Miriamne, the day after her conversion, at evening, was sitting in the portal of the church at Bozrah, musing. “Oh, how I thank Father Adolphus for showing me the way to this peace!” The western sky, to the maiden’s rapt imagination, seemed very like the gate of Heaven, and in her meditations she exclaimed as if talking to those in glory, yet near to her: “Mother of my Saviour, I need a mother! Thou and I, two women, loved of the same Lord, shall we not evermore be friends?” Then the stars glittered through the fading sun light like night-lamps, set along the parapets of that far off city, and the maiden felt as if heaven’s doors were being shut. She was oppressed with a sense of being left alone, and thereupon cried out, “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, do not leave me here in the dark; Oh! thou mother, sainted and happy, may I not be where thou art until morning?” The cry or prayer of the girl, having in it much of the poet, little of the skilled theologian, was one likely to be censured by those adept in stately forms, and yet it was very natural. Miriamne was but an infant in experience and had yet to learn that after the resurrection came Pentecost; then the Ascension. Steps like these are in the believer’s experience; conversion is a rising from the dead to be followed by the assuring work of the Holy Spirit, then Heaven. But the soul quickened from the charnel-house of sin and inducted, not only into a new inner life but into a new fellowship, hungers for more and more. Hence, it is a common thing for the young convert to wish to die, and be away from life’s turmoils and defilements at once and with the glorified, immediately, forever. It is as if the disciple would pass at once from the sepulcher directly up the Mount of Ascension. In this spirit Mary Magdalene pressed forward to embrace to her human heart the newly risen Saviour that morning when he tenderly restrained her. There was something for her to be and do before the final rest on the Divine bosom, in unending rapture. “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended,” as if He would say, “I myself, have other work yet, before the eternal gates are lifted up for my triumphal entrance as the King of Glory.” “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father.” The master words were, “Go;” “say.” The load Jesus put on His followers was the same in kind, though infinitely less, that He took on Himself. Some way it was love burdening with blessing, for He that in dying agony sent the Rose of His heart, Mary, to the home of John instead of at once to Paradise, knew surely that then for her that was best. “To go” and “tell” was best for Magdalene, as to stay and work for a time is best for all:
So Miriamne’s prayer, though so worded that it would have been censured by the learned churchmen, was heard in heaven, and He that said: “My peace I leave with you,” ministered, all unseen by human eye, to that lamb, bleating alone amid the dark giant castles of Bashan and the darker castles of fears that hover not far from each new-born of His Kingdom. She passed from repining, from morbidly wishing to die and from thoughts solely of her own weal, to the second stage of experience; that stage, where the young convert is influenced with a burning zeal to tell of the blessings found and thereby win others for the Saviour. Miriamne soon felt desire inexpressible to run and tell others of her joy. Then her mind recurred to her father, living somewhere far to the westward, just beneath where she had fancied the gates of heaven were a little while ago. “No, no; I cannot go yet! I must stay here and do something. Oh, I’d be ashamed to go to heaven and leave my father, my mother, my brothers, my people in their misery!” As she thus spoke she pulled her hand quickly down by her side. The motion like to one pulling away from some leading influence. A voice at hand spoke: “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
Miriamne, with a slight startled exclamation, turned to see whence the voice and with joy beheld Father Adolphus.
“Oh, dear Father, I’m glad you came this way! I want to tell you above all others how happy you made me.”
Solemnly and tenderly the old man replied: “‘Not unto us, oh Lord; not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and for thy truth’s sake.’”
“Yes, He has done it; but you helped, good teacher; and I am so happy! Oh, I do not know myself! I feel so changed. I’m growing wiser, happier and stronger every minute.”
“If so, then, He that called thee, daughter, had a purpose.”
“I know it; see it; feel it. I’m called to help my people; to bring together Sir Charleroy and Rizpah.”
“Say ‘my parents’; it’s more filial.”
“Yes, but it’s so strange. I call them in my mind now all the time by their names. It seems as if I belonged to another family; that of Jesus, Mary and the Angels.”