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| He Refers to the Tears, and the Memorable Dream Concerning Her Son, Granted by God to His Mother.
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Chapter XI.—He Refers to the
Tears, and the Memorable Dream Concerning Her Son, Granted by God
to His Mother.
19. And Thou sendedst Thine hand from above,261
and drewest
my soul out of that profound darkness, when my mother, Thy faithful
one, wept to thee on my behalf more than mothers are wont to weep
the bodily death of their children. For she saw that I was dead by
that faith and spirit which she had from Thee, and Thou heardest
her, O Lord. Thou heardest her, and despisedst not her tears, when,
pouring down, they watered the earth262
| 262 He alludes here to that devout manner of the
Eastern ancients, who used to lie flat on their faces in
prayer.—W. W. | under her eyes in every place where
she prayed; yea, Thou heardest her. For whence was that dream with
which Thou consoledst her, so that she permitted me to live with
her, and to have my meals at the same table in the house, which she
had begun to avoid, hating and detesting the blasphemies of my
error? For she saw herself standing on a certain wooden rule,263
| 263 Symbolical of the rule of faith. See viii. sec. 30,
below. | and a bright
youth advancing towards her, joyous and smiling upon her, whilst she was
grieving and bowed down with sorrow. But he having inquired of her
the cause of her sorrow and daily weeping (he wishing to teach, as
is their wont, and not to be taught), and she answering that it was
my perdition she was lamenting, he bade her rest contented, and
told her to behold and see “that where she was, there was I
also.” And when she looked she saw me standing near her on the
same rule. Whence was this, unless that Thine ears were inclined
towards her heart? O Thou Good Omnipotent, who so carest for every
one of us as if Thou caredst for him only, and so for all as if
they were but one!
20. Whence was this, also, that when she had
narrated this vision to me, and I tried to put this construction on
it, “That she rather should not despair of being some day what I
was,” she immediately, without hesitation, replied, “No; for it
was not told me that ‘where he is, there shalt thou be,’ but
‘where thou art, there shall he be’”? I confess to Thee, O
Lord, that, to the best of my remembrance (and I have oft spoken of
this), Thy answer through my watchful mother—that she was not
disquieted by the speciousness of my false interpretation, and saw
in a moment what was to be seen, and which I myself had not in
truth perceived before she spoke—even then moved me more than the
dream itself, by which the happiness to that pious woman, to be
realized so long after, was, for the alleviation of her present
anxiety, so long before predicted. For nearly nine years passed in
which I wallowed in the slime of that deep pit and the darkness of
falsehood, striving often to rise, but being all the more heavily
dashed down. But yet that chaste, pious, and sober widow (such as
Thou lovest), now more buoyed up with hope, though no whit less
zealous in her weeping and mourning, desisted not, at all the hours
of her supplications, to bewail my case unto Thee. And her prayers
entered into Thy presence,264
and yet Thou didst still suffer me
to be involved and re-involved in that darkness.
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