The man had quarrelled with God.
But Israel's heart was not yet dead.

There was one place, where he who bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great tenderness.

That place was his own home.

What he saw there was enough to stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them, and to send him abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the babe.
The child was born blind and dumb and deaf.

At the feast of life there was no place left for it.