Thus the Song of Solomon produced a passionate commodity, but it required the Mary Magdalene of the Gospel to express the _summum bonum_ of a woman of “Greatly Loving.” In the first prayer book of A.D. 1549 there was a Collect for her! No other woman had a Collect except the Virgin Mary. Emotion, self-surrender, selflessness, immortal courage, wondrous physical beauty! Mary Magdalene was a great human reality. It is quite obvious she was no debauchee or her Beauty would have failed, nor could she have been a “hardened” sinner or she would have scoffed! What was her history? What caused her lapse? Who was her Betrayer? “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.” And is it not very striking that St. Peter, who dictated St. Mark’s Gospel, records in the 16th chapter, verse 9, of St. Mark, that the first person in the world to whom the Saviour showed Himself after His Resurrection was Mary Magdalene? “Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, He appeared _first_ to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And she went and told them that had been with Him as they mourned and wept. And they, when they heard that He was alive and had been seen of her, believed not.” * * * * * A Sun-Dial that I Love. Que Dieu éclaire les heures que je perds. (May God light up the hours that I fail to light.) * * * * * Though hidden yet from all our eyes, He sees the Gideon who shall rise To save us and His sword. EPILOGUE MOUNT PISGAH It is stated that the historian, Lecky, O.M. (I assisted at the operation of his receiving the Order of Merit) gave more thought and time to the book of his last years, “The Map of Life,” than to any other of all his works, and it is said that for three years he kept on revising the last of its chapters. The book was derided to me by a literary friend of great eminence as being “The Pap of Life!” I read its last chapters with great avidity. If for nothing else, the book is worthy of immortality for the reason that it so emphasises those great words of Dryden as being appropriate to the close of a busied life-- “Not Heaven itself upon the past has Power, What has been has been, and I have had my hour.” Whenever (as I often do) I pass Dryden’s bust in Westminster Abbey I invariably thank him for those lines. Mr. Lecky urges his readers to leave the active scenes of life in good time and not to “Lag superfluous on the Stage” (I believe Mr. Gladstone recommended this also, but didn’t do it!).