“The Sphinx! Well, that’s strange. I’d never think of that, unless I happened upon something very big and very meaningless!” “No, no; the people that rocked the cradle of religions in their infancy, wrought all their theology into that one mighty symbol, to endure and challenge compare with all that man should find beside.” “I do not see how!” “The Sphinx faces the East—light!” “True!” “It can not reach that light toward which it looks, neither could the Nubians.” “All true.” “It was part man, part beast; but the upper part was man, and this is what we think we know, and all of man?” “Oh, knight, Phthah, the ‘beautiful-faced,’ ‘secret-opener’ of the Nile gods has touched thee.” “The Sphinx was like man’s thought; too great for words; at least such words as men can now fit to their lips.” “I see; it’s all coming into my mind, master.” “It sat still and was silent, but the world went on; the thought it expressed reached hearts after the men that formed the image had passed away. The truth lives ever, and can not die until it completes its purpose.” “Thou art a magician, who pleases, astonishes, excites, instructs, and at the same time plays with me as if I were a pigmy!” “It’s not I, but the truth. The Sphinx again! Its hugeness, truth expressed, appears mighty when placed by our sides.” “Tell me where I am! Shall I fling Neb-ta away as a bauble, or beg its pardon for hanging so much meaning to a fool’s neck?” “Vehement! The sun is in thy head!” “But shall I sit and look as a Sphinx, or run mad because I can’t?” “Be calm, and let me tell thee that the dwellers by the mighty Nile plagued themselves with lasting darkness when they banished the people whose leader’s face shone from communion with Jehovah. They clung to some half truths, left them by the progeny of Joseph, but the half was dimmed by courted lusts.” “But my people had no Neb-ta, no women divinities to leave in Egypt.” “No, yet Egypt, aiming to exalt the tender, the beautiful, the mother, incarnated certain virtues, and lo, a woman deity! It was an effort to find the ‘Rose.’ The nation was in a vast, serious pilgrimage through all their dynasties after an idea, a pattern; an opportunity to reach and to express the best things. I tell thee, Jew, the heathen nations sit in darkness; this side and that, along the track of time, holding here and there a torch, waiting through the night whose hours are tolled off at century intervals, for something, Some One. There have passed before them like phantoms, gods and gods; man invented, man evolved; but none of these tarried, none satisfied. Oh, ‘the Isles wait for thee,’ Jesus, Thou Ideal Man, and also for the true conception of Mary the ideal woman!” “For two Gods? Is Mary divine?” “Did I say that? Nay, as the child Jesus was subject to her, so she was subject to the Christ, at last. Christ was the Word, Mary His blessed echo; Christ the Sun, Mary the Moon that reflected that light, showing its beauty in woman’s life!”