Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847

THE CRUSADE OF THE CHILDREN

Some years ago, while the pastoral charge of the little Saxon village of Grönstetten, from some neglect in the proper authorities, remained vacant, that neighborhood was visited by a strange religious epidemic. It had formerly, indeed, been one of the most cheerful places; standing together, house by house, in the midst of a large, well cultivated plain, on which the fields, scarcely marked out from one another save by neighbourly tokens, stretched with their green level to the side, of the woods, only varied by the different colours of the several crops. The little old church, surrounded by a few spreading trees, stood at the end of the village on some higher ground, raising its gilded steeple into the blue air, so that it always seemed to be touched by an evening sun. Neither wall nor fence was to be seen, and the surrounding level looked like the single farm of a brotherhood; the peasants, noticing of a fine Sunday afternoon how the season had advanced their wheat or flax, appeared to a stranger almost as much interested in one patch as in another. Various games and exercises went on amongst the young men and boys after work and school hours, on the piece of common near the churchyard, while the young maidens and the old people with their children stood by. Nowhere were holidays, occasions of marriage, and old festival traditions more fondly kept; in every house at Christmas, while snow was on the ground and on the bare woods, the window shone so brightly against the icicles hanging from the roof, as the Christmas-tree, with its prettily-adorned branches, was lighted-up; and the whole united family surprised each other with carefully prepared gifts. Then at Easter time, when spring was bursting out of trees and earth, and the birds beginning to sing again, you might have seen with what joy the children rolled their coloured paschal eggs along the grass, parents entering into their feelings with smiles. It was a serious business for them to dress and water the graves under the church wall, wreathing the small head-stones with garlands of fresh wild-flowers, gathered about the ruins of the old castle, which rose on a neighbouring height. Nor did many evenings ever pass that there was not some meeting of the young people in one of the village houses, where the girls brought their spindles, or pieces of cloth to make a bedcover for the dame; while the youths stood by to seize the opportunity for sundry advances of rustic courtship. All this gaiety was by no means inconsistent with the industry in which this resembled other villages of the district; and as little did it result from any want of earnestness and serious thought in matters of religion, or in the attendance upon those services to which the church in due season called every one. For it was while the venerable old pastor lived, that this state of things lasted at Grönstetten. The good man himself diffused by his presence among them, as well as by his precepts, a spirit not only of devotion, but of cheerfulness; nor would he have failed, in case of any causeless absence from church, or on occasion of a breach of morality, to visit, and faithfully reprove the offender. Even after his death, when the services were only occasionally performed by strangers, the change of feeling in the village would not have occurred, but for some other circumstances; doubtless the people themselves possessed sufficient independence and ground of faith to pursue their lives according, to the true temper of rational men, had none interfered with them.

