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VIII
THE ANGEL AND THE IRON GATE
It is of no use arguing against an iron gate. There it stands—chained and padlocked, barred and bolted—right across your path, and you can neither coax nor cow it into yielding. So was it with Peter on the night of his miraculous escape from prison. ‘Herod,’ we are told, ‘killed James with the sword, and, because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to take Peter also.’ There he lay, ‘sleeping between two soldiers, bound with chains, whilst the keepers before the door kept the prison.’ He expected that his next visitor would be the headsman; and whilst he waited for the executioner, there came an angel! This sort of thing happens fairly often. They are sitting round the fire, and the lady in the arm-chair is talking of her sailor-son.
‘Ah!’ she says, ‘I haven’t heard of him for over a year now, and I begin to think that I shall never hear again.’
There is a sharp ring at the bell. She starts.
‘Something tells me,’ she continues, ‘that this [90] is a message to say that the ship is lost, and that I shall never see my boy again.’
Even whilst she speaks the door is opened, and her last syllable is scarcely uttered before she is folded in the sailor’s arms.
The principle holds true to the very end. It is a sick-room, and the pale wan face of the patient looks very weary.
‘Oh, how I dread death!’ she says; ‘I cannot bear to think that I must die.’
An hour later the door of the unseen opens to her, and there stands on the threshold, not Death, but Life Everlasting!