He said evasively, his grandmother owned one, and he had seen it in early youth. And then he went on in a sort of apologizin’ way. He had always meant to read it, but he had entered political life at an early age where the Bible wuzn’t popular, and he believed that he had never read further than the Epistles of Gulliver to the Liliputians.
Sez I, “That hain’t Bible, there hain’t no Gulliver in it, and you mean Galatians.”
Well, he said, that might be it, it wuz some man he knew, and he had always heard and believed that man wuz the only worker that God had chosen.
“Why,” sez I, “the one great theme of the New Testament—the salvation of the world through the birth of Christ—no man had anything to do with. Our divine Lord wuz born of God and Woman. Heavenly plan of redemption for fallen humanity. God Himself called woman into that work, the divine work of saving a world, and why shouldn’t she continue in it? God called her. Mary had no dream of publicity, no desire of a world’s work of suffering and renunciation. The soft air of Galilee wropped her about in its sweet content, as she dreamed her quiet dreams in maiden peace—dreamed, perhaps, of domestic love and happiness.
“From that sweetest silence, the restful peace of happy innocent girlhood, God called her to her divine work of helpin’ redeem a world from sin. And did not this woman’s love and willin’ obedience, and sufferin’ set her apart, baptize her for this work of liftin’ up the fallen, helpin’ the weak?
“He’d entered political life where the Bible wuzn’t popular; he’d never read further than Gulliver’s Epistle to the Liliputians.”
“Is it not a part of woman’s life that she gave at the birth and crucifixion? Her faith, her hope, her sufferin’, her glow of divine pity and joyful martyrdom. These, mingled with the divine, the pure heavenly, have they not for nineteen hundred years been blessin’ the world? The God in Christ would awe us too much; we would shield our eyes from the too blindin’ glory of the pure God-like. But the tender Christ who wept over a sinful city, and the grave of His friend, who stopped dyin’ on the cross to comfort His mother’s heart, provide for her future—it is this womanly element in our Lord’s nature that makes us dare to approach Him, dare to kneel at His feet?
“And since woman wuz so blessed as to be counted worthy to be co-worker with God in the beginnin’ of the world’s redemption; since He called her from the quiet obscurity of womanly rest and peace into the blessed martyrdom of renunciation and toil and sufferin’, all to help a world that cared nothin’ for her, that cried out shame upon her.