Dark and sad the hours have been In the valley and shade of Death,
Where co light mine eyes have seen But the far, cold stars of faith.
And my heart with haunting fears
Almost sank into despair; Yet the harvest of my years
Mostly has been gathered there.
(3) When sorrow has come in upon us like a flood. — By a strange and stern law of compensation, which equalizes the distribution of pain, where the material loss is the less felt the heart's loss is often the greater. No hunger, no cold, no nakedness enters this house
1 A. M. Fairbairn. 2 q^ jj^ Spurgeon,
8 F. J. A. Hort, Life and Letters, i. 36.
^6 GOD WHO IS OUR HOME
by reason of the new record in the registry of death. Externally, materially, all is as before. But there is the more room and scope for the agony of bereavement; there is the less possibility of assuagement by the good offices of others. Gifts can do nothing here to help ; and words, we know, are often less kind than silence. The stranger cannot intermeddle ; no anxious effort we can make can mitigate the bitterness.
\ A king once planted in his gardeti a beautiful rose-tree, and bade his gardener so tend and train it as to make its flowers the richest and loveliest possible. The tree grew and flourished, and year by year blushed into blossoms of manifold beauty. But it sent out so many shoots, formed so many buds, that its very fertility threatened to injure the quality of its flowers. So the gardener removed the shoots, pruned away the buds, till the tree seemed to bleed all over in loss and pain ; but the wounds healed, the sap and strength ran up to those buds that were spared, and when the season of ripeness was come, the roses were lovelier and sweeter than ever — most meet of all in the garden to be carried into the palace of the great king, to fill its galleries and chambers with delicious and grateful fragrance.
God gives us love. Something to love He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone.
But it is left alone that it may be the one perfect bond between the human and the Divine, the fragrant sacrifice that rejoices God, the glorious beauty that makes man a source and seat of joy for ever.
If all my years were summer, could I know
What my Lord means by His "made white as snow"?
If all my days were sunny, could I say,
" In His fair land He wipes all tears away " ?
If I were never weary could I keep
Close to my heart, " He gives His lov6d sleep " ?
Were no graves mine, might I not come to deem
The life eternal but a baseless dream ?
My winter, yea, my tears, my weariness,
Even my graves may be His way to bless;
I call them ills, yet that can surely be
Nothing but good that shows ray Lord to mo.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiii. 27 77
(4) In the fear of death. — When, at last, each of us is laid on the bed of death, and the moment has come when we must enter into the presence of God and see our souls, with every mask of hypocrisy, conscious or unconscious, torn away, see our souls as they are and as God sees them ; when we are sinking naked and possessionless into the grave ; when we feel the mist in our eyes, the fog in our throats, and the voices of our friends no longer reach us, or if they do we have no strength even to sigh back an answer or to return the pressure of the hand — what can help us then ? Alone we must enter that dark valley — no troops of friends can accompany us there ; alone must our souls seem to sink down- wards as through unfathomable seas of gloom. Which of us can tell how soon that awful hour may be awaiting us ? And when it comes, how will every one of the things which we have desired on earth seem to shrink into utter insignificance in comparison with " the one thing needful," which, perhaps, we may have altogether neglected. When the solid earth itself seems to be crumbling under our feet, when we lie helpless in the grasp of that inexorable force, there is one thing which gives to the Christian not only hope, but "peace which passeth all understanding"; it is when we feel that for us death can have no sting, and the grave no victory, because the eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
^ Mr. B., an eager business man in middle life, declared that, till he found a way of escape, to go to bed was to go to hell. Just as he was about to lose consciousness there had been almost always presented to his mind the idea and sensation of himself falling through boundless space. The perspiration stood on his face as he avowed that the phrase " bottomless pit " was to him overwhelming in its suggestiveness. This torture he had begun to experience while he was yet a schoolboy. At the school prayers on Sunday night the boys had always sung Ken's evening hymn. The lines —