And now my grief I see
Was but that ancient shadow part of me.
Not yet attuned to good,
Still blind and senseless in its warring mood,
I turn from it and climb
To the heroic spirit of the prime,
The light that well foreknew
All the dark ways that it must journey through.
Yet seeing still a gain,
A distant glory o'er the hills of pain,
Through all that chaos wild
A breath as gentle as a little child,
Through earth transformed, divine,
The Christ-soul of the universe to shine.*
2. These two reasons — sacrifice and discipline — are summed up in the Apostle's word " glory." And we are led to consider 1 Whittier. 2 "A. E.," The Divine Fisim.
14 ANOTHER GOOD RECKONING
what is involved in " the glory which shall be revealed to us- ward." But before doing so we might notice that the gain of Buffering is not all kept for the life that is to come. We can believe that the suffering of men is working out such a glory because even in this earthly life sorrow and pain work out a glory that is worth the price. Take, for example, Dante, the Italian man of sorrows. Denied the woman he loved, driven an exile from his native land, sentenced to be burned alive, left alone, astonished amid the agony of life — yet but for this he had never written his poem. As Carlyle has said, had Dante not suffered, " Florence would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor, and the ten dumb centuries continued voiceless." Give him the choice of his happiness ! He knew not, more than we do, what was really happy, what was really miserable. The song was worth the price.
^ The world is full of beauty and joy ; full, too, of suffering and pain. Suffer we must, each one of us. What shall we gain by it ? Shall we suffer so that, when the pain has swept by, it leaves us nothing but the spirit of rebellion, the angry feeling of helpless despair? Or shall we suffer so that even our darkest moments are times of victory, so that out of the pain and anguish come God's beautiful gifts that can turn sorrow into joy ? That is the question we have to ask ourselves. Shall it be triumph or despair? Often enough we shall have to choose suffering, deliberately choose it, as the escape from defeat and despair. When sin has laid its defiling touch upon us, and there lie before us the two ways — the way of easy acquiescence in evil as inevitable, and the nobler, harder way of godly sorrow — we dare not hesitate ; and this is but the picture of what God calls us to in the school of brave endurance where we are being trained, where the way of ease is the way of danger, and the pathway of the Cross the road to victory.^
And methought that beauty and terror are only one, not two ; And the world has room for love, and death, and thunder,
and dew ; And all the sinews of hell slumber in summer air; And the face of God is a rock, but the face of the rock is
fair. Beneficent streams of tears flow at the finger of pain; And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.* ^ E. J. Purchase. ^ R. L. Stevenson, Songs of Travel.
ROMANS VIII. i8 15
II.
The Glory that is tq be Eevealed.
"The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward." Just like the mist that in the early morning hangs dark, damp, and depressing round the earth, but in the evening has been lifted into the blue sky, and is irradiated with a dazzling light, so the present sorrow will be even beautiful when the glory has been revealed. If the glory cannot come without the pain, it is not unloving to inflict the pain. This is, it is true, only a practical solution of the problem. But the Bible meets only our practical needs. It does not tell us why pain is the way to glory — it tells us only that " God is love." It is not strange that the suffering should now seem very great. For
Here alone Is given thee to suffer for God's sake. In other worlds we shall more perfectly Serve Him and love Him, praise Him, work for Him, Grow nearer and nearer Him with all delight; But then we shall not any more be called To suffer, which is our appointment here.
Let us take heed in time That God may now be glorified in us; And while we suffer, let us set our souls To suffer perfectly; since this alone The suffering which is this world's special grace May here be perfected and left behind.
^ What a wonderful and illimiinating thought it is when once we practically apply it ! For where is the burden of the mystery of life if we not only hope for an immortality in which all the ravelled skeins of time will be pulled straight, but know that all the enravelment of this life, all its strange blending of evil with good, of sorrow with joy, of loss with gain, is intended to exercise us in discrimination, in manliness, in moral capacity and fervour and breadth ; intended, therefore, for a discipline by which we shall be educated and made meet for the glory of a future life in which, redeemed from every bond of imperfection, every taint of corruption, we shall rise into an untrammelled freedom, a growing perfection, an eternal usefulness which shall also be an eternal joy ? If this be verily so, if we are at last to learn once for all