> Samuel Cox. ' J. Hunter.
ROMANS VIII. 38, 39 153
I thought the road would be hard and bare,
But lo ! flowers,
Springing flowers, Bright flowers blossoming everywhere!
The night, I feared, would be dark and drear,
But lo ! stars,
Golden stars, Glorious, glowing stars are here !
And my shrinking heart, set free from dread,
Sees Love
(Lo! it is Love.) God's love crowning with Death my head!*
^ It happened in 1901 — if I may introduce a personal illus- tration— that my only child fell ill, and for a time, as it seemed, dangerously ill. One day she fell into a troubled sleep, in which it was evident that her dreams were disquiet. She tossed about and cried aloud. Her mother bent over her, touched her, and she awoke. The eyes of the little sufferer opened. She looked up at her mother's face, and oh ! what a change passed over her own ; and she said, " Oh, mother dear, I have been dreaming such dread- ful things. I dreamt that I was far away in a dark place, and that I called and called and you could not hear, and did not answer. And then you touched me, and I opened my eyes, and there you were." The language of the child reminded me of the language of a saint, one of the greatest that ever lived, in a prayer addressed to the King of kings and Lord of lords: "We sleep, 0 our Father, on Thy tender and paternal bosom, and in our sleep we sometimes dream that all is wrong, only to wake and find that all is right." ^
^b"-
^ The truest and tenderest earthly love says to its beloved, what is said on Charles Kingsley's tombstone in Eversley Church- yard : Amavimus, amamus, amdbi7nus.
Even for the dead I will not bind
My soul to grief; death cannot long divide,
For is it not as if the rose that climbed
My garden-wall had bloomed the other side?
3. Nor life. — We know death — that black cloud which is ever travelling towards us across the waste and will presently touch
* Margaret Blaikie, Songs by the Way, 66. '•^ E. J. Campbell.
154 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE
us with its cold shadow. St. Paul bids it come. Ay, and life too. His defiance rises from death to life ; for life, did we but realize it, is a worse enemy than death — more perilous, more mysterious, more awful.
Many there be that seek Thy face
To meet the hour of parting breath; But 'tis for life I need Thy giace: Life is more solemn still than death.
What dread chances it holds ! what appalling chances of disaster, of suffering, of shame ! Who can forecast what may be on the morrow ? Perhaps poverty, or disease, or insanity, or — worse than all — disgrace. Many a man has succumbed to a sudden temptation, and, in one passionate moment, has defamed the honour of his blameless years. Surely life is more terrible than death, and it is nothing less than a deliverance and a triumph when a wayfarer arrives at his journey's end and is laid to rest without reproach.
Out of the sleep of earth, with visions rife
I woke in death's clear morning, full of life:
And said to God, whose smile made all things bright,
"That was an awful dream 1 had last night."
4. Not a few honest and devout souls in these days are com- pelled by their experience to interpret " life " in our text as including intellectual perplexities and doubts, suspensions of judgment on important matters of faith, uncertainties, even posi- tive disbelief in things once surely believed among us. Growing knowledge in many directions, physical discovery, the advance of philosophical thought, the new study of comparative rehgion, the more purely critical study and interpretation of our sacred religious literature — these and other causes are operating to unsettle and change traditional ways of thinking about many things and to make ancient symbols fade and fail Let us not be anxious or fearful. The mind must obey its laws ; and to feel and obey the sacred claims of truth is to love God with the mind. The truth of things is also the thought of God in things.
(1) Realizing the love of God in Jesus Christ, we more than triumph over all the viydery of life. The natural tendency of the painful things of human life is to induce a depressed mood, to
ROMANS VIII. 2,S, 39 155
render us sceptical towards the greatest truths. Many are not affected by the dark aspects of nature and history : they give these no place in their thought; they never brood over them, wondering what they mean; thoughtless and shallow, they eat and drink and sleep. It is very different with others. They cannot rest because of the suffering and sorrow of the world, and the natural action of such brooding is to work havoc in the soul. Eeasou fails to solve the cruel problems ; then scejjticism sets in, and despair by scepticism. But so long as I can say " He loved me and gave himself for me," I am immune from the baneful power of mystery and intellectual bewilderment: the darkness emphasized by science and felt by us all cannot blind and destroy me. He who has saved me from death in His own death will one day clear up these painful puzzles ; they are incidental and temporary. Love in the heart means light in the eye. Believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, I keep my hold on the eternal truths which ensure eternal life.