^J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, pt. ii. 125. 'F. M. White.
ROMANS VIII. 28 91
Love understands the mystery, whereof
We can but spell a surface history: Love knows, remembers: let us trust in Love:
Love understands the mystery.
Love weighs the event, the long pre-history, Measures the depth beneath, the height above, The mystery, with the ante-mystery.
To love and to be grieved befits a dove
Silently telling her bead-history: Trust all to Love, be patient and approve:
Love understands the mystery,^
2. The bright things. — ^When St. Paul says " All things work together for good to them that love God," he is not taking a merely negative view of life. It is not only of trials and calamities, of losses and sufferings, that he is speaking. He does not say all trials, but all things — health, strength, youth, beauty and intellect, vigour of mind and vigour of body.
^ Do honour to your bodies. Eeverence your physical natures, not simply for themselves. Only as ends they are not worthy of it, but because in health and strength lies the true basis of noble thought and glorious devotion. A man thinks well and loves well and prays well, because of the rich running of his blood.2
^ We should be as happy as possible, and our happiness should last as long as possible; for those who can finally issue from self by the portal of happiness know infinitely wider freedom than those who pass through the gate of sadness.^
^ One shivering evening, cold enough for frost, but with too high a wind, and a little past sundown, when the lamps were beginning to enlarge their circles in the growing dusk, a brace of barefooted lassies were seen coming eastward in the teeth of the wind. If the one was as much as nine, the other was certainly not more than seven. They were miserably clad ; and the pavement was so cold you would have thought no one could lay a naked foot on it unflinching. Yet they came along waltzing, if you please, while the elder sang a tune to give them music. The person who saw this, and whose heart was full of bitterness at the moment, pocketed a reproof which has been of use to him
* Christina G. Rossetti. * PiiUlips Brooks.
* Maurice Maeterlinck.
92 LOVE'S PROSPERITY
ever since, and which he now hands on, with his good wishes, to the reader.^
Spirit of sacred happiness. Who makest energy delight,
And love to be in weakness might; Now with enlivening impulse bless. Now re-confirm our steadfastness. And make us vigorous and bright.*
ii. Working together for Good.
1. Now first observe a very important distinction. St. Paul does not assert that all things are good, but he does affirm that [/ all things worJc together for the ultimate good. Even the most apparently insignificant affairs in life work out for our greatest ^, benefit in the future. Something that occurs to-day may be the ' beginning of a series of circumstances which will not come to fruition for the next twenty years, but the next twenty years will prove how essential the almost unnoticed circumstance was for our later good. One of the most interesting features of history is to observe how things of an apparently opposite nature have worked together for some universal benefit — things which at first sight could scarcely have been believed to have any possible connection with each other. And yet they have been as closely connected as the links of a chain or the cog-wheels that work into each other in a piece of machinery.
^ When the physician has prescribed some medicine, we go to the chemist to have it made up ; and he takes one ingredient from this phial, and another from that, and another from else- where ; any one of these taken alone might kill us outright, but when they have been well compounded and mixed they work together for a perfect cure.^
•[[ All that is harmony for thee, 0 universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for thee is too early or too late for me.*
The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven above;
Do thou, as best thou may'st, thy duty do; Amid the things allowed thee live and love;
Some day thou shalt it view.^
* R. L. Stevenson, Notes on Edinburgh.
« T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet, 90. » F. B. Meyer.
* Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, ' Clough.
/
ROMANS VIII. 28 93
2. In the second place, we must make no mistake about what St. Paul means by " good." When the Apostle declares that all things work together for good, he is thinking of good in God's sense of that word. Happiness is one thing, good is another and a very different thing. Good in this sense will, in the long-run, no doubt bring in its turn perfect blessedness ; it will bring un- sullied and unmixed joy; but good is not happiness, good is not freedom from strife, care, and pain. If we think that all things work together to give the godly man all he desires, to deliver him from trial, trouble, worry, and distress, to make him prosperous, smiling, contented with everything about him, and unruffled in temper, person, and estate, we entirely misread these words, and we shall in all probability be woefully disappointed.