________________________________________________
_ "_I DO_ not know how that may be," said the mother, lifting her
head, and looking through almost blinding tears, into the face of
her friend. "The poet may be right, and, "Not as a child shall I
again behold him, but the thought brings no comfort. I have lost my
child, and my heart looks eagerly forward to a reunion with him in
heaven; to the blessed hour when I shall again hold him in my arms."
"As a babe?"
"Oh, yes. As a darling babe, pure, and beautiful as a cherub."
"But would you have him linger in babyhood forever?" asked the
friend.
The mother did not reply.
"Did you expect him always to remain a child here? Would perpetual
infancy have satisfied your maternal heart? Had you not already
begun to look forward to the period when intellectual manhood would
come with its crowning honors?"
"It is true," sighed the mother.
"As it would have been here, so will it be there. Here, the growth
of his body would have been parallel, if I may so speak, with the
growth of his mind. The natural and the visible would have developed
in harmony with the spiritual and the invisible. Your child would
have grown to manhood intellectually, as well as bodily. And you
would not have had it otherwise. Growth--development--the going on
to perfection, are the laws of life; and more emphatically so as
appertaining to the life of the human soul. That life, in all its
high activities, burns still in the soul of your lost darling, and
he will grow, in the world of angelic spirits to which our Father
has removed him, up to the full stature of an angel, a glorified
form of intelligence and wisdom. He cannot linger in feeble
babyhood; in the innocence of simple ignorance; but must advance
with the heavenly cycles of changing and renewing states."
"And this is all the comfort you bring to my yearning heart?" said
the mother. "My darling, if all you say be true, is lost to me
forever."
"He was not yours, but God's." The friend spoke softly, yet with a
firm utterance.
"He was mine to love," replied the bereaved one.
"And your love would confer upon its precious object the richest
blessings. Dear friend! Lift your thoughts a little way above the
clouds that sorrow has gathered around your heart, and let
perception come into an atmosphere radiant with light from the Sun
of Truth. Think of your child as destined to become, in the better
world to which God has removed him, a wise and loving angel. Picture
to your imagination the higher happiness, springing from higher
capacities and higher uses, which must crown the angelic life. Doing
this, and loving your lost darling, I know that you cannot ask for
him a perpetual babyhood in heaven."
"I will ask nothing for him but what 'Our Father' pleaseth to give,"
said the mother, in calmer tones. "My love is selfish, I know. I
called that babe mine--mine in the broadest sense--yet he was God's,
as every other creature is his--one of the stones in his living
temple--one of the members of his kingdom. It does not comfort me in
my great sorrow to think that, as a child, I shall not again behold
him, but rays of new light are streaming into my mind, and I see
things in new aspects and new relations. Out of this deep affliction
good will arise."
"Just as certainly," added the friend, "as that the Sun shines and
the dew falls. It will be better for you, and better for the child.
To both will come a resurrection into higher and purer life." _
Read next: CHAPTER V. ANGELS IN THE HEART.
Read previous: CHAPTER III. "RICH AND RARE WERE THE GEMS SHE WORE."
Table of content of All's For the Best
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
