world s harvest advenes. Yet, for the most part, the



532 The Queen of the House of David.

multitudes see not the ripening. For years the first
fruits were offered, and as yet, the people do not un
derstand that first fruits mean chosen, choice fruits, the
elect of God.

" For centuries, Israel offered the shoulder and heart
of the lamb, and yet Israel waits under the overshadow
ing smokes of its burnt offering, not discerning the
Lamb Priest, whose heart of eternal love and shoulder
of power, are given for the salvation of the people.

" Israelites, hear me ; out of the altar s smoke emerges
to view the kingdom of the house of David, refined, puri
fied the hope of the future. Ye have thought, hith
erto, that David s kingdom, whatsoever it might have
been, is, in these ages, to be reckoned with the dynasties
and forces of an antiquity, whose influences long ago
ebbed away along the shores of the all-entombing past.

" Yet such conclusion is as fallacious as it is evidently
superficial. The God who works in unbroken time
cycles, though men remit their tasks at the beck of sleep
or death, pushes forth His forceful, faultless projects
with a tireless consistency that knows no cross pur
poses. A real and present kingdom is that with which
this Pentecost we have to do. We are not, at that
time when they shall bring out tJie bones of the kings of
JiidaJi and spread them before the sun. David s throne
is a verity, though long incrusted with neglects ; it is a
symbol of power in a dynasty that is ordained to over
spread the earth. I d summon my witnesses ; first the
weeping Jeremiah. Thus said the Lord : David shall
never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of
Israel. How bold ! but amid the ruins about us, I cry
never! never! Now call the God-nourished cap
tive Daniel, who, sincere to the last, made all Babylon



The Queen of the House of David. 533

glow with his prayers and his visions. Saith Dan
iel :

" The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom
that shall never be destroyed. The dream is cer
tain ; the interpretation sure. He was proof against
the alluring blandishments of his royal captors, and as
pure to the last as a knight of San Grail."

Cornelius saw a light on the Hospitaler s face, and
knew it was that that comes from a conscience clear
before God. The latter went on with a voice suddenly
become tenderer than it was before.

" Let us hear the reply of the converted pagan king,
Nebuchadnezzar : Whose kingdom is from generation
to generation !

" Hearken to Isaiah, to whom the scroll of human his
tory through a thousand generations then yet to come
was present and lucid : Unto us a child is born . . .
his name shall be called Wonderful . . The Prince
of Peace. Of the increase of His government and
peace there shall be no end upon the throne of David
to establish it with judgment and with justice from
henceforth and forever. Surely he must be of dull
comprehension who saith this is only the spiritual,
heavenly kingdom of the glorified.

" Let us stand for a little under the light of the
blazing tongues of Pentecost, enswathed in imagina
tion by the mighty, rushing tide of Spirit manifesta
tion, fresh from the Being of the Almighty. Now lis
ten to Peter, transfigured and illuminated within and
without. Error here, with him, was impossible ! Un
truth at such a time would be a madness like that of
the attempted steadying of the ark. Saith Peter : Da
vid being- a prophet knowing that God had sivorn to Jiim



534 The Queen of the House of David.

that He would raise tip Christ to sit on his throne! Pe
ter at last, a rock of God, I bless thee ! Call that arch
angel, who doth excel in strength, his name given him
in heaven being Gabriel, the Champion of God. He
certified his mission to Mary in terms that can be
made no finer : / am Gabriel, that STAND IN THE PRES
ENCE OF GOD and sent to show thce glad tidings.
Thou shalt bring forth a son. And the Lord shall give
unto Him the throne of His father David. Of H is,King-
dom there shall be no end. These are glad tidings,
indeed, sung as such to the joy and wonder of heaven,
as well as proclaimed as the sovereign comfort of
earth s inhabiters.

" The splendid, earthly Kingdom outlined so glori
ously by the prophets has suffered no syncope, and Da
vid s royal line has not found its end in sepulchral
palaces. That Kingdom and that line survives; their
zenith not yet attained.

