ave Him. And when
God, pointing to the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries,
'How can I forgive His executioners?' She then commands that all
the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels, should prostrate
themselves with her before the Immutable and Changeless One and
implore Him to change His wrath into mercy and--forgive them
all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a
kind of yearly respite of tortures between Good Friday and
Trinity, a chorus of the 'damned' singing loud praises to God
from their 'bottomless pit,' thanking and telling Him:
Thou art right, O Lord, very right,
Thou hast condemned us justly.
"My poem is of the same character.
"In it, it is Christ who appears on the scene. True, He says
nothing, but only appears and passes out of sight. Fifteen
centuries have elapsed since He left the world with the distinct
promise to return 'with power and great glory'; fifteen long
centuries since His prophet cried, 'Prepare ye the way of the
Lord!' since He Himself had foretold, while yet on earth, 'Of
that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven
but my Father only.' But Christendom expects Him still. ...
"It waits for Him with the same old faith and the same emotion;
aye, with a far greater faith, for fifteen centuries have rolled
away since the last sign from heaven was sent to man,
And blind faith remained alone
To lull the trusting heart,
As heav'n would send a sign no more.
"True, again, we have all heard of miracles being wrought ever
since the 'age of miracles' passed away to return no more. We
had, and still have, our saints credited with performing the most
miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers, there
have been those among them who have been personally visited by
the Queen of Heaven. But Satan sleepeth not, and the first germs
of doubt, and ever-increasing unbelief in such wonders, already
had begun to sprout in Christendom as early as the sixteenth
century. It was just at that time that a new and terrible heresy
first made its appearance in the north of Germany.* [*Luther's
reform] A great star 'shining as it were a lamp... fell upon the
fountains waters'... and 'they were made bitter.' This 'heresy'
blasphemously denied 'miracles.' But those who had remained
faithful believed all the more ardently, the tears of mankind
ascended to Him as heretofore, and the Christian world was
expecting Him as confidently as ever;
|