Z#z/j 
 
SERVICE OF SORROW 
 
 LUCRETIA P. HALE. 
 
 B O STUN : 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. 
 
 867. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by 
 
 THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
PAGE 
 
 Our Summer 5 
 
 The Repose of the Meadow 17 
 
 The Comforter 20 
 
 Our All in God 22 
 
 God Disposes 23 
 
 The Sorrow of Death 25 
 
 Substitution 28 
 
 Consolation 29 
 
 "Blessed are they that Mourn; for they 
 
 shall be Comforted " 30 
 
 The Vision 38 
 
 Prayer of Archbishop Laud's ........ 40 
 
 how shall i take sorrow? 41 
 
 Cleansing Fires . • 46 
 
 Sorrow. Sermon, by T. Colani 48 
 
 The Soul that Suffers 73 
 
 a 
 
iv Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 From Letters of Joubert to a Friend .... 74 
 
 The Battle Summer 81 
 
 God is Present in our Trouble 87 
 
 In Presence of Battle 89 
 
 The Divine Life 91 
 
 The Soldier's Death in Battle 93 
 
 A Child's Death 115 
 
 The Discipline of Uselessness 119 
 
 Words of Christ, David, and Paul 130 
 
 Be Strong ..... 132 
 
 Acquainted with Grief 133 
 
 Past Suffering • 134 
 
 Seen and Unseen 136 
 
 The Burden of Life . . ' 140 
 
 Who shall Deliver Me? • ... 149 
 
 A Gay, Serene Spirit 151 
 
 Good and Evil 152 
 
 Disappointment. Sermon, for New Year's Day, by 
 
 Christoph F. Ammon 155 
 
 • Night Musings . 176 
 
 Troubles which Come to us through the Mis- 
 takes or Misconduct of Others .... 178 
 
 Judge Not 188 
 
 Extract from Mad. Swetchine 190 
 
 Sadness and Gladness 191 
 
 Immortality 196 
 
 The Presence of God 203 
 
 The Mystery 205 
 
Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Of Death 206 
 
 The Memory we Leave behind 208 
 
 Sonnets 212 
 
 Immortality. A Sermon preached on All-Saints 
 
 Day. By A. Tholuck 214 
 
 Christ must needs have Suffered. A Sermon, 
 
 by Edward E. Hale 233 
 
 The Shore of Eternity 246 
 
Though Night has climbed her highest peak of noon, 
 And bitter blasts the screaming Autumn whirl, 
 All night through archwajs of the bridged pearl, 
 And portals of pure silver, walks the moon. 
 Walk on, my soul, nor crouch to agony; 
 Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy, 
 And dross to gold, with glorious alchemy, 
 Basing thy throne above the world's annoy. 
 Rest thou above the storm of sorrow and of ruth 
 That wars beneath ; unshaken peace hath won thee. 
 So shalt thou pierce the woven glooms of truth; 
 So shall the blessing of the meek be on thee ; 
 So, in thy hour of death, the body's youth, 
 And honorable eld, shall come upon thee. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
FR SUMMER. 
 
 f I ^HE house to which we came for the sum- 
 -*- mer was far down the village street, just 
 where it began to stray away among the fields 
 and hills. In front was a broad meadow, yel- 
 low with cowslips as we reached there, and 
 waving with grass ; so that the children, as 
 we left the carriage, instead of waiting for the 
 pleasure of watching the heavy trunks taken 
 down, instead of satisfying their curiosity with 
 hurrying into the house to see what sort of a 
 place we were to spend the summer in, ran 
 away across the road, plunging into the grass 
 
The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 to see if they could reach some of the flowers, 
 — " the real country-flowers ! " 
 
 In front was this broad meadow, resting the 
 eyes that looked upon it ; behind, a stretch of 
 wood that sloped gradually to the foot of some 
 steep hills. Gertrude, when all the bustle of 
 arrival was over, sat at the window ; and I 
 could see that the broad, quiet, green meadow 
 was bringing rest already to her tired soul and 
 body. Clara came to her mother's side, and, 
 leaning against her, wondered that all houses 
 were not built with a meadow in front. 
 
 Johnie would have liked it better as it was 
 at the house where we dined, where there were 
 geese in a pool by the door ; and Martin in- 
 sisted that brick streets and brick houses were 
 best after all, but he consented to go out and 
 see where the barn was. 
 
 A short rest and quiet, while the boys went 
 into the barn, and the girls hurried up stairs 
 " to choose their rooms," and the mother and I, 
 in the few moments of silence, looked out 
 over the green grass. The rest was soon 
 
Our Summer. 
 
 broken by the squabbles of the two older girls, 
 who wanted the same room ; for they never 
 would think of sharing it. Each came down 
 with her own complaint and her own plea. 
 "Clara always had the best," complained 
 Ellen ; " it was but fair she should have the 
 first choice for once." And Clara insisted that 
 " the oldest had a right to choose ; and she was 
 the oldest." And dreamy Rosa, the third 
 girl, was appealed to by both sides, and gave 
 answer in favor of either. 
 
 By this time, the boys came in, and Martin 
 had kicked John, and there were more troubles 
 to be attended to ; so Gertrude turned away 
 from her meadow, and set to work to compose 
 a peace. 
 
 But the meadow was still there. That could 
 not be taken away from us. And Gertrude, 
 after calming the children in some wonderful 
 way, set me in a comfortable chair by the win- 
 dow, "to rest after the journey," while she 
 went up stairs to settle this weighty question of 
 the rooms, bearing the boys along with her. 
 
8 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 So I was left alone to rest, and to wonder at 
 the quiet, and to wonder over again at the 
 power that had brought about the quiet.. For 
 Gertrude had, all her life, herself been a 
 spoiled child. And when my brother died, 
 and left her, his wife, with seven children to 
 manage, and children very difficult to rule, the 
 first question was, who could take care of Ger- 
 trude? She had always been taken care of, 
 petted, caressed, cloyed almost with the goods 
 of life. She had never been allowed the care 
 of her house or her children. Frank could 
 not bear an anxious shade upon her face. 
 " His wife should never drudge, nor wear her- 
 self out, like other women." So he heaped 
 upon her luxuries, gratified her tastes, an- 
 swered her wants before she could speak them, 
 and insisted upon taking all care upon himself. 
 And she had submitted. 
 
 I was just beginning to discover that this 
 serenity of Gertrude's was true submission. 
 For now, with the necessity, there developed in 
 her the power of rule. For the time of trial 
 
Our Summer, 
 
 had come. The friend who had tried to shield 
 her from all care and sorrow could not save 
 her from this greatest grief of all, from the 
 separation of death. 
 
 How impossible it is for us to pick out only 
 the joys of life for our friends to live upon ! 
 Every one who lives, must live through his 
 own amount of hardship and suffering. Even 
 the hyacinth, in the soft air of the greenhouse, 
 has to break through the hard rind of its shell, 
 must cut through the heavy clod laid over it, 
 before its germ can find its way up into the 
 warm air. It must have the same fight after 
 light and sunshine that the snowdrop outside 
 in the flower border has. 
 
 It is very useless in us to plan quiet, shielded 
 lives for our friends, much as we would long 
 to do it, — useless and foolish. Care, sickness, 
 and death, we have no power to shut out. No 
 one else can live our life for us. Every man 
 must live for himself, must bear his own sor- 
 row, must find out for himself the earnestness 
 of his own life. 
 
io The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 And, thank God ! all these things, so beyond 
 our little grasp, lie in his hands. Care and 
 sickness and death come through the hands of 
 God as do the joys of life. In looking back, 
 what hour of our own sorrows would we have 
 given up, where only our own happiness has 
 been affected? In remembering the strength 
 that has come to us from conflict, we remember, 
 too, the triumph, — the peace so hardly wrung. 
 The way of the cross has become the way of 
 light. We could not see the path before. We 
 were groping, cast down, overwhelmed. Now, 
 as we look back, the light of success shines 
 over the dark moment, and we are grateful for 
 its deepest agony. 
 
 As I look back upon my past life, and recall 
 the long hours of wearisome sickness ; shorter, 
 sudden pangs of more overwhelming sorrow ; 
 moments and hours which I could never have 
 borne to look forward to, — I can recognize 
 the strength that came out of the weakness, the 
 power that was born of the sorrow. I might 
 shudder to pass through them again, but I 
 
Our Summer. n 
 
 could not bear to cut them out of the history of 
 my life. I could not do without the strength 
 they gave. 
 
 This bitter baptism we would fain spare our 
 friends. We would like to save them from the 
 evil, not being well able to tell what is for 
 them, the evil or the good. So still for Ger- 
 trude I was planning and hoping for quiet and 
 ease, hoping that this undisturbed summer's 
 life might give her rest from her great sorrow, 
 time for her mourning, and repose after the 
 sudden grief into which we had been thrown. 
 
 The voices of the children sounded down to 
 me, as they were coming back through the 
 entries, — happy, satisfied voices. Gertrude 
 had arranged every thing. 
 
 "To be sure there was only one chamber 
 looking into the cherry-tree, but cherries would 
 not last all summer long ; and Ellen should 
 have the room over the little porch, and Rosa 
 the dressing-room ; and the boys the large 
 room in the end, where their voices would not 
 disturb Aunt Ann's morning nap. As for 
 
12 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 cherries, too, there were trees in the garden 
 that all could climb." 
 
 "Oh, yes!" said Ellen; "lazy Clara might 
 eat the cherries from her window-seat, but it 
 would be far jollier to climb the tree." 
 
 Whether a fresh contest arose, I do not 
 know, as the voices went off into another 
 room, and began to settle about the furniture. 
 
 I went on wondering at Gertrude's power. 
 
 But a character, indeed, that has any moral 
 force in it, is spoiled no more by favors and 
 luxuries than it is crushed by adversities. It 
 is only weak souls that are hurt by indulgence. 
 The spoiled child, nursed and petted by its 
 parents, has not the heart to appreciate the 
 self-sacrifice with which they devote themselves 
 to its happiness. It selfishly absorbs all the 
 goods laid within its reach, and vegetates in its 
 own atmosphere of self. Very often, it despises 
 the very idolatry upon which it is fed ; and, as 
 it grows up, fancies itself superior to the kind 
 souls that have not given themselves time to 
 grow. It can never appreciate the grandeur 
 
Our Summer. 13 
 
 of the larger souls that have been willing to 
 yield to all its desires. Theirs may have been 
 a mistaken fondness, but they have been grow- 
 ing larger and greater by the very act of 
 giving. 
 
 But there is a way of receiving generously, 
 as there is a way of giving ungenerously. 
 The habit of receiving, or submitting to bene- 
 fits, may have a cramping power, but not upon 
 a noble soul. It is waiting its own time for 
 giving, and is gathering strength in its inac- 
 tion. The time of inaction may be too pro- 
 longed, and the soul grow rusty from want of 
 using its weapons ; but a rich nature finds 
 always some use for its soil, even if it has not 
 been ploughed and harrowed for corn and 
 grain. 
 
 After all, thought I, it is not the quiet, sunny 
 meadow that Gertrude is needing in her trials. 
 She is beginning upon her true duties, — upon 
 the action of life. She has been helped too 
 long, and now she is to help others. She was 
 right in insisting that Clara and Ellen should 
 
14 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 not go back to the boarding-school from which 
 they were summoned at their father's sudden 
 death. She declared, too, that she was fully 
 able to take care of little fragile Rosa. And 
 she was very sure she could contend with the 
 boys, especially in the country, where there 
 was plenty to occupy them. 
 
 " It is strange, indeed, that any one should 
 doubt that I could take care of my own chil- 
 dren," she said, with a pained smile, sadder in 
 its way than any I had yet seen on her face. 
 
 Brave heart ! she let Fred, the oldest boy, 
 go back to his regiment. She was willing to 
 have him follow in his father's steps, I believe, 
 even to the end. 
 
 I heard her brave, cheery voice again as she 
 came down stairs with the children. They 
 wanted to make a procession to take me to my 
 room, if I were quite rested now. It over- 
 looked my meadow, and a cushioned chair 
 waited me there ; and Ellen had put a mug of 
 the yellow cowslips on the window-sill, and 
 Gertrude had scattered round some home-like, 
 
Our Summer. 15 
 
 pretty things she had taken from her trunk, 
 that took away the look of newness from the 
 room, and gave it an air of welcome. 
 
 "Now go down, wild beasts," she said to 
 the children, who were beginning to be noisy 
 again, " and I will come directly, and go with 
 Johnie to see his chickens." 
 
 I looked at her with wonder, and then with 
 gratitude at all she was doing for me. 
 
 " Our summer's consolations are beginning," 
 she said, as she looked out of the window. 
 "I can see they are to be very various, — an 
 open place for us to look out upon and to think 
 in, — and an open space for the children to play 
 in." 
 
 " Repose and action for you," I said ; w but 
 I fear there is to be too much of the last." 
 
 " Oh, no ; not yet, not yet ! " she cried out. 
 " I am not strong enough to think now : it is 
 better for me to have to act." 
 
 There was a sudden call for her, and she 
 went away ; and so our summer begun. We 
 had out-of-doors and in-doors to help us, and 
 
1 6 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 friends who spoke with look and word, and 
 books and letters to read. And some of this 
 comfort I laid by in store, thinking it might 
 continue to help me, if I held on to it; that it 
 might help me again, or that it might be of 
 service to others ; and it lies all together in 
 the following pages. 
 
THE REPOSE OF THE MEADOW. 
 
 \ FTER the shock of a great sorrow, one 
 ■*■ -*- of our first feelings is a consciousness of 
 the want of sympathy of all nature with our 
 grief. The day is bright and glad, the sun 
 shines, the flowers open gayly, and the birds 
 flutter through the leaves. There is no sigh 
 in answer to ours. No word of comfort comes 
 to me. Day after day passes on in the same 
 round, and my loss is unnoticed. The happy 
 summer brings the remembrance of former 
 summers with it, — " the crown of sorrow," 
 this remembering " happier things ; " and the 
 
The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 very joy of nature adds a fresh agony to our 
 grief. 
 
 This, at least, is one phase of our sorrow. 
 Happily, it is only a part of that bitterness that 
 spreads from our own unhappiness, and over- 
 flows and colors all the gayety that surrounds 
 us. Happy it is, rather, that our wishes are 
 not granted ; that the heavens do not put on 
 clouds to sympathize in our mourning ; that 
 we wake up rather to a glad day, after our 
 own night of tears. 
 
 The offices of nature are always repairing : 
 the fresh blades of young grass gather the 
 dead leaves into the soil, and do not stay to 
 mourn over the loss. Without noise, and 
 gently, the healthy sight of the spring comes 
 to renew our worn-out spirits. Our tired eyes 
 rest on the peaceful landscape. If its glad 
 beauty makes no appeal to us, it is our own 
 fault. If only we will be willing to accept 
 each summer day of sunshine as a special gift 
 to our grieved hearts, we shall find a consola- 
 tion that is new every day. 
 
The Refose of the Meadow. 19 
 
 There are very few truly quiet moments in 
 this busy world of ours. A summer day brings 
 them sometimes, when they cannot be found 
 at any other time. For a little time, one may 
 forget to think, when there is a soft, whisper- 
 ing breeze among the leaves, a hum of insects, 
 a pleasant talking among the birds, a waving 
 in the tall green grass, cloud shadows floating 
 across the meadows, and a quiet and rest there, 
 that spreads at last into the tired brain and 
 heart. 
 
 This is not the only comforter. It is no 
 comforter at all, if we have no other to listen 
 to. If we have no work in the world, we can 
 have no comfort in repose. If we do not learn 
 how to seek after the Highest in the depths of 
 our own souls, we cannot learn to feel his 
 presence in outward things. But how many, 
 how various joys, indeed, has the most sorrow- 
 ing heart ! 
 
THE COMFORTER. 
 
 ET not your heart be troubled : ye be- 
 -*— ^ lieve in God, believe also in me. In my 
 Father's house are many mansions : if it were 
 not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare 
 a place for you. And, if I go and prepare a 
 place for you, I will come again and receive 
 you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may 
 be also. 
 
 I will not leave you comfortless ; I will come 
 to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth 
 me no more ; but ye shall see me. Because I 
 live, ye shall live also. 
 
The Comforter. 21 
 
 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto 
 you : not as the world giveth, give I unto you. 
 Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
 afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I 
 go away, and come again unto you. If ye 
 loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said I 
 go unto my Father ; for my Father is greater 
 than I. 
 
OUR ALL IN GOD. 
 
 TJLESSED is the man who lovethThee, and 
 
 -" his friend in Thee, and his enemy for 
 
 Thee. For he only loses none dear to him, to 
 
 whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. 
 
 And who is that but our God, the God that 
 
 made heaven and earth, and jilleth them, even 
 
 by filling them creating them? None loseth, 
 
 but he who leaveth Thee. 
 
 St. Augustine. 
 
GOD DISPOSES. 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN. 
 
 O TILLED now be every anxious care ; 
 v ~^ See God's great goodness everywhere ; 
 Leave all to him in perfect rest : 
 He will do all things for the best. 
 From grief and care he can set free ; 
 What he thinks best, that best must be. 
 For God disposes : if he will, 
 He can my life with pleasure fill. 
 
 In bitter moans if I complain, 
 These sad complaints are all in vain ; 
 For more and more my sorrows swell, 
 
24 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 As loudly of my griefs I tell. 
 
 Rather in patience will I hope, 
 
 And to my gracious God look up, 
 
 For God disposes, gain or loss, 
 
 And joy may come even from my cross. 
 
 Slowly the days may pass away, 
 And time my wish may long delay ; 
 But yet at last may come the flower, 
 And then the fruit, oh, blessed hour ! 
 This trust shall over all prevail, 
 My hope in God shall never fail ; 
 For well I know my God disposes : 
 In this firm hope my soul reposes. 
 
 I from my soul drive every care, 
 I give my God a dwelling there : 
 That always shall my pleasure be 
 Which he imparts to comfort me ; 
 For if to-day remains my sorrow, 
 It may be turned to joy to-morrow. 
 God disposes ; patient bear ; 
 Joy may come instead of care. 
 
THE SORROW OF DEATH. 
 
 /^\F all events which bear the character of 
 ^^ irremediability, the death of those who 
 are dear to us is undoubtedly of the first rank. 
 To see borne away a part of one's self, and to 
 survive through our grief those affections which 
 made our glory, our strength, our joy, our 
 serenity, and perhaps all these together, — is 
 to feel one's self crushed, impoverished, and 
 pierced through and through. Such regrets, 
 so legitimate, are permitted, as it is a part of 
 our dignity not to lose them ; and it is, at the 
 utmost, only against their excess that Chris- 
 
26 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 tianity arms us. Only, here as elsewhere, 
 changing our point of view, it makes us pene- 
 trate into the reality of our affliction, in order 
 to render it conformable to its divine spirit, and 
 to disengage from it all that embitters or en- 
 venoms it. 
 
 Christianity is always ready to sanction in 
 us, a consciousness of all that there is sharp, 
 poignant, and cruel in our afflictions. It is 
 always ready to recognize how a blank in joys 
 that have been tasted can become a deep abyss ; 
 how the disappearance of one single being can 
 make a desert of this world ; how a cruel 
 privation can attach to each moment a weight 
 that hangs heavy upon us, and lacerates us. 
 But, after all these concessions, it asks us, 
 if it is indeed just that an immortal creature 
 should linger over one sad moment in space, 
 in order to extend its shadows over its whole 
 career. It asks if this irremediability of death, 
 incontestable this side of the tomb, holds its 
 power beyond ; if faith has ever spoken to us 
 of eternal separation ; if the friends deplored 
 
The Sorrow of Death. 
 
 27 
 
 are indeed lost, rather than being only absent ; 
 if, finally, being able to hope to recover them 
 some day, we ought not force ourselves to put 
 a rein upon our impatience, hastening by 
 prayer a common deliverance. 
 
 Mad. Swetchine. 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 1T7HEN some beloved voice, that was to you 
 
 * * Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly ; 
 And silence, against which you dare not cry, 
 Aches round you like a strong disease and near, — 
 What hope ? what help ? what music will undo 
 That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh, 
 Nor reason's subtle count. Not melody 
 Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew. 
 Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales, 
 Whose hearts leap upwards through the cypress- 
 trees 
 To the clear moon ! Nor yet the spheric laws 
 Self-chanted, — nor the angels' sweet all-hails, 
 Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these. 
 Speak thou, availing Christ, and fill this pause. 
 
CONSOLATION. 
 
 A LL are not taken : there are left behind 
 Living beloveds, tender looks to bring, 
 And make the daylight still a happy thing ; 
 And tender voices to make soft the wind. 
 But if it were not so ; if I could find 
 No love in all the world for comforting, 
 Nor any path but hollowly did ring, 
 Where " dust to dust" the love from life disjoined ; 
 And if, before those sepulchres unmoving, 
 I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb 
 Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth), 
 Crying, " Where are ye, O my loved and loving? " 
 I know a voice would sound, " Daughter, I AM. 
 Can I suffice for Heaven, and not for earth ? " 
 
 E. B. Browning. 
 
BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN; FOR 
 THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED." 
 
 f 1 ^HESE words come with a certainty of 
 -*- strength and consolation. For this, we 
 are willing to believe them, and hold on to 
 them even in our darkest moments ; yes, in 
 the very depth of our grief. For they do not 
 say, "Thou art comforted now." They do 
 not say, that, with the shadow of desolation, 
 there comes at the same time hope. They 
 do not impress upon us a duty, that we are to 
 find or look for comfort directly. The com- 
 fort is not now. The blessing comes in the 
 sorrowing, not without it; the comfort shall 
 come afterwards. If we did not feel the whole 
 
''•Blessed are they that Mourn." 31 
 
 weight of the desolation, the whole depth of 
 the sorrow, if there were in us no true mourn- 
 ing, then there were no blessing. 
 
 How could it be otherwise? How could we 
 ever have thanked enough for the gift, if we 
 could have calmly and quietly seen it taken 
 away ? We were leaning upon a strong arm : 
 suddenly it is snatched away from us. The 
 voice that used to greet us 'every day, cheer- 
 fully, is silent all at once. No answer, no 
 word, comes back to us. We were living on 
 day after day happily, finding out all the joys 
 there are in living, when suddenly we are 
 brought before the gateway into another life. 
 This companion, this very one who was close 
 by our side, whose hands we held, whose breath 
 was on our cheek, has gone, — has disappeared 
 behind that door that shuts us out from word or 
 touch or look. We are left alone in the silence. 
 Behind, with us, remain all the plans we two 
 had made together for to-morrow, for next 
 year, — together! but I am left alone. And 
 what is that life upon which he has entered? — 
 
32 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 of which I can know nothing, in which I can 
 take no share. Alone? Yes; for with this 
 separation has come the strange lesson of 
 death, that teaches us, that, however closely we 
 may be bound to each other, there comes this 
 breaking of ties to cut us off one from the 
 other ; that love or health or human will can- 
 not hold us together ; that there is one road we 
 must walk alone. Let there be ever so many 
 friends to come with kind and sympathizing 
 words, there are none that break up this sense 
 of loneliness. 
 
 Let it come ; let it bring with it the deepest 
 feeling of sorrow. Do not try to turn away 
 from the sensation of grief as though it could 
 be avoided. It will come, however you long 
 to hide it and cover it up. Look it in the face, 
 and find out how great the sorrow is. Learn 
 all its depths ; taste all its bitterness ; and do 
 not persuade yourself that it is gladness or joy. 
 This is the moment for courage, and it is the 
 time when courage should come, if ever; for 
 it is the hour of struggle. 
 
"Blessed are they that Mourn" 2iZ 
 
 God is very good, indeed. Sometimes we 
 are so stunned by the blow we have received, 
 we do not know how great is its evil ; and then 
 gradually we come to the strength to bear it. 
 But even when we cannot see all the details of 
 our grief, when we are so overwhelmed with 
 sorrow that we cannot look beyond, it is the 
 very heartiness of our grief that will help us- 
 Then we shall have sounded all the depths of 
 loneliness and desolation ; and, staggering and 
 uncertain, we shall learn that we have found 
 God. 
 
 He must be near us then, when we cry out 
 in the agony of our sorrow. 
 
 If we had turned away from our mourning, 
 if we had looked out for shallow and super- 
 ficial consolations, we would not have seen 
 Him. We might, perhaps, have filled up the 
 empty spaces around us with something that 
 for a while would have made us feel less 
 lonely ; but we should have gone away from 
 Him. The blessing was with us when we 
 mourned. 
 
 3 
 
34 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 But is not such grief selfish ? Are there not 
 our duties to others, and our gratitude for all 
 the blessings we have beside? And should we 
 forget all these in our sorrow? 
 
 The truth is, that such sudden separations 
 as those made by death — for these are always 
 sudden — must bring us all back to self. They 
 wake up self-consciousness : they make a 
 silent space for a little while around our hearts 
 to give us time to inquire about ourselves. If 
 we do not stop to question ourselves, to ask 
 what kind of life this is in which we are still 
 left, and how we mean to manage with it ; if 
 we do not stop to think what has become of 
 that spirit that has left behind these cold tools 
 with which it worked on earth, these hands 
 that labored in love, this brain that thinks no 
 longer, these eyes that will not open again to 
 gladden us like sunshine, and these lips that 
 are never to speak more ; ah ! if we do not 
 stop to wonder about that new life, and to 
 mourn bitterly, bitterly for the life that has 
 closed, — then it will be very hopeless for this 
 
"Blessed are they that Mourn" 35 
 
 poor self of ours, and we shall need again and 
 again death and parting and agony to wake 
 us up to the thought of self; and the mourning 
 cannot be blessed. 
 
