“The relation between Christ and his friends is closer than any human relation. No one can say to any friend, “Without me you can do nothing.”
The mother cannot say it to her child. It is a sore loss when the mother of a baby is taken away—but how sore a loss no words can explain. Even God cannot twice give a mother. No other one, however loving and tender in spirit, however gentle in care, however wise in guiding and helping the young life—can be to it all that its own mother could have been.
Yet even the best and holiest mother cannot say to her child, “Without me you can do nothing.” The child, though so bereft, lives and may live nobly without a mother.”