Such realisation would be the redemption of
the present culture of the West. For workers of every kind--not only
artists, musicians, novelists, but the handicraftsmen, the shapers of
useful things, of churches and houses and laws, even the labourers in
the road and the garden--would be living in the strength of a promise
and the light of a vision.
* * * * *
The pilgrimage was a carrying of the cross, but it was also a happy
wayfaring. It was a hard journey but not comfortless. Many of the
pilgrims walked thousands of miles in Russia before finally embarking
on the pilgrim boat. They walked solitarily, not in great bands, and
they were poor. From village to village, from the Far North, Central
Russia and the East, they tramped their way to Odessa and Batoum, and
they depended all the way on other men's hospitality. As Jeremy said,
"They had no money: instead of which they found other men's charity."
They lived night by night in hundreds of peasant homes, and prayed day
by day in hundreds of little churches. Not only did they find their
daily bread "for the love of God," but in many cases they were
furnished even to Jerusalem itself with passage money for the boat
journey, and bread to keep the body alive.
Such pilgrims often were illiterate, and it was astonishing how they
remembered all the folk they had to pray for at Jerusalem; for
every poor peasant who could not leave his native village, but gave
threepence or four-pence to the wanderer, asked to be remembered in
the land "where God walked".
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234