There have been many Elizabeth’s who wore crowns. Almost everyone knows about the beloved Queen Elizabeth of England and the charming Princess Elizabeth. Perhaps you know about the great Queen Elizabeth who ruled England in the sixteenth century. She was called the Virgin Queen, and the state of Virginia, in the United States, was named in her honor by the brave men who came to this wild, new land to explore and settle it. Many boys and girls, too, know the story of the Princess Elizabeth who was the daughter of King Charles I and lived in England many, many years ago. At that time there was a great deal of trouble in England and there were wars and fighting everywhere. That was why the little Princess Elizabeth was a prisoner in the big Carisbrooke Castle when she was twelve.
The only friend that the princess was allowed to take into her castle prison with her was a book, but it was the very best Book a little girl in such an unhappy place could have. It was the Grand Old Book about which boys and girls sing:
The Grand Old Book! The Grand Old Book!
You'll find the words of comfort
Wherever you may look.
In sorrow or in pain,
Its promises are plain,
So keep on believing in the Grand Old Book!
Princess Elizabeth did just that. She kept on believing in the Grand Old Book. She read in it of the Lord Jesus Christ who came to save His people from their sins. She read that He had said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." She came to Him and believed that He died to save her. Then one morning when she was very tired of being a prisoner and needed "words of comfort" she went again to the Grand Old Book. She read, "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." Surely these were "words of comfort" and a "plain promise" to a tired little princess who was in sorrow. She put her finger on the place and closed her eyes. Perhaps she went to sleep resting on that promise; no one knows. At any rate, when the attendant came into the room a little later the princess seemed to be asleep, but she would not waken. When they looked more closely they saw that she had gone to be with the Lord Jesus-to that place which He had prepared for her.
Although her story is a very interesting one, she is not the Elizabeth of our story. This Elizabeth was a cousin of that Princess Elizabeth, and was born far away from England in a beautiful old castle at Heidelberg, Germany, in 1619.
The year 1619 was long ago. It was the year before the Pilgrims came in the "Mayflower" to Plymouth Rock, and started their colony in North America. In that long-ago time in England, where King Charles' little daughter, Princess Elizabeth, lived, and in Germany, where the Princess Elizabeth of our story lived, there was a war, and many fathers and big brothers and uncles marched away to be soldiers.
The same Book which brought words of life and hope to Princess Elizabeth when she was a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, the same Book which revealed eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ to Princess Elizabeth of Heidelberg Castle, is still the same wonderful Book today. The Bible can bring to boys and girls of today the same message of salvation and hope it brought to those who read and believed it in those days of long ago.
Princess Elizabeth's father was Frederick V, the king of Bohemia, one of the German states, and her mother was Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of King James 1 of England and the sister of King Charles I.
When the princess was a very little girl her father's enemies came and the family had to flee from the beautiful castle home above the wide sunny valley of the Neckar River. From place to place they fled before their enemies and the little princess finally was given into the care of her grandmother.
This grandmother reminds us of a grandmother of long ago-Grandmother Lois, who taught her little grandson, Timothy, the Holy Scriptures which are able to make even a child wise unto salvation. Elizabeth's grandmother, Juliane, did the same thing. She thought that the Bible was the most important book for a little girl to study, so she taught Elizabeth from Scripture and also from the Heidelberg Catechism. This catechism was a series of questions and answers which were intended to teach children the great truths of the Bible. Some of the statements in it were very fine and these the little princess memorized.
At the age of eight she went to live again with her parents who had found a haven from their wanderings at the Hague. Here the little girl found herself a member of a large family among which she felt like a stranger. There were three sisters and nine brothers most of whom she knew not at all.
Her sisters, Louise and Henriette, thought her a very strange, quiet little girl, who loved books more than was necessary. They said she was "so like her grandmother." Her mother considered her children a necessary nuisance and much preferred the company of her many dogs and pet monkeys to that of her husband or her children. She was also very fond of her horses and liked nothing more than a good hunt. She spent much of her time at her country house, and left her family in the care of numerous governesses, tutors, and nurses. The little princess found life now very different from what it had been with her grandmother, and she longed to return to the life she had known in happier days-days spent with her books and her quiet lessons.
In her brother Henry, a year older than she, Elizabeth found a beloved companion. Here was one who could share her playtime-her books-and her thoughts. She in turn shared with him the lessons which he had to learn-lessons from which she, as a girl, was exempt. To the amazement and scorn of her sisters she studied Greek, Latin, mathematics, philosophy, and all the things it was considered necessary for a prince to know.
One night sorrow came to the princess-such sorrow as she had never known. Henry, the dearest of the family, was drowned. It seemed to Elizabeth that the sunshine had gone out of her life forever. Although she had learned many Scripture promises from her grandmother, she knew them only in her head, not in her heart, and so she had nothing to comfort her in her sorrow. If she had only known and trusted the Lord Jesus Christ she would have found Him "a very present help in trouble." She would have known God as the "God of all comfort," as Paul calls Him in his letter to the Corinthians. So, you see, merely knowing God's Word does not make us know and trust the Lord Jesus: we must believe it. None of Elizabeth's other brothers or sisters had loved her as Henry had loved her, and none of them had understood her thoughts and hopes as he had. In her loneliness Elizabeth turned more and more to her books.
Then, four years later, sorrow came again to trouble Elizabeth. This time her father, whom she had learned to love dearly, was taken by death. More than ever Elizabeth pondered the questions of life and death. What is life? What is death? Elizabeth did not know. She had never become acquainted with Him who is the Author of Life, and so she tried to find answers to her questions in the philosophies and writings of men, wise in the knowledge of this world, but knowing not God's wisdom. She could not find the answer to her questions. She did not go to the Word of God which could have answered them for her.
She would have learned from the Bible that death is separation. Spiritual death is separation from God. Adam and Eve were driven from the presence of God when they sinned. Eternal death is eternal separation from God and from the light of His presence. Death, both physical and spiritual, is the result of sin. She would have learned that life, both physical and eternal, is the gift of God; that eternal life comes by accepting Him who could say of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Elizabeth sought comfort from many books instead of the Book, and found nothing that could give peace in her heart and rest for her soul.
In the first chapter of Corinthians we read many things concerning man's wisdom. God's judgment of man's wisdom is summed up in this sentence: "The foolishness of God is wiser than men." That means that the very wisest things man can say or think are far, far below anything God thinks. God, who made this world, and everything in it, knows much more than all the wise men of this world can discover. Wise men have discovered the laws of gravity and centrifugal force, and these have influenced many great and marvelous inventions; but since the creation of the world God has known them, even before the creation of the world, for He established these laws in the beginning.
Men have studied the stars, and have learned many wonderful things about them. Astronomers can measure the distance between them and the earth; they can predict accurately, long in advance, where a certain star will be in the sky at a given time, for men have recorded their movements with much precision. But God made all the stars and holds them all in their places. He not only knows how they move, but He is the One who makes them move in regular and orderly fashion.
So it is in every branch of science and learning known to man. Whatever wise men have discovered, or may yet discover, about the great and scientific things of this world, their knowledge can never approach God's, for He made all these wonders of the universe.
To everyone who would be truly wise, God gives this word of instruction: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 9:1010The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10)). Many people who think themselves very wise, and who are considered very learned by their fellow men, have not even the beginning of wisdom in God's sight because they do not reverence and believe Him!
Thus Elizabeth passed her childhood, accumulating a vast store of learning, yet puzzled and bewildered by the great unanswered questions of eternity which troubled her heart.