Original - The MAN & Other Families

Of Dartmoor and its Borderland. 5greatest care. Not only did the wayside and village crosssuffer at a time when men's mistaken zeal caused them tocommit acts of destruction in and around our churches, but inquite recent years they have received, in too many instances,but little consideration. In the one case the guiding influencewas bigotry in;the other, ignorance or apathy. The latter,it is pleasing to know, are being removed ;the former we canpity, without being so uncharitable as to blame. There is, intruth, no room for blame. The men who cast out the gravenimages from the churches, and overturned and shattered thesculptured stones by the wayside and on the village green,warred not against the cross, but against idolatry.Apart from the interest attaching to the cross as a symbolof Christianity, it has other claims on our attention. Noobject in our island belonging to historic times is older. Itexisted before the earliest churches, for without doubt thelatter came to the cross the cross did not come to them.Where it was reared, people gathered for worship, and believershad before their eyes that which would cause them toremember the great work accomplished for mankind, as indays remote the stones set up in the sacred river remindedthe Israelites of their deliverance from bondage. There is atradition connected with the church and cross at North Lew,a parish to the north of Dartmoor, which tells us that thelatter was anciently a preaching station of the monks ofTavistock. After a time a church was commenced to bebuilt. First one aisle, then a second and a third, and so thestructure was gradually completed.But the cross, though no longer needed for its originalpurpose when each parish had its church, remained still anobject of veneration, while within the sacred building itsplace was supplied by the great rood. And as it had beenduring long years the one point to which the littlecommunitywere drawn for worship, so it came to be looked upon as thecommon centre of the village, and from ittidings were proclaimedin which the people were interested, and much tookaround it that affected the common weal.placeAn object that could turn the thoughts to an event of suchimportance as the great sacrifice once offered for mankind, waspeculiarly fitted for setting up in such places as the wayfarermight pass, for it became a guide to him in a double sense.