The Children"s Portion.
by Various.
Edited by Robert W. Shoppell.
THE GOLDEN AGE.
REV. ALEXANDER MACLEOD, D. D.
I.
THE KING"S CHILDREN.
There was once, in Christendom, a little kingdom where the people were pious and simple-hearted. In their simplicity they held for true many things at which people of great kingdoms smile. One of these things was what is called the "Golden Age."
There was not a peasant in the villages, nor a citizen in the cities, who did not believe in the Golden Age. If they happened to hear of anything great that had been done in former times, they would say, "That was in the Golden Age." If anybody spoke to them of a good thing he was looking for in years to come, they would say, "Then shall be the Golden Age." And if they should be speaking of something happy or good which was going on under their eyes, they always said, "Yes, the Golden Age is there."
Now, words like these do not come to people in a day. And these words about the Golden Age did not come to the people of that ancient kingdom in a day. More than a hundred years before, there was reigning over the kingdom a very wise king, whose name was Pakronus. And to him one day came the thought, and grew from little to more in his mind, that some time or other there must have been, and some time or other there would be again, for his people and for all people a "Golden Age."
"Other ages," he said, "are silver, or bra.s.s, or iron; but one is a Golden Age." And I suppose he was thinking of that Age when he gave names to his three sons, for he called them YESTERGOLD, GOLDENDAY, and GOLDMORROW. Sometimes when he talked about them, he would say, "They are my three captains of the Golden Age." He had also a little daughter whom he greatly loved. Her name was FAITH.
These children were very good. And they were clever as well as good.
But like all the children of that old time, they remained children longer than the children of now-a-days. It was many years before their school days came to an end, and when they ended they did not altogether cease to be children. They had simple thoughts and simple ways, just like the people of the kingdom. Their father used to take them up and down through the country, to make them acquainted with the lives of the people. "You shall some day be called to high and difficult tasks in the kingdom," he said to them, "and you should prepare yourselves all you can." Almost every day he set their minds a-thinking, how the lives of the people could be made happier, and hardly a day pa.s.sed on which he did not say to them, that people would be happier the nearer they got to the Golden Age. In this way the children came early to the thought that, one way or other, happiness would come into the world along with the Golden Age.
But always there was one thing they could not understand: that was the time when the Golden Age should be.
About the Age itself they were entirely at one. They could not remember a year in their lives when they were not at one in this. As far back as the days when, in the long winter evenings, they sat listening to the ballads and stories of their old nurse, they had been lovers and admirers of that Age. "It was the happy Age of the world,"
the nurse used to say. "The fields were greener, the skies bluer, the rainbows brighter than in other Ages. It was the Age when heaven was near, and good angels present in every home. Back in that Age, away on the lonely pastures, the shepherds watching their flocks by night heard angels" songs in the sky. And the children in the cities, as they were going to sleep, felt the waving of angel wings in the dark. It was a time of wonders. The very birds and beasts could speak and understand what was said. And in the poorest children in the streets might be found princes and princesses in disguise."
They remembered also how often, in the mornings, when they went down to school, their teacher chose lessons which seemed to tell of a Golden Age. They recalled the lessons about the city of pure gold that was one day to come down from heaven for men to dwell in; and other lessons that told of happy times, when nations should learn the art of war no more, and there should be nothing to hurt or destroy in all the earth.
"Yes, my dear children," their mother would say, in the afternoon, when they told her of the teacher"s lessons and the nurse"s stories. "Yes, there is indeed a happy age for the children of men, which is all that your nurse and teacher say. It is a happy time and a time of wonders.
In that time wars cease and there is nothing to hurt or destroy.
Princes and princesses in poor clothing are met in the streets, because in that Age the poorest child who is good is a child of the King of Heaven. And heaven and good angels are near because Christ is near.
It is Christ"s presence that works the wonders. When He is living on the earth, and His life is in the lives of men, everything is changed for the better. There is a new heaven and a new earth. And the Golden Age has come."
II.
DIFFERENT VIEWS.
It was a great loss to these children that this holy and beautiful mother died when they were still very young. But her good teaching did not die. Her words about the Golden Age never pa.s.sed out of their minds. Whatever else they thought concerning it in after years, they always came back to this--in this they were all agreed--that it is the presence of Christ that makes the Gold of the Golden Age.
But at this point their agreement came to an end. They could never agree respecting the time of the Golden Age.
