Chapter I: Introduction: To the Queen of the House of David

BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D.

I have been asked to open the front door of this book. But I must not keep you standing too long on the threshold. The picture-gallery, the banqueting hall and the throne-room are inside. All the fascinations of romance are, by the able author, thrown around the facts of Mary’s life. Much-abused tradition is also called in for splendid service. The pen that the author wields is experienced, graceful, captivating, and multipotent. As perhaps no other book that was ever written, this one will show us woman as standing at the head of the world. It demonstrates in the life of Mary what woman was and what woman may be. Woman’s position in the world is higher than man’s; and although she has often been denied the right of suffrage, she always does vote and always will vote—by her influence; and her chief desire ought to be that she should have grace rightly to rule in the dominion which she has already won.

She has no equal as a comforter of the sick. What land, what street, what house has not felt the smitings of disease? Tens of thousands of sick beds! What shall we do with them? Shall man, with his rough hand, and heavy foot, and impatient bearing, minister? No; he cannot soothe the pain. He can not quiet the nerves. He knows not where to set the light. His hand is not steady enough to pour out the drops. He is not wakeful enough to be watcher. You have known men who have despised women, but the moment disease fell upon them, they did not send for their friends at the bank or their worldly associates. Their first cry was, “Take me to my wife.” The dissipated young man at the college scoffs at the idea of being under home influence; but at the first blast of typhoid fever on his cheek he says, “Where is mother?” I think one of the most pathetic passages in all the Bible is the description of the lad who went out to the harvest fields of Shunem and got sunstruck; throwing his hands on his temples, and crying out, “Oh, my head! my head!” and they said, “Carry him to his mother.” And the record is “He sat on her knees till noon and then died.”

In the war men cast the cannon, men fashioned the muskets, men cried to the hosts “Forward, march!” men hurled their battalions on the sharp edges of the enemy, crying “Charge! charge!” but woman scraped the lint, woman administered the cordials, woman watched by the dying couch, woman wrote the last message to the home circle, woman wept at the solitary burial, attended by herself and four men with a spade. Men did their work with shot and shell, and carbine and howitzer; women did their work with socks and slippers, and bandages, and warm drinks, and scripture texts, and gentle soothings of the hot temples, and stories of that land where they never have any pain. Men knelt down over the wounded and said, “On which side did you fight?” Women knelt down over the wounded and said, “Where are you hurt? What nice thing can I make for you to eat? What makes you cry?” To-night, while we men are soundly asleep in our beds, there will be a light in yonder loft; there will be groaning down that dark alley; there will be cries of distress in that cellar. Men will sleep and women will watch.

No one as well as a woman can handle the poor. There are hundreds and thousands of them in all our cities. There is a kind of work that men cannot do for the destitute. Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather it. But woman glides so softly into the house of want, and finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right up to Heaven, from whence she seems to have come down. O, Christian young woman, if you would make yourself happy and win the blessings of Christ, go out among the poor! A loaf of bread or a bundle of socks may make a homely load to carry, but the angels of God will come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty will give His messenger hosts a charge, saying, “Look after that woman, canopy her with your wings, and shelter her from all harm.” And while you are seated in the house of destitution and suffering, the little ones around the room will whisper, “Who is she? is she not beautiful?” and if you will listen right sharply, you will hear dripping through the leaky roof, and rolling over the broken stairs, the angel chant that shook Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will to man.” Can you tell why a Christian woman, going down among the haunts of iniquity on a Christian errand, seldom meets with any indignity?

I stood in the chapel of Helen Chalmers, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Chalmers, in the most abandoned part of the city of Edinburg; and I said to her, as I looked around upon the fearful surroundings of that place, “Do you come here nights to hold a service?” “Oh, yes,” she said; “I take my lantern and I go through all these haunts of sin, the darkest and the worst; and I ask all the men and women to come to the chapel, and then I sing for them, and I pray for them, and I talk to them.” I said, “Can it be possible that you never meet with an insult while performing this Christian errand?” “Never,” she said; “never.” That young woman, who has her father by her side, walking down the street, and an armed policeman at each corner is not so well defended as that Christian woman who goes forth on Gospel work into the haunts of iniquity carrying the Bible and bread.

