Two emotions diametrically opposed are to be contained within the narrow
room of one disposition and temper. 'Ye greatly rejoice.... Ye are in
heaviness.' Can such a thing be? Well! let us think for a moment. The
sources of the two conflicting emotions are laid out before us; they may
be constantly operative in every life. On the one hand, 'in which ye
greatly rejoice.' Now that 'in which' does not point back only to the
words that immediately precede, but to the whole complex clause that
goes before. And what is the 'which' that is there? These things; the
possession of a new life--'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ who hath begotten us again!'--the springing up in a man's
heart of a strange new hope, like a new star that swims into the sky,
and sheds a radiance all about it--'Begotten unto a lively hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'; a new wealth--an
'inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away; a new
security--guarded by the power of God through faith unto salvation.'
These things belong, _ipso facto_, and in the measure of his faith, to
every Christian man, a new life, a new hope, a new wealth, and a new
security; and in their conjoint action, all four of them brought to bear
upon a man's temper and spirit, will, if he is realising them, make him
glad.
Then, on the other hand, we have other fountains pouring their streams
into the same reservoir. And just as the deep fountains which are open
to us by faith will, if we continue to exercise that faith, flood our
spirits with sweet waters, so these other fountains will pour their
bitter floods over every heart more or less abundantly and continually.
'Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
temptations.' There are confluent streams that one has sometimes seen,
where a clear river joins, and flows in the same bed with, one all foul
with half-melted ice, and the two run side by side for a space, scarcely
mingling their waters. Thus the paradox of the Christian life is that
within the same narrow banks may flow the sunny and the turbid, the
clear and the dark, the sorrow that springs from earthly fountains, the
joy that pours from the heavenly heights.
Now notice that this is only one case of the paradox of the whole
Christian life. For the peculiarity of it is that it owns two;--it
belongs to, and is exposed to, all the influences of the forces and
things of time, whilst in regard to its depths, it belongs to, and is
under the influence of, 'the things that are unseen and eternal'; so
that you have the external life common to the Christian and to all
other people, and then you have the life 'hid with Christ in God,' the
roots of it going down through all the superficial soil, and grappling
the central rock of all things. Thus a series of paradoxes and perennial
contradictions describes the twofold life that every believing spirit
lives, 'as unknown and yet well known, as dying and, behold we live, as
sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making rich, as having
nothing and yet possessing all things.'
Remember, too, that according to Peter's conception neither of these two
sources pours out a flood which obliterates or dams back the other. They
are to co-exist. The joy is not to deprive the heaviness of its weight,
nor the sorrow of its sting. There is no artificial stoicism about
Christianity, no attempt to sophisticate one's self out of believing in
the reality of the evils that assail us, or to forbid that we shall feel
their pain and their burden. Many good people fail to get the good of
life's discipline, because they have somehow come to think that it is
wrong to weep when Christ sends sorrows, and wrong to feel, as other men
feel, the grip and bite of the manifold trials of our earthly lives.
'Weep for yourselves,' for the feeling of the sorrow is the precedent
condition to the benefit from the sorrow, and it yields 'the peaceable
fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'
But, on the other hand, the black stream is not to bank up the sunny
one, or prevent it from flowing into the heart, ay! and flowing over,
the other. And so the co-existence of the joys that come from above, and
the sorrows that spring from around, and some of them from beneath, is
the very secret of the Christian life.