Yestergold believed that it lay in the past. In his esteem the former times were better than the present. People were simpler then, and truer to each other and happier. There was more honesty in trade, more love in society, more religion in life. Many an afternoon he went alone into the old abbey, where the tombs of saintly ladies, of holy men, and of brave fighters lay, and as he wandered up and down looking at their marble images, the gates of the Golden Age seemed to open up before him. There was one figure, especially, before which he often stood. It was the figure of a Crusader, his sword by his side, his hands folded across his breast, and his feet resting on a lion. "Ay,"
he would say, "in that Age the souls of brave men really trod the lion and the dragon under foot." But when the light of the setting sun came streaming through the great window in the west, and kindling up the picture of Christ healing the sick, his soul would leap up for joy, a new light would come into his eyes, and this thought would rise within him like a song--"The Golden Age itself--the Age into which all other Ages open and look back--is pictured there."
But on such occasions, as he came out of the abbey and went along the streets, if he met the people hastening soiled and weary from their daily toils, the joy would go out of his heart. He would begin to think of the poor lives they were leading. And he would cry within himself, "Oh that the lot of these toiling crowds had fallen on that happy Age! It would have been easy then to be good. Goodness was in the very air blessed by His presence. The people had but to see Him to be glad." And sometimes his sorrow would be for himself. Sometimes, remembering his own struggles to be good, and the difficulties in his way, and how far he was from being as good as he ought to be, he would say, "Would that I myself had been living when Jesus was on the earth."
More or less this wish was always in his heart. It had been in his heart from his earliest years. Indeed, it is just a speech of his, made when he was a little boy, which has been turned into the hymn we so often sing:--
"I think when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children, as lambs, to His fold, I should like to have been with Him then.
"I wish that His hands had been placed on my head, That His arms had been thrown around me, That I might have seen His kind looks when He said, "Let the little ones come unto Me.""
Goldmorrow"s thoughts were different. They went forward into the future. He had hardly any of Yestergold"s difficulties about being good. He did not think much about his own state. What took up all his thoughts was the state of the world in which his brothers and he were living. How was that to be made better? As he went up and down in his father"s kingdom, he beheld hovels in which poor people had to live, and drink-shops, and gambling-houses, and prisons. He was always asking himself, how are evils like these to be put away? Whatever good any Age of the past had had, these things had never been cast out. He did not think poorly of the Age when Christ was on the earth. He was as pious as his brother. He loved the Lord as much as his brother.
But his love went more into the future than into the past. It was the Lord who was coming, rather than the Lord who had come, in whom he had joy. "The Golden Age would come when Christ returned to the earth," he said. The verses in the Bible where this coming was foretold shone like light for Goldmorrow. And often, as he read them aloud to his brothers and his sister, his eyes would kindle and he would burst out with speeches like this: "I see that happy time approaching. I hear its footsteps. My ears catch its songs. It is coming. It is on the way. My Lord will burst those heavens and come in clouds of glory, with thousands and tens of thousands in His train. And things evil shall be cast out of the kingdom. And things that are wrong shall be put right. There shall be neither squalor, nor wretched poverty, nor crime, nor intemperance, nor ignorance, nor hatred, nor war. All men shall be brothers. Each shall be not for himself but for the kingdom.
And Christ shall be Lord of all."
In these discussions Goldenday was always the last to speak. And always he had least to say. I have been told that he was no great speaker. But my impression is that he got so little attention from his brothers when he spoke, that he got into the way of keeping his thoughts to himself. But everybody knew that he did not agree with either of his brothers. His belief was that the present Age, with all its faults, was the Golden Age for the people living in it. And there is no doubt that that was the view of his sister Faith. For when at any time he happened to let out even the tiniest word with that view in it, she would come closer to him, lean up against his side, and give him a hidden pressure of the hand.
III.
SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN AGE.
When these views of the young Princes came to be known, the people took sides, some with one Prince, some with another. The greatest number sided with Yestergold, a number not so great with Goldmorrow, and a few, and these for the most part of humble rank, with Goldenday. In a short time nothing else was talked about, from one end of the kingdom to the other, but the time of the Golden Age. And this became a trouble to the King.
Now there happened to be living at that time in the palace a wise man, a high Councillor of State, whom the King greatly esteemed, and whose counsel he had often sought. To him in his trouble the King turned for advice.
"Let not this trouble thee, O King," the Councillor said. "Both for the Princes and the people it is good that thoughts on this subject should come out into talk. But let the thoughts be put to the test.
Let the Princes, with suitable companions, be sent forth to search for this Age of Gold. Although the Age itself, in its very substance, is hid with G.o.d, there is a country in which shadows of all the Ages are to be seen. In that country, the very clouds in the sky, the air which men breathe, and the hills and woods and streams shape themselves into images of the life that has been, or is to be among men. And whosoever reaches that country and looks with honest, earnest eyes, shall see the Age he looks for, just as it was or is to be, and shall know concerning it whether it be his Age of Gold. At the end of a year, let the travelers return, and tell before your Majesty and an a.s.sembly of the people the story of their search." To this counsel the King gave his a.s.sent. And he directed his sons to make the choice of their companions and prepare for their journey.