But, about this time, there came frequently to Grönstetten several preachers of a new and almost unknown sect, and of a cast altogether different from what the people had been accustomed to. These persons considered that in time past at Grönstetten all had been in a manner spiritually dead; that men there, indeed, were as good as asleep to all eternal realities, or were at best dreamers of false peace. Not only did they, in their fervid addresses, exaggerate the vileness of human nature, and set it against itself, but the idea of goodness placed by them before the mind, seemed one wholly different from its own direction of progress, if not altogether unattainable. Many simple natural affections were by them almost represented as sinful, while they looked upon the customary diversions in the light of unholy levities, and upon the old holiday practices as traditions quite heathenish. In short, the heaven to which they pointed so mystically, appeared to consist in an utter contrast to all conceptions which were ever formed on earth, to every joy which had been felt by men, even in their moments of purest contact with each other and nature; the reward of some great sacrifice and toil, which were to be undergone. There was much talk of strange, unutterable changes to take place on the earth, for which preparation was to be made; and the new preachers exulted in the interpretation of prophecies, which they fancied could be understood beforehand, in making men uneasy at thought of all outward coming of the Lord, of wars, and destruction, which would make the world worse than ever it had been. Their meeting-house, opened in an old barn, was at first frequented chiefly by women, since the men and older people had a natural dislike to innovation; but eventually the very newness of the doctrine began to gain ground for it, and the fact of its being so distinct from that of the late pastor, only tended to reflect upon his memory. There is, certainly, something in our nature, by which those things most opposed to it, as in a kind of fascination at times lay hold of it; so in hateful dreams or ghost-fears. Especially if the soul be not regularly furnished with supplies of healthy and cheerful enlightenment; and thus it was that this kind of unearth-like religion, imported by men of zeal for the most part sincere and also assisted by sympathy with other places in the neighbourhood, exerted so much influence at the village of Grönstetten. The first symptom of this was exhibited in a certain secret discomfort at home, a sense of division between persons of the same household, which made them look strangely and wonderingly on each other. It seemed, indeed, to be a principal and favourite object of the new-comers to gain over the female members; they aimed their chief blow at the family sacredness, alleging the words, "I am come to set the husband against the wife, the son against the father, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." People came to feel nature also as discordant with themselves; the very grass and trees, and the quietness of the air, seemed to many not so good as before; the mute, inanimate things appeared almost as so many tempting wiles of a hidden power which was below, working through all, and meaning man evil. One would have thought, as they stood listlessly at their doors of an evening, looking beyond into the distance, that they would have taken up staff or scrip and set out on pilgrimage, had they but known where to go, or what to do. After all, however, this state of matters wore itself out, and gradually returned to something like the former; nor would any one have been the worse, rather, in truth, a little wiser, upon the eventual settlement of a new pastor at Grönstetten. Only, indeed, that a few who had not joined in the late feeling, and who had previously been united to their neighbours by intercourse, had for the time seemed to be excluded from their better sympathies, became more worldly, and were inclined to scoff at holy things. As in all cases of extremes, the bad had grown more addicted to vice, none stretching out to them a better hand; and it was long ere a reviving sense of brotherhood did much to raise them higher.

Still the most peculiar feature of this excitement was, that, as if its impulse must extend through every class, the younger people latterly showed signs of a religious emotion, yet stronger and more remarkable than in those less subject to impressions from their years. What they saw and heard in others had sunk into the children's minds, which brooded upon it as if upon the sense of some dispeace, and contradiction at the heart of domestic forms; as if to their clearer instinct various inconsistencies in the practice of life, nay in the parental relations, had been revealed; yet for which the true remedy had been by them misconceived. This appeared with many of them partly in the shape of impatience to go forth into the world, a weariness when the sun light, shining into the cottage, stole from chair to chair, and the clock ticked monotonously against the wall. Something that was to be done and suffered seemed to lie far without; the object of their lives and souls, from which friends, parents, with their daily earth-customs, were tyrannically withholding them. But chiefly, perhaps, from ill-judged, dealing with this vague desire, was it frequently betrayed in enthusiastic words, in a sort of unaccountable, ecstasy in trances, which some reckoned prophetic. Instead of the life-like, careless, childish games, and little quaint devices, which formerly enlivened the house or open air, they gathered together praying, as if for the fulfilment of an unspeakable distantlonging; they went up the street, or across the fields, singing devout hymns. One or another at home would stand up by the table, unabashed by the presence of elder people, and speak from the seeming influence of some internal communication, mystical, half-articulate words, and piously-sounding reproofs or exhortations. It was in vain to chide or chastise them; trustful obedience, humility, content with home, simple duties, cheerful playfulness, were during this interval gone. Parents expected every day to see the childish train assemble and depart from the village on some rapture-wandering; and they were careful every night to lock the doors, and see their family in bed.

