow reply as the Druse departed. A turn in the road soon shut him from view.
 
“Well, my spouse, Miriamne, our new Bethany sees strange visitants these days,” remarked her husband.
 
“The mystic Druse is finding something that is finer than the creeds of his mountain clans,” rejoined Miriamne.
 
“Be not too certain; those Highlanders of Palestine are ever politic; they’ll quote the Koran to one of[585] Islam, kiss the Bible in the company of Christians; but once alone are Druse to the last.”
 
“That is their character; but we’ve a transforming gospel; no man as old as he and companion of such advocates of the White Kingdom as the Hospitaler and Nourahmal, could talk as did that old man to kill time or conventionally.—But you do not study your parchment.” Cornelius, recalled by Miriamne’s words, unfolded the document given him by the camel-driver, and read aloud:
 
“My son and my daughter: Greeting; the streams of gospel blessing rising in the springs of your mountain temple reach refreshingly even unto Jerusalem, as I daily perceive. Therefore, for your consolation and for the enkindling of your pious zeal, I herewith send these lines. Work onward, beloved, believing, hoping you have arrived at the dawn of a new revelation and well commenced a true work for God. To-day, as I sought to interpret His prophecies, it came to me that that you are attempting to do is nigh to being a fulfillment of His word as recorded in the manner following by Ezekiel:
 
“Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim.
 
“And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
 
“The word of the Lord came unto me, saying:
 
“Thus saith the Lord God: I will assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
 
“And they shall come thither, and they shall take[586] away all the detestable things thereof and all the abominations.
 
“And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within, and I will take the stony heart.
 
“That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
 
“Then did the cherubim lift up their wings, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
 
“And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city.
 
“These solemn words tell how the glory and favor of God was driven from the people of old by their sinning; how slowly, yearningly, God departed; how in every land He provide little sanctuaries for the faithful few. And more than all this, the Holy Word describes God in Spirit as pausing on the mount to the east of Jerusalem. That pausing place was your Olivet. The Jewish Rabbins in their sacred histories affirm that for three years God, in manifest form, tarried, near where your Temple of Allegory stands, repeating over and over the solemn call, ‘Return unto me, and I will return unto you!’ Beloved, since then the eternal voice, through Jesus Christ, has spoken through three ministering years from these mountains to the world. You are now re-echoing the cry. God be with you, as He is, and give you faith to call and call until the ascended Christ come into all hearts.”
 
“No name to his letter, as usual?” remarked the chaplain.
 
“He seems to loathe names almost; but recently, when I made bold to ask him his, he sententiously observed, ‘God knows; ’tis in a white stone, I’m to get; for this life I’m only remembered by what I’ve done.’ But what engages my husband’s attention now?”
 
[587]
 
“I’m trying to interpret the picture yonder, over the door, to the retreat you call the ‘Mother’s Pillow.’”
 
“What think you of it? You perceive it’s the legend of the mother pelican feeding her famishing young with blood drawn from her own bosom, which she has wounded for their food.”
 
“I think the picture likely to depress nervous mothers!”
 
“That’s a picture of one side of mother life; look beyond it.”
 
At that the light from a distant window was let fall, by some unseen attendant, all about the entrance to the “Mother’s Pillow!”
 
“I see a splendid ‘Gabriel’ above the pelican; the angel’s hand points upward.”
 
“Glorious Gabriel! Angel of mothers and victories, by interpretation, ‘God’s champion!’ You’ve heard his titles, Cornelius?”
 
“I know that he bore victory to Gideon and lightened the way for Daniel’s conquest of all Babylon; nor do I forget that h............