_As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon
nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart_, Prov. xxv. 20.
Worldly mirth is so far from curing spiritual grief, that even worldly
grief, where it is great and takes deep root, is not allayed but
increased by it. A man who is full of inward heaviness, the more he is
encompassed about with mirth, it exasperates and enrages his grief the
more; like ineffectual weak physic, which removes not the humour, but
stirs it and makes it more unquiet. But spiritual joy is seasonable
for all estates: in prosperity, it is pertinent to crown and sanctify
all other enjoyments, with this which so far surpasses them; and in
distress, it is the only _Nepenthe_, the cordial of fainting spirits:
so, Psal. iv. 7. _He hath put joy into my heart._ This mirth makes way
for itself, which other mirth cannot do. These songs are sweetest in
the night of distress.
There is something exquisitely beautiful and touching in the first of
these similes: and the second, though less pleasing to the
imagination, has the charm of propriety, and expresses the transition
with equal force and liveliness. A grief of recent birth is a sick
infant that must have its medicine administered in its milk, and sad
thoughts are the sorrowful heart's natural food. This is a complaint
that is not to be cured by opposites, which for the most part only
reverse the symptoms while they exasperate the disease--or like a rock
in the mid-channel of a river swoln by a sudden rain-flush from the
mountains, which only detains the excess of waters from their proper
outlet, and makes them foam, roar, and eddy. The soul in her
desolation hugs the sorrow close to her, as her sole remaining
garment: and this must be drawn off so gradually, and the garment to
be put in its stead so gradually slipt on and feel so like the former,
that the sufferer shall be sensible of the change only by the
refreshment.--The true Spirit of Consolation is well content to detain
the tear in the eye, and finds a surer pledge of its success, in the
smile of Resignation that dawns through that, than in the liveliest
shows of a forced and alien exhilaration.