BIBLICAL PROPHECY AND NINETEENTH CENTURY HISTORICISM: THE JOACHIMITE THIRD AGE IN MATTHEW AND MARY AUGUSTA ARNOLD

Abstract

Her life was no longer her own: she lived in him—in every look of those eyes—in every movement of that wasted frame. As she sat there, her Bible on her knee, her strained unseeing gaze resting on the garden and the sea, a sort of hallucination took possession of her. It seemed to her that she saw the form of the Son of man passing over the misty slope in front of her, that the dim majestic figure turned and beckoned. In her half dream she fell on her knees. 'Master!' she cried in agony, 'I cannot leave him! Call me not! My life is here. I have no heart—it beats in his!' And the figure passed on, the beckoning hand dropping at its side. She followed it with a sort of anguish, but it seemed to her as though mind and body were alike incapable of moving—that she would not if she could. Then suddenly a sound from behind startled her. She turned, her trance shaken off in an instant, and saw Robert sitting up in bed. For a moment her lover, her husband, of the early days was before her—as she ran to him. But he did not see her.