"My darling, if all you say be true, is lost to me
forever."
"He was not yours, but God's." The friend spoke softly, yet with a
firm utterance.
"He was mine to love," replied the bereaved one.
"And your love would confer upon its precious object the richest
blessings. Dear friend! Lift your thoughts a little way above the
clouds that sorrow has gathered around your heart, and let
perception come into an atmosphere radiant with light from the Sun
of Truth. Think of your child as destined to become, in the better
world to which God has removed him, a wise and loving angel. Picture
to your imagination the higher happiness, springing from higher
capacities and higher uses, which must crown the angelic life. Doing
this, and loving your lost darling, I know that you cannot ask for
him a perpetual babyhood in heaven."
"I will ask nothing for him but what 'Our Father' pleaseth to give,"
said the mother, in calmer tones. "My love is selfish, I know. I
called that babe mine--mine in the broadest sense--yet he was God's,
as every other creature is his--one of the stones in his living
temple--one of the members of his kingdom. It does not comfort me in
my great sorrow to think that, as a child, I shall not again behold
him, but rays of new light are streaming into my mind, and I see
things in new aspects and new relations. Out of this deep affliction
good will arise.
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