“Why-ee!” says I. “How you talk!” says I. “Have you ever read the Bible?”
He said “He had, his grandmother owned one. And he had seen it in early youth.”
And then he went on, sort o' apologizin', “He had always meant to read it through. But he had entered political life at an early age, and he believed he had never read any more of it, only portions of Gulliver's Travels. He believed,” he said, “he had read as far as Lilliputions.”
Says I, “That hain't in the Bible,—you mean Gallatians.”
“Wall,” he said, “that might be it. It was some man, he knew, and he had always heard and believed that man was the only worker God had chosen.”
“Why,” says I, “the one great theme of the New Testament,—the redemption of the world through the birth of the Christ,—no man had any thing to do with that whatever. Our divine Lord was born of God and woman.
“Heavenly plan of redemption for fallen humanity. God Himself called women into that work,—the divine work of helpin' a world.
“God called her. Mary had no dream of publicity, no desire for a world's work of sufferin' and renunciation. The soft airs of Gallilee wrapped her about in its sweet content, as she dreamed her quiet dreams in maiden peace, dreamed, perhaps, of domestic love and quiet and happiness.
“From that sweetest silence, the restful peace of happy, innocent girlhood, God called her to her divine work of helpin' to redeem a world from sin.
“And did not this woman's love, and willin' obedience, and sufferin', and the shame of the world, set her apart, babtize her for this work of liftin' up the fallen, helpin' the weak?