“Well, what do you think the little fellow said?—'Don't kill me, papa,' he cried. 'I will be good. Don't, please, be hanged for my naughtiness! Whip me, and that will make me good.'”
“And then you couldn't do it?” asked Barbara anxiously.
“I cried,” said Wingfold, and almost cried again as he said it. “I'm not much in the habit of crying—I don't look like it, do I?—but I couldn't help it. The child took out his little pocket-handkerchief and dried my eyes, and then prepared himself for the whipping. And I whipped him as I never did before, and I hope in God shall never have to do again. The moment it was over, while my heart was like to burst, he flung his arms round my neck and began kissing me. 'I will never make you cry again, papa!' he said.—He has kept his word, and since then I have never wondered at the suffering in the world. I have puzzled my metaphysical brains to the last gasp about the origin of evil—I don't do that now, for I seem to understand it—but, since then, I have never troubled myself about the origin of suffering. I don't like pain a whit better than another, and I don't bear it nearly so well as Helen, but I vex neither my brain nor my heart as to God's sending it. I knew after whipping my boy, that the tears the Lord wept over Jerusalem were not wept by him only, but by the Father as well. Whoever says God cannot suffer, I say he does not understand. God can weep, and weeps more painful tears than ours; for he is God, and we are his little ones. That boy's trouble was over with the punishment, but my heart is sore yet.
“It comes to this, that the suffering you see around you, hurts God more than it hurts you, or the man upon whom it falls; but he hates things that most men think little of, and will send any suffering upon them rather than have them continue indifferent to them. Men may say, 'We don't want suffering! we don't want to be good!' but God says, 'I know my own obligations! and you shall not be contemptible wretches, if there be any resource in the Godhead.' I know well that almost all the mothers in my congregation would, hearing what I have just told you, call me a cruel father. They would rather have me a weak one, loving my child less. They would rather their child should be foul in the soul than be made clean through suffering! I know they would! But I know also that they do not see how ugly is evil. And that again is because they are not clean enough themselves to value rightness above rubies! Tell the tale your own way to your workman-friend, and may God help him to understand it! The God who strikes, is the God whose son wept over Jerusalem.”
“I am so glad you whipt the darling!” said Barbara, scarcely able to speak. “I shall love him more than ever.”
“You should see how he loves his father!” said Helen. “His father is all his talk when we are alone together. He sees more of me than of him now, but by and by his father will take him about with him.”
“And then,” said Barbara, “all his talk will be of you!”
“Yes; it is the way of the child!”
“And of the whole family in heaven and earth,” rejoined the parson.
Barbara rose.