The twain did as commanded, the youth with avidity, the maid with a timorous, modest reserve. The touch of each, electric to the other, was recorded in their faces, over which passed rapidly a poem of emotion. The audience became silent, hushed by admiration akin to adoration. The old, old, yet ever new, ever-entrancing spectacle of love’s full crowning, brought to all minds the splendor and holiness of that royal gift which finds in earth its completest unfoldment in wedlock. Each of the auditors, conscious of admiration of the presentment, was also conscious of self-approving. There is a cleansing of conscience like that which follows prayer in the act of heartily approbating the thing which is good and beautiful. With the espoused for his inspiration and his background of light, the Hospitaler, with his usual abruptness, began addressing the assembly:
“You of the East hear best when your eyes are treated together with your ears, hence I speak at this time, most propitious, of themes pertinent. You have heard how the ancient Romans named this month, deemed by them favorable to marriage, Junonius, in honor of their chaste and prudent goddess of conjugal life. She was the Hera of the Greeks, the only lawfully wedded goddess of all their mythologies. The myths prove that those pagans discerned the potency and beauty of holy wedlock. They polished jewels and wove girdles for its personifications, and to-night, in this temple dedicated to womanhood at her best, I’d take the girdle and crown and place them upon the Queen of Women, the peerless Virgin. For such a real woman the ancients were seeking when they had their dream of the myths. She was what they yearned for, and her exaltation as the representative of all that she truly did represent, will be found of lasting profit to all. Behold her, an orphan girl, yet by faith having an Eternal Father. As a girl, abhorring waywardness; as a woman, therefore, free from wantonness. Mark me, ye maidens, the wayward becomes the wanton. Coquetry brushes the down from the cheek of the peach, and she that frivolously plays with passion in the morning will be likely to seek the groves of Astarte at noon. Our ideal woman reached maidenhood’s roses all portionless, as world-help is counted, but with the inestimable affluence of prudence, constancy and purity. Thus she set the finest youths of all Jewry to striving for her heart and hand. What Juno was to Rome, Mary was to Israel. The Romans proclaimed their faith in the good wife as the producer and conserver of wealth by putting their mint in their temple of ‘Juno-Moneta.’ The carpenter of Nazareth, building up a clean, honest, though humble home, by the aid of his consort, built more enduringly, and presents a finer historical figure, than that once mighty, once wise Solomon; though the latter erected the wondrous Temple. The home and love of Joseph and Mary will be praised by the ages that abhor the ivory houses of pleasure of the great and fallen king. The story of that home life at Nazareth has not been written, and we must gather it from fragments and eloquent silence. Mary’s jewels as a wife were unostentatiously treasured within the four walls of her domicile. The devastating tornado leaves enduring, though hateful history; but the constant, man-blessing tides of the ocean come and go without having their recurring blessings recorded. So the constant, loyal, patient woman of Nazareth passed noiselessly by in her day. Her exclamation to the Angel of the Annunciation, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word,’ was the keynote of that life ever enhanced by the beauty of duty. There was submission to right because it was righteous. And this was not mere passiveness. You remember how she challenged her Son in His early youth, that time He was absent for a season from His parents, at first without explanation? The words Mary spoke that day burn like polished gems when considered aright: ‘Why hast thou dealt thus with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing.’ She did not forget her Son’s divine origin, but exalted the rights of motherhood and fatherhood, confident that even Deity could not ignore them. She challenged the right of a son to cause parental sorrow without instant strong reason for so doing. She put her husband’s cause before her own, and made his honor her sacred wifely trust. There are in this history some very fine things expressed by implication. We know the woman was beautiful and much younger than her husband; the disparity of years did not hinder full affinity. She did not fall into the weakness of feeling self-sufficient and all-complacent because feeling pretty. All she was and all she had was centred in her consort as a commonwealth between him and her. That the sycophant and flatterer crossed her path there can be no doubt; but she who was not intoxicated by Bethlehem’s gloria in excelsis could not be dazzled by the honeyed words of mortals. Wearing such a wife on his heart, Joseph was rich indeed. Silence is once more eloquent. We know that the mother of Jesus, having been widowed, never wed again. Her first love suffered no eclipse. That she was courted, after her spouse’s death, we must believe. The mother of a Son so famous as was hers, and the possessor of personal charms enshrining a soul that knew how to utilize sorrows until they became refinements, doubtless had many suitors in her widowhood days. And there was no law forbidding her a second marriage, except the unwritten law of fine sentiment; but to the Queen of the House of David the law of fine sentiment was all-controlling. All her heart was filled with love for her husband, her Son and her Savior. When her consort died, the niche in her heart that he occupied, the only part with room for conjugal love, became a shrine. Its door was sealed then until the final resurrection. Where such constancy exists there is certainty of pure homes. Sanctity, chastity and faithfulness were the lights of the temple, dedicated to the mythical Juno, within whose precincts no impure woman was suffered to enter. To-day I claim for the True Ideal all that was accorded the mythical one.”
