Let us gather up the last threads of our story. After the death of Miriamne, the “Sisters of Bethany” soon ceased to congregate at the “House of Bethesda,” in the city on Olivet. Cornelius Woelfkin attempted for a time to carry forward the work of the mission, but, utterly miserable himself, he did not know how to bestow comfort on others; a man, without the intimate companionship of the woman who had been his inspirer, he had no discernment of the needs of woman, nor power to interpret the truths that were in the Book or in nature, those garners of manna.
The Hospitaler was sent for as an aid. He came but once, and then spoke as kindly as he could to the women of Bethany and Jerusalem, and took his farewell of them all, in closing words like these:
“The blessed Miriamne, child of Jesus, and emulator of Mary, has passed away, but Christ her Comforter and Savior may be such to each of you, that wills Mary’s example, as the inspiration of all women, can never die. The world has been a battle-ground, and each of you can here see over the whole field of conflict. Shall all pleasures be found under the leadership of Bacchus and Venus, or in Him that is the God of Joy? Shall woman echo the passions of man or the ‘Magnificat’ of Mary? Shall the strength that man seeks be that of the giants, brute force; the strength of woman be, in her youth the bewitchings of personal beauty, in old age the cunning of the witch-hag? Shall it not rather be in the girdle of her moral worth?
“The world needs to seek and find love, beauty and light. Some go after it, vainly, as did the Egyptian devotees of Phallic Khem; to whom, with pitiful incongruity, were offered rampant goats and bulls, decorated with most delicate flowers. They called Khem the ‘God of births,’ the ‘beautiful God,’ but we know to put mothers on the throne as the beautiful; their flowers, their jewels, their glories being their offspring!
“Women of Jerusalem, never forget the Savior’s own words to the women that envied His mother, crying that the one that bore Him and nursed Him was therefore peculiarly blessed! His reply was: ‘Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.’”
Then the Hospitaler, bending his eyes upon the pale-faced, widowed missioner, continued: “I’ll tell thee a tradition of our Lord’s mother. Doubting Thomas, laggard because doubting, came late to the burial-place of Mary. He begged to have her coffin opened, that once more he might gaze on the face of his Savior’s mother. It was done. But there seemed to be nothing in that coffin except lilies and roses, luxuriously blooming. Then, looking up, he saw the spirit of the woman ‘soaring heavenward in a glory of light.’ But as she soared, she threw down to him her girdle. Here is a beautiful parable. The graves of the holy are to memory full of the ever-blooming roses of love and the lilies of purity. If we may not have them we loved with us always, we may have the virtues with which they engirdled themselves, for our conflicts.”
The Hospitaler paused, cast a glance of yearning tenderness upon the assembled women and the heart-stricken Cornelius; then exclaimed:
“Long partings are painful. Farewell!” He glided away ere any could clasp his hand. Not long after this event the Sheik of Jerusalem, Azrael’s putative son, raided Bethany, razing the “Temple of Allegory” to the earth. He was maddened because, after the disappearance of the Hospitaler, there came to him no stipend to buy immunity for the “Bethesda House” of the “Sisters of Bethany.” He despoiled it, hoping to find a treasure therein, but though there was in and about the place a great wealth, it was all beyond his grasp or ken, for he knew naught of the worth or power of precious truths and precious memories. Cornelius, after this, taking his infant son, soon departed from Syria. His dream of evangelizing the world and the great designs of Miriamne faded from his hopes, as the vision of universal empire has faded often from the hopes of dying conquerors. For years he devoted himself to being father and mother to his child. At last we behold him, as in the foregoing pages, looking toward sunset. He stands finally in Bethany, his dismantled home and Miriamne’s ruined temple not far away, her tomb close at hand, himself like the fragment of a wreck; altogether presenting a sad, dramatic tableau. He stands there as the last of the new “Grail Knights,” the last of those who in his time were devoted to the new grail quest. It was Saturnalia-time, and it was night.
“Virgin and Mother of Our Dear Redeemer
...