None had watched throughout the course of this remarkable visitation, more unaffected by its power than the steadfast, intelligent old Wendel, schoolmaster of Grönstetten; but, especially, he observed its effect upon his own peculiar charge with no small measure of careful anxiety. One fine afternoon, towards the end of school-time, he dismissed the children from their tasks, and gathering them around his seat near the open casements, intimated his intention of relating to them a story from true history, as was occasionally his custom. The old dame his wife, and his daughter, were seated behind him with their work; and the venerable gray-haired man looked cheerfully on the crowd of sober young faces in front, as if he would have diffused somewhat of the spirit of childhood again from his own experience into their innocence. A book from which he had been reading at mid-day lay upon his little desk. Far beyond, out in the upper air shown through the window, a golden sunlight came over the cool green woods, and fell upon the gray towers of the old ruined castle of Grönstetten.

"Children," said he, "yonder old castle takes us back in thought to the time of which I would speak. You must know, that in the old time things were very different from what they are now, although the same green earth and blue air enclosed between them men and children who were at heart the same as ourselves. However, the world was then in great darkness and ignorance: there were no books for children, nor picture's such as you have here to show you what is in other countries; nor were there any schools except for churchmen. The good Heavenly Father, who is always teaching men, doth it by degrees; and for a long time it was only the priests and learned clerks who knew any thing of what God had been doing with the world. This knowledge remained chiefly in their heads; but when the help of strong arms against unbelievers was needed, the time came in which warriors and people also were partly let into the secret. The heart of all Christendom was stirred with the thought that pilgrims were denied access to the place where such great matters had been transacted, and that the holy ground of our Saviour's burial was in the keeping of infidels, as if once more the stone which had been rolled away was put back, and Christ were buried again. Warriors and workmen, having now a part, as it were, in the Church, set out in multitudes to rescue Jerusalem. It was then, too, that the Lord of Grönstetten left his castle, seeking to expiate many a crime he had committed by travelling so many leagues, and striking so many blows. All this was, no doubt, calculated to teach those who went, and those to whom they afterwards returned, not to place their heaven on earth, nor to make up for concerns of the soul by bodily things; when they found, there also, enemies of flesh and blood, and after all the sepulchre empty. Long after this, when the enthusiasm of men about the Holy Land was beginning to fail, and they were looking for the road to Heaven in other ways, the lingering spirit which had once led them forth, seemed to descend in a simpler and purer way into the hearts of children. You may be sure that to Them at home, where all lessons and thoughts were learnt out of the shape of visible things, the sight of those brilliant pageants ever passing towards the East – the tales of pilgrims who came from thence – had been to them as a longing dream. The natural feeling of the young is like that of a heaven near to them – of a holy delight to be at once gained, and without conception of the long, difficult way between, or even of the real entrance to it. The firmament which lies overhead appears to descend upon the very earth at a distance, and all visions and radiant things to issue from an everlasting morning source that is attainable. They know not how, in reality, the natural world is rounded upon itself, so that over every particular spot a continual morn, noon, evening, and night are indeed breaking, and that only in this same station should the life of each individual be best carried out, not leaving it, but accepting there every quiet degree of heaven. At this period of which I speak it became more and more the fashion of the Church, and of those who made pictures or images for shrines, to represent the Saviour as a young child in the arms of Mary his mother. For priests and grown men, the patron was Madonna; whereas Jesus seemed to have himself become again a little Child, appealing finally to the hearts of children. When the Holy City and its land were relapsing once more into the hands of Moslems, many beheld visions and dreams of the Virgin, who, with a sad and pleading face, held out her son, or appeared to be vainly attempting to approach his grave. In France, Italy, and the south of our own German land, children and young people, as if without conference between each other, began very generally to imitate that desire which was already passing away from older persons. They took vows, and banded themselves together to deliver the Holy Land from bondage; nor were there wanting monks and priests who encouraged this emotion, proclaiming that God had chosen