Some one said, “I dislike very much to see that Christian woman teaching these bad boys in the mission school. I am afraid to have her instruct them.” “So,” said another man, “I am afraid too.” Said the first, “I am afraid they will use vile language before they leave the place.” “Ah,” said the other man, “I am not afraid of that; what I am afraid of is, that if any of those boys should use a bad word in her presence, the other boys would tear him to pieces—killing him on the spot.”

Woman is especially endowed to soothe disaster She is called the weaker vessel, but all profane as well as sacred history attests that when the crisis comes she is better prepared than man to meet the emergency. How often have you seen a woman who seemed to be a disciple of frivolity and indolence, who, under one stroke of calamity, changed to be a heroine. There was a crisis in your affairs, you struggled bravely and long, but after a while there came a day when you said, “Here I shall have to stop;” and you called in your partners, and you called in the most prominent men in your employ, and you said, “We have got to stop.” You left the store suddenly; you could hardly make up your mind to pass through the street and over on the ferry-boat; you felt everybody would be looking at you and blaming you and denouncing you. You hastened home; you told your wife all about the affair. What did she say? Did she play the butterfly; did she talk about the silks and the ribbons and the fashions? No; she came up to the emergency; she quailed not under the stroke. She helped you to begin to plan right away. She offered to go out of the comfortable house into a smaller one, and wear the old cloak another winter. She was one who understood your affairs without blaming you. You looked upon what you thought was a thin, weak woman’s arm holding you up; but while you looked at that arm there came into the feeble muscles of it the strength of the eternal God. No chiding. No fretting. No telling you about the beautiful house of her father, from which you brought her, ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. You said, “Well, this is the happiest day of my life. I am glad I have got from under my burden. My wife don’t care—I don’t care.” At the moment you were utterly exhausted, God sent a Deborah to meet the host of the Amalekites and scatter them like chaff over the plain. There are scores and hundreds of households to-day where as much bravery and courage are demanded of woman as was exhibited by Grace Darling or Marie Antoinette or Joan of Arc.

Woman is further endowed to bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is easier for a woman to be a Christian than for a man. Why? You say she is weaker. No. Her heart is more responsive to the pleadings of divine love. The fact that she can more easily become a Christian, I prove by the statement that three-fourths of the members of the churches in all Christendom are women. So God appoints them to be the chief agencies for bringing this world back to God. The greatest sermons are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an audience of two or three and in private home-life. A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord Almighty; and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A sailor came slipping down the ratlin one night as though something had happened, and the sailors cried, “What’s the matter?” He said, “My mother’s prayers haunt me like a ghost.”

In what a realm is every mother the queen. The eagles of heaven can not fly across that dominion. Horses, panting and with lathered flanks, are not swift enough to run to the outpost of that realm, and death itself will only be the annexation of heavenly principalities. When you want your grandest idea of a queen you do not think of Catherine of Russia, or of Anne of England, or Maria Theresa of Germany: but when you want to get your grandest idea of a queen you think of the plain woman who sat opposite your father at the table or walked with him, arm in arm, down life’s pathway; sometimes to the Thanksgiving banquet, sometimes to the grave, but always together; soothing your petty griefs, correcting your childish waywardness, joining in your infantile sports, listening to your evening prayer, toiling for you with needle or at the spinning wheel, and on cold nights wrapping you up snug and warm; and then, at last, on that day when she lay in the back room dying, and you saw her take those thin hands with which she had toiled for you so long, and put them together in a dying prayer that commended you to the God whom she had taught you to trust—oh, she was the queen! The chariots of God came down to fetch her, and as she went in, all heaven rose up. You can not think of her now without a rush of tenderness that stirs the deep foundations of your soul, and you feel as much a child again as when you cried on her lap; and if you could bring her back to life again to speak, just once more, your name as tenderly as she used to speak it, you would be willing to throw yourself on the ground and kiss the sod that covers her, crying, “Mother! mother!” Ah, she was the queen!

