THE BIBLE AND SORROW
One who is jealous for the reputation of the Bible as a complete Book of
life must sometimes feel that undue emphasis has been placed upon its
messages for the sorrowing. If the jealousy does not entertain just this
feeling, it has the resembling fear--that the biblical message for sorrow
has been emphasized until it has hidden the message for gladness. As a
necessary prelude to a discussion of the Bible's relation to the sorrow of
the world, we shall treat its meaning for the world's gladness. We are
willing to use the word "pleasure" in this connection, though pleasure is
classed as representing a mood less deep than the mood of joy. Some of us
can recall the surprise we experienced in reading Lubbock's The Pleasures
of Life. One chapter dealt with "The Pleasure of Duty." This title caused
us no wonder. But the next chapter astonished us with the heading, "The
Duty of Pleasure." We quickly found ourselves asking whether there was
such a duty. Is it an obligation laid on men and women to seek for a
proportion of pleasure? Are the light joys of life to be classed with our
duties? Lubbock answered these questions in the affirmative. What reply
does the Bible give?
Certainly we can say in the beginning that, if we take a review of its
pages, the Bible does not impress us as being a mournful book. This is
significant when we note the fact that its pages were all written by
mature and serious persons. Even more, the pages were written with
reference to some of the most serious and sacred elements and events in
life. Vast solemnities evoked many sections of the Bible. We should expect
that the seriousness of the authors and the critical importance of the
events would touch the Book and would dominate its spirit. It is even so.
Our worthier thought would not have it otherwise. If the Bible had been
simply the inspiration and guide for the world's playgrounds, it would
have lost the most of its soul.
For a volume whose materials were jokes and whose primary purpose was
laughter might have a legitimate mission, but it would have difficulty in
being rated as redemptive literature. The real humorist is doubtless one
of God's agents in lifting the troubles of mankind; but Providence sees to
it that humorists are not so plentiful as to destroy our sense of
proportion. Each generation is granted a small group of men who set the
world aglee and become the distributors of smiles and laughter. The
appreciation of humor, also, is placed in the nature of each normal
person; but the continual demand for humor becomes a plague. Men know
instinctively that for the greatest things it will not suffice. There is a
story to the effect that one of the most renowned Americans was not
allowed to write the Declaration of Independence because it was feared
that he might work a joke into the historic document. True or false, the
story stands for a fact--that humor is a secondary form of service and
that the big crises insist that humor shall stay in its own realm.
None the less the Bible is not a stranger to the play element. As we march
through its life we see smiles and hear laughter. Children are there in
their careless gladness. Young men and maidens are there in their innocent
pleasures. Games are there with their delight of striving. Parties are
there with their gayety and music. We pass through pages of darkness only
to emerge into pages of sunshine. We sit down at Marah and find the
brackish and bitter waters and hear the murmuring of the Israelites. But
the next day we come to Elim, with its twelve pure and gushing wells and
its threescore and ten palm trees. This transition is what we would
anticipate in a Book of real life, and it is what fits the Bible to be the
guide of total life. A joyless book could not control a joyful world;
neither could a sorrowless book control a sorrowful world. The Bible must
have a message for both types of experience.
There is a theological reason for this twofold message. We have been told
by our religious teachers that Christ, being tempted, can succor those
that are tempted. The Man of Sorrows can save the people of sorrows. The
High Priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. The Captain of
our salvation was made perfect through suffering. He learned obedience
through the things he suffered. The world is made acquainted with the
sorrowing Saviour of the sorrowing world. Still we have been slow to apply
our theology to the other side of life. The forged letter of Publius
Lentulus stated that Jesus had often been seen to weep, but never to
smile! The mischief of such a misconception is apparent. It provides for a
mutilated theology. It gives the world a fractional Christ. It leaves the
hour of gladness without its Exemplar. It gives comfort for a funeral, but
no companionship for a feast. In the average life the realm of joy is
larger than the realm of sorrow. Few people would declare that with them
sadness had exceeded gladness. The world needs to-day the Saviour of the
joyful, even as it needs the Saviour of the sorrowful. Joy that refuses to
be curbed needs saving power just as does sorrow that refuses to be
comforted. We need not enter into any needless comparison and try to state
which has the more need. It is sufficient to affirm that a complete Bible
must take account of pleasures and joys, if these are to be counted among
the divinely appointed experiences of life.
We do not long study the Bible without becoming aware of its law of
proportion. It gives the word in season, and it gives the word in measure.
