FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]"Suddenly to all appearing the great Day of God shall come."

[1]"Suddenly to all appearing the great Day of God shall come."

CClose under the walls of the Cathedral, nestling against one of its buttresses, leant the Cottage in which the little crippled Marie lived.

Close under the walls of the Cathedral, nestling against one of its buttresses, leant the Cottage in which the little crippled Marie lived.

Time and weather had stained and shaped the rude timbers of which it was built, and tender mosses had woven their fine tapestries over its roof, so that it seemed as little out of harmony with the stately building which looked down on it and sheltered it, as the mosses and lichens on its own stones.

For all the grandeur of the Cathedral being the grandeur of a house of God, only made it, like the everlasting hills themselves, "the hills of God," so much the more the shelter and refuge of the smallest of His creatures.

Moreover, the Cathedral, for the very reason that it was a house of God, being also a home and refuge for men, having also been designed, arch by arch, by loving human thought, and raised, stone by stone, by lowly human hands, had necessarily a twofold kindred: allying it, on the one side, with the great temple of the Creator's own building, vaulted with its infinite depths of starry worlds; and on the other side, with the lowliest dwelling in which human creatures toil and suffer. Indeed, its kindred with the cottage was closer than with the stars, because He who was adored in it became, for our sakes, Himself the greatest Sufferer; who, while He had made thestars, was made Man, and Himself lived in a very lowly cottage once for thirty years.

All this little Marie felt, as she lay hour by hour alone on her pallet; felt, not thought, for the roots of true thoughts in after-life lie deep in the feelings of the child's heart, which the child cannot utter even to itself, and which some lips indeed are never opened in this life to utter to any one: a silence not of much moment, since this is the world for learning rather than for uttering, and many of our most eloquent utterances here would seem but as babes' lispings there; while many lips which have but lisping or stammering speech here, will be opened in very glorious singing there.

For are not reverence and love the highest religious lessons of childhood; and indeed of all this life, which is but a childhood? a reverent uplooking sense of Love and Power unbounded, above, yet very near us, such as happy children learn from a holy mother's looks and tones; and little motherless Marie received, in some measure, from the Cathedral, interpreting to her, with its music and its beauty, the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed which she had learned from her dying mother's lips, when too little to understand anything but the sounds.

Marie was very much alone. Her father was a water-carrier, and was bearing water all day to the thirsty people in the hot streets of the city, or taking it to their homes. He had to leave quite early to draw the water fresh from the spring in the cool of the morning. And one of Marie's two great wishes was that one day she might go with him to the fountain, and drink the water fresh from the spring. Every morning he used to place all the things he thought his little girl would need within her reach; a little white wheaten loaf, a cup of milk, a jug of water, and, when he had had a prosperous day, some fresh fruit.

Marie thought her father's calling a very high and beautiful one, although she knew it was not considered glorious in thecity, nor one that would make his name known and honoured. But that she thought little of; for her father had often told her no one in the city knew the name of the Architect of the Cathedral; and if his name had faded away from the memories of men who counted his work the chief glory of their city, it was plain, Marie thought, that the records of the city must be very imperfect and very little worth caring about, and that, probably, there were better records kept somewhere else on quite a different plan.

Water-carrying, besides not being a glorious calling in that city, was not a lucrative one; so that, in order to eke out the daily bread, Marie had learned to plait straw for fruit baskets. Agatha, the old woman who sold fruit by the Cathedral porch, bought them of her; and in return did, not without many grumblings, all the little household work Marie would have done with such deft fingers and such a glad heart, had she been able.

Sometimes, moreover, especially on a rainy day, Mark, Agatha's little orphan grandson, would spend his play-hours with Marie, and she would mend his poor ragged clothes as well as she could, and make him wonderful little toy-baskets of straw lined with orange-peel, and balls of rags; and in return he would sing her little songs, and the multiplication-table, and sometimes hymns about Paradise, and the Living Fountains, and the Temple and the Singers there.

This was Marie's visible world; her father and the Cottage, Agatha and her fruit-stall, and little Mark, and the Cathedral.

To interpret it, she had the Our Father and the Apostles' Creed. Or rather, she had them to interpret each other; His invisible things being understood by the things that are seen, and our visible things by the things that are not seen.

As to how this interpretation went on, I could say more another time. My story now is simply of the Cottage and the Cathedral.

From the window by which Marie's bed lay, she could see Agatha's fruit-stall, and the Cathedral. By propping herself up she could command the fruit-stall, and see a great deal of the world, though not in its highest circles. By leaning back as far as she could in one corner, she could see to the top of the Cathedral tower, with its wonderful crown of fretted stone; common stone sculptured by man's heart and hands into a beauty greater than that of any diadem of gems.

Marie liked to think how each stone in that beautiful crown, which glowed above her in the sunsets and sunrises, and at night was itself crowned with stars, had been once a common gray stone like the fallen ones which lay on the ground outside, useless and shapeless.

Of these stones Marie did not like to think. She hoped none of them had ever been in that glorious crown. She did not think it anything but a glory for any stone to be made the lowest stone in the uttermost buttress of the Cathedral. Indeed, the greatest glory, perhaps, for any stone was to be a hidden stone; altogether hidden, deep beneath the earth, from human eyes. For such were the very foundation and corner stones themselves, on which, as on the Unknown Architect, the whole visible glory rested. But to be a fallen stone, chipped, and marred, and useless, and crumbling into dust, when it might have been a resting-place for sunbeams, and for birds to sing welcomes to the sunbeams from, was a thought which made Marie very sad, and gave a tremulous depth to her tones when she prayed, "Lead us not into temptation," or tenderly coaxed little Mark not to render railings for his grandmother's railings, or to use the rough words which he learned in the streets.