the weak things of this earth to confound the strong; and out of the mouths of babes and sucklings would perfect praise. Sometimes you might have seen parents, who in their ignorance partook of this enthusiasm, yoking their oxen to rude carts, and, with their children seated on their household goods, leaving home to find out the Holy Land; and at every city which they came in sight of, the children would shout joyfully, asking if that were Jerusalem. But in one part of Germany at least those vague wishes were drawn out at last into action by the mysterious visits of one, attired like a palmer, with staff and scallop-shell, who passed from house to house, declaring the Divine call. At his voice, the group playing merrily by the wayside was changed into a throng of serious figures: fathers and mothers who returned from church or market found that this strange wayfarer, during their absence, had stood at their hearth. In their longing to be concerned in some behest more pure and worthy than those which were enjoined by earthly friends, the young regarded all common tasks as trivial; they forgot their own childhood in this phantom-Christ who seemed to call them away. The trees and roofs of home! – what were they to the spires and palms of that Jerusalem? And they looked upon the old people as foolish utterly. To the parents, truly this loss of love between them and those they had nourished was very dreadful – this Heaven, that would alienate and draw away their offspring into it, yet had no reference to their own hopes and wishes! In our times, the wise father knows how better to deal with such inexperienced dreams, which indeed are now rather more apt to represent this living world too brightly than to scorn it for spiritual objects; he suffers the boy to take time and find out the reality. But in those days heaven and earth were confounded; they knew not with what words or means to disprove these fancies; there was no world of books wherein the young soul might spend its superfluous thought and distinguish facts from ideas. Thus had they recourse only to outward watchfulness; to locking doors, and separating the children from their companions, whereby the more proud and wilful were but more confirmed. They waited for escape, and got away even by making holes in the walls; issuing forth from home as to a festival procession, which, swelling by degrees to many thousands, was heard passing by the villages, and on toward the East. The eldest was not more than eighteen, while numbers there were of far tenderer years, who, singing as they went, travelled under guidance only of the sky, as each morning it lightened up with radiance, and marked some especial valley or mountain-path as the last verge of a golden Orient. From towns or castles they held apart, sustained merely by the fruits of the earth, or by the gifts of solitary peasants, who rejoiced to offer food to the holy pilgrimage, while at the same time they carefully shut in their own children until it was long out of sight. But as the country grew around them more waste and desert, as they traversed wide, lonely, and barren plains, deep forests, or toilsome hills, the case became different. Some, scattered from the rest, lost their way; others, from weariness and hunger alone, dropped down and died – boys and girls, who in that hour only remembered the bitterness of their mothers' hearts for their loss. Still the main body continued to press forward, encouraged by some bolder spirits amongst them, or by the steadfast, confiding faith of others; for it was the youngest often who seemed to be filled with such patient constancy, so ineffable a sense of Divine aid, that they would scarce have hesitated to cross the deep river on foot, or to throw themselves from the loftiest precipices. Ever and anon, beyond some rude ascent, the broad level of the earth would stretch before them to the silvery horizon, so bright, so green, so beautiful, that methought it was the border of a holier country. Or when the rainbow suddenly spanned the distance with its vivid arch, those who were foremost appeared to the last already to be entering through its gate of triumph into a land of glorious colours, of celestial transfigurement. Then would the stragglers press on in haste to make up with them, but only in time to mix with the crowd which now stood shivering and confused in the shadow of that cloud from which the meteor had passed away. Nevertheless, who could doubt but that the land which they sought, which had been attained by so many multitudes before, truly existed? Were not all these things but signs of its being – tokens that beckoned onward, or difficulties they were to conquer? And when at length the hearts of the children, hitherto sustained by fellow-feeling and the deep excitement of their imagination, did sink down utterly before these hardships, in ignorance of their way – when they had begun to think wistfully each of his own home, with its little daily tasks – then there appeared mysteriously, to guide them, the form of that unknown palmer who had first called them forth. It boots not to follow, step by step, their after wanderings – the further evils which befel