| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 1 |
Page 5 |
What a countless multitude of mothers there are, for example, whose little children have been lifted out of their arms and borne away! The bud did not have time to open in the short summer of earth. It is carried from us, still folding in its closed up calyxes all its possibilities of loveliness, power and life. Sorrow weeps bitterly, almost inconsolably over the hopes which seem blighted, and cuts on the marble shaft an unopened bud, a torn branch, or some other symbol of incompleteness. Yet when we believe in immortality, what matters it that the bud did not open here and unfold its beauty this side the grave? There will be time enough in heaven’s long summer for every life to put forth all its loveliness. Faith in immortality lifts the veil, and eyes of love find these sweet infant faces again in the beautiful land.
“I wonder, oh I wonder, where the little faces go,
That come and smile and stay a while, and pass like flakes of snow–
The dear wee baby faces that the world has never known,
But mothers hide, so tender eyed, deep in their hearts alone.
“I love to think that somewhere, in the country we call heaven,
The land most fair of everywhere will unto them be given.
A land of little faces–very little, very fair–
And every one shall know her own and cleave unto it there.
“Oh grant it, loving Father, to the broken hearts that plead!
Thy way is best–yet oh, to rest in perfect faith indeed!
To know that we shall find them, even them, the wee white dead,
At thy right hand, in they bright land, by living waters led!”
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