Yestergold, for his companions, chose a painter and a poet. Goldmorrow preferred two brothers of the Order of Watchers of the Sky. But Goldenday said, "I shall be glad if my sister Faith will be companion to me." And so it was arranged.
Just at that time the King was living in a palace among the hills. And it was from thence the travelers were to leave. It was like a morning in Wonderland. The great valley on which the palace looked down, and along which the Princes were to travel, was that morning filled with vapor. And the vapor lay, as far as the eye could reach, without a break on its surface, or a ruffled edge, in the light of the rising sun, like a sea of liquid silver. The hills that surrounded the palace looked like so many giants sitting on the sh.o.r.es of a mighty sea. It was into this sea the travelers had to descend. One by one, with their companions, they bade the old King farewell. And then, stepping forth from the palace gates and descending toward the valley, they disappeared from view.
The country to which they were going lay many days" distance between the Purple Mountains and the Green Sea. The road to it lay through woods and stretches of corn and pasture land. It was Autumn. In every field were reapers cutting or binding the corn. At every turn of the road were wagons laden with sheaves. Then the scene changed. The land became poor. The fields were covered with crops that were thin and unripe. The people who pa.s.sed on the road had a look of want on their faces. The travelers pa.s.sed on. Every eye was searching the horizon for the first glimpse of the mountain peaks. In every heart was the joyful hope of finding the Golden Age. Can you think what the joy of a young student going for the first time to a university is? It was a joy like his. While this joy was in their hearts, the road pa.s.sed into a mighty forest. And suddenly among the shadows of the trees a miserable spectacle crossed their path. It was a crowd of peasants of the very poorest cla.s.s. A plague had fallen on their homes, and they were fleeing from their village, which lay among the trees a mile or two to the right.
Yestergold was the first to meet them. He was filled with anguish.
His sensitive nature could not bear to see suffering in others. He shrank from the very sight of misery. Turning to his companions, he said, "If the Lord of Life had been traveling on this road as He was on that other, long ago, when the widow of Nain met Him with her dead son, He would have destroyed the plague by a word." "Oh, holy and beautiful Age!" exclaimed the poet, "why dost thou lie in thy soft swathings of light, and power to do mighty deeds, so far behind us in the past?"
"But let us use it as a golden background," said the painter. "That is the beautiful Age on which Art is called to portray the Divine form of the Great Physician!" Saying these fine words, the party rode swiftly past.
The terrified villagers were still streaming across the road when Goldmorrow came up. Nothing could exceed the pity which the spectacle stirred in his breast. Tears streamed from his eyes. The bareness, the poverty, the misery of the present time seemed to come into view and gather into a point in what he saw. "Oh!" he cried to his companions, "if Christ were only come! Only He could deal with evils so great as these!" Then, withdrawing his thoughts into himself, and still moved with his humane pity, he breathed this prayer to Christ: "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and lay thy healing hand on the wounds and sorrows of the world." His companions were also touched with what they saw. And in earnest and reverent words one of them exclaimed: "Blessed hope! Light of the pilgrim! Star of the weary! The earth has waited long thy absent light to see." But, by the time the words were spoken, the villagers were behind them, and, spurring their horses, the travelers hastened forward on their way.
IV.
A PLAGUE-STRICKEN VILLAGE.
The dust raised by their horses" hoofs was still floating over the highway when Goldenday, with his sister and their attendants, rode up to the spot. Two or three groups of the fugitives had made a temporary home for the night under the shelter of the trees on the left. Others were still arriving. The pale faces, the terrified looks of the villagers, filled the Prince with concern. "It is the pestilence,"
they said, in answer to his inquiries. "The pestilence, good sir, and it is striking us dead in the very streets of our village." The Prince turned to his sister. She was already dismounted. A light was in her eye which at once went to his heart. The two understood each other.
They knew that it was Christ and not merely a crowd of terrified peasants who had met them. They were His eyes that looked out at them through the tear-filled eyes of the peasantry. It was His voice that appealed to them in their cries and anguish. He seemed to be saying to them: "Inasmuch as ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto Me." In a few moments the Prince had halted his party and unpacked his stores, and was supplying the wants of the groups on the left. Before an hour was past he had brought light into their faces by his words of cheer, and, with his sister and his servants, was on his way to the plague-stricken village.
Most pitiable was the scene which awaited him there. People were really dying in the streets, as he had been told. Some were already dead. A mother had died in front of her cottage, and her little children sat crying beside her body. Another, with a look of despair in her eyes, sat rocking the dead body of the child. The men seemed to have fled.
The Prince"s plans were soon formed. He had stores enough to last his party and himself for a year. He would share these with the villagers as far as they would go. He had tents also for the journey. He would use these for a home to his own party and for hospitals for the sick.