The Hospitaler continued, as attention was given anew:
“That profoundest of ancient teachers, Plato, enunciated at least a half-truth or truth’s shadow, in his doctrine of the preëxistence of souls, though, as our church understands it, it pronounces the teaching heretical. Be that as it may, this much assuredly is true: if each man has not been on earth before, his present existence being the repetition of a prior one, his intuitions, vague recollections out of a past forgotten in a former death, surely there is none who is not the fruit of his parents. He is largely what they made him, and of the twain that beget, I affirm that the mother wields the ruling influence in the life and character of the begotten. I believe men perpetuate their worst traits through their posterity, easily and more persistently than do women theirs. In the giant of the human pair brawn and muscle predominate, and these, if depraved, feed every evil passion, giving each power to run with virulence from sire to son. The woman, formed by finer conceptions to be an angel, may fall to sinning and let weakness take the place of gentleness. So be it; yet even then her weaknesses and her sinnings, constantly repugnant to her nature as God framed it, antagonistic to the refinement that is native, ebb and die along the shores of her being’s course. She more naturally and more forcefully transmits her good than she does her evil, as a general rule. They have in fable-lore a tradition that the mythical goddess of love, Venus, wore a resplendent girdle, the sight of which made every beholder love the wearer. Let me give present force to the legend by affirming that every true woman, girded with the virtues that it is her duty and her privilege to wear, is an object, among all earthly beings, superlatively, entrancingly beautiful—next after Christ, God’s best gift to man.”
Cornelius now plucked the corner of Miriamne’s pepulum. It was a lover’s restless, questioning act. Being a man, trained as men, he was naturally inclined to doubt the speaker and to join in secret ridicule, that substitute for gainsaying when arguments are utterly lacking; but being a lover, he was so far doubtful as to his old creeds concerning women, as to be ready to be led. Miriamne turned toward her lover with a smile lightened by eyes which glowed. Hers was not the smile of a girl flatly complacent in an effort to be very agreeable. She believed; the love she had for the man at her side was consecrated first to truth. Her will was that of a blade of steel—yielding, serviceable; but still elastic or firm, as need be and as its highest purposes required. She smiled, but the smile mounting to her brightening eyes, left her fine forehead, a very temple of thought, all placid. The smile and the glance routed all doubts from the young man’s mind. She to him was a Venus, and more, a saint. She wore the invisible girdle of which the knight had spoken, and the youth felt its winning power. Another proof that the best advocate of a woman is a woman; and of her worth, the best argument an example.
The orator knight proceeded without pause:
“I know full well that some sneer and carp on woman’s weakness, having recourse to Eden for argument. To these I reply: The enemy assailed not the weaker, but the stronger first, and exhibited masterly generalship in seeking to overcome the citadel that would insure the greatest loss, the most complete victory. And note how long and arduous his siege of Eve; then remember how quickly Adam fell. Crush the woman’s heart, ruin her faith, degrade her body, and then, with this work completed, we are ready to ring down the curtain over the end of the tragedy of a wrecked world. When men hold women to their hearts, their manhood is enlarged and their queens become their angels, bearing a ‘grail’ that catches for both the choice things of heaven. But when a man turns his strength against a woman, she ceases to be his charming, alluring helpmate. He has brawn, and she, not having that, puts on that cunning which is the natural arm of the weaker. When the honey-suckle turns to poison-ivy, or the dove to a fox, then weep; but when woman lays aside the entrancings of her moral beauty to enter a desperate strife with armed cunning, let men go mad over their queens become witches. I tell you, hearers, when men become demons women will give themselves to sorcery. I speak not of spiritual possession, but of human deflowering. Shall our queens be uncrowned, disrobed, degraded? No, no, Satan alone could say ‘yea.’”
When the burst of applause that had interrupted him subsided, the Hospitaler continued:
“We knights revere the sign of the cross because the world’s Savior died thereon; it will be well for us to revere womankind because it was given to woman, not to man, to coöperate with God in bringing that Savior to the world. A woman bore him with crucial pains, as each of us was borne, before He bore the cross. And reverently I say it, companions, woman’s cross is ever set, and all the earth is her Calvary. I can not but see, as must you who think, that all this pain to her has in God’s great plan some vicarious element, some blessing for mankind. We Christians pray for the second coming of Jesus, the Jews wait and weep for the dawn of a day of salvation, the Mohammedans, like hosts of the Pagans, in every clime, are longing for some golden day; better than the present. This universal longing is a prophecy of good to come. I can not believe that the All-Father would suffer this universal and intuitive longing to end in disappointment and mockery. He is too good for that. By this longing I see standing out, less dimly, and yet dimly enough to be by many unseen, some sublime, prophetic hints. Read sacred Writ. Wherever therein you discern a prophetic character, emblem of Christ, forerunner of the golden age, you will find not far from him, as his partner and help, fittingly a woman!
“From the first it was so. Adam the first appeared, and a woman was his partner, helpmate and more. He fell. A way of recovery was provided for him, but it was the woman who was given to bring forth the One whose heel was to crush the head of the author of humanity’s great catastrophe. Then came the second Adam—Immanuel. At his advent the chief figure, next after God the chief instrument in His bringing in, by His side along the years in all helpful ministries, a woman, Mary, the beautiful, the perfect, the ideal of women.
“Again and again we have puzzled over the records, wondering why Matthew traced the genealogy of Jesus along the male line only, through David and Jacob to Abraham the father of the faithful, and that Luke traced that genealogy through Mary and her father, Heli. But there’s method most wise in the records. Matthew wrote for the Jews, Luke for the Gentiles. The hint is herein given that when the Gentiles are fully gathered in, woman will be recognized in the ultimate religion, that knows neither race nor sex. As in the royal line which gave man a Savior, as in a queenly line having for man, society and home—the emblem of heaven expressed on earth—blessing and saving powers.”