The painted windows of the Cathedral were rather a distress and perplexity to Marie. Sometimes, it was true, the upper panes glittered a little in the noontide sunbeams; but, for the most part, they looked dark and confused. If they had not been painted, she sometimes wistfully thought, she might havecaught glimpses of the glories inside. But then, of course, they were painted for the people inside, not for those without.

If she could only once creep Inside to see and to listen!

That was the great longing of her life.

If only once she could feel the great roof bending over her, and the walls embracing her; if, instead of straining to catch some clear melody which she might sing over in her heart, out of the dim labyrinth of those sweet and solemn sounds which reached her where she lay; if she could only once be among them, hearing the music, knowing the words, making melody in her heart among the worshippers! Marie thought she could live happy for the rest of her life on the remembrance; on the remembrance and the great Hope it would light up.

She did not speak of this longing. She lived, poor little one, with so keen a sense that her life was necessarily a burden on every one around her, partly awakened by Agatha's very unconcealed complainings, and much more by her father's weary looks when he came home at night with his water-jars and his few hard-earned pence and sat down to his scanty meal, that she could never bear by look or word to express a wish for anything that was not absolutely needed or freely offered.

All the more, because she knew so well that the father's love (which was mother's and father's love to her, and so interpreted to her the Our Father) would hold any burden light and any sacrifice possible to gain the motherless child a pleasure or an alleviation of suffering.

So the longing lay deep hidden in her heart, but never came from her lips, until, one autumn when she seemed to grow brighter than usual, and a flush came on her pale face sometimes towards evening, one morning her father, looking fondly at her, said,—

"Child! by Christmas, who knows but we might have thee singing the Christmas hymns inside the Cathedral!"

Then her whole face was lit up as he had never seen it shinebefore, with the streaming out of the long-hidden hope; and drawing his face down to her, she stroked it as she had been wont when a very little child, and kissed him, and said,—

"Oh, father, do you think God will give me the joy of going Inside?"

"Why not, darling?" he answered cheerily; "nothing is too good for Him to give; and what was the Cathedral built for, but for such as thee to sing His praises inside?"

Yet, even as he spoke, there was something in the light of the wistful eyes, and in the touch of the feeble feverish hands, that made his accents falter.

Christmas Eve came. All night the snows fell. In the morning the sun shone, but the air was keen and cold, and little Marie knew there was no going Inside for her that day. But she thanked God for making the outside so beautiful, just as if the angels of the winds had been all night decorating every ledge and angle and quaint familiar bit of carving, and all the fretwork of the stone crown, with alabaster and crystal, or some heavenly blending of glories impossible in earthly material.

As her father left her for the service, he looked fondly back, and said,—

"At Easter, darling; inside at Easter!"

But there was no ring of hope in his tones, cheerful as he tried to make the words; and when he had left her, and the soft dim music floated in broken cadences to her on her solitary little bed, for once the child felt not merely alone but lonely, and a few hot, rare tears fell through her thin fingers as she pressed them on her face.

But she was not alone. And as she lay quietly weeping, sacred words came into her heart, borne on the sacred music, like the scent of violets on the winds in spring.

"Thy will be done on earth."

She said it, she wept it, she wept it to her Father in heaven. And softly, as from the other side of the choir, came back, as from above, the glorious antiphon—

"As it is in heaven."

The sob of submission came back, as it so often does, in a song of praise, from the land where the Amens are transfigured into the Hallelujahs.

"As it is in heaven."

"It will be all Easter there," she thought. "I shall be Inside there at last!"

When her father came back, and looked anxiously at his darling as he entered the door, her smile met him like a song of victory and welcome.

"At Easter, darling! Inside the Cathedral at Easter!"

"Yes, father," she said; "one Easter I shall be Inside."

But the hidden fount of joy, from which the smile came, he did not know. She would not tell him, because to him, at first, she knew it must be a bitter well of tears.

Slowly she faded away.

The Cathedral, her great stone Poem, her Paradise, rose before her, and spoke to her, day and night.

But with new readings.

For she had learned that this whole visible world, with its earth and its heavens, its cities and its cathedrals, this whole transitory life, is but as the little timber Cottage nestling against the everlasting walls of the Temple whose builder and maker is God.

Day by day old Agatha grumbled over her household work, yet day by day more tenderness began to mingle with her complainings.

Day by day little Mark came, attracted irresistibly, he knew not how, by the gentle voice, although the feeble fingers could mend or make for him no more. And unconsciously he unlearned the rough lessons of the streets, and learned a loving reverence from the dying child.

And day by day the father laid the little white loaf, and the milk, and the water-jug by his darling's bed, only showing his anxiety by never missing any day now to bring some little gift of fruit to add to it, were his labour prosperous or not, taking it from his own scanty meal. And little Marie dared not remonstrate or refuse; she knew the memory of those little sacrifices would be so precious.

Beyond this tacit understanding, the two did not confess to each other by word or look that both knew what was at hand.

