The Ravens and the Angels Part 12

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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 G.o.d's work, by patient study of man's needs. Curve by curve, line by line, stone on stone, 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 pa.s.sing 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 grat.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude 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 mult.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 beside it, 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 wors.h.i.+p there, and pa.s.s 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 G.o.d, and was satisfied.

_Only the Crypt.[2]_

We are entering the Beautiful Temple of G.o.d, said the children, a brother and a sister, as they pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sive pillars of the low arched aisles.

"Can this be the Cathedral?" whispered the brother to the sister; "the glorious House of G.o.d 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 the _darkness_!" 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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 wors.h.i.+ppers.

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