The dark brown mould's upturned
By the sharp-pointed plow, And I've a lesson learned.
My life is but a field
Stretched out beneath God's sky Some harvest rich to yield.
Where grows the golden gi'ain,
Where faith, — where sympathy? In a furrow cut by pain.^
2. Sorrow tarries only for the night. It takes its departure whenever its mission is fulfilled. A thunder-storm is very short when measured against the long summer day in which it crashes ; and very few days have thunder-storms. It must be a bad climate where half the days are rainy. If we were to take a chart and prick out upon it the line of our voyage, we should find that the spaces in which the weather was tempestuous were brief and few indeed as compared with those in which it was sunny and calm.
^ Referring to the discipline which God's love makes Him use, David says, " For his anger is but for a moment : his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may come in to lodge at even, but joy Cometh in the morning." There may be weeping. There shall be joy. Weeping won't stay long. There is a morning coming, always a morning coming, with the sunshine and the chorus of the birds. Love's discipling touch that seems at the moment like anger is only for a moment. (The printer wanted to change that word " discipling " to " disciplining " ; but God's tenderness comes to us anew when we realize that disciplining with its sharp edge means the same as discipling, with its softer, warmer touch.) The loving favour is for always, a lifetime of eternal life.^
^ A tourist writes of stopping at Giesbach to look at the wonders of its waterfalls. The party had to pass over one of the falls on a slender bridge through the drenching water, with the wild torrents dashing beneath. It was a trying experience. But
1 G. H. Morrison, The Afterglow of God, 92.
* M. D. Babcock, Thoughts/or Hvery-Day Living, 167.
' S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 210.
46 THE TRANSIENCE OF SORROW
once through, a glorious picture burst upon them. There were rainbows above, beneath, and circling on all sides. So the spray of sorrow falls now, and we may have to walk through floods and pitiless tcnrents, and all may seem a strange, inexplicable mystery. But there will come a time when we shall have passed through these showers of grief, and when we shall stand amid the splendour of rainbows on the shores of glory. Then we shall understand, and see love in every pang and tear.^
From the sunshine of Thy dwelling Thou hast sent me this new day, Laden with Thy love excelling, Tidings of Thy glory telling To refresh my way.
Good and perfect gifts are lying
Wrapt within its folds of light, Pledges of a faith undying, That earth's sorrow and its sighing Will but last a night.^
3. There is a balance of good in the world, using the word "good" in the lowest sense, that is, looking merely on man's animal life, and regarding him only as a denizen, for a little, of this material world. Men are busy, men are happy ; far more happy, at least, than miserable. Some few are miserable utterly ; all are more or less unhappy at times, and for a little. Yes ! that is just it, just what the text says — " for a little " ; the dark time is "for a moment." The brighter times stretch on, and flow into each other, and go far to fill up the life.
^ The proportion of solid matter needed to colour the Irwell is very little in comparison with the whole of the stream. But the current carries it, and a trace of dye-stuff will stain miles of the turbid stream. Memory and anticipation beat the metal thin, and make it cover an enormous space. And the misery is that, somehow, we have better memories for sad hours than for joyful ones, and it is easier to get accustomed to " blessings," as we call them, and to lose the poignancy of their sweetness because they become familiar, than it is to apply the same process to our sorrows, and thus to take the edge off them. The rose's prickles are felt in the flesh longer than its fragrance lives in the nostrils,
> J. R. Miller, Week-Day Religim, 81. ' G. MiitLeson, Sacred Sanga, 57.
PSALM XXX. 5 47
or its hue in the eye. Men have long memories for their pains as compared with their remembrance of their sorrows.^
^ To her friend Miss Nicholson, whose sympathy brought her much strength and peace, Florence Nightingale wrote in 1846 : " My imagination is so filled with the misery of this world that the only thing in which to labour brings any return, seems to me helping and sympathizing there; and all that poets sing of the glories of this world appears to me untrue : all the people I see are eaten up with care or poverty or disease. I know that it was God who created the good, and man the evil, which was not the will of God, but the necessary consequence of His leaving free- will to man. I know that misery is the alphabet of fire, in which history, with its warning hand, writes in flaming letters the conse- quences of Evil (the Kingdom of Man), and that, without its glaring light, we should never see the path into the Kingdom of God, or heed the directing guide-posts." ^