Hence its aim is to cultivate proportion in human lives. Its ideal is the
ideal of a holy God, that is, of One with a perfect balance of the
infinite nature. Its ideal for man must, therefore, be that man shall gain
for himself that balance in the human realm that God has in his divine
realm. For this reason the Bible is a curber of excesses, a restorer of
proportions. It gives here its largest lesson for pleasure. Recognizing
its legitimacy, it recognizes its limits as well. As an example from both
Testaments we may give a statement of conduct that receives rebuke from
Moses and from Paul. It is recorded in Exodus that, after their riotings
with the golden calf, the Israelites proceeded to engage in riotings of
pleasure. The ancient account puts it, "The people sat down to eat and to
drink, and rose up to play." Saint Paul quotes it in First Corinthians in
precisely its original form. In the early account the rebuke of the Lord
awaits the people. In the later account the apostle makes the conduct the
natural accompaniment of idolatry, as if indeed the worship of an image
would issue into the idolatry of the table and the playground. Now eating
and drinking are not only good; they are necessary. Play is not only good;
it is necessary. The Bible declares that food and water are the gifts of
God, and it makes them symbols of God's deeper benevolence. Nor does the
Bible ever condemn play. On the contrary, it represents the streets of the
Holy City as filled with playing children. The trouble, then, must have
been in the lack of proportion as well as in the lack of a good motive.
The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play. This is to
say that the two constant movements of life were monopolized by appetite
and sport. The Israelites ate to play, and they played to eat. Two things
intended to be legitimate portions of life became its illegitimate
entirety. Designed to be preludes, eating and drinking and playing became
the whole program. Life consisted in the satisfaction of two ranges of
desire. The demand of Moses and Paul was not that eating and drinking and
playing should be abolished, but that they should be pushed back into
their just proportions as worthy departments of living. The glutton of
food and the glutton of play are both condemned by the Bible.
There are those who say that one of the crying evils of our own day is
that the people are appetite-mad and pleasure-mad. Probably some men in
every age have brought this charge against their time; and the charge is
true as applied to some persons in each period. For such the Bible has its
repeated warning. They who are lovers of pleasure more than of God fall
under condemnation. Mankind has never long admired the eaters and players
of history. If it remembers Beau Brummel and Beau Nash at all, it enrolls
them in its lists of ridicule. An epitaph which recorded that "He ate much
of the time and played the rest of the time," would not serve to enroll a
man among the earth's heroes! The Bible and humanity are against the
unbalanced devotees of the table and the parlor and the field of sports.
But the Bible and humanity unite again in their estimate of the other
extreme. The mere ascetic secures curiosity rather than admiration. He
has not learned how to follow Him who often went to feasts and who sat
down with his friends at the supper which they gave him at Bethany. It is
said of him that "he was anointed with the oil of joy above his fellows."
Jesus entered into the normal joys of life. He came eating and drinking,
until his enemies seized upon his conduct and exaggerated it into a charge
against him. He was present at weddings where joy reigned supreme. In all
his teaching and by all his example he never proved himself an enemy to
the normal pleasures of life. This particular emphasis is occasionally
needed. It may not have as large a mission as has the warning against
overdone appetite and play; but it has its message to that smaller circle
of the deceived who would drive joy from the world in the name of Christ.
One of the hymns declares:
The brightest things below the sky
Yield but a flattering light;
We should suspect some danger nigh
Where we possess delight.
There is something morbid in this conception. The invitation to the
religious life becomes gruesome. The sister of Pascal cared for him
through a long and serious illness. Pascal came to love her so much that
he feared that his affection was wicked. In a gloomy hour he wrote in his
diary these words, "Lord, forgive me for loving my dear sister so much!"
Afterward his abnormal conscience worked again, and Pascal actually erased
the word "dear." For such moods the Bible has a lesson. God "giveth us
richly all things to enjoy." We would think it small glory for ourselves
if our children should push our gifts away from their little hands with
the idea that those selected gifts were perilous. God fills the world with
possibilities of pleasure. Food and drink are not negative and tasteless.
The paths of earth are not flowerless. Voices are not without music.
Companionship is not lifeless. The Bible is the foe of wicked pleasure.
The Bible is the foe of excessive pleasure. The Bible is the friend of
legitimate and proportionate pleasure.
But while pleasure needs to be guarded and curbed, it is not either a
burden to be lifted or a pain to be endured. Sorrow is both. Therefore
sorrow demands some positive services from the Bible. We may be impatient
with those doleful folks who speak of this world as a vale of tears or as
a wilderness of woe! We may be inclined to quote the lines:
I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's.
