Wells of Living Water Commentary
John 3:16
God's Wonderful Love Story
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
We wish to give our whole attention today to one verse of Scripture. It stands before us as an unfathomable river of blessing. Some one has called John 3:16 "the Gospel in a nutshell."
Let us notice for our first statement The Great Lover.
Who is it that so loves the world? It is God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the Divine Trinity loves us, and yet John 3:16 is speaking particularly of the love of the Father because the verse says "God so loved * * that He gave His * * SON." Let us then think of God, the Lover, for a few moments.
1. The common conception of God. To the carnal mind, God is often a tyrant who is driving men to hell. The heathen spend much of their time trying to propitiate an angry God. The medicine men and the dancers of wild tribes all imagine that God is a God of terror. We have read of as many as thirty-six thousand babes who have been ruthlessly murdered in order to appease the imaginary wrath of the Almighty.
In India the babes are thrown into the Ganges with the same argument. Even in a so-called Christian country, and sometimes in pulpits, God is described as a God of wrath, while His Son, Christ, is pictured as seeking to placate His anger, and to induce Him to love sinful men. Not for one moment would we overlook the fact of "the wrath of God" being "revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." However, by the side of this we would place the God of love, who was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.
Even in John 3:16 there is a vision of the wrath of God in the word, perish. However, the verse, as a whole, is love superabounding over wrath. It is love finding the way out, and showing how God can be just and yet the Justifier of those who believe.
2. God's part in redemption. God knew that man would sin, and therefore before He created him, He gave Jesus Christ to die for sin. The Bible says that Christ was "delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." He was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." God the Father is the great Lover of men. While He is a holy God, and cannot receive into His presence the unclean; while He is a just God, and cannot justify the guilty, yet He planned redemption in such a way that He could satisfy the righteous demands of the Law, uphold the honor of His justice, and save the lost. In all of this, one thing is seen, and that is our next point.
3. God, the Lover of men. As we think of the Almighty, the Creator, the Provider of the human race, we think of Him with a love that absolutely surpasses knowledge. It is in the Book of Titus that we find these words, "But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared * * according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." In this Scripture the Father and the Son are spoken of as our Saviour. We think of Jesus loving us, and He did, but God loved us supremely.
I. "GOD SO LOVED," OR THE DEPTH OF HIS LOVE (John 3:16)
"So" is the biggest little word in the Bible. Included in the word "so" are all of the agonies of the Cross, and all of the riches of God's grace; in the gift of His Son, are all the depths, the heights, the breadths, and lengths of grace.
In Ephesians 3:18 Paul is praying for the saints that they may "comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." Did you ever try to fathom an unfathomable depth? Did you ever try to know the unknowable? That is just what Paul prayed we might do. After his prayer he said, "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory."
How the little word "so" remains with us. We revel in its beauty. The love of God is a love that knows no end. It is a love that never fails. It is a love that loves unto the end. Many waters cannot quench His love. Neither can the floods drown it. This should all be true of our love to Him. It is certainly true of His love to us. "Having loved His own * * He loved them unto the end." To know Him is to love Him, because our love is born of His love. We love Him because He first loved us. Because of His love, we ought also to love one another.
O what love now enraptures my soul,
O what grace doth my spirit control;
For the Saviour is mine, and His love-light doth shine;
And the billows of joy o'er me roll.
O My Saviour is more than a friend,
And His love knows no change to the end;
'Neath the smile of His face, and the wealth of His grace,
All the beauties of Heaven do blend.
II. THE WORLD THE OBJECT OF HIS LOVE
It is easy for us who are saved to want to monopolize God's love. That God loved us, we know. That we love Him, we know. However, the love of John 3:16 is His own all-inclusive love. It is His love to all of the world.
1. God's love to Israel set forth. In the Old Testament we read concerning Israel these words: "[He] did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; * * but because the Lord loved you." Here is a gripping statement, God did not love Israel because of what Israel was numerically, nor in any other way. He loved them because He loved them. There is something about the love of God that is indescribable and incomprehensible. When God tried to tell His people why He loved them He simply said because He loved them. Call "because" a woman's reason, if you want to, but here it is God's reason.
2. God's love to the Church set forth. Christ loved the Church, and bought it with His Blood. "For we know the love which God hath toward us." In our Scripture for today there is much of the love of God toward His own. God loves, because God is love. God manifested His love toward us.
3. God's love to the world set forth. In Romans 5:8 is this statement. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." In Revelation 1:5 is a verse that is, perhaps, still more striking: "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His Own Blood." That is, God loved us before He washed us.
