After his greeting, on arriving at his abode, his first words were: “I’ve seen the crowns of fire, and now comprehend the meaning of Pentecost, where men gathered from varied climes, heard each the spirit’s message in his own tongue! The Spirit is the interpreter!”
“By what aid came this revelation?”
“God and the Hospitaler.”
“We have the first here; let us call the other, that the temple on the hill be made to feel the glow. The time is opportune, for each day witnesses new triumphs of our cause.”
When the knight arrived a feast was in progress. His air awed those to whom he was a stranger, and there were not a few who thought within themselves,
“Is he a prophet?”
Abruptly, as usual, he began:
“Friends: I would that all hearts here were moved by justice to enthrone the Queen whose praise your frank youths have been sincerely singing. I am here to-day to proclaim her rights, and in so doing I shall appeal to that sure word which survives when all else fails. She was of David’s royal line; the noblest one of all the earth. To the proof? The Christian Scriptures, from the hands of Matthew and Luke, present her ancestral descent. These apostles wrote as God directed, and, after all, only reaffirmed that already set forth in the most carefully, religiously guarded records of all antiquity, the Jewish genealogical tables.
“You know that the ancient Jews held those tables in sacred regard, for on their integrity depended the proof of the things to them most dear, as they believed. By them every Jew could trace his Abrahamic descent, and to Abraham’s seed were all the great promises of the covenant. By those tables they proved their title to the land of promise, Canaan. Every Jew, believing himself one of God’s chosen people, and that his advancement and the advancement of his posterity in the Divine favor, depended on the purity of the blood of both, felt that he needed the guidance of those tables to preserve him from any admixture with alien or Gentile blood. The Aaronic priesthood was hereditary and the priesthood was initial in the religious system of the Hebrews. Its legitimacy was preserved chiefly by these hereditary charters. Then all true Israelites looked for the coming of a Savior, Priest and King to bring to the chosen transcendent glory, and to win an universal dominion, marked by love, joy and peace. Every Jew knew that Great One was to spring from the house of David, and all within that Judaic line hoping that he or his children might be near akin to the One to come, carefully, constantly, proudly guarded and studied these records of descent. Birth was the foundation upon which all Jewish institutions were founded. ‘So all Israel was reckoned by genealogies.’ They lived in a reign of blood, and in blood to be Jewishly thoroughbred was, they thought, to be most highly favored. They had not yet discerned the law of the new dispensation, which declares all men akin; a dispensation seeking to build up a superior humanity by first of all transforming and exalting the inner life. By the revered records of these Jewish patriarchs, both holy and love-ladened, place the writings of Matthew and Luke, and with concurrent testimony, unimpeachable as well as conclusive, the legitimacy of Jesus the son of Mary is proven! He was beyond a cavil of David’s kingly line. There were Christ-haters who contested at every point His claim of Messiahship. They forged lies freely; they hurled after Him slanders innumerable; they insinuated that He was born in fornication; they affected to flee from Him as one having a devil; they denounced Him to Jewish as well as Roman authorities as a liar, a seducer of men and a traitor. In a word, they howled Him down in every way they could, unabashed by the splendor of His baptismal indorsement, unsilenced by the awful warnings of His cross. But in their desperation they never dared to challenge the records which proved Him ‘the son of David.’ Now had His claims rested upon His relations to His earthly father, Joseph, they would have been disproven. All Jewry would have quickly, fiercely proclaimed Him a pretender and not in the family of promise. The Christ was heir of David’s name and fame because His mother was, and so in exalting Him you crown the saintly woman who bore Him! He was the adopted son of Joseph, type of all His followers, adopted sons of a Royal Father. He was legitimate through his mother, type of all his followers, brought into the royal family of God by the power of a mystic new birth.