Constantly she speaks of herself as bearing food or drink in her words. “I bid thee eat,” she said to one, “and rest ye, and eat amore, for ’tis the wish o’ me that ye be filled.” The seed, the loaf, the cup, are frequently used symbolically when referring to her communications.
“There be a man who buyeth grain and he telleth his neighbor and his neighbor’s neighbor, and lo, they come asacked and clamor for the grain. And what think ye? Some do make price, and yet others bring naught. But I be atelling ye, ’tis not a price I beg. Nay, ’tis that ye drink my cup.”
“’Tis truth o’ earth that ’tis the seed aplanted deep that doth cause the harvester for to watch. For lo, doth he to hold the seed athin (within) his hand, ’tis but a seed. And aplanted he doth watch him in wondering. Verily do I say, ’tis so with me. I be aplanted deep; do thee then to watch.”
And with greater significance she has exclaimed: “Morn hath broke, and ye be the first to see her light. Look ye wide-eyed at His workings. He hath offered ye a cup.”
It is thus she announces herself to be a herald of a new day, a bearer of tidings divinely commissioned.
What, then, is her message? For answer it may be said that it is at once a revelation, a religion and a promise. Whatever we may think of the nature of this phenomenon, Patience herself is a revelation, and there are many revelations in her words. The religion she presents is not a new one. It is as old as that given to the world nineteen centuries ago; for fundamentally it is the same. It is that religion, stripped of all the doctrines and creeds and ceremonials and observances that have grown up about it in all the ages since His coming, and paring it down to the point where it can be expressed by the one word—Love. Love, going out to fellow man, to all nature and overflowing toward God.
In the consideration of this religion let us begin at the beginning, at the ground, so to speak, with this expression of love for the loveless:
Ah, could I love thee,
Thou, the loveless o’ the earth,
And pry aneath the crannies