For the long lancet window that faces east it was extremely difficult to
find a subject, owing to its extreme narrowness and height. Many
subjects were tried, but in the end the difficulty was solved by a chance
holiday visit to an old Cornish church at St. Neots, and by the reading
of a passage out of the “Legend of the Cross” in Baring Gould’s “Curious
Myths of the Middle Ages,” pp. 379–382, {14} which was called to mind by
a valued Cornish friend. Out of the “Legend of the Cross,” one of the
greatest popularity in the Middle Ages, and often lending itself to
representation in varied form in fresco or stained glass, has been
designed a window which tells of “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained,”
lost when Adam was driven forth from Eden, but regained through the
Saviour who died upon the Cross, made, so the Legend runs, from the wood
of the three trees which, incorporated and confounded as to their several
natures in a single trunk, had grown from the three seeds of the Tree of
Life, given to Seth by the Guardian Angel and planted by him in his
father’s tomb. “The Tree had grown till its branches reached heaven.
The boughs were covered with leaves and flowers and fruit. But the
fairest fruit was a little babe, a living sun, who seemed to be listening
to the songs of seven white doves who circled round his head.” So runs
the legend of the vision of the son of Adam, as, stopped at Eden’s gate
by the angel with the flaming sword, he looked into the future. Perhaps,
after all, this vision of the redemption of mankind by the coming of the
Saviour endowed with all the seven-fold gifts of the Spirit, is not an
unworthy subject for a stained glass window in a Christian church to-day.