“Happy are ye if ye do them” (John xiii. 17).
You little know the rest that comes from the yielded will, the surrendered
choice, the abandoned world, the meek and lowly heart that lets the world
go by, and knows that it shall inherit the earth which it has refused! You
little know the relish that it gives to the blessing to hunger and thirst
after righteousness, and to be filled with a satisfaction that worldly
delight cannot afford, and then to rise to the higher blessedness of the
merciful, the forgiving, the hearts that have learned that it is “more
blessed to give than to receive,” and the lives that find that “letting go
is twice possessing,” and blessing others is to be doubly blessed!
Nay, there is yet one jewel brighter than all the rest in this crown of
beatitudes. It is the tear-drop crystallized into the diamond, the
blood-drop transfigured into the ruby of heaven’s eternal crown. It is the
joy of suffering with Jesus, and then forgetting all the sorrow in the
overflowing joy, until with the heavenly Pascal we know not which to say
first, and so we say them both together, “Tears upon tears, joy upon joy”.