d children who were at heart the
same as ourselves. However, the world was then in great darkness and
ignorance: there were no books for children, nor picture's such as you
have here to show you what is in other countries; nor were there any
schools except for churchmen. The good Heavenly Father, who is always
teaching men, doth it by degrees; and for a long time it was only the
priests and learned clerks who knew any thing of what God had been doing
with the world. This knowledge remained chiefly in their heads; but when
the help of strong arms against unbelievers was needed, the time came in
which warriors and people also were partly let into the secret. The heart
of all Christendom was stirred with the thought that pilgrims were denied
access to the place where such great matters had been transacted, and that
the holy ground of our Saviour's burial was in the keeping of infidels, as
if once more the stone which had been rolled away was put back, and Christ
were buried again. Warriors and workmen, having now a part, as it were, in
the Church, set out in multitudes to rescue Jerusalem. It was then, too,
that the Lord of Groenstetten left his castle, seeking to expiate many a
crime he had committed by travelling so many leagues, and striking so many
blows. All this was, no doubt, calculated to teach those who went, and
those to whom they afterwards returned, not to place their heaven on
earth, nor to make up for concerns of the soul by bodily things; when they
found, _there_ also, enemies of flesh and blood, and after all the
sepulchre empty. Long after this, when the enthusiasm of men about the
Holy Land was beginning to fail, and they were looking for the road to
Heaven in other ways, the lingering spirit which had once led them forth,
seemed to descend in a simpler and purer way into the hearts of children.
You may be sure that to Them at home, where all lessons and thoughts were
learnt out of the shape of visible things, the sight of those brilliant
pageants ever passing towards the East--the tales of pilgrims who came
from thence--had been to them as a longing dream. The natural feeling of
the young is like that of a heaven near to them--of a holy delight to be
at once gained, and without conception of the long, difficult way between,
or even of the real entrance to it. The firmament which lies overhead
appears to descend upon the very earth at a distance, and all visions and
radiant things to issue from an everlastin