^ This valley [the Yosemite] is flanked by towering mountains, cleft for the most part right up in every variety of extraordinary summit. The rock is granite of flashing whiteness, rising into
2 COR. IV. 17 III
triangles, squares and domes. The feature of the valley is two gigantic domes, the one split like the half of a helmet, the other running up in a mass of rock till an entire helmet crowns its mass. Yesterday I walked to the Mirror Lake on the one fork of the valley. The pines at first by their reflection almost ab- sorbed the view ; but when you look far enough down, in quite distinct perspective you see to almost infinite depths the outline of the rocks and of the sky. Thus the transient in the glass of time captivates many ; we need to look deep enough to catch the eternal.^
III.
The End of Affliction.
1. Affliction is the precursor of glory. It cannot be said that trial and suffering in themselves have power to make men holier or more heavenly. Upon many they have the very opposite effect, making them gloomy, selfish, and envious. They harden the heart instead of making it tender and sympathetic. They may come and overwhelm a man in their dark waves, and yet when their tide recedes it may leave him impure and worldly as before. Let no one think, then, that he is necessarily the better for having been tried. It is not so ; and yet it is true that trial is most generally the instrument which God employs for softening the hard-hearted, for subduing the proud, for teaching endurance and patience, for expanding the sympathies, for exercising the religious affections, for refining, strengthening, and elevating the entire dis- position and character. You cast the ore into the furnace in order to obtain the pure gold unalloyed with any dross ; so men must pass through those fires of affliction which try every man's work of what sort it is. "And no one," it has been observed, " who has borne suffering aright has ever complained that he had been called on to endure too much of it. On the contrary, all the noblest of our race have learned from experience to count suffer- ing not an evil but a privilege, and to rejoice in it as working out in them, through its purifying and perfecting power, an eternal weight of glory." St, Paul had learned to " glory in tribulations also : knowing that tribulation worketh patience ; and patience,
^ Life and Letters of John Cairns, 697.
112 AN ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY
experience " ; in other words, that the result of trial is, or ought to be, the discipline and enlargement of the spirit.
^ A friend of mine, Mr. Houston of Johnstone Castle, died last week at the age of eighty-two, who had for fifty years suffered uninterruptedly from neuralgia. Many years ago he told me that for twenty years he had never been so sound asleep as to lose the consciousness of suffering. He died praising God for His tender mercies, which had led him all his journey through.^
2. Affliction " worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory." More is said here than at first appears ; more than the hasty reader would observe. It is not merely as- serted that we shall be relieved of pain by-and-by ; it is not merely stated that they who suffer here on earth shall cease to suffer in heaven ; this were no new thing to tell. But what is said is this : that pain is the forerunner of joy, as its efficient cause. " Afflic- tion " is not merely followed by " glory " ; it " worketh " that glory, it maketh that glory to be. " Our light affliction worketh for us a weight of glory." This is a specific truth of Catholic Christian- ity, and one unknown to the wise and sagacious of this world.
There is nothing more characteristic of the scientific thought of to-day than the law of progress through struggle. Scientists show us that its working is found in every kingdom of the animate universe ; that there is no progress apart from struggle and labour and suffering; and that in this conflict only the fittest survive, and by their survival raise their species to a higher plane. And this which philosophers of the nineteenth century claimed as the great discovery of their age is anticipated in these words of St. Paul. Our sufferings and struggles, if rightly used, lead to the development of our powers, and work for us a splendid result — the life of glory. He shows us that in this struggle alone is spiritual progress possible, and that the result of it is the survival of the fittest, of the saints, in the kingdom of glory.
^ A bar of iron worth £1, when wrought into horse-shoes is worth £2. If made into needles it is worth £70. If into pen- knife blades it is worth £650. If into springs for watches it is worth £50,000. Thus the more it is hammered and pounded and polished, and brought through the fire, the more valuable it be- comes. Does not this throw light upon many a perplexing provi- * Letters of Thomas Erskme of Linlathen, ii. 144.