"
The Recluse bowed his head.
"Wait for me here with them, dear Child, I will fetch you after
service."
The church began to fill; old men in smock frocks and tall hats,
little children wrapped warm against the cold, lads, shining and
spruce, old women in crossed shawls and wonderful bonnets. The
service was not very long; then the Recluse went up into the old
grey stone pulpit. The villagers settled to listen--he did not
often preach.
"My brothers and sisters, to-night we keep the Birth of the Holy
Babe, and to-night you and I stand at the gate of the Kingdom of
Heaven, the gate which is undone only at the cry of a little child.
'Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not
enter.'
"The Kingdom is a great one, nay, a limitless one; and many enter
in calling it by another name. It includes your own hearts and
this wonderful forest, all the wise and beautiful works that men
have ever thought of or done, and your daily toil; it includes your
nearest and dearest, the outcast, the prisoner, and the stranger;
it holds your cottage home and the jewelled City, the New Jerusalem
itself. People are apt to think the Kingdom of Heaven is like
church on Sunday, a place to enter once a week in one's best:
whereas it holds every flower, and has room for the ox and the ass,
and the least of all creatures, as well as for our prayer and
worship and praise.
"'Except ye become as little children.
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