Only one morning, as he was leaving home, she said to him in a faint voice, but with a bright smile, "Father, I think God has given you beautiful work to do—to carry water to those who thirst. Is it not just what His only Son, our Lord, is doing always for us? He does not stand at the fountain; He brings the water home, does He not? home to every one of us, to our very hearts."

Then she added,—

"Father, you will come back early. I think our Lord is coming to take me to the Fountains of Waters. We shall drink together one morning, father, fresh from the spring. I think I am going Inside at last."

He did not leave her again.

Days of suffering came.

But before Easter she had exchanged the little Cottage for the Cathedral. The child had entered in, and was joining in the songs of the Temple, which is the Father's house, wherein are many mansions.

And Agatha said,—

"We have had a saint with us, a saint of God,—and I did not know it!"

But she grew gentler and kinder. The Cottage where the gentle child had lived and died had grown as sacred as the Cathedral, and a hush of reverence was on it which seemed to make harsh words impossible where she had suffered and entered into rest.

Little Mark said, "My friend is gone." But when he said the Our Father she had taught him, he understood a little what a heaven it must be where all the voices were as gentle as Marie's, and all the hearts as true and kind.

The father said nothing, except to God.

"Our Father which art in heaven," he said, "mine and hers, Thou gavest me a saint of Thine to be an angel in my home. I thank Thee I knew it while she was here with me; not first now that she is Inside, at home with Thee."

But a glory came down on his lowly work from her memory, her words, and the sense he had of her immortal life, until he too should be called to the Living Fountains, to hear once more the dear familiar voice, then long at home in the Hallelujahs, but sure never to forget the tones of welcome it had on earth for him.

"Sic hat ihren Sprung gethan. Ach wollt' Gott dass ich den Sprung gethan hätte. Ich wollt' mich nicht sehr herwieder sehnen."—Martin Luther(Watchwords for the Warfare of Life, p. 304).

Say not they sank to rest,As a wave when its force is spent,As a weary child on its mother's breast,So it seemed; but not thus they went.Not thus it seemed to thoseWho watch by our side alway,And through the calm of the last reposeSee the dawn of the endless day.As a stream the frosts enchain,By the touch of Spring set free,Vocal and strong bounds forth again,Springs forth to meet the sea;As a bird of some sunny land,Caged in the darkness long,Freed by the touch of a friendly hand,Springs into light and song.We are the feeble, and boundIn fetters of night and frost;Winged, but chained to the ground,In fevered slumbers tost.The dying, the dead are we;The living, the living are they;Ever living, from death set free,To praise thee, Lord, this day.Say not they sank to rest,As a wounded bird on the sod;—As a waking child to its mother's breast,They sprang to life and to God!

Say not they sank to rest,As a wave when its force is spent,As a weary child on its mother's breast,So it seemed; but not thus they went.

Not thus it seemed to thoseWho watch by our side alway,And through the calm of the last reposeSee the dawn of the endless day.

As a stream the frosts enchain,By the touch of Spring set free,Vocal and strong bounds forth again,Springs forth to meet the sea;

As a bird of some sunny land,Caged in the darkness long,Freed by the touch of a friendly hand,Springs into light and song.

We are the feeble, and boundIn fetters of night and frost;Winged, but chained to the ground,In fevered slumbers tost.

The dying, the dead are we;The living, the living are they;Ever living, from death set free,To praise thee, Lord, this day.

Say not they sank to rest,As a wounded bird on the sod;—As a waking child to its mother's breast,They sprang to life and to God!

IIn the days when Gothic architecture was still a vital force in the world, ever spontaneously renewing itself in varied forms, nourishing itself with all the life around it, enriching itself with all the changes of the times and seasons, and giving them forth in new and ever-varying forms of growth and beauty, as living things do, the Architect of the Minster lived.

In the days when Gothic architecture was still a vital force in the world, ever spontaneously renewing itself in varied forms, nourishing itself with all the life around it, enriching itself with all the changes of the times and seasons, and giving them forth in new and ever-varying forms of growth and beauty, as living things do, the Architect of the Minster lived.

Day by day, and night by night, the beautiful thought grew in his heart and brain. For, as with the Kingdom of God itself, so more or less with all the works of the Kingdom, is it not "as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how"?

All the beauty of all he saw and heard in the City and in the fields grew into it, the wonder and the joyousness of his childhood, the aspirations of his youth, the power of his manhood,—all the joys and sorrows of his life, its sacred memories, and its more sacred hopes.

When, he went through the streets of the City near at hand, the happy faces of little children, the patient toil of working-men and women, the furrows on the faces of the aged who could toil no more, all were sacred to him, and inspiring; forall said: "You are building a home for us, a home for each, where children's voices shall soar in praise, and the toil-worn find rest in the sacred shadow, and the aged a foretaste of the rest to which they are drawing near. A home for all, which, like the Great Home that abideth, shall unite, not separate."

When he wandered over the undulating reaches of solitary moorland near the city, or through the shades of forest and copse, or listened to the little rills trickling from their gravelly sources through the sedges of the marshy hollows, not a golden arrow of sunshine that shot through the trees, nor a curve of sedge or grass in the quiet places, but sowed some germ of beauty in his brain.

