Christ teaches us how, under the redemptive government of God,
suffering has become a subtle and magnificent process for the
full and final perfecting of human character. Science tells us
how the bird-music, which is one of nature’s foremost charms,
has arisen out of the bird’s cry of distress in the morning of
time; how originally the music of field and forest was nothing
more than an exclamation caused by the bird’s bodily pain and
fear, and how through the ages the primal note of anguish
has been evolved and differentiated until it has risen into
the ecstasy of the lark, melted into the silver note of the
dove, swelled into the rapture of the nightingale, unfolded
into the vast and varied music of the sky and the summer. So
Christ shows us that out of the personal sorrow which now rends
the believer’s heart he shall arise in moral and infinite
perfection; that out of the cry of anguish wrung from us by the
present distress shall spring the supreme music of the future.
(Text.)--W. L. WATKINSON, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
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