“‘Whatever time my Saviour calls me, I shall be ready to go....’ Often and often,” Mrs. Adam told us, as her tears fell, “he has said those words to me.”
Like many another active, hard-working man, the thought of failing health, debility, old age, was abhorrent to him.
“He never could have borne a long illness.” Thus the widow tries to console herself—pitiful scraps of self-administered comfort with which poor humanity always attempts to parry the horror of an unmitigated tragedy!
There are strange secrets between the soul and God. Among the many wonders of the City of Light will be the simple solving of the riddles that have been so dark and tormenting to our earthly minds. From the very beginning of the war this honest Englishman had wanted to go out and serve his country. He was over age. His wife and two children depended on his labours, yet the longing never left him.
“I doubt but I’ll have to go yet,” was a phrase constantly on his lips.
He had joined the Ambulance Corps and, indeed, was on his way to that errand of mercy when he was stricken. Did he in those inner communes of the soul with God breathe forth his desire to give his life for his country, and was it somehow mystically accomplished? For death smote him and he fell and lay in his blood, as a soldier might. Who knows that the sacrifice was not accepted?
It was terrible for us—it seemed an unbelievable addition to her burthen of sorrow for the woman who loved him—but for him it may have been the glory and the crown.
When all human aid is unavailing, when everything that science can do to assist or relieve has been accomplished and fellow-creatures must stand aside and watch the relentless law of nature accomplish itself, then the value of religion is felt, as perhaps never before, even by the most devout.
Had poor Adam but belonged to the Old Faith the call for the priest would have been more urgent yet than the call for the doctor; we would have had the consolation of hearing the last Absolution pronounced over the unconscious form. The soul would have taken flight from the anointed body, strengthened by the ultimate rites; the child of the Church would have gone forth from the arms of the Church—from the arms of the earthly mother, to the mercy and justice of the heavenly Father.