The sweep of the great River round meadow and tower, the rush of the current which linked it with the heart of the land, and the ebb and flow of the tides which bound it to the heart of the changing sea; the day, with its revelations of earth, and its awakening of eyes to see and work; the night, with its revelations of heaven, and its awakening of souls to see and pray; the steadfast arch of starry sky, which was no roof, but an unveiling of the Infinite; the changing gleams of cloud and sunshine, clothing the earth with her robe of light and tears; the intervening brief glows of dawn and sunset, when earth and sky held festival with blaze of colour and burst of choral song;—all these sank deep into his spirit, to live again in the pillars of his forest aisles, and the arch of the aspiring roof, which, like the starry roof of heaven itself, was not to shut the adoring heart in and down, but to lift it up and up for ever.

So the Minster grew—grew as human works do grow, by patient mechanical toil of brain and hand elaborating the original inspiration, by accurate measurement, by rigid faithfulness to law, by lowly learning from God's work, by patient study of man's needs. Curve by curve, line by line, stone onstone, till the vision of the poet's heart grew into a vision of beauty for the refreshment of the hearts of all men.

But the Architect did not live, on earth, to see his thought grow into sight.

On a pallet, in a cell of the monastery, he lay, smitten with fever.

And while the thought of his brain was growing into solid stone on the sunny earth outside his cell, the solid earth itself was passing away, like a dream, from him.

It was Easter Eve. In the deepest dusk before the dawn, in the silence of his cell, a stirring and shadowing of something unholy seemed to darken and disturb the air.

Unloving voices answered each other in hoarse whispers, like a hot, dry wind through the crisp and shrivelled sedges of a dried-up watercourse.

"Ha!" laughed the voices; "he thinks he has been working for immortality. But we know better. A century hence, not a creature will remember his name, any more than they remember or care who planted the first tree in the forests around the city.

"He dreams of the gratitude of men; and centuries after he has mouldered into dust, the generations of the dust-born will be gazing up with stupid wonder at the thing he built, and pouring out their prayers and praises to the stone roof which rises above his dust and theirs, fancying their words pierce through, instead of falling back like the echoes. But we know better.

"Among all the names glorified there, no mention will be made of his. He fancies his name is written in stone, and in men's hearts. It is written in dust, and in men's breath. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is Vanity.'"

A faint ray of gray light crept in through the window of the cell, and the mocking voices died away among the chill morning winds.

But the Architect lay on his bed in a rapture of gratitude and content.

"Father," he said in his heart, "can this be true? Shall this thing for which I have thought and toiled indeed grow up into a holy place, wherein men shall adore Thee for centuries after I am gone—even Thee? Shall this offering of mine be indeed so accepted on Thine altar? First me, and then it?—Wilt Thou indeed accept both altogether thus? Wilt Thou indeed let me be altogether hidden in this thing I have thought, in it and in Thee?"

Then from all the churches of the city rang forth the Easter bells.

And through the victorious peal of the Resurrection music, through the slow dawning of the newly-risen light, through the chirping and carolling of the waking birds, there came to the patient sufferer voices, and white visions of glory—white so as no fuller on earth can white them.

And the voices spoke thus into his heart:—

"Thine offering is altogether accepted. Thou and it. Thy work shall live on earth, faithfully fulfilled according to the thought of thine heart. Thy name shall be written in Heaven, in the Temple not made with hands.

"Thy work shall live where thou no longer art, to help men for ages, to be bread to the eater and seed to the sower of the generations to come. Thy name shall live where thou shalt be; among the great multitude which no man can number, yet each one of which is graven on One divine and human Heart.

"For ages to come, whilst thou art blessed and at rest, men and women, still toiling and struggling on this earth, and children, shall praise God in this beautiful place of thy building, with such praise as toiling, sinning, repenting, human creatures can give.

"The voice of the great River shall be heard no more besideit, for the ebb and flow of the great tide of human life which shall surge round it on every side.

"Day after day the sunbeams, ever new, shall come and go across its pillars, like a harp touched by an invisible hand, or be caught in its delicate traceries and entrapped down into the shadows.

"Easter after Easter, the Resurrection hymns of victory, ever new, shall echo from its vaulted roofs.

"Generation after generation shall worship there, and pass away, and rest beneath its shade.

"But thy name shall not be written there.

"Not there, among the dying and the sinning. Above; among the living and the holy. In the Book of Life. On the heart of the Holiest. For ever and for ever. Art thou content?"

Softly the light and music died away into heaven.

And the sufferer sighed.

"Content! Are the archangels content before the throne? Father, Redeemer, hast Thou indeed accepted my work thus? My offering and me—even me?"

And softly the humble and blessed spirit died away into the eternal light, into the hands of God, and was satisfied.

WWe are entering the Beautiful Temple of God, said the children, a brother and a sister, as they passed reverently under the arched doorway for the first time.

We are entering the Beautiful Temple of God, said the children, a brother and a sister, as they passed reverently under the arched doorway for the first time.

But the roof was low, and the light faint. A feeling of chill and depression crept over them.

The weight of the vaulted stone roof seemed to crush the spirit. Through the small, narrow windows, with their diamond panes, the sunbeams crept in thin silver threads, and soon seemed to grow dim in the damps that came up from below, or to lose their way among the massive pillars of the low arched aisles.

"Can this be the Cathedral?" whispered the brother to the sister; "the glorious House of God our fathers told us of, and we have dreamt of?"

"They said it was the Cathedral," said the sister; "therefore it must have glories. We may not doubt the Builder, or Him to whom it is built. Let us rather doubt ourselves. Our eyes will grow used to the light, and then we shall learn its beauty. Our mother used to say the eyes of little children had to get used to the light before they could understand this world."

