“A child of the Kingdom, indeed! When thy parents are converted, the family tie will be revived. Thou dost feel the love of heaven; the great eternal family bond, as Christ when he said: ‘My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it.’”
“But if I hope to bring my parents together I must go first to my father and persuade him. I know my mother will object to the journey. Can I disobey her and still please God?”
“Ask God. I have for thee, and already see thy way. I have already acted in this matter.”
“I can not forget the law in that I learn that ‘He that setteth lightly by his father or his mother is cursed.’ Among our noble ancients, the Maccabees, the disobedient child was even stoned to death.”
“But thy salvation puts thee under the Gospel, although, under the Law even parents had duties; they were forbidden to make their children walk through the idolatrous fires. What says Jesus to thee?”
“I do not know whether it be His spirit or not; yet all the time I hear a voice within me saying: ‘These twain shall be one.’”
“I see thy soul abhors this actual divorcement of thy parents. Oh, how some play hide and seek with their consciences around forms as these do; not comforting but hating each other; not bearing together their common burdens; wide seas between them, yet fancying they have violated no law of God, because they have not asked the law of man to do what it never can, truly, proclaim two, neither having committed the deadly sin, apart.”
“This separate living is their constant sin?”
“He that starts wrongly repeats the wrong anew each time that, by act or thought, he approves the wrong first done. Sin’s name is truly legion.”
“What an awful thing is sin!”