the Golden Age has come."

II.

DIFFERENT VIEWS.

It was a great loss to these children that this holy and beautiful mother died when they were still very young. But her good teaching did not die. Her words about the Golden Age never passed out of their minds. Whatever else they thought concerning it in after years, they always came back to this—in this they were all agreed—that it is the presence of Christ that makes the Gold of the Golden Age.

But at this point their agreement came to an end. They could never agree respecting the time of the Golden Age.

Yestergold believed that it lay in the past. In his esteem the former times were better than the present. People were simpler then, and truer to each other and happier. There was more honesty in trade, more love in society, more religion in life. Many an afternoon he went alone into the old abbey, where the tombs of saintly ladies, of holy men, and of brave fighters lay, and as he wandered up and down looking at their marble images, the gates of the Golden Age seemed to open up before him. There was one figure, especially, before which he often stood. It was the figure of a Crusader, his sword by his side, his hands folded across his breast, and his feet resting on a lion. "Ay," he would say, "in that Age the souls of brave men really trod the lion and the dragon under foot." But when the light of the setting sun came streaming through the great window in the west, and kindling up the picture of Christ healing the sick, his soul would leap up for joy, a new light would come into his eyes, and this thought would rise within him like a song—"The Golden Age itself—the Age into which all other Ages open and look back—is pictured there."

But on such occasions, as he came out of the abbey and went along the streets, if he met the people hastening soiled and weary from their daily toils, the joy would go out of his heart. He would begin to think of the poor lives they were leading. And he would cry within himself, "Oh that the lot of these toiling crowds had fallen on that happy Age! It would have been easy then to be good. Goodness was in the very air blessed by His presence. The people had but to see Him to be glad." And sometimes his sorrow would be for himself. Sometimes, remembering his own struggles to be good, and the difficulties in his way, and how far he was from being as good as he ought to be, he would say, "Would that I myself had been living when Jesus was on the earth." More or less this wish was always in his heart. It had been in his heart from his earliest years. Indeed, it is just a speech of his, made when he was a little boy, which has been turned into the hymn we so often sing:—

  "I think when I read that sweet story of old,
    When Jesus was here among men,
  How He called little children, as lambs, to His fold,
    I should like to have been with Him then.

  "I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,
    That His arms had been thrown around me,
  That I might have seen His kind looks when He said,
    'Let the little ones come unto Me.'"

Goldmorrow's thoughts were different. They went forward into the future. He had hardly any of Yestergold's difficulties about being good. He did not think much about his own state. What took up all his thoughts was the state of the world in which his brothers and he were living. How was that to be made better? As he went up and down in his father's kingdom, he beheld hovels in which poor people had to live, and drink-shops, and gambling-houses, and prisons. He was always asking himself, how are evils like these to be put away? Whatever good any Age of the past had had, these things had never been cast out. He did not think poorly of the Age when Christ was on the earth. He was as pious as his brother. He loved the Lord as much as his brother. But his love went more into the future than into the past. It was the Lord who was coming, rather than the Lord who had come, in whom he had joy. "The Golden Age would come when Christ returned to the earth," he said. The verses in the Bible where this coming was foretold shone like light for Goldmorrow. And often, as he read them aloud to his brothers and his sister, his eyes would kindle and he would burst out with speeches like this: "I see that happy time approaching. I hear its footsteps. My ears catch its songs. It is coming. It is on the way. My Lord will burst those heavens and come in clouds of glory, with thousands and tens of thousands in His train. And things evil shall be cast out of the kingdom. And things that are wrong shall be put right. There shall be neither squalor, nor wretched poverty, nor crime, nor intemperance, nor ignorance, nor hatred, nor war. All men shall be brothers. Each shall be not for himself but for the kingdom. And Christ shall be Lord of all."

In these discussions Goldenday was always the last to speak. And always he had least to say. I have been told that he was no great speaker. But my impression is that he got so little attention from his brothers when he spoke, that he got into the way of keeping his thoughts to himself. But everybody knew that he did not agree with either of his brothers. His belief was that the present Age, with all its faults, was the Golden Age for the people living in it. And there is no doubt that that was the view of his sister Faith. For when at any time he happened to let out even the tiniest word with that view in it, she would come closer to him, lean up against his side, and give him a hidden pressure of the hand.

III.

SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN AGE.

When these views of the young Princes came to be known, the people took sides, some with one Prince, some with another. The greatest number sided with Yestergold, a number not so great with Goldmorrow, and a few, and these for the most part of humble rank, with Goldenday. In a short time nothing else was talked about, from one end of the kingdom to the other, but the time of the Golden Age. And this became a trouble to the King.

Now there happened to be living at that time in the palace a wise man, a high Councillor of State, whom the King greatly esteemed, and whose counsel he had often sought. To him in his trouble the King turned for advice.

"Let not this trouble thee, O King," the Councillor said. "Both for the Princes and the people it is good that thoughts on this subject should come out into talk. But let the thoughts be put to the test. Let the Princes, with suitable companions, be sent forth to search for this Age of Gold. Although the Age itself, in its very substance, is hid with God, there is a country in which shadows of all the Ages are to be seen. In that country, the very clouds in the sky, the air which men breathe, and the hills and woods and streams shape themselves into images of the life that has been, or is to be among men. And whosoever reaches that country and looks with honest, earnest eyes, shall see the Age he looks for, just as it was or is to be, and shall know concerning it whether it be his Age of Gold. At the end of a year, let the travelers return, and tell before your Majesty and an assembly of the people the story of their search." To this counsel the King gave his assent. And he directed his sons to make the choice of their companions and prepare for their journey.

Yestergold, for his companions, chose a painter and a poet. Goldmorrow preferred two brothers of the Order of Watchers of the Sky. But Goldenday said, "I shall be glad if my sister Faith will be companion to me." And so it was arranged.

Just at that time the King was living in a palace among the hills.