"Used to thedarkness!" murmured the boy.

At that moment a patient sunbeam made its way in through one of the larger windows and lit up patches of the pillars, falling at last in a golden glory on a brazen cross with an inscription round it, inlaid in the slab at the base of one of the pillars.

The children knelt down to read the letters. They were a tender record of the sorrow of parents for the loss of a child.

And as they examined further they found that every stone beneath their feet bore some similar memorial words.

"Can we be right?" said the boy with a shudder. "I thought we were coming to a house of worship. We seem to have come into a house of graves."

They sat down sad and perplexed on the base of one of the pillars.

As they sat there silent, hand in hand, the sound of soft music, happy, and of an overpowering sweetness, came to them they could not tell whence, faint, and yet not, it seemed, far off, more as if there were some barrier between them and it. It seemed around, above, everywhere; yet the ear could fix on no point to trace it to that they might follow it.

Soon it ceased. But then the strains were taken up by voices nearer at hand. This second music had not the delicious perfectness of the first. Individual voices could be distinctly heard, not blended into a perfect whole; and some of these were harsh, some were shrill, some tremulous and broken as if with tears, some too low with fear, some too high as if from eagerness to be heard; yet the tones were those of reverent worship, and something of the joy of the first music broke through them often, like the sunbeams through the dim, chill air.

"We will go near and try to join," said the children. As they went towards the sound they saw some lamps which had hitherto been hidden from them by the pillars. These lit up the forms of a kneeling company of worshippers.

The children came near, and knelt in adoration beside them. In the worship their hearts took wing and rose into the light, and for a time they forgot the chill and the gloom.

Yet, even as they knelt, they saw that the little company was not abiding. There was a continual movement and change in it. The voices changed. The sweetest and best trained were continually breaking off, in obedience to some summons the children could not hear; and others who, like themselves, had all their music to learn, were coming in their place.

An awe and trembling came again over the children; and the brother whispered,—

"Can we be right? Can this be the Cathedral? No one seems to stay! Whither can they go?"

And the sister answered in a soft whisper,—

"We will wait to see. Can they be going to theother music?"

Scarcely had the words died from her lips when a maiden who had been kneeling close beside them, from whose liquid voice and clear reverent utterance the children had been learning the words of the song, and from whose pale radiant face they had been drinking in its joyful meaning, suddenly ceased her singing, and looking up for a moment with an earnest listening gaze, she seemed to hear some welcome irresistible call, for she said,—

"For me? Can it be indeed forme?" And softly touching the children's forehead with a touch that seemed to them a blessing, she murmured, "You will be called too, by-and-by." Then noiselessly she rose and glided away through the shadow of the arches towards the east, and up a flight of steps the children had not observed before.

They followed her with eager, anxious gaze, and for a moment, ere she glided out of sight, there was the streaming of a flood of golden sunshine down the gloom, from an open door, and once more the sound of that perfect music they had heard at first.

At that moment there was a pause in the service, and a silver-haired old man came to the children and bid them welcome.

"You look sad and bewildered, my children," he said.

"Oh, father! tell us what it means," they whispered. "Can we be in the right place? We thought we were coming to a place of light and of heavenly singing, full of rejoicing worshippers who delighted to stay there. But this seems a place of gloom and of graves. Here the worshippers are a little broken band, and even these do not stay. All is changing and imperfect. What does it mean?"

The old man smiled. "Where do you think you are?" he said.

"In the Cathedral," they answered. "Are we not in the Cathedral?"

"You are, and you are not!" he said. "This is part of the Cathedral. But it is only the Crypt. The Church cemetery and the Cathedral school. The choir children are trained here. But the true Cathedral is above; and, of necessity, when the choristers are trained, they are called up to join the services there."

When the children heard this they understood it all.

Thankfully they went to learn their part in the Psalm with the choir children.

And knowing the Crypt to be only a crypt, its gloom was wonderfully brightened to them. Its stray sunbeams grew clear and golden, now that they were understood to be only earnests of the golden day above. Its broken hymns grew tenfold sweeter, now that they were felt to be but the learning of the anthems to be sung above.

Precious was every hard lesson of the singing, precious every thin silver thread of the light, for they were the foretaste or the preparation of the moment when the door of the true Temple should open, and the shadows flee away.

Moans of sharpest agony,Faintly moaning ceaselessly,"Earth is all one grave to me!"Greenest fields but churchyard turf,Sunniest seas but deadly surf;Purest skies one vaulted tomb,Death in all homes most at home.Moans of sharpest agony!Back from far they came to me,Echoed from the crystal sea,As a chant of victory;From the sea's translucent vergeBack in triumph pealed the dirge:—"Earth is all one grave to thee?What besides could earth now be,Since He died upon the tree,Since He died on earth for thee?Since beneath it He lay, dim,Cold and still each tortured limb,Buried are His own with Him,Yet the dirge is all a hymn.Wouldst thou take the crypt's chill damps,And its few sepulchral lamps,For His temple spaces high,For His depths of starry sky?Wouldest thou? Not so would theyWho one moment breathe His day,Who for one brief moment's spaceHave the vision of His face.Earth has light for earth's great strife,—Where He liveth, there is Life."Earth is all one grave to thee?Yet lift up thine eyes and see!For the stone is rolled away,And He standeth there to-day;Patiently by thee will stayTill thy heart 'Rabboni' say!(He will not forget the clay,Thine, nor theirs, by night or day.)That 'Rabboni!' faint through fears,Sobbed in agony of tears,—That alone thy heart can clearThose far-off Amens to hear,That alone can tune thy heartIn those songs to take her part."Then thy cry of agony:'Earth is all one grave to me,'Echoing shall come back to theeIn a chant of victory,Echoed from the crystal sea,From the living victors free,Ransomed everlastingly."