 In such grief there is little danger of stagna- 
 tion or selfishness. The duties of life come 
 up, and hold out their hands as comforters ; and 
 thankfulness for the friends we have, and for 
 their sympathy, stands by the side of the deep 
 sorrow. The blacker its shadow, the brighter 
 is the sunshine all around. 
 
 "They shall be comforted." Those words 
 have a certainty in them that resounds in our 
 hearts. They shall be comforted ; not yet, not . 
 now; we may mourn on still, indeed we must, 
 and learn the meaning of sorrow, but we 
 shall be comforted. Not with the shallow com- 
 fort that time will make us forget our grief. 
 No ; happily, our sorrow is too great to be for- 
 gotten. It will stay with us ; we will never 
 give it up. It will take hold of our hearts. It 
 is this sorrow that has planted God there, that 
 has made us venture to call ourselves "followers 
 
2,6 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 of Christ." It is this that has ennobled our life 
 here, and has made it worth while to live. It 
 is this that has set us to thinking about another 
 world, and has made us dare to think of 
 immortality. 
 
 Because we could not believe that we had 
 laid beneath the ground all of that dear friend 
 who was something more to us than voice or 
 form, or sweet face to look upon; because we 
 learned the bitterness of parting, — we were 
 forced to believe in immortality. It is death 
 that has taken us into the presence of God. It 
 was strange indeed, that we must wait for that. 
 It was strange that we did not find Him every 
 day, in happy, laughing hours, in sunny 
 gleams in woods, or by the sea ! No, we were 
 in too great a hurry then ; we could not stop 
 for so great a thought. We could not stop 
 till He stopped us by the side of this cold, un- 
 moving form ; by the silence ; by the agony of 
 the waking of the morrow ; by the mourning 
 for the dear child, — the little child that stayed 
 but a few days ; the helpful sister, mother, 
 
"Blessed are they that Mourn." 37 
 
 father, friend, brother, that made our lives for 
 us, and who now are making for us that other 
 life. 
 
 Only by our mourning can we find out this. 
 Let us not stay our tears, nor check our sor- 
 row. It will be worst of all, if we cannot learn 
 to feel it. 
 
THE VISION. 
 
 r I ^HESE are they that came out of great 
 -*- tribulation, and have washed their robes 
 and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
 Therefore are they before the throne of God, 
 and serve Him day and night in his temple ; 
 and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell 
 among them. 
 
 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst 
 any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, 
 nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the 
 midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall 
 lead them unto living fountains of water ; and 
 God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. 
 
The Vision. 39 
 
 Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is 
 the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they 
 that mourn ; for they shall be comforted. 
 Blessed are the meek ; for they shall inherit 
 the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger 
 and thirst after righteousness ; for they shall be 
 filled. Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall 
 obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart ; 
 for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace- 
 makers ; for they shall be called the children 
 of God. Blessed are they which are perse- 
 cuted for righteousness' sake ; for theirs is the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 As ye are partakers of the suffering, so shall 
 ye also be of the consolation. 
 
 Behold, we count them happy which en- 
 dure. 
 
PRAYER OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD'S. 
 
 f I ^HAT which I cannot foresee, I beseech 
 -*■ thee prevent ; that which I cannot with- 
 stand, I beseech thee master ; that which I do 
 not fear, I beseech thee unmask and prostrate, 
 — that, being delivered from all danger, both 
 of soul and body, I may praise thee, the De- 
 liverer, and see how happy a thing it is to 
 make the Lord of hosts my helper in the day of 
 trouble, as well as in the day of joy. 
 
 Undoubtedly the Christian suffers : he suf- 
 fers deeply, because it is a dignity to suffer ; 
 and he would possess all dignities. Still more, 
 he suffers always ; for God, who has created 
 the consolation, has not created forgetfulness. 
 
 Mad. Swetchine. 
 
HOW SHALL I TAKE SORROW? 
 
 MANY times have you heard of the fruit- 
 ful blessings of sorrow. But is it such 
 a blessing, when one storm gathers after 
 another above us, and we remain always the 
 same? Heaven help us, when every hot hour 
 of suffering serves only to inflame the evil de- 
 sires in the heart ! How, then, can such evil 
 desires ever be removed from us? Sorrows, 
 indeed, are the fruit-bearing inundations of the 
 Nile ; but, friends, they are not so, if they pass 
 over rocky ground. Sorrow is indeed the 
 storm-wind beneath whose blast the sparks of 
 
42 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 the love of God must be blown into a flame ; 
 but, friends, the spark must first be there in 
 order that the flame may follow. It is heart- 
 rending to see sorrow discharge itself upon sor- 
 row over many men ; and they lie unmoved. 
 Like the stones in the street, they are trodden 
 under foot; it rains, the sun shines again, and 
 they remain still what they are, — stones. 
 
 When the hour of sorrow comes, if there is 
 not already in the heart something of a holy 
 drawing towards God, then awakens defiance 
 instead of humility, blasphemy in the place of 
 prayer. " If thou wilt not as I will," cries the 
 perverse man, "then I will not as thou wilt," 
 and gives God the go-by in his soul. Only 
 where the love of God dwells in the soul, even 
 without a clear consciousness of it, can sorrow 
 lead to God. Have you seen the flowers that, 
 in a close cellar, turn their heads towards the 
 side where the sun appears ? so the heart of 
 man in the night of sorrow, when there is a 
 trace of God living within. Through all the 
 night of bitterness, it seeks for the crevice 
 
How shall I take Sorrow f 43 
 
 through which the eternal light shall fall into 
 the darkness ; and seeks and drinks, and grows 
 even more thirsty. Only in such hearts, in the 
 silent night of sorrow, does prayer begin to 
 tone forth ; only in such hearts is that prayer 
 reached which pours itself out, as the apostle 
 says, in groanings that cannot be uttered. 
 
 Tholuck. 
 
 The old Book says, "The Lord gave, and 
 the Lord hath taken away." I would mend it 
 by saying, The Lord giveth, giveth, giveth. 
 He takes away a form, He gives a spirit; He 
 takes away the presence, and gives a memory 
 and a hope ; He takes away a friend, and 
 gives an angel ; He takes away the support 
 of an earthly home, and gives the pledge of a 
 heavenly one beyond it ; He takes away the 
 objects of time, and gives eternity; He takes 
 away the uses of the material and of the fleshly, 
 and gives the great hereafter of blessed life ; 
 He takes away one who walks by our side, He 
 gives us a spirit that is with us here, every-, 
 
44 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 where and every day, that never leaves the 
 door, that is always sitting in the chair, that is 
 always filling the chamber, that is always be- 
 stowing gifts. The Lord takes away the dust, 
 the form, the touch, the embrace ; and gives to 
 us the whole human nature, a fresh revelation 
 of power and truth and greatness and good- 
 ness, that was concealed from us by this fine 
 transparency of the flesh. God gives us Death, 
 the great revealer, the great restorer, the true 
 and beautiful friend who tells us what our 
 friends were, and how dear they were ; and 
 awakes in our hearts that dear, deep longing 
 which is the earnest of the immortal life. 
 
 Nothing that has truly lived perishes : there 
 is no death to truth, to wisdom, to aspira- 
 tion. There is no decay to love. It may take 
 a hundred forms, but it will preserve a strong 
 consistency ; and the root that is planted here 
 in the earth will grow and grow until it puts on 
 immortality. It may ripen here, but it will 
 flower in the great world that is to come. Let 
 us not think that God dies when our friend 
 
How shall I take Sorrow f 45 
 
 dies, or that the hand of Providence is closed 
 when our friend's hand drops. Dear friends, 
 let us not be so short-sighted and foolish as to 
 imagine, that, outside the horizon that bounds 
 our eyesight, there is no eternal law, no infinite 
 spirit, no endless love, no perfect goodness, no 
 never-ceasing thought. Out of that hand of 
 God we can never drop ; if our bark sink, 'tis 
 to another sea, and that sea is the ocean of 
 divine immortality. Let us, O friends ! with 
 manly heart, with cheerfulness, with joy and 
 triumph, stand by the remains of our dearly 
 beloved brother. If he was brave, let us be 
 brave ; if he was true, let us try to strengthen 
 ourselves ; if he has helped us, let us return 
 the grace by helping our brother as he helped 
 us ; and may the spirit that went with him to 
 the end go also to the end with us, that we, 
 too, may meet the inevitable hour, and say that 
 it is blessed. 
 
 Rev. O. B. Frothingham. 
 
CLEANSING FIRES. 
 
 ET thy gold be cast in the furnace, 
 ■*— < Thy red gold, precious and bright ; 
 Do not fear the hungry fire, 
 
 With its caverns of burning light, — 
 And thy gold shall return more precious, 
 
 Free from every spot and stain ; 
 For gold must be tried by fire, 
 
 As a heart must be tried by pain. 
 
 In the cruel fire of sorrow, 
 
 Cast thy heart ; do not faint or wail ; 
 Let thy hand be firm and steady, 
 
 Do not let thy spirit quail : 
 But wait when the trial is over, 
 
 And take thy heart again ; 
 For as gold is tried by fire, 
 
 So a heart must be tried by pain . 
 
Cleansing Fires, 
 
 47 
 
 I shall know by the gleam and glitter 
 
 Of the golden chain you wear, 
 By your heart's calm strength in loving, 
 
 Of the fire they have had to bear. 
 Beat on, true heart, for ever ; 
 
 Shine bright, strong golden chain ; 
 And bless the cleansing fire, 
 
 And the furnace of living pain. 
 
 A. A. Proctor. 
 
SORROW. 
 
 SERMON, BY T. COLAN 
 (Translated from the French.) 
 
 " My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers 
 temptations ; knowing this, that the trying of your faith 
 worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, 
 that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." — 
 James i. 2-4. 
 
 r I ^HE highest happiness, pure as a cloudless 
 A sky, calm as a sea, undisturbed by a 
 single breath of wind, — a perfect happiness is 
 a thing so rare among human beings, that 
 Pagan antiquity looked upon it as a subject of 
 terror, and turned away with horror from the 
 wretch who was laden with such felicity. For 
 
Sorrow. 49 
 
 the gods, doubtless, elevated him above the 
 earth only to precipitate him from a higher 
 point, in their anger. And, in truth, this per- 
 fect happiness, if it has ever existed elsewhere 
 than in fable, was an anomaly, a sort of mon- 
 strosity. No day dawns without bringing to 
 us its portion of uneasiness, of grief, of suffer- 
 ing. You can class all the persons of your 
 acquaintance in one of these three categories : 
 many do not have what they desire, — fortune, 
 honors, health, a position, a family ; others 
 have the good that they wish, but something 
 prevents them from enjoying it completely and 
 tranquilly, and this is generally a fear of losing 
 it, or the ennui which accompanies its posses- 
 sion ; others, finally, have no longer that 
 blessing which made the charm of their lives, 
 and which now, to their torment, they imagine 
 was without alloy. You frequently hear said, 
 "A year ago, ten years ago, before this terri- 
 ble blow, I was entirely content with my lot;" 
 or else, "When I shall have made my fortune, 
 when I shall have a home, when I shall have 
 4 
 
5<D The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 established my children, I shall have happier 
 days." But do you ever hear, "Now, in this 
 position, nothing is wanting to my wishes"? 
 Men speak much of their past happiness, much 
 of their happiness to come, little or not at all 
 of their present happiness. It is because hap- 
 piness — that, at least, that we seek outside of 
 ourselves, or a fortunate conjunction of circum- 
 stances — is, with few exceptions, a dream. 
 Reality presents us quite a different thing, — 
 pleasures, doubtless, but mingled with distaste ; 
 joy, but sadness also ; enjoyments, but trials 
 too ; tribulations, tears, mourning : our daily 
 bread is, as it were, salted with bitterness. As 
 long as your earthly pilgrimage will last, the 
 pale phantom of sorrow will walk silent at your 
 side, filling you with an indefinable fear by its 
 presence, even when it will no longer chain 
 you with its icy hand. You can no more get 
 rid of it than you can get rid of yourself. 
 
 Thus the gospel does not pretend to sup- 
 press sorrow. It understands humanity too 
 well to repeat the mad utterance of a haughty 
 
Sorrow, 5 1 
 
 philosophy, "Pain, thou art only a name." 
 Pain, according to the gospel, is much more 
 than a name, — the most real of realities. 
 When St. Paul shows us how God will subject 
 all things to the Son, he says that the last 
 thing that will resist this transformation of the 
 universe will be death, the king of terror, the 
 personification of sorrow. This will last 
 longer than all the rest. Christianity, then, 
 acknowledges seriously the bitter things of 
 life. Yet it gives them a new and divine sig- 
 nificance, so that, while feeling them vividly, 
 we can accept them with gratitude, and rejoice 
 as in an excellent gift. The warrior, who sees 
 his blood flow in battle, suffers as much as the 
 daily laborer who wounds himself, a victim to 
 his own carelessness : on either side the physi- 
 cal ill is the same ; but the consciousness of a 
 duty nobly accomplished, and the hope of 
 a glorious recompense, give the soldier the 
 sweetest of satisfactions. This gaping wound, 
 in his eyes, is something different from that of 
 mere tortured fibres : it has a meaning ; it is 
 
52 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 the token of valor. Thus, all is not necessa- 
 rily painful in sorrow ; and this is what allows 
 St. James to begin his sententious Epistle with 
 the lines I have read you. He has just ad- 
 dressed his readers : "James to the twelve 
 tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting." 
 In the Greek, this last word signifies properly 
 "joy." But in what shall they rejoice, these 
 despised beings whom the world loads with a 
 double opprobrium, because they are Jews by 
 origin, and because they are of the sect of the 
 crucified? Is there not an irony in accosting 
 them with a salutation so gay and worldly at 
 once as this phrase, "joy"? Yes, joy. "Count 
 it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." 
 And he explains himself: it is by these tribu- 
 lations they will become "perfect and entire." 
 Now he who wishes the end wishes the means. 
 Whoever desires to lift himself to the full 
 stature of man must then submit himself will- 
 ingly to the yoke of suffering. Brethren, let 
 us consider this admirable saying, and learn 
 from James how tribulation is necessary for our 
 
Sorrow. 53 
 
 spiritual education, and how we can make it 
 turn to our advantage. 
 
 "Trial," says our text, "produces patience," 
 renunciation, sacrifice ; trial detaches us from 
 the earth, and this is the first step towards 
 eternal life. 
 
 Man, you know, is placed on the confines of 
 two worlds ; the world of sense, and the world 
 of spirit. At first, at the moment of birth, the 
 physical life is all-powerful, leaving no place 
 for the moral life, which seems as yet scarcely 
 a germ. But this germ is to develop itself by 
 degrees, to render itself independent of the 
 physical life, and to end even by absorbing it, 
 transforming it, and reducing it to its own ser- 
 vice. Ah ! well, brethren, without the suffering 
 of the body, never would the spirit become 
 free of its fetters, never should we go beyond 
 the animal instincts. This is humiliating to 
 say, but it is true ; for we are much greater 
 sensualists than we dare to avow, and mate- 
 rial pleasures have inconceivable attractions 
 for us. Say, conscientiously, do you feel your- 
 
54 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 self strong enough to be sure, that a continued 
 satisfaction of the body would not swallow up 
 your soul in a mortal sleep? Do you feel 
 strong enough to do without sickness, and those 
 innumerable little discomforts which sting us 
 incessantly, without precisely making us suf- 
 fer? For myself, brethren, I should not be 
 willing that all this should be taken from me 
 at any price. I know it too well, hardly should 
 I be freed from it than matter would take an 
 irresistible, perhaps a limitless, ascendency 
 over me. It is, then, fortunate that God has 
 placed distaste by the side of pleasure, so that 
 the one engenders the other infallibly, each 
 giving a counterpoise to the other. It is happy, 
 too, that God has distributed to the human 
 race, and especially to civilized nations, a cer- 
 tain quantity of evils which force us to seek 
 our happiness higher than in the physical life. 
 Yes, the suffering of the body is good, — very 
 good. When it is feeble, it shakes our mate- 
 rialism ; when it is strong, it overthrows it, 
 whether we will or no. The sick man bound 
 
Sorrow. 55 
 
 to his couch by weakness, tortured by fever, 
 broken down by sleeplessness, is indeed obliged 
 to renounce pleasure, and to resign himself to 
 live another life than that of the senses. 
 
 The body is not, besides, the sole power 
 with which God disputes for our soul, and 
 against which he employs suffering as a power- 
 ful dissolvent. We form a portion of society, 
 and we play there a varied part ; nothing more 
 legitimate, since God has so ordered it. Only, 
 our reputation, our influence, our fortune, ought 
 to be no more than means, — means for doing 
 good ; and, too often, we make of them the 
 end, the sole end, of our efforts. This is why 
 God strikes us in our reputation, our influence, 
 our fortune, in order to detach us from them 
 violently. It is permitted us to seek for ease, 
 to enjoy an honorable fortune, but on the ex- 
 press condition, that we make use of this gold 
 as an instrument for the relief of our brethren. 
 As soon as we amass it for the purpose of 
 heaping it up, in order to count it, to touch it, 
 or even with the intention of creating for our- 
 
56 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 selves a life without care or without duty* an 
 epicurean retreat, — we glide over the fatal pre- 
 cipice of egotism. And, if God has pity upon 
 us, he will hasten to chastise us, to render our 
 speculations vain. He will suspend our busi- 
 ness affairs, will let our factories stand idle, 
 destroy our harvests ; in a word, ruin our for- 
 tune, in order to save our souls. So it is by 
 an effort of his grace that he deigns to anni- 
 hilate our influence in the world, when we 
 abuse it. You desire to occupy a certain place 
 as administrator, judge, or professor ; and you 
 might do there much good, effectively. You 
 wish that the crowd would adopt your political 
 sentiments or your religious opinions, and I 
 can believe they might have reason to felicitate 
 themselves. But look at the bottom of your 
 heart, and see, if self, with its pride and 
 cupidity, counts for nothing in this ambition. 
 In this case, the most truly fortunate thing that 
 could happen to you would be for you to strike 
 against the breakers, and to see all your hopes 
 there dashed to pieces. I would say the same 
 
Sorrow. 57 
 
 of our reputation. We are certainly right in 
 clinging to the esteem of our fellow-men, since 
 this esteem is like the perfume that gives 
 price to social life. But let us take care that 
 we do not sacrifice our dignity to the desire of 
 shining, our convictions to a wish to please, 
 our conscience to vanity. It would then be a 
 thousand' times better to submit to the keenest 
 humiliations, and receive affronts, that, pene- 
 trating to the roots of our self-love, might 
 perhaps extirpate it. Doubtless it is sad to be 
 poor, it is sad to be conquered, it is sad to 
 be disgraced. We tremble at contact with these 
 evils, as the body shudders and shrinks beneath 
 the cold knife of the operator ; and yet I hesi- 
 tate not to affirm, that poverty or defeat or 
 shame is from time to time indispensable to 
 repress our worldly spirit. 
 
 But to suffer bodily, or in our social rela- 
 tions, does not suffice. There is a point in 
 our being to which the chain that draws us 
 towards evil is yet more firmly riveted ; a 
 point, in consequence, upon which God must 
 
58 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 bring to bear a suffering more concentrated : 
 this spot is the heart. 
 
 It is often repeated, that the Eternal Being 
 forbids us to love too much those who are dear 
 to us, and that, if he strikes us through our 
 affections, it is in order to diminish them. This 
 view, I must say, seems to me little in harmony 
 with the laws of the kingdom of God. It is 
 not forbidden us to love too much, to devote 
 ourselves, to sacrifice and forget ourselves too 
 much (this last need scarcely be urged) ; but 
 it is forbidden to love ourselves in others, to 
 seek in the affections our own satisfaction 
 alone, — and no fault is more frequent. How 
 many fathers and mothers there are who 
 cherish their children, and consecrate to their 
 education large sums of money ; who inces- 
 santly occupy themselves with them ; and who, 
 under this appearance of love, hide a gross 
 selfishness, since they wish not to render their 
 children happy, but to be happy themselves in 
 their children ! How many married people 
 there are who love passionately husband or 
 
Sorrow. 59 
 
 wife, on condition of their bending to every 
 caprice, of abdicating all personality in order 
 to be moulded in their own stamp, to become 
 in their lives a mere piece of furniture ! But 
 let us leave such affection, falsely so called, 
 and let us penetrate more deeply into the heart. 
 Does it never happen that we love in our friend 
 just his faults? A little coquetry, a little 
 malice, a little anger, sets off a character admi- 
 rably, and gives it a certain piquancy. This 
 amuses us. And in how many other such 
 cases do we not place our own passing pleas- 
 ure above our friend's true happiness ! Such a 
 meanness do all those commit, who, dreading 
 to trouble the charm of tender effusions, allow 
 their children, husband, wife, or friend to go 
 straight towards evil, without ever warning 
 them : it matters little that one good quality 
 after another is lost, provided the friend is 
 there, proving by his presence the charm of a 
 fresh emotion. 
 
 This selfishness, to which we give ourselves 
 with a sort of abandonment, as though it were 
 
60 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 a virtue, can be combated only by a very bitter 
 suffering ; and thanks be rendered to God, that 
 He does not spare it us. Who will enumerate 
 the sufferings of the heart? Three thousand 
 years, poets have not ceased to labor in this 
 field, and every day they make a new discov- 
 ery there. We love, and are not loved ; and 
 we suffer. We love, and are loved, and still 
 we suffer ; for we are separated by the abyss 
 of space, or the still more deep abyss that cir- 
 cumstances plough up for us. Or else, in the 
 midst of the deepest emotions, a poignant sur- 
 prise is suddenly awakened ; we just discover 
 that the union of souls contains ever something 
 incomplete and terrestrial : perhaps even in 
 the folds of that heart that was believed to be 
 nobleness and devotion itself, there is found 
 some hideous defect. Shall I paint to you 
 what we feel, when, leaning over the being 
 whose life made our only joy, we see the 
 pale, thin face grow yet more pale, and the 
 eyes — those eyes that brought a ray from 
 the soul — languish, dull and fixed? What can 
 
Sorrow. 61 
 
 we do then ? We moan like the lioness who 
 defends her cub. We plead against the strong 
 God. We argue with him that He is deceived ; 
 that it is not us whom He should smite ; that He 
 has not the right ; that, if He wishes to chastise 
 us, it is not this cherished being whom He 
 should snatch from us. We supplicate him to 
 ravish fortune, health, honors ; but that He 
 should leave us this life, that He should suspend 
 his sentence, that He should wait at least a 
 few moments. The prayers are vain. God 
 goes straight to the end, and, with one blow, 
 crops down our felicity. Now, detachment, 
 renunciation, is easy : there is nothing to detach 
 ourselves from, nothing more to renounce. 
 Terrible God ! where we found a world of joy, 
 thou hast placed nothingness. Ask not, if we 
 submit: hast thou left us the choice? Thou 
 hast crushed us. Yes, thy arguments are 
 without reply. Yes, we confess that our hearts 
 needed to be torn, since thou hast willed it. 
 
 Patience, detachment from the world, is not 
 yet the divine life, but only the soil in which 
 
62 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 this life ought to put forth. "That ye may be 
 perfect," says St. James, "let patience have 
 her perfect work." 
 
 Avoid, my brethren, the dejection into 
 which so many souls plunge : you would risk 
 there all profit from your trials. They who 
 fall there remain sad, dejected, without vigor 
 or energy ; refining upon their sadness, find- 
 ing a bitter pleasure in renewing, through the 
 imagination, the sense of the blow with which 
 they have been struck. Believe me, this tor- 
 por is fatal. At any price, gather up your 
 strength : your suffering would become a sort 
 of habit, that is to say, it would cease to be 
 serious ; and (what now strikes you with hor- 
 ror) you would end by affecting sorrow. 
 
 Besides, why should you be overwhelmed, 
 all you who pass through tribulation ? 
 
 Are you an invalid, and are a thousand joys 
 wanting to you ? But the joys of the soul are 
 not interdicted you. In limiting you with re- 
 gard to the body, God has wished to crowd you 
 back, as it were, to the regions of the spirit : 
 
Sorrow. 63 
 
 follow this current that leads towards him, 
 and soon you will perceive that God can make 
 himself felt in our hearts in a manner as posi- 
 tively as material objects place themselves 
 before our eyes. The activity that others 
 direct towards outward things, you will turn 
 within : now, as a Father of the Church has 
 said, the interior things are also the superior. 
 You will experience this ; you will acquire a 
 delicacy of feeling of which humanity seems 
 hardly capable ; you will feel pleasures, by 
 the side of which sensual enjoyments will 
 appear not only gross, but dull and cold. It 
 has frequently been observed, that those who 
 suffer from long and cruel disease (all other 
 sufferings end by deadening themselves) reach 
 a singular development ; that piety unfolds in 
 them into an exquisite flower; that perhaps 
 they alone, here below, have a foretaste of 
 the life to come ; and, too, they alone present 
 an image of the man of Gethsemane. Is not 
 such a fate glorious? and is it paid for too 
 dearly with the price of a few torturing pains? 
 
6\ The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 But, to reach this, it is not enough to submit to 
 suffering, — sombre and passive ; it is neces- 
 sary to aid it at work in our soul, tearing from 
 before it every root of evil. Oh, you who are 
 smitten in your body, apply yourselves to this 
 inner work ! If God has not given this su- 
 preme benediction, if perhaps sufferings too 
 intolerable allow you neither to imagine nor to 
 feel any joy whatever, He will, at least, sus- 
 tain you enough that your patience may inces- 
 santly renew itself, being always living, always 
 true. 
 
