In the lulls of her pain
he told her about the man Christ Jesus--what he did for the poor
creatures who came to him--how kindly he spoke to them--how he cured
them. He told her how gentle he was with the sinning women, how he
forgave them and told them to do so no more. He left the story
without comment to work that faith which alone can redeem from
selfishness and bring into contact with all that is living and
productive of life, for to believe in him is to lay hold of eternal
life: he is the Life--therefore the life of men. She gave him but
little encouragement: he did not need it, for he believed in the
Life. But her outcries were no longer accompanied with that fierce
and dreadful language in which she sought relief at first. He said
to himself, 'What matter if I see no sign? I am doing my part. Who
can tell, when the soul is free from the distress of the body, when
sights and sounds have vanished from her, and she is silent in the
eternal, with the terrible past behind her, and clear to her
consciousness, how the words I have spoken to her may yet live and
grow in her; how the kindness God has given me to show her may help
her to believe in the root of all kindness, in the everlasting love
of her Father in heaven? That she can feel at all is as sure a sign
of life as the adoration of an ecstatic saint.'
He had no difficulty now in getting from her what information she
could give him about his father.
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