'And you see, darling, He was a "bit absent-minded" that morning, and
now He's just asked for one of them back.'
'Oh, father,' I exclaimed, with a sudden rush of tears, 'and the one
He's asked for back was always called "the lamb"!'
And then the horror of that 'perilous stuff' swept over me, and all the
despair and doubt and misery of the last few months surged up like a
great flood that presently would overwhelm me, and I cried,--
'But, oh, daddy! He isn't _my_ Shepherd Beautiful, I can't find His
love; I can only see some one who has been very cruel to me.'
And father put his arm round me as he used to do when I was little and
frightened in the woods, and the evening sun streamed down upon his
face, and deepened the aloof look that he wore, and he gazed out over
the fields of lilies that were tinted now with gold and rose.
'Yet, it is He who clothes the woods you love so every spring, my
darling.'
And as I looked at all the colour and the harmony, the flowers, the
sunlight, and the dappled shade, the woods soothed and quietened me.
And the old 'washed' feeling came, and the rebellion went, and a great
longing to understand God's ways came in my heart instead.
'Oh, but the world's pain, father, and all the grief brought by the
war.'
'God calls the world that way sometimes, Meg.'
'But does He never call except through pain?'
'Some very perfect souls can feel Him "in the summer air or in dewy
garden green," or in the song of birds, but to many it is only "when the
sharp strokes flesh and heart run through, in all their incommunicable
pain"--God speaks Himself.'
'And does He always call when He sends pain, father?'
'It has so large a place in God's economy, my darling, that we may find
in it another Sacrament. When the Great High Priest gives the bread of
tears, the wine of separation, there is, in these visible things, His
inward call to come closer to Himself. Oh, little daughter, when you
can find His love in nothing else, look at Calvary, for there the
perfect Saviour deigned to stoop to a last service--"Love's epitome."'
And so I 'looked' at Him upon His cross, as daddy bade me, and realised
for the first time that as God's justice has been satisfied, there is
nothing left but His love for me.
I saw, all in a moment, that if God loved me enough to give His Son, and
if His Son loved me enough to give His life, He will not keep back any
other gift. He is all love, so all He sends to me is Love. He cannot
help Himself.
I am all broken up to think that I so nearly missed a gift of love
because He sent it veiled to me in pain.
Out in the Hickley Woods I found Him. Down the paths of my life I
suddenly saw the way of His feet, and my soul rushed out to meet Him.
At last I know the lesson that Ross learned by pain. I see what Charlie
saw only when he was blind. I understand what father has known since
mother died. Oh, the wonder and the utter perfection of this
'experience.' It links me up with all the others down the centuries who
having found _Him_ 'in a mist of tears' can _glory_ in their pain. If
only I could pass the lovely comfort of it on to some of those whose
hearts are wounded, as mine is, inexpressibly and beyond all telling, by
this awful war:--
He only takes away the ones we love if, in His all wise love, He sees He
must. If we accept the atonement that He made, and love Him, and are
dutiful to Him about the ones He takes. He will always give instead
that incomparably more lovely, priceless, perfect, altogether lovely
one--Himself.
And now this funny old book is finished. As I write the words my room
grows dark, because the sun is hidden for a moment by a cloud of rain.
Yet all the tender plants out in the woods will be the stronger for the
storm, when it has passed.
I look into the future, and I see that there remains for me one last
'experience.'
Some day, perhaps when I am very old, I shall walk down a valley
shadowed with dark wings. Beside me will be one--that mighty one--whose
face is cold and quiet, majestic and inexorable. I shall not fear him as
the darkness deepens in that vale, for all around, by reason of the
Passion of my Lord, there will be a song of triumph sung:--
'Oh death! where is thy sting?
And where thy victory?'
And at the end of that dark night I, too, shall find the morning. I
shall greet Ross again. I shall see mother, and the others who have
gone before. I shall in one ecstatic moment, find myself--'linked up'
with God.