PETER ABELARD

 
          …both men [Peter Abelard and his servant, Thibault] suddenly stood still.
          “My God,” said Thibault, “what’s that?”
          From somewhere near them in the woods a cry had risen, of such intolerable anguish…
          “It’s a child’s voice,” he said.  “O God…”  
Thibault had gone outside.  The cry came again, making the twilight and the firelit hearth a mockery.
“A rabbit,” said Thibault.  … “It’ll be in a trap.”  …He listened.   …The scream came yet again….
“Oh, God,” [Abelard] was muttering.  “Let it die.  Let it die quickly.”
But the cry came yet again….
The rabbit stopped shrieking when they stooped over it, either from exhaustion, or in some last extremity of fear.  Thibault held the teeth of the trap apart, and Abelard gathered up the little creature in his hands.  It lay for a moment breathing quickly, then in some blind recognition of the kindness that had met it at the last, the small head thrust and nuzzled against his arm, and it died.
It was that last confiding thrust that broke Abelard’s heart.  He looked down at the little draggled body, his mouth shaking.  “Thibault,” he said, “do you think there is a God at all?  Whatever has come to me, I earned it.  But what did this one do?”
Thibault nodded.  “I know,” he said.  “Only—I think God is in it too.”
Abelard looked up sharply.  “In it?   Do you mean that it makes Him suffer, the way it does us?”  Again Thibault nodded.  
“Then why doesn’t He stop it?”
“I don’t know,” said Thibault.  “Unless—unless it’s like the Prodigal Son.  I suppose the father could have kept him at home against his will.   But what would have been the use?   All this,” he stroked the limp body, “is because of us.  But all the time God suffers.  More than we do.” …
“Thibault, do you mean Calvary?”
Thibault shook his head.  “That was only a piece of it—the piece we saw—in time.  Like that.” He pointed to a fallen tree beside them, sawn through the middle.  “That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole length of the tree.  But you only see it where it is cut across.  That is what Christ’s life was; the bit of God that we saw.  And we think God is like that, because Christ was like that, kind, and forgiving sins and healing people.  We think God is like that forever, because it happened once, with Christ.  But not the pain.  Not the agony at the last.  We think that stopped."...
"Then, Thibault," he said slowly, “you think that all this,” he looked down at the little quiet body in his arms, “all the pain of the world, was Christ’s cross?”
“God’s cross,” said Thibault.  “And it goes on.”