He loved me when, a sinner,
I trampled on His love,
He loved me still, though straying,
I spurned His Home above;
And still He loved; and loving,
For me He bled and died,
Then loving on and wooing,
He drew me to His side.
III. HE GAVE HIS SON THE GIFT OF HIS LOVE
When we speak of the supreme Lover, we delight in speaking of the manifestations of His love, of the gift of His love, and of how He proves His love to us.
1. He loved us and gave all things richly to enjoy. When God created the Heavens and the earth, He commanded the earth to bring forth fruit. When God filled the earth with beasts and birds, fish and creeping things, in all of this He was working for man. He was storing the earth, and even the air with everything which man would need, and He saw that it was good.
2. He loved and gave us the Word. What a marvelous gift it is, God's love letter is God's revelation of things to come, God's expression of His heart toward men.
3. He loved and gave us the Holy Ghost. In Luke 11:1 we read, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" What a gift is the Paraclete!
4. He loved and gave us His Son. He gave Him as a teacher. He gave Him as a healer. Jesus went about doing good. All of this was the gift of God. The supreme gift of the Son, however, was that He gave the Son to be our Sin-bearer. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
IV. "WHOSOEVER" THE EXTENT OF HIS LOVE
There is one great joy, and that is that the love of God is all-inclusive. Rich and poor, peer and pauper, good and bad all come under the word, "whosoever."
An old blacksmith was trying to read John 3:16. When he came to the word, "whosoever," his knowledge of letters was too circumscribed. He could not make the word out. He read, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that * *," and then he desired so much to know the next word. He laid his book aside awaiting the return of his daughter from school. He put his finger on the word, when she came in, and said, "What is this, daughter?" She said, "It is 'whosoever,' and it means me, or you, or anybody else." He clapped his finger down on the word as though it might get away, and said, "Thank God, that means me!"
1. Whosoever signifies that Christ tasted death for every man. No man is lost because there was no provision for his being found. No man is lost because his sins knew no atonement, Christ died for all.
2. Whosoever means that God sent His messengers to every man. The command was, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." None are excluded.
"None are excluded thence
But those who do themselves exclude;
Welcome the learned, the polite,
The ignorant, the rude."
3. Whosoever includes every son of Adam. It is an all-embracing word. It is not a question of whether you are invited, it is a question of whether you want to believe. Sin and shame, in Him will find a Saviour who can save to the uttermost.
V. BELIEVING IN HIM, OR THE RECEPTION OF HIS LOVE
1. There are some who spurn God's love as manifested in Christ. Isaiah 53:1 must stand before us as an exponent, not alone of God's saving grace, but of man's sinfulness of heart. Isaiah 53:3 says, "We hid as it were our faces from Him; * * we esteemed Him not. * * We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. * * We have turned every one to his own way." Oh, how vile is the heart that rejects the Son of God! If men in their sin were rejecting an enemy, it would be different.
In the second chapter of Romans there is a statement like this: "Not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance." The man who despiseth God, despises the riches of His goodness, of His forbearance, and of His long-suffering.
2. Those who accept His love. Not all spurn it. In Acts it is told how "some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not." To believe in Him, is to turn to Him. We believe it was Robert L. Stevenson who wrote, "Oh, my friend, teach me to be thine."
The story is told how when Caesar saw Brutus, his own familiar friend, come to him with a dagger, it quite vanquished him. How can we help but love Christ? How can we refrain from believing Him? "We love Him, because He first loved us."
VI. "SHOULD NOT PERISH" THE ASSURANCE OF HIS LOVE
1. Men are under Satan's power. Jesus Christ came to open the prison bars, and to set the captive free. This was God's gift, and He does not want men to remain trapped by the devil.
2. Men are sin-driven. There are not only dangers from without, which engulf sinners, but there is the power of the flesh within, the sinful self that holds men captive. God loved us, and gave Christ to deliver us so that we should not perish under the reign of self.
3. Men are hell-bound. The wicked shall be cast into hell, and all nations that forget God. God loved us and gave Jesus Christ, His Son, that we might not perish, and become engulfed in the powers and darkness of the pit.
We delight in that wonderful story of the Good Shepherd who went out after the sheep which was lost. He stayed out until he found it, and when he found it he put it upon his shoulders, and brought it home rejoicing. When we think of the love of God in Christ, we think of a love that will not let us perish, that will not let us go.
