human
I wasn’t expecting you, Master Carol, but I’m right glad to see you. It do seem so wonderful that just this time last Sunday all the village was waiting for news from the Manor, and I was that sad thinking I’d never have you come to see me again. The Rector prayed for you in church. I was there for the first time for well-nigh two years. ’Well, well,’ I said to myself, ’if the Lord takes him, His will be done.’ But, oh, I prayed as I’ve never prayed since we lost our first child that He wouldn’t.
gpt
You do not understand then yet that death can never be God’s will. Didn’t Jesus say, ’I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly’? If Jesus came to bring us life, does not that show that God never sends death?
human
Well, Master Carol, as you put it, maybe it is so, but I’m an old man, and it’s what I was taught as a boy, and the belief’s grown up wi’ me, and somehow I wouldn’t like to give up the thought. It’s the only thing that makes the parting bearable--to think God wills it. We put it on the headstone where we laid our little girl. _Thy will be done_. Aye, I’ve stood and looked at them words many a time, and they sort o’ comforted me. She was our first-born.
gpt
There is another verse which says ’to know God is everlasting life.’ In everlasting life there can be no death, can there? Just think of this: If the sun were never hidden, and you could keep your eyes steadfastly on the light, you would have no knowledge of darkness--you would not understand it or believe in it. In the same way when we understand that God is ALL, we must lose the thought of and belief in death. There is no death to those that know we live and move and have our being in God-Life. Death could not steal one of God’s ideas--His children--and destroy it. What seems to die is not God’s child. What you buried in the churchyard was not your little girl, and what they cast into the sea, was not my father. They are still living. It is only that we do not see them. You know Jesus says, ’In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ They have passed on to another mansion--that is all. My cousin has taught me that the mansions Jesus spoke of are not afar off in a locality called Heaven. We are to-day--you and I--dwelling in one of God’s mansions, and it is a higher or a lower mansion according as we dwell in the consciousness of good. We have to take all the steps up to that special place which Jesus has gone to prepare for us. If we are not ready for it, we shall not be able to enter it, even if we have passed through the door called death. We have to fight and overcome all that separates us from God. Jesus overcame everything. He put sin and disease under his feet, and we have just to follow in his steps, knowing that he prepared the way, and is helping us all the time. Perhaps you did not think when you had rheumatism that it was a shadow between you and God, did you? You thought it was God’s will for you.
human
That’s true, Master Carol. I just bowed down to it, thinking God chose to afflict me for some special purpose.
gpt
I knew it was not so, when I tried to help you. I always saw you perfect, as God made you, and you know the shadow disappeared. When I lay in bed a few days ago, and couldn’t move, the bruises seemed so real, and the pain very great, I couldn’t think of them as shadows, but my cousin was able to do it for me, and all disappeared. Neither my aunt nor the doctor seemed able to believe it at first, because they do not understand. Won’t it be a happy day when everyone understands that Truth destroys disease; and when little children have hip-disease doctors won’t hurt them to try to make them better, as they did me?
human
Did they really?
gpt
Yes, and the operation did not make me better. But we will not talk about it. I ought not to remember anything about it. It was all error. Shall we have the chapter again from St. John which tells us ’In my Father’s house are many mansions’?
human
Aye, I mind that chapter well. The words just sink down into my heart, and stir up something there, and I’ve wanted to understand them better. I’ve thought a lot about it since the last time you talked to me. I know He is faithful who promised, the ’works that I do shall he do also.’ As I said before, I’m an old man, Master Carol, and I’ve been looking for it all my life. Why, I’ve asked myself, don’t His servants and ministers give us the signs He promised?
gpt
And now what you have been looking for all these years has come--the light at eventide,