The history of that ancient Bethany family, gathered from various sources, but chiefly from the simple and touching narrative of the Evangelist John, is full of interest. The mother of that home, to us nameless, was dead. Yet she was not fameless; that circle of children in their several relationships witnessed full well of a finest mother-culture, that had been theirs. The father of that family was worse than dead; he was a leper, buried alive in the Lazar keeps of the plague-stricken, and the husband of Martha, the elder sister, early had left his bride widowed.
That was a circle cut through its center; but affliction had knit together in deepened affection the few left. The fatherly brother, Lazarus, well fulfilled his double obligation, and wins admiration, as do ever those sons and brothers who faithfully take the place of dead fathers. That he was such a brother, the grief of his sisters when he died fully proclaimed.
With a few fine sentences John depicts those sisters. Martha, widowed in life’s morning, but surmounting all morbidness by giving herself to motherly ministries in her home; and then was Mary, a clinging, trusting, pious maiden; a poem of faith, a tear-bedewed rose-wreath. When Christ joined that circle there was presented the finest conceivable ideal of a home. They served and He blessed, and though their bereavements could never be forgotten, while His banner of love was over them, they were able to alleviate the poignancy of their griefs through the hope of a blessed resurrection and a final, eternal reunion.
The sacred associations gathering about the village of Olivet made it a place peculiarly attractive to Cornelius and Miriamne; for they, too, were bereaved; neither in all the world having a single living kinsman of whom they knew.
They determined, shortly after their final farewell to Bozrah, to take up their abode at the “House of Dates,” and were unmeasurably delighted in being able to secure for themselves a house reputed to have been the identical one occupied by Christ and His choice friends. If it were not the same, there seemed good reason to believe it was at least on the site of that ancient sacred domicile.
One day they conversed of their work, their hopes, and the needs of their field of labor.
“I’m led to think that we should establish a refuge for Magdalenes, Miriamne.”
“If we did attempt the founding of an asylum for outcasts we would not belie the memory of a noble woman, who was never a harlot, by applying to it her name. But my ‘grail’ does not lead me that way. I’d go mad working for the utterly lost only! No; no, our work must be more radical, by beginning back of the falling so as to prevent it.”
“Something must be done to educate the women of this country to better living and higher conceptions of womanhood. We need a school of some kind.”
“A school? Good, if it be of the right kind; but there have been schools and schools for men, such as they were, and they have effectually proven that education alone is not a savior. Learning does not transform the soul, else God would have given Moses the pattern of a college instead of that of a tabernacle. My mother used often to tell me that the devil is superbly educated. The more he knows the prouder and more dangerous he becomes. I do not despise learning, but since it is impotent to transform men, why try it as the savior of woman? She who takes counsel less of the intellect than of the conscience and affections! We must seek for those we aim to help something surpassing in direct efficacy any thing yet attempted;” so saying, Miriamne paused.