"O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be."
Let us close with that wonderful statement which was written by the Holy Ghost, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." This is the love of God which assures us that we will never perish.
VII. "EVERLASTING LIFE," OR THE CLIMAX OF HIS LOVE
How unfathomable is the word, "everlasting." Some one has suggested that eternity might be described by a bird which carried the grains from every seashore to some distant planet, and this one grain each year until all was gone, and then eternity would just have begun. This life is everlasting.
1. There is included the city of gold, the new Jerusalem, the new heavens, and the new earth. These will be the abode of the saints forevermore. We shall dwell where sin and sorrow, sighing and sickness, penury and pain, can never enter. We shall dwell in the city of light. We shall walk in the Garden of God, and eat of the fruit of the tree of life, of the tree which bears twelve manner of fruit. We shall pass down by the river of the water of life, clear as crystal.
2. There is included the reunion of the saints. This is for all those who are in Christ, they shall live forever together, knowing as they are known forevermore. From the east, and from the west; from the north and from the south, they will come, and sit down together in the Kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with the redeemed.
3. There is included God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. No more of separation; no more of isolation, but eternal fellowship.
AN ILLUSTRATION
Love is Heaven's great gift. God's love in its endurance is well illustrated by a mother's love.
The end came happily to Mrs. Ellen Brown because the son for whom she had waited and watched for ten years was at her side. Today he followed her to the grave.
Everybody in Newburgh knew the sad-faced little woman who had haunted railroad stations and boat landings for a decade. Often she went across to Fishkill to watch the arrival of the New York Central trains.
"|||||I remember away up " lonely Highland Valley, where, beneath a tall, black cliff, all weather worn and cracked and seamed, there lies at the foot, resting on the green sward that creeps around its base, a huge rock that is fallen from the face of the precipice." A shepherd had once passed beneath that rock as it first lay high up in the mountain side; then, suddenly, it rent itself from its bed and leaped down, pinning the man beneath it. So it is with sin. In a moment of unexpectant fury, it too will sweep its way against the artless man who was willing to trust in its shadow.
I. THE WHOLE WORLD GUILTY UNDER SIN (Romans 3:19)
It is folly for the sons of men to evade the issue all are sinners and, therefore, all stand guilty before God. To deny the fact of sin does not lessen the fact. To cover sin does not remove sin. Adam and Eve sought to cover their nakedness with fig leaves, however, their robing was rejected by God. What man covers, God uncovers.
There is no use to cavil. All the world stands guilty before God. No man can stand requited of his sin. The sentence of judgment must fall. Over the head of every son of Adam is written the verdict, "guilty." "the world? It is God. God the Father, God t", and God the Holy Ghost, the Divine Trinity loves us, and yet John 3:16 is speaking particularly of the love of the Father because the verse says "God so loved * * that He gave His * * SON." Let us then think of God, the Lover, for a few moments.
1. The common conception of God. To the carnal mind, God is often a tyrant who is driving men to hell. The heathen spend much of their time trying to propitiate an angry God. The medicine men and the dancers of wild tribes all imagine that God is a God of terror. We have read of as many as thirty-six thousand babes who have been ruthlessly murdered in order to appease the imaginary wrath of the Almighty.
In India the babes are thrown into the Ganges with the same argument. Even in a so-called Christian country, and sometimes in pulpits, God is described as a God of wrath, while His Son, Christ, is pictured as seeking to placate His anger, and to induce Him to love sinful men. Not for one moment would we overlook the fact of "the wrath of God" being "revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." However, by the side of this we would place the God of love, who was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.
Even in John 3:16 there is a vision of the wrath of God in the word, perish. However, the verse, as a whole, is love superabounding over wrath. It is love finding the way out, and showing how God can be just and yet the Justifier of those who believe.
2. God's part in redemption. God knew that man would sin, and therefore before He created him, He gave Jesus Christ to die for sin. The Bible says that Christ was "delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." He was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." God the Father is the great Lover of men. While He is a holy God, and cannot receive into His presence the unclean; while He is a just God, and cannot justify the guilty, yet He planned redemption in such a way that He could satisfy the righteous demands of the Law, uphold the honor of His justice, and save the lost. In all of this, one thing is seen, and that is our next point.
3. God, the Lover of men. As we think of the Almighty, the Creator, the Provider of the human race, we think of Him with a love that absolutely surpasses knowledge. It is in the Book of Titus that we find these words, "But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared * * according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." In this Scripture the Father and the Son are spoken of as our Saviour. We think of Jesus loving us, and He did, but God loved us supremely.
