“Mary had the trust of Joseph in those dire days, when nothing but a miracle could prove her integrity. She presents not only woman’s goodness but that which even the loftiest wife needs, the constancy beyond measure of her husband.”
“Joseph was advised by an angel. I not.”
“As you love your mother, honor the woman who mothers your children. They bear your image, yet she alone, with a sublime self-forgetting, struggles to have them grow up honorably, purely, and in the fear of God.”
“She wants to make them Israelites.”
“Perhaps so, and perhaps the Christian examples she has seen give her no reason to wish otherwise. But after all, her way is better than to have left them as their father left them, to become infidels or nothing. Oh, father, do not think me bold. I speak because I love you; as perhaps no other might care or presume to give utterance.”
“Well, girl, I guess I’m a double man; for, determined to oppose, I feel a desire within to have thee win in this argument. I’m one compound of contradictions. I was a sworn bachelor, then a sworn husband, now I’m neither. I’m a widower, with a living wife; a parent of three children with only one. I bewail my homelessness, yet run from an offered home. I confess to being useless, yet see a mission most important at my own door. Swearing loyalty to Mary, I disregard all she exemplified—of late revealed to me; professing to be a Christian, I live a life that would shame a decent Jew. I have a daughter, said by all to be much like me in temper, feature, and mind, yet we are here utterly opposed in thought and purpose. I’ve heard the profoundest teachers in grandest temples unmoved to this duty, to-day presented; and, now, without the pale of any church, in the wilds of Jericho, a mere girl, my daughter, instructs me well! This all proves that I’m the caricature of Miriamne’s father. If I be Sir Charleroy, then I’m beside myself!”
“A good half confession! Now for the atonement!”
“What, a bundle of contradictions making atonement? undoing the past! more contradictions?”
“Righteousness displaces all the contradictions of life!”