"In that zenith day, Truth shall spring out of the
earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

11 So it was settled forever in heaven, for earth and
to all eternity, that in the vocabulary of divine wisdom,
first-born means choice-born. And he is choice-
born no matter how ill his beginning, who is reborn by
the all-uplifting, renewing Spirit of Grace ! Jesus, in
marked manner, even in this respect, parallels David
in reaffirming in Himself this law of His refined, exalted
kingdom. The line of the Christ from remotest gener
ations is found to have deflected from the line of the
first born. His descent must be traced through Seth,
Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, Solomon
and Nathan, and still others, none of whom were first
in their advent into the families to which they belonged.



The Queen of the House of David. 535

Again, the Christ and his progenitor, David, antagon
ized the barbarian tenet of all ages that a man was to
be honored merely because of his gigantesque figure or
prowess. In olden times men revered greatly the
giantly. Among the primitives to be a weakling was
to be pitiable, and to be huge to monstrosity was to be
respected, if not actually worshiped. Indeed, pagan
ism in its essence is but homage paid to the great, that
is terrible. The princely David began his career in
slaying wild beasts and monstrous giants, but we may
cease admiring the prowess he had physically in greater
admiration of the symbol that lies in his early exploits.
He was to be the giant-slayer; evil giants and giant
evils were to fall before him alike ; and a shepherd s
little sling, in pious hands, was shown to be invin
cible. In Solomon s time, there was more out
ward splendor, but less spirituality than in David s
time. The latter witnessed the gilded decline in its
beginnings. Decay followed swiftly. The world
sighed for a restoration ; the heathen manufactured
gods ; the Fire Worshipers followed stars ; in the
groves, virgins were, after a sort, worshiped, as in
the forest night-services of the old England of some of
you, the Druids prayed to a mystical virgin that was
to bring forth. There was a common yearning for the
coming of a Champion to lead and defend the races of
man. The yearning felt its way blindly toward the
wonder to be, that of a woman of the children of men,
mothering One all human, all divine, a Prince fit to link
together the parts of David s kingdom, whether mili
tant here or triumphant above. That full day has
begun, but is only dimly seen by many. You Jews
have been wont to keen a Pentecost of males only



536 The Queen of the House of David.

while Egypt deifies a woman as goddess of the harvest,
One turns to brawn, the other to the bringer forth, and
neither gets the truth, the royal truth, found in the
faith that brings forth through all humanity !

" Would you see a real Pentecost ? Now, look how
the first was to the fathers. The holy ones, among
Christ s followers, believing His promises, assembled
at Joseph of Arimathaea s house, to await it. Hear the
word :

"And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of
the disciples, the number of names together were about
a hundred and twenty.

" These all continued with one accord in prayer and
supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of
Jesus, and with his brethren."

" Our holy Luke, said to have been an artist, artistically
presents the scene. As we read his record, we behold
the Queen of the House of David, the representative
woman ; as she should be, in the company and honor
of God s people. Not there as a beautiful creature to
be admired ; but there to pray with those who prayed
for the dawn and the glory. With the genius of an artist,
and the insight of a prophet, Luke displays his ideal
thus. The Scripture record closes, leaving the typical
woman amid God s people, on her knees, waiting in
hopefulness for the full dawn ; while for a little time
over all falls the earnest of the promise in miraculous
displays from above. There was a rushing of mighty
sounds, the providences of God in motion, the move
ments of His spirits who minister, for a time made
visible ! The scene was one never to be forgotten, and
the holy John, years after in the glowing visions of the
Apocalypse, had brought to his mind its cent.al figure



TJie Queen of the House of David. 537

the woman clothed with the sun ; the transfigured
woman, and she as woman in her highest estate ; that
is mothering a child ! He saw her rising above all
perils, all evils ; but as she rose, she bore aloft her
child, a Man Child ! Look at the picture, men and
brethren, till it possesses your souls! BEHOLD THE
WOMAN ! Behold the interlaced symbols ! As a mother
holds above peril her child, so the peerless woman
held aloft her Divine Babe ; as the church holds aloft its
offspring, so also in the apotheosis of the ideal mother,
comes the uplifting of man s hopes, and the triumph of
all that is best, all that is promised. We see to-day,
but the smoke side of Pentecost, by and by we ll see,
as do those in heaven, its fire side."

The speaker ceased his address, and all were filled
with great and moving thoughts.



CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE CORONATION OF THE QUEEN.