Moans of sharpest agony!Back from far they came to me,Echoed from the crystal sea,As a chant of victory;From the sea's translucent vergeBack in triumph pealed the dirge:—"Earth is all one grave to thee?What besides could earth now be,Since He died upon the tree,Since He died on earth for thee?Since beneath it He lay, dim,Cold and still each tortured limb,Buried are His own with Him,Yet the dirge is all a hymn.Wouldst thou take the crypt's chill damps,And its few sepulchral lamps,For His temple spaces high,For His depths of starry sky?Wouldest thou? Not so would theyWho one moment breathe His day,Who for one brief moment's spaceHave the vision of His face.Earth has light for earth's great strife,—Where He liveth, there is Life.

"Earth is all one grave to thee?Yet lift up thine eyes and see!For the stone is rolled away,And He standeth there to-day;Patiently by thee will stayTill thy heart 'Rabboni' say!(He will not forget the clay,Thine, nor theirs, by night or day.)That 'Rabboni!' faint through fears,Sobbed in agony of tears,—That alone thy heart can clearThose far-off Amens to hear,That alone can tune thy heartIn those songs to take her part.

"Then thy cry of agony:'Earth is all one grave to me,'Echoing shall come back to theeIn a chant of victory,Echoed from the crystal sea,From the living victors free,Ransomed everlastingly."

FOOTNOTES:[2]Partly suggested by a passage in Longfellow's "Hyperion."

[2]Partly suggested by a passage in Longfellow's "Hyperion."

"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

TThe great torrent of the First Crusade had been sweeping for weeks through the valley of the Danube. Along that "highway of nations" tribe after tribe had poured westward, leaving its deposit in castle and village, on dominant height and in sheltered hollow. And now the rush of men swept back eastward: no slowly advancing tide of emigration, but a wild torrent of enthusiasm, which would leave behind it nothing but graves and the bones of unburied thousands. And yet in that death were seeds of life.

The great torrent of the First Crusade had been sweeping for weeks through the valley of the Danube. Along that "highway of nations" tribe after tribe had poured westward, leaving its deposit in castle and village, on dominant height and in sheltered hollow. And now the rush of men swept back eastward: no slowly advancing tide of emigration, but a wild torrent of enthusiasm, which would leave behind it nothing but graves and the bones of unburied thousands. And yet in that death were seeds of life.

Week after week the Lady of the Tannenburg had seen from the terrace of her castle the bands of peasants pass on their way,—men and women and little children, with the red-cross on the shoulder,—to the Tomb of Christ, to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel. Multitudes almost entirely composed of the poor: no plumed helmets or richly caparisoned war-horses. The red-cross, of common stuff, was fastened on the poor garments of the peasants. The only chariots were the rough cart drawn by oxen taken from the plough, carrying the mothers and the little ones, who were too feeble to walk.

Of geography they knew little more than the children, who cried out as each town came in sight, "Is that Jerusalem?"The patient oxen would suffice to carry them and theirs, they thought, to the Master's Grave!

The rich had loans to effect, lands to sell, affairs to arrange, stewards and agents to appoint, before they could commence the perilous journey with a fitting escort. Moreover, to them the Holy Land contained something more than the Sepulchre of Christ. It contained rich Moslem cities to be plundered, fertile lands to be possessed, fair provinces to be reigned over. To the poor it contained only the Master's Grave. And He who leadeth the blind by a way that they know not, led the people then as now.

The rich, for the most part, came back impoverished. The poor, for the most part, never came back at all: but from their graves sprang the first-fruits of freedom for Europe. The religious enthusiasm for which they died had begun the emancipation of their class. From chattels, attached to the soil like its crops and its stones, they had become men. The Master's Grave was theirs to die for, as much as it was their lords'; the Master's will was theirs to live for, as much as for the noblest.

Day by day the Lady of the Tannenburg had watched the pilgrim-bands passing slowly in irregular groups through the broad valley beneath her. Night by night she had seen the camp-fires gleaming through the pine-woods, and heard the "Dieu le veut" echo from crag to crag. Often she had sent her only child, young Rudolf, with a band of retainers, bearing bread and meat from her stores, fruit from her orchards, and wine from her vineyards, to be distributed among the pilgrims. And night by night, as the hosts passed by, they knew the Lady's castle by the one steadfast light from one arched window, which never failed to shed its faint glow over the castle wall.

It was well known among them that scarcely a year before, her husband, Sir Rudolf of the Tannenburg, had died. It was said that he had been on the eve of joining the Crusade; andmany a vow was made to the young Rudolf that his father's name should be faithfully remembered at the Holy Sepulchre. The boy knew that the tears which came into his mother's eyes when he told her of those vows were tears that heal. But at last one evening, as he rose from his prayer at her knee, he looked up into her face, while a sudden light broke over his, and said,—

"Mother, are not all the people going to the same Holy Grave?"

"The same? Surely, my son," she said, bowing her head reverently. "The Grave of Christ, our Lord."

