Chapter 7: Love and Judgment

MOTHER AND SON

When, for the last time, from His Mother’s home
The Son went forth, foreseeing perfectly
What doom would happen, and what things would come,
Was there upon His lips no stifled sigh
For happy hours that should return no more,
Long days among the lilies, pure delights
Of wanderings by Galilee’s fair shore,
And converse with His friends on starry nights?
Yet brave He stepped into the setting sun
With this one word, “Father, Thy will be done!”
With a low voice the stooping olive-trees
Whispered to Him of His Gethsemane;
The cruel thorn-bush, clinging to His knees,
Proclaimed, “I shall be made a crown for Thee!”
And, looking back, His eyes made dim with loss,
He saw the lintel of the cottage grow
In shape against the sunset, like a cross,
And knew He had not very far to go.
Yet brave He stepped into the setting sun,
Still saying this one word, “Thy will be done!”
So, when the last time, from His Mother’s home
The Son passed out, no choir of angels came,
As long before at Bethlehem they had come,
To comfort Him upon the road of shame.
Alone He went, and stopped a little space,
As one overburdened, stopped to look again
Upon His Mother’s pleading form and face,
And wept for her, that she should know this pain.
Then, silently, He faced the setting sun
And said, “Oh, Father, let Thy will be done!”

Just as Jesus called in the vision of the unseen world to redress the balance of the visible world, when He said that there was more joy in heaven over the penitent sinner than over ninety and nine just men who needed no repentance, so in His final addresses to His followers He again discloses the unseen world. These final addresses deal with the tremendous problem of a future judgment. Over no problem does the human mind hover with such breathless interest, such unfeigned alarm. But with characteristic perversity the elements in Christ’s vision of the judgment on which men have seized most tenaciously, are precisely those elements which are least intelligible, and least capable of strict definition. It is around the word “eternal” and the nature of the punishment suggested, that the theological battles of centuries have centred. Yet the really central point of both the vision and the teaching, is not here at all; and it is only man’s habitual love of enigma which can explain the passion with which men have opposed one another over the interpretation of words and phrases which must always remain enigmatic.