Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/15

 Strange sights are around him, he sees them not; strange sounds assail his ears, he hears but one—the trumpet-note which gives the signal for him to stay his wanderings and rest his weary feet.

It is possible to linger over those noble woodcuts, and learn from them something new each time that we study them; they are picture-poems full of latent depths of thought. And now let us to the history of this most thrilling of all Mediæva1 myths, if a myth.

The words of the Gospel contain the germs out of which the story has developed. “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom ,” are our Lord’s words, which I can hardly think apply to the destruction of Jerusalem, as commentators explain it to escape the difficulty. That some should live to see Jerusalem destroyed was not very surprising, and hardly needed the emphatic Verily which Christ only used when speaking something of peculiarly solemn or mysterious import.

Besides, St. Luke’s account manifestly refers the coming in the kingdom to the Judgment, for the