THE FINGER OF GOD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 216, 15 June 1877, Page 13

THE FINGER OF GOD.

*' Hi's been quite merry all the morning, doctor. Do you not think he seems much better to-day ?" But the words were spoken with a tremor of voice, and accompanied by a deprecating look, that contradicted the hopef ulness implied in them, and the kind-hearted medical man could but gently parry the question, and reply as cheerily as the truthfulness of his nature would allow him. Yet it was not that he doubted of the bodily condition of his patient ; this, although not unusually Robust, was still sufficiently firm to promise the endurance of an ordinary life-time, and probably the supposed invalid would survive for years the delicate nurse who watched him with an untold tenderness. It was that the doctor's skilful eye detected that ■what had been mistaken for infirmity of body was, in fact, disease of the mind, and that the boy, to whom his mother clung so passionately, was a confirmed idiot. And this was to be the end of her life's story. She, in whose couch of strewn roses it had once appeared as if no shrivelled petal would ever be found, whose beauty and refinement had been surrounded by every luxury of admiration and friendship, now widowed and still in her youth, — she must pass her days alone, the companion of one so afflicted that none but herself could bear to keep him company, and for whose sake she would find herself deserted of all. But, oh ! the depth of that Father's love, which has made provision for such as was this mother, and planted in the hearts of His rational creatures the germ of a pity so divine that it throws a halo round the utmost deformity and finds therein loveliness only. It is true, as the ISrdgeist says, that God may be seen in His " garment" of creation, and they who look upon the universe with such intent will find in it a wondrous beauty and a sublime meaning, but nowhere may we discover Him more evident, more adorable, more clearly our Father, than in this capability of miraculous love with which He has endowed our being; this provision He has made that the hearts of the parents shall be knit to such of their children as most need their care, to such as are at once their reproach, their hindrance, and — by His mercy — their delight. Here is God's fiuger manifest, and they who feel it at work within them may know themselves cherished of Heaven. And this wondrous germ probably exists in most of those who are human ; oftenest lying there a latent force, as light and heat that come to earth from the sun lie concealed age after age, until accident calls them into activity, that they may become the sources of comfort in places that otherwise were dark and cheerless. Fides.