Only-begotten Son

“ And again, since Begotten and Unbegotten are contradictories, like possession and deprivation, it would follow that contradictory essences would co-exist, which is impossible. [13] Or again, since possessions are prior to deprivations, and the latter are destructive of the former, not only must the Essence of the Son be prior to that of the Father, but it must be destroyed by the Father, on your hypothesis.
XIII. What now remains of their invincible arguments? Perhaps the last they will take refuge in is this. If God has never ceased to beget, the Generation is imperfect ”

“ And if his heart is ever filled with an awful agony that requires all his strength to meet it, he will remember that his father failed. I could not rest in my grave if my son, living, should despise me, even though my narrow house was in the same darkness that hides Her. ”

“ An honest man waits my death to love her better, and be the father of my son. Hala o hala! I have had the daughter of my murdered friend to kiss and bless me, and to love my son. My son has given me his confidence, unknowing whom I was, and shown to me a brave, pure heart. ”

“ At last both fathers gave up all hope and only lived on remembrances, firmly convinced that there was nothing in life for them, and that death alone would reunite them to their loved ones, who were everything to them. ”

“ Wednesday, October 15th, 1845.
My dearly loved mother,—How can I express words of sympathy to you, when my heart is so full of grief on my own account, from such a loss as I can never experience but once, the loss of a father.
To lose a parent under any circumstances is a heavy affliction; but to lose such a father, and to be unable to administer to his comfort, by his sick bed; to receive and treasure the words of love and wisdom which fall from his lips,—to hear his last prayer, and receive his last blessing, is indeed a sorrow heavy to be borne. ”

“ Thou hast forsaken thy Father in heaven.... and a good child seeks his father, even though he has prepared sorrow for him.... There is no greater grief than when father and son seek and cannot find one another!...' The maniac ran quickly away: but his words, burnt into my soul like kindled sparks.--I did not know my father! ”

“ How could they bear their son to die when he was thirteen. Yet how could they bear to have him just an ordinary boy, like any other that came into the world, and had trouble, and made mistakes, and died at last, leaving no name behind him? ”

“ As a father, himself on the brink of the grave, schemes for the worldly grandeur of the son, in which he confounds and melts his own life, so this sombre and predestined man, dead to earth and to joy and the emotions of the heart, looked beyond his own tomb, to that existence in which he transferred and carried on his ambition. ”

“ It is not the parting alone, but it is the horror of the grave,—the tender child alone in the far off gloomy burial-ground, the heavy earth piled on the tender little breast, the helplessness that looked to you for protection which you could not give, and the emptiness of the home to which you return when the child is gone. He who made a mother's heart and they who have borne it, alone can tell the unutterable pain of all this. ”

“ He knows not that his son is already dying. He hears not how, in a last senseless hope, with a child's faith in the power of adults, his son is calling him without words, with his heart: "Papa, papa, I am dying! Hold me!" Man sleeps soundly and sweetly, and in the deceptive, mysterious fancies there arises before him the picture of impossible happiness. Awake, Man! Your son is dead. ”

“ I have seen few things in life so touching as the spectacle of an old father going daily to the grave of his child, while the shadows are lengthening, and pouring out his grief in wails that would move a demon, until his figure melts with the gray twilight, when, silent and solemn, he returns to his desolate family. The weird effect of this observance is sometimes heightened, when the deceased was a grown-up son, by the old man kindling a little fire near the head of the scaffold, and varying his lamentations with smoking in silence. ”

“ You cannot ask of me that I should become like you, and I do not entertain the foolish thought that you could be brought to be like me—to see through my eyes, feel with my heart. My dead father lies between us now, and he will ever be between us—he a man of pure life, noble aspirations, a man of books, of high principle, fearing God and loving men. ”

