Forgiven Long Ago by H. T. Robjohns

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 28, 1874

Forgiven Long Ago.

By H. T. Robjohns

YEARS ago I read in Charles Kingsley somewhere—and I have never forgotten it—that when we have thought our highest and best of the love of God, the real thing is beyond it infinitely. There is nothing on earth like it, save the love of a mother for a lost son. Oh! friends, put away dark and harsh views of the love of God; they are all devil’s lies; there is no truth in them. If you were moved now to return this minute to the great God, in whose heart nestles all fatherhood, and motherhood too, he would receive you straightway into the embrace of his almighty love. The love of God is the biggest thing that angels know. I lately heard one tell this story: “It was my happiness to know something of the enduring and indestructible character of a mother’s love. She had much trouble when I was young. My father died early, and we soon found out that he died a bankrupt. Things had to be sold. One trouble came after another, and my widowed mother had as much as she could bear in the way of anxiety and toil. At last, to crown all, her eldest son, who should have been her prop and stay, ran away in very distressing circumstances. I well remember the early years of that cruel separation. Sitting by the fire in the long winter nights, my mother would speak to me and the other children calmly and quietly of our poor father that was dead; but if anybody named the wanderer, she could not endure the anguish; and so, after a time, his name was never heard. I remember how in the night, when the wind was raging round our humble cottage on the hill, making it tremble to its foundation, I used to hear my mother, for her bedroom was over mine, pacing the floor all night, sobbing and praying for her lost boy. She did not know where he was, and, for aught she knew, he might be on the sea.

Fourteen years passed away. All of us were scattered except two, who were twins, now men, but little more than babies when their brother went away. It was early summer, and they and mother were sitting in the little parlor with the window open. To the window, with halting step, came a great, dark-bearded stranger. He looked in, leaning on the window-sill. My mother looked at him, and did not know him at first. But the big tears were running down his face, and she knew him through the tears. She sprang up and bade him instantly come in. ‘No, mother!’ said he, ‘I shall never cross your threshold till you have told me that you forgive me everything.’ My mother said, ‘Why, dear! I’ve forgiven you long, long ago. There’s now nothing to forgive, save that you have stayed away so long.—Rev. H. T. Robjohns.