After him, Ekkehard mounted the altar-steps. With deep emotion his eye glided over the crowded assembly; once more the remembrance of how he had but a short while ago, stood face to face with the Duchess in the solitary chamber, passed through his mind,--and then he read the gospel of the suffering and death of our Saviour. As he read on, his voice became always clearer and more distinct, and when he had finished, he first kissed the book and then handed it to the deacon, for him to put it back on its silk cushion. For a moment he looked up heavenwards, and then began his sermon. The assembly listened to his words with breathless attention. "Almost a thousand years have come and gone," cried he, "since the Son of God, bent his head on the cross, saying: 'it is finished!' but we have not yet prepared our souls to receive the redemption, for we have lived in sin, and the offences which we have committed through the hardness of our hearts, cry out against us, towards Heaven. Therefore a time of affliction has come upon us; glittering swords are raised against us; heathenish monsters have invaded the christian territories. "But instead of angrily enquiring, 'how long will the Lord forbear, before He interferes and delivers our beloved homes from the hands of such heathenish idolaters,' let everybody strike his own bosom and say: on account of our sins this chastisement has been sent upon us. And if ye would be delivered from them, think of our Saviour's painful death, and as he took up his cross, bearing it himself to the place of skulls, seize the sword, and choose your own Golgotha!" ... Pointing over to the shores of the lake, he poured out words of comfort and prophecy, strong and powerful, as the lion's call in the desert. "The times are coming of which it has been written: 'And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations, which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up, on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God, out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night, for ever and ever.'[12]