Mrs.
Falconer burst into a very agony of weeping. From that day, for
many years, the name of her lost Andrew never passed her lips in the
hearing of her grandson, and certainly in that of no one else.
But in a few weeks she was more cheerful. It is one of the
mysteries of humanity that mothers in her circumstances, and holding
her creed, do regain not merely the faculty of going on with the
business of life, but, in most cases, even cheerfulness. The
infinite Truth, the Love of the universe, supports them beyond their
consciousness, coming to them like sleep from the roots of their
being, and having nothing to do with their opinions or beliefs. And
hence spring those comforting subterfuges of hope to which they all
fly. Not being able to trust the Father entirely, they yet say:
'Who can tell what took place at the last moment? Who can tell
whether God did not please to grant them saving faith at the
eleventh hour?'--that so they might pass from the very gates of
hell, the only place for which their life had fitted them, into the
bosom of love and purity! This God could do for all: this for the
son beloved of his mother perhaps he might do!
O rebellious mother heart! dearer to God than that which beats
laboriously solemn under Genevan gown or Lutheran surplice! if thou
wouldst read by thine own large light, instead of the glimmer from
the phosphorescent brains of theologians, thou mightst even be able
to understand such a simple word as that of the Saviour, when,
wishing his disciples to know that he had a nearer regard for them
as his brethren in holier danger, than those who had not yet
partaken of his light, and therefore praying for them not merely as
human beings, but as the human beings they were, he said to his
Father in their hearing: 'I pray not for the world, but for
them,'--not for the world now, but for them--a meaningless
utterance, if he never prayed for the world; a word of small
meaning, if it was not his very wont and custom to pray for the
world--for men as men.
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