[Illustration: “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.
“He will help her carry on the work of helpin’ a sinful world. He will protect her in it, she cannot be harmed or hindered, for the cause she loves of helpin’ men and wimmen, is God’s cause too, and God will take care of His own. Herods full of greed and frightened selfishness may try to break her heart by efforts to kill the child she loves, but she will hold it so clost to her bosom he can’t destroy it; and the light of the Divine will go before her, showin’ the way through the desert and wilderness mebby, but she shall bear it into safety.”
“You spoke of Herod,” sez he dreamily, “the name sounds familiar to me. Was not Mr. Herod once in the United States Senate?”
“Not that one,” sez I. “He died some time ago, but I guess he has relatives there now, judgin’ from laws made there. You ask who Herod wuz, and as it all seems a new story to you, I will tell you. When the Saviour of the world wuz born in Bethlehem, and a woman wuz tryin’ to save His life, a man by the name of Herod wuz tryin’ his best out of selfishness and greed to murder Him.”