Home influences are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There are men who have maintained their integrity, not because they were any better naturally than some other people, but because there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into African jungles, they may fly to the earth’s end, they can not go so far and so fast but the prayer will keep up with them. Oh, what a multitude of women in heaven. Mary, Christ’s mother, in heaven. Elizabeth Fry in heaven. Charlotte Elizabeth in heaven. The mother of Augustine in heaven. The Countess of Huntingdon is in heaven—who sold her splendid jewels to build chapels—in heaven; while a great many others who have never been heard of on earth, or known but little of, have gone into the rest and peace of heaven. What a rest. What a change it was from the small room with no fire and one window, the glass broken out, and the aching side and worn out eyes, to the “house of many mansions.” Heaven for aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten frames. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering steps. No more rough blows on the temples. No more sharp, keen, bitter curses.

Some of you will have no rest in this world; it will be toil and struggle all the way up. You will have to stand at your door fighting back the wolf with your own hand red with carnage. But God has a crown for you. He is now making it, and whenever you weep a tear, He sets another gem in that crown; whenever you have a pang of body or soul, He puts another gem in that crown, until after a while in all the tiara there will be no room for another splendor; and God will say to his angel, “The crown is done; let her up that she may wear it.” And as the Lord of righteousness puts the crown upon your brow, angel will cry to angel, “Who is she?” and Christ will say, “I will tell you who she is; she is the one that came up out of great tribulation and had her robe washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.” And then God will spread a banquet, and He will invite all the principalities of heaven to sit at the feast, and the tables will blush with the best clusters from the vineyards of God and crimson with the twelve manner of fruits from the tree of life, and water from the fountains of the rock will flash from the golden tankards; and the old harpers of heaven will sit there, making music with their harps, and Christ will point you out amid the celebrities of heaven, saying, “She suffered with me on earth, now we are going to be glorified together.” And the banquetters, no longer able to hold their peace, will break forth with congratulation. “Hail! hail!” And there will be a handwriting on the wall; not such as struck the Persian noblemen with horror, but with fire-tipped fingers writing in blazing capitals of light and love and victory: “God has wiped away all tears from all faces.”

And now I leave you in the hands of Dr. Walsh, the author of this book. He will show you Mary, the model of all womanly, wifely, motherly excellence—the Madonna hanging in the Louvre of admiration for all Christendom, and for many millions in the higher Vatican of their worship.

T. DE WITT TALMAGE.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.—THE QUEEN’S PORTRAIT.

“A form beloved comes again”—Inspired painters in a voyage of
discovery—Tributes to Mary, honoring all womankind—Guido’s
wish—Madonnas of many climes. Raphael’s “Transfigured
Woman”—Savonarola’s bonfire—St. Luke’s picture of the
Virgin—The Vandal spirit. Page 29

CHAPTER II.—THE PILGRIM, CRUSADER AND VIRGIN.

Life a pilgrimage—Pilgrims of many faiths—A struggle for holy
places between the Pilgrim-Crusaders and Moslem—The harem and
the home—The rise of Chivalry—The Knights and “Our Lady”—The
results of the Crusades. Page 36

CHAPTER III.—ARMAGEDDON! “THE KEY AND SICKLE.”

“The wandering hermit wakes the storms of war”—Acre and
Esdrælon, the “Armageddon” or “Mountain of the Gospel” of the
Scriptures—The battle-field of nations—The City of Jeanne
d’Arc. The jewel in the sickle-haft—Prince Edward, the Crusade
leader—Sultan Kha-tel—The sacking of Acre—Actors introduced. Page 48

CHAPTER IV.—SIR CHARLEROY; THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE AND KNIGHT
OF SAINT MARY.

The flight from Acre to Nazareth—The born-leader—Life estimates
with Death holding the scales—A prince honors, a bishop
blesses, and a mother loves—An epitome of paradoxes. Page 53

CHAPTER V.—NAZARETH.

Nazareth, the place of Mary’s nativity—The choice of a
leader—The coward king—The Virgin’s Fount—English songsters—The
Knights’ mountain Litany—Longings for home and mother—Nain and
Endor’s lessons. Page 61

CHAPTER VI.—THE FUGITIVES.

A night bivouac amid sacred scenes—The “Knight of the
Holy-Sepulcher” who fled on “a white charger with black
wings”—The funeral at dawn—Mary’s palm-bearing angel-guard—The
twelve knights separate into two parties—Will-makings and
farewells—By Endor to oblivion. Page 74

CHAPTER VII.—ICHABOD.