When the speaker paused, some of the men present broke forth, as was the custom in the synagogue service, with an “Amen,” and some exclaimed “Rabbi, thine are good words for our women to hear!”
The Hospitaler’s black eyes flashed; a hint of retort of lightning-like directness to come. And it came, instantly:
“I shall fail of my duty if I give all to one-half. I shall fail of my intent if my words seem like railings at the sex most tender, most burdened. Since we are treating of the weeds of the mourners, let us question why it is that widowers more frequently seek remarriage than do widows. The bereaved man easily says: ‘Get me another wife.’ The bereaved woman more frequently says: ‘Let me hurry on heavenward after my only and ever beloved.’
“With the true woman marriage is a committal so utter that it is difficult for her, generally, to make it more than once. Again me thinks that marriage brings the graver, heavier loads to women. Once experienced, there is need of a mighty love to allure her to a second trial. The man rises by self-assertion, and wedlock does not hinder him. With the woman wedlock means self-denial; her name changes, her career is merged into that of her consort; her body is given, literally, to the new beings she bears. To woman marriage has no parallel, except death. Her only possible compensation is love, and that she should receive with measures knowing no stint. Oh, men, all fair to other men, all merciful to the beasts that toil, all prudent in keeping in motion, by day and by night, the water-wheels in your orange and mulberry groves, be fair and merciful to your consorts. Yea, and evermore water with love’s most grateful refreshments the bearing vines whose tendrils intwine your hearts, whose fruits enrich your homes. This is religion; what is less is heresy, and he who deals unkindly, cruelly or niggardly with his other self, can not face God. The prayers of such are hindered and like unto a tree whose leaves are storm-stripped. You know the race, by birth, comes forth in two sexes, of equal numbers, a hint of God’s plan to have mankind live as pairs; but the men are a constant majority. Why? I answer that, notwithstanding the perils falling upon the sterner sex, by exposure, by war, and all such things, the trials falling to woman’s lot work the greater havoc, keeping her sex in huge majority in the places of the dead. Now you praise me, because I’ve told your women to be like the glorious Mary? Praise me again for telling them, as I do this instant, to be like her in choice of consorts. If they can not find Josephs to begin with, God grant to make the men they have like the choice spouse who fell to Mary’s lot!”
The Hospitaler paused for a moment; there was a wave of excitement, very near to applause, running over the audience. The bride and the groom, together with all the women present, by their faces expressed their delight. The men who had exclaimed at the first, looked blank and kept silent now.
Abruptly, as before, again the knight spoke:
“I’ll touch now another pertinent theme—Mary under the shadows of scandal! I’d exalt her as one having sounded the depths of woman’s misery, and yet preserving her integrity. I know that some here will think themselves offended, since it’s the fashion so to think when listening to discourse such as I now intend. Society, more prudish than sincere or wise, has demanded that the burning, scarlet, social wrong be spoken of only by scrupulous hint, half words and reserves, at least among decent and happy folks. For once, as God’s accredited ambassador, I’ll change all this, and by Purity’s earthly throne, the marriage altar, denounce the crime of crimes, the blasting curse of all mankind. Let him that’s conscious of his own impurity mince words. I’ll not! Jehovah might have brought forth the Christ without subjecting Nazareth’s Virgin to the painful necessity of being doubted. It was as He decreed and wisely ordered. The happening was not because Deity was frustrated, but because He knew that she whose example was to be woman’s inspiration, could be so more surely, if her career took her along all lines of woman’s needs. There was a time when almost all who knew Mary doubted her integrity; a time when her name was banded about by the roués of her native place; a time when even her betrothed was resolving to renounce, if not to denounce her. First I’d speak of how impurity is abhorred of God, and then of His wondrous effort to allure those lost by it, as evinced in sending out after them the two lambs—the Eternal Lamb and the lamb-like woman.