rom Heaven, "Lord,
that thou wouldest put me back into my father's house." And the
evangelist, because he was human, dropped a tear as he stooped to kiss
her forehead, saying, "Daughter, thy prayer is heard in heaven; and I
tell thee that the daylight shall not come and go for thirty times,
not for the thirtieth time shall the sun drop behind Lebanon, before I
will put thee back into thy father's house."

[Footnote 50: "_The Prophet_":--Though a Prophet was not _therefore_
and in virtue of that character an Evangelist, yet every Evangelist
was necessarily in the scriptural sense a Prophet. For let it be
remembered that a Prophet did not mean a _Pre_dicter, or _Fore_shower
of events, except derivatively and inferentially. What _was_ a Prophet
in the uniform scriptural sense? He was a man, who drew aside the
curtain from the secret counsels of Heaven. He declared, or made
public, the previously hidden truths of God: and because future events
might chance to involve divine truth, therefore a revealer of future
events might happen so far to be a Prophet. Yet still small was that
part of a Prophet's functions which concerned the foreshowing of
events; and not necessarily _any_ part.]

Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of the evangelist. She
sought not to varnish her history, or to palliate her own
transgressions. In so far as she had offended at all, her case was
that of millions in every generation. Her father was a prince in
Lebanon, proud, unforgiving, austere. The wrongs done to his daughter
by her dishonourable lover, because done under favour of opportunities
created by her confidence in his integrity, her father persisted in
resenting as wrong's done by this injured daughter herself; and,
refusing to her all protection, drove her, whilst yet confessedly
innocent, into criminal compliances under sudden necessities of
seeking daily bread from her own uninstructed efforts. Great was the
wrong she suffered both from father and lover; great was the
retribution. She lost a churlish father and a wicked lover; she gained
an apostolic guardian. She lost a princely station in Lebanon; she
gained an early heritage in heaven. For this heritage is hers within
thirty days, if she will not defeat it herself. And, whilst the
stealthy motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth day, behold!
a burning fever desolated Damascus, which also laid its arrest upon
the Daughter of Lebanon, yet gently, and so that hardly fo