about our Lord; for I learned it all from his lips. The Book itself was a hidden treasure I did not see for years afterwards. And wonderful was the hope that story gave to me. It quietly adjusted everything, pieced the broken world, and our little broken lives-gave meaning to the inexplicable; and yet not by trying to explain things, but simply by bringing in the Light. It made me even learn to give thanks for my poor misshapen body. It was a link with the misshapen, twisted world below; and it was a link with the healing Lord, who lived so much among the sick. In that carpenter's cottage two things were set open to me, which have made the joy and the work of all my life: the great world of the poor, of the people; and the life of the Master. I escaped out of the prison of the rich, the luxurious, the few. I learned to love the wide world of the toiling, the poor, who earn daily bread by daily work. And there, walking with them along the dusty highways, sailing with them in their fishing-boats, asking a drink of water from one of them at the village well, toiling beside them at the carpenter's bench, resting with them on the grass, clothed like them, eating of their common food, paying tax and tribute among them; not living in the castle and visiting them thence, but living in the fisherman's cottage, and letting the rich and great, if also weary and heavy-laden, come to Him -deeper, lower than that, dying the death of a bondman, I found my Lord. I found Him in the field, by the sea-shore, by the poor sick-bed; and wherever He came I found Him healing the sick, blessing the children, forgiving (which is the highest healing), bringing patience and hope, and joy unspeakable, and light and love. Then, going back to the castle, I found Him there also. Going back to our mother's crucifix, I found-ah! I found that the head so patiently bowed there was the face I knew best, and loved best in all the world. And He, not dead, but living. Not a soft silvery feather in a sea-gull's breast, not a curve or a fold in a pinion or a shell but His living touch was there. Not a sick child or a worn-out labourer in the fields but through the parched or lisping lips murmured His, “Me!—unto_Me!" Jesus and the poor. Ah, what a world to live—to die for! What a life to live with, to live in, to live by! And all the while, though we knew it not, He was training in the quiet valley by the river Meuse, in a peasant's cottage, helping her father in the fields and her mother by the hearth, a child, a little peasant maiden, obeying the voice of her parents, and with heart open to hear the voice of her King, Joan the Maid, "Daughter of God," deliverer of France from ruin and England from crime, renewing the world, as of old, from the lowly places, whither go the roots and whence spring the wells of life. III.-PETER THE WRIGHT'S STORY. WHEN first she came to us-the child, the maid, the little Dame Elaine,-came to my Margery's cottage in her dainty raiment, her fine linen and purple, her golden net around her brown hair, her mother's jewels clasping her white throatI hated the sight of her. She seemed to me, she and hers, like evil, fair, fat ghouls that had lived on the blood of our lost little ones. I was sullen and sour to her in my heart, however Margery might constrain me to be courteous. We had suffered so much from her like, since the days when, after the rising under Wat Tyler, the people had trusted themselves like loyal brothers, like guileless children, to the royal word of the boy-king, Richard, and had then by him. and his forty thousand been hung like snared vermin, or tortured like hunted-down beasts of prey. My father was a yeoman with his own good freehold then, hardly earned and thriftily kept. But the men of law working for the barons disputed his title, and robbed us of our land, and then, being landless, brought us under the Statute of Labourers, and forbade us to leave the land they had robbed us of, constraining us to till it for the lord, or to live on what he chose to give. They dragged us down into bondage again, and broke my father's heart. There was no way left out of our misery but through the Church; and my father, who had learned much of Wycliffe and his poor priests, seeing I loved learning, strove to get me made a clerk. He hoped I would also have been a priest, either "poor" to teach the poor, which he thought "divine," or rising on the ladder of the priesthood as countless before had done, to be a parson, an abbot, or even a bishop, remembering in the palace the heart of the poor, and so binding poor to rich. But, woe to us! the Church herself had grown worldly, the abbots were landowners as proud as the barons, the bishops were courtiers of England or Rome, the friars were pardon-sellers and plunderers of the poor, and none wanted landless men. And, moreover, the lords did their utmost to shut out the old way to freedom from us; they sought to make a law that no son of a bondman or bondwoman should be suffered to take orders in the Church, lest by that means they might be advanced in the world. Thus, the end of my learning and reading was only that I could read. And so, while my feet were as fettered as ever, my mind was set free to think, and my eyes were opened to see; which only made the bonds chafe harder. We had but two books (I never learned Latin), two English books, Piers Plowman and Wycliffe's Bible. These we kept carefully hidden in the straw of a mattress, and on winter nights, when labour was done, by the light of a candle, I used to read. Both of the books seemed to deepen the gloom. Piers the Plowman sang dolefully how money, meed, and greed ruled all, only checked by hunger, which assailed both rich and poor. For the ravages of the Black Death were scarcely over when he wrote, when half the people in our parts died within a few months, and the fields were left untilled, and half of many a stricken flock lay dead, with no priest to bury them, and the other half strayed, helpless and hopeless, with no shepherd to care for them; and the cattle wandered through the unreaped corn, with none to hinder or to herd them. That book was a doleful