"We have our own holy grave, mother!" he replied—"thou and I. But have we no share in this Grave of Christ?"

"Surely; their Lord is ours," she said; "and His Holy Sepulchre is ours, in common with all Christendom."

"Then, mother! mother!" he exclaimed, gazing full into her eyes, "let us also go to the Grave, to weep there, with all His Christendom. Let us do what my father meant to do. Who will remember his name as we would there?"

For a few moments she made no reply. The casement stood open, although it was winter, and through the stillness of the frosty air echoed once more the solemn, "Dieu le veut."

"Out of the mouth of the babes who are Thine, out of the mouth of Thy poor, O Christ, Thou speakest. I listen—I obey. God wills it.—My boy," she said quietly, pressing him to her heart, "God has surely spoken by thee. My heart speaks by thee. We will go."

She sat beside the child till he slept, till the long lashes shaded the flushed cheek, and the half-open lips and the small clenched hand seemed to tell of some boyish dream of conflict with the infidel.

Kneeling beside her sleeping child, she made her first vow in the presence of all that made life living to her.

And then she went down to keep solitary vigil in the castle-chapel;to kindle those sepulchral lamps which were seen far across the valley, which she never suffered any hands but her own to trim or feed.

Her own room was bare and austere as any monastic cell. All her precious things were lavished on the mortuary chapel, which was her treasure-chamber, the resting-place she longed to share, the threshold of the Father's house. On the steps of that memorial altar, which was a tomb, and there only in the world, she felt at home.

The light of the flickering lamps, contending with the steadfast, silent moonbeams, wrought strange magical contrasts of glow and gloom on silver shrine, and polished marble pavement, and jewelled paten, and chalice, and gold-embroidered drapery; and beyond, on the rich Gothic sculpture, here and there relieving the shadows of the arched aisle.

And kneeling there once more, she renewed the vow, in the presence of what made life death to her, and death as the threshold of life.

"Dieu le veut," she said, pressing her forehead on the cold marble. "O Christ, I take the cross on me, for me and for him. Accept it for both, and shelter us both with Thine."

It was early spring.

Forth through the green Danube valley they went,—the mother and her son, Snorro the old castellan, and Gunhilda the nurse, with other faithful old servants of the house.

At night they slept under a tent, or in any lowly hut they could find.

In the morning they awoke with no stately walls between them and Nature.

To the boy, the journey amongst the forests and by the streams was one perpetual holiday.

And on the mother also soft dews of healing began to fall, from sunsets and sunrises, and the opening of leaves, and thesongs of birds, and the life of all the humble happy creatures.

But most of all from this, that she had stepped down from the cold height of her solitary sorrow, and went forth as one bearing the common burden of humanity.

"We are going to the Holy Grave that belongs to us all!" she said to herself. "We go with Thy poor, Thou who wast poor Thyself! We go to Thy sepulchre, mortal, mourning human creatures, for Thou also wast mortal once. Thou alsohast died and hast been buried!"

Thus, in stooping lowly, nearer her fellow-men, she grew nearer Him who stooped lowest of all.

"The whole earth is a sepulchre," she said; "for it was Thine! Not our beloved only; Thou also hast lain in the grave! When we and our beloved lie down in ours, it will be but where Thou hast lain before."

Meanwhile, all the time the earth was bearing her lowly witness to the resurrection in opening buds and nestling birds, and all the renewal of the spring. Yet the Lady thought only, "My love is dead. My Lord has died."

But one twilight, as they walked together in the sombre shadows of a pine-forest, the boy said to her,—

"Mother, I heard strange talk last night by the camp-fires. Old Snorro was talking to Gunhilda, and he said he could not make out all this wandering to the Sepulchre in the Morning Land. His mother, he said, used to tell him how, when they lived far away by the Northern Seas, the young men and maidens mourned for the death of Balder the Good and Beautiful, the sun-god, until one day a stranger priest came, with the Cross, from the south, and told them to mourn no longer for the slain god, for he brought them tidings of One good, and strong, and beautiful, the Light of all the worlds, who had wrestled with death and hadnotbeen overcome, but had broken through the grave and risen in immortal life to give life to men.If indeed He lived, Snorro said, why did all the people run away from the places He set them in, to His grave, where He was not, instead of praying to Him, and trying to please Him in the heaven where He is? And Gunhilda said Snorro must not talk of things he did not understand; that it was a good and holy work to wrest the Holy Grave from the infidel; the priest said so, and the Pope said so; and how should he know who had only been a Christian at all for two generations? Old Snorro did not seem satisfied. He said he only wanted to understand. And she said he ought not to want to understand; that was like Eve, and like the devil, and was the beginning of all wickedness. And so they were whispering on when I fell asleep.

"Mother, what did old Snorro mean?"

She took his hand, and they walked on some little time in silence.

"Was old Snorro quite wrong, mother?" the boy said at length.

"Not quite, my son," she said. "I think not altogether wrong. Our Lord is surely living. Nevertheless, it is surely right that we should reverence the Holy Grave, and seek to wrest it from the unbeliever."

