Letter 300

300. To the father of a deceased scholar, a letter of consolation

Since the Lord has set us in the second rank of fathers to Christians, entrusting to us the forming, through godliness, of His children who have believed in Him, the suffering that has befallen your blessed son we have reckoned to be our own as well; and we have groaned over the untimeliness of his departure, feeling compassion above all for you, and considering how great will be the weight of grief for a father by nature, when even in us, who are made his own by the commandment, so great a dejection of heart has arisen. For over him there was no need either to suffer or to utter anything mournful; but pitiable are those who have been disappointed of their hopes in him. And truly they are worthy of many tears and groans, who, having sent forth a son in the very flower of his age to the training of eloquence, receive him back in silence, keeping this long and dreaded silence. But these things, as men, at once stirred us, and we poured out a hasty tear and let go an unschooled groan from the midst of the heart, the suffering suddenly, like some cloud, enveloping our reason. But when we came to ourselves, and looked with the eye of the soul toward the nature of human things, we made our defence to the Lord for the way our soul, swept along, had been affected toward what had happened, and we admonished ourselves to bear these things with measure, since they were allotted to the life of men by the ancient decree of God.

A son is gone, leading the very prime of his age, distinguished in the companies of his fellows, dear to his teachers, able from a bare meeting to draw even the most savage into goodwill, quick in his studies, gentle in character, composed beyond his years; and one who said more than this would still say less than the truth. Yet, after all, he was a man born of a man. What, then, did it befit the father of such a son to consider? What else than to remember his own father, that he is dead? What wonder, then, that one born of a mortal should become the father of a mortal?

But that it was before his time, and before he had his fill of life, and before he came to the measure of full age, and was made known among men, and left a succession to his line—these are not, as I persuade myself, an increase of the grief, but a consolation for what has happened. The dispensation of God ought to be received with thanks, in that He did not leave orphan children upon the earth, in that He did not leave a wife a widow, given over to a long affliction, or to live with another man and neglect her former children. And as for the fact that the boy's life was not prolonged in this world, who is so ungracious as not to consider this the greatest of goods? For a longer sojourn here is an occasion of more evils. He did no evil; he wove no guile against his neighbour; he came under no necessity to mingle with the brotherhoods of those who do wickedly; he was not entangled in the evils of the marketplace; he endured no compulsion to sin—no falsehood, no ingratitude, no greed, no love of pleasure, none of the passions of the flesh that naturally arise in ill-bred souls. He departed with his soul branded by no stain, but withdrew pure to the better lot. It was not the earth that hid the beloved, but heaven that received him. God, who orders our affairs, who appoints to each the boundaries of his times, who led him into this life, He Himself also removed him. We have, in the excesses of our misfortunes, a school in that renowned utterance of great Job: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so also has it come to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever."