“No. It is the constant voice of history that false belief concerning these things of which I have spoken, brings both blindness and degradation. Unbelief comes swiftly in the wake of impurity. The gorgons had but one eye and that had the malign power of turning to stone all upon whom its glance fell. When men deify a fallen woman then look for a cataclysm of evils. Rizpah has seen little of the world, but this in time she’ll find true; the man whose cult or faith bends toward the libidinous is on the way to utter atheism. So these old-time free-lovers, like those of to-day, push out of the universe in their belief, the Great, Beautiful, First Cause. The pure in heart see God; the impure can not even pray to Him. The latter must be aided by an Immaculate One. They make a gulf betwixt their souls and heaven, which Great Mercy alone can bridge.”
“Ah, knight, I’d dread a return of those gross idolatries, knowing mankind’s trend, but that I knew that Shiloh was to come as a Reformer.” The knight caught at the words of his wife to lead her toward his own dear belief.
“If He came to Rizpah in the form of a man, unique because of his virgin purity, unlike any other in being all unselfish, and accompanied by a peerless woman, exemplifying all that is best in the gentle sex; between Himself and that woman a love deep to love’s last depth, pure as a sunbeam, enduring as eternity itself, would Rizpah welcome Him!”
“That would be a wondrous coming; but I’d welcome Him.”
“Does Rizpah believe such an appearing desirable?”
“Oh, on my soul, yes! If he should so come, methinks the rites which have gone on in the secrecy of the groves, under the uncertain light of the moon, would be driven from the earth, and men come to worship God, taking that man for the ideal of manhood, that woman as woman’s pattern.”
“Dost thou see that stone with eight lines crossing, lying just there by the image of Astarte?”
“I see it and the lines; but what of them?”
“In the far East, the land of the Fire Worshipers, on almost all the handiwork of man that symbol is placed. It is to represent an eight-pointed star, the Assyrian sign of immortality.”