Sir Charleroy’s band approach Shunem, the City of Elijah—The
surprise—Sir Charleroy the captive of Azrael the Mameluke—The
Mohammedan heaven depicted—“A hair, the bridge over hell”—The
odoriferous houris—A gorgeous charnel-house blasted—The
prodigal becomes the herald of purity—The Knight of Saint
Mary and the Jewish Spy—Adversity makes the Knight and the
Jew friends—The Knight instructing Ichabod—“’Till Shiloh
comes”—“The true, refined and final Judaism”—“The east and
the west embracing; truth leading.”—An honest doubt is a real
prayer. Page 82

CHAPTER VIII.—FROM JERICHO TO JORDAN.

The radiant proselyte—Climbing to glory—The ghostly forms
hovering over submerged Sodom—Jordan’s sweetening—Siddim-angels
among the willows and oleanders by the Dead Sea—Summonsed
to fight for the Crescent or go to the slave mart—Nourahmal
“The light of the harem” becomes the disciple and friend of
Ichabod—A debate concerning women—A rarity and a wonder—“I told
her women had souls; she laughed like a monkey”—The flight from
Jericho by night—The lightning—God’s torch—“Canst thou dance
rocks into camels?”—A mummy’s flight, and the burial of a live
man—“Unclean”—The solemn passage of Jordan. Page 93

CHAPTER IX.—THE FEAST OF THE ROSE.

A breakfast of lentils and barley in the wilderness—The gloom
of the Knight and the joy of the Jew—Sermons on fate and
songs in flowers—The poetry of Ichabod—Celibacy a reward at
Rome—Kneph “The father of his mother”—The heathen and the
Christian “Feast of the Rose”—The summary of the events in
Mary’s life and in the life of Jesus—The Egyptian Rosary—Neb-ta
the maiden sister—The egg and the cross, ancient signs of
immortality—The Copt priest—The insights of the Egyptians
symbolized by the Sphinx. Page 113

CHAPTER X.—AFTER EVE, ESTHER OR MARY?

By Jabbock, in the native place of Ichabod—Israelitish
maidens keeping the feast of Esther—Religious love, filial
love and lover’s love—The poetic Jew’s rhapsody concerning
affection—God’s voice in the Garden—The ideal women of the Old
Testament and of the New—The Jew’s cry for mother—Vacillating
Sir Charleroy—“Echo’s Magic”—Jewish customs. Page 135

CHAPTER XI.—THE FEAST OF PURIM.

A night-scene by Jabbock—Harrimai the priest, and his daughter
Rizpah—The religious ceremonial and the revel—Sir Charleroy
and Rizpah as “Ahasuerus and Esther”—The Knight’s secret
discovered—Conquest of a woman’s heart through pity—“Of what
metals Jewish maidens are.” Page 152

CHAPTER XII.—ASTARTE OR MARY?

The Knight of Saint Mary enslaved by a Hebrew beauty—The
journey toward Bozrah—The Mameluke attack—The hand to hand
fight—Sir Charleroy wounded and Ichabod slain—Rizpah’s heroism
in peril—Espousal in the face of death—A wonderful vision. Page 170

CHAPTER XIII.—FROM RAMOTH GILEAD TO DAMASCUS.

Teacher and pupil become patient and nurse—Perilous
relations—Delights, assurances, fears and clouds—Harrimai’s
discovery and his malediction—Love’s debate and
decision—Elopement by night—the Knight and the Jewess wedded at
Damascus. Page 182

CHAPTER XIV.—THE THEATER OF THE GIANTS.

The death of Harrimai—A honey-moon in the “Eye of the
East”—To Bashan with the Mecca chaplet-seekers—Nature,
art and desolation—Lejah’s black lava-sea—The frenzies of
Gerash’s passion-flower—Reaction after exaltation—“A camel
voyage in-sea”—Rizpah’s challenge—Jealous of Sir Charleroy’s
love for Mary—“Illusion”—The church of Saint George at
Edrei—Recrimination—Ridicule costly to pride—Neither Christian,
Jew nor Pagan—A woman with unsettled faith—A babe poisoned by
its mother’s passion—The lamp and the palm-trees—The Knight’s
appeals—Omens—A beacon needed—Fleeing the Lejah—To Bozrah. Page 195

CHAPTER XV.—THE REVELS OF MEN AND THE RITES OF THEIR GODDESSES.

