I suppose I slept, for when I awoke this feeling was gone. I was a
man, and I wanted to know what I could do for my friend to help him
or to serve him. He was looking towards the stream, and his hands
were clasped in prayer; and then I saw that he too had been wounded.
I could see, as it were, a shot-wound in his hand, and as he prayed
a drop of blood gathered and fell to the ground. I cried out. I
could not help it, for that wound of his seemed to me a more awful
thing than any that bitter war had shown me. "You are wounded too,"
I said faintly. Perhaps he heard me, perhaps it was the look on my
face, but he answered gently, "This is an old wound, but it has
troubled me of late." And then I noticed sorrowfully that the same
cruel mark was on his feet. You will wonder that I did not know
sooner. I wonder myself. But it was only when I saw His feet that I
knew Him.
"The Living Christ"--I had heard the Chaplain speak of Him a few
weeks before, but now I knew that He had come to me--to me who had
put Him out of my life in the hot fever of my youth. I was longing to
speak and to thank Him, but no words came. And then He rose swiftly
and said, "Lie here to-day by the water. I will come for you tomorrow.
I have work for you to do, and you will do it for me."
In a moment He was gone. And while I wait for Him I write this down
that I may not lose the memory of it. I feel weak and lonely and my
pain increases, but I have His promise. I know that He will come for
me to-morrow.
II. THE MESSENGER
"And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood
in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace
be unto you."
--THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE, chap. xxiv: 36.
"The War has powerfully changed the 'psychological atmosphere,' and
the thoughts of a great multitude are turned towards the spiritual
aspect of existence. In this vast but connected universe we are not
the only self-conscious beings. Life is working here as elsewhere,
for some sublime purpose. The day is at hand when we shall turn from
the child-like amusements and excitements of physical science to the
unimaginable adventures of super-physical discovery; and in that day
we shall not only flash our messages to the stars, but hold
communion with our dead."
--HAROLD BEGBIE.
THE MESSENGER
The Parish Church stood high perched in the Glen, and through its
clear windows we could see the white, winding road that was our one
link with the great world beyond the mountains. Perhaps our eyes
strayed from the preacher's face more than was seemly, and in spring
time we had this excuse, that the fresh green of the larches against
the dark rocks made a picture fairer to the eye than our plain old
Church and its high pulpit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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