CONCERNING CROWNS AND CROSSES.

"No cross, no crown."

T is noticeable, that although the symbol of the Cross has been so universal throughout Christendom as an object of veneration,-in churches, on the sceptres of princes, over the dome of cathedrals, sparkling on the bosom of beauty, and everywhere recognised as the significant heraldry of Christendom,-it has found a place in but very few proverbs; it shines rather in parable and poem. There is, however, one famous proverb, and it is curious that this is not to be found in most of our popular collections ; we allude to the famous truth involved in the great saying, "No cross, no crown," the title also of a well-known book by William Penn-still a great favourite with the Society of Friends.

The Vision of the Angels of the Crosses.

We read a Church legend from one of those dreamy old saints, Marina d'Escobar, setting before us the almost invariable melancholy of the good, and the mysterious aid which enables them to overcome it. Perhaps our severe Protestantism will still permit us to be instructed by the vision: "One morning," says the saint, "I beheld many angels bearing golden crosses with great solemnity and joy; and they bore them to earth. And the first angel fixed his cross in a certain foreign land, and walked about seeking some who would embrace and adore it; and, finding no one, he carried it back to heaven. The second angel fixed his cross also in another land, and then went to seek for those who would adore it. He met, walking in the fields, a certain poor rustic, who seemed a hermit, walking as if searching for something. 'Servant of God, whither goest thou?' asked the angel. 'I seek,' replied the hermit, 'that hidden treasure which the man, finding in his field, sold all that he had and bought it.' 'Come with me,' said the angel, ' and I will show you this treasure;' and he led him to the cross, and said, 'Lo, there is the treasure which enriches the soul, and leads it to eternal life; for he who finds it finds his supreme good.' Then the hermit, prostrate, adored the cross. The angel placed it on his shoulder, assisted him to bear it, and so it was carried to his poor hut, where the angel said, 'Now, I will remain here with you to the end of your life, and I will never cease helping you to carry that cross.' Then I saw the third angel, who also fixed his cross in the ground; and a certain pious, poor woman, who was walking in the field very

THE ANGELS OF THE CROSSES.

459

anxiously and weary, with expanded arms, seeking something, embraced it. Servant of God,' said the angel to her, 'what seekest thou?' 'I seek,' she replied, the royal way to blessedness-the plain and secure way to find my God.' To whom the angel said, 'Behold that cross! That is the royal way to blessedness, the plain, safe way to heaven, on which no one perishes.' The woman adored and embraced the cross. The angel placed it on her shoulder, and helped her to bear it to her poor house, which seemed like a hovel; and then he said, 'Here will I remain with you all the days of your life on earth, and I will assist you to bear it.' The fourth angel fixed his cross in another region, and then walked about till he met a certain nobleman walking in the field, very thoughtful, as if he searched for something; and the angel said, 'Noble servant of God, what seekest thou?' The nobleman answered, 'I seek the treasure of the soul-I seek peace and security.' 'Oh, what a good you seek for!' replied the angel. Come with me, I will show you all at once;' and showing him the cross, he said, 'There is the true treasure of the soul, comprising all good; he who embraces, and loves, and wishes it, possesses this peace, and finds true security. All who embrace that cross reign with God in heaven; and nowhere else is anything secure.' The noble prostrated himself, and adored the cross, and took it for his spouse; and the angel placed it on his shoulder, and helped him to carry it to his house, and said, on arriving there, 'I will remain hereafter always with you.'"

And very much in the spirit of this vision are those fine words in "John Inglesant.' Nothing but the infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite pathos of human life."

An old writer very truly says, that if passengers to a certain place are told that their way lies over a steep hill, a craggy rock, and a moorish fen-if they come up to these things, they may naturally suppose themselves to be in the right way; on the contrary, if in their pilgrimage they pass only through enamelled meadows and flowery gardens, they may naturally suspect whether they be on the right road. No doubt, amidst life's contradictions, travellers have often to betake themselves to Luther's great parable, when, in his prison in the Wartburg, he thought of

The Props of the Firmament.