 And you who are touched in your fortune, 
 your influence, your reputation, ill success 
 appears to be your portion, and all that there 
 is discouraging in the world, — that rock of 
 Sisyphus that is eternally falling back, — it 
 might perhaps be permitted you, you at least, 
 to maintain a mournful resignation. But why 
 so ? Because you have not obtained or have 
 lost an agreeable position, do you believe your- 
 self out of place in the world? You would 
 have wished to be rich, and, behold, you are 
 
Sorrow. 65 
 
 poor ; you would have liked to fulfil public 
 duties, and you are a simple citizen ; you 
 would have wished to possess the esteem and 
 love of your fellows, and you are hated by all. 
 Ah ! well, my brother, poor, simple citizen, 
 hated as you are, be henceforth God's work- 
 man. Put your hand to the plough without 
 any personal pre-occupation, without looking 
 back to contemplate the ruins of your other 
 projects, without calculating whether this time 
 you will harvest the fruit of the sweat of your 
 brow. In order to be of God's workers, it is 
 not necessary to have the use of long leisure, 
 or high authority, or great treasures. Bring 
 only your indigence, with the nobleness of a 
 soldier of Christ, and you will already have 
 done much. This generation needs preachers 
 who teach it by their example of frugality and 
 moderation : be one of these preachers by sim- 
 ply showing yourself content with your lot. 
 And since this generation has gone so far as 
 to believe no longer in the strength of convic- 
 tions, let it see, — you whose services it has 
 5 
 
66 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 repulsed, and whom it overwhelms with its 
 disdain — let it see that a man's convictions 
 are colors far more sacred on the day of defeat 
 than on the day of victory. But, at the same 
 time, let your constancy show nothing of cha- 
 grin, of spite, or misanthropy. Be so much 
 the more gentle and affectionate, the more you 
 are rebuffed. How can you complain of being 
 condemned to inaction, when a career so fine 
 is open for your need of activity? However 
 crushed your life may seem, you can do an 
 immense deal of good ; you can- be intensely 
 happy. 
 
 And you, brothers and sisters, whose hearts 
 bleed with a wound ever new, I do not say to 
 you, "Recover happiness by ceasing to love, 
 or by transporting your love to some other 
 object." For affection is not a flower to be 
 gathered by the roadside, whose perfume we 
 may breathe with delight, and can then fling 
 away with indifference as soon as it has faded 
 in our grasp. But I say to you, "Recover 
 your happiness by loving yet more, with a love 
 
Sorrow, 67 
 
 more disinterested, with a love that is active 
 and devoted." 
 
 If, in smiting you through the being whom 
 you cherish most deeply, God has, neverthe- 
 less, favored you, by leaving him still with 
 you, your conduct is traced clearly. Does he 
 suffer? Consecrate yourself to softening his 
 sufferings, and especially to sustaining him; 
 which is more difficult than might be believed. 
 Await no reward. Be careful to keep no kind 
 of account current in which you will inscribe, 
 on one side, your own pains that you have 
 taken, and, on the other, the testimonies of his 
 gratitude. Serve him with no after-thought of 
 happiness, and you will see that your sacrifice 
 will bring it home to you. But, perhaps, his 
 faults, his vices, cost you tears. The task will 
 be much harder ; but it will not be above your 
 powers. It seems to me almost impossible 
 that by force of true charity, tender and perse- 
 vering, you will not succeed in bringing him 
 back into the right way. Let there be no 
 trace of self-love in your affection. Love, as 
 
68 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 God loves us, for us, for our own good, and 
 not for his own satisfaction. Love without 
 feebleness and without waywardness, always 
 incapable of compromising with conscience ; 
 but constantly ready to give yourself always 
 filled with an unchanging hope. Hope is the 
 force reserved especially for this trial. 
 
 Is not this, too, a consolation for you who 
 are separated from a friend by the abyss of the 
 tomb? You know that sooner or later you 
 will rejoin him ; and very often you sigh with 
 impatience, thinking of death. But until then 
 it is necessary to live, day after day. Perhaps 
 with Job you cry, "Wherefore is life given to 
 those who are bitter in soul, who rejoice 
 exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find 
 the grave ? " Why does God leave you life ? 
 In order that your affection may purify it- 
 self, like gold in the crucible, freeing itself 
 by the fire of tribulation from all alloy of 
 selfishness. It was easy for you to love when 
 you enjoyed the sweet talks, the long unfold- 
 ings of soul to soul, the indefinable charm of 
 
Sorrow, 69 
 
 meeting face to face : you will learn now to 
 love in silence and solitude and darkness, with- 
 out any thing to recall that such a heart is 
 comprehending you. You had, until now, a 
 thousand pleasing ways of showing and ex- 
 pressing your affection ; you will henceforth 
 have but one, and that is an austere one : it is 
 to labor incessantly for your own improvement, 
 to fulfil your duties, great and small, with a 
 severe conscience. As soon as your love is no 
 longer selfish, it will no longer contain any 
 thing selfishly exclusive : purified and fortified 
 by the Holy Spirit, without ceasing to be per- 
 sonal, it must needs overflow from your heart 
 upon the world in a shower of gentleness, pa- 
 tience, benevolence, and charity. 
 
 Of all men who have ever traversed the 
 earth, none has suffered so much as Christ; 
 because in suffering, above all things, did we 
 need a divine guide. His body was scourged, 
 put upon the cross, pierced with nails, exposed 
 to a burning sun, until life was crushed out 
 from it by excess of pain. And already had 
 
7o 
 
 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 he known all the bitterness in which society 
 can steep us ; poverty, with scorn and anguish 
 heaped upon it; want of success, with its re- 
 grets and agitations ; hatred, with its insults and 
 its calumnies. Were the pains of the heart 
 lacking, when his mother and his brothers 
 wished to take possession of him as of a 
 wretched madman ; when he saw his apostles 
 persevere in their gross, carnal views ; when 
 he understood that one of the twelve was pre- 
 paring to sell him for thirty pieces of silver ; 
 and when, in Gethsemane, he begged his three 
 disciples in vain to watch one hour with him ; 
 and when, in the Prastorium, he perceived 
 among the soldiers and priests only one friendly 
 face, and this friend denied him even three 
 times ? " The Lord," says the Scripture, " turn- 
 ing, then looked upon Peter ; and Peter went out 
 and wept bitterly." I believe it, indeed : from 
 what eyes would tears have not been wrung at 
 a glance of such ineffable sadness? 
 
 But see, too, in the midst of all these tribu- 
 lations, how strong Christ was. What activity, 
 
Sorrow. 71 
 
 what energy, what valor ! And then what 
 serenity, calmness, and sweetness ! See what 
 a man, can be and can do amid the most vivid 
 trials. Or rather it is through these trials that 
 Jesus became our Saviour ; and it is through 
 our trials, too, my brothers, that we shall be 
 like him. Yet it is not enough that we are 
 smitten. We may suffer enormously, and yet 
 remain selfish, sensual, perverse. If the most 
 unhappy were necessarily the most virtuous, 
 the lower stratum of the social world were a 
 school of sanctity. For nowhere is there 
 greater suffering. Affliction elevates us only 
 when, by our own consent, it works patience ; 
 and then, if, with our own assistance, patience 
 has its perfect work. It requires our own 
 will. 
 
 But, alas! who wills it? Some, to reduce 
 as low as possible the office of grief, cease to 
 live, and set themselves to vegetate in a hot- 
 house, where they stop up all the chinks with 
 care, for fear a breath shall disturb their quiet. 
 Others live in the open air, take part in what- 
 
72 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 ever is agitating, even provoke suffering ; but, 
 as soon as they feel its sting, you see them ask 
 of the universe all its distractions, in order to 
 direct their thoughts and to forget. Ah ! it is 
 not only for the evils of the body that a method 
 has been invented to render ourselves insensi- 
 ble. 
 
 Brethren, let us never use this moral chloro- 
 form, but let us allow — oh! resolutely allow 
 suffering to penetrate our souls, and transfigure 
 us into the image of Christ. 
 
THE soul that suffers is stronger than the 
 soul that rejoices. Remember this, also, 
 that you are bound to suffer whatever is put 
 upon you. And it does by no means follow, 
 that, because it is not the work of God, it is not 
 His will. This is a comfort we need not deny 
 ourselves, through pride, as we deny ourselves 
 
 the comfort of our kind. 
 
 E. Shepard. 
 
 I HAVE also felt much perplexed as to what 
 submission really is, whether we ought to 
 like all that happens to us, as well as to take it 
 without complaining. But Hugh says, sub- 
 mission does not mean we are to call bitter 
 things sweet, or to try to feel them so ; but that 
 we are to take them, however we dislike them, 
 without a murmur, being sure that the bitterest 
 are really good, because God sends them. 
 
 Mrs. Kitty Trevylyan. 
 
FROM LETTERS OF JOUBERT TO A 
 FRIEND. 
 
 [" OFFER your affliction to your reason and to 
 ■*■ time : these alone can help you. In the 
 name of Heaven, do not reject the future, and 
 let the present pass on. You have met with 
 irreparable losses, but you have not yet reached 
 the middle of your career; and life, in its ex- 
 tent, may offer you unexpected compensations. 
 Do not commit such an outrage upon Provi- 
 dence as to believe that it has exhausted its 
 treasures for you, and that it has not still some 
 with which to make you amends. Great gifts 
 may yet await you. Nature, which is full of 
 
Letters of "Joubert to a Friend. 75 
 
 pains, is full, too, of consolations. You would 
 be unwise to repulse them. Until they present 
 themselves, accept, at least, the light distrac- 
 tions offered you by all the objects that sur- 
 round you. There is in that part of our moral 
 faculties that we call our sensibility, a disposi- 
 tion to excess, a sort of irritability that needs 
 to be tempered by the pure and peaceable en- 
 joyments of the senses. If the senses are 
 held in inaction, the soul becomes dry as a plant 
 without dew. I beg you, mingle some sensa- 
 tions with your sentiments ; love some odors, 
 some colors, sounds, and savors, or you will be 
 far from wise. God has blest us with varied 
 gifts ; some He has created for the soul, some 
 for the body. Would you dare to accept but 
 one-half of the goods his hand offers, and dis- 
 dain and reject the other? Surely you would 
 be punished for it. 
 
 For myself, if I may venture to mention my- 
 self as example, I fulfil, as I best can, under 
 all the circumstances, the duty of being happy. 
 I am always as much so as I can be ; and, if I 
 
>j6 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 am but little, I say to God, "Thou seest, Lord, 
 I cannot do more. Pardon it for the sake of 
 my infirmity, and the course of events." 
 
 I do not pretend to be insensible, indeed, to 
 any of the accidents of life ; and I should be 
 sorry to be so. But, in the infinite multitude of 
 ways by which we can be affected, there is not 
 one of these events, happy or sad, that is not 
 capable of producing in us a sublime and noble 
 sentiment. It is this sentiment that I seek. I 
 rapidly pass by all the others to stay only at 
 this. Thus my sorrows, as well as my joys, 
 are eternal. When my soul has been able to 
 attain this, it clings to it, and for ever. Every 
 day I am conscious of some that have lasted 
 from my cradle. But these pure griefs are as 
 good as joy ; and I know, by my own expe- 
 rience, that affliction even is no enemy to 
 happiness ; that is to say, to the state in which 
 the soul finds a constant satisfaction in itself. 
 It matters little if it is content with events, so 
 long as its way of submitting to them renders 
 it content with itself. The soul finds content 
 
Letters of youbert to a Friend. 77 
 
 by the perfecting of a sensibility, which, well 
 taught and guided, knows how to extract 
 honey from every thing. It can be found even 
 in pain. 
 
 But you fear, you say, in accepting consola- 
 tion, you may outrage and wound the dear 
 shades, the sacred manes, of your friends. 
 Here is an exaggeration of language and of 
 sentiment that I should treat with no considera- 
 tion. 
 
 No honest affection can wound hearts that 
 are noble. If in our terrestrial imperfection 
 we feel jealousy, it must cease and fall away 
 with the clay that environs our nature. Be- 
 yond this life, all is purity, all is goodness. 
 Ah ! even in this world, one might find a soul 
 so great as not to be wounded by so kind a 
 sentiment, if, in the rude envelope in which 
 our hearts are hidden, and in the blindness in 
 which our pride steeps us, we did not fancy 
 that the love of which others than ourselves 
 is the object is an exclusion, and humiliating to 
 the love that is given to us ; if we did not sup- 
 
78 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 pose that in giving to others something is taken 
 from us, that we are exiled when they are ad- 
 mitted, that we are despoiled when others 
 come in for a share. We wish to be loved 
 alone, for fear of not being loved at all. 
 
 But celestial intelligences feel very differ- 
 ently : the idea of " sharing," which for us in 
 our blindness is inseparable from the idea of 
 diminution, because one does not operate with- 
 out the other in the material objects that our 
 hands touch incessantly, offers to these clear- 
 sighted beings only an impression of extent 
 that pleases and rejoices them. 
 
 None of the letters that you have written me 
 have afflicted me as much as the last. I see, 
 then, how deep is your wound ; and, in some 
 degree, how irremediable. Your soul has 
 taken sides with your desolation, and reasons 
 as that pleases. All turns to sadness for you, 
 and your reflections tend only to draw from 
 every thing some subject for dejection. I have 
 taken the wrong road. I have occupied you 
 
Letters of Joubert to a Friend. 79 
 
 too much with your misfortune, wishing to 
 render it lighter for you. Your whole soul is 
 sick ; but, since I have imprudently provoked 
 it to reason upon its malady, I will not leave 
 some of your observations without answer, nor 
 those opinions unexplained which I have not 
 sufficiently developed. 
 
 No : the friends that we have lost are not 
 honored by such excessive grief, which honors 
 no one ; because it exposes more the weakness 
 and the stubbornness of those who display it 
 than the grandeur of the loss to which they have 
 submitted. There is a certain lady of fashion, 
 who, for the death of a child four days old, 
 has lamented more, has wept more, and per- 
 sisted in deeper show of grief, than is done for 
 beings whose life was of the greatest value. 
 What honors those who are no more is a mod- 
 erate grief, whose very moderation permits it 
 to be as lasting as the life of him who feels it, 
 because it exhausts neither his soul nor body ; 
 a lofty grief, that allows the occupations and 
 even the relaxations of life to pass on in its 
 
80 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 very presence ; a calm grief, which sets us at 
 war neither with fate nor with the world nor 
 with ourselves, and which pervades a soul at 
 peace, in the moments of its leisure, without 
 interrupting its intercourse with the living and 
 the dead. 
 
THE BATTLE SUMMER. 
 
 ' I ^HE summer came, full of anxiety and 
 -*- dread. It was the terrible summer, the 
 saddest of the war, when the army lay before 
 Richmond, when we were waiting and waiting, 
 and to all our expectations there came only a 
 sad answer and the news of death. The sad 
 message came to us too ; sorrow upon sorrow. 
 I have heard that it is often so ; that, when one 
 sorrow comes, another follows in its train. I 
 cannot say if it is so, and who could venture? 
 I know not who can read the law of such 
 things, except in this, to find that all must be 
 for good. 
 
 6 
 
The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 Perhaps one grief gives the strength for 
 bearing another, and brings along certain con- 
 solations, opens certain fountains of strength 
 unknown before. However it is, with us 
 grief came upon grief, after many happy 
 years. 
 
 It was a time of darkness for all. It was 
 hard to look forward and hope, and we seemed 
 to be all moving in a heavy dream. For one 
 of the qualities of a terrible dream is its utter 
 hopelessness. We seem, then, to be bound 
 hand and foot, or we are forced to run, or com- 
 pelled into some inevitable destiny. And so, 
 in return, all very hopeless times seem like 
 fearful dreams. Could we only wake from 
 them ! But where is the hope ? 
 
 Our waking came with the news of another 
 death, — Gertrude's oldest boy. He died, 
 brave to the last, in the midst of battle. Our 
 boy! This was all we could know of him. 
 All ! And was not this enough ? It is happy 
 when the death corresponds to the life, and 
 the life is only an illustration of the death. 
 
The Battle Summer. 83 
 
 When the life has been courageous and un- 
 selfish, then we can believe that the death is 
 brave and noble. We need not ask for any 
 death-bed scene nor words of parting ; for the 
 brave act speaks better. 
 
 " God be thanked that he could die so," we 
 say in our agony, while we knew, that, as he 
 had lived bravely always, he could only die so. 
 This is a strange sorrow we feel for those who 
 die for the sake of a great cause. It is a sor- 
 row mingled with a great pride, if they belong 
 to us. In its bitterest moments, we feel that 
 we could not have it otherwise. 
 
 A great gift has he given in offering his life. 
 He showed how precious it was in the very act 
 of giving it away. 
 
 "Wo unto that man by whom the offence 
 cometh ! " I said to Gertrude, in thinking of the 
 evil that had caused the war, and the authors 
 of the evil. She changed the words. "Alas 
 for them ! " she said. She had grown very 
 gentle. The sorrow was sad : to have caused 
 the sorrow had been far more bitter. 
 
84 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 Her suffering was too deep for bitterness ; 
 and her other loss did help in bearing this. 
 It would have been so hard for him to part 
 with his oldest son. " But how proud he would 
 have been ! " 
 
 There were many others to suffer with us. 
 Certain words came to us to strengthen us, that, 
 we often repeated. 
 
 " Think it not strange, concerning the fiery 
 trial which is to try you, as though some 
 strange thing happened to you." 
 
 A great sufferer said this long ago. This 
 
 fiery trial, as it was, he found no strange 
 
 thing, and would have us find it so. And 
 
 more still, he says, "Rejoice, inasmuch as ye 
 
 are partakers of Christ's sufferings." 
 
 And this death of the young and brave was 
 to become no strange thing to all of us. Ah, 
 how many hearts were torn with sorrow, how 
 many homes made desolate ! 
 
 A new, strange thing it was at first, indeed ; 
 for this was our first lesson in the horrors of 
 war. It was hard, at first, to consent to such 
 
The Battle Summer. 85 
 
 a thing, that war should be ; harder still to find 
 how many of the choicest must be sacrificed to 
 it, that just these must fall for the sake of the 
 purification of the country. " Rejoice ! " How 
 could we rejoice? how could the mother be 
 willing to part with her son, and the wife with 
 her husband — joyfully? Yet it was so. In 
 the midst of the most hopeless days, they could 
 rejoice. But of this very sorrow came courage 
 and joy. They had become partakers of 
 Christ's sufferings ; they who gave their lives, 
 and those who must mourn for them. 
 
 For Jesus said, " Greater love has no man 
 than this, that he lay down his life for his 
 friends." And for us, all these have offered 
 up their lives ; to keep away war and bloodshed 
 from our firesides and homes. For others 
 more helpless, too, they have laid down their 
 lives, — the young leader in the same grave 
 with those whose rights and liberty he was de- 
 fending. What death more glorious ! What 
 life in death ! 
 
 And we, too, must glory in being partakers 
 
86 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 of such sufferings. Listen to the words of 
 Christ : — 
 
 "Verily I say unto you, except a corn of 
 wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
 alone ; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much 
 fruit. 
 
 "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and 
 whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and 
 the gospel's shall keep it unto life eternal." 
 
 We must all some time part with those dear- 
 est to us. We must all die ourselves. It is 
 out of the manner of our death and life that 
 grows the life eternal. 
 
GOD IS PRESENT IN OUR TROUBLE. 
 
 /^\ GOD ! thou hast cast us off; thou hast 
 ^-^ scattered us ; thou hast been displeased. 
 O turn thyself to us again ! Thou hast made 
 the earth to tremble ; thou hast broken it. 
 Heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. 
 
 Thou hast showed thy people hard things ; 
 thou hast made us to drink the wine of aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear 
 thee, that it may be displayed because of the 
 truth, that thy beloved may be delivered : save 
 with thy right hand, and hear me. 
 
88 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 Hear my cry, O God ! attend unto my 
 prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry 
 unto thee : when my heart is overwhelmed, 
 lead me to the rock that is higher than I. 
 
 Because thou hast been my help, therefore 
 in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. 
 
 O thou that hearest prayer ! unto thee shall 
 all flesh come. 
 
 By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou 
 answer us, O God of our salvation ! who art 
 the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and 
 of them that are afar off upon the sea. 
 
^w 
 
 IN PRESENCE OF BATTLE. 
 
 TJELIEVE me, nowhere does one think 
 -*^ more rarely of dying than in camp 
 among the dying. Man is here a flame, not 
 ashes. The colors are seen borne along, wav- 
 ing over the current of battle, but high above 
 the graves that it cuts through, and those who 
 are opening the graves. And the throb of 
 death, though it were our own, appears only as 
 one more motion, the last, against the enemy. 
 Strength and right here elevate the feelings : 
 there is no chamber anguish to stifle them. 
 In the midst of the kingdom of ideas and 
 
9° 
 
 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 deeds, which nowhere stand so near each other 
 as in battle, is the fleshly life easily given up ; 
 and if a forlorn child or a trembling old man 
 stands calling for your saving hand, then you 
 go forth against the barbarous horde like a 
 lion, and the flash of powder seems like the 
 silver-flash of life. 
 
 J. P. RlCHTER. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 c 
 
 THE DIVINE LIFE. 
 
 ■h*3 
 
 np^HE divinest life the All-Father ever sent 
 -■- into this world, — I will make no irrev- 
 erent comparison, — the life of his own Holy 
 Spirit, for his own highest designs, continued 
 here but a little over thirty years ; yet was it 
 long enough for its own perfecting, and readi- 
 ness to be glorified, long enough for doing all 
 the Father's will, and long enough for sending 
 light, comfort, and a saving power over the 
 world and through the ages. And those who 
 have most resembled that highest one, how 
 often do we see them fade in death, or rather 
 
92 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 flower up into immortality, in the dew of their 
 youth, or the prime of their beauty and power ! 
 Heaven wants them, and opens its pearly gates 
 for them ; and they go up in the light of the 
 morning sun to be crowned, and forwarded on 
 their eternal course. 
 
 And this life, over whose close we meditate 
 and pray and weep to-day, — do not murmur 
 that it has been short in the reckoning of our 
 earthly calendar. Think rather how rich, how 
 beautiful, how highly inspired and nobly spent 
 it has been, — and still is ; for is it not here still, 
 here in its dear and sacred memories, and all 
 the sweet companionships of the spirit? Was 
 he ever so dearly loved as to-day? Was he 
 ever so near as now to those to whom he has 
 been always nearest? 
 
 Rev. George Putnam. 
 

 THE SOLDIER'S DEATH IN BATTLE. 
 
 SERMON, BY F. BRETSCHNEIDER. 
 
 (Translated from the German.) 
 
 "And, when the sixth hour was come, there was dark- 
 ness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And, at the 
 ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, 
 Eloi, lama sabacthani ! which is, being interpreted, My 
 God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And some of 
 them that stood by, when they heard it, said, Behold, he 
 calleth Elias. And one ran, and filled a sponge full of vine- 
 gar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink, saying, 
 Let alone ; let us see whether Elias will come to take him 
 down. And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the 
 ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from 
 the top to the bottom. And when the centurion, which 
 stood over against him, saw that he so cried out and gave 
 up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God." 
 — Mark xv. 33-39. 
 
 II 7HEN we see beloved friends snatched 
 
 ? * from our side ; when into the silent 
 
 kingdom of the dead is borne the youth in 
 
94 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 the bloom of his years, or the revered head 
 of a family in the fulness of power and ac- 
 tivity, we mourn deeply, and our sorrow flows 
 in a stream of hot tears. But, at the same 
 time, we find a consolation in the thought 
 that their death was not owing to human pas- 
 sions or follies, but that it followed the cus- 
 tomary course of nature ; and that the beloved 
 one met with the death-struggle peacefully, on 
 his bed, surrounded by friends, and consoled 
 by their words and support. 
 
 But if the wickedness of a murderer, the 
 violence of an assassin, has forcibly short- 
 ened the life of an innocent being ; if we greet 
 the pale corpse of him, who, going forth as a 
 peaceful wanderer, met with death from the 
 hand of human wickedness, then our heart 
 shudders before the terrible lot of such a vic- 
 tim. For he was obliged to breathe out his 
 life violently through the crime of his brother ; 
 not in the arms of dear friends, but beneath the 
 blows of a bloodthirsty wretch ; not with the 
 consoling sympathy of love, but amid the fren- 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 95 
 
 zy of anger and rage. Wherefore, O Infinite 
 Goodness ! do our bowed hearts sigh ? Where- 
 fore must this innocent man be subject to the 
 wickedness of his murderer? 
 
 Yet, dear friends, what is the loss of one 
 man, compared with that of hundreds and 
 thousands? Compare the sight of one mur- 
 dered man with that of a battle-field, where 
 thousands lie dead, or in the death-struggle, 
 and where their life has been suddenly cut off 
 by violence. What must our hearts feel at 
 such a sight ! How anxiously should we cry 
 to heaven, Wherefore, O wise and infinite 
 Providence ! must these thousands be sacri- 
 ficed to death, and in such a way, — through 
 the hands of their own brothers? 
 
 * For twenty years has war raged over one 
 part of the world : over the whole country are 
 battle-fields moistened with man's blood. Rest- 
 lessly rages now the sword of war in many 
 
 * This was preached in the year 1812, when the French 
 army, together with the German, was turning towards 
 Russia. 
 
96 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 lands, and a new spectacle of destruction 
 threatens to disclose itself. 
 
 Thousands will find their end in this great 
 struggle. The conquerors of our people draw 
 near for this strife, and the angel of death 
 will surely enter among them. Can we be in- 
 different, brethren, to this destined sacrifice? 
 Should it not fill us with pain and sorrow? 
 