Kunawat at the City of Job—The Shrine of Astarte—The Cyclopean
image—Questioning the Soul, Time and God—Hugeness, greatness;
littleness, caricature—The naked worshipers of the golden
calf—Sins exposed—Purity’s vision—Phallic mysteries—Khem—Female
deities—Dualism—Immortality by progeny and by regeneration—The
fire-worshiper’s mystic number eight, and the Jewish covenant
number seven. Page 212

CHAPTER XVI.—A BATTLE OF GIANTS AT BOZRAH.

Houses forty centuries old—The old stone-house of an
ancient giant becomes the home of the knight and his
wife—How circumstances change people—Recriminations and
reconciliation—“The gall taken from animals offered to Juno,
goddess of marriage”—Rizpah’s temper that seemed brilliant
before wedlock, afterward seems to Sir Charleroy very like
that of a virago—The charming nonsense of those for the
first time parents—Shall she be named Davidah, Angela, Marah
or Mary?—The Christian and Jewish faith battle about the
cradle—The separation of husband and wife, in anger—The sick
child and the desolated, deserted wife—Rizpah longs for a
mother, such as Mary of Bethlehem. Page 224

CHAPTER XVII.—RIZPAH THE ANCIENT MOTHER OF SORROWS.

After many years, Rizpah dwells in Bozrah with her
three children—Rizpah of Bozrah fascinated by Rizpah of
Gibeah—Miriamne the daughter of Rizpah—The daughter appalled
by her mother’s mysterious hallucinations—The wonders of
mother-love—The story of the ancient, Jewish “Mother of
Sorrows”—The omen of the bat and the parable of the stars. Page 245

CHAPTER XVIII.—THE QUEEN PROCLAIMED IN THE GIANT CITY.

The old and the young Jews—The old Christian priest and
his Jewess proselyte—Attacked by Mamelukes—The “Old Clock
Man”—The Balsam Band—Miriamne, the Jewess proselyte, questions
concerning the queen of the old priest’s heart—The miraculous
picture of Mary at Damascus—Silver hands and feet—Crown
jewels. Page 264

CHAPTER XIX.—THE STORY OF MARY’S CHILDHOOD. Page 282

CHAPTER XX.—THE WEDDING—THE BIRTH AND THE FLIGHT.

The birth of Jesus and the flight to Egypt—Miriamne reads
to her mother a Christian account of Mary’s espousal—Rizpah
curious but doubtful. Page 293

CHAPTER XXI.—THE QUEEN AND HER FAMILY IN EGYPT.

Father Adolphus and Miriamne converse of the Holy Family’s
sojourn in Egypt—Heliopolis and the Temple of the
Sun—Fire-worshipers—At Memphis, the shrine of Apis the
sacred bull—The red heifer of Israel—The Holy Family rescued
in Egypt by a robber who afterward died on the cross next
to the Savior—The legend of a gipsy’s prophecy concerning
Jesus—Zingarella won by the Virgin. Page 312

CHAPTER XXII.—THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS.

Rizpah dreading heresy yet charmed by the story of the “Girl
Wife”—“Behold my mother and brethren”—Christ’s message to his
widowed mother—The “Church of the Terror”—Rizpah’s vision
of “Glad Tidings.” Rizpah of Bozrah allured from Rizpah of
Gibeah—A hot-chase after an old love—The sword that pierced
Mary—The shadow of the cross horrifies Rizpah—The faith of the
Nazarene denounced—Miriamne driven from home by her mother.
Page 322

CHAPTER XXIII.—THE MISERERE AND THE EASTER ANTHEM.

Miriamne alone at night in the giant city—A refuge at the
Christian priest’s—The midnight Miserere—Penitents—Easter at
Bozrah—Finding the mother-love in God’s heart. Page 337

CHAPTER XXIV.—A HEROINE’S PILGRIMAGE.

