The Ravens and the Angels Part 1

The Ravens and the Angels.

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles.

A STORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

I.

In those old days, in that old city, they called the Cathedral--and they thought it--the house of G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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.

Thus, while, inside, from the lofty aisles pealed forth, night and day, the anthems of the choir, close outside, night and day, rose also, even more surely, to G.o.d, the sighs of a sorrowful woman and the cries of little children whom all her toil could hardly supply with bread.

Because, He hears the feeblest wail of want, though it comes not from a dove or even from a harmless sparrow, but a young raven. And He does _not_ heed the sweetest anthem of the fullest choir, if it is a mere pomp of sound. Because, while the best love of His meanest creatures is precious to Him, the second-best of His loftiest creatures is intolerable to Him. He heeds the s.h.i.+ning of the drops of dew and the rustling of the blades of gra.s.s. But from creatures who can love He cannot accept the mere outside offering of creatures which can only make a pleasant sound.

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 G.o.d, 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 she toiled on, carving for sale little devotional symbols--crosses, and reliquaries, and lilies, and lambs--with the skill she had learnt from him, and teaching the little ones, as best she could, to love and work and suffer. Only teaching them, perhaps, not quite enough to _hope_. For the lamp of hope burnt low in her own heart, and therefore her patience, not being enough the patience of hope, lacked something of sweetness. It never broke downward into murmurs, but it too seldom soared upward into praise.

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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d, to Lenichen.

Perhaps, too, it would not be true. Because, after all, it would not be exactly G.o.d 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,--

"Dear, holy Lord Jesus, you were once a little child, and know what it feels like. If Lenichen and I are not good enough for you to send us bread by the blessed angels, do send us some by the poor ravens. We would not mind at all, if they came from you, and were _your_ ravens, and brought us real bread. And if it is wrong to ask, please not to be displeased, because I am such a little child, and I don't know better, and I want to go to sleep!"

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.

The next morning he was awaked, as so often, by Lenichen's little bleat; and he rose triumphantly, and took his crust to her bedside.

Lenichen greeted him with a wistful little smile, and put up her face for a kiss; but her reception of the crust was somewhat disappointing.

She wailed a little because it was "hard and dry;" and when Gottlieb moistened it with a few drops of water, she took it too much, he felt, as a mere common meal, a thing of course, and her natural right.

He had expected that, in some way, the hungry hours it had cost him would have been kneaded into it, and would have made it a kind of heavenly manna for her.

To him it had meant hunger, and heroism, and sleepless hours of endurance. It seemed strange that to Lenichen it should seem nothing more than a hard, dry, common crust.

But to the mother it was much more.

She understood all; and, because she understood so much, she said little.

She only smiled, and said he looked more than ever like his father; and as he sat musing rather sadly while she was dressing, and Lenichen had fallen asleep again, she pointed to the little peaceful sleeping face, the flaxen hair curling over the dimpled arm, and she said,--

"That is thy thanks--just that the little one is happy. The dear Heavenly Father cares more, I think, for such thanks than for any other; just to see the flowers grow, just to hear the birds sing to their nestlings, just to see His creatures good and happy, because of His gifts. Those are about the best thanks for Him, and for us."

But Gottlieb looked up inquiringly.

"Yet He likes us to say 'Thank you,' too? Did you not say all the Church services, all the beautiful cathedral itself, is just the people's 'Thank you' to G.o.d? Are we not going to church just to say 'Thank you,'

to-day?"

"Yes, darling," she said. "But the 'Thank you' we _mean_ to say is worth little unless it is just the blossom and fragrance of the love and content always in the heart. G.o.d cares infinitely for our loving Him, and loves us to thank Him if we do. He does not care at all for the thanks without the love, or without the content."

And as she spoke these words, Mother Magdalis was preaching a little sermon to herself also, which made her eyes moisten and s.h.i.+ne.

So she took courage, and contrived to persuade the children and herself that the bread-and-water breakfast that Christmas-Eve morning had something quite festive about it.