The Sojourn at Rome

132:6.1Here in Rome also oc­curred that touch­ing in­ci­dent in which the Cre­ator of a uni­verse spent sev­eral hours restor­ing a lost child to his anx­ious mother. This lit­tle boy had wan­dered away from his home, and Je­sus found him cry­ing in dis­tress. He and Ga­nid were on their way to the li­braries, but they de­voted them­selves to get­ting the child back home. Ga­nid never for­got Je­sus’ com­ment: “You know, Ga­nid, most hu­man be­ings are like the lost child. They spend much of their time cry­ing in fear and suf­fer­ing in sor­row when, in very truth, they are but a short dis­tance from safety and se­cu­rity, even as this child was only a lit­tle way from home. And all those who know the way of truth and en­joy the as­sur­ance of know­ing God should es­teem it a priv­i­lege, not a duty, to of­fer guid­ance to their fel­lows in their ef­forts to find the sat­is­fac­tions of liv­ing. Did we not su­premely en­joy this min­istry of restor­ing the child to his mother? So do those who lead men to God ex­pe­ri­ence the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of hu­man ser­vice.” And from that day for­ward, for the re­main­der of his nat­u­ral life, Ga­nid was con­tin­u­ally on the look­out for lost chil­dren whom he might re­store to their homes.

132:6.2There was the widow with five chil­dren whose hus­band had been ac­ci­den­tally killed. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the loss of his own fa­ther by an ac­ci­dent, and they went re­peat­edly to com­fort this mother and her chil­dren, while Ga­nid sought money from his fa­ther to pro­vide food and cloth­ing. They did not cease their ef­forts un­til they had found a po­si­tion for the el­dest boy so that he could help in the care of the fam­ily.

132:6.3That night, as Gonod lis­tened to the recital of these ex­pe­ri­ences, he said to Je­sus, good-na­turedly: “I pro­pose to make a scholar or a busi­ness­man of my son, and now you start out to make a philoso­pher or phi­lan­thropist of him.” And Je­sus smil­ingly replied: “Per­haps we will make him all four; then can he en­joy a four­fold sat­is­fac­tion in life as his ear for the rec­og­ni­tion of hu­man mel­ody will be able to rec­og­nize four tones in­stead of one.” Then said Gonod: “I per­ceive that you re­ally are a philoso­pher. You must write a book for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.” And Je­sus replied: “Not a book—my mis­sion is to live a life in this gen­er­a­tion and for all gen­er­a­tions. I—” but he stopped, say­ing to Ga­nid, “My son, it is time to re­tire.”