Great griefs can seldom be borne in silence; nor is it well
that they should be. Just as the cry of pain springs to the
lips of a child when it is hurt, so the wounded spirit longs
for utterance to ease its sorrow. Far from being a rebellious
and unnatural desire, this longing to somehow unburden the
soul in words is a merciful gift of God, who, even when he
chastens, would fain temper the wind to the shorn lamb. See
how the noblest souls have sought and found, not only a balm
for sorrow, but sorrow’s own deeper meaning in uttering their
heart’s profoundest cry. Think of that magnificent memorial poem
in which Tennyson gathered up, as in a sacred urn, the fragments
of his broken heart. Was his sorrow for Hallam the less, that
he thus robbed it of its bitterest sting, the sting of helpless
silence and hopeless brooding? Was Cicero less noble, less
heroic, because, after the death of his beloved daughter Tullia,
he wrote a treatise, on consolation to alleviate his sorrow?
No; utterance sanctifies the grief whose pang it softens. God
does not will that we should suffer in white-lipped silence. He
never drives the barbed arrow into the human heart.--_Zion’s
Herald._
(1313)