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.’”

There was a light knock at the door.  The face of the Grey One was like a wraith, motionless and staring at him.  Vina Nettleton looked up from her soiled hands, which had streaked her face....  She moved suddenly to the door, but did not touch it.