“ Has he not lived to outstrip your swift hopes? What mother can refuse a second birth To such a son? But ye denying him, What after-offering may appease the gods? What joy outweigh the grief of this one day? What clamor drown the hours' myriad tongues, Crying, 'Your son, your son? where is your son, Unnatural mother, timid foolish man?" Then Pheres gravely: "These are graceless words From you our daughter. Life is always life, And death comes soon enough to such as we. We twain are old and weak, have served our time, And made our sacrifices. ”

“ Often as, morn and eve, he looked forth upon the spot, where his mother’s heart, unconscious of love and woe, mouldered away, the indignant and bitter feelings of the wronged outcast and the son who could not clear the mother’s name swept away the subdued and gentle melancholy into which time usually softens regret for the dead, and with which most of us think of the distant past, and the once joyous childhood! ”

“ For when a man dies who owns a son, it is as a man with two eyes—one sleeps yet the other watches,—but a man without a son is blind in death’s darkness.”
And the ascetic, seeing his grief, answered swiftly:
“Sir, have no fear. Good and better than good are the portents. I wept for myself. This child shall rule the world, but I, by reason of my age, shall not live to see it. Deep and full and wide is the river of his Law. Like a great lake is the calm of his Yoga; like the sun at the zenith his wisdom. ”

“ And I am sure you, dear mother, feel it a high privilege to have had such a son. It is a great comfort to look back, and while we sorrow, to feel there is nothing to regret. A pure, noble life, and a glorious death. ”

“ Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,) While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, The only son is dead. But the mother needs to be better, She with thin form presently drest in black, By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw, To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son. ”

“ In this manner the son decks himself with the spoils of the father; closes his eyes; succeeds to his rank, fortune, and dignities; conducts the pomp of his funeral, and leaves it more occupied with, more affected by, the new titles with which he is now invested, than instructed by the last advices of a dying parent; than afflicted for his loss, or even undeceived with regard to the things of the earth, by a sight which places before his eyes their insignificancy, and announces to him the same destiny soon. ”

“ How will he be surprised when he finds his lost and erring son here, a changed and amended person! You are still our son, and now worthy of the name. Affliction, and the nearness of a fearful death have changed you, and given you back to yourself a new being. ”

“ Without censuring ourselves or her, let us with sympathizing hearts strew flowers upon her grave. But, at the grave in which the hapless mother sleeps, let me ask why you acknowledge not the child,—a son whom any father might rejoice in, and whom you appear entirely to overlook? ”

“ Leaving nought to inheritance, will-power, or surroundings of man.
He is dead, mother, dead; I his friend might have made his earth fair,
But I crept like a scorpion to sting all his hopes to despair:
Robbed his body of this world's joys, and his soul of the hope
Of that other that sings through the air at the pull of the rope,
Till my mad passion swells at the tongues of the bells.”
“Hush thee and listen, my son, my son, for the bells are the voice of love.”
(All the things He made live can their Father forgive.)
“O mother! a sinner's cry may be heard above. ”

“ Then another woman said:
"'Tis my own son that from me you wring,
I deceived not the King.
[Pg 154] But slay me, even me,
And let my boy be.
A mother most hapless,
My bosom is sapless,
Mine eyes one tearful river,
My frame one fearful, shiver,
My husband sonless ever,
And I a sonless wife
To live a death in life.
O my son! O God of Truth!
O my unrewarded youth,
O my birthless sicknesses
Until doom without redress.
O my bosom's silent nest,
O the heart broke in my breast." ”

“ This put my father into a great fright doubting I was gone quite away; and so great a passion of grief seized on him, that he forebore not to weep, and to cry out aloud, so that the family heard him: “Oh, my son! I shall never see him more; for he is of so bold and resolute a spirit that he will run himself into danger, and so may be thrown into some gaol or other, where he may lie and die before I can hear of him.” ”

“ Only a few weeks after I had followed my father to his resting-place in the silent grave, my brother was brought home with delirium tremens again, and, after suffering for a short time the most terrible agony, the poor boy died, and was laid in a drunkard's grave. O my God! why was I ever born? Why cannot I die, too? But what will my eternity be for having thus ruined my own brother, the bright and beautiful boy? ”

