"Ah," said Amroth, "it is the new birth. You can never be the same again. But you are not yet lost in Him. The time for that is not yet. It is a mystery; but as yet God works outward, radiates energy and force and love; the time will come when all will draw inward again, and be merged in Him. But the world is as yet in its dawning. The rising sun scatters light and heat, and the hot and silent noon is yet to come; then the shadows move eastward, and after that comes the waning sunset and the evening light, and last of all the huge and starlit peace of the night."
"But," I said, "if this is really so, if I have been gathered close to God's heart, why is it that instead of feeling stronger, I only feel weak and unstrung? I have indeed an inner sense of peace and happiness, but I have no will or purpose of my own that I can discern."
"That," said Amroth, "is because you have given up all. The sense of strength is part of our weakness. Our plans, our schemes, our ambitions, all the things that make us enjoy and hope and arrange, are but signs of our incompleteness. Your will is still as molten metal, it has borne the fierce heat of inner love; and this has taken all that is hard and stubborn and complacent out of you—for a time. But when you return to the life of the body, as you will return, there will be this great difference in you. You will have to toil and suffer, and even sin. But there will be one thing that you will not do: you will never be complacent or self-righteous, you will not judge others hardly. You will be able to forgive and to make allowances; you will concern yourself with loving others, not with trying to improve them up to your own standard. You will wish them to be different, but you will not condemn them for being different; and hereafter the lives you live on earth will be of the humblest. You will have none of the temptations of authority, or influence, or ambition again—all that will be far behind you. You will live among the poor, you will do the most menial and commonplace drudgery, you will have none of the delights of life. You will be despised and contemned for being ugly and humble and serviceable and meek. You will be one of those who will be thought to have no spirit to rise, no power of making men serve your turn. You will miss what are called your chances, you will be a failure; but you will be trusted and loved by children and simple people; they will depend upon you, and you will make the atmosphere in which you live one of peace and joy. You will have selfish employers, tyrannical masters, thankless children perhaps, for whom you will slave lovingly. They will slight you and even despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and yours will be the face that they will remember when they come to die, as that of the one person who loved them truly and unquestioningly. That will be your destiny; one of utter obscurity and nothingness upon earth. Yet each time, when you return hither, your work will be higher and holier, and nearer to the heart of God. And now I have said enough; for you have seen God, as I too saw Him long ago; and our hope is henceforward the same."
"Yes," I said to Amroth, "I am content. I had thought that I should be exalted and elated by my privileges; but I have no thought or dream of that. I only desire to go where I am sent, to do what is desired of me. I have laid my burden down."
XXXIV
Presently Amroth rose, and said that we must be going onward.
"And now," he said, "I have a further thing to tell you, and that is that I have very soon to leave you. To bring you hither was the last of my appointed tasks, and my work is now done. It is strange to remember how I bore you in my arms out of life, like a little sleeping child, and how much we have been together."
"Do not leave me now," I said to Amroth. "There seems so much that I have to ask you. And if your work with me is done, where are you now going?"
"Where am I going, brother?" said Amroth. "Back to life again, and immediately. And there is one thing more that is permitted, and that is that you should be with me to the last. Strange that I should have attended you here, to the very crown and sum of life, and that you should now attend me where I am going! But so it is."
"And what do you feel about it?" I said.