LESSON VI
RESIGNATION
Rabbi Meir, the great teacher, sat one Sabbath day in the school of the holy law, and taught the people. The rabbi had two sons, who were youths of great promise and well instructed in the law. On that Sabbath day they both died.
Tenderly their mother bore them to an upper chamber, laid them on her bed, and spread a white sheet over their bodies.
In the evening Rabbi Meir came home. "Where are my sons," asked he, "that I may give them my blessing?"
"They are gone into the school of the law," was his wife's reply.
"I looked around me," said he, "and I did not see them."
She set before him a cup; he praised the Lord for the close of the Sabbath, drank, and then asked again, "Where are my sons, that they may also drink of the wine of blessing?"
"They cannot be far off," said his wife, as she placed food before him and begged him to eat.
When he had given thanks after the meal, she said, "Rabbi, allow me a question."
"Speak, my beloved," answered he.
"Some time ago," said she, "a certain one gave me jewels to keep for him, and now he asks them back. Shall I give him them?"
"My wife should not need to ask such a question," said Rabbi Meir.
"Would you hesitate to give anyone back his own?"
"Oh, no," replied she, "but I did not like to give them back without your knowing beforehand." Then she led him to the upper chamber, stepped in, and took the covering off the bodies.
"Oh, my sons," sobbed the father, "my sons, my sons!" The mother turned herself away and wept.
Soon, however, his wife took him by the hand and said: "Rabbi, have you not taught me that we must not refuse to give back what was intrusted to us to keep? See, the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: the name of the Lord be blessed."
And Rabbi Meir repeated the words, and said from the depths of his heart, "Amen."