Yet was there comfort near, if he would but ask for it, and of the very kind he wanted: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." He knew it not; he cried not for it. He was not ignorant of God's omnipresence; in ordinary times the boy believed with a child's simple faith that God was always near him, but in the hour of his trouble he was incapable of deriving any comfort from the knowledge, incapable of any thought but his own sorrow.
Children of a larger growth, but children in understanding still, do not many of us, in spite of our maturer experience, do likewise? "There is no help," we say; "our trouble is greater than we can bear." We lie like the child, crushed and despairing, and God, who at other times we feel to be so near, seems hidden from us altogether.
But thank God it is only seems, not is. He is unchangeable, and unaffected by our changeability. Hidden, it may be, by the cloud we have ourselves raised, the dark cloud of hopelessness, He is still there, the Same whose presence we realise so fully in happier moments. "He," says a writer of the present century, "is immutable, unchangeable, while we are different every hour. What He is in Himself, the great unalterable I Am, not what we in this or that moment feel Him to be, that is our hope."
The comfort, then, for us and for the stricken child is, that though we may not at such times do our part, He is ever ready to do His; and it would almost seem as if He were providing for this state of feeling when he says, "Before they call, I will answer." But what could be done for the child in the terrible hour of his trouble? We know not, but God knew. The little heart was open before Him, and He knew that his sorrow would flee at morning light, and that he only wanted comfort for the present moment. So, looking pityingly down upon the lonely child, He sent him the only thing that could help him—laid gently upon his heavy eyelids the only gift that could do him any good—giving him the peace of unconsciousness till the hour of sorrow and sighing should pass away!
There one of the maids found him an hour or so later, and carried him up to bed without waking him.
CHAPTER X.
Humphrey slept late the next morning, and the sun was streaming on his face when he awoke.
He sprang out of bed with an exclamation of delight at seeing such a fine day, and then started back in surprise at finding himself in a strange room.