Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/227

Rh me as he can; he is willing to go with me, and so is Emma, if you can only give your consent.” Woman has made many and great sacrifices for Jesus, and largely by such sacrifices has the cause of truth and purity been advanced among men. Since holy Simeon said to the mother of the Lord's Christ, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also,” how many mothers, especially in resigning their children for the service of God at home or in distant lands, or those again in parting with their little ones that they might go there, or stay there—how many such in these Christian sacrifices have felt this anguish pierce their maternal sympathies when, as true followers of the Divine Father, “who spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all,” they have surrendered their loved ones to the Lord's work, enduring their pungent sorrows, and trying to say, “My Saviour, I do this for thee!” Compared with such offerings, how poor and small, and easily parted with, were the sacrifices of Jewish saints! They had only to surrender their corn, or wine, or oil, the best of their barn-yards or their flocks, or a money equivalent, for their first-born. None of these, save in such a case as Hannah's, went deeper than the purse. They were only property; they left the heart unscathed; they cost no tears, and inflicted no anguish. But it is different with Christian saints, who follow a self-denying Saviour, and who for his sake are willing to bear this peculiar cross. How amply compensated will such mothers feel when, in the presence of Him for whom they made these sacrifices, they shall see the sons or daughters whom they resigned to the work of God, after having turned many to righteousness, “shine as the stars for ever and ever!”

A spark of this Christ-like grace in the soul of a humble woman, once a heathen, can produce the same blessed spirit of self-sacrifice as that which animates the breasts of the most cultured ladies of Christendom; while her prompt and noble reply puts to the blush the selfishness of some mothers in this land, who have dared to stand between their children and convictions of duty to God and a dying world.