"What a hideous time of darkness!" he added in the silence. "The Jews were but little better than the Romans. They were looking for a king, a Solomon sort of king with temples and trappings and sizable authorities. Isn't it divine irony, that the Messianic Figure should appear in the very heart of this racial weakness of the Jews? And their lesson seems still unlearned. New York brings this home to-day…. So, to the Jews and the Romans, He was insignificant in appearance. His beauty was spiritual, which to be recognized, requires spirituality—a feminine quality.
"And among the disciples: Hasn't it occurred to you again and again how their doubting egos arose, when His face was turned away? Poor fellows, they were bothered with their stomachs and their places to sleep; they quarrelled with the different villagers, and doubtless wished themselves back a hundred times to their fishing-banks and kindred employments, when the Christ moved a little apart from them. I can see them (behind His back), daring each other to approach and make known their fancied injustices and rebellions. It was so with the multitudes before they looked upon His countenance.
"But when He turns, whether in sorrow or in anger, the look is invincible…. That is always true, whether the Face is turned upon one, or the Twelve, or the multitude—in the crowded market-place, or by the sea where the many were fed, or on the Mount—perfect tributes of silence answered His direct attention, and all spiteful, petty ego outcroppings vanished…. So there were two Figures: One, a man, slender, tired and tortured; and an Angel Countenance, before whose lustrous communications all men were abased according to their spirit."
He paused, but the women did not speak….
"Dear God, how lonely He was!" Bedient said after a moment, as he regarded a picture of the Christ alone on the Mount, and the soldiers ascending to make the arrest "There were two who might have sustained in His daily death agonies. I have always wished they could have been near Him throughout the Passion. They would not have slept, that darkest of nights while He prayed! I mean Saint Paul, who of course did not see the Jesus of history, and John the Baptist, who was given to know Him but an hour at the beginning. They were the greatest mortals of those days…. They were above the attractions of women of flesh. Do you see what I mean? They were humanly complete, beyond sex! Their grandeur of soul meant a union within themselves of militant manhood and mystic womanhood. Illumination really means that. They could have sustained and ministered unto the Christ with real tenderness.
"Invariably, I think, this is true: It is a woman, or the woman in man that recognizes a Messiah…. Look at those males of singing flesh—the ultra-masculine Romans—how blind and how torpid they were to Him; and the materialistic Jews, ponderously confronting each other with stupid forms and lifeless rituals, while their Marys and Magdalens and Miriams followed the Master and waited upon Him!… I always found a kind of soulful feminine in John, the apostle—not the Forerunner, but the brother of James. He was weak in those days of the Passion, but became mighty afterward, and divinely tender, the apostle whom Jesus loved, to whom he intrusted His Mother…. But look into the arch-feminine ideal of the Christ Himself—that night on the Mount of Olives, when all Earth's struggle and anguish passed through Him, clothing itself with His pity and tenderness, before it reached the eye of the Father. What ineffable Motherhood!"
The room wrought strangely upon Bedient. He had never spoken at such length before, nor so eagerly. Vina Nettleton spoke for the first time almost, since she had welcomed him. "You help me greatly," she said with difficulty. "I cannot tell you exactly. I didn't know why, but last night I hoped you would come here. Oh, it wasn't to help me with this—not selfishly in the work, not that—but I seemed to know you knew the things you have said just now."
Bedient was thrilled by her sincerity…. The low voice of the Grey One now repeated:
"Spirituality, a feminine quality?"
"To me, always," said Bedient, his eyes lit with sudden enthusiasm. "The Holy Spirit is Mystic Motherhood. It is divinely the feminine principle…. Look at the world's prophets, or take Saint Paul, for he is in finished perspective. Completely human he is, unconquerable manhood ignited by the luminous feminine quality of the soul. There he stands, the man born again of the Holy Spirit, or Mystic Motherhood…. Now look at Jesus, a step higher still, and beyond which our vision cannot mount. Here is the prophet risen to Godhood—the union of Two, transcendent through that heavenly mystery—the adding of a Third! Doesn't it clear for you startlingly now? It did for me. Here is the Three in One in Jesus—the Godhood of the Father, the manhood of the Son, and the Mystic Motherhood of the Holy Spirit. So in the radiance of the Trinity—Jesus arose—'the first fruits of them that slept.'"