“O Father, if I could do that thing!”
“Child, when the Master went home for a season, and left His lodging here below, He appointed ‘to every man his work.’ Some of us have hard work: let us press on with it cheerfully. If we be His, it is His work. He knoweth every burden that we bear, and how hard it presseth, and how sore weary are His child’s shoulders. Did He bear no burdens Himself in the carpenter’s workshop at Nazareth; yea, and up the steep of Calvary? Let Him have thy best work. He hath given thee His best.”
Never before, nor in so short a time, had so many new ideas been suggested to the mind of Agnes Stone. The very notion of Christ’s sympathy with men was something strange to her. She had been taught to regard Mary as the tender human sympathiser, and to look upon Christ in one of two lights—either as the helpless Infant in the arms of the mother, or as the stern Judge who required to be softened by Mary’s merciful intercession. But the one gush of confidence over, she was doubly shy. She shrank from clothing her vague thoughts with precise and distinct language.
“I would I might alway confess unto you, Father,” she said gratefully, rising from her hard seat “I would have thee confess unto a better than I, my daughter,” was the priest’s answer. “There is no confessor like to the great Confessor of God. Christ shall make never a blunder; and He beareth no tales. Thine innermost heart’s secrets be as safe with Him as with thyself.”
“But must I not confess to a priest?” demanded Agnes in a surprised tone.
“There is one Priest, my daughter,” said the Friar. “And ‘because He continueth ever, unchangeable hath He the priesthood.’ There can be none other.”
This was another new idea to Agnes—if possible, more strange than the former. She ventured a faint protest which showed the nature of her thoughts.
“But He, that is the Judge at the doomsday! how could such as I e’er confess to Him?”
A smile—which was sad, not mirthful—parted the grave lips of the Black Friar.
“Child!” he answered, “there is no man so lowly, there is no man so loving, as the Man Christ Jesus.”