them – by what weary ways, by what disappointments, and what incitements they were encountered, until – still led by that strange messenger, whether man, or fiend, or angel – they reached the coasts of the sea. For there, indeed, was the dream of those children bitterly dispelled; there they found a city where men spoke and thought only of buying and selling – where they lived to get gold. Thither, in truth, there came many barks from the East – from that region which had appeared to the children full only of thoughts and sacred mysteries; but the vessels were laden with silks and spices for the rich and noble at home. And, alas! lamentable was the fate of the young pilgrims, falling into the avaricious hands of those, who perchance had heard of their childish visions to draw them thus forth into their power. Because they had nothing else but their beloved gold to exchange for the costly products of the East, those merchants did not scruple even to send to Moors and Saracens for slaves these poor youthful victims who had so delivered themselves up. The Ships were filled with many Christian children, who were thus borne by the wind and sea, as it were, into a region of utter doubt and evil – having cause almost to regard all old beliefs as falsehood, and all men as pitiless and unfriendly. It is sad, my children, to think how true these things were; that so many fair young maidens, who had been their fathers' and mothers' pride, were forced to brook the will of Turkish lords, growing up forgetful of that faith, which became to them as an early, foolish vision; that so many once happy boys should wear away their lives in bondage beneath that very air which they had fancied holier than their own. Yet these had all issued forth in joyous expectation, filled with the hope of heaven. For so it is always on this earth, that happiness and goodness are really to be derived for us human beings through the commonest things. Not far away, nor in any thing which we cannot easily do, but nearer and nearer every day to home, and what we are concerned with, is the Joy, the Peace which glimmers out of every living thing. When you hear of God and heaven, you ought not to think of these as having any meaning separated from direct, unhesitating, simple life – since God is in every growing leaf about us, no less than in the sky; and there is a part of heaven revealed in each right action of this day, in each smile of approval from your parents, and in all temperate earthly joys. Had these unhappy children continued but at home, believing like children that what was good for those older than they was good for themselves also, – looking through their parents at life and death, the necessities of home would have ever drawn round them a line of certainty, sufficient even amidst that unfavourable ancient time. But as it was, they were plunged all at once into a state of complete helplessness, where yesterday had no connexion with today's work, where there was nothing to remind them of their former selves, only that their wish to wander forth to fairer scenes now exchanged for a sick heart-longing after Home, in which many pined away. However, there was One of the captive youths at Tunis to whom this Thought of the spot he had so foolishly left became gradually a sort of nourishment and support, as it grew more clear and fond. Even after his religious belief, for want of the due confirmation, had almost died away, or yielded to his Moorish master's commands, yet the recollection of childish years came in its place, growing and strengthening the more the longer his captivity endured. In his master's train did this youth visit first Mecca, which followers of the Prophet consider holy, and finally also Jerusalem itself. In the latter place, which, so many years before, he and his companions had ignorantly set out to reach, he now was struck with painful wonder, both at all things there, and at himself. Nothing more beautiful or holy was there here than elsewhere. The fields, the woods, and the hut where he was born were, in his mind, fairer far than this pale, scattered city, with its deep, dark valleys of tombs, into which the gray Desert crept. Almost a scorn of all beliefs flashed upon him as he saw the dusty pilgrims prostrate around a piece of silent stone in the church of the Sepulchre, while the turbaned faces of the Moslem sneered behind. Only there still abode in his heart one deep holy Thought, which seemed alone to contain many others unknown – the thought of that one place on earth which had been the source to him of pure feelings, and where he had once been so near to some different beginning of life. It appeared to him that it indeed was worthy to make a pilgrimage to, and that, if he could again return thither, he should from it behold the true opening into things which were at present to him dead and unintelligible. The last hope of his better nature had, as it were, passed unnoticed over his head, and now shone far behind, instead of in the airy future; and thus be remembered how, long ago, on their childish adventure, he had seen with misgiving the Eastern morning sun before them renew its splendour over again in the West.