" My knowledge is so weak, oh, blissful queen,
To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,
That I the weight of it may not sustain ;
But as a child of twelve months old or less
That laboreth his language to express,
Even so fare I and therefore pray,
Guide thou my song which I of thee may say."

WORDSWORTH,

F I could only carry to Bethany \vhat I feel
now ! " ejaculated the young chaplain, as he
hurried along from the knights celebration
of Pentecost, homeward, at the time that the
Moslems were summoned to evening prayers by the
minaret calls.

After his greeting, on arriving at his abode, his first
words were : " I ve seen the crowns of fire, and now
comprehend the meaning of Pentecost, where men
gathered from varied climes, heard each the spirit s
message ir his own tongue ! The Spirit is the inter,
preter ! "

" By what aid came this revelation? "
" God and the Hospitaler."

" We have the first here ; let us call the other, that
the temple on the hill be made to feel the glow. The
time is opportune, for each day witnesses new tri
umphs of our cause."




The Coronation of the Queen. 539

When the knight arrived a feast was in progress.
His air awed those to whom he was a stranger, and
there were not a few who thought within themselves

" Is he a prophet ? "

Abruptly, as usual, he began :

" Friends : I would that all hearts here were moved
by justice to enthrone the Queen whose praise your
frank youths have been sincerely singing. I am here
to-day to proclaim her rights, and in so doing I shall
appeal to that sure word which survives when all else
fails. She was of David s royal line ; the noblest one
of all the earth. To the proof? The Christian Scrip
tures, from the hands of Matthew and Luke, present
her ancestral descent. These apostles wrote as God
directed, and, after all, only reaffirmed that already set
forth in the most carefully, religiously guarded records
of all antiquity, the Jewish genealogical tables.

" You know that the ancient Jews held those tables
in sacred regard, for on their integrity depended the
proof of the things to them most dear, as they be
lieved. By them every Jew could trace his Abrahamic
descent, and to Abraham s seed were all the great
promises of the covenant. By those tables they
proved their title to the land of promise, Canaan.
Every Jew, believing himself one of God s chosen peo
ple, and that his advancement and the advancement of
his posterity in the Divine favor, depended on the
purity of the blood of both, felt that he needed the
guidance of those tables to preserve him from any ad
mixture with alien or Gentile blood. The Aaronic
priesthood was hereditary and the priesthood was in
itial in the religious system of the Hebrews. Its legiti
macy was preserved chiefly by these hereditary chart-



540 The Queen of the House of David.

ers. Then all true Israelites looked for the coming of
a Savior, Priest and King to bring to the chosen tran
scendent glory, and to win an universal dominion,
marked by love, joy and peace. Every Jew knew that
Great One was to spring from the house of David, and
all within that Judaic line hoping that he or his chil
dren might be near akin to the One to come, carefully,
constantly, proudly guarded and studied these records
of descent. Birth was the foundation upon which all
Jewish institutions were founded. So all Israel was
reckoned by genealogies They lived in a reign of blood,
and in blood to be Jewishly thoroughbred was, they
thought, to be most highly favored. They had not yet
discerned the law of the new dispensation, which de
clares all men akin ; a dispensation seeking to build up
a superior humanity by first of all transforming and
exalting the inner life. By the revered records of
these Jewish patriarchs, both holy and love-ladened,
place the writings of Matthew and Luke, and with con
current testimony, unimpeachable as well as conclusive,
the legitimacy of Jesus the son of Mary is proven !
He was beyond a cavil of David s king]}- line. There
were Christ-haters who contested at every point His
claim of Messiahship. They forged lies freely; they
hurled after Him slanders innumerable ; they insin
uated that He was born in fornication ; they af
fected to flee from Him as one having a devil ; they
denounced Him to Jewish as well as Roman authori
ties as a liar, a seducer of men and a traitor. In a
word, they howled Him down in every way they could,
unabashed by the splendor of His baptismal indorse
ment, unsilenced by the awful warnings of His cross
But in their desperation they never dared to challenge



The Coronation of the Queen. 541

the records which proved Him the son of David.
Now had His claims rested upon His relations to His
earthly father, Joseph, they would have been disproven.
All Jewry would have quickly, fiercely proclaimed Him
a pretender and not in the family of promise. The
Christ was heir of David s name and fame because His
mother was, and so in exalting Him you crown the
saintly woman who bore Him ! He was the adopted
son of Joseph, type of all His followers, adopted sons
of a Royal Father. He was legitimate through his
mother, type of all his followers, brought into the
royal family of God by the power of a mystic new
birth.

