t, on the other hand, the old people were much
surprised, when he told them that night of his wanderings, how it was that
he who had visited the Sepulchre itself, did not perceive there best that
the Saviour was risen. And it could perhaps only be thoroughly apprehended
by the returned pilgrim himself, when once more there arose for him a home
on the spot where his father's cottage had stood, and when it was shared
with him by that fair young maiden whose countenance had first again
restored to him the conception of life which he had lost. For then it was
that, in the fulfilment of common simple necessities, in unquestioning
intercourse with natural things, and in gradual progress to the holy
grave, he felt truly how the pure and complete hope of happiness proceeds
out of the bosom of human life; how the desire of goodness must be drawn
out of real experience; and how enthusiasm disproportioned to its object
is dangerous and false. It was thus, my children," said the old
schoolmaster, looking round them all in succession, "that one of the
children who sought the Holy Land far off, was taught to seek it near at
hand; and that perhaps many knights and pilgrims of the Crusade may have
found it on their return. And the mistakes of that period are doubtless
capable of their benefit to us.

"It is now with us no longer a formal, but a spiritual system of things;
the heavenly good, the communion of God with man, are no more confined to
particular places and signs, nor, on the other hand, to singular acts and
language. Christ hath made all things, yea, the very commonest, holy to
us and sacramental, if we only strive to apprehend their deep inward
meaning. It is the religion of The Homely,--of Him who as a child in
Bethlehem concerned himself with little household matters as they befell;
and thus prepared himself for being about his Greater Father's business in
the Temple. Duty extends her mighty, solemn chain unbrokenly from the
lowest to the highest: nay, the least insect in the grass performs a
behest that is not to be contemned. This was one chief lesson of The Great
Master's earthly life,--and in his Resurrection from death, also, taught
he his disciples not to limit his presence to any one form of things, but
to look for _it_ in all: when they found the Grave empty, and yet in an
ordinary figure, or in a passenger by the way, they suddenly recognised
their Lord, and He seemed to break out of every thing that was around
the