picture of a doleful world. But the other Book, as all may know, dark as its pictures of the world are, being true, is nevertheless a book of hope and a gospel. Yet to me in those days it brought no hope. I thought of it as the book forbidden by the worldly priests, the Lollard book, for which men had been content to be burnt, which had taught the sheep to know and to hate the hireling shepherds, which had inspired the generation of my father to hope in a just Christ, King of rich and poor, and to rise for their divine and human rights, cost what it might. the Book said to me (as I deemed). All was wrong; popes, and kings, and barons, and priests, and friars. War was wicked, and riches were a curse, and Law only forged chains to fix on the wrongs; and the burden of all the wrongs rolled ever down and down upon us, the peasants. The lord of our village was a hard man; he went to the wars in France, and he must have horses, and caparisons, and arms, and men-at-arms, and archers to go with him will they, nill they. And they went; and there was some cruel solace in the thought that our good bowmen made the noblest blood of France flow like rivers. But my lot was to stay at home, and see hunger lay siege to my own little homestead, and strive to keep him off and fail, and see my children pale, and pine, and die, until at last some scattered sufferers among us took courage, and rose against the lords. But, though despair may give courage, it gives scant wisdom; the leaders and teachers, the few nobles and priests, who had led us once, were soon gone, on the gibbet, the scaffold, or stake. And we had to flee, and Margery and I came to the wild Western sea, and there her last babe was born and died, and the peasant's sorrow went, as was wont, to supply the lady's lack. Margery became foster-mother to the boy Percival, and the boy lived and flourished, and we were left bereaved and destitute, to toil at the old toil for the masters, loathsomely lightened now of the maintenance of our beloved. And Margery, being but a mother, and finding it more needful to love than even to live, grew to love the mother and the children. But I sate apart, a foreigner among the Western men, bitter in heart and hopeless, until Elaine the maiden came and crept into my heart. It was the dwarfed and suffering body, it was the wistful look of pain and helplessness in the child's eyes that began to melt the ice. And then her tears for our sorrows. wrongs grew sweetened into sorrows. Margery would never let me talk bitter And there I stood amidst the ruins of our talk to the child, which at first made me father's rights and hopes, old wrongs riveted sullen and silent, and then constrained me down on our necks, as it seemed, for ever, to tell her what I knew, leaving the bitterwith fresh chains. And there was a bitterness out; and in telling her the story, the comfort in seeing that the Book condemned the robbery of the poor, and said that their blood cried out unto God from the ground. The blood of the multitudes which had cried out so long, and no answer had come, save that old promise that there would come a day of Doom! Not a little bit here and there was wrong, For had not she also sorrows, the innocent babe? sorrows that looked like wrongs, but which, if wrongs, could be traced to no hand but Almighty God's; which made a break in the cry of revolt and bitter complaining. And then she wrung out of me, I scarce know how, the story of the Gospels. And as I told it to the child, and saw her dear face | Adam friends; me who had grown to hate glow and shine at the words and works of the priests and the friars like poison-not Christ, the form of the Son of man seemed without reason; for I found that he and I, to change to me, and instead of the avenging and others, perchance many of his order, had judge scourging the traffickers from the been all the time soldiers in one army, though Temple, and thundering woe after woe on often fighting in the dark against each other. the rich (though that also is true), I saw the Our first acquaintance came about on this Healer touching the outcast leper none would wise. touch, letting the sinner no righteous man would look at touch Him, the young man in peasant's clothes (He was but thirty) take the little children in His arms; the innocent sufferer answering to the blows which knocked the nails into the torn hands with "Father, forgive them." Alas, alas! I saw that poor and rich alike had forsaken Him, and had loved Him; that the rich man had stooped to bury the poor mangled body; that He was so poor that the poorest were rich compared with Him, and so rich that the richest had to come as beggars to Him: that from the throne to the dungeon every corner of this earth was sacred with his presence, for He was not conquered but the conqueror, not dead but living, and loving all-all, rich and poor, noble and villain, bound and free. And so, meaning and hope came into all things slowly, very slowly. For I began to see that to grow more like this Son of God, by ever so little steps-patient, loving, obedient—was joy, and conquest, and wealth, and royalty; and that this was a kind of shaping that came not as a child's snow image, by easy moulding of soft hands, but as with iron and gold, by fiery fusing and much hammering. Wherefore, it was no wonder that so much of the world should be more like a forge than a hall of feasting. Also, the child led me back again, I scarce know how, to religion, which I had grown to hate as the hollowest of all the hollownesses of the false and hollow world; the cruelest deception, because breaking the highest promise. To her it was not hollow. To her, the story of the one True Life linked itself to the crucifix, to her mother's lessons of Creed and Paternoster, and Sacrament and Altar. She made me say the Our Father again morning and night as when I was a child, taking it for granted I had never left it out. And she made me come to Mass again with her on Sunday, if only to hear the praises of the Agnus Dei, who takes away the sins of the world—the Lamb of God of whom my Book spoke, by the old river, and on the throne of God. And