"No, Sir, no fall; he's not harmed, Sir. It's only the old room, you know, Sir, and he quite forgot himself."
"Poor boy! Will he come with me, Esther?"
"No, Mr. Johns. I'll find something'll amuse him; hey, Ruby?"
And the parson goes back to his desk, where he forgets himself in the glow of that great work of his. He has taught, as never before, that "all flesh is grass." He accepts his loss as a punishment for having thought too much and fondly of the blessings of this life; henceforth the flesh and its affections shall be mortified in him. He has transferred his bed to a little chamber which opens from his study in the rear, and which is at the end of the long dining-room, where every morning and evening the prayers are said, as before. The parishioners see a light burning in the window of his study far into the night.
For a time his sermons are more emotional than before. Oftener than in the earlier days of his settlement he indulges in a forecast of those courts toward which he would conduct his people, and which a merciful God has provided for those who trust in Him; and there is a coloring in these pictures which his sermons never showed in the years gone.
"We ask ourselves," said he, "my brethren, if we shall knowingly meet there—where we trust His grace may give us entrance—those from whom you and I have parted; whether a fond and joyous welcome shall greet us, not alone from Him whom to love is life, but from those dear ones who seem to our poor senses to be resting under the sod yonder. Sometimes I believe that by God's great goodness," (and here he looked, not at his people, but above, and kept his eye fixed there)—"I believe that we shall; that His great love shall so delight in making complete our happiness, even by such little memorials of our earthly affections (which must seem like waifs of thistle-down beside the great harvest of His abounding grace); that all the dear faces of those written in the Golden Book shall beam a welcome, all the more bounteous because reflecting His joy who has died to save."
And the listeners whispered each other as he paused, "He thinks of Rachel."
With his eyes still fixed above, he goes on,—
"Sometimes I think thus; but oftener I ask myself, 'Of what value shall human ties be, or their memories, in His august presence whom to look upon is life? What room shall there be for other affections, what room for other memories, than those of 'the Lamb that was slain'?
"Nay, my brethren," (and here he turns his eyes upon them again,) "we do know in our hearts that many whom we have loved fondly—infants, fathers, mothers, wives, may-be—shall never, never sit with the elect in Paradise; and shall we remember these in heaven, going away to dwell with the Devil and his angels? Shall we be tortured with the knowledge that some poor babe we looked upon only for an hour is wearing out ages of suffering? 'No,' you may say, 'for we shall be possessed in that day of such sense of the ineffable justice of God, and of His judgments, that all shall seem right.' Yet, my brethren, if this sense of His supreme justice shall overrule all the old longings of our hearts, even to the suppression of the dearest ties of earth, where they conflict with His ordained purpose, will they not also overrule all the longings in respect of friends who are among the elect, in such sort that the man we counted our enemy, the man we avoided on earth, if so be he have an inheritance in heaven, shall be met with the same yearning of the heart as if he were our brother? Does this sound harshly, my brethren? Ah, let us beware,—let us beware how we entertain any opinions of that future condition of holiness and of joy promised to the elect, which are dependent upon these gross attachments of earth, which are colored by our short-sighted views, which are not in every iota accordant with the universal love of Him who is our Master!"