"Two signs I have had lately. I was looking out of my window at midnight, and I saw the stars,-the whole majestic vault of God supporting itself, without my being able to see the columns on which the Master rested it; but it fell not. There are men now-a-days who insist upon finding out these invisible columns,-nay, who insist upon touching them with their own hands; and because they cannot achieve this, they tremble, and lament, and beat their breasts, fearing the firmament is about to rush down upon them. The heavens will not stir any the more for their groping.

460

AN EVENING WALK IN A SEA-BOARD PARISH.

"In the morning I saw huge, heavy-laden clouds floating over my head like an ocean. I saw no pillars supporting the enormous masses: yet they fell not, but, saluting me gloomily, passed on; and as they passed, I perceived beneath the curve which had sustained them—a delicious rainbow. It was very slender and very delicate, and some might have trembled lest the heavy clouds should destroy it, yet its slight aërial line was strong enough to bear all that weight, and protect us from danger. We have among us too many who fear the clouds and distrust the rainbow; they would fain ascertain, by some experiment of their own, the exact force of the rainbow; and as they cannot do this, they are all alarmed lest the clouds should break and overwhelm them in their fierce waves. The clouds are very heavy, they say, and your rainbow is very slight. Time will try its strength."

The proverb we quote is the proverb of life-"No cross, no crown.” We have elsewhere remarked that life seems so unfair that we are compelled to seek, outside our visible and diurnal life, for the Divine law which at once controls, completes, and crowns it; and that law is the Divine grace which supplements and sanctifies our weakness.

How well we remember one summer evening some years since, in one of the sweetest of our sea-board villages, among the crags of our western coast. We had stood in the gathering twilight, watching a fisherman's wife straining her eyes over the "low moaning and leaden-coloured seas." She was attempting to catch a glimpse of her husband's trawl; and we wondered whether some evening, perhaps, those earnest eyes would watch for

"One who would never come back to the town."

Then, as we walked away, we held that evening two conversations with two to whom life seemed so unfair, two lives in that little village on the cliff on the coast.

Our first talk was with an old man of eighty-two years of age. He murmured out his tale; he had two shillings a-week from the parish. Thirty years since he lost his trawl, or fishing-boat. He might have got over that, but in that one night he lost everything; for that same night, in the same storm, he lost his only son, a pilot. He had never been able to obtain another boat; all was gone; he could only look back on thirty years of weary poverty. We were tenderly affected by this story; and only a few moments after we talked it over again with a neighbour of the old man, an old sea captain. He did not seem to think the case of the old man so singular, or so cruel; but his own case! that took all the strength of nature, or of grace, to enable him to bear. He had been on the seas all his life, a cruel life of toils and separations. It was only a year or two since he gave up. He said, "Soul, take thine ease." "I said," said he, "life shall be enjoyed now in the dear old home in the village on the cliff; no storms more, no dangers more, no parting from

NO CROSS, NO CROWN.

461

the dear wife more! Home, home!" So he settled in the old cottage -he had no children-he and his wife together would walk to the happy end-he was a sweet-spirited old Christian. Ah, that longing expectation for rest with the companion of his younger days! In a few months-suddenly, in a moment, with no warning, all fell to disappointment-his wife died! We shall never forget how each of these old pilgrims, having so different a tale to tell, could neither well understand the other; but in both it was a subtle trial of strength, illustrating that all our ideas of life on this side the grave are tangled, incoherent, and cross-burdened, and need the crown beyond to give completeness.

Polycarp and the Catacombs.