On the other hand, it is well to remember that the young, especially, see
life almost exclusively from the standpoint of hope and courage. The
minister of the gospel begins to feel, when he reaches the age of forty,
that he has not given enough comfort to his people. As he identifies
himself closely with their lives he finds that most homes carry some
secret sorrow and that most men and women have their own personal
tragedies. You will recall the myth about the boatman whose duty it was to
carry over the Styx the souls who departed from earth. He noticed that
these souls mourned much and took the voyage unwillingly. He thought that
it must be a very beautiful and joyful land that laid such hold on their
hearts. So he secured leave of absence from his post of duty and made an
excursion into the world. He discovered that for every birth there must
eventually be a death; that every home that was made must in due season be
broken; that men and women were troubled and maimed and sick. On all sides
he saw the evidences of sorrow. He went back to his ferry greatly
wondering why people should be sad because they left a sad world. This
mythical picture is overdrawn, but it has its suggestion of truth. Earth
does have its manifold sorrows. If all the burdens and pains and problems
and anguishes of a single day could focus their influence upon any single
life, the result would be either a broken heart or an insane mind.
The Bible does not make light of sorrows. Its heroes have their troubles.
Call the roll of its sons and daughters and you will find that at some
time each one of them was a child of grief. The Book does not assign
burden and pain and sorrow to the class of unrealities. Neither does it
assign them to the class of negations. In the Bible sorrow is real and
sorrow is positive. When Rachel weeps for her children, the scene is real.
When David goes into the room in the tower over the gate and utters his
pitiful lament over Absalom, the Book does not describe his anguish as an
illusion. Paul's hunger and thirst, and stripes and shipwrecks, and perils
and imprisonments were not the vain froth of a mortal mind. Jesus's cross,
and the thorns and the nails and the spear, and the tauntings of the
passers-by, and the thirst, and the darkened face of the Father were not
swept into the void by reciting a formula about the All. Jesus gave a
promise to his disciples, "In the world ye shall have tribulation." He
kept that promise. They walked the ways of martyrdom. Their spirits won
victories over their flesh. Yet there is no hint that their persecutions
and deaths were the fictions of error or the dreams of a night that did
not exist. The Bible, being real, ministers to sorrow that is real.
The Book, too, touches on all the phases of comfort that we may gather
from the surface of life, only it does not make them either a full gospel
of consolation or a large part of that gospel. Sometimes a word of
Scripture will suggest the method of comparison implied in the statement,
"It might be worse." Paul does this with one quick word. "Our _light_
affliction," he puts it. We have lost one hand; we might have lost two! We
have lost one eye; we might have lost both! We have been sick one week; it
might have been a year! Sometimes this method carries us off into rather
graceless comparisons of ourselves with other people as if, indeed, we
were divine favorites. Can a man prove more divine providence for himself
by assuming that there is less for another person? This road of comparison
leads to phariseeism unless we watch carefully against a despicable
by-path. Tennyson in his "In Memoriam," which is a poem of comfort, shows
much impatience with this false form of consolation:
One writes, "that other friends remain,"
That loss is common to the race;
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more;
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening but some heart did break.
This method of comparison is inadequate. Whether the word "light" makes
our imagination furnish the details of the worse affliction, or whether it
contrasts our sorrows with the greater sorrows of others, it does not do
enough for our smitten hearts.
Nor are we fully satisfied with the plea that sorrow is but "for a moment"
and that we can be thankful for its brevity. There is comfort here, to be
sure, but it has no final quality. Paul knew that, and so he gave the idea
an incidental part of a sentence, and then went on to the deeper
consolation. One poet puts it:
Since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous heart! be comforted;
And like a cheerful traveler, take the road,
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints? At least it may be said,
"Because the way is short, I thank thee, God."
The truth is that there is real comfort in all this only when pain's
brevity contributes something to the good of the years and even to
eternity. Thus the Bible does not give much space to the slight comforts
of either comparison or brevity. These have their function, but they are
the small helpers of the larger consolations.
The Bible likewise gives as one of the comforts of sorrow that sorrow
prepares us to console others' sorrows. Saint Paul uses this in his
message to the Corinthians: "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who
comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them
which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are
comforted of God." Here we are pushed back to the deepest sources of
comfort. God comforts the sorrowful in order that other sorrowful ones may
have comfort. The consolers are delegated by the great Consoler. It
requires this reach clear back to the heart of God to rescue this
suggestion from the superficial. One man has sorrow. He consoles others
who have sorrow. Then you have two sorrows in your problem. In this way
you would keep playing off sorrow against sorrow, without any fundamental
explanation of any sorrow. The question is, Why any sorrow at all? If one
of the by-products of sorrow is the power to comfort the sorrowing, we
must still find some main product that will put the two sorrows together
in a meaning of good. The God of comfort must preside over both sorrows
ere either sorrow shall yield its contribution to the sufferer. Paul saw
this, and so he related our power to comfort others to the fact that we
had gotten our comfort from the Father of all consolation.
