“Miriam, I thank you from my soul,” at length Fabiola said; “you have fulfilled your promise of guiding me. For some time I have only been fearing that you might not be a Christian; but it could not be.
“Now tell me, are those awful, but sweet words, which you just now uttered, which have sunk into my heart as deeply, as silently, and as irrevocably as a piece of gold dropped upon the surface of the still ocean goes down into its depths,—are those words a mere part of the Christian system, or are they its essential principle?”
“From a simple allegory, dear lady, your powerful mind has, in one bound, reached and grasped the master-key of our whole teaching: the alembic of your fine understanding has extracted, and condensed into one thought, the most vital and prominent doctrines of Christianity. You have distilled them into their very essence.
“That man, God’s creature and bondsman, rebelled against his Lord; that justice irresistible had doomed and pursued him; that this very Lord ‘took the form of a servant, and in habit was found like a man;’[218] that in this form he suffered stripes, buffets, mockery, and shameful death, became the ‘Crucified One,’ as men here call Him, and thereby rescued man from his fate, and gave him part in His own riches and kingdom: all this is comprised in the words that I have spoken.
“And you had reached the right conclusion. Only God could have performed so godlike an action, or have offered so sublime an expiation.”
Fabiola was again wrapped up in silent thought, till she timidly asked:
“And was it to this that you referred in Campania, when you spoke of God alone being a victim worthy of God?”
“Yes; but I further alluded to the continuation of that sacrifice, even in our own days, by a marvellous dispensation of an all-powerful love. However, on this I must not yet speak.”
Fabiola resumed: “I every moment see how all that you have ever spoken to me coheres and fits together, like the parts of one plant; all springing one from another. I thought it bore only the lovely flowers of an elegant theory; you have shown me in your conduct how these can ripen into sweet and solid fruit. In the doctrine which you have just explained, I seem to myself to find the noble stem from which all the others branch forth—even to that very fruit. For who would refuse to do for another, what is much less than God has done for him? But, Miriam, there is a deep and unseen root whence springs all this, possibly dark beyond contemplation, deep beyond reach, complex beyond man’s power to unravel; yet perhaps simple to a confiding mind. If, in my present ignorance, I can venture to speak, it should be vast enough to occupy all nature, rich enough to fill creation with all that is good and perfect in it, strong enough to bear the growth of your noble tree, till its summit reach above the stars, and its branches to the ends of earth.
“I mean, your idea of that God, whom you made me fear, when you spoke to me as a philosopher of Him, and taught me to know as the ever-present watchman and judge; but whom I am sure you will make me love when, as a Christian, you exhibit Him to me as the root and origin of such boundless tenderness and mercy.