But that night she had a strange dream. She thought the ancient spirits, with legends of whom her Northern land was full, were all awake, careering through the forest like winds, flickering like the flames of the dying camp-fires, flitting to and fro like shadows; water-spirits from the forest-pools, dwarfs from the mountains, gnomes from under the hills. And some were laughing, some were sighing; but all kept saying to each other,—

"It is the old funeral procession we remember so long ago; it is the old, old wail. The children of men are mourning once more their Good and their Beautiful slain, and buried, and lost. Once more they find their best and dearest in a grave. For alittle while we thought the death-wail was interrupted, swallowed up in the New Song of Life and Victory. But it has come back. Balder the Beautiful, the Light of heaven, is slain. This new Light of Life, this new Hope of the children of men, is also slain. It is the old funeral train, and the old death-wail. We—the earth-born, spirits of the waters and the forests and the hills—live on, and send our echoes on from age to age. They—the heaven-born—die, and mourn, and pay vain worship to their dead. Once more the religion of the children of men is a pilgrimage to a grave."

All that day the wondering doubt of old Snorro the Norseman, and the moans and whispers of that strange dream, sent wild, bewildering echoes through the Lady's heart.

And that evening it chanced that the encampment lay amidst the ruins of some deserted dwellings on the outskirts of a walled city.

The Lady could not sleep; and as she lay awake in the silence, broken only now and then by the howling of wolves from the forest, and the baying of watch-dogs from the city, every now and then a low faint moaning fell on her ear, as if from a little distance.

At first she thought it was but some of those strange moanings which the winds make at night among the woods. She listened more intently, until she became sure that faint articulate sounds mingled with the moans, which she knew could only come from a human voice.

Softly she arose, and glided to where the sound seemed to be.

And there, in the angle of one of the charred and shattered walls, she found a young maiden stretched helplessly on a heap of dry leaves.

At the gentle tones of the Lady's voice, the maiden's eyes languidly opened.

After a time she consented to take a little food and wine from the Lady's hands: and then slowly she told how she wasof the hated and hunted Hebrew race, and had lived with her people in this the Jewish Quarter, outside the city walls, until, two nights ago, a wild band of Crusaders had fallen on them at midnight, had set fire to their dwellings, and killed all who could not flee, calling them Infidels and Enemies of Christ; while she herself, long laid on a sick-bed, unable to move, had been strangely overlooked, and left there to die alone.

Many days the Lady sat beside her, and tenderly soothed and served her, refusing to abandon this destitute sufferer, even to pursue the way of the Holy Cross.

"For," she said, "I would not have Him say to me in that day, 'I was sick and a stranger, and ye visited Me not.'"

Thus the company of Crusaders went on their way; and the Lady and her son, with their retainers, were left by themselves among the ruined dwellings between the city and the forest.

At first the sick girl seemed to revive with the tender care lavished on her; and her heart opened freely to the motherly heart that had thus taken her to itself.

"It is very strange," she would say; "what does it all mean? He whom you worship was one of our people. A good man of your people told me once He loved our race; and forgave even those who were most cruel to Him; and wept over our sorrows, which He foresaw; and forbade any to think He did not love us. Such a lovely portrait the good man drew of your Christ, I thought if I had lived on earth when He did, I must have been a Christian. But His Christians hate our race, and never forgive, and hunt us to death."

"Not all," the Lady said tenderly. "It is He who bade me minister to you."

"If you are like Him, and all Christians were like you," the maiden said, "I might be a Christian even now. But all is so strange!" she went on. "Our people say your Christ is dead, and was buried long ago. But your Book says He rose again, and lives evermore. Yet all His Christians seem to think Hehas left nothing so precious behind, belonging to Him, as His grave. But if indeed He lay in it only those three days, what was it more than a sick-bed, from which one rises to new health and strength? It is strange. If He lives, has He left you nothing more precious than a grave?"

"Surely He lives!" the Lady said; "and I think He has left us much more precious and dearer to Him than His grave. Poor child," she said, her whole face radiant with the thought, "I thinkyouare dearer, dearer to Him than His Holy Sepulchre. For you may be His living shrine. He said once in a parable, 'In that ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto Me.'"

A heavenly light shone from the dark Oriental eyes of the dying girl.

"Did He say so?" she said. "Then your Christ was indeed different from those who call themselves by His name."

And soon afterwards she resumed,—

"Lady, it may be that I shall see Him soon—see your Christ. It may be I shall find He is our Christ. It may be I shall find He was born my Saviour also, and that He will receive even me among His brethren. It may be He will be pleased with what you have done for me."

And soon afterwards the large wistful eyes grew languid, and were closed in death.

The morning broke over the pine-tops, and over the towers of the city, and on the Lady watching beside her sleeping boy, and on the Jewish maiden sleeping the sleep of death.

And with the morning broke peals of bells from every tower in the city, and every lonely chapel scattered through the far-off glades of the forest.

Easter Bells.

The Passion Week had come and passed, unheeded, whilst the Lady sat and watched through her agony with the dying girl.

And now the Easter burst on her with a glad surprise, as if it had been the first; as if the tidings of Resurrection had now first burst on her from heaven.

The Lord has risen indeed.

It was true. His Sepulchre was empty. But heaven and earth were full of Him, and of His glory.

"Mother," said her boy, when they rose from their morning prayer together, "what do all these joy-bells mean? Is it a king's marriage, or a great victory? Can it be that they have rescued the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel at last?"

"They are indeed ringing for a Great Victory," she replied; "the greatest ever won. It is Easter Day, my son. This day our Lord left His grave for ever, and rose victorious over death, and opened the gate of everlasting life to all believers."

And still the bells pealed joyfully on, from the villages on the plains and hill-sides, from the rocky castled heights, from the depths of the forest—

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