 Yet remember that you live in a world where 
 the holiest and the noblest are often victims to 
 human violence and cruelty, or at least appear 
 so ; in a world where peace has not its home, 
 but strife ; where even the Son of God, when 
 he brought the blessings of God to mankind, 
 found death upon the cross. Look upon this 
 death of your Lord, to the solemnization of 
 which this day is consecrated. It was far more 
 painful this death ; far more cruel and extraor- 
 dinary, than the end of those who pour out 
 their blood upon the battle-field. But it has 
 some striking resemblances to the death of the 
 fallen warrior, which are instructive, and con- 
 soling for us too, if we consider them closely. 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 97 
 
 It will be worthy of the day of our Lord's 
 death to compare the death of Jesus to that of 
 so many bloody victims of war ; and it will 
 bring trust to our hearts to discover, in this 
 comparison, reasons for consolation for the fate 
 of our brethren who are doomed to death. 
 
 The evangelist describes the last bitter 
 struggle of the Redeemer, his death-struggle. 
 The description, simple and unadorned as it is, 
 strikes every feeling heart, that tries to picture 
 this noblest of men. He was wounded painful- 
 ly ; surrounded by a rude, unfeeling crowd, 
 whom he would fain have benefited ; mocked 
 by scorning enemies, and now he is dying a 
 lingering death. More terrible was his lot, 
 more bitter than that of the warrior falling in 
 battle. For he fights on for this booty of his life ; 
 but Jesus could only suffer. He finds, when 
 he falls, often some consoler who lightens the 
 struggle of death ; but Jesus had not one to con- 
 sole him. He dies in the field of glory and 
 honor, and his name will be held sacred among 
 the brave ; but Jesus died a shameful death, — 
 7 
 
The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 that of a despised criminal. The soldier falls 
 by the side of noble companions in arms ; but 
 Jesus died surrounded by malefactors thrust out 
 from society. Yet dissimilar as is the manner 
 of their death in many respects, on the other 
 side is the resemblance great between the death 
 of Jesus and that of the fallen soldier. 
 
 First, let us consider in what does this re- 
 semblance consist. Then what consolation 
 can we draw from it for the death of the victims 
 of war. 
 
 I. The resemblance does not lie deeply con- 
 cealed. We find it in these points : that Jesus 
 was in the bloom of his years ; that he was 
 forced to die a violent and painful death, as a 
 victim to human passions, and with claims to 
 happiness and reward all unfulfilled. 
 
 They were taken away in the bloom of 
 their years. In his thirty-third year, at that 
 age of fresh life when the full power of man 
 has just developed itself, at a time when his 
 capabilities were at their height, with all those 
 powers for teaching and making happy that 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 99 
 
 world to which his blessed activity was giving 
 a new form, — in this very time did the wicked- 
 ness of his enemies snatch Jesus away, short- 
 ening his days, and drawing him violently to 
 his grave, in the very current of a life full of 
 activity and beauty. Similar to this is the fate 
 of most soldiers who fall on the battle-field. 
 Most of them stand in the fairest bloom of their 
 youth. They are youths who have scarcely 
 left the shelter of their parental homes ; men, 
 in the fulness of their strength, and gifted by 
 nature with a blooming health, which promises 
 them every claim to a long life. They are at 
 the age when the powers of the body and soul 
 are at their freshest, the claims upon life and 
 happiness at their strongest, and the hold upon 
 hope and joy is the firmest. These, too, does 
 destiny snatch away in the midst of a life full 
 to its brim. It smites them down in the midst 
 of their course. 
 
 Again, Jesus died, not in the course of na- 
 ture, not in the arms of cherishing, consoling 
 love, but by a violent and very painful death. 
 
ioo The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 It was not to the strength of disease, not to the 
 weakness of age, nor the exhaustion of his 
 powers in the service of duty or of mankind, 
 that Jesus yielded up his life ; but on the cross 
 did he let loose the blood of that noble body, 
 and wounds the most painful forced him to 
 taste the bitterness of death drop by drop, and 
 rent with violence the ties that bound him to 
 life. He had not the consolation of dying in 
 the arms of his friends or his loving mother ; 
 no friendly counsel, no loving help, lightened 
 the pain of his death-agony : forsaken by too 
 timid friends, surrounded by an unfeeling mob, 
 mocked by revengeful enemies, he died with- 
 out sympathy, without consolation, without 
 love or help, so that he cried out from the 
 depth of his soul, " My God, my God, why 
 hast thou forsaken me ? " And how it must 
 have heightened his sorrow, and embittered his 
 last hour, to have left his mother, whose joy 
 he was, all unconsoled behind; to have for- 
 saken his friends and disciples, who needed 
 him still so sorely ! 
 
The Soldiers Death in Battle. 101 
 
 Look now to the victims of war : their death 
 is like the death of Jesus. They, too, do not 
 die quietly in their beds, with strength gradu- 
 ally failing ; but violently does the sword or 
 the ball rend the firm threads of their blooming 
 life. They, too, often shed their blood in 
 wounds that let the bitter cup of their death 
 empty itself drop by drop : they, too, die far 
 from their fatherland, far from their own : they 
 too, in their last moments, have no alleviation, 
 no consolation, no help : they, too, in their 
 death-struggle, are not seldom exposed to the 
 ill-treatment and cruelty of an embittered 
 enemy ; and often leave behind friends, who 
 through their death are thrown into mourning, 
 — parents to whom they were consolation and 
 joy, wives and children whose protectors they 
 were and ought to have been. 
 
 And Jesus died as a victim to human pas- 
 sions. It is well known that a part of the Jews 
 — Pharisees and Sadducees, especially — hated 
 the Redeemer bitterly, because he, the incor- 
 ruptible and undismayed friend of truth and 
 
102 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 virtue, disclosed their crimes and their hypocrisy 
 unsparingly ; and they feared, if he should be 
 recognized as the Messiah, to lose their influ- 
 ence over the people. Thus it was to envy, 
 ambition, revenge, and other such passions, 
 that Jesus died a victim. And is it otherwise 
 with soldiers falling in battle? Are they not 
 victims to human passions? It is difficult to 
 find a reasonable ground for plunging mankind 
 into the necessity of carrying on war. It is 
 far more difficult to think it possible, that na- 
 tions and rulers, on either side, can claim to lay 
 the causes of their strife upon grounds of jus- 
 tice and equity, if they would only listen as 
 willingly to the voice of reason as to the voice 
 of passion. It is the passions of men that kin- 
 dle war ; and this terrible evil brings its burden 
 especially on the nation whose passions have 
 been the original cause of the war : on this 
 nation is charged the guilt of all the blood that 
 is shed, and all the victims of war fall as vic- 
 tims to its passions. 
 
 Jesus died, too, with claims upon happiness 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 103 
 
 and reward all unfulfilled. Jesus, our Master, 
 could make every claim to the fairest joys of 
 life. In the short period of his life, he had 
 accomplished much that was good and great ; 
 had won much for his friends, his country, and 
 posterity : he had been the benefactor of many 
 thousands ; he might, had he lived longer, 
 have been their benefactor in a still higher 
 degree, and have enlarged his circle of influ- 
 ence over his whole nation and other nations, 
 and might claim all the fruit that the blossoms 
 of a noble and useful life promise and deserve. 
 But these blossoms withered beneath the hand 
 of death ; these fruits, the cross snatched from 
 him ; the world was still owing him his life's 
 deserts. 
 
 So is it with the greater part of those who 
 fall in war. There are, it is true, some unwor- 
 thy ones among them, for whom it may seem 
 a punishment well deserved that they were cut 
 off by the sword ; but the greater part of those 
 who fall are men who can make every claim to 
 earthly promise. The wide field of life still 
 
1 04 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 offers to them many a garland of joy, — quiet, 
 enticing happiness in the bosom of domestic 
 life ; the peace of the secure citizen : the whole 
 expanse of permitted joys, full of beauty, lies 
 like a fair meadow spread before their hopeful 
 gaze. Only one thing separates them from this 
 longed-for bliss of peaceful life, — the years 
 which they have consecrated to the service of 
 arms, to the defence of their fatherland. But 
 that peace, towards which they were looking, 
 is not to be theirs. The battle-cry sounds ; 
 the angel of death snatches them away ; and, 
 like the vanishing image of a dream, the hap- 
 piness and reward of life fades from their 
 fainting eyes. 
 
 I have said enough to show, that the dying 
 Redeemer resembles in many respects those 
 who die as innocent victims to war. 
 
 Let us now gather courage by considering 
 this resemblance on its instructive and consol- 
 ing side. 
 
 We can see that Jesus, though he died in the 
 bloom of his youth, had yet reached the goal 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 105 
 
 of his earthly life. Great was the day's work 
 that the Lord was to accomplish, greater than 
 was ever set for any mortal before or after him. 
 He was to cause the light of divine truth to 
 dawn upon those who walked in darkness, and 
 who sat in the shadow of death ; to destroy the 
 mastery of error and superstition, of sin and 
 folly : he was to set up the kingdom of truth, 
 goodness, and hope ; and to carry on the high 
 work of the redemption of the human race and 
 its blessedness for ever. A great, an extraor- 
 dinary work, — greater than it would appear 
 possible for any human life to enter upon and 
 accomplish. And yet only three years were 
 granted to Jesus for its vast objects. In his 
 thirtieth year, he entered upon his great work ; 
 and, in his thirty-third, he died upon the 
 cross. Who would not have believed that 
 God indeed had forsaken him, and the whole 
 aim of his life had been frustrated by his 
 early death? Yet this was not the case. 
 Though he died in the bloom of his years, 
 yet he had lived long enough for his great 
 
106 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 work, and had reached the aim for which 
 he lived on earth. 
 
 So, too, the soldier, though he is snatched 
 away in the fulness of his years, may have 
 reached the aim of his earthly life. For what 
 is the aim for which mortals are born? What 
 is the prize for which they strive as this life's 
 booty? It is not merely to live, and to live so 
 long that the body outlives itself, and of itself 
 decays and crumbles away. Neither is it that 
 we run through a certain course of changes ; 
 that we all become men, fathers of families, 
 and aged gray-beards. For to have grown 
 old means not to have lived ; else would the 
 existence of dead rocks, that have seen centu- 
 ries pass by, appear preferable to the soul- 
 inspired drama of human life. Neither can it 
 be the aim of our earthly existence to drink in 
 pleasures, and the fulness of our desires, 
 though many would willingly persuade us so. 
 For it is not the desire and the joys of wanton 
 pleasure that unfold the rich powers of the 
 human soul, or form them, and bring them 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 107 
 
 nearer to completion. It is only too apparent, 
 that the Creator of this earth we inhabit made 
 it not merely for a scene of joy, but rather 
 for discipline and improvement ; and there- 
 fore he made it a theatre of many sorrows 
 and struggles. This only can we acknowledge 
 as the highest aim of our earthly life, to per- 
 fect ourselves, to prepare and discipline our 
 souls for a more complete existence. With 
 this aim did the Son of God come upon earth ; 
 for this he died upon the cross. 
 
 But, dear friends, to reach this object of our 
 earthly life, must we wait for manhood? must 
 we grow gray? The wise man rightly says, 
 " Honorable age is not that which standeth in 
 the length of time, nor that is measured by the 
 number of years. But wisdom is the gray 
 hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old 
 age." 
 
 It is true the wisdom of the gray-beard 
 may be riper, his virtue firmer, his power of 
 overcoming the world and living to God 
 stronger. But the youth who is cut off by the 
 
108 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 sword slumbers not ; he is active in a higher 
 field of life ; he will there, perhaps, stride for- 
 wards more speedily to perfection than would 
 have been possible for him here. He has, 
 by his early death, lost nothing in this incom- 
 plete world that he will not find in the fields 
 of immortality. 
 
 But is it not always to be deplored, that the 
 falling soldier, though he may have fulfilled 
 the purpose of his life, must yet bleed as a vic- 
 tim to human passions? 
 
 Jesus, our Lord, bled as sacrifice to human 
 passions, but in appearance only. He died in 
 reality in consequence of God's unrecognized 
 beneficent designs. The nearest cause of his 
 death was, it is true, no other than the hatred 
 and revenge of his enemies, — the result of 
 human passions ; but these passions were 
 blind instruments in the hands of God. For, 
 according to the decree of the Heavenly 
 Father, Jesus was to die this death ; by this, he 
 was to fulfil the holy work of redemption, and 
 found a reconciliation by which we should 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. 109 
 
 become heirs of a new life and eternal blessed- 
 ness. He seems to have bled on the cross only 
 from the hatred of his enemies ; but he died ac- 
 cording to the holy decrees of God. So, too, 
 fall the soldiers in battle. It is true the human 
 passions, that light up such destructive wars, 
 were the first cause of their death ; but even 
 these passions stood at the service of Divine 
 Providence. It is the decree of Divine Wisdom, 
 that most of what is good on earth must spring 
 from destruction and dissolution. As in nature, 
 so in the world of man. Millions of plants 
 and animals must turn to dust in order to form 
 the fruitful soil which covers the surface of the 
 earth, and nourishes countless millions of liv- 
 ing beings. Storms and tempests must arise, 
 in order to render the air pure, healthy, and 
 fruitful. The earth must be wounded and 
 torn, and all the grass and weeds must be 
 rooted from it, in order that the field may be 
 covered with the blessing of grain. So is it, 
 my friends, with the world of humanity. We 
 must labor, — with all our strength must we 
 
no The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 labor for life, and its every enjoyment. Pain 
 and loss, even agony, it is that makes us wise. 
 Even the Son of God could open the way for 
 us to eternal happiness only through suffering. 
 Destruction, war, and other great calamities, 
 are what give new life to mankind, and with 
 their violent throbs better the condition of the 
 world. Even the great battle of a nation, car- 
 ried on for many years, is a period when man- 
 kind passes through great sufferings to a new 
 majesty, even if our eyes are too short-sighted 
 to look into the purposes of Providence, and 
 our life too transient to see them carried out. 
 But for these purposes, and not for the passions 
 of men, did all those thousands bleed whom 
 the sword of war has mowed to earth ; for these 
 purposes will all those bleed whom war must 
 snatch away in the future. They serve no 
 human leader but the Lord of all Lords and 
 the King of all Kings. They fall, not before 
 the decrees of earth, but those of heaven. 
 
 But you will say, brethren, how little conso- 
 lation is there in this for them, for us, that just 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle. in 
 
 they must be the victims ; that these must die so 
 painful a death, while their brothers will pass 
 away quietly in their beds, nursed lovingly and 
 carefully ; that they must see all their claims 
 to the joy of life destroyed, while their brothers 
 taste peacefully all the happiness of life ! What 
 have these done, that they must sacrifice the 
 happiness of their life for the good of posterity ? 
 What can make amends to them for such a sac- 
 rifice? What can give our wounded hearts 
 balsam and consolation? 
 
 Let us look to the Lord, the Beginner and 
 the Finisher of our faith. He both knew the 
 joy, and suffered the cross ; he died a sad, 
 painful death ; he died with claims unfulfilled, 
 — claims to the happiness and the joy of life. 
 
 Again : the Divine Providence was able to 
 make him complete amends. "Through suffer- 
 ing," so he himself said to his friends, after his 
 resurrection, "through suffering must the Son 
 of God pass on to his glory." For all that he 
 suffered, for all that he lacked, did his Father 
 reward him beyond measure. For God awak- 
 
H2 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 ened him from the dead, and raised him to 
 heaven : He has given him a name that is above 
 all names, and has set him to be Ruler and 
 Judge of his redeemed, — over the living and 
 the dead. Those, too, who, in the counsels of 
 God, have lost their lives in bloody warfare, the 
 goodness of the Heavenly Father will richly 
 reward. It is true, there may be among them 
 those who are unworthy and stained with crime, 
 who may look upon it as a righteous punish- 
 ment, if they are cut off by the sword. But the 
 greater number of these fallen warriors have 
 not deserved the suffering and agony, and the 
 early, bloody death they have met with. But 
 God will reward them as He rewarded Jesus in 
 his sufferings. For their agony in the last 
 moment of their life, for their unfulfilled claims 
 upon this life, they will find hereafter a rich 
 reparation. For, "if we die with Jesus, so 
 shall we live with him ; if we suffer, then shall 
 we reign with him." * Yes, the immeasurable 
 universe of that God who is love is not too 
 
 * 2 Tim. ii. u, 12. 
 
The Soldier's Death in Battle, 113 
 
 poor to make up to us a thousand fold for every 
 joy that is snatched from us here, in the dwell- 
 ings of the immortal ; his eternity is not too 
 small in joys to make amends for the suffer- 
 ings of a few moments of terror. For no eye 
 hath seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath it en- 
 tered into the heart of man to conceive, what 
 God hath prepared for those who love him, 
 when He leads them out from the storms of this 
 life into eternal peace. 
 
 Then let the concealed future bring sorrows 
 and anguish and death : we will not be terri- 
 fied. Then, though death may conquer in the 
 dark valleys of earth, and demand its youthful 
 and its bloody victims ; though the scourge of 
 war sweep devastatingly over thousands of lives, 
 let us not be terrified, let us not murmur ! For 
 our lives lie in thy hands, King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords. To thee do all creatures live 
 and die. Nothing can separate us from thee 
 and thy kingdom. Thou hast prepared for us, 
 thy redeemed, after the hard struggle of this 
 life, a dwelling of pure joy in the fields of 
 8 
 
114 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 eternal peace. Then shall we, with Jesus, our 
 friend, rest from the bitter struggle that rent 
 soul from body. Then will the remembrance 
 of all the terrors of this life seem like a heavy 
 dream, out of which we shall wake to blessed- 
 ness ; and, overwhelmed with joy, we shall 
 acknowledge in our stammering words what 
 the song of praise from the just made perfect 
 echoes out through heaven, "Lord, the suffer- 
 ings of the past time are not worthy to be com- 
 pared with the glory beyond measure that is 
 revealed in us." 
 
A CHILD'S DEATH. 
 
 r I ^HOU touchest us lightly, O God ! in our grief; 
 But how rough is thy touch in our prosperous 
 hours ! 
 All was bright ; but thou earnest, so dreadful and 
 
 brief, 
 Like a thunder-bolt falling in gardens of flowers. 
 
 My children ! my children ! they clustered all round 
 
 me, 
 Like a rampart which sorrow could never break 
 
 through ; 
 Each change in their beautiful lives only bound me 
 In a spell of delight which no care could undo. 
 
n6 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 But the eldest, O Father ! how glorious he was, 
 With the soul looking out through his fountain-like 
 
 eyes ! 
 Thou lovest Thy Sole-born ; and had I not cause 
 The treasure thou gavest me, Father, to prize ? 
 
 But the lily-bed lies beaten down by the rain, 
 And the tallest has gone from the place where he 
 
 grew, — 
 My tallest ! my fairest ! Oh, let me complain ! 
 For all life is unroofed, and the tempests beat 
 
 through. 
 
 I murmur not, Father : my will is with thee ; 
 I knew at the first that my darling was thine. 
 Hadst thou taken him earlier, O Father ! — but see ! 
 Thou hadst left him so long, that I dreamed he was 
 mine. 
 
 Thou hast taken the fairest ; he was fairest to me. 
 Thou hast taken the fairest ; 'tis always thy way. 
 Thou hast taken the dearest ; was he dearest to 
 
 thee? 
 Thou art welcome, thrice welcome ; — yet woe is 
 
 the day ! 
 
A Child's Death, 117 
 
 Thou hast honored my child by the speed of thy 
 
 choice ; 
 Thou hast crowned him with glory, o'erwhelmed 
 
 him with mirth : 
 He sings up in heaven with his sweet sounding 
 
 voice, 
 While I, a saint's mother, am weeping on earth. 
 
 Yet oh for that voice which is thrilling through 
 
 heaven, 
 One moment my ears with its music to slake ! 
 Oh, no ! not for worlds would I have him regiven, 
 Yet I long to have back what I would not retake. 
 
 I grudge him, and grudge him not. Father, thou 
 
 knowest 
 The foolish confessions of innocent sorrow : 
 It is thus, in thy husbandry, Saviour, thou sowest 
 The grief of to-day for the grace of to-morrow. 
 
 Thou art blooming in heaven, my blossom, my 
 
 pride ; 
 And thy beauty makes Jesus and Mary more glad : 
 Saints' mothers have sung when their eldest-born 
 
 died, 
 Oh why, my own saint, is thy mother so sad? 
 
n8 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 Go, go with thy God, with thy Saviour, my child ! 
 Thou art His, I am His, and thy sisters are His ; 
 But to-day thy fond mother with sorrow is wild, 
 To think that her son is an angel in bliss ! 
 
 Oh ! forgive me, dear Saviour, on heaven's bright 
 
 shore, 
 Should I still in my child find a separate joy ! 
 While I lie in the light of thy face evermore, 
 May I think heaven brighter, because of my boy ! 
 
 F. W. Faber. 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF USELESSNESS, 
 
 TN the re-action of the Christianity of our day, 
 *■ of muscular Christianity, our prayers, all 
 our books of devotion, share in the earnest ap- 
 peal to active duties. The poor invalid, with 
 broken heart, day after day listens to the ex- 
 hortations to work by way of prayer ; sees with 
 a sigh how the idler is despised, and what a 
 burden the shiftless and lazy are upon society. 
 There is very little room for the weak and the 
 useless in our world : even the books that only 
 the invalids have time to read, preach the 
 economies of nature and the vice of idleness. 
 
120 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 This literature is far more healthy indeed 
 for the sick and the feeble than weak books 
 framed only for them. The inspiring breezes of 
 activity are as necessary for them as for the 
 busy workers. Such strengthening doses can 
 rouse from listlessness, and help the sick man 
 to cure himself. Religion is not merely a 
 binding up of the soul ; but it must bind up the 
 body too, and is its wisest physician. The 
 fresh blast of the spring air must be let into 
 the sick room, and must blow out the dust 
 from the curtains, and purify the dead atmos- 
 phere. And the freshness of active life must 
 come in. The sick life and the outside life 
 must not be separated. The one is as much 
 <r a life " as the other ; and each needs the other. 
 
 Only in our sick rooms, in acknowledging 
 this glory of usefulness, we must remember 
 that there are consolations even in uselessness. 
 These are very hard for the weak heart of the 
 invalid to find. "The use of uselessness," — 
 can such a thing be ? 
 
 And what would become of us, if such a 
 
The Discipline of Uselessness. 121 
 
 thing could not be? What does the bravest 
 and the strongest accomplish in comparison 
 with his desires? Can the most active bene- 
 factor look back with satisfaction on his work? 
 If he could, how despicable would he be ! 
 What are our human efforts to create happi- 
 piness, all put together, in comparison with the 
 joy that a blade of grass gives? Indeed, how 
 can we ever balance use and uselessness? 
 How can we ever judge a life ? How can we 
 tell, with our shortness of sight, what are de- 
 feats and what are victories ? Even Christ 
 said, " It is finished," in the hour from which 
 Christianity took its date. The few hours of 
 a little child's life, — how precious they are to 
 us ! Would we change them for one of the 
 stars ? 
 
 What have we ever done ourselves in the 
 world? Is it so very much missed? Have we 
 a right to complain that our handful of the 
 gleaning has dropped out of the sheaf unno- 
 ticed? 
 
 These questionings are not the consolation I 
 
122 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 would bring forward. It would be no consola- 
 tion in our uselessness to dwell upon all the 
 failures in the world, nor on our own pettiness. 
 But such questionings lead us to put a true test 
 to the activity of life, and show us how it is 
 that mere doing is not living. But what is ? 
 
 To us the trouble is, that our idle life looks 
 very easy. The hard workers would like 
 sometimes to change with us. They would be 
 so glad of a few hours' rest, — a few hours. 
 But they gladly get up from it, when any plea- 
 sure or duty calls, while we must stay. By 
 this time, we have learned to know we would 
 willingly decline the pleasure : such sweets 
 look cloying to us now ; but the struggle is in 
 giving up help for others, — hours of work at 
 the Sanitary Commission or the hospital, and 
 all the while seeing the workers wearing them- 
 selves out, day after day, with too much work, 
 and to know that we cannot come to the res- 
 cue, that we are not even the forlorn hope, 
 that we have no strength to offer, — shall 
 never have. 
 
The Discipline of Uselessness. 123 
 
 We must see the work we might have done, 
 left undone. What is worse, we must see 
 others take upon themselves our work, when 
 they have quite as much of their own as they 
 ought to bear. We grow very sharp-sighted 
 in these unoccupied hours, and can see what is 
 needed here and there, and have not earned 
 the right to mend the work. We have an out- 
 side view of life, as a bystander looks upon 
 a game of chess ; but we cannot even move a 
 pawn. 
 
 Besides all this, what is worse still, our help- 
 lessness adds to the work of the world. The 
 care of us makes one more care. Ah ! though 
 it may look easy, all this is very hard to bear. 
 It is hard when we misconceive our powers, 
 and believe, if we could only have health, we 
 might have done much to help the world. It 
 is harder in our discouraged hours, when we 
 believe that we should never have been of any 
 use, sick or well ; and that we were born to be 
 a clog and weight, — to be in everybody's 
 way. 
 
124 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 If we could only stop at the first part of this 
 complaint, "born to be a clog," that would 
 allow that we were born to be something. 
 The brake on the cars, the clog on the coach 
 going down hill, are as necessary as the horses 
 and the steam engine. The train has to stop 
 now and then : it is dangerous for the carriage 
 to go down hill too fast. So a nation needs a 
 war when it is too prosperous ; and homes that 
 are likely to grow too gay and frivolous can 
 afford the few serious thoughts that a sick room 
 suggests. 
 
 This thought should serve to create a respect 
 from others towards those who are suffering 
 from sickness ; but it does not help the " clogs " 
 and the "brakes" themselves. It would add 
 self-conceit to the other trials that their friends 
 must suffer through them, to dwell upon any 
 advantages gained from their sickness and 
 weakness ; and they are the very last to be 
 able to perceive them, and surely should be the 
 very last to get any consolation from being the 
 clogs for forming the bitter element in life. 
 