I. "GOD SO LOVED," OR THE DEPTH OF HIS LOVE (John 3:16)
"So" is the biggest little word in the Bible. Included in the word "so" are all of the agonies of the Cross, and all of the riches of God's grace; in the gift of His Son, are all the depths, the heights, the breadths, and lengths of grace.
In Ephesians 3:18 Paul is praying for the saints that they may "comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge." Did you ever try to fathom an unfathomable depth? Did you ever try to know the unknowable? That is just what Paul prayed we might do. After his prayer he said, "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory."
How the little word "so" remains with us. We revel in its beauty. The love of God is a love that knows no end. It is a love that never fails. It is a love that loves unto the end. Many waters cannot quench His love. Neither can the floods drown it. This should all be true of our love to Him. It is certainly true of His love to us. "Having loved His own * * He loved them unto the end." To know Him is to love Him, because our love is born of His love. We love Him because He first loved us. Because of His love, we ought also to love one another.
O what love now enraptures my soul,
O what grace doth my spirit control;
For the Saviour is mine, and His love-light doth shine;
And the billows of joy o'er me roll.
O My Saviour is more than a friend,
And His love knows no change to the end;
'Neath the smile of His face, and the wealth of His grace,
All the beauties of Heaven do blend.
II. THE WORLD THE OBJECT OF HIS LOVE
It is easy for us who are saved to want to monopolize God's love. That God loved us, we know. That we love Him, we know. However, the love of John 3:16 is His own all-inclusive love. It is His love to all of the world.
1. God's love to Israel set forth. In the Old Testament we read concerning Israel these words: "[He] did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; * * but because the Lord loved you." Here is a gripping statement, God did not love Israel because of what Israel was numerically, nor in any other way. He loved them because He loved them. There is something about the love of God that is indescribable and incomprehensible. When God tried to tell His people why He loved them He simply said because He loved them. Call "because" a woman's reason, if you want to, but here it is God's reason.
2. God's love to the Church set forth. Christ loved the Church, and bought it with His Blood. "For we know the love which God hath toward us." In our Scripture for today there is much of the love of God toward His own. God loves, because God is love. God manifested His love toward us.
3. God's love to the world set forth. In Romans 5:8 is this statement. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." In Revelation 1:5 is a verse that is, perhaps, still more striking: "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His Own Blood." That is, God loved us before He washed us.
He loved me when, a sinner,
I trampled on His love,
He loved me still, though straying,
I spurned His Home above;
And still He loved; and loving,
For me He bled and died,
Then loving on and wooing,
He drew me to His side.
III. HE GAVE HIS SON THE GIFT OF HIS LOVE
When we speak of the supreme Lover, we delight in speaking of the manifestations of His love, of the gift of His love, and of how He proves His love to us.
1. He loved us and gave all things richly to enjoy. When God created the Heavens and the earth, He commanded the earth to bring forth fruit. When God filled the earth with beasts and birds, fish and creeping things, in all of this He was working for man. He was storing the earth, and even the air with everything which man would need, and He saw that it was good.
2. He loved and gave us the Word. What a marvelous gift it is, God's love letter is God's revelation of things to come, God's expression of His heart toward men.
3. He loved and gave us the Holy Ghost. In Luke 11:1 we read, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" What a gift is the Paraclete!
4. He loved and gave us His Son. He gave Him as a teacher. He gave Him as a healer. Jesus went about doing good. All of this was the gift of God. The supreme gift of the Son, however, was that He gave the Son to be our Sin-bearer. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
IV. "WHOSOEVER" THE EXTENT OF HIS LOVE
There is one great joy, and that is that the love of God is all-inclusive. Rich and poor, peer and pauper, good and bad all come under the word, "whosoever."
An old blacksmith was trying to read John 3:16. When he came to the word, "whosoever," his knowledge of letters was too circumscribed. He could not make the word out. He read, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that * *," and then he desired so much to know the next word. He laid his book aside awaiting the return of his daughter from school. He put his finger on the word, when she came in, and said, "What is this, daughter?" She said, "It is 'whosoever,' and it means me, or you, or anybody else." He clapped his finger down on the word as though it might get away, and said, "Thank God, that means me!"
1. Whosoever signifies that Christ tasted death for every man. No man is lost because there was no provision for his being found. No man is lost because his sins knew no atonement, Christ died for all.
2. Whosoever means that God sent His messengers to every man. The command was, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." None are excluded.
