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There was something dreamily monotonous in the recurrent features of the landscape and the regular halts at stations all built upon one plan; yet Father Gregory could not sleep. When he closed his eyes he saw before him the appealing figure of Madeline Rorke, her unfathomable gaze fixed upon him; and all through the long night he prayed that he might be in time to save her from death, or if her proposal to do away with herself had been but an exaggeration, that he might save her soul alive. " My Christ, Thou wilt not forsake one of Thy children! " he murmured; and with hope beaming in his rugged old face he said over to himself a hundred times: " Though her sins be as scarlet, yet shall they be as white as snow." He had long since given up all speculation as to why he should be concerning himself so deeply in the welfare of a girl who was almost a stranger to him : he had accepted the call as coming from the Master, and he was setting out at His bidding to find one of His lambs that had strayed from the flock. Madeline was an outcast from society, and might be regarded as a menace to it ; yet he believed that even in that moral degradation Christ walked by her side. It was almost unthinkable that the Deity could follow a woman of her grade down into the darkness of her untutored life; yet he believed that the saving hand of the Good Shepherd could stretch down even to depths far below the limits of his own comprehension. He recalled, and now said over to himself, the words of the poet Rabindranath Tagore which he had read in a publication of the India Society and had memorized on account of their beautyThere rest Thy feet where live The poorest, the lowliest, and the lost. When I try to bow to Thee, My obeisance cannot reach down to The depth where Thy feet rest among The poorest, the lowliest, and the lost. My heart can never find its way to where Thou keepest company with the companionless Among the poorest, the lowliest, and the lost If she could but know how near to her was the King in His beauty ! It was for him to find her and to open her eyes, that suddenly she might feel the sweetness of the presence of the Master and might place all her cares upon Him. Page Updated - Thursday, 01 June 2017 |
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