The Discipline of Uselessness. 125 
 
 No : it is only in bravely acknowledging our 
 utter uselessness that we can find our help. It 
 is here that shines in the broad ray of comfort. 
 Allow that we have nothing to give, in return, 
 that we are utterly dependent, and we suddenly 
 discover what is the joy of receiving. We 
 have learned what we never knew before, — 
 what friendship is, what love is. We have the 
 power of accepting gladly. These are mere 
 words to those who have never known the de- 
 pression there is in this feeling of absolute 
 physical dependence. Every one has had 
 some little taste of the bitterness of depend- 
 ence, and shrinks from it. But the invalid ex- 
 periences it day after day ; too feeble to move ; 
 hands too weak for work ; eyes aching so that 
 it is impossible to read, or even to move them 
 to look in the face of a friend ; head too con- 
 fused for thought ; the whole body too full of 
 pain for rest. One must be many days and 
 weeks or years in such a state to learn what is 
 the blessedness of friends, to appreciate their 
 sympathy and forbearance in our weakness, 
 
126 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 their cheerfulness and their thoughtfulness. 
 Blessed as it is to give, we have learned the 
 less noble, less elevating blessedness of receiv- 
 ing. Because it is less elevating, it is more dif- 
 ficult to learn and to acknowledge. Only a 
 long dependence on the goodness of others can 
 teach it. Our poor, discouraged self-respect 
 comes in to help us. "Ah ! we must indeed be 
 something to them, if they can love us so." 
 
 I do not mean that it is only in becoming 
 sick and helpless that we find out our friends : 
 I mean that in our sickness and helplessness 
 we find one feature in this love of our friends, 
 that we never can find otherwise. It is the 
 giving and returning that makes the delight in 
 most friendship, and that keeps up the activity 
 of our love. Unconsciously, without acknowl- 
 edging it, we make account of what we receive 
 and what we give, and are anxious to return 
 as fast as we accept. This is our healthy life. 
 
 In our invalid days, we learn how to receive ; 
 and in this we need to be generous. It re- 
 quires some generosity to be willing to receive ; 
 
The Discipline of Uselessness. 127 
 
 and, when we have learned to do it, we find in 
 the very bottom of the cup, in the bitterest 
 dregs we have to drink, this one compensation, 
 — the knowledge of this sacrificing love of our 
 friends. 
 
 Of this it might be useless to speak ; for 
 those who are well, and are able to pay their 
 own debts in friendship, ought not to be able to 
 understand it. But it is in this submission, with 
 the support that comes in submitting, that we 
 get a glimpse of one of the positions in which 
 we stand towards God. 
 
 Some of the old books are fond of dwelling 
 upon our insignificance in God's creation, that 
 He asks nothing of us, while we need all 
 things from him ; words which, if often used 
 in our time, have an air of false humility. 
 They are depressing and discouraging to the 
 Christian soldier. It is a sort of humility that 
 the veriest weed in a garden-patch would not 
 think of wearing. 
 
 A true humility must have nothing to do 
 with abjectness. The guest takes the lowest 
 
128 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 place, waiting to be called to a higher. If we 
 were indeed worms, born only to grovel on the 
 ground, there would be no humility in placing 
 ourselves low as the ground. We must volun- 
 tarily cast ourselves there from a greater height. 
 It would have been no offering of humility, if 
 it had not been a rich velvet cloak that Raleigh 
 flung down before the queen. One must first 
 be proud, in order to be able to be humble. 
 
 We need not debase the offering we make of 
 ourselves to God in our own esteem, particu- 
 larly as He made us, and not we ourselves. 
 
 Yet it would be better for us, if we could 
 more often be conscious of our dependence 
 upon a Higher Being. And just as long sick- 
 ness, with a long period of weakness, wrings 
 from us the confession, that it is a pleasure to 
 be so served as we are by the love of our 
 friends, it teaches us, at the same time, our de- 
 pendence, and our pleasure in dependence 
 upon God. We begin to see more clearly that 
 the ordering of things does lie in his hand ; 
 that we need not make ourselves uneasy be- 
 
The Discipline of Uselessness. 129 
 
 cause our day's work in the world has failed. 
 There are other workmen ; if not, there is 
 Himself. 
 
 This sort of submission is the true M waiting 
 upon God," and gives us an idea of the true 
 quality of patience. A poor, querulous, waver- 
 ing patience, it may look to be on the outside ; 
 but it must needs be wavering. It finds its 
 support only in an utter, hourly dependence 
 upon God ; and the heart is constantly rebel- 
 ling. If the struggle for this patience were 
 not a constant one, if by one effort it could be 
 made certain, it would be only a dull endur- 
 ance, not patience gained. It is for these 
 stormy hours of such lonely battle that I have 
 found one prayer helpful. 
 
 " My God, give me strength, if it is thy will ; 
 if not, patience. Not -patience, if it is not thy 
 will:' 
 
WORDS OF CHRIST, DAVID, AND PAUL. 
 
 HAVE faith in God. Verily I say unto 
 you, if ye have faith and doubt not, ye 
 shall not only do this which is done to the fig- 
 tree, but also, if ye shall say unto this moun- 
 tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into 
 the sea, it shall be done. And all things what- 
 soever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye 
 shall receive. Whosoever shall not doubt in 
 his heart, but shall believe that those things 
 which he saith shall come to pass, he shall 
 have whatever he saith. Therefore I say unto 
 you, what things soever ye desire when ye 
 
Words of Christ, David, and Paul. 131 
 
 pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall 
 have them. 
 
 My soul, wait thou only upon God ; for my 
 expectation is from him. He only is my rock 
 and my salvation : He is my defence ; I shall 
 not be moved. In God is my salvation and my 
 glory : the rock of my strength and my refuge 
 is in God. 
 
 If we hope for that we see not, then do we 
 with patience wait for it. 
 
BE STRONG. 
 
 BE strong to hope, O Heart ! 
 Though day is bright, 
 The stars can only shine 
 
 In the dark night. 
 Be strong, O heart of mine ! 
 Look towards the light. 
 
 Be strong to bear, O Heart ! 
 
 Nothing is vain : 
 Strive not ; for life is care, 
 
 And God sends pain. 
 Heaven is above, and there 
 
 Rest will remain. 
 
 Be strong to love, O Heart ! 
 
 Love knows not wrong : 
 Didst thou love — creatures even, 
 
 Life were not long ; 
 Didst thou love God in Heaven, 
 
 Thou wouldst be strong. 
 
 A. A. Proctor. 
 
ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF. 
 
 TT is no wonder that we apply these words to 
 -"- Christ; for in this we find our closest 
 brotherhood. He was a man of sorrows. He 
 could pray that the bitter cup might pass from 
 Him, so near was He to the mortal agony. Yet 
 He could ask it only if it were God's will, so 
 near was He to the Divine comfort. With His 
 grief, let us take His courage ; in His loneli- 
 ness, let us find with Him the Father. 
 
 Let me be weak a little, in order to be strong 
 much, so that I may dry up my tears quickly, 
 and proceed to serve thee better, — even if it 
 be with my patience only. 
 
 Leigh Hunt. 
 
PAST SUFFERING. 
 
 TT is a good thing to think of, that we are 
 •"r better prepared to judge our troubles when 
 they are passed than while their stress is on 
 us. If our troubles slay us, there needs proof 
 that we shall not immediately rejoice therefor ; 
 and, if we survive them, there are always con- 
 siderations which make us not sorry to have 
 suffered. Who so proud as he that has suf- 
 fered? The least complaint of another pro- 
 vokes his self-conceit. No soldier was ever 
 ashamed of his scars. No athlete was ever 
 sorry for the care and exertion which his high 
 
Past Suffering. 135 
 
 condition cost him. And so the exercise of 
 pain and care and sorrow, which develop the 
 intellectual gladiator, and make him strong by 
 experience and insight, is never remembered 
 but with pride and pleasure. A thousand years 
 of suffering are but as yesterday when it is 
 past ; but the present pride of a lofty soul sends 
 light and glory over all the future. 
 
 Optimism. 
 
SEEN AND UNSEEN. 
 
 r I ^HE wind ahead, the billows high, 
 
 A whited wave, but sable sky ; 
 And many a league of tossing sea, 
 Between the hearts I love and me. 
 
 The wind ahead ! day after day 
 These weary words the sailors say ; 
 To weeks the days are lengthened now, 
 Still mounts the surge to meet our prow. 
 
 Through longing day and lingering night, 
 I still accuse Time's lagging flight, 
 Or gaze out o'er the envious sea 
 That keeps the hearts I love from me. 
 
Seen and Unseen. 137 
 
 Yet, ah ! how shallow is all grief! 
 How instant is the deep relief! 
 And what a hypocrite am I 
 To feign forlorn, to 'plain and sigh ! 
 
 The wind ahead ? The wind is free ! 
 For evermore it favoreth me ; 
 To shores of God still blowing fair, 
 O'er seas of God my bark doth bear. 
 
 This surging brine, I do not sail, 
 This blast adverse is not my gale ; 
 'Tis here I only seem to be, 
 But really sail another sea, — 
 
 Another sea, pure sky its waves, 
 Whose beauty hides no yawning graves ; 
 A sea all haven, whereupon 
 No helpless bark to wreck hath gone. 
 
 The winds that o'er my ocean run 
 Reach through all worlds beyond the sun ; 
 Through life and death, thro' fate, through time, 
 Grand breaths of God, they sweep sublime. 
 
138 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 Eternal trades, they cannot veer, 
 And, blowing, teach us how to steer ; 
 And well for him whose joy, whose care, 
 Is but to keep before them fair. 
 
 O thou God's mariner, heart of mine ! 
 Spread canvas to the airs divine ; 
 Spread sail, and let thy Fortune be 
 Forgotten in thy Destiny. 
 
 For Destiny pursues us well, 
 
 By sea, by land, through heaven or hell ; 
 
 It suffers Death alone to die, 
 
 Bids Life all change and chance defy. 
 
 Would earth's dark ocean suck thee down ? 
 Earth's ocean, thou, O Life ! shalt drown ; 
 Shalt flood it with thy finer wave, 
 And, sepulchred, entomb thy grave. 
 
 Life loveth life and good ; then trust : 
 What most the spirit would, it must. 
 Deep wishes in the heart that be, 
 Are blossoms of necessity. 
 
Seen and Unseen. 139 
 
 A thread of Law runs through thy prayer, 
 Stronger than iron cables are ; 
 And love, and longing toward her goal, 
 Are pilots sweet to guide the soul. 
 
 So Life must live, and Soul must sail, 
 And Unseen over Seen prevail ; 
 And all God's argosies come to shore, 
 Let ocean smile or rage and roar. 
 
 And so, 'mid storm or calm, my bark 
 With snowy wake still nears her mark ; 
 Cheerly the trades of being blow, 
 And sweeping down the wind I go. 
 
 D. A. Wasson. 
 
THE BURDEN OF LIFE, 
 
 r I ^HERE are sad, distrustful moments, when 
 -*- our existence seems a terrible enigma, 
 from which we cannot turn away. We are 
 waiting, and seem to hear every sand of life 
 dropping. The idea of an eternal life gives us 
 a shudder ; for we do not yet know what we are 
 going to do with this. We are conscious of a 
 longing for something higher than our present 
 selves, and find within us only the same means 
 we have tried to work with over and over 
 again. We have got tired of our own faults, 
 and yet are nourishing somewhere a little petty 
 
The Burden of Life, 141 
 
 self-conceit, that all the time excuses them to 
 us. If only something would come to stir us 
 from our despondency ! 
 
 There are times when it seems as if even a 
 sharp sorrow would be a blessing, to rouse us 
 from the torpor of our souls. We see that 
 others, who have been brought near an actual 
 suffering, have found a serenity that we cannot 
 understand. I have often heard a longing ex- 
 pressed, by those who are surrounded with 
 sunshine and placid days, for some event to 
 come, something to happen to break up the 
 monotony of life. But this complaint of those 
 who live only on the excitements of life, and 
 find a disgust in the tame moments that must 
 come between its gay hours, is sometimes 
 uttered by those who are more serious. The 
 complaints, perhaps, come from a similar 
 cause. There has been a time of excitement, 
 and now there is a time of flatness. The 
 energies have been spent in a great work, and 
 now follows the time of exhaustion. 
 
 Whatever the cause, the dejection is none the 
 
142 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 less certain, and the despondency the harder to 
 bear, because there is no accountable reason 
 for it. Here it is, something to be struggled 
 with, — the burden of life. 
 
 The burden is the heavier, because it is 
 thoroughly selfish. It is filled with a self-dissat- 
 isfaction, — not the healthy kind that rises 
 from a true humility, but the grasping kind, 
 that seeks for so much, it is forced to be disap- 
 pointed. If we could only forget ourselves for 
 awhile in some grand duty into which we could 
 fling ourselves ! 
 
 But God leaves us sometimes to create our 
 own fortunes. To some He has given great 
 deficiencies, that they are forced to fill up for 
 themselves ; and in this way have built up their 
 own characters. We say that "circumstances" 
 have been against them. On the contrary, it 
 is their circumstances that have called out their 
 energies, and have made them what they are 
 by forcing them into activity. 
 
 Perhaps, then, those are most the creators of 
 their fortunes who have had "every wish 
 
The Burden of Life, 143 
 
 granted," as we say ; who have lived a quiet, 
 comfortable, common-place life, without any 
 singular event to call out a singular talent, or 
 any shock to wake up an unknown power. 
 They must create an object for themselves. 
 They do not have to work to earn bread. They 
 have no great responsibilities of wealth to at- 
 tend to. No one depends upon them for teach- 
 ing ; for they are the ones who have always 
 been carefully taught. Their time is always at 
 their own disposal ; but, alas ! they have noth- 
 ing to do with the time. All is so well-ordered, 
 there is nothing left to order for themselves. 
 
 These it is who must show an unwonted 
 strength, if they create a career for themselves. 
 Is it possible ? 
 
 With God, all things are possible. 
 
 Only, is not to take God's name into a life 
 that is only trivial and insignificant a blas- 
 phemy? By a great sorrow, one may indeed 
 call upon God. What has our flat, unprofita- 
 ble life to do with the Lord of the worlds ? 
 
 And here we reach the depths of the thank- 
 
144 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 lessness of our hearts. We do not know how 
 to draw near to Him in thanksgiving, though 
 we know there is no one else to whom we can 
 go in sorrow. 
 
 This thanklessness is a part of the apathy of 
 our soul. How can we thank Him for the ex- 
 istence that brings us no joy? And where 
 shall we find this joy in life? 
 
 " In the midst of the deep sea and in storm, to 
 lie with a soul full of sorrow, — that is truly not an 
 unbearable affliction. There is struggle, pressure, 
 and despair ; there we can console ourselves with 
 the thought, ' If I can bear it no longer, I may lie 
 down and die/ Then one is so stunned, so over- 
 whelmed, that one cannot measure one's woe. But 
 when the storm is at rest, and the calm of a so- 
 called pleasant existence begins ; when we have 
 nothing to struggle with, nothing to subdue ; when 
 life spreads before and around us in an easy, a 
 golden freedom ; when no weighty, decided duties 
 spur the thoughts, rule the acts ; when we have time 
 and leisure to feel, to think, to measure our sorrow 
 over and over, and through and through, — look 
 you, then sorrow ends, and misery begins ; and the 
 
The Burden of Life. 145 
 
 most miserable side of the misery is that it makes 
 one weary, — weary. The first condition of our 
 being is a whole life, — that is, a life which is 
 claimed ; over full by our duties ; to which, as of 
 course, belong struggles, bitterness, and cares 
 of every kind. But it is this empty existence that 
 can be likened to a crushed sea-shell, and which, 
 like no other, makes one miserable." 
 
 A terrible burden to bear is " this empty ex- 
 istence," — the most miserable to be borne. 
 
 But whose fault is it that this " existence " is 
 empty? The power lies in every one's hands 
 to fill it. In olden times, this tried soul that 
 could find nothing worthy of life would have 
 gone into a convent, with the pretext of serving 
 God, only to make there a shrine to itself, to 
 spend its time in counting up its own faults, 
 and selfishly deploring its selfishness. 
 
 But now, there is no room for those who 
 would " rather die " than live ; no such chance 
 for killing the heart and walling up the feel- 
 ings. If you need a sorrow to ripen your soul, 
 it is easily found. If God has not thought 
 
146 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 best to bring it into your own home, it is that 
 you may go and find it in another. If you 
 have no prayer to offer for yourself, pray for 
 the countless sufferers on either side. If you 
 want to know what sorrow is, think of those 
 who have given sons to the war, who are left 
 alone because right was to be bought by the 
 blood of those dearest to them. If you believe 
 you have no sympathy from those who have 
 followed Christ in suffering as he did, think 
 of the tender love with which he spoke to the 
 young man who had much possessions, "How 
 hard it is for those who have riches to enter 
 into the kingdom of God !" How hard ! Yes, 
 he who is to us the type of the greatest suffer- 
 ing of mankind saw that just this trial was 
 hard to bear. 
 
 Pass out from your own life, since it seems 
 so tasteless, and enter with a full heart into 
 that of others. Wake up to the new life that 
 every day brings, the sun that fetches the 
 morning, the spring that opens the leaves, 
 the glad song of the birds, the gay colors of 
 
The Burden of Life. 147 
 
 the flowers. Take joy to those who are 
 morose and unkind. Insist upon it. In order 
 to carry them cheer, you will have to be cheer- 
 ful yourself. Because an apparently easy lot 
 has been given you, spread some of its joy 
 over the waste places. Carry your gifts that 
 you despise to those who need them. If you 
 need the sorrow, go where it is bitterest and 
 heaviest, in order to weep with those who 
 weep ; and, as Mary found her Master in the 
 place whence she thought they had taken him, 
 you will find God in the empty existence, in 
 that vacant life that seemed such a burden. 
 
 It is our own heart that needs to be warmed. 
 There is too much love of self there, too little 
 thoughtfulness and love for others. It is just 
 here that we need to warm and heat ourselves 
 with thinking of the life of Christ, to remember 
 that his first and greatest law was " to love 
 one's neighbor as one's self." Let us awaken 
 our souls to that "enthusiasm of humanity" 
 to which the author of " Ecce Homo " would 
 arouse us, as he shows how it was, Christ 
 
148 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 bound men to himself, and so bound them to 
 each other. 
 
 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
 my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and 
 my burden is light. 
 
 For ye have the poor with you always ; and, 
 whensoever ye will, ye may do them good. 
 
 Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and 
 ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened 
 unto you. For every one that asketh, receiv- 
 eth ; and he that seeketh, findeth ; and to him 
 that knocketh, it shall be opened. 
 
 ^B#S^ 
 
WHO SHALL DELIVER ME? 
 
 #7* OD strengthen me to bear myself, 
 
 
 That heaviest weight of all to bear 
 
 Inalienable weight of care. 
 
 All others are outside myself: 
 
 I lock my door, and bar them out, — 
 
 The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. 
 
 I lock my door upon myself, 
 
 And bar them out ; but who shall wall 
 
 Self from myself, most loathed of all ? 
 
 If I could once lay down myself, 
 And start self-purged upon the race 
 That all must run ! Death runs apace, 
 
150 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 If I could set aside myself, 
 
 And start with lightened heart upon 
 
 The road by all men overgone ! 
 
 God harden me against myself, 
 
 This coward with pathetic voice 
 
 Who craves the ease and rest and joys ; 
 
 Myself, arch traitor to myself; 
 
 My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
 
 My clog whatever road I go. 
 
 Yet One there is can curb myself, 
 Can roll the strangling load from me, 
 Break off the yoke and set me free. 
 
 Christina G. Rossetti, in the " Argosy." 
 
\ GAY, serene spirit is the source of all 
 ■*■■*■ that is noble and good. Whatever is 
 accomplished of the greatest and the noblest 
 sort flows from such a disposition. Petty, 
 gloomy souls, that only mourn the past and 
 dread the future, are not capable of seizing 
 upon the holiest moments of life, of enjoying 
 and making use of them as they should. 
 
 Schiller. 
 
 Think, we are walking every hour of the 
 
 day in that fairy world of glory and beauty 
 
 without knowing it. And people call it " this 
 
 every-day life," and this " work-a-day" world ! 
 
 Can we not understand a little how it is that 
 
 God finds it for our profit to lead us sometimes 
 
 into the shadows? 
 
 Kitty Trevylyan. 
 
GOOD AND EVIL. 
 
 TI^E should avoid the exaggerations of a 
 * * rash philosophy which falsely in- 
 scribes itself as opposed to our natural senti- 
 ments. 
 
 The groaning chorus of the discouraged 
 repeats constantly, "All is vain, all is empty; 
 the earth is a valley of tears, and happiness is 
 an illusive word, an irony that insults our 
 griefs." This is a literary declamation, belied 
 every day by our actions and our sentiments ; 
 every day accepted and said again, like an 
 eloquent complaint on which we pride our- 
 
Good and EviL 153 
 
 selves. It appears well to complain thus ; and 
 we associate, with the greatest security, unlim- 
 ited effusions on the infinite wonders of an 
 omnipotent goodness with endless lamenta- 
 tions upon the miseries of existence, and the 
 sad nothingness of the world through which it 
 flows. Such amplifications of rhetoric in favor 
 of two sides would be fit only for the schools. 
 
 Yes, there are frightful evils ; but there is 
 much great and truly good in the world. Hap- 
 piness exists : it is not very rare, it is even 
 easy. But it is right to say, that it is neither 
 sure nor durable. What is not easy, what is 
 often impossible, is to avoid unhappiness ; and 
 unhappiness is no more of an illusion than hap- 
 piness. Sorrow is real : it leaves more profound 
 traces than happiness. In itself, it is without 
 consolation, although it may be the occasion 
 for wise thoughts, noble resolutions, generous 
 efforts. All this does not rise from sorrow, 
 but from the liberty of the soul and the power 
 of reason. A proof of this is, that unhappi- 
 ness often dejects, enervates, corrupts. Good 
 
154 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 does not then come from the evil : it comes 
 only from good. And here it is the good that 
 is in us which re-acts against the evil of our 
 destiny. Far from pain being a good, it is 
 good only to conquer it, or rather to conquer 
 ourselves in spite of it. 
 
 But to conquer is not to console ourselves ; 
 and I shall never insist enough upon the differ- 
 ence which separates the question of duty from 
 the question of happiness. Morality does not 
 require that we should strive to unnaturalize 
 our most irresistible impressions, to change our 
 joys into miseries, and our miseries into joys. 
 This temerity of philosophers and theologians 
 in belying human nature, or re-making it, in- 
 spired sometimes by a praiseworthy dream of 
 an artificial perfection, is very often an abuse 
 of inventive subtlety, a pretension to know 
 more than common sense teaches. 
 
 Charles de Remusat. 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT. 
 
 SERMON, FOR NEW YEARS DAY, BY CHRISTOPH F. AMMON. 
 
 (Translated from the German.) 
 
 1I7E are often led to ask, why the New 
 * ™ Year's Day, which ought to inspire 
 every one with joy and fresh cheerfulness in 
 his life's course, is celebrated by so many with 
 a dull indifference, or even by many with visi- 
 ble sadness. And we discover the cause 
 plainly in a silent grief over wishes unfulfilled. 
 So long as the year is passing on in the midst 
 of its course, we follow willingly the plan of 
 life once marked out with zeal and perseve- 
 rance, we are not easily led away from our 
 projects by chance interruptions or obstacles. 
 
156 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 We often hope where there is little to be hoped 
 for, and are always reckoning upon a happy 
 chance which may give a favorable turn to our 
 affairs, and may bring a happy result to our 
 plans. 
 
 But, on the first day of a new year, our old 
 hopes and expectations are wont to disappear 
 with the old year. We stand on a cross road, 
 where we must needs lift up our heads, and 
 give a new direction to our course in life. We 
 discover with pain, that we have persevered in 
 vain ; have striven, fought, struggled in vain : 
 and the less we feel within us the power and 
 activity of spirit then for adapting ourselves 
 to the present, or for breaking open a new 
 course for our wishes, the more sadly, the 
 more bowed down and troubled, do we sink 
 into an anxious melancholy and hopelessness. 
 So fearful is the power of evil upon earth, that 
 even there where the spirit of good has raised 
 its head victoriously, the evil is not utterly de- 
 stroyed and conquered. New cares arise, new 
 passions awaken, and new obstacles start up ; 
 
Disappointment. 157 
 
 old habits of thought and action are destroyed ; 
 hopes and wishes are torn away, in which the 
 delight and happiness of the fairest joys were 
 bound up. 
 
 There is no doubt that we, all of us, have 
 more or less cause to yield to sensations of 
 sorrow over our disappointed plans. The 
 uncertain present, the insecure future, the in- 
 terruption of our dearest projects, the slow 
 backwardness in our household prosperity, on 
 all sides offer us occasions for dissatisfaction 
 and discontent ; and we no longer find in the nar- 
 rowing circle of our friends that confidence and 
 openness which formerly brought us so many 
 happy hours. But is it right towards God and 
 our consciences to nourish such sensations, and 
 cherish such adverse feelings? Is it wise or 
 worthy of a Christian to grieve in silence, and 
 destroy his best powers in such a struggle of 
 inward bitterness? Shall we draw nearer by a 
 single step to the goal of our wishes, if we arm 
 ourselves with old weapons to meet the emer- 
 gencies of a new year? and shall we have the 
 
158 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 slightest influence over the direction, course, or 
 result of its events, unless we yield the former 
 standpoint of our prejudices and passions? 
 Shall we not, rather, when the course of the 
 sun is opening to us a new year, direct an 
 inquiring glance upon ourselves and our wel- 
 fare ? Should we not consider all that lies with- 
 in the circle of our influence, with repose, 
 unrestraint, and with carefully measured pru- 
 dence ? Should we not reflect on what in our 
 ways, our projects, and our deeds, might be 
 made better, more pure, more noble? Should 
 we not finally enjoy the many good things the 
 present offers us with satisfaction, thankfulness, 
 and gladness ; and yield ourselves to the hope, 
 that the future, under God's guidance, will be 
 the best and kindest consoler for our disap- 
 pointed wishes and expectations f Oh, the 
 awakening from the dreams of a false happi- 
 ness in which we have cradled ourselves is so 
 bitter ! The number of the days allotted to 
 our journey in life is so small and insignifi- 
 cant ! 
 