" But there is another line running backward, pre
served through the centuries to connect the first Adam
with this last one. This line runs from Christ through
his mother to Eden. Behold the august truth sus
pended by that chain of names ! Names; only names
of the dead ! names of the forgotten ! Jesus by Mary
is linked to the chain ! It s an old, old chain, but yet
it has gems in its links. Each named is the child of
another living before, and the history of each is re
corded in two words, begat, died. A chain of dust !
One man precedes another. Each in turn vanishes
until immortality is confronted in the last sentence :
Adam, who was the son of God/ The first mortal
son of God uncrowned and led away from his kingdom,
by a woman, to death ! The twain go down together,
each ruinous to the other, with nothing left them but
a hope ; and that hope rested upon a to them mys
terious promise : The seed of the woman shall crush tht
head of the serpent / It would have staggered their
faith had one told them that in God s revenges, all



542 The Queen of the House of David.

compensating, all healing, she that led down was of
the sex that should lead upward. Out of their dark
ness there came a seeming dawn, and Eve cried ec
statically at the birth of Cain :

" I have gotten a man from the Lord !

" They thought he was a token of renewed favor
and probably the redeemer from the curse. Returned
out a murderer, and introduced them to the supreme
horror of humanity death. The conflict of light and
darkness went on, and the first pair tasted death them
selves, looking along the horizon of unrealized hopes
to the last and waiting, as all their posterity through
painful centuries waited, for the Man that was to save.
The long years with leaden tread marched on, strug
gles amid suffering weighty and countless, accompanied
the race ; of them all woman bore the heavier part, but
she kept somehow the larger hope. Each Jewish mother,
with a pride of sex secretly cherished, watched and
longed for the coming from herself of the ONE who was
to lift her up and crown her queen, indeed.

"God at last gathered all woman s trustful hopings
into one great answered prayer, and deigning, in sov
ereign love, His marvelous co-operation, brought forth
another and a perfect Adam.

" We are informed that Joseph and Mary went, about
the time of Jesus birth, in compliance with Roman
law, to Bethlehem to pay their personal taxes. The
Roman tax lists were based upon the records of fam
ily descent so far as concerned the Jews.

" To make the collection certain beyond the possibil
ity of any one s escape, the law required each taxable
subject to pay his allotted tribute in the city of his
nativity. The father and mother of Jesus were cited



The Coronation of the Queen. 543

to the city of David. Thither they went. And so in
the providence of God it happened triat pagan Rome
was summoned to the cradle of the infant Savior and
made unwittingly an attester to all time that He was
of a family by right recorded among those descended
from great David.

" The son and the mother here stand or fall together.
If Mary was not of David s line, then the Son she bore
was not, and He is left without proof of being of the
seed of David.

" Joseph was not the father of the Christ after the
flesh. The lives of mother and son are eternally inter
twined. If we honor one we must needs honor the
other; abating the fame of one we degrade the other.

" Jesus claims to being the Messiah depended upon
the fact that His mother was of the tribe and family
royal. The absolute requirements of prophecy can
only be met in the Messiah by His being of the House
of David. Jesus himself admitted and fairly met this
necessity. So he questioned the Pharisees : What
think yc of Christ? Whose son is he? They say
unto him, the Son of David. Admitting this, the
Savior propounded the question involving sonship
and spiritual unity with God which His questioners
could not answer:

" If David then call him Lord, how is he son ?

" Neither durst any man from that day forth ask
Him any more questions

" HadHedenied the necessity of Davidic origin they
could have overwhelmedHimwith Scriptures. Had he
not been of that family the most ignorant Jew would
have promptly rejected His claims to being the Hope
of Israel.



544 The Queen of the House of David.

" Peter the apostle, amid the soul-trying solemnities
of Pentecost, speaking to the representatives of peo
ple from all parts of the earth and for all time, cried :
Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you con
cerning the Patriarch David : Being a prophet, and
knowing God had sworn with an oath to him that of
the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would
raise up Christ to sit on his throne.

