' Bishop W. C. Bonipas, Northern Lights on the Bible, 55.
PSALM XXX. 5 43
no more. 0 Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake, comfort our desolate hearts. May we be a united family still in heart through the communion of saints — through Jesus Christ our Lord." ^
4. Sorrow comes in the night of the consciousness of sin. In the dim glimmer of the fire on the hearth the angel of penitence brings to our notice stains on our garment which, she assures us, would look a thousand times worse if we saw them in the proper light — saw them as others see them, and, above all, as God sees them. She tells us that such marks can never be removed; that there are also upon our countenance ugly scars which will always disfigure it ; that it is a hopeless thing when a man has lost his good name ; that when that is lost there is nothing worth keep- ing. She tells us, too, that even those stains which others may not detect God sees ; that sin is sin, whether it be secret or open ; and that, the wide world over and in every age, " the wages of sin is death,"
Yearly I till the vale and sow the seed,
But in the furrow rots the golden grain;
My labour is accursed, and all in vain, — The very earth revolteth at my deed. God saith no man shall slay me, though I plead
Daily for death. He placed this scarlet stain
Here on my brow, and agonizing pain Gnaws me beneath it — yet He gives no heed. Enoch reproacheth me — the guileless lad —
With eyes too like that other's, long since dead;
Eemorse engulfs me in her sanguine flood ; I build this City, else I should go mad;
But, as I work, the frowning walls turn red
And all the towers drip crimson with his blood.*
IL
The Sojourn of Sorrow.
1. Sorrow always comes with a mission. It has a message from God to human life. You may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. The same power will send one
^ Life of Archbishop) Tail, i. 189. » Lloyd Mifflin.
44 THE TRANSIENCE OF SORROW
wheel revolving from riglit to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one pro- duct. It is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the sun's course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion that hurls a comet close to the burning sun and sends it wandering away out into the fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. And so one uniform Divine purpose fills the life, and there are no interruptions, however brief, to the steady, con- tinuous flow of God's outpoured blessings. AH is love and favour. Anger is masked love, and sorrow has the same source and mission as joy. It takes all sorts of weather to make a year, and all tend to the same issue of ripened harvests and full barns.
^ I grudged not our noble, lovely child, but rather do delight that such a seed should blossom and bear in the kindly and kindred paradise of my God. And why should not I speak of thee, my Edward ! seeing it was in the season of thy sickness and death the Lord did reveal in me the knowledge and hope and desire of His Son from heaven ? Glorious exchange ! He took my son to His own more fatherly bosom, and revealed in my bosom the sure expectation and faith of His own eternal Son ! Dear season of my life, ever to be remembered, when I knew the sweetness and fruitfulness of such joy and sorrow ! ^
^ " We will not complain of Dante's miseries," said Carlyle ; " had all gone well with him as he wished it, Florence would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor, but the world would have lost the Divina Commedia."
^ There came to Glasgow, not so long ago, a pianist of an excellent reputation, I read the Herald's criticism on him, and there was one thing in it that I noted specially. The Herald said that he had always been brilliant — always been wonderful as an executant — but now there was a depth of feeling in him that had never been present in his work before. A day or two afterwards, preaching in a suburb, I met a relative of the pianist. And we fell to talk of him, and of the Herald, and of the Herald's criticism on him. And he said to me, " Did you notice that ? And do you know what was the secret of the cliange ? It xoas tJie death of his mother eighteen months ago." He was an only son, unmarried, and he had been simply devoted to his mother. And
' Edward Irving, in Life by Mrs. Oliphant, L 247.
PSALM XXX. 5 45
then she died, and he was left alone, and all the deeps were broken up in him. And now he played as only he can play who knows what life and death are, and what sorrow is.^