“ But then he was afraid as death of his ‘old dad,’ as he called him; just as his mother had been. I wrote to him that his mother in heaven would never forgive him for his treatment of me; for that she had left me in his care, as a younger sister. And that now, however low he sunk, he might look about him in the sloughs there, for any woman whom he met might be the sister to whom he had betrayed his trust. I did not mean to give him a chance to take much comfort in his badness. But I meant to do more than to merely put a ‘death’s head’ at the feast of life which he had spoiled for me. ”

“ The father having learnt that there lies in his son’s way a dangerous stone, sets out beforehand and removes it unseen by anyone. His son, the object of this tender forethought, unaware of the misfortune from which he has been preserved by the father’s hand, will of course show no gratitude, and will love him less than if he had cured him of a grievous wound. But should he come to know all, will he not love him still more? ”

“ The father, being come upon the place, first hears the lamentation of the servants, and then sees the sad spectacle of his son all bloody and breathless, with his head laid upon a cloak, whereon he falls himself, and cries aloud: “My son, my son, dead or alive? dead or alive?” ”

“ If death ends all, and if this handful of dust over which you weep is all there is, you have this consolation: Your son is not within the power of this reverend gentleman's God—that is something. Your son does not suffer. Next to a life of joy is the dreamless sleep of death. ”

“ LEOPOLD-FERDINAND, DUC DE BRABANT.
The death of a child is at all times a subject of mournful interest: it is so sad to see the hereditary curse falling on the innocent heads of those who in themselves have done nothing to merit the punishment of sin. But when the lost child is an only child, or an only son, our sympathies with the bereavement are increased tenfold; so proud do we know each other to be, of perpetuating the frailties of which we are but too conscious, and leaving behind us an inheritor of the misery we have endured. ”

“ Without father or mother, without friends, without the sense of belonging to anybody in the world, of ever being loved or pitied by a single human soul. Even the idea of a kind and loving Father in heaven had no meaning for him. ”

“ With infinite unction he groaned out, "If, worthy sir, it is sad, mournful, pitiable, and most grievous to lose a dear, beloved child by a natural death, how much more sad, mournful, pitiable, and grievous must it be for a father when a healthful son is snatched from him through God's severe, though wise and gracious dispensation, by so sudden, violent, and horrid a death, without first having time to confess and repent his errors, so that in the full flower of his sins he is hurried away before the eternal judgment-seat!" ”

“ For alone we are from infancy to death!—we, for the most part, grow not more near together but rather wider apart with the widening years. Where go the sympathies between the parent and the child, and where is the close old love of brother for his brother? ”

“ If they had lost their only son there would be no use in saying anything more about the matter. I hate people who cry over spilt milk. But when I think that they might lose their only son, I certainly am much affected. ”

“ That good son lets all his brothers go away from home to seek their fortunes; he stays with the old folks, comforts their old age, closes their eyes in death, and with much love and many tears follows them with his prayers beyond the grave. ”

“ Life seems to be empty and hollow to yet another father who has lost his youthful son, who was the joy of his heart and pride of his life. The bereaved grieve and weep, sigh and sob, cry and pray that God may give them back their dear ones, who had shared their joys and sorrows at the fire hearth, but God does not give them back. ”

“ We receive the impression that the departed son comes daily closer and closer to life and converses more and more easily, more and more familiarly with all those who loved him before he was overtaken by the shadows of the grave. ”

“ The dead son's faults are all forgotten and obliterated by death's 'effacing fingers.' The headstrong, thankless rebel is, in David's mind, a child again, and the happy old days of his innocence and love are all that remain in memory. The prodigal is still a son. The father's love is immortal, and cannot be turned away by any faults. The father is willing to die for the disobedient child. Such purity and depth of affection lives in human hearts. So self-forgetting and incapable of being provoked is an earthly father's love. ”