" This orator spoke then with the accuracy of one in
the presence of the Holy Ghost, and not only made
sincere, but illuminated, by the torch of God. This
is conclusive, but the reiteratives of the inspired
writers justify us in presenting their cumulative
evidence.

"After Peter comes the learned Hebrew of the He
brews, Paul ; before his conversion to Christianity de
claring himself to have been afte rthe most straight-
est sect a Pharisee ; after that conversion, rejoicing
to the end of life, as of the true, new Israel by faith in
Him that makest all new.

" Twice Paul met Mary s son mysteriously, face to
face, within the ver} confines of Glory. Let Paul
speak : Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, separated
unto the gospel of God, concerning His Son, our Lord,
which was made of the seed of David according to the
flesh !

" Let us not longer make a mock of eternal, holy veri
ties ! Christ was of David s flesh through His mother,
and born to be a real king of a real kingdom, not a
phantom kingdom ! That kingdom must come; yea,
blessed be Jehovah ! it is coming.

" Joseph, the putative father of Jesus, adopted Jesuc
as his son, but he could not, by that legal act, make



The Coronation of the Queen. 545

his foster son, whose father was the Holy Spirit of the
seed of David, after the flcsli ! Jesus received, then,
His royal blood from Mary, and bore His Kingly title
after the flesh as the crown wherewith his mother
crowned Him. Revelations harmonize ; Luke and
Matthew must therefore agree with Paul and Peter.

" The tables of Luke and Matthew agree down to
David s time, but then they diverge, until they are
converged in Jesus, through the undoubted legitimacy
of Mary as a descendant of David and the adoption of
Jesus by Joseph, a scion of another branch of the same
great family. Luke gives a sentence, all luminous,
but first puzzling : Jesus himself began to be about tliirty
years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of JoscpJi,
which was the son of Heli. 1 Ah, as was supposed!
sneers the infidel. As was supposed! SUPPOSED!!
hatefully shouts some insinuating, ignorant Jews ! But
now let us fill out, naturally, Luke s statement, as
was supposed, the son of Joseph, but in reality the son
of Heli. But here it may be asked, was Jesus the son
of Heli? It is, I answer, not infrequently in the Scrip
tures that a grandson is called a son. Jesus was prob
ably the grandson of Heli. It was a common custom
of the Jews, except in cases of especial necessity, not
to record the names of women in tracing lines of de
scent. Men kept the books, and it had become a habit
with the lords of creation to thrust woman into the
background. Mary was too insignificant a person,
socially considered, in her time, to be registered in her
own name in the hereditary charters. Joseph was put
in her stead, as her representative. There was not any
supposition about the descent of Mary, but these
scribes, who had charge of the books, thought it were



546 The Queen of the House of David.

more creditable to the male sex to record Joseph as the
father of Jesus, and, by a little fiction, suppose him to
have descended through the former from Heli, than to
say Mary descended from Heli and Jesus descended
from Mary. The Romans encouraged this, and also the
politicians. Men were the only ones to fight or pay
taxes, and, as political factors, were strictly watched by
those in authority. Luke, in reality, gives Mary s line.
He was scholarly and accurate, besides that a physi
cian, and we judge by all experience that there is that
in the profession of medicine which makes its followers
tender toward all suffering, consequently especially
tender to women, the largest inheritors of the pains
that beset our race. Doctor Luke, like those of his
fraternity, by an act of graceful justice, in the spirit
of Christianity which is essentially humane, just, and
courtly, accorded gladly the woman her place. But the
doomsday books of the Jews, containing their family
trees or genealogies, perished with the perishing of the
Jewish nation. Those records had done their work;
it was time for them to go. They had become by misuse
agencies of evil. They stood long enough to demon
strate that God works through cycles vastly wide, and
that His definite promise made to Adam, Abraham and
many of their successors, had finally been fulfilled, at
the end of thousands of years, with a miraculous ex-
plicitness. The records disappeared after Christ came,
and herein was a providence saying to the watchers :
He is come. No need further of the patents of His
ancestry to aid your watching. More than that, they
being gone, no other could arise claiming to be Shiloh.
with hope of convincing any by appeal to proof from
the records of ancestry.

" Shiloh and his white kingdom have come. It is



TTie Coronafion of the Queen. 547

ruling the earth ; not in memories of its mighty dead,
but by its regal, potent virtues and charities. The