Disappointment. 159 
 
 The seeking after the one thing needful, the 
 searching after the higher and eternal life, can 
 bear so little delay and postponement, that we 
 cannot quickly enough collect and compose 
 ourselves on our entrance on a new, perhaps 
 the last, circle of an earthly being, to raise our 
 eyes to the Father of light and purity, to lay 
 down all our cares and burdens at the foot of 
 his throne, and to beg of him power and 
 strength that we may complete our course with 
 earnestness and confidence, with peace and 
 gladness. Our prayer is thanksgiving and 
 praise, and our thanksgiving is prayer for new 
 blessings and new grace : we enter before his 
 presence in silent devotion. 
 
 " And when eight days were accomplished 
 for the circumcising of the child, his name was 
 called Jesus, which was so named of the angel 
 before he was conceived in the womb." — Luke 
 ii. 21. 
 
 Little as the parents of Jesus must have 
 doubted, that the name which was given to him 
 on his acceptance into the covenant of his peo- 
 
160 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 pie had reference to the spiritual salvation of 
 his nation and mankind in general, yet they 
 were not free from the more bodily expecta- 
 tion, that he would take the throne of his 
 father David, and that his kingdom would have 
 no end. The fatherly friend and protector of 
 his youth passed away too early from the stage 
 to utter aloud his hopes ; but of Mary, who 
 pleased herself with the glory and in the mira- 
 cles of her son, we know with certainty, that 
 she needed the reminder, " My hour is not yet 
 come." And of his brethren, the Scripture in- 
 forms us, they believed not in him, because he 
 did not openly reveal himself to the world. It 
 is evident that the desires with which Jesus was 
 brought to the circumcision by his relations did 
 not reach their fulfilment, because they had 
 not considered the signs of the times, nor 
 looked freely and unrestrainedly enough into 
 the future. We would then, by way of aiding 
 our conscientious inquiry into the past and the 
 future, consider the great truth, that the future 
 under God's guidance is the best consoler for 
 
Disappointment. 161 
 
 our disappointed wishes. Let it teach us in 
 the first place, why we have till now been 
 disappointed in so many of our wishes ; 
 and we may then console ourselves with the 
 inquiry, how we may reach them more se- 
 curely in the future, and bring them to com- 
 pletion. 
 
 If we look into the future with the conviction 
 that it rests "under God's guidance, it becomes 
 in the first place our teacher, because it brings 
 us to a complete insight into the reason that 
 our wishes have until now been disappointed. 
 On a day like to-day, the thought comes to us 
 of itself, that many of our hopes must have 
 failed of success, either because we did not 
 know what was good for us, or because we did 
 not always seek after this good with patience 
 and prudence, or because we wished to per- 
 form all through our own strength without 
 God's assistance. 
 
 One look into a future guided by God re- 
 calls to us, firstly, that we till now have been 
 disappointed in our wishes, because we knew 
 
162 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 not what was good for us. Of all that makes 
 mankind truly satisfied and happy, a kind 
 Providence permits no one to want. Nature 
 is rich and powerful enough to give us all food, 
 health, and clothing ; and the higher gifts of 
 knowledge and virtue which create the true 
 happiness of a reasonable being, God gives al- 
 ways without measure, as he himself is inim- 
 itably holy, kind, and merciful. But, in the 
 passing year, how little have we thought of 
 the true needs of our nature, of the higher 
 blessings of the spirit ! How often have we 
 considered that which is only a means and a 
 preparation for better things as our highest 
 and only object ! Yes, often have we been 
 like children who prefer the sparkling, the 
 noisy, the dazzling, to the useful, the neces- 
 sary, and the noble. We have wished only to 
 increase our own property, to add gain to gain ; 
 and forgot, at the same time, that a man "liveth 
 not by having much goods." We wished to 
 feel happy in the lavishness of expense, in 
 our rich ornaments, in brilliant raiment; and 
 
Disappointment. 163 
 
 forgot that "life is more than meat, and the 
 body than raiment." We did not deny our- 
 selves any amusement, any pleasures, any 
 intoxicating delight ; and forgot that dissipation 
 is the mother of ill-humor, and that luxurious 
 enjoyment is the death of true joy. We have 
 wished to live in our own quiet circle, with- 
 drawn from the world, to live only for ourselves 
 and our own hearts ; and forgot that for man, 
 yet imperfect, this is a source of bitterness and 
 melancholy. We have wished only to attract 
 attention, to win only honor, rank, and pre- 
 eminence ; and forgot that ambition presses the 
 sting of pain into our hearts, if it is not led 
 and moderated by an inner repose of con- 
 science. Ought you to wonder that the past 
 year has deceived you in all these expecta- 
 tions? Was it not wholesome and beneficial 
 for you, that a higher hand denied you that 
 which led you so blindly to your ruin? "What 
 man is there of you, who, if his child ask 
 brecid, will he give him a stone? or if a fish, 
 will he give him a serpent? How much more 
 
164 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 will your Father in heaven give good gifts to 
 them that ask him ! " 
 
 Yes : not in vain do you to-day cast an in- 
 quiring glance upon the past year; not, in vain 
 does the thought arise within you, that it was 
 your own fault that you have not been as happy 
 this year as you would have wished. The 
 year that greeted you so kindly, when you were 
 fulfilling your duty, discloses to you on one 
 side the secret of your disappointed wishes, 
 because it reminds you that you often knew 
 not what is good for you. 
 
 But, when we have known better, we have 
 not always sought for it with the necessary 
 patience and prudence : this is another dis- 
 covery which the future, led by God, offers us 
 with regard to our disappointed wishes. You 
 were not wrong, if in the course of the past 
 year you planned a greater activity in your 
 business, an increase in your wealth and prop- 
 erty ; but " your hour was not yet come." 
 The moment for becoming satisfied and happy 
 was not yet to be yours. You have failed to 
 
Disaff ointment. 165 
 
 reach the goal of your wishes, because you 
 pursued it too impatiently, — with too rash and 
 too bold zeal. You were not wrong when you 
 aimed at making a name for yourself in your 
 art, your profession, or business ; and at being 
 looked upon with respect and applause by 
 others. But there w T ere many others before 
 you who surpassed you in attainments and 
 merits. The lot of being honored and dis- 
 tinguished did not yet belong to you ; and 
 you have injured yourself in public opinion by 
 seeking to compel honor and glory before you 
 were ripe and worthy of it. And now look at 
 the means that you chose to reach your aim. 
 Was it prudent that by play, fortune, or ven- 
 turous undertakings, you wished to become 
 rich, and neglect diligence and activity in your 
 calling? Was it prudent that you demanded 
 a high price for your wares, your industry, or 
 your services ; and thereby lost the praise of 
 honesty, modesty, and equity? Was it pru- 
 dent that you expected to strengthen and re- 
 store your impaired health by art and skill, 
 
1 66 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 and then neglected the laws of order and mod- 
 eration ? And how if you sought the wisdom of 
 life in wholly false ways? — if, instead of learn- 
 ing from the fathers, you wished to draw every 
 thing from yourself and the fulness of your 
 own self-conceit? — if, instead of cultivating 
 your own talents in quiet, you sought to obtain 
 flattering friends to extol you and cry you up ? 
 Instead of winning true love by inner worth, 
 have you not striven for a permanent connec- 
 tion in life by frivolous acquaintances and am- 
 biguous attachments? Have you not fancied 
 you had served your fatherland with zeal, 
 firmness, and activity, when in truth you have 
 labored for yourself, for your own advantage, 
 to the injury of the public? Let us confess, 
 under that wise ordinance of God in which the 
 present and the future are bound together, our 
 wishes must, until now, have needs necessarily 
 been disappointed ; because we did not strive 
 after their fulfilment with the necessary repose 
 and prudence. 
 
 Here we meet again with this fault, that we 
 
Disaff ointment. 167 
 
 wished to complete all by ourselves without 
 God's assistance. In the industry necessary in 
 our business, in many undertakings for the in- 
 crease of our wealth, in diligent application for 
 the support, advancement, and elevation of our 
 domestic happiness, we have perhaps not failed 
 as children of this world; only we were of the 
 opinion that we could do all this through our 
 own strength and prudence. We were unwill- 
 ing to see that the creature takes only what the 
 Lord of his destiny procures for him accord- 
 ing to his fatherly wisdom and goodness ; we 
 were too secure and proud to beg of him bless- 
 ing and prosperity in humble submission. 
 Should we, then, wonder if he has denied us 
 what we have not deserved ? Is it not easy to 
 explain why our purposes and schemes have 
 met with hindrance and delay? Must it not 
 become evident why it is that the goal towards 
 which we have stretched our hands has con- 
 stantly been torn from us, and removed into the 
 far distance? Yes, indeed : even with regard 
 to our own wishes, it lies not according to any 
 
1 68 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 man's will. "I returned, and saw under the 
 sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the 
 battle to the strong ; neither yet bread to 
 the wise, nor yet riches to men of understand- 
 ing, nor yet favor to men of skill : but time 
 and chance happeneth to them all." 
 
 However clear-sighted, rich, and honored 
 one may be, yet what we have is less than 
 what we miss. The ignorant and the learned, 
 the needy and the fortunate, the prince and 
 beggar, without exception, carry about with 
 them new endeavors and new schemes ; and, if 
 they ask, at the entrance of a new year, where- 
 fore they have been disappointed the past year 
 in so many wishes, they cannot avoid the 
 warning remembrance that only the proud con- 
 fidence in their own power has deceived and 
 deluded them. In so painful an experience, 
 how sensitive should this discovery make us to 
 the consolation that a future led by God offers 
 us, if we will only observe the conditions under 
 which we may promise ourselves to-day a hap- 
 pier lot ! " It is this which we now have to con- 
 sider. 
 
Disaj)j>oin tment. 169 
 
 In order that the future, under God's guid- 
 ance, may crown your wishes, let them first be 
 awakened by a higher impulse. You think it 
 would be a great earthly happiness, if you 
 could walk in the circle of your friends, beau- 
 tiful, adorned, and admired : it is much too little 
 and narrow, what you choose. Wish rather to 
 be skilled in your art, profession, or calling : 
 for, in the hour when you wish this in earnest, 
 you will busy yourself with high examples ; 
 you will advance beyond the circle of your 
 mediocrity eagerly and with spirit ; you will be 
 more perfect, more distinguished, more worthy 
 of the admiration of others. You think it 
 would be a great blessing to have the control 
 of great sums, if you could shine brilliantly in 
 a pompous display of expense, if you could 
 live every day nobly and joyfully. This is 
 much too common and petty for you to desire : 
 wish rather to be rich in inner advantages, in 
 the virtues of modesty, of self-control, and of 
 friendly benevolence ; for, in the very hour 
 when you wish this in earnest, you will prepare 
 
170 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 for yourself new estimation, — a new source 
 of satisfaction and joy. You have thought till 
 now it was an enviable lot to go about with dis- 
 tinguished people, to be friendly with the great, 
 to approach princes and kings. This that you 
 prefer is much too little, too small. Wish ear- 
 nestly only to be nearer God, and sure of his 
 favorable approbation ; for, the very hour you 
 wish this earnestly, your spirit itself will soar 
 higher, and peace, dignity, power, and strength 
 will rejoice your very soul. For this reason we 
 are loosed from the lordship of the past ; for 
 this we are called a chosen race, and a kingly 
 priesthood, because the love of the Father 
 has waxed stronger and more mighty in us 
 than the love of this world : for if God has 
 not allowed our sensual and earthly desires 
 to be realized, yet he gives us richly the better 
 things that we need as Christians and immor- 
 tals. Under his guidance, the future comes to 
 meet us with promises that shall not fail, if we 
 only know how to ennoble our wishes, and give 
 them a higher impulse. 
 
Disaff ointment. 171 
 
 But also we must be led by the principle of 
 sparing our best and innermost wishes for 
 heaven. Health and strength of body are, of 
 course, essential conditions of our activity and 
 happiness in life. Yet you cannot always suc- 
 ceed with the greatest regularity and modera- 
 tion in being free from weakness, pain, and 
 sickness. If you are now wise, you submit 
 silently to the unavoidable lot of an earthly 
 nature, and await a better condition in the land 
 of unperishable things, where the more beauti- 
 ful and noble raiment of a heavenly being is 
 prepared for you. Clearness, harmony, and 
 completeness of knowledge and ideas, are es- 
 sential peculiarities of the true wisdom of life ; 
 yet, in your present state of knowledge, there is 
 darkness and mystery everywhere. It is incon- 
 ceivable to you how God could permit upon 
 earth so much injustice, so many acts of vio- 
 lence, so much oppression of innocence. If 
 you are wise, you await the issue, and look 
 longingly towards the future revelations of God, 
 when you can draw from the source of light, 
 
172 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 when 3'ou can loose the riddle of life, and look 
 upon your destiny in its whole course. Do you 
 bear in your breast a wound that no consolation 
 or balm on earth can heal ? Have you lost a 
 friend, a beloved, a wife or husband, with 
 whose loss every blossom of joy is broken 
 away? Do you feel a longing within you for 
 something higher and more blessed, for which 
 the earth offers no satisfaction ? Walk on con- 
 soled, and grieve not : let your faith, your 
 longing, your love, lead you to the hopes and 
 wishes that heaven only can fulfil, and secure, 
 to your everlasting joy. No impatience or 
 doubting dissatisfaction can hasten God's wise 
 purposes and counsels. Therefore let us hum- 
 ble our hearts under the dispensations of his 
 mighty hand, and bring to him confidingly the 
 sacrifice of our resignation and submission. 
 Even the happiest future on earth can only pre- 
 pare us for the blessed joys of the heart that 
 God has arranged for his friends, and there- 
 fore nothing is more fit than that we should 
 reserve our best and noblest wishes for heaven. 
 
Disappointment. 173 
 
 Whatever, on the contrary, this earth can 
 and ought to afford to us, for this we ought to 
 strive, even with persevering and unwearied 
 activity, in order that the future may no longer 
 disappoint our wishes. If it is painful to you 
 that you have been able to perform so little, to 
 win so little in your profession, your art, or 
 your calling, then beware of becoming dispir- 
 ited, or seeking your fortune in some false 
 path : an upright and firm will, under God's 
 guidance, brings the victory infallibly, and 
 will win, even for you, the reward and the 
 blessing that your long-waiting heart has de- 
 sired. If it is bitter to you that you as yet 
 have not found a free circle of influence, that 
 unexpected obstacles have opposed your antici- 
 pations and aspirations, oh ! beware of giving 
 way to anger, sadness, or bitterness : for God 
 has decreed the reward of faithfulness, not to 
 the restless, the distrusting, but to the perse- 
 vering, childlike will ; and, if your heart only 
 continues firm, so shall you praise the Lord 
 who is the strength of your countenance and 
 
174 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 your God. Is it painful to you that you have 
 not till now obtained by labor the necessities 
 for your family, that you cannot maintain your 
 household properly, that you could scarcely 
 afford what belongs to the necessary mainte- 
 nance of life, — be sure not to let your hands 
 lie in your lap, or to live only half-way, incon- 
 siderately, despairing in confidence and faith. 
 A firm will never fails, and a diligent hand 
 never grows poor : even before you suspect it, 
 will the weight of sorrow be lightened for you, 
 and a prospect for the future be opened to you, 
 free from care. " I have been young, and now 
 am old ; yet have I not seen the righteous for- 
 saken, nor his seed begging bread." 
 
 Already a great advance is made towards 
 the fulfilment of your disappointed wishes, if 
 you only continue persevering in your diligence 
 and activity. 
 
 And so there is only wanting to our happi- 
 ness a truly living confidence, childlike, and 
 submissive to the guidance of Him who leaves 
 not one of our best wishes unfulfilled. " There 
 
Disaff ointment. 175 
 
 hath not entered into the heart of man the 
 things which God hath prepared for them that 
 love him." For he oversees all our needs and 
 all our hopes : he knows the day and hour that 
 " no man knoweth, no, not the angels which 
 are in heaven, neither the Son, but the 
 Father." 
 
 Without this confidence, what would avail 
 our wearisome strivings at a time when the 
 past becomes involved in the present, and both 
 enter into a struggle with the decisive future, 
 pressing upon us more than ever the appeal of 
 the holy poet, " Commit your way unto the 
 Lord: trust also in him, and he shall bring it 
 to pass"? Yes, to thee, the Eternal One, 
 "who alone doeth great wonders, whose mercy 
 endureth for ever," we lift up our hearts in 
 childlike devotion, in this new circle of time, 
 developing itself under thy guidance ! 
 
NIGHT MUSINGS. 
 
 FROM THE GERMAN. 
 
 TT7HEN, through the dark and weary night, 
 
 * Sleepless I lie, and long for light ; 
 Oppressed with care, and filled with grief, — 
 Where shall I turn to find relief? 
 My sighs, O God ! rise up to thee : 
 My Father, come and comfort me. 
 
 When wet with tears I eat my bread, 
 
 While sorrow bows my drooping head, 
 
 How sore and great my grief may be, 
 
 My God will still remember me ; 
 
 For He has ever led his child 
 
 Where thorns have torn, or roses smiled. 
 
 How have I pondered long and late, 
 And questioned of my future fate ! 
 And then at length the welcome day 
 Has driven these clouds of doubt away. 
 
Night Musings. 177 
 
 #So I will trust thee, and from hence, 
 In God place all my confidence. 
 
 Oh, give me patience that I may 
 
 Throw anxious fear and care away ! 
 
 My anchor firm be constant prayer, 
 
 My God will hear, my God will care. 
 
 My willing spirit, Lord, sustain, 
 
 Till my weak flesh new strength may gain. 
 
 I have no want, if I have thee ; 
 Thou carest for those I love and me ; 
 Through life and death there shines above, 
 The sun of grace, a Father's love : 
 Thus in full trust my care shall cease, 
 And find in God a perfect peace. 
 
 And when the final hour has come, 
 
 To heaven's own rest he calls me home ; 
 
 My weary eyes he shuts in peace, 
 
 And to my soul gives glad release. 
 
 The time and place he orders right, 
 
 When to the world I say Good-night ; 
 
 For so for ever God disposes : 
 
 Gently in death my eyes he closes. 
 
 S. P. H. 
 
TROUBLES WHICH COME TO US THROUGH THE 
 MISTAKES OR MISCONDUCT OF OTHERS. 
 
 \ GREAT variety and very severe trials 
 ■*■ ■** may come to us from these causes. 
 Very hard are they to bear, and very peculiar 
 and careful must be the training to fit the soul 
 to bear them. The personal sorrow of a feeble 
 or diseased body is hard to endure. But it 
 has its alleviations ; it comes directly from the 
 Father's hand; it comes perhaps gradually, 
 and we learn by degrees to bear it ; or it comes 
 in a violent shock which at first stuns and be- 
 numbs the faculties, and the gradual softening 
 of the pain or rallying from the weakness is 
 
Troubles which Come to Us. 179 
 
 such a blessing that the great beginning of 
 the pain is forgotten. We have no reproaches 
 to make to ourselves, and we have the sympa- 
 thy and help of loving friends, and confidence 
 and trust in the Heavenly Father and Physi- 
 cian : we lie still in his hand, and await his 
 time. 
 
 The far sorer trouble of separation from those 
 we love comes to us also directly from above. 
 He gave, and he takes away. Our loss is 
 their gain. We must sit still, and wait, and look 
 up, and pray and trust. Our Saviour has gone 
 before to prepare the mansions. The departed 
 are in their w little cells of felicity : " they await 
 us there. 
 
 There is another kind of grief which is 
 sometimes put into the list of the ills that flesh 
 is heir to, — what is called adversity, a change 
 of fortune or loss of property or of worldly posi- 
 tion ; but this seems so light, compared with 
 these others, that it hardly deserves a place in 
 this catalogue. If we have healthy bodies, and 
 loving friends, and brave hearts, shall we not 
 
180 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 have our Heavenly Father to give us meat to 
 eat, and clothes to wear? " He knoweth ye 
 have need of these things." 
 
 But where is the heart of man or woman 
 who could not, if he dared, tell of heavier sor- 
 row, one harder to bear than any of these? 
 Many years ago, a poor laboring woman was 
 sympathizing with a friend who had just been 
 parted from the husband of her youth, the lov- 
 ing father of her little family of children, one of 
 the wisest, tenderest, best of men. " Oh, me !" 
 she said, "you have had a heavy loss: the 
 Lord give you strength to bear it ! But a liv- 
 ing trouble is worse than a dead one." It was 
 perhaps a coarse, rude expression ; but she 
 was a woman of but little culture, who had 
 had the hard struggle of life in some of its 
 rudest forms. No historian or romancer had 
 been by to tell of her early youth, and the steps 
 by which her husband had been led along and 
 astray, till, long before her old age, at the time 
 of which I speak, he had yielded to tempta- 
 tion, had acquired ruinous habits, had become 
 
Troubles which Come to Us. 181 
 
 harsh and severe and improvident. She had 
 borne and reared seven children in her pov- 
 erty, and with the fountain nature had pro- 
 vided for each new-comer she had nourished 
 another child beside, and thus been a mother 
 to fourteen children ; and the earnings from 
 this source had been the chief support of the 
 family. From the desolate house, where, how- 
 ever, were the decencies and comforts of life ; 
 and the bereft mother, who had still all she 
 needed for her children, — her mind turned to 
 her own little cottage over which brooded the 
 heavy shadow of her blighted hopes ; and 
 where the struggle for daily bread, and the 
 attempt to keep peace, was constant and urgent. 
 But she was a brave woman, kept up a good 
 heart ; her children grew up and helped, or 
 died and left her ; and in later years, as she 
 used to express it in her homely phrase, "she 
 got the better of the old man : " he was una- 
 ble to go out and procure what was the source 
 of all their trouble. "She only gave him a 
 little on his birthday." He died several years 
 
182 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 before she did ; and she was able to live on in 
 her solitary little home, of which she managed 
 to remain the owner, until, in her great age 
 and increasing infirmity, she consented to ex- 
 change it for a comfortable room in the poor- 
 house. She survived husband and children ; 
 but she had a brave, devout heart. Almost to 
 the last, she answered by her presence " the 
 blest summons to the house of God ; " and, in 
 her simple faith, lived and died in peace and 
 hope. 
 
 All have not this poor woman's trials ; but 
 there are few who are not in some way or 
 fashion wounded in the house of their friends. 
 How are these troubles to be met and borne ? 
 
 In the first place, let great care be taken that 
 the pain which we attribute entirely to the fault 
 of another does not come from our own hearts. 
 Are we quite free from envy and jealousy, and 
 selfishness in all its forms? Do we take great 
 care to think no evil, not to magnify the faults 
 of others, not to attribute motives of action to 
 others which we are not certain are founded in 
 
Troubles which Come to Us. 183 
 
 truth? Selfishness, though we often do not 
 know it, is at the bottom of almost all the 
 trouble that comes up between men. Why 
 should you gare so much for yourself, if those 
 about you are good and happy ? Why should 
 you be disturbed, if it is not exactly in the way 
 you think best ? Why be troubled at the fear 
 that others do not do you justice, or do not 
 think of }'ou at all? If they are good, you 
 think of them, and love them ; if they are 
 unworthy, it is no matter what they think. An 
 old writer says, "Perhaps, if he who thinks 
 ill of you knew you as well as you know your- 
 self, he would think far worse." 
 
 But, beyond these sentimental and perhaps 
 imaginary causes of trouble, there is a still 
 deeper and darker shadow : one whom we 
 tenderly love, for whom we would gladly lay 
 down our life, is led astray from the Father, 
 from the Lord Jesus, from the paths of good- 
 ness and hope. We have striven, we have 
 watched, we have prayed ; but temptation is 
 strong, and man is weak, and hope is almost 
 
184 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 lost. But never despair. Pray on, hope on, 
 strive on. Watch especially that you do not, 
 even by well-meant efforts, make harder the 
 returning step : never quench tjie smoking 
 flax, nor breathe out the kindling flame of 
 penitence ; but stand ever ready with an out- 
 stretched hand, and remember the condition 
 on which the Lord has bidden us ask to have 
 our trespasses forgiven. 
 
 Try not to look forward to something worse 
 than you are now suffering. Time is a great 
 alleviator, and you know not what God has in 
 store for you. If you have any experience of 
 life, you must have learned how utterly vain 
 and futile it is to attempt to imagine what may 
 happen in the future. Never, in your abhor- 
 rence of the sin, allow any thing but tenderness 
 to the sinner to live in your heart. Do not 
 allow yourself to dwell on the faults or mis- 
 takes that cause you pain ; but turn aside from 
 them, and try to look out and cherish every 
 spark of goodness that remains. And how 
 few are the hearts in which all God's grace is 
 
Troubles which Come to Us. 185 
 
 put out ! One poor old woman lived to see all 
 her troubles cleared away, all the faults of 
 those she loved forgotten. Her poor, feeble 
 body parted gently from her aspiring and 
 happy soul, which has doubtless found its 
 home and its happy place in the mansions of 
 the blest. 
 
 In misunderstandings among relatives and 
 friends, which often cause exquisite pain, and 
 lead sometimes to separation of what God has 
 joined together by birth or sacrament, do not 
 dwell upon what caused the first rupture, nor 
 ask who took the first step across the stream 
 which separates you ; but rather try to see who 
 shall enter first the returning path. Let the 
 past be forgotten and forgiven, and be hopeful 
 and trustful for the future. Life is too short 
 to be spent in unkindness, and separation of 
 dear ones. 
 
