Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Ravens and the Angels with Other Stories and Parables by Charles Elizabeth Rundle
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 1365 lines and 78799 words, and 28 pages
THE RAVENS AND THE ANGELS, 7
ECCE HOMO, 33
THE COTTAGE BY THE CATHEDRAL, 59
THE UNKNOWN ARCHITECT OF THE MINSTER, 69
ONLY THE CRYPT, 74
THE SEPULCHRE AND THE SHRINE, 80
THE CATHEDRAL CHIMES, 91
THE RUINED TEMPLE, 98
THE CLOCK-BELL AND THE ALARM-BELL, 106
THE BLACK SHIP, 109
THE ISLAND AND THE MAIN LAND, 125
THE JEWEL OF THE ORDER OF THE KING'S OWN, 137
THE ACORN, 148
PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A FERN, 153
THORNS AND SPINES, 158
PARABLES IN HOUSEHOLD THINGS, 161
"THINGS USING US," 166
SUNSHINE, DAYLIGHT, AND THE ROCK, 170
WANDERERS AND PILGRIMS, 172
THE ARK AND THE FORTRESS, 175
THE THREE DREAMS, 178
THOU AND I, 183
WHAT MAKES THINGS MUSICAL, 187
THE SONG WITHOUT WORDS, 192
A STORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
In those old days, in that old city, they called the Cathedral--and they thought it--the house of God. The Cathedral was the Father's house for all, and therefore it was loved and honoured, and enriched with lavish treasures of wealth and work, beyond any other father's house.
The Cathedral was the Father's house, and therefore close to its gates might nestle the poor dwellings of the poor,--too poor to find a shelter anywhere besides; because the central life and joy of the house of God was the suffering, self-sacrificing Son of Man; and dearer to Him, now and for ever, as when He was on earth, was the feeblest and most fallen human creature He had redeemed than the most glorious heavenly constellation of the universe He had made.
And so it happened that when Berthold, the stone-carver, died, Magdalis, his young wife, and her two children, then scarcely more than babes, Gottlieb and little Lenichen, were suffered to make their home in the little wooden shed which had once sheltered a hermit, and which nestled into the recess close to the great western gate of the Minster.
All this, or such as this, the young mother Magdalis taught her babes as they could bear it.
For they needed such lessons.
The troubles of the world pressed on them very early, in the shape little children can understand--little hands and feet nipped with frost, hunger and darkness and cold.
Not that the citizens of that city were hypocrites, singing the praises of God, whilst they let His dear Lazaruses vainly crave at their gates for their crumbs. But Magdalis was very tender and timid, and a little proud; proud not for herself, but for her husband and his babes. And she was also feeble in health. She was an orphan herself, and she had married, against the will of her kindred in a far-off city, the young stone-carver, whose genius they did not appreciate, whose labour and skill had made life so rich and bright to his family while he lived, and whose early death had left them all so desolate.
For his dear sake, she would not complain. For herself it had been easier to die, and for his sake she would not bring the shame of beggary on his babes. Better for them to enter into this life maimed of strength, she thought, by meagre food, than tainted with the taint of beggary.
Rather, she thought, would their father himself have seen them go hungry to bed than deserve that the fingers of other children should be pointed scornfully at them as "the little beggars by the church door," the door of the church in which she gloried to think there were stones of his carving.
So it happened that one frosty night, about Christmas-tide, little Gottlieb lay awake, very hungry, on the ledge of the wall, covered with straw, which served him for a bed.
It had once been the hermit's bed. And very narrow Gottlieb thought it must have been for the hermit, for more than once he had been in peril of falling over the side, in his restless tossings. He supposed the hermit was too good to be restless, or perhaps too good for the dear angels to think it good for him to be hungry, as they evidently did think it good for Gottlieb and Lenichen, or they would be not good angels at all, to let them hunger so often, not even as kind as the ravens which took the bread to Elijah when they were told. For the dear Heavenly Father had certainly told the angels always to take care of little children.
The more Gottlieb lay awake and tossed and thought, the further off the angels seemed.
For, all the time, under the pillow lay one precious crust of bread, the last in the house until his mother should buy the loaf to-morrow.
He had saved it from his supper in an impulse of generous pity for his little sister, who so often awoke, crying with hunger, and woke his poor mother, and would not let her go to sleep again.
He had thought how sweet it would be, when Lenichen awoke the next morning, to appear suddenly, as the angels do, at the side of the bed where she lay beside her mother, and say,--
"Dear Lenichen! see, God has sent you this bit of bread as a Christmas gift."
For the next day was Christmas Eve.
This little plan made Gottlieb so happy that at first it felt as good to him as eating the bread.
But the happy thought, unhappily, did not long content the hungry animal part of him, which craved, in spite of him, to be filled; and, as the night went on, he was sorely tempted to eat the precious crust--his very own crust--himself.
"Perhaps it was ambitious of me, after all," he said to himself, "to want to seem like a blessed angel, a messenger of God, to Lenichen. Perhaps, too, it would not be true. Because, after all, it would not be exactly God who sent the crust, but only me."
And with the suggestion, the little hands which had often involuntarily felt for the crust, brought it to the hungry little mouth.
But at that moment it opportunely happened that his mother made a little moan in her sleep, which half awakened Lenichen, who murmured, sleepily, "Little mother, mother, bread!"
Whereupon, Gottlieb blushed at his own ungenerous intention, and resolutely pushed back the crust under the pillow. And then he thought it must certainly have been the devil who had tempted him to eat, and he tried to pray.
He prayed the "Our Father" quite through, kneeling up softly in bed, and lingering fondly, but not very hopefully, on the "Give us our daily bread."
And then again he fell into rather melancholy reflections how very often he had prayed that same prayer and had been hungry, and into distracting speculations how the daily bread could come, until at last he ventured to add this bit of his own to his prayers,--
Then Gottlieb lay down again, and turned his face to the wall, where he knew the picture of the Infant Jesus was, and forgot his troubles and fell asleep.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page