It is thus clear that the Scriptures give place to all the minor elements
in the ministry of sorrow. Its comparative lightness, its sure brevity,
and its tuition for sympathy have their part in the Bible curriculum. The
Scriptures also move onward to the vision of a God who cares. "Like as a
father pitieth"--this is the message even of the Old Testament. It gives
an answer to that piercing cry:
What can it mean? Is it aught to Him
That the nights are long and the sun is dim?
Can he be touched by the griefs I bear
Which sadden the heart and whiten the hair?
Around his throne are eternal calms,
And glad, strong music of happy psalms,
And bliss unruled by any strife!
How can he care for my little life?
The answer of the Bible is the vision of the pitying God. Our earthly
friends have helped us in our sorrows by simply caring. They have come to
us in the shadows, and their words and faces have told us that they cared.
It is a strange feature of human psychology that just this gives us
comfort. Our friends do not solve the problem for us. They do not remove
the cause of our pain. But they feel with us, and this is aid. Every
sympathizer seems to lift a bit of the weight from our own hearts. When
the Bible gives us the revelation of One who pitieth "like as a father
pitieth," it brings God into that circle of helpfulness.
The lesson goes farther and deeper than this. Though we have not here used
the words technically, the soul's dictionary draws a distinction between
pity and sympathy. The pitier may never have walked the way that allows
him to understand our grief; the sympathizer comes to us from some
experience that permits him to remember those that are in bonds as bound
with them. We cannot read the Bible long ere we discover that there is in
God the capability of joy and sorrow. The passages are abundant that
justify this statement. God can be pleased. God can be grieved. If men and
women have been made in his image, and if we find in them the capability
of pain and sorrow, we are driven to the conclusion that something
corresponding thereto must be in the divine nature. The father in the
parable of the prodigal son, sitting lonely and mournful in his home,
represents God. The father in that same parable meeting his son in the
roadway and giving him glad welcome, and calling to his neighbors,
"Rejoice with me," likewise represents God. The truth seems to be that the
farther up we go in the grade of being, the more capability of pain and of
pleasure do we find. The polyp can neither suffer much nor enjoy much. The
oyster can enjoy more and suffer more. The bird has its note of joy and
its note of pain. Human beings have exquisite powers of enjoyment and
equally exquisite powers of suffering. We may well believe that when we
reach the perfect being of God both of these capabilities come to their
highest. This is the meaning of that verse:
Can it be, O Christ Eternal,
That the wisest suffer most?
That the mark of rank in nature
Is capacity for pain?
That the anguish of the singer
Makes the sweetness of the strain?
We are allowed to believe, then, that the pity of God passes over into
sympathy. We are visited in our sorrows not by a God whose mood toward us
is abstract, but whose own infinite heart knows grief. "The human life of
God" is a phrase that has been used to describe the incarnation. That
phrase enters into our problem here. If Jesus shows us what God is like,
then the Christ who wept over Jerusalem brings us one revelation of the
divine life. The pitying God becomes the sympathizing God.
The biblical lesson of comfort does not halt even here. It is given a
closer and more personal quality. A pitier and sympathizer may be very
distant, and his aid may reach us over the abysses. If the Bible gives us
the vision of a pitying father, it gives us also the vision of the God who
comforteth even as a mother comforteth. In the various kinds of trouble
men become aware of reserve forces in their nature. They endure what they
thought they could not endure. In crisis times the muscles secure extra
strength, the mind secures extra alertness, and the spirit secures extra
power either to do or to bear. These reserves must be of God's giving,
whether they lie ready in the nature always, or are special gifts sent
direct to help us in the troublous hours. There is, however, a still more
personal interpretation that the Bible offers for these experiences. They
are the special visits of God to the afflicted. If the creed of the divine
sympathy gets its meaning from "the human life of God" as seen in the
incarnation of Christ, this part of the creed gets its meaning from the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is true that the Greek word which is
translated "Comforter" might be given other meanings such as Adviser or
Helper. But this does not change the point for the present discussion. An
Adviser in sorrow is a Comforter, and a Helper in sorrow is a Comforter.