 What makes this form of trial most hard to 
 meet is, that it is one which we cannot speak 
 openly of to our friends. Fain would we hide 
 our trouble from every eye. We cannot bear 
 
1 86 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 that the most intimate companion should guess 
 our sorrow. It is long before we confess it to 
 ourselves. The poor Irish woman who is res- 
 cued by the police-officer from the cruelty of 
 her half-insane husband shrinks the next 
 morning from testifying to her injuries before 
 the magistrate, in order that he may be sent to 
 prison ; but very probably pays his fine from 
 her own hard earnings, and goes home with 
 him, to have the same scene renewed when 
 the momentary terror of judgment has passed 
 away. 
 
 Patience, prayer, and hope should never 
 cease ; and they will not fail in the end. When 
 nothing can be done but to continue in the 
 exercise of these graces, try to turn the mind 
 as much as possible from the source of the 
 sorrow. Accept the comforts and alleviations 
 that come from other sources ; and perhaps, in 
 a way that we know not or think not of, relief 
 shall come. "Fret not thyself," says the 
 Psalmist ; and, if you have power to follow 
 his counsel, you will stand firm and free to help 
 
Troubles which Co?ne to Us. 
 
 187 
 
 forward the wanderer whenever he shall begin 
 his returning and ascending way. And God 
 ever is found ready to help those who try to 
 help themselves. 
 
 *J/& 
 
JUDGE NOT. 
 
 TUDGE not : the workings of his brain 
 And of his heart thou canst not see : 
 What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, 
 
 In God's pure light may only be 
 A scar, brought from some well-won field, 
 Where thou wouldst only faint and yield. 
 
 The look, the air, that frets thy sight, 
 
 May be a token, that, below, 
 The soul has closed in deadly fight 
 
 With some internal, fiery foe, 
 Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace, 
 And cast thee shuddering on thy face. 
 
Judge Not. 
 
 The fall thou darest to despise — 
 May be, the slackened angel's hand 
 
 Has suffered it, that he may rise 
 And take a firmer, surer stand ; 
 
 Or, trusting less to earthly things, 
 
 May henceforth learn to use his wings. 
 
 And. judge none lost ; bu 1 : wait and see, 
 
 With hopeful pity, not disdain : 
 The depth of the abyss may be 
 
 The measure of the height of pain 
 And love and glory, that may raise 
 This soul to God in after-days. 
 
 A. A. Proctor. 
 
HT^HERE is indeed a miracle of resignation 
 -*- to be performed with regard to those 
 evils that come to us from individuals : it is 
 this, to make them transparent, and to show 
 us God behind them. From the moment we 
 have seen Him through the light veil of events 
 and men, then insults, offences, the most in- 
 tentional wrongs and the most direct, are only 
 the divine finger tracing the way of mercy 
 which leads to future happiness. Our evils 
 can yet make us suffer ; but they no longer 
 contain poison. From the rank of masters, 
 our enemies descend to that of instruments. 
 Those who believed they commanded, are seen 
 to obey. 
 
 Mad. Swetchine. 
 
SADNESS AND GLADNESS. 
 
 r I ^HERE was a glory in my house, 
 
 And it is fled ; 
 There was a baby at my heart, 
 
 And it is dead. 
 
 And when I sit and think of him, 
 
 I am so sad, 
 That half it seems that nevermore 
 
 Can I be glad. 
 
 If you had known this baby mine, 
 
 He was so sweet, 
 You would have gone a journey just 
 
 To kiss his feet. 
 
192 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 He could not walk a single step, 
 Nor speak a word ; 
 
 But then he was as blithe and gay 
 As any bird 
 
 That ever sat on orchard bough, 
 And trilled its song, 
 
 Until the listener fancied it 
 As sweet and strong 
 
 As if from lips of angels he 
 
 Had heard it flow ; 
 
 Such angels as thy hand could paint, 
 
 Angelico ! 
 
 You cannot think how many things 
 
 He learned to know, 
 
 Before the swift, swift angel came, 
 
 And bade him go. 
 
 So that my neighbors said of him, 
 
 He was so wise 
 
 That he was never meant for earth, 
 
 But for the skies. 
 
Sadness and Gladness, 193 
 
 But I would not believe a word 
 
 Of what they said ; 
 Nor will I even now, although 
 
 My boy is dead. 
 
 For God would be most wicked, if, 
 
 When all the earth 
 Is in the travail of a new 
 
 And heavenly birth, 
 
 As often as a little Christ is found, 
 
 With human breath, 
 He, like another Herod, should resolve 
 
 Upon its death. 
 
 But should you ask me how it is 
 
 That yours can stay, 
 Though mine must spread his little wing, 
 
 And fly away, — 
 
 I could but say, that God, who made 
 
 This heart of mine, 
 Must have intended that its love 
 
 Should be the sign 
 
 13 
 
194 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 Of his own love ; and that if he 
 
 Can think it right 
 To turn my joy to sorrow, and 
 
 My day to night, 
 
 I cannot doubt that he will turn, 
 
 In other ways, 
 My winter darkness to the light 
 
 Of summer days. 
 
 I know that God gives nothing to 
 
 Us for a day ; 
 That what he gives he never cares 
 
 To take away. 
 
 And when he comes and seems to make 
 
 Our glory less, 
 It is that by and bye we may 
 
 The more confess, 
 
 That he has made it brighter than 
 
 It was before ; 
 A glory shining on and on 
 
 For evermore. 
 
Sadness and Gladness. 
 
 And when I sit and think of this, 
 
 I am so glad, 
 That half it seems that nevermore 
 
 Can I be sad. 
 
 J 95 
 
 J. W. C. in the Monthly Religious Magazine. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 IT 7HEN the sound of some voice dear to 
 * * us " stops suddenly," we are brought 
 directly to the closed door into the silent land. 
 The great questionings come up again freshly 
 as to that "beyond." Where have they gone 
 who were with us just now? What is their 
 new life? Is it a complete sundering of the 
 old one? Can they hear us? Are they 
 nearer the presence of God? 
 
 A crowd of uncertain questions : but in the 
 doubt comes one certainty ; it is of the immor- 
 tality of this life that has passed out of our 
 
Immortality. 197 
 
 sight. This friend, whom I can see no more, 
 whose eyes are closed and voice stilled, was 
 made up of more than eye or sound could ex- 
 press, of something besides the "mortal." In 
 the life we shared together, there was some- 
 thing besides what was expressed by word or 
 look, or by the senses. 
 
 Not that all these were of little value. Now, 
 more than ever, I know what I possessed 
 before, in that bodily presence, in that cheer- 
 fulness of look and word, in that support which 
 only a glance could give. What a vacant 
 place ! And nothing can ever fill it. I feel as 
 if, in those happier days, I never knew what 
 was the full blessing of this presence that is 
 gone, or valued it enough, or asked enough 
 from that voice, or gave thanks enough for all 
 the joy it brought. No memory, no sense of 
 spiritual presence, can restore the full happiness 
 of that nearness both of soul and body. Such 
 parting as this cannot make us prize less the 
 joy that the senses can bring ; it heightens 
 only all the happiness that has gone, and 
 
198 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 makes us homesick and longing for all that 
 went before. 
 
 It is this homesickness and longing that 
 opens to us the other world. Our hearts must 
 needs follow those who have gone towards it. 
 We suddenly find, that, though the gift of that 
 presence was what made our life rich, it was not 
 all in touch or look, but because these told us 
 things of the spirit, — that our highest friendly 
 intercourse was often in silences or in unex- 
 pressed words. And this part of our life and 
 theirs suddenly opens itself. We find that 
 such a life could not die with the dissolution of 
 the senses ; it must continue and find a new 
 life and a home in which to express itself. 
 
 It is because we feel they cannot die that we 
 begin to build up the thought of the other 
 world. " Death leads us with a gentle hand " 
 into this silent land. 
 
 Of this future life we have one certainty, that 
 it cannot be where God is not. These parting 
 spirits, wherever they have gone, must go to 
 meet Him. We still have, then, one place 
 
Immortality, 199 
 
 where we may meet them, — in our prayers to 
 God. Here is a true communion of all those 
 who lift their hearts to God, to which we are 
 compelled when the grave has shut us out 
 from all other union with our friends. 
 
 No wonder, then, that for those who have 
 grown familiar with death, the other world 
 seems a place more real than this. It is peo- 
 pled with those who are most dear to them. 
 The thought of it lifts them up more nearly to 
 the thought of God. No wonder that, in the 
 constant contemplation of its spiritual joys, the 
 cares of * this life should seem very petty and 
 distasteful, and the way seem very long that 
 leads to it. 
 
 But we none of us know the hour that will 
 call us there. Let us thank God that it is so. 
 If we had such an hour appointed, and if we 
 believed it necessary to make such preparation 
 for it as many would lead us to think, this 
 world would indeed be the valley of tears that 
 some would represent it. On the contrary, let 
 us think, that, seeing we are some day to part 
 
200 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 from these gifts with which God has sur- 
 rounded us, we ought to value them as long as 
 we have them. Ah, how should we regret it, 
 if we had shortened the happy hours of our 
 intercourse with a dear friend in our lamenting 
 that he must leave us ! And what shall we 
 have to say if God shall ask us, where is our 
 joy at this beautiful world that He has created 
 for us, and what right we have to another, 
 since we knew not well what to do with this ? 
 
 If our life here is to be a preparation for 
 another world, it must follow that our senses 
 are given us for a high purpose, to teach our 
 souls with what they bring to our conscious- 
 ness. If our memory brings back to us the 
 thought of any kindness we might have paid 
 to a friend that has died, any gratefulness we 
 might have shown him, we regret it with all 
 our hearts ; and it is the bitterest part of our 
 sorrow. So, too, we shall regret our want of 
 gratitude for the joys of this world, our forget- 
 fulness of the rich life there is in every day, 
 our repining and longing for another world, 
 
Immortality . 201 
 
 for which perhaps we shall so make ourselves 
 more unfit than for this. Our longing after 
 those higher joys ought only to refine those 
 that are given us here, and exist by the side of 
 them, as the consciousness of our friend in the 
 other life holds its place in the midst of the 
 memories of our happiness together here. 
 
 The changes in this life are apt to be gentle 
 and gradual. And why not this last change? 
 The soul, when it forsakes the body, composes 
 it to rest, leaves a peaceful smile around the 
 mouth, which often shows that the parting of 
 soul and body has been triumphant as well as 
 happy. I often think that one of the surprises 
 of that new life may be, that all the time it has 
 been so near, and the entrance to it so easy, — 
 a waking less violent than from a tired night 
 into a tired day. 
 
 No eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, nor 
 heart conceived, the things that God hath pre- 
 pared for them that love Him. Then, too, "I 
 am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor 
 angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things 
 
202 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 present nor things to come, nor height nor 
 depth nor any other creature, shall be able to 
 separate us from the love of God which is in 
 Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
 For God is to be found in death as in life, 
 in things present as in things to come. Not 
 height or depth, no, nor any other creature, 
 is to separate us from Him. Our love for 
 " any other creature " ! Perhaps there is dan- 
 ger that a blind selfish love this way might lead 
 us from Him. But no : rather let it lead us 
 towards Him through life, through death, into 
 that Presence where we both may meet again. 
 
^ Or 
 
 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 A ND what indeed could adversity do, since 
 x ■*- the more one loves God, the less one is 
 sensitive to misfortune ? What death or life ; 
 since God is conqueror of the one, and giver 
 of the other? Or angels or powers ; since all 
 are his ministers, — some for justice, and some 
 for mercy? Or things present or things to 
 come ; since a heart full of God sees nothing, 
 hopes for nothing but in Him ? What are heights 
 and depths ; since the height of heaven is prom- 
 ised to him who loves Him, and the depth of 
 the abyss to him who loves Him not ? Let us, 
 
204 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 then, do our best to bend our head beneath the 
 blow that strikes us, and thus render thanks to 
 the just Judge, the kind Father, the powerful 
 Remunerator, from whom comes correction 
 and trial. Let us consider that all our afflic- 
 tions come from Him, and we shall take them 
 with submission ; that they are the laws of our 
 nature, and we shall receive them with pa- 
 tience ; that they are the punishment of our 
 faults, and we shall be resigned ; that they are 
 fatherly chastisements to free us from other 
 and greater evils, and we shall be grateful ; 
 that they are the promoters of our virtue, and 
 we shall take them with confident courage ; 
 that they are the crucible of our rewards, and 
 we shall welcome them with joy. 
 
 G. Barbieri. 
 
THE MYSTERY. 
 
 TJEHOLD, I show you a mystery! We 
 -*-* shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
 changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an eye, at the last trump ; for the trumpet shall 
 sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
 ruptible, and we shall be changed. For this 
 corruptible must put on incorruption, and 
 this mortal must put on immortality. So when 
 this corruption shall have put on incorruption, 
 and this mortal shall have put on immortality, 
 then shall be brought to pass the saying that is 
 written, "Death is swallowed up in victory." 
 
 O death ! where is thy sting ? O grave ! 
 where is thy victory? 
 
 The sting of death is sin ; and the strength 
 of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, 
 which giveth us the victory through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
OF DEATH, 
 
 /GENERALLY speaking, death seems to 
 ^* have been made terrible only to keep us 
 the more willingly and safely in life, only to 
 make us take the greater care of our present 
 vitality, and of our qualifications for its enjoy- 
 ment. Before we come to the pass, others 
 have gone through it, whose disappearance 
 has made it less terrible, whom we may be 
 even glad to follow ; and, when we arrive at 
 it, there is reason to believe that, under no cir- 
 cumstances but such as guilt or superstition 
 darkens (and there are hearts that can bring 
 
Of Death, 207 
 
 comfort even to those) , does the passage turn 
 out to be any thing like what we thought it, 
 or, if so, in any such degree. There is work 
 to be done by the fact of going through it ; 
 and that employs us. There is comfort to be 
 received and given ; and that employs us also, 
 and exalts us. And if there is sorrow at part- 
 ing, and pain in the struggle to breathe, both 
 are often minimized b}^ the parting mind and 
 the unresisting body. Many go out with a 
 sigh ; many, as if there had not even been 
 
 a sigh. 
 
 Leigh Hunt. 
 
THE MEMORY WE LEAVE BEHIND. 
 
 THERMIT me a moment to say how I would 
 -*- like to be regretted. Thus shall I show 
 how fine I would think it to be so mourned. 
 
 I would wish that my memory should never 
 present itself to my friends without bringing a 
 tear of tenderness to their eyes, and a smile 
 upon their lips. I would wish that they could 
 think of me in the midst of their most intense 
 joys, without ever troubling them ; and that 
 even at table, in the midst of their feasts, in 
 rejoicings with strangers, they might make 
 some mention of me. I would wish to have 
 
The Memory We Leave Behind. 209 
 
 had enough good fortune, and sufficient good 
 qualities, that it may please them to call up 
 often, for their newer friends, some trait of my 
 kindly humor or of my good sense, or my good 
 heart or good will ; and that such recollections 
 may render all hearts more gay, more pleased, 
 and set them in happier mood. I would wish 
 that, till the last, they would thus remember 
 me ; that they might be happy in a long life, 
 to remember me the longer. I would wish to 
 have a tomb whither they might come together 
 in fine weather, on a fine day, to speak to- 
 gether of me, with some sadness if they would, 
 but with a gentle sadness that should exclude 
 no joy. I would wish above all, and I would 
 so order it if I could, that during this tender 
 ceremony, in the coming and returning, there 
 should be in all their feelings and their expres- 
 sion nothing lugubrious or forbidding, but that 
 it might rather be something pleasant to see. 
 I would wish, in short, to excite such regrets, 
 that those who should look upon them might 
 neither dread to experience nor to inspire. 
 H 
 
2io The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 It is the image of the terrible regrets one may 
 leave behind, that, in part, renders death so 
 bitter. It is the horrors with which death has 
 been surrounded, that, in their turn, render 
 the regrets of the survivors so terrible. These 
 two causes act perpetually upon each other, 
 and distract the soul, disturbing its most praise- 
 worthy and most inevitable sentiments. It is 
 our passions that have made the idea of our 
 last hour a subject of despair and fright, a 
 hated moment, from which foresight and mem- 
 ory both turn away. Our institutions and our 
 customs, in their turn, have made of it an event 
 whose terrible accompaniments we hasten to 
 forget as soon as possible. Instead of accus- 
 toming ourselves from infancy, both in thought 
 and by our senses, to regard this separation 
 only as the moment of a departure on a jour- 
 ney to which there is no return ; a journey that 
 we shall one day make ourselves, doubtless to 
 meet each other again in regions now unseen, 
 — we have taken pains to forget nothing that 
 might render it an object of horror. We have 
 
The Me?nory We Leave Behind. 211 
 
 been made to consider it as a chastisement, as 
 the blow of an omnipotent executioner, as a 
 punishment ; and our friends, those nearest to 
 us, quit our bed of repose as they would quit 
 the scaffold to which we are sentenced to 
 death. Lift yourself, I conjure you, above 
 such commonplace, low sentiments. You are 
 worthy of a greater elevation, and you have 
 need of it. You are indeed more capable of 
 it than you think ; for your grief, just now, 
 calumniates your reason. 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
SONNETS. 
 
 O LOWLY and softly let the music go, 
 
 v ~-^ As ye wind upwards to the gray church-tower ; 
 
 Check the shrill hautboy, let the pipe breathe low ; 
 
 Tread lightly on the pathside daisy-flower. 
 
 For she ye carry was a gentle bud, 
 
 Loved by the unsunned drops of silver dew ; 
 
 Her voice was like the whisper of the wood 
 
 In prime of even, when the stars are few. 
 
 Lay her all gently in the sacred mould ; 
 
 Weep with her one brief hour ; then turn away. 
 
 " Rise," said the Master ; " come unto the feast : " 
 She heard the call, and rose with willing feet. 
 But, thinking it not otherwise than meet 
 For such a bidding to put on her best, 
 
Sonnets, 213 
 
 She is gone from us for a few short hours 
 
 Into her bridal closet, there to wait 
 
 For the unfolding of the palace-gate 
 
 That gives her entrance to the blissful bowers. 
 
 We have not seen her yet, though we have been 
 
 Full often to her chamber-door, and oft 
 
 Have listened underneath the postern green, 
 
 And laid fresh flowers, and whispered short and 
 
 soft. 
 But she hath made no answer, and the day 
 From the clear west is fading fast away. 
 
 H. Alford. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 A Sermon preached on All-Saints Day. 
 
 BY A. THOLUCK. 
 
 (Translated from the German.) 
 
 ^1 7"E stand to-day, my fellow- worshippers, 
 * * at the end of the Church year. The 
 consideration of the blessings which, through 
 Jesus Christ, have come to our share, has again 
 reached its close ; and it remains to us to cast 
 a glance upon that final period in which all 
 the blessings of mercy reach their maturity. 
 The Church of our fatherland has placed the 
 Feast of All-Souls upon this last Sunday of the 
 Church year ; and has thus pointed out to us, 
 
Immortality. 215 
 
 that our hopes of a blessed immortality are of 
 a right sort, only when we think of them as a 
 gift of mercy which mankind could not have 
 partaken of, except through the only-begotten 
 Son of God. Consider, then, to-day, all your 
 joyous hopes, your blessed prospects, your 
 'sure expectation of the other world ; and re- 
 member also what the Word of God has told 
 us of the Prince of life, the loving One who 
 says, " I am He that liveth, and was dead ; and, 
 behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the 
 keys of hell and death." Whatever of joyous 
 hope, of blessed prospect, of sure expectation, 
 exists in us, all this shall rest to-day upon 
 the word of the Lord which he utters in John 
 xiv. 19, "Because I live, ye shall live also." 
 
 That the heart of the Christian can rest upon 
 no surer ground of a blessed immortality than 
 these emphatic words of our Lord, we will now 
 strive to recognize in this hour, and in the 
 presence of God. 
 
 And what other ground have you, who are 
 in the condition to look with hope beyond the 
 
216 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 limits of this world? On what other ground 
 can you rest your hopes ? Let this be my first 
 question. 
 
 When our hearts exult in such a hope, an 
 echo sounds from the rising of the sun to the 
 spot where it goes down, from all people, in all 
 tongues, asking, Is not the peal of resurrec- 
 tion, sounding in every man's heart, testimony 
 enough that the Father speaks an amen to their 
 joyous hopes? Yes: there lies something tre- 
 mendous in the thought, that all human hearts 
 that have throbbed upon earth have believed 
 this. And, in the harmony of all times and all 
 languages, is it possible that a single voice of 
 doubt could cry out in dissonance? And yet, 
 doubt has entered in, and if it warns us of 
 the numbers of those who, though they have 
 believed in an eternity, yet have found day 
 only on this side the grave, and night upon the 
 other ! if it recalls to us how as yet the com- 
 plete truth has never been the possession of the 
 multitude, but only of the individual, and that 
 there is still more than one voice silent at 
 
Immortality . 217 
 
 every Easter feast of Christendom ! if it asks 
 whether still in the world the tender voice of 
 truth is not still before the clamors of false- 
 hood ! if it calls upon us to number, not the 
 hearts of those who exult over this or that 
 truth, but the grounds by which they prove it ! 
 Are we, too, willing to give an account of the 
 hope that is within us? Yet why need we 
 speak, if silent nature herself has gained a 
 tongue, and rebukes the doubter to his face? 
 Spring-time, spring-time, that is the season 
 when a Resurrection sermon should be preached 
 more loudly, more forcibly, than from any 
 Church pulpit. When thousands and millions 
 of sleepers awaken, in the wide kingdom of 
 nature, a cry of jubilee, is it not at the same 
 time the funeral peal that leads a sad, desolate 
 scepticism to its grave ? So it appears : but, 
 beloved, if our hope is no other than that of 
 the leaves and the buds that again lift their 
 heads in the spring, if it is no other than this, 
 what can counsel us more ill ? for, alas ! the 
 leaves that the rough winter has shaken off 
 
218 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 violently, and has laid in the grave, are not 
 the same that come again in spring. I hear, 
 indeed, a sermon on immortality in the joyous 
 tones of spring ; but it is for mankind at large, 
 in the abstract, not for me, the dry leaf, 
 that the harvest storm has shaken to the 
 ground. If my heart had no other grounds 
 on which it could build its hope, then were it 
 forsaken indeed. 
 
 But is there not a teaching of resurrection 
 that springs from the very depths of the human 
 soul? 
 
 When I opened my eyes upon the clear 
 daylight, with it was given me a promise, an 
 earnest of happiness, perfection, and reward. 
 Where is its fulfilment? The few hours of 
 clear pleasure, gathered out of weeks of bitter 
 woe ; the days of happiness that, when we 
 have once tasted, we have so thoroughly 
 tasted, that we fling them away like the peel 
 of the juiceless fruit, — is this the fulfilment of 
 that promise with which, on the morning of 
 life, the light of day beamed on the eye of the 
 
Immortality . 219 
 
 waking infant with messages of joy and perfec- 
 tion? Indeed, many a branch on the tree of 
 my life has set its buds! has borne blossoms 
 and fruit indeed ; but, when the blossoms be- 
 gan to burst forth in beauty, whence came the 
 poisonous mildew that caused so many of them 
 to die, almost before they had left the bud? 
 Whence came the autumnal shower that 
 stopped the growth of the fruits as they began 
 to form? There are, indeed, more powers in 
 me ; yes, in all of us, I know there are more 
 powers than those that ripen under the sun of 
 our earth. It is not possible, it cannot be the 
 will of God, that, like so many unborn chil- 
 dren, the cold finger of death should rest upon 
 them, that they should perish for ever. 
 
 And, as to my struggle for virtue, I have 
 been defeated indeed ; but what though the de- 
 feats were as many as the victories ! still I have 
 fought well. Before thy altar, high' virtue, 
 have I offered the best days of my life, along 
 with the applause of men. I have brought to 
 thee the sacrifice of my gayest hours, through 
 
220 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 trust in an eye that sees in secret. And was 
 that an illusion? and was there no living 
 Father's eye there, only emptiness? no eye of 
 a Father to look into the hours of mortal con- 
 flict? And will there never come a day of 
 victory for the good man who, in this life, has 
 had the right but not the might? 
 
 I hear another voice say : " Do you com- 
 plain, weak, timid heart? The day for which 
 you are seeking in the future is already given 
 you in the present." "Faint-hearted one," 
 says this voice, " arise ; do you mourn that you 
 have not enjoyed enough? Unsatisfied heart, 
 though you have not the right to an hour of 
 enjoyment, not even years satisfy you, — you 
 long for eternities. You complain that on the 
 tree of your life there are blossoms that never 
 come to the budding ; and into the wide lap of 
 nature fall millions of flowers that never 
 reach their fruit, for whose sake not a single 
 eye is wet with tears. And this is right. Who 
 would lament over the blossoms that fall to the 
 ground, when, in the harvest, there is fruit 
 
Immortality. 221 
 
 enough on the tree to make the heart laugh 
 with joy? Learn to serve mankind, not your- 
 self alone. What you labor upon perishes 
 not; it lives again in ever-new forms. But as 
 to your virtue. Oh, what a pitiable hireling is 
 that who finds not the fairest reward of victory 
 in the fact of struggling and seeking for vic- 
 tory, but longs weakly for the crown of laurel ! 
 And what if the last breath of the dying man, 
 at the end of a well-enjoyed life, full of labor 
 and well fought through, should be actually 
 the last, and for all time? Does the warrior, 
 when the bullet strikes him in the very begin- 
 ning of the battle, after he has held a little 
 while his position, — does he weep like a woman 
 because he is shut out from the advance, and 
 from the triumph of his army? He has filled 
 his place ; he has lived long enough. If you 
 have any heart for mankind, be satisfied. If 
 you must fall at your post, without ever rising 
 again, why will you whimper and lament, in- 
 stead of bathing your spirit in the prospect of 
 an ever-advancing progress in the conquest 
 
222 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 of your race rising onward to the infinite, in 
 the victory in which you have borne your 
 part ? " 
 
 Such a voice I hear before the doors of the 
 holy place of the Christian Church ; and at its 
 hollow sound you shudder in your hearts, — 
 you who stand in the communion of the Lord. 
 Then a sound of a cry of victory thunders 
 through the assembly, "Because I live, ye 
 shall live also ; " and, as awakened from a 
 heavy dream, all eyes and all hearts turn 
 whither that cry presses forth. 
 
