There be soul-artists, who go through this world, looking among their
fellows with reverence, as one looks amid the dust and rubbish of old
shops for hidden works of Titian and Leonardo, and, finding them,
however cracked or torn or painted over with tawdry daubs of pretenders,
immediately recognize the divine original, and set themselves to cleanse
and restore. Such be God's real priests, whose ordination and anointing
are from the Holy Spirit; and he who hath not this enthusiasm is not
ordained of God, though whole synods of bishops laid hands on him.
Many such priests there be among women;--for to this silent ministry
their nature calls them, endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre, and
a subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed reason;--and she
of whom we write was one of these.
At this very moment, while the crimson wings of morning were casting
delicate reflections on tree, and bush, and rock, they were also
reddening innumerable waves round a ship that sailed alone, with a wide
horizon stretching like an eternity around it; and in the advancing
morning stood a young man thoughtfully looking off into the ocean, with
a book in his hand,--James Marvyn,--as truly and heartily a creature of
this material world as Mary was of the invisible and heavenly.
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