"None are excluded thence
But those who do themselves exclude;
Welcome the learned, the polite,
The ignorant, the rude."
3. Whosoever includes every son of Adam. It is an all-embracing word. It is not a question of whether you are invited, it is a question of whether you want to believe. Sin and shame, in Him will find a Saviour who can save to the uttermost.
V. BELIEVING IN HIM, OR THE RECEPTION OF HIS LOVE
1. There are some who spurn God's love as manifested in Christ. Isaiah 53:1 must stand before us as an exponent, not alone of God's saving grace, but of man's sinfulness of heart. Isaiah 53:3 says, "We hid as it were our faces from Him; * * we esteemed Him not. * * We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. * * We have turned every one to his own way." Oh, how vile is the heart that rejects the Son of God! If men in their sin were rejecting an enemy, it would be different.
In the second chapter of Romans there is a statement like this: "Not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance." The man who despiseth God, despises the riches of His goodness, of His forbearance, and of His long-suffering.
2. Those who accept His love. Not all spurn it. In Acts it is told how "some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not." To believe in Him, is to turn to Him. We believe it was Robert L. Stevenson who wrote, "Oh, my friend, teach me to be thine."
The story is told how when Caesar saw Brutus, his own familiar friend, come to him with a dagger, it quite vanquished him. How can we help but love Christ? How can we refrain from believing Him? "We love Him, because He first loved us."
VI. "SHOULD NOT PERISH" THE ASSURANCE OF HIS LOVE
1. Men are under Satan's power. Jesus Christ came to open the prison bars, and to set the captive free. This was God's gift, and He does not want men to remain trapped by the devil.
2. Men are sin-driven. There are not only dangers from without, which engulf sinners, but there is the power of the flesh within, the sinful self that holds men captive. God loved us, and gave Christ to deliver us so that we should not perish under the reign of self.
3. Men are hell-bound. The wicked shall be cast into hell, and all nations that forget God. God loved us and gave Jesus Christ, His Son, that we might not perish, and become engulfed in the powers and darkness of the pit.
We delight in that wonderful story of the Good Shepherd who went out after the sheep which was lost. He stayed out until he found it, and when he found it he put it upon his shoulders, and brought it home rejoicing. When we think of the love of God in Christ, we think of a love that will not let us perish, that will not let us go.
"O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be."
Let us close with that wonderful statement which was written by the Holy Ghost, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." This is the love of God which assures us that we will never perish.
VII. "EVERLASTING LIFE," OR THE CLIMAX OF HIS LOVE
How unfathomable is the word, "everlasting." Some one has suggested that eternity might be described by a bird which carried the grains from every seashore to some distant planet, and this one grain each year until all was gone, and then eternity would just have begun. This life is everlasting.
1. There is included the city of gold, the new Jerusalem, the new heavens, and the new earth. These will be the abode of the saints forevermore. We shall dwell where sin and sorrow, sighing and sickness, penury and pain, can never enter. We shall dwell in the city of light. We shall walk in the Garden of God, and eat of the fruit of the tree of life, of the tree which bears twelve manner of fruit. We shall pass down by the river of the water of life, clear as crystal.
2. There is included the reunion of the saints. This is for all those who are in Christ, they shall live forever together, knowing as they are known forevermore. From the east, and from the west; from the north and from the south, they will come, and sit down together in the Kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with the redeemed.
3. There is included God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. No more of separation; no more of isolation, but eternal fellowship.
AN ILLUSTRATION
Love is Heaven's great gift. God's love in its endurance is well illustrated by a mother's love.
The end came happily to Mrs. Ellen Brown because the son for whom she had waited and watched for ten years was at her side. Today he followed her to the grave.
Everybody in Newburgh knew the sad-faced little woman who had haunted railroad stations and boat landings for a decade. Often she went across to Fishkill to watch the arrival of the New York Central trains.
"I am waiting for my son," she told those who questioned her. "He will come back to me some day,"
Richard Brown was only seventeen when he left his home. His mother never heard from him.
A month ago Mrs. Brown became grievously ill and was taken to St. Luke's Hospital. The doctors knew that she would not leave it alive. Each morning she asked whether there was news from her son. They knew that it was the longing to see him that kept her alive.
A week ago Richard Brown returned to Newburgh. He went to the hospital. There was no surprise in the little mother's face, but only a great joy.
From that time she failed rapidly. She died with her boy's hand in hers, with peace and happiness in her heart.
J. W. C.