THY WILL BE DONE by Mrs. M. L. Rayne

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 21, 1868

THY WILL BE DONE.

By Mrs. M. L. Rayne

In one of the upper chambers of a pleasant home, a little child lay very ill, apparently dying. Friends were gathering near to offer the last services of love and kindness, and the physician, whose assiduous skill seemed baffled, watched with grave attention the coming of the terrible spasms that threatened each instant dissolution. The little babe was itself unconscious of suffering or love, for its tender brain was benumbed with anguish it had endured, and all felt that it would indeed be a merciful hand that shortened the parting strife—all save one—that one the mother, who hung in agony above the couch of her child. She had not left it for a moment during its severe illness. She could neither eat nor sleep while her darling lay pale and senseless beside her; but she had never given up the hope that it would be spared to her, and now she refused to hear the physician’s voice, lest it should pronounce the fatal opinion. “I can not, can not give her up!” she cried wildly. “God will not require such a sacrifice at my hands. What has my darling done that she should suffer so? Oh! I can not, will not give her up! She must live.” In this rebellious spirit the mother continued, and, strange to say, at the very last moment succeeded in snatching her child from the very arms of death, and after a weary siege brought it back in triumph to convalescence and health.

Mrs. Herbert, the mother of the child, became, in after years, a Christian, and when she looked back upon that hour of her life, shuddered at her own rebellious defiance of God’s wisdom. “Still,” she would say to herself, “I could not have given up my child, it would have killed me.”

Years passed on; the babe from a lovely and engaging child grew to be a beautiful, intelligent girl, and early gave remarkable promise of a youth of rare maturity. Her impulses were all good, the powers of her mind of more than average strength, and her heart was early given to the Saviour, and her life sealed to him through baptism. Her parents doted upon her, her young friends held her up as a lovely example of what they themselves would wish to be, and her teachers were proud of her acquirements, and commended her diligence in study, and her gentle Christian deportment.

In less than a year she expected to graduate with honor, and all her energies were put forth to this end. She was not of a sanguine temperament. Indeed, this was the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand in the horizon of her life, her proneness to melancholy; she regarded life with a critical attention, that realized its solemn importance. Hence she took but little interest in the frivolities that interested her young companions. “I cannot forget,” she would say, “that I am on probation for another life, that will never end, and when I see so many going on thoughtlessly to certain death, I shudder lest I, too, may become a castaway.” It was well that she had realized so fully the importance of her mission, for in the midst of her studies, without a moment’s warning, she was seized with a return of the dreadful convulsions that had well-nigh destroyed her infant life, and when they left, the power of thought and memory was gone, and the passive brain no longer wrought out future plans, or pondered over momentous deeds.

The mother, thus again stricken, now saw her idolized child shut out from hopes and privileges that had always been her portion, and a victim to a dread disease which no physician could overcome, and looking back she saw how infinitely better it would have been had she died in her infancy. “I wrestled with God for her,” thought she, “and now I witness her sufferings, but am powerless to help. God knew what was best. I feel now as if he had permitted me to have my sinful wish that he might teach me in my woe to say, ‘Thy will be done.’ When I hear my dear child say, as she often does, that life has no longer any pleasure for her, and death would be welcome, I remember how I prayed that she might live, only live for my pleasure. Oh! surely God knows best after all.”

Yes; God knows best. We must never forget this, nor that he does not willingly afflict. His ways are not as our ways, and the cross that presses us so heavily to the earth may yet lead our eyes heavenward, to read, as did Constantine, “In this I conquer.” The humility that is born of self-abasement and sorrow, is the proudest mantle the Christian can wear, for they who dimly grope here through the narrow path shall hereafter emerge into the perfect light, where the Lazaruses of this world dwell in Abraham’s bosom.—Mrs. M. L. Rayne, in Ladies’ Repository.