 "I live," the voice says, and lays a founda- 
 tion for our hope that neither time nor eternity 
 can shake. He lives in whom "the divine and 
 the human were united ; where all fulness finds 
 its completion." And through his mere exist- 
 ence he gives us a security that not only man- 
 kind, but man also, — this poor individual, 
 fleeting son of the hour, — is an immortal being. 
 The wise men of this day would grant immor- 
 tality only to mankind at large ; for their faith 
 is not capable of comprehending, that the heart 
 
Immortality. 223 
 
 of a single transient son of the hour is large 
 enough to take in the fulness of eternity as a 
 temple of God. And indeed, when we see how, 
 even in its boldest flight, the most gifted human 
 soul strives in vain after the full truth ; how, 
 even after a struggle of eighty years, a John 
 must cry out, " If we say that we have no sin, 
 we deceive ourselves ; " when we see how the 
 wisdom of each century becomes folly before 
 that of the next ; and, alas ! when we first 
 enter the huts of misery, and draw near the 
 dying bed of the old man, fallen back again 
 into childishness ; or, if you have ever stood 
 in presence of the dying, watching the death 
 struggle, and that glassy eye that gleams only 
 despair, — oh, indeed, it requires much to be- 
 lieve that this solitary, transient son of the 
 hour, that indeed any one of us, can be 
 the man whom God has created in his image, 
 and has created for an eternal life. And yet, 
 "I live," Christ says, and points thus to a ful- 
 ness of life, even in individual man, that shall 
 not pass away in death. Here you see, in one 
 
224 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 mortal, divinity so united with humanity, that 
 even death has no more power over him. 
 Therefore, he speaks in complete consciousness 
 himself of his own power of life : " I have 
 power to lay it down, and I have power to take 
 it again." He who allowed that cry of life to 
 resound into the grave of another, "Lazarus, 
 come forth," — he indeed cannot be the servant 
 of death. I have seen thy majesty, Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as the majesty of the only-begotten Son 
 of the Father ; He whom, while He yet walked 
 upon earth, death must needs obey, like a sub- 
 ject servant, — He, I surely know, is no fleet- 
 ing wave in the stream of mankind. 
 
 "I live," he says, " and you shall live also ;" 
 as if he would say, " Oh my beloved disciples ! 
 as you may yet be the servants of death, I will 
 indeed keep nothing for my own ; my life shall 
 be your life ; and where I am, shall my disci- 
 ples be also." We have looked upon him, and 
 are certain of this. Over this life death could 
 have no power ; and should the day come 
 
Immortality. 225 
 
 when all the suns and all the earths, bowed 
 down with the weakness of age, should tum- 
 ble into a deep abyss, above the falling suns 
 and the falling earths would Christ, the Living 
 One, stand and say, "I am alive for evermore, 
 and have the keys of death and hell." This 
 we know well. 
 
 But are we not also, in the very presence of 
 his humanity, conscious of our own? Now his 
 " I live " casts us to the ground ; but his " ye 
 shall live also " is our resurrection. What he 
 here but darkly says, — that he will keep no- 
 thing to himself, this perfect Son of Man ; that 
 all he has he will share with his own, — other 
 passages in Scripture have many times uttered 
 to us more expressly. "For whom he did fore- 
 know, he also did predestinate to be conformed 
 to the image of his Son, that he might be the 
 first-born among many brethren," says the 
 Apostle Paul. "Beloved," says John, "now 
 are we the sons of God, and it does not yet 
 appear what we shall be ; but we know, that, 
 when he shall appear, we shall be like him." 
 15 
 
226 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 This may appear to us inconceivable when we 
 consider what we now are, — full of sin, blind- 
 ness, and uncleanness ; but faith seizes the 
 promise, and with the eye of faith I see it now 
 already done and completed. With the eye of 
 faith I see you baptized into the death of Christ, 
 and risen with him to the new life in God. 
 With the eye of faith I see you already, the 
 tears of time and its struggles behind you ; 
 with him, your first-born brother, taking pos- 
 session of his throne, sharing his crown, and 
 ruling his inheritance from eternity to eternity. 
 This I see ; for I rest upon the words of the 
 Lord, "Because I live, ye shall live also." 
 And the hope of my immortality rests upon a 
 foundation that not time nor can eternity shake 
 away. He in whom the fulness of life has 
 appeared, — He has promised us who believed 
 on Him, that we shall be partakers of his life, 
 giving the other ground upon which our Chris- 
 tian hope of immortality rests. 
 
 We walk encircled by death ; but, at the 
 same time, the life that we shall live for ever 
 
Immortality, 227 
 
 with him has already begun in us. His " you 
 shall live also " is not merely a promise for 
 eternity, but also for time. "We know," says 
 John, "that we have passed from death unto 
 life." The disciples of Christ "taste the 
 powers of the world to come," writes the apos- 
 tle to the Hebrews. "We have the first-fruits 
 of the Spirit," writes Paul to the Romans. 
 The Christian, if any man upon earth can 
 have it, has this consciousness, " I do not live 
 my life out utterly upon this earth." Is it not 
 this that gives the force to all these proofs of 
 immortality when they have an influence over 
 the soul ? Then it is that such proofs are not 
 cast down by the words of our Master, — on 
 which, as Christians, we support our hopes, 
 — but then first gain their full signification. 
 For it is clear that, taken in the sense in which 
 the child of the world trusts, "I have not yet 
 fully enjoyed, not yet fully labored," there is 
 no firm anchorage. One who is not willing to 
 leave the world, though it is leaving him, may 
 say, "I have not yet fully lived." Such a 
 
228 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 one has indeed a feeling that he has lived but 
 superficially, that he has not thoroughly lived ; 
 and hence there rise sweet, soft dreamings, 
 that the life that is here begun must needs go 
 on. But appearances contradict this. All 
 that was his enjoyment goes with him to the 
 grave. For him, when it is evening, the 
 streets grow still. Now the window is closed, 
 and now the door ; and scarcely a single step 
 sounds through the street. Thus has his 
 evening come to meet him. The doors of 
 sense are closed. Old age is a silent cham- 
 ber wherein, undisturbed by this world, the 
 soul should busy itself with the future one. 
 The doors of sense have closed upon him, and 
 have preached to him that all is over for him 
 with this world's pleasures. The evening is 
 the sure messenger of the night. The very 
 thing which is the dearest to him he cannot 
 take away with him. So do all appearances 
 show him that he has outlived himself. And 
 not only is there no firm reason for hoping that 
 he has not outlived enjoyment upon earth, he 
 
Immortality. 229 
 
 has also outlived his work here. For what has 
 been his work? He has labored: yes, he has 
 built mansions ; but no other than those which 
 will fall away together with himself, and sink 
 into the same grave. One building alone can a 
 man raise up for himself that will not crumble 
 with him into his earthly grave, — the temple 
 of a soul consecrated to God. But you — you 
 have outlived your labor, and all appearances 
 teach you so. Are you unwilling to confess 
 that you yourself do not believe in your sweet 
 dreams of immortality? You cannot deny it. 
 Your fear of death gives you the lie. You 
 cannot deny it. A man who grows pale in the 
 presence of death has no sure ground for his 
 hope. Who is there that would faint before 
 the thought of death, who was conscious that 
 the day of his death was to be the day of his 
 birth? 
 
 This we believe as Christians. "You shall 
 also live," our Master has said ; and we already 
 taste of that life which never ends. The disci- 
 ples of Christ " taste the powers of the world 
 
230 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 to come." They walk on earth and live in 
 heaven. These are only " the first-fruits " 
 which they have received, as Paul calls them ; 
 and the apostle calls these first-fruits of the 
 Spirit "the earnest " by which God has sealed 
 them that they are his children. 
 
 " My life began when I loved thee," they 
 say to their Lord ; and, at the same time, are 
 they conscious that they can love him yet much 
 more. And both their love and their thirst for 
 love is an earnest to them of eternal life. 
 With glorifying and praise and thankfulness 
 they have experienced that they are redeemed 
 from the world, and are transplanted into the 
 kingdom of God. God has begun to rule in 
 them ; yet they pray daily, K Thy kingdom 
 come." It is still coming, till God shall be all 
 in all in us. Therefore, let him grow pale who 
 will, the Christian is not terrified, though there 
 sounds forth the message which the prophet 
 brought to the dying king, Hezekiah, "Set 
 thine house in order, for thou shalt die." I 
 am not terrified, for my house is easily set in 
 
Immortality . 231 
 
 order ; my accounts are blotted out ; my best 
 possession I take with me ; my dear ones I 
 bequeath to the great Father of the fatherless, 
 to whom belongs heaven and earth ; my body 
 I leave to the earth, and my soul to my Mas- 
 ter, who has won it through a long life, and 
 has bought it with his blood. Is not this a 
 blessed lot? 
 
 I have not yet lived out my whole of life ; 
 
 For Christ has given me of his cup to taste, 
 
 And on my heart one tender line has traced. 
 
 So, though I should live out this mortal strife, 
 
 Yet, in the ages of eternity, 
 
 Living and earnest shall my spirit be : 
 
 I have not yet lived out the whole of life. 
 
 Would you be so blessed? Learn it from 
 experience ; learn it in daily intercourse with 
 the Saviour, who truly lives, and is near to all 
 your souls ; learn what mean the words, " Be- 
 cause I live, you shall live also." Live with 
 Christ, and there is none of you who will not 
 cry out in joyous faith, — 
 
 My sorrow, grief, my pain, my anxious care, 
 In the Lord's sepulchre lie buried deep ; 
 
232 
 
 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 Near his pale body, in its deathless sleep, 
 My sorrows, griefs, and cares lie buried there. 
 
 The Lord is risen indeed ! 
 
 Angels to meet him speed ! 
 Where is my pain, my anxious sorrow, where ? 
 Up from the tomb he rose, and left them buried there. 
 
CHRIST MUST NEEDS HAVE SUFFERED. 
 
 A SERMON, BY EDWARD E. HALE. 
 " Christ must needs have suffered." — Acts xvii. 3. 
 
 /^\UR first duty as to suffering is to relieve 
 ^^ it when we can. If we find a blind 
 child, we strive to restore him to sight, or we 
 send him where his other faculties can be best 
 trained. Or is there danger of fever, or of 
 cholera, in a poor neighborhood, we go to 
 work to see it cleansed, purified, and made 
 safe. And, as the world advances, it suc- 
 ceeds in correcting many forms of suffering. 
 It finds out vaccination ; it uses ether in sur- 
 
234 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 gery ; it insures men against fire ; it insures 
 widows and orphans, when husbands or fathers 
 die. Our battle with human suffering is thus 
 relieved by occasional victories. 
 
 I am afraid that, from these occasional vic- 
 tories, there springs a misapprehension of 
 human suffering or affliction. Are you not 
 conscious sometimes of a lurking feeling, that 
 we might arrange things so that we should be 
 rid of it all ? Do you not find that there lurks 
 in you something of the feeling of early times, 
 that some sort of devil brings it all in on us, 
 and that it is a kind of victory won over the 
 intentions of God? That undefined feeling 
 springs, perhaps, from the fact, that we are 
 always trying to relieve the sufferings of 
 others. The false inference is drawn, that 
 some one might have relieved us of ours. 
 
 That false inference will be swept away, 
 and a truer view will come in, if we will 
 fairly compare our condition in this matter 
 with that of Jesus. Just after his resurrection, 
 he explained this to the two travellers, on their 
 
Christ must JVeeds have Suffered. 235 
 
 way to Emmaus, "that Christ must have suf- 
 fered." They had not understood it before. 
 I suppose that we Christians of to-day think 
 we do understand it. We acknowledge that 
 Christ must have suffered. We build a great 
 deal on his suffering. But still I am afraid, 
 that practically we do not understand an im- 
 portant consequence of the lesson; viz., that, 
 if we be Christ's brothers and sisters, in his 
 work, living his life, we must suffer too, be- 
 fore we shall work that work through, or live 
 that life through. 
 
 We say, very faithfully, " Christ was made 
 perfect through suffering." Do we say as 
 faithfully, " If we are ever made perfect, it 
 must be through suffering " ? Or do we not 
 think that our suffering comes in as some- 
 thing so made up of human weakness, — the 
 result of human causes, — that we could do 
 very well without it? Do not we look on all suf- 
 fering as if it all belonged to the class of pain 
 which can be relieved? Is it not carelessly 
 spoken of as one of the mistakes of human 
 
236 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 nature, which more advanced civilization or a 
 more pure Christianity will sweep away ; as 
 the famines of savage tribes are got rid of 
 when they grow up to civilization, — as the 
 stroke of lightning has been disarmed by one 
 lucky hit of science ? Christ must needs have 
 suffered. Yes ; but do we not look on it as a 
 misfortune, rather than a necessity, when we 
 suffer too? 
 
 I. To set ourselves right in this matter, I 
 have said that we might compare our position 
 with Christ's own. First, we are to note, that 
 the Gospel theory of life says and promises 
 very little about happiness, or the relief from 
 suffering. It may be doubted if it speaks of it 
 at all. The Gospel takes it for granted, that 
 men who do their duty must suffer. That is 
 the distinction between doing what we ought 
 to do, and mere doing what we " want" to do. 
 The Gospel orders a myriad of men forward 
 on a majestic duty, — the re-formation of a 
 world. It calls them to that duty, as children 
 of God. It points to them his well-beloved 
 
Christ must JVeeds have Suffered. 237 
 
 Son, his first-born, their elder brother, leading 
 the way. It bids them gird themselves to that 
 work, as children of the Almighty. And, with 
 every whisper and injunction, it shows them 
 that that God is with them all the while. Is 
 their duty with the sick, God is there ; with 
 the wicked, God is there ; in the wilderness, 
 God is there ; on the sea, God is there. Now, 
 in inciting them thus, in compelling them by 
 these high demands, the Gospel does not de- 
 scend to speak of the agreeableness or ele- 
 gance or delicacy or happiness of the duty. 
 It takes it for granted that it will require re- 
 nunciation. Jesus says, in his general orders, 
 " Take up your cross, and follow me." He 
 does not say, " You shall have pleasant 
 weather, if you follow me ; " or, " It shall be 
 a broad, easy road, if you follow me ; " or, 
 " You shall reap in a field where there are no 
 briars, if you follow me." No. There is a 
 good deal said, on the other hand, about 
 crosses and tears, about narrow paths and 
 thorny ways. For the object is not our hap- 
 
238 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 piness : it is the salvation of the world, — the 
 bringing men to God. The campaign is not a 
 sham review, in which we are to be amused. 
 It is a great battle, of which the victory is 
 God's glory. In the beginning of that cam- 
 paign, it must needs be that Christ suffered. 
 As it goes on, it must needs be we suffer, too. 
 II. The Gospel does not promise, that we 
 shall be rid of suffering. Jesus seems to have 
 thought as little of abolishing suffering for his 
 brethren as he thought of lifting them at once, 
 without training, to heaven. This is the se- 
 cond feature in his view of it. Not only does 
 he regard it as a necessary incident of human 
 nature, but also he regards it as essential to 
 the hardening and strengthening of our di- 
 vine nature, necessary to prepare us for heaven. 
 He speaks of suffering, as a matter of course, 
 where infinite souls are shut up in human or 
 limited bodies ; and then he says that it works 
 good for them in the end. He does not say, 
 therefore, " You shall not mourn," as false 
 prophets do; nor, "You ought not mourn," 
 
Christ must Needs have Suffered. 239 
 
 as Job's comforters do ; nor, " You do not 
 mourn," as certain stoics do. But he says, 
 " Blessed are they who do mourn." Blessed, 
 — not happy. He does not say, " Happy are 
 those who are not happy." There is no such 
 miserable contradiction as that in the Gospels. 
 That is left to sentimental poetry to tell you — 
 
 "There's such a charm in melancholy, 
 I would not, if I could, be gay; " 
 
 or it is left to modern religious tracts to pre- 
 tend to. It is not the Gospel statement. But 
 Jesus does say, to you who mourn, that you are 
 blessed, — blessed with the presence of an 
 angel, who, if you please, brings you close 
 to God. 
 
 III. The Gospel does say, that sorrow 
 and suffering are temporary. Jesus looks at 
 men's life as eternal, — running on for ever; 
 and sometimes speaks of it without alluding 
 to death, regarding that as the transient inci- 
 dent it is, — as I might speak of the history of 
 this country, without alluding to the fact, that 
 part of it was in one century, and part in an- 
 
240 The Service of Sorrow, 
 
 other. Jesus speaks of life as eternal ; and, 
 because he does, there comes in an obscurity 
 sometimes when we try to construe his words, 
 as if he spoke only of the seventy or eighty 
 years which make the beginning of it. 
 Speaking so, he says that trouble, sorrow, 
 grief, are nothing in comparison to the future. 
 But, when he stands by the weeping sisters, 
 he does not say that grief is nothing then. He 
 does not say, "You ought not weep;" "You 
 do not weep;" nor, "You will not weep." 
 No. He weeps too. 
 
 These seem to me the principles on which 
 sorrow is treated by him, and on which we 
 ought to regard it now : First, sorrow is ; and, 
 in a w r orld where physical restraints hem in 
 immortal spirits, sorrow and suffering will be. 
 Second, that sorrow is the gate of wisdom. 
 By it these spirits are trained to their highest 
 life. Christ himself, we know not how, is 
 made perfect through suffering. So Peter 
 the timid fisherman becomes Peter the tri- 
 umphant apostle. We know how. It is 
 
Christ must Needs have Suffered, 241 
 
 through the bitter tears of the court of the 
 high-priest's palace. So Christ says, "Blessed 
 are they that mourn." Third, sorrow and 
 suffering are temporary. And, when looking 
 at eternal life, Jesus says, " Let not your 
 hearts be troubled," but goes on to show that 
 he means that their trouble of that moment 
 shall be soothed by their hope of the future. 
 
 These principles, I think, may be traced 
 out in all his sorrows, and in his blessed in- 
 terviews with those that mourn. 
 
 Thus : they meet a blind man. The dis- 
 ciples try to trace the origin of evil, — a thing 
 I advise you never to do. "Who did sin, this 
 man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 
 "Neither," says Jesus, and shows that the use 
 of that suffering is in the cure he brings to us, 
 — a lesson we can carry home, every one of us, 
 and apply where we see suffering next which 
 admits a cure. Again : " It has been said, 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine 
 enemy. But I say, Love your enemies ; do 
 good to them that hate you, and pray for 
 16 
 
242 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 them that despitefully use you." That is, we 
 are to make use of what we suffer from men 
 as a part of our training for heaven. When 
 he sends out his apostles to preach, " Take 
 nothing for your journey," — not a staff, not 
 a scrip, nor even money ; that is, do not count 
 your own comfort at all in comparison with 
 your effect upon the world; that is all in all. 
 "When you come to a house, say, Peace be 
 upon this house." What if they are not re- 
 ceived? What if they meet the sorrow of 
 men who are despised? Then "let your 
 peace return upon yourselves." That is, be 
 more peaceful, more gentle, for the rebuff. 
 Let your sorrow be your training. "Do not 
 think," he goes on, "that I have come to send 
 peace on earth. It is not peace, but a sword." 
 But this enmity shall not last for ever; for 
 " whosoever shall confess me before men, him 
 will I also confess before my Father." " He 
 that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 
 Sorrow is temporary ; life, real life, is eternal. 
 And the same is the spirit of the words which 
 
Christ must Needs have Suffered, 243 
 
 bless so many mourning hearts, when he 
 came to the tomb of Lazarus. He does not 
 say, "You ought not mourn." Why, the 
 sisters are weeping ; the people round are 
 weeping ; he is weeping himself, — sighing 
 and troubled in spirit. He says through his 
 tears, "Whoso liveth and believeth shall never 
 die. What you see is temporary ; life is eter- 
 nal." The same lesson as when he says that 
 the loss of hand or foot is nothing, the loss of 
 earthly life nothing, if, in that loss, though it 
 were at the stake of agony, one maintain the 
 purity of the immortal soul. As when, just 
 before his own death, he says, in the temple 
 courts, " Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die, it abideth alone ; but, if it die, 
 it bringeth forth much fruit." 
 
 In selecting these illustrations from his own 
 words, I have passed along his life in order, 
 taking one quotation for each lesson which he 
 taught us as to our mourning. They are not 
 lessons, however, of that cold kind which are 
 sometimes brought to mourners by those who 
 
244 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 have never felt at all. This is not the spirit of 
 what we call Job's comforters, "who jest at 
 scars, but never felt a wound." No. Here are 
 the words of one who knew our sufferings as 
 well as we do. He was homeless ; he had 
 friends who failed him ; he was surrounded 
 by those who ridiculed him. Eager to serve 
 men, he was said to be in league with devils. 
 Loving all, he was used despitefully, spoken 
 of as a wine-bibber and a madman, and really 
 driven, an outcast, from town to town. It is 
 he, who, when death is right before him, tells 
 us that our troubles are but for a moment, and 
 that in heaven we have many mansions. It is 
 he, who, surrounded by the men who will take 
 his life, says, "If it die, it will bring forth 
 much fruit;" He, the Man of Sorrows, so well 
 acquainted with grief, who says, "Blessed" — 
 though not happy — " are they that mourn." 
 
 So much, in our mourning for the friends 
 we have lost, — our little children, or our 
 strongest, or our best, — do we gain in having 
 the word of God come to us by his lips, in a 
 
Christ must Needs have Suffered. 245 
 
 human life. It is not the cold comfort of dead 
 words carved out in some table of stone : it is 
 the loving sympathy of a weeping Saviour. 
 It is not the calm, oracular direction of a high- 
 priest, who does not partake of our infirmities, 
 but the blessed love of one who wept with us, 
 hungered with us, and thirsted with us ; 
 whose heart-strings were strained as ours are ; 
 and who passed through all as he begs us to 
 do. It is not, again, the poor human demon- 
 stration of one who has worked out a system 
 by which he thinks death can be explained, 
 and who demonstrates to the last, as poor 
 Socrates did, — till the hemlock came : it is 
 the triumphant utterance of that Son of God 
 who died, as he lived, in the full presence of 
 his Father, and to whom the agony of his 
 death was, as the countless agonies of his life, 
 only a part of the suffering which he was eager 
 to share with us, that we might know how to 
 bear ours. So Christ must needs have suf- 
 fered. So we, if we will do our duty here, 
 and if we will be trained to higher service 
 there, must needs suffer too. 
 
THE SHORE OF ETERNITY. 
 
 A LONE ! to land alone upon that shore, 
 
 With no one sight that we have seen before ; 
 Things of a different hue, 
 And the sounds all new, 
 And fragrances so sweet, the soul may faint. 
 Alone ! Oh that first hour of being a saint ! 
 
 Alone ! to land alone upon that shore 
 
 On which no wavelets lisp, no billows roar ; 
 
 Perhaps no shape of ground, 
 
 Perhaps no sight or sound ; 
 No forms of earth our fancies to arrange, 
 But to begin alone that mighty change. 
 
The Shore of Eternity. 247 
 
 Alone ! to land alone upon that shore, 
 Knowing so well we can return no more ; 
 
 No voice or face of friend, 
 
 None with us to attend 
 Our disembarking on that awful strand, 
 But to arrive alone in such a land ! 
 
 Alone ! to land alone upon that shore ; 
 To begin alone to live for evermore ; 
 
 To have no one to teach 
 
 The manners or the speech 
 Of that new life, or put us at our ease : 
 Oh that we might die in pairs or companies ! 
 
 Alone? No ! God hath been there long before ; 
 Eternally hath waited on that shore 
 
 For us who were to come 
 
 To our eternal home ; 
 And He hath taught His angels to prepare 
 In what way we are to be welcomed there. 
 
 Like one that waits and watches, He hath sate 
 As if there were none else for whom to wait ; 
 
 Waiting for us, — for us 
 
 Who keep Him waiting thus, 
 
248 The Service of Sorrow. 
 
 And who bring less to satisfy His love 
 Than any other of the souls above. 
 
 Alone? The God we know is on that shore, 
 The God of whose attractions we know more 
 
 Than of those who may appear 
 
 Nearest and dearest here ; 
 Oh ! is He not the life-long friend we know 
 More privately than any friend below ? 
 
 Alone? The God we trust is on that shore, 
 The Faithful One whom we have trusted more, 
 
 In trials and in woes, 
 
 Than we have trusted those 
 On whom we leaned most in our earthly strife : 
 Oh, we shall trust Him more in that new life ! 
 
 Alone? The God we love is on that shore, 
 Love not enough, yet whom we love far more, 
 
 And whom we've loved all through, 
 
 And with a love more true 
 Than other loves, — yet now shall love Him more ; 
 True love of Him begins upon that shore. 
 
The Shore of Eternity. 249 
 
 So not alone we land upon that shore ; 
 'Twill be as though we had been there before. 
 
 We shall meet more we know 
 
 Than we can meet below, 
 And find our rest like some returning dove, 
 And be at home at once with our Eternal Love ! 
 
 F. W. Faber, D.D. 
 
 Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 
 
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