more, she made me and old Father Our little lady expected me to receive the Sacrament at Easter. It was many years since I had. There had been much angry discussion amongst us as to how the body and blood of the Lord could or did nourish, or whether heavenly treasures could come unsullied through corrupt human hands; whether the wicked unabsolved priest could absolve; whether unholy hands could consecrate. But of all this I could not speak to the child. I remember once stammering an excuse that I did not like to do what I did not understand. But the dark wistful eyes looked wonderingly into mine as she said "It is not you who have to do it, is it? I thought God did it all, and gave it all. If He understands and knows how, is not that enough? I thought we had only to believe and receive?" And the child's words went deep,—and I had to go, as she said. Should I starve myself from bread, because wise men could not agree how the seed grew into the ear, or because the miller was not honest ? Accordingly I went to Father Adam to receive absolution. I suppose my manner was proud and sullen enough, for the old man said— Have you absolved me?" I thought he was mocking, and answered angrily,— "Little enough do the parsons and friars care what the flock has to say of them." "But I am one who do care," he replied quite seriously and gently. "I mean what I say. You have been at mass to-day. Have you absolved me?" And then he read to me out of his book, and showed to me how every day, before the people confess to the priest, the priest confesses to the people and says, "I confess to you, my brothers, that I have sinned much by thought, word, and deed; by my fault, by my fault, by my very great fault; and I beseech you, my brethren, to pray for me to the Lord our God.” "And you," said Father Adam, "by the mouth of the child or man who answers, say, 'May the Almighty God have mercy on you, and, having for given your sins, lead you to everlasting life.' Every day I have been saying this to you, and you to me." "It is a pity it was in Latin," I said. "Perhaps it is," he replied. "The words were written hundreds of years before there was anything but Latin to say it in. But henceforth say it in English, brother, for me. You will know when I ask you, by my striking my hand on my breast." There could be no suspicion that he was jesting now; the dry, quiet voice had broken down, tears were running over were running over the old withered face. "It is a pity it is all in Latin," I murmured. "How was I to know?" "Forgive us, brother, forgive me," he said, "let us all forgive each other, priest and layman, prince and peasant. There is much to forgive." And then restraining himself, and his voice gathering strength and firmness as he spoke, he said, "Only, do not think no one ever wanted to set the wrongs of the world right before you." And then he told me how every monastery, or at least every ancient one, however it might now seem a mere society of serf-holders and landowners, feasting on the toil of others, had begun in an apostolic twelve of hard-working men, living on the toil of their own hands, renouncing the joys of the world for joy in God, dwelling as labouring men among the labouring, as poor among the poor, ennobling toil for all, by joining it with priestly sacrifice. And friar, he said, meant brother. If the monks had meant to consecrate labour, the friars had meant to glorify poverty, to glorify the lot of the multitudes by making it the choice of the elect-poverty and brotherhood. Poor as the poorest, to enrich the poor with heavenly riches, and brothers of all men. Prince and peasant were to become among them alike poor and alike brother. "If the friars had kept to their first estate," he said, "the rich would have learned there is no title for Christian men, brethren of Christ, higher than brother: the poor would have learned there is no lot higher than labour. There would have been no peasant revolt, and no Statute of Labourers, no Wat Tyler or Jack Straw. The church would have gathered all the world into a divinely equal brotherhood, and ordered all men in a divinely differing kingdom." And then with bitter anguish he lamented things as they are. It "We live! we live," he said, "like the demoniac of Gadara, among the tombs. is an age of tombs, and a world of tombs. The monasteries are whited sepulchres; the friaries are open graves; the Crusades are robberies No man now builds great churches; no man sings great songs, does great deeds. We can but copy and conclude, and spoil. Not this or that institution only-all Christendom is a tomb." or 'But Christ is risen!" I said, "and we pray, Thy kingdom come. Is He then a king like Arthur in the legends, slumbering in some far-off valley? His kingdom broken up, and His work ruined? Is that the end?" "That is not the end," he replied. "One earthquake and one angel rolled the stone from His Holy Sepulchre. The heavens shall be moved, and shall roll up as a scroll, when the stone is rolled away from this unholy sepulchre in which we live." "What shall we do then ?" I said. "Hate the world? Lie down and die ?” Nay," Father Adam replied; "love the world the Lord loved, and rise up and live, and serve and succour every shipwrecked wretch we find. Only, brother, never think again you were the first to try and set the wrongs of the world right, or that you will be the last; and remember to pray God to forgive us, and me." So I went and received the blessed Sacrament, and forgave, and prayed to be forgiven. And meantime, in one far-off valley, though we knew it not, the King was filling one peasant child with His love, and moulding her into His likeness, and training her to help forward His kingdom among men. VIII. N.S. So runs the law, the law of recompense, That binds our life on earth and heaven in one; But faith can live and sing when these are gone. We grieve and murmur, for we can but see Our lips would breathe a song and not a sigh. Wait then, my soul, and edge the darkening cloud And if to-day thou art with sorrow bowed, And when we reach the limit of our days, Beyond the reach of shadows and of night, HENRY BURTON. 2 |