Kingdom at all, but that they had yielded themselves to our Lord and become His disciples and lovers.  This is not what they intended to do, but it is what actually had happened:  and when the grave yielded up the dead Whom they thought that they had lost forever, Jesus came back with a mission for them that was infinitely wider than their dream:  the mission of founding not the old Kingdom of David, but the Kingdom of David’s Son.  All their aspirations and prayers were fulfilled by being transcended, and they found themselves in a position vastly more important than had been reached even in their dreams.

Something like that not infrequently happens in our experience.  We conceive a spiritual ambition and work for a spiritual end, and seem always to miss it; and then the day comes when God reveals to us what He has been doing, and we find that through the very discipline of our failure we have been being prepared for a success of which we had not thought:  and when we raise our eyes from the path we thought so toilsome and uninteresting, it is to find ourselves at the very gate of the City of God.  It will be with us as with the Apostles who in the darkest hour of their imagined failure, when they were gathered together in hiding from the Jews were startled by the appearence among them of the risen Jesus, and were filled with the unutterable joy of His message of peace.

     “His body is wrapped all in woe,
     Hand and foot He may not go. 
     Thy Son, Lady, that thou lovest so
     Naked is nailed upon a tree.

     “The Blessed Body that thou hast born,
     To save mankind that was forlorn,
     His body, Lady, the Jews have torn,
     And hurt His Head, as ye may see.”

     When John his tale began to tell
     Mary would not longer dwell
     But hied her fast unto that hill
     Where she might her own Son see.

     “My sweete Son, Thou art me dear,
     Oh why have men hanged thee here? 
     Thy head is closed with a brier,
     O why have men so done to Thee?”

     “John, this woman I thee betake;
     Keep My Mother for My sake. 
     On Rood I hang for mannes sake
     For sinful men as thou may see.

     “This game alone I have to play,
     For sinful souls that are to die. 
     Not one man goeth by the way
     That on my pains will look and see.

     “Father, my soul I thee betake,
     My body dieth for mannes sake;
     To hell I go withouten wake,
     Mannes soul to maken free.”

     Pray we all that Blessed Son
     That He help us when may no man
     And bring to bliss each everyone
     Amen, amen, amen for Charity.

Early English Lyrics, p. 146.  From an MS. in the Sloane collection.

PART TWO

CHAPTER XX