Light human nature is too lightly tost
And ruffled without cause, — complaining on,
Restless with rest — until, being overthrown,
It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost
Or a small wasp have crept to the innermost
Of our ripe peach, or let the wilful sun
Shine westward of our window, — straight we run
A furlong's sigh, as if the world were lost.
But what time through the heart and through the brain
God hath transfixed us, — we, so moved before,
Attain to a calm. Aye, shouldering weights of pain,
We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore,
And hear, submissive, o'er the stormy main,
God's chartered judgements walk for evermore.8
1 C. H. Spurgeon. 2 E. B. Browning, Sonnet*.
The Perfection op Sorrow.
JER.-MAL. — II
Literature.
Adeney (W. F.), Canticles and Lamentations (Expositors Bible), 120.
Belfrage (H.), Sacramental Addresses, 81.
Foxell (W. J.), A Mirror of Divine Comfort, 100.
Hickey (E. P.), Short Sermons, ii. 83.
Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, i. 173.
Hunter (J.), God and Life, 277.
Jerdan (C), For the Lord's Table, 163.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Holy Week, 183.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, i. 288.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, vii. 377.
Sanderson (T.), Unfulfilled Designs, 72.
Segneri (P. P.), Quaresimale (tr. J. Ford), iii. 194.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvii. (1881), No.
1620 ; lix. (1913), No. 3360. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xi. (1874), No. 879. Williams (L), Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels, iii. 124. Christian World Pulpit, lxviii. 273 (J. Hunter) ; lxx. 360 (C. S. Home). Church Pulpit Year Book, 1909, p. 83 ; 1910, p. 53. Churchman's Pulpit : Holy Week, vi. 370 (S. W. Skeffington). Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, ii. 665 (C. W. Emmet). Literary Churchman, xxi. (1875) 74; xxxii. (1886) 156 (F. Foster).
rt»
The Perfection of Sorrow.
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me. — Lam. i. 12.
1. These words take us back to a time nearly six hundred years before Christ, when Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the conquering Chaldseans. There is no ode or elegy in literature more pathetic or more tragic than this Hebrew poet's wail over his desolate city. It gives expression to feelings which must have stirred many a patriotic Hebrew heart in those dark and troubled days. " Solitary lieth the city, she that was full of people, she that was great among the nations, a princess among provinces. Zion's ways do languish, her gates are desolate, her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, all her friends have betrayed her and she is in bitterness." In the text Jerusalem herself is represented as plunged in the lowest depths of despair and as appealing for sympathy and help. She appeals first to passing travellers, then to the larger circle of the surrounding nations, and lastly to her God. Already the suffering city has spoken once or twice in brief interruptions of the poet's descriptions of her miseries, and now she seems to be too impatient to permit herself to be repre- sented any longer even by this friendly advocate ; she must come forward in person and present her case in her own words, " Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me."
2. The appeal to all who pass by is most familiar to us in its
later association with our Lord's sufferings on the cross. But this
is not in any sense a Messianic passage; it is confined in its
purpose to the miseries of Jerusalem. Of course there can be no
objection to illustrating the grief and pain of the Man of Sorrows
by using the classic language of an ancient lament if we note that
this is only an illustration. There is a kinship in all suffering,
163
1 64 THE PERFECTION OF SORROW
and it is right to consider that He who was tried in all points as we are tried passed through sorrows which absorbed all the bitter- ness even of such a cup of woe as that which was drunk by Jerusalem in the extremity of her misfortunes. If never before there had been sorrow like unto her sorrow, at length that was matched, nay, surpassed, at Gethsemane and Golgotha. When He who was " holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners " came into direct relation with sin, He suffered as it is not possible for us to realize. To our Lord, the sin around Him was that from which His nature, and His intense loyalty to His Father in heaven, shrank with unspeakable pain. In its climax we can even see how it led to an actual sense of separation from God ; for when sin, in its hate of Him, hung Him up as a "cursed thing" upon the eross, as malefactor, outlaw, and outcast, it pictured forth its own deadly power to kill the representative of the race, sinless though He was. And the silent heaven seemed to the breaking heart of the Christ as the hiding away of the Face of Eternal Love, who in that dark hour knew a grief which we understand not, while "he spared not his own Son."