The convert’s yearnings—“Go and tell”—When parents oppose each
other which shall the child follow?—A child of the kingdom
in a new family circle—Jesus, Mary and the elect—Miriamne’s
two great ambitions—Living apart may be as sinful as actual
divorcement—Father Adolphus encourages and Rizpah opposes
Miriamne—Rizpah recounts to Miriamne the story of her love for
Sir Charleroy, his madness and her own futile visit to London
in the effort to win him back—The curse of heredity—“I’ll
disown thee with tears in my voice and kisses in my heart.” Page 351

CHAPTER XXV.—CONSOLATRIX AFFLICTORUM.

Miriamne’s welcome by the London Palestineans—The daughter
meets her father in a mad-house—Disappointment—The flight—The
search—The White Madonna of the Asylum Park—Love the remedy
of minds perturbed by hate—Pallas-Athene the virgin of the
heathen—Miriamne’s letter to her mother and its grim answer. Page 367

CHAPTER XXVI.—THE WEDDING AT CANA.

Sir Charleroy giving signs of recovery under Miriamne’s
Ministries—A remarkable service in the chapel of the
Palestineans—The knight interested in the story of Cana—The
address of Cornelius, on “Home” and “Marriage”—“Is this
London or Bozrah?”—Sir Charleroy’s sudden relapse—Miriamne’s
adroit ministries—Memories that awaken hopes—The clouds again
lifting—Mary’s life motto. Page 381

CHAPTER XXVII.—THE STAR OF THE SEA.

Sir Charleroy, partially restored, with Miriamne and Cornelius
journeying toward Syria—Passing Cyprus—Olympus—A storm rising
on the Mediterranean—Cornelius presses his love suit on
Miriamne—Miriamne pledges love, but pleads her mission as a
barrier to marriage—Conflicts below, tempests aloft—A dream;
Venus’s court and Mary’s triumph—Sir Charleroy in frenzy
defying the billows—An hour of peril—The “Lightning Song” of
the sailors—The twin stars—“Mary, Star of the Sea”—The victims
of fabricated consciences—Parting. Page 397

CHAPTER XXVIII.—THE QUEEN IN THE VALLEY OF SORROWS.

Father and daughter at Acre—The mysterious Hospitaler—From
Acre to Joppa—“The myths are as full of women as the
women are full of myths”—The wars of men about women—At
Jerusalem—The wonderful words of the Knight-Hospitaler, turned
preacher—The _Via Dolorosa_—The Valley of Jehosaphat—The
mountain outlook—“Soldiers Speed the Cross”—Mary, the sun
of women, rising in moral grandeur above the women of the
grove-shrines—The panorama of the ages, passing before Mary’s
mind. Page 419

CHAPTER XXIX.—TWO DEAD HEARTS UNITING TWO LIVING ONES.

From Jerusalem to Bozrah—The tomb of Ichabod—Sir Charleroy
argues against meeting Rizpah—Miriamne’s strong argument
in behalf of the lasting obligations of marriage—A husband
reaching the climax of revenges—Joseph by kindness kept Mary
in sweet mood and so blessed the unborn Christ—“Miriamne,
I am a bundle of contradictions!”—The news-rider—A plague
at Bozrah—De Griffin’s twins nigh death—Miriamne meets her
mother—Reconciliation—A strange funeral; only two women as
mourners and pall-bearers. Page 437

CHAPTER XXX.—THE “KNIGHT OF SAINT MARY” AND RIZPAH AT THE
GRAVE OF THEIR SONS.

Father Adolphus and Sir Charleroy—A ruined temple and a
ruined man—“A woman, a woman leading in religion!”—Jesus and
Magdalena—The twelve appearings of the lingering Christ—The
Savior’s love-letter from heaven to His mother—Lucifer’s
attempt at suicide—The kiss befouled by treason—The meeting
of Sir Charleroy and Rizpah—“The tomb of giant-love grown to
mad-hate.” Page 453

CHAPTER XXXI.—THE ROSE, QUEEN OF HEARTS IN BOZRAH.