Beneath the city of Rome there is a long succession of subterranean streets and galleries, quarried from the rocky strata of the soil. These are now opened, and strangers may visit them. They are remarkable; they are even wonderful; they are the most astonishing cemeteries in the world. They are called the Catacombs; they are the burial-places of the martyrs of the young Christian faith. The inscriptions over innumerable tombs are to be read even yet; they seem fresh, almost as if painted yesterday; and they are fragrant with the flowers of immortality. Many of the inscriptions are passionately, touchingly affectionate. They speak tenderly of the Star of Hope which had just risen on the confines of the grave; they stand in wonderful contrast to the despair of Paganism and the poetry of Horace. Thither, from torturing racks and burning coals, the early Christians conveyed revered and beloved forms, precious dust. They deposited them there, with tears, but in the full assurance of the life beyond death, beyond the flame and the dungeon. It is remarkable that in these low catacombs Christian art had its birth-art which is always the struggle of mind with death; and in the palpable carving in the stone, and the floral delineations of the pencil, the chisel and palette were first consecrated there. When John wrote, as we believe he wrote, at the dictation of the Divine Spirit, those fine words— "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life," the martyrs were crowding into the catacombs; and not only so, the profession of the Christian faith everywhere had an outlook to martyrdom.

It is said these words were addressed to Polycarp, and were the prophecy of his death beneath the persecution of the mild Aurelian; for however mild and merciful an emperor he could be to others, he could only be merciless to Christians. Polycarp was a disciple of John, and the Bishop of Smyrna, to which Church these words were written. He was "faithful unto death," and in Smyrna received the crown. He was seized; he was called upon to renounce his faith. "Blaspheme Christ," said the proconsul, "and I release thee." "Eighty and six years," said the old bishop, "have I served Christ, and He has never done me wrong; how can I blaspheme my King, my Saviour?" Thus he was faithful

462

HOLD FAST FAITH.

unto death," and thus he received the crown of life. Such is the historical connection.

But there is a deeper lesson than the merely pleasant revival of an historical story, however venerable and affecting that story may be; it is that which is given in our proverb, that every crown is won through the pathway of the cross. Such is the condition of nature beneath which

we live. This is the everlasting lesson

"On whose still-recurring page

Nought grows obsolete with age.”

How it comes about we need not curiously inquire. It is clear that life is a perpetually renewed crucifixion, a perpetually renewed contradiction of self. But revelation, especially in the person and work of our Saviour, assures us that thus we attain to our degree of immortality. If we take our crucifixion bravely, "and, for the joy that is set before us, endure the Cross and despise the shame, we shall sit down at the right hand of the throne of God." We stoop into a dark tremendous sea of cloud; but if we press this God's lamp close to our breast, "its splendours soon or late will pierce the gloom" from which "we shall emerge one day."

This is the law of all true eminence, of all real attainment and dignity. Therefore we say, there is no true Crown that has not its Cross, which requires Faithfulness. Is there any degree in this life, worth the having, which is won without working for it? Do we not interpret the honest heart rightly when we say, "We want to win nothing by craft, by cunning; rather the honest pittance well won than the large fortune obtained by fraud." The noble masters of the thought of the world won their way through hard and strong toil; they battled with rough winds and waves, and so, at last, by such rough navigation through those stormy seas, they became great discoverers; they won their place of power through midnight studies, fighting off sleep, and going forth to prove their soul. This was the law. We know how capricious is human fortune and human fame, but we shall not believe that real toil-honestpurposed toil-loses in the long run. We do not envy the trickster, the gambler; we neither envy him nor his conquest. Hold fast Faith. Persist with a purpose to the Crown. Thou shalt win and wear the Crown.

Such is the law of the spiritual life too. There is a daily martyrdom which wins. Suffering in this world is a great, it may be an impenetrable, mystery; but anguish of soul or pain of body do, as we often see, transfigure and change our whole inward being; and we often feel that suffering plants the mind of a man at a point of sight in the spiritual world from which things altogether hidden from ordinary eyes-and even from the sufferer until then-become visible. There is a great difference between truth known and truth felt: the one may be an intellectual perception, the other is real; even as it is said of our Lord, He "learned