my heart.  I was like one about to die.  I hurried away from the pitiless crowd, from the terrible spectacle, from the city accursed.  And straightway I turned my face toward my home.  And as I came within sight of my father’s kingdom, I gave thanks to God that my lot had been cast in this favored Age, and that the horrors through which the Lord had to pass are behind us; and that we see Him now in the story of the Gospels, as the Son of God, clothed with the glory of God, seated on the throne of heaven and making all things work together for good.”

As the Prince was bringing his speech to a close, a distant rolling of drums announced that one of his brothers had arrived at the gates of the city.  It was Goldmorrow.  And in a little while he entered the hall, embraced his father, and was telling the story of his travel.

“My companions and I,” he said, “have been where the Golden Age of my dreams is displayed.  We have been in that far future where there is to be neither ignorance nor poverty, neither sickness nor pain, and where cruelty and oppression and war are to be no more.  It is greater than my dreams.  It is greater than I have words to tell.  It is greater than I had eyes to see.  We were not able to endure the sight of it.  We felt ourselves to be strangers in a strange land.  The people we met looked upon us as we look upon barbarians.  Our hearts sickened.  We said to each other:  ‘It is too high, we cannot reach up to it.’  The very blessings we had come to see did not look to us like the blessings of which we had dreamed.

“But our greatest trial was still to come.  The Lord had come back to the earth and was living among the people of that Age.  We made our way to the palace in which He lived.  It was like no palace we had ever seen.  It was like great clouds piled up among the hills.  We were present when the doors were thrown open.  We beheld Him coming forth.  But the vision of that glory smote our eyes like fire.  We were not able to gaze upon it.  Our hearts failed within us.  This was not the Christ we had known.  We shrank back from the light of that awful presence.  We fell on the ground before Him.  ’God be merciful to us sinners,’ we cried, ‘we are not worthy to look upon thy face.’  And when we could open our eyes again the vision had passed.

“Then, O father! then, O friends beloved, I knew that I had sinned.  In that moment of my humiliation and shame I recalled a sight which I had seen in the first days of my journey.  I remembered some peasants fleeing from a plague-stricken village, whom we had passed.  I said to myself, I say this day to you, we were that day at the gates of the real Golden Age and we did not know it.  We might that day have turned aside to the help of these peasants, but we missed the golden chance sent to us by God.”

VI.

The Finder of the age.