| GOOD-BYE—GOD BLESS YOU! |
| I love the words—perhaps because When I was leaving mother, Standing at last in solemn pause, We looked at one another; And I—I saw in mother's eyes The love she could not tell me, A love eternal as the skies, Whatever fate befell me. She put her arms about my neck, And soothed the pain of leaving, And though her heart was like to break, She spoke no word of grieving; She let no tear bedim her eye, For fear that might distress me; But, kissing me, she said good-bye, And asked our God to bless me. |
How It Was Blotted Out
For many years I had been a follower of strange gods, and a lover of this world and its vanities. I was self-righteous, and thought I had religion of my own which was better than that of the Bible. I did not know God, and did not serve him. Prayer was forgotten, public worship neglected; and worldly morality was the tree which brought forth its own deceptive fruit.
But when I shared parental responsibility, and our boy was growing up, our love for him made us anxious about his welfare and future career. His questions often puzzled me, and the sweet and earnest manner in which he inquired of his poor sinful father to know more about his Heavenly Father, and that "happy land, far, far away," of which his nurse had taught him, proved to me that God had given me a great blessing in the child.
A greater distrust of myself, and a greater sense of my inability to assure my boy of the truth contained in the simple little prayers that I had learned from my mother in childhood, gradually caused me to reflect. Still, I never went to church; had not even a Bible in the house. What was I to teach my boy,—Christ and him crucified, or the doctrines I had tried to believe?
One of his little friends died, then another, then his uncle. All these deaths made an impression on the boy. He rebelled against it; wanted to know "why God had done it?" It was hard that God should take away his friends; he wished he would not do it. I, of course, had to explain the best I could. One evening he was lying on the bed partly undressed; my wife and I were seated by the fire. She had been telling me that Willie had not been a good boy that day, and I had reproved him for it. All was quiet, when suddenly he broke out in a loud crying and sobbing, which surprised us. I went to him, and asked him what was the matter.