that smile of the Father. Or if this same vault remained serene too
long; if the soil of the fields became dusty to his boots and his
young grain began to wither, when at last, in response to his
prayer, the clouds were brought directly over them and emptied
down, as he stepped forth into the cooled, dripping, soaking green,
how his heart blessed the Power that reigned above and did all
things well!

It was always praise, gratitude, thanks-giving, whatever happened.
If he prayed for rain for his crops and none was sent, then he
thought his prayer lacked faith or was unwise, he knew not how; if
too much rain fell, so that his grain rotted, this again was from
some fault of his or for his good; or perhaps it was the evil work
of the prince of the powers of the air--by permission of the
Omnipotent. In the case of one crop all the labor of nearly a year
went for nothing: he explained this as a reminder that he must be
chastened.

Come good, come ill, then, crops or no crops, increase or decrease,
it was all the same to him: he traced the cause of all plenty as of
all disappointment and disaster reaching him through the laws of
nature to some benevolent purpose of the Ruler. And ever before his
eyes also he kept that spotless Figure which once walked among men
on earth--that Saviour of the world whose service he was soon to
enter, whose words of everlasting life he was to preach: his
father's farm became as the vineyard of the parables in the
Gospels, he a laborer in it.

Thus this lad was nearer the first century and yet earlier ages
than the nineteenth. He knew more of prophets and apostles than