Finally, remember under whose dominion all the sorrows and changes of earth take place.Let your faith in Him be firm and clear.To Him address your grief;--to Him lift up your prayer.Of Him seek strength and consolation;--of Him ask that a holy influence may attend every experience.And while all the trials of life should quicken us to a loftier diligence, and inspire us with a keener sense of personal responsibility, surely when our hearts are sore and bleeding,--when our hopes lie prostrate, and we are faint and troubled, it is good to rise to the contemplation of the Infinite Controller,--to lean back upon the Almighty Goodness that upholds the universe; to realize that He does verily watch over us, and care for us; to feel that around and above all things else He moves the vast circle of his purpose, and carries within it all our joys and sorrows; and that this mysterious tale of human life-this tangled plot of our earthly being-is unfolded beneath His all-beholding eye, and by His omnipotent and paternal hand.
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SORROW
"A man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief" Is.Iii.3.
There is one great distinction between the productions of Heathen and of Christian art.While the first exhibits the perfection of physical form and of intellectual beauty, the latter expresses, also, the majesty of sorrow, the grandeur of endurance, the idea of triumph refined from agony.In all those shapes of old there is nothing like the glory of the martyr; the sublimity of patience and resignation; the dignity of the thorn-crowned Jesus.
It is easy to account for this.In that heathen age the soul had received no higher inspiration.It was only after the advent of Christ that men realized the greatness of sorrow and endurance.It was not until the history of the Garden, the Judgment-Hall, and the Cross had been developed, that genius caught nobler conceptions of the beautiful.This fact is, therefore, a powerful witness to the prophecy in the text, and to the truth of Christianity.Christ's personality, as delineated in the Gospels, is not only demonstrated by a change of dynasties,--an entire new movement in the world,--a breaking up of the its ancient order; but the moral ideal which now leads human action,--which has wrought this enthusiasm, and propelled man thus strangely forward,--has entered the subjective realities of the soul,--breathed new inspiration upon it,--opened up to it a new conception; and, lo! The statue dilates with a diviner expression;--lo! The picture wears a more lustrous and spiritual beauty.
The Christ of the text, then,--"A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,"-has verily lived, for his image has been reflected in the minds of men, and has fastened itself there among their most intimate and vivid conceptions.
Sorrow, as illustrated in Christ's life, and as interpreted in his scheme of religion, has assumed a new aspect and yields a new meaning.Its garments of heaviness have become transfigured to robes of light, its crown of thorns to a diadem of glory; and often, for some one whom the rich and joyful of this world pity,--some suffering, struggling, over-shadowed soul,--there comes a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."I remark, however, that Christianity does not accomplish this result by denying the character of sorrow.It does not refuse to render homage to grief.The stoic is as far from its ideal of virtue as the epicurean.The heart of the true saint quivers at pain, and his eyes are filled with tears.
Whatever mortifications he may deem necessary as to the passions of this poor flesh, if he imitates the example of Christ he cannot deny those better affections which link us even to God; he cannot harden those sensitive fibres which are the springs of our best action,--which if callus we become inhuman.He realizes pain; he recognises sorrow as sorrow.Its cup is bitter, and to be resisted with prayer.
There is nothing more wonderful in the history of Jesus than his keen sense of sorrow, and the scope which he allows it.
In the tenderness of his compassion he soothed the overflowing spirit, but he never rebuked its tears.On the contrary, in a most memorable instance, he recognized its right to grieve.It was on the way to his own crucifixion, when crowned with insult, and lacerated with his own sorrows.
"Daughters of Jerusalem," said he, to the sympathizing women, "weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." As though he had said, "You have a right to weep;weep, then, in that great catastrophe which is coming, when barbed affliction shall pierce your hearts, and the dearest ties shall be cut in sunder.Those ties are tender; those hearts are sacred.Therefore, weep!"But Christ did more than sanction tears in others.He wept himself.Closest in our consciousness, because they will be most vivid to us in our darkest and our last hours, are those incidents by the grave of Lazarus, and over against Jerusalem; the sadness of Gethsemane, and the divine pathos of the last supper.Never can we fully realize what a tribute to sorrow is rendered by the tears of Jesus, and the dignity which has descended upon those who mourn, because he had not where to lay his head, was despised and rejected of men, and cried out in bitter agony from the cross.He could not have been our exemplar by despising sorrow-by treating it with contempt; but only by shrinking from its pain, and becoming intimate with its anguish,--only as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."But, on the other hand, Christianity does not over-estimate sorrow.While it pronounces a benediction upon the mourner, it does not declare it best that man should always mourn.It would not have us deny the good that is in the universe.
