d the
galleries of Creation crowded with sympathetic watchers like the "old
boys" of a great English school coming back at the annual school games
to cheer on the lads and remember how they had run themselves long ago
in the very same fields.[1]

III

And the hope which Scripture thus suggests and never contradicts
commends itself to reason and to the deepest instincts in our hearts.

I think of a mother leaving her children and going into a full
conscious life, where, mark you, she can still think and remember and
love. I see that her love for them was probably the most powerful
influence in ennobling her life here. And she has gone into a life
where that ennobling is God's chief aim for her. Since she can
remember them, I feel quite sure that if she had the choice she would
want to watch over them always.

But, somebody says, she might not be quite happy if she knew all that
they had to go through. Seeing that at any rate she remembers them, do
you think she would be more happy if she knew that they might have to
go through troubles of which she could not learn anything? Put
yourself in the place of any mother on earth that you know and ask if
it would make her any happier to stop all letters about her children
whom she felt might be in danger or trouble. Are you quite sure that
in that spirit life a peaceful contentment like that of the cow who
forgets her calf is the highest thing to be desired? The higher any
soul grows on earth the less can it escape unselfish sorrow for the
sake of others. Must it not be so in that land also? Surely the
Highest Himself must have more sorrow than any one else for the sins
and troubles of men. Have you ever thought of that "eternal pain" of
God? If there be joy in His presence over one sinner that repenteth
must there not be pain in His presence over one that repenteth not?

There are surely higher things in God's plans for His saints than mere
selfish happiness and content. There is the blessedness that comes of
sympathy with Him over human sorrow and pain. We but degrade the
thought of the blessedness of the redeemed when we desire that they
should escape that.

And since in that life she is "with Christ" and able doubtless to win
for her children more than she could ever win on earth, and since she
knows that Christ is more solicitous for them than she is herself and
that she can trust Him utterly to do for them more than she can ask or
think, does it no