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Mark: "A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the wine-fat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen." It is painful to find that the same animosity which attends the claims of the several sects of Christians at Jerusalem for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre disgraces their contentions at Bethlehem for the Grotto of the Nativity.
Baldwin I., King of Jerusalem, the brother of Godfrey, had survived his brother eighteen years, when, in 1118, the crown passed to Baldwin du Bourg, Count of Essex, who, according to the usual fate of the Defenders of the Holy Sepulchre, felt his health fast giving way under the influence of toil, anxiety, and climate.
This council Peter addressed, and, with all the eloquence of a man inspired by a mighty project, depicted the wrongs and grievances of those who yearly sought, for holy purposes, the sepulchre wherein the Savior of man reposed after his crucifixion. He was successful in inspiring the people with his own wild enthusiasm.
They spoke only of dust to dust and ashes to ashes; but that little glimpse into the simple love of simple hearts in the far-off past lifted me above all the decays of the sepulchre. It assured me that our deepest heart-affections are the helpers of our highest hopes, and the instinctive guarantees of a life to come. Love creates its own immortality; for "love is love for evermore."
Louis and Edward were the last princely Crusaders, though the idea lived on in almost every high-souled man through the Middle Ages. Henry V. and Philip le Bon of Burgundy both schemed the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; and the hope that chiefly impelled the voyage of Columbus was, that his Western discoveries might open a way to the redemption of the Holy Land.
Thus they buried in the plains about Mansoul the election doubters, the vocation doubters, the grace doubters, the perseverance doubters, the resurrection doubters, the salvation doubters, and the glory doubters; whose captains were Captain Rage, Captain Cruel, Captain Damnation, Captain Insatiable, Captain Brimstone, Captain Torment, Captain No-Ease, Captain Sepulchre, and Captain Past-Hope; and old Incredulity was, under Diabolus, their general.
George struck a match and looked at his watch. He was early. Another ten minutes must elapse before he could hope for her arrival. He sat down on a broken wagon which lay on its side against one of the walls. Depression returned. It was impossible to fight against it in this beast of a barn. The place was like a sepulchre. No one but a fool of a butler would have suggested it as a trysting-place.
That will chain him to the spot and compel him to look once more, and once again, after he has satisfied all curiosity and lost all interest concerning the other matters pertaining to the locality. And so I close my chapter on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the most sacred locality on earth to millions and millions of men, and women, and children, the noble and the humble, bond and free.
While, with bursting hearts, we turn from the new-made mound, one more glorified body, in anticipation, is added to thy charge. Smiling at our sorrow, in joyful thought of the change to be witnessed in and around that sepulchre when the family circle shall there put on incorruption, thou canst not pity us except as we pity the brief sorrows of children.
But it no longer blew as from the charnel-house of the past; it blew from the stars through the chinks of the unopened door on the other side of the sepulchre. It was a wind of the worlds, not a wind of the leaves. It told of the march of the spheres, and the rest of the throne of God. We were going on into the universe home to the house of our Father. Mighty adventure! Sacred repose!
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