Then he called on them to take up arms for the deliverance of the Holy Land. “If you live,” said he, “you will possess the kingdoms of the East; if you die, you will be owned in heaven as the soldiers of the Lord; Let no love of home detain you; behold only the shame and sufferings of the Christians, hear only the groans of Jerusalem, and remember that the Lord has said, ‘He that loveth his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. Whoso shall leave house, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, and all that he has, for My sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and in the world to come eternal life.’” “_Deus vult; Deus vult;_”--It is God’s will--broke as with one voice from the assembly, echoing from the hills around, and pealing with a voice like thunder. “Yes, it is God’s will,” again spoke Urban, “Let these words be your war-cry, and keep you ever in mind that the Lord of Hosts is with you.” Then holding on high the Cross--“Our Lord himself presents you His own Cross, the sign raised aloft to gather the dispersed of Israel. Bear it on your shoulders and your breast; let it shine on your weapons and your standards. It will be the pledge of victory or the palm of martyrdom, and remind you, that, as your Saviour died for you, so you ought to die for Him.” Outcries of different kinds broke out, but all were for the holy war. Adhemar de Monteil, Bishop of Puy, a neighboring See, first asked for the Cross, and thousands pressed after him, till the numbers of Crosses failed that had been provided, and the cardinals and other principal persons tore up their robes to furnish more. The crusading spirit spread like circles from a stone thrown into the water, as the clergy of the council carried their own excitement to their homes, and the hosts who took the Cross were beyond all reckoning. On the right or wrong of the Crusades, it is useless as well as impossible to attempt to decide. It was doubtless a spirit of religion, and not of self-interest, that prompted them; they were positively the best way of checking the progress of Mahometanism and the incursions of its professors, and they were undertaken with far purer intentions than those with which they were carried on. That they afterward turned to great wickedness, is not to be denied; some of the degenerate Crusaders of the latter days were among the wickedest of mankind, and the misuse of the influence they gave the Popes became a source of some of the worst practices of the Papacy. Already Pope Urban was taking on him to declare that a man who perished in the Crusade was sure of salvation, and his doctrine was still further perverted and falsified till it occasioned endless evils. Yet, in these early days, joined with many a germ of evil, was a grandeur of thought, a self-devotion, and truly religious spirit, which will hardly allow us to call the first Crusade other than a glorious and a Holy War.