A scene of domestic happiness—Love the vassal of the
will—Neb-ta in the “Judgment Hall of Truth”—The lambs that
are offered by sectarian hates—The Arcana of glorious wedded
love—Rizpah transformed—Miriamne’s public profession of
Christ—Cornelius Woelfkin again appeals for union in wedlock—An
inner and an outer Miriamne—The coronation of love—The solemn
espousal. Page 467

CHAPTER XXXII.—THE QUEEN AND THE GRAIL-SEEKERS.

“The gold of my heart to the man that piloted me to
happiness”—Miriamne yearns for a world in sin—Has the Church
or God failed?—A revolutionary reformer—The story of the
grail quest—The quest of a heavenly cure for human ills—The
triumphant Adam and Eve—The queenly women of patriarchal
times—The mother of the Savior as the wife of a carpenter—What
kept her young heart from breaking—Miriamne’s farewell to
Bozrah. Page 484

CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE HOSPITALER’S ORATION.

The secret meeting of the Knights at the house of Phebe—Swords
bent sickle-like and spears crossed—After war, social
victories—Sunrise at midnight—Each career determined by the
life that gives life—The girdle of Venus—Next after God, Mary
chiefly instrumental in giving the world a Savior. Page 498

CHAPTER XXXIV.—MEMORIALS AT BOZRAH.

The death of Dorothea—The priest of the wayside—The wedding of
Cornelius and Miriamne—A pilgrimage to the tombs of Adolphus,
Charleroy and Rizpah. Backlook, and outlooks. Page 510

CHAPTER XXXV.—THE SISTERS OF BETHANY.

The Missioners at Bethany—The site of the Home of
Jesus—Miriamne’s ideal society—The miracle age—A home, not a
throne, the place of Ascension—Will Jesus so return?—The angel
bivouac. Page 522

CHAPTER XXXVI.—THE QUEEN OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID.

The Knight’s Pentecost—In the upper room of Joseph of
Arimathæa—Mary’s title and realm—Luke, the word-painter—The
smoke side and the fire side of Pentecost. Page 529

CHAPTER XXXVII.—THE CORONATION OF THE QUEEN.

The Hospitaler deemed a prophet at Bethany. The legitimacy of
Jesus as the “son of David” assured through His mother—“The
reign of blood”—First born—Pagan Rome made sponsor for Mary’s
son—Doomsday books and royal charters. Page 538

CHAPTER XXXVIII.—THE “LIGHT OF THE HAREM” IN THE “TEMPLE OF
ALLEGORY.”

The old church at Bethany—A dedication—The wonders of
symbolism—Idolatry and Mariolatry. Page 548

CHAPTER XXXIX.—CROWN JEWELS.

The Hospitaler warns the Missioners of the Sheik of Jerusalem’s
designs—The son of Azrael—Immunity purchased—The wedding of
Beulah, Nourahmal’s grand-daughter to a Jewish convert—The
wedding address—Juno-Moneta—Crown jewels of maidens and
mothers—Mary sounding the depths of woman’s miseries—A
malediction for lust—“Knights of the White Cross”—The lost
woman dreaming of how it seems to have a mother’s arms
infolding her—The Virgin’s potent example. Page 568

CHAPTER XL.—THE QUEEN’S VISION OF THE AGE OF GOLD AND FIRE.

Nourahmal wed to the Druse camel-driver—the Druse converted—The
Hospitaler’s message—Ezekiel prophecies fulfilled at Olivet—The
“Mother’s pillow”—Gabriel, the “Angel of Mothers and of
Victories.” Page 581

CHAPTER XLI.—A CHIME AND A DIRGE AT CHRISTMAS-TIME.

“Motherhood priced”—“Thou shalt be saved in
child-bearing”—Sylvan gods of Rome—“The Miriamites,”—“In
Rama, weeping and great mourning”—Joachim’s bleating lamb
slain—Woman’s supreme hour—Maternity’s crucifixion—“The
Cæsarian Section”—The ebbing tide and the stranded wreck,
at midnight. Page 595

CHAPTER XLII.—THE MOTHER OF SORROWS TRIUMPHANT AT LAST.

The funeral of Miriamne—The Hospitaler tells the traditions of
Mary’s death and assumption—What the Druse convert said to his
camel—“The beatings of mighty wings”—The tomb of Miriamne in
Gethsemane. Page 611