Mark 10:28-31 Then Peter began to say to him, See, we have left all, and have followed you.… And the heart, do you believe that it can reconcile itself to your cold doctrine, and always love without hoping for return? It does not calculate, doubtless, but it believes that its flights do not disappear in a void. What is more disinterested than the love of a mother? Does she love her infant in order to be recompensed? Ah! though one should come and tell her that she must die before that infant can respond to her affection and reward her by a word, will she love it less, will she use the less on its behalf all that remains to her of energy and of life? Are there not every day and in all classes those martyrs of maternal love? And yet will you accuse a mother of loving less because, looking towards the future, she dreams with tremors of joy of the day when her infant's look will respond to her look, when its heart will understand her, and when she will find in it her strength and her recompense? Her recompense, I have said Well, be consistent. Call her mercenary, accuse her of devoting herself to her task through self-interest, drag her to the tribunal of the human conscience, and, if she comes away from it condemned, you shall drag there the Christian who seeks his joy and his wages in the love of God, who finds his true life there, and who thirsts for immortality, because he thirsts for an eternal love. (E. Bersier, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.WEB: Peter began to tell him, "Behold, we have left all, and have followed you." |
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