“Oh yes, sir, it is!” said Jeanie; “but yet it’s an awfu’ blank! Ilka thing in the world seems different.”
“I’m jist thinking, Jeanie,” said Mrs. Armstrong, “that it’s a comfort ye ever pit yer een on Davie, for there’s puir Mrs. Blair—John Blair’s blin’ wife, ye ken—when she lost her callant, May was a year, she cam’ to me in an awfu’ way aboot it, and what vexed her sae muckle was, that she never had seen his wee face, and that she could only touch and han’le him, and hear him greet.”
“Puir body,” remarked Jeanie, “it was a sair misfortun’ for ony mither that—an’ yet—But I’ll no’ think aboot it; ilk ane has their ain burden to carry. Noo, minister, let me speir at you, sir: Will I never see my bairn again? and if I see him, will I no’ ken him?”
“You might as well ask whether you could see and know your child if he had gone to a foreign country instead of to heaven,” replied the Doctor. “Alas! if we did not know our beloved friends in heaven, earth in some respects would be dearer to our hearts! But then, ignorance is not possible in such a place of light and love.”
“It wadna be rational to think so,” remarked William, speaking for the first time, though he had been listening with great interest to the Doctor.
“But,” continued Jeanie, with quiet earnestness, “will our bairn aye be a bairn, Doctor? Oh, I hope so!”
“Dinna try, Jeanie dear,” said David, “to be wise aboon what is written.”
The Doctor smiled, and asked, “If your child had lived, think you would you have rejoiced had he always continued to be a child and never grown or advanced? and are you a loss or a gain to your father and mother, because you have grown in mind and knowledge since you were an infant?”
“I never thocht o’ that,” said Jeanie thoughtfully.
“Be assured,” continued the Doctor, “there will be no such abortions there as infants in intellect and sense for ever. All will be perfect and complete, according to the plan of God, who made us for fellowship with Himself and all His blissful family. Your darling has gone to a noble school, and will be taught and trained there for immortality by Him who was Himself a child, and who knows a mother’s love and a mother’s sorrow; and you too, parents, if you believe in Christ, and hold fast your confidence in Him, and become to Him as little children, will be made fit to enter the same society; and thus you and your boy, though never, perhaps, forgetting your old relationship on earth, will be fit companions for one another for ever and ever. Depend upon it, you will both know and love each other there better than you ever could have done here.”