To get without giving is mean.  To take the torch and not to pass it on is to fail to play the game.  We must hand on to the others the light that has come to us.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 8:  The chief authority for the story of Wilfrid is Bede.]

CHAPTER III

THE KNIGHT OF A NEW CRUSADE

Raymund Lull

(Dates, b. 1234, d. 1315)

I

A little old man, barefooted and bareheaded, and riding upon an ass, went through the cities and towns and villages of Europe, in the eleventh century, carrying—­not a lance, but a crucifix.  When he came near a town the word ran like a forest fire, “It is Peter the Hermit.”

All the people rushed out.  Their hearts burned as they heard him tell how the tomb of Jesus Christ was in the hand of the Moslem Turk, of how Christians going to worship at His Tomb in Jerusalem were thrown into prison and scourged and slain.  Knights sold lands and houses to buy horses and lances.  Peasants threw down the axe and the spade for the pike and bow and arrows.  Led by knights, on whose armour a red Cross was emblazoned, the people poured out in their millions for the first Crusade.  It is said that in the spring of 1096 an “expeditionary force” of six million people was heading toward Palestine.

The Crusades were caused partly by the cruelty of the followers of Mohammed, the Moslem Turks, who believed that they could earn entrance into Paradise by slaying infidel Christians.  The Moslems every day and five times a day turn their faces to Mecca in Arabia, saying “There is no God but God; Mohammed is the Prophet of God.”  Allah (they believe) is wise and merciful to His own, but not holy, nor our Father, nor loving and forgiving, nor desiring pure lives.  On earth and in Paradise women have no place save to serve men.

The first Crusade ended in the capture of Jerusalem (July 15, 1099), and Godfrey de Bouillon became King of Jerusalem.  But Godfrey refused to put a crown upon his head.  For, he said, “I will not wear a crown of gold in the city where Our Lord Jesus Christ wore a crown of thorns.”

    The fortunes of Christian and Moslem ebbed and flowed for nearly
    two hundred years, during which time there were seven Crusades
    ending at the fall of Acre into the hands of the Turks in 1291.

The way of the sword had failed, though indeed the Crusades had probably been the means of preventing all Europe from being overrun by the Moslems.  At the time when the last Crusade had begun a man was planning a new kind of Crusade, different in method but calling for just as much bravery as the old kind.  We are going to hear his story now.

II

The Young Knight’s Vision