“Well, then, ardent catechumen, listen. For three years the queenly Mary, with her consort and child, tarried in Egypt—”
“How did they subsist?”
“Oh, the God of the outcasts Ishmael and Elijah, who provided water for one and bread for the other of those two, was the One who sent the Holy Family to Egypt with the charge that they ‘be there until He brought them word.’ Now, thou hast learned that when God sends any on His work He charges Himself with their support.”
“Did they find friends in Egypt?”
“Thou wilt learn in time, daughter, that two of that family had, as none on earth before, the secret of making friends. They had the love-enchantment from on high, which has been winning its way ever since over the world. But I’ll proceed. There were in Egypt at that time multitudes of Israelites who had sought its refuge from the persecutions practiced toward them nearer home. Doubtless these exiles received Joseph’s family kindly. Also, in all the East at that time there were many artizan leagues, banded together to aid their fellow-craftsmen. Joseph being a carpenter, I doubt not, found among these sympathy and help.”
“At what place did the family abide?”
“Tradition says they tarried for a considerable period at Heliopolis, the city celebrated the world over for its splendid temple, where centered the Egyptian Sun worship. To me this tradition seems most reasonable, when I remember that the child of that family was pointed out before, by a miraculous star, which led the Fire worshipers of Persia to his cradle. The Fire worshipers of the far East and the Light worshipers of Egypt were much alike in their beliefs. They were all seeking light, and, impelled by the necessity of man’s nature for some religion, revealed or man-made, able to do no better, looked up to the sun, the greatest light of which they knew. God’s hand was in that meeting of the old and the new. There is a tradition that when the Holy Family arrived at Heliopolis all the idols in the Sun Temple fell on their faces. Be that as it may, the pathos of the poor prayers of the Light worshipers moved the Divine Mercy to send them the Sun of Righteousness, and all the handiwork of Rhameses, at On, lies in great, grim silent ruins, while the faith that had its germ in that little outcast family is overspreading the earth. Alas, poor Egypt!”
“Why poor Egypt?” questioned Miriamne, wonderingly.
“Those living now are so like their ancients who, in fright and helpless doubt, sought to save themselves by placating both good and evil; the light struggles in Egypt to-day, entering slowly and often retiring. Yea, poor Egypt, I pity thee! But I digress. It is said that the Holy Family also tarried for a season at Memphis, on the Nile, the city where chiefly was practiced the worship of Apis, the sacred bull. Thou rememberest how Israel was nearly ruined by doing homage to a golden calf at Sinai? That calf-worship was the same as the Apis-worship of Egypt. The Egyptians, in common with all mankind of old, earnestly looked for a manifestation of God in visible form—an incarnation. Their priests practiced on their pitiful yearnings and credulity, and taught them to believe that their greatest god appeared from time to time under the form of a bull, which Avatars they, the priests, claimed that they only could discover. The Egyptians, highly esteeming endurance and passionate vigor, readily accepted the animal pre-eminent in these things as the abiding place and expression of their god. The Child Jesus, the token of a better faith, was fittingly brought, therefore, to Egypt’s Temple of Apis. Thus the Light and Immortality confronted that typified grossly at Memphis, and the incarnations that were as false as they were offensive, were brought face to face with the Incarnation sung by the angels. The devotees at the fanes of Memphis degraded man by preferring the beast. He that made man a little lower than the angels first, afterward exalted him to sonship by appearing garbed in the likeness of a man. Christ, at Memphis, was to do what Moses did at Sinai.”
“I do not comprehend these words!”