“Well, I went homewards, and near the hotel I came across a poor woman, carrying a child⁠—a baby of some six weeks old. The mother was quite a girl herself. The baby was smiling up at her, for the first time in its life, just at that moment; and while I watched the woman she suddenly crossed herself, oh, so devoutly! ‘What is it, my good woman?’ I asked her. (I was never but asking questions then!) ‘Exactly as is a mother’s joy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God’s joy when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the first time, with all his heart!’ This is what that poor woman said to me, almost word for word; and such a deep, refined, truly religious thought it was⁠—a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was expressed in one flash⁠—that is, the recognition of God as our Father, and of God’s joy in men as His own children, which is the chief idea of Christ. She was a simple countrywoman⁠—a mother, it’s true⁠—and perhaps, who knows, she may have been the wife of the drunken soldier!