Those words welled up and rimmed over in Yodogimas heart, as molten lava heaves and lips and inflows at the craters edge. Esyo, a sister, had denounced her, but something within, a promise somewhere, sustained her, roused her to a deeper, broader sense of duty than she could conjure forth of self-effacement. Then Jokoin came, and only her presence had made it seem once more as if earth truly held some fair portion, but her counsel, too, seemed empty, even blasphemous.
Christ is our redeemer; He died to save us; I am confessed; hallelujah! shouted Jokoin, happy and careless, if unmindful.
Sister! You shock me. Have you forgotten our father?
Oh, hes alright; he didnt know; the new religion takes em all. Repent and be saved; quarrel and separate; divorce and—do you know, they allow man, big men, only one wife at a time; firstary, secondary, or multipary? Thats something!
I do believe you are losing your mind, Jokoin.
Thats nothing; go to Bungo; theyre half daffy there; and, they say, Hideyoshi, himself, would have accepted Christianity were it not for giving up the idea of more wives than one. I guess, though, hes a stickler on that—perhaps, come to think, you may know better than I?
I know my own mind; and that is more than it would seem—there, Jokoin; it is enough; let us be sisters—I presume there is nothing against that, in your religion?
Really, I havent inquired: the priests will know—however, we might just sort of hang out that way; its an elastic affair, this Christian religion, whatever else.
Withal her newfangled notions and queer mannerisms, Yodogima found this little sister most stimulating and satisfying to know and to cling to, however trying or unreasonable. Each, it is true, had an ideal of her own, quite as distinct and appealing to its possessor, as Esyos had been to her, yet neither one had stooped to attain, nor would she. Jokoin had become a Christian because it pleased her to do so: its revelation had resolved more the humorous than serious, the human and not the divine. A half century of struggle and martyrdom had proven, if anything, in their minds, that the Christian church, like all others, were but a means to an end: that God alone is supreme—substitution or addition or usurpation a dangerous, designed, fleeting makeshift.
All these creeds had been threshed out in competition and with vengeance—none had spared life or property—and yet it seemed to Yodogima that she must be saved: saved in accordance with precepts established and of a danger that to her were more than death or salvation, or both, however atoned or attuned. She must live, she must do, and in that attain: in her prayer she asked for power and not for ransom.