In the early morning in the spring garden "thou wilt see me again!" There again spoke the voice which had roused her so early! The countess raised her head--but still remained kneeling as if spell-bound. Before her stood the Promised One.
She could say nothing save the word uttered by Mary Magdalene: "Master!"
A loving soul can never be surprised by the object of its love because it expects him always and everywhere, yet it appears a miracle when its expectation becomes fulfilment.
"Have I interrupted your prater? I did not see you because you were kneeling"--he said, gently.
"You interrupt my prayer--you who first taught me to pray?" she asked, holding out her hand that he might help her rise. "Tell me, how did you come here?"
"I could not sleep--some yearning urged me to your presence--to your garden."
He gently raised her, while she gazed into his eyes as if enraptured. "Master!" she repeated. "Oh, my friend, I was like Mary Magdalene, my Lord had been taken away and I knew not where they had laid Him. Now I know. He was buried in my own heart and the world had rolled the stone before it, but yesterday--yesterday He rose and the stone was cast aside. So some impulse urged me into the garden early this morning to seek Him and lo--He stands before me as He promised."
"Do not speak so!--I am well aware that the words are not meant for me, but if you associate Christ so closely with my personality, I fear that you will confound Him with me, and that His image will be dimmed, if anything should ever shadow mine! I beseech you, Countess, by all that is sacred--learn to separate Him from me--or you have not grasped the true nature of Christ, and my work will be evil!" He stood before her with hand uplifted in prophecy, the outlines of his powerful form were sharply relieved against the dewy, shining morning air. Purity, chastity, the loftiest, most inspired earnestness were expressed in his whole bearing, all the dignity of the soul and of primeval, divinely created human nature.
Must not she have that feeling of adoration which always seizes upon us whenever, no matter where it may be, the deity is revealed in His creations? No, she did not understand what he meant, she only understood that there was something divine in him, and that the perception of this nearness to God filled her with a happiness never known before. Joseph Freyer was the guarantee of the existence of a God in whom she had lost faith--why should she imagine Him in any other form than the one which she had found Him again? "Thou shalt make thyself no graven image!" Must this Puritanically misunderstood literal statement destroy man's dearest possession, the symbol of the reality? Then the works of Raphael, Titian, and Rubens must be effaced, and the unions of miracles of faith, wrought in the souls of the human race by the representations of the divine nature.
"Oh blessed image-worship, now I understand your meaning!" she joyously exclaimed. "Whoever reviles you has never felt the ardent desire of the weak human heart, the captive of the senses, for contact with the unapproachable, the sight of the face of the ever concealed yet ever felt divinity. Here, here stands the most perfect image Heaven and earth ever created, and must I not kneel before it, clasp it with all the tendrils of my aspiring soul? No! No one ought, no one can prevent me."