It is significant that the consciousness of the church followed the
translators eagerly and adopted the word Comforter as if it met some need
of life and as if it answered to some deep experience of life. We may not
go into a labored discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. We may affirm
that a humanity that sorrows is glad for a doctrine of the Godhead that
magnifies the office of consolation. The comforting quality in Barnabas
led the early disciples to change his name from Joses to Barnabas because
he was a "son of consolation." They rejoiced in their human comforter. The
church has ever found satisfaction in the revelation of a divine
Comforter. In this revelation it sees the pitying God and the sympathizing
God become the Comforting God.
Related to this is the scriptural idea that God conquers our sorrow not by
removing it but by making us equal to its burden. The clearest concrete
illustration of this is seen in Paul's words about his "thorn in the
flesh." His thrice-repeated prayer was that the thorn might be removed;
his answer was that, while the difficulty would not be taken away, he
would be given grace sufficient for his trial. Paul's experience has
impressed men as being typical of the inner kind of divine aid. The sorrow
may be of many kinds; but the powers of resistance are strengthened by the
grace of God and the sorrows are borne in a brave and patient spirit.
Although the idea be trite, it claims a place in the discussion, as indeed
it was worthy of a place in the ritual of comfort. We are not dealing with
any mere law of reaction. It was not the thorn that was making Paul
strong; it was God who was making Paul strong to endure the thorn. He
himself describes the transaction as if it had involved a direct gift of
the divine grace, as it had involved a direct message from the divine
heart.
Yet great as are all these types of biblical consolation, we all feel that
we have not reached the conclusion of the matter. Comparison is not
enough. Brevity does not explain why sorrow should be just brief. Pity
does not tell us why we should need to be pitied. Direct spiritual
reserves do not fully justify the hard experience that calls for them.
Direct and personal comfort does not solve the problem since no one would
seek trouble in order to have the visits of a comforting friend. The
gaining of inner strength comes nearer to a positive warrant for the
sorrows of life; yet it does not quite reach the satisfying conception.
All these things are parts of the program, but they are not its
conclusion. The tale of life's sorrow is not all told by their recital.
The full story we cannot understand now; still we may be able to glimpse
its meaning. In the epic of Job there are traces of the revelation. The
patriarch gathers a harvest out of his troubles. They never reach the
uttermost extreme. They do not last forever. They bring him pity, however
crude; sympathy, however bungling; comforters, however mistaken; reserve
forces, however tardy; inner strength, however won. But his sorrows do
more than this; they are represented in the last chapter as having been
made the servant of Job. The richer and stronger man returns to the richer
and stronger life. The testings have been turned into gains.
This deeper lesson of comfort is often given to us in the Bible by means
of a very positive verb. Our afflictions "work" for us. All things "work"
together for us. As men are sent to the fields, and as the forces of
nature are sent along the wires, so sorrows are sent to become our
servants. This service is not inevitable; it is conditioned on the
attitude of the sorrowing life; but it is a very real service when the
conditions are met. Our afflictions work for us--when we get the
spiritual vision so that we can receive the things that are eternal. All
things work together for good for us--when we fulfill the innermost
requirement of loving God. The condition in both cases is located within
the spiritual life. This condition being met, the promise of the Bible is
that sorrow is made our efficient servant. Paul in his famous verse of
consolation states the case with marked confidence. The afflictions work
for us until they produce "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of
glory." Language could scarcely be stronger. Nor were the words used by
one who lolled in the high places of ease and delight and shouted down his
abstract comforts to the strugglers in the vale. The assurance to the
sorrowing comes from their comrade. His experiences ranged all the way
from the petty hardships of a wandering life on to the Appian Way and the
block of death. It was the sure faith of the apostle that all his sorrows
had been made to work for him. He was not their victim; he was their
master and their beneficiary.
The persons who have seen much of the world's better living will not deny
this conception. Le Gallienne in his booklet, If I Were God, admits that
suffering does often work toward the making of character and becomes a
real servant. His skepticism does not lie at this point. His inquiry is
whether a just and good God could not have found some easier way, some
servant for which we would not have to render such a painful cost. This,
of course, is that old method of debate that flees for refuge to some
imaginary world and conceives of people who do not exist. Our task is with
the people now on earth, and with them we must deal in our efforts at
consolation. Some of them we have seen driven to bitterness of spirit by
their sorrow. They themselves made sorrow an evil servant which filled the
garden of life with noxious weeds, shut the windows of hope in the home of
life, put the poison of despair into the water of life, and spread the
clouds of gloom over all the sky of life. Others we have seen mellowed and
sweetened by the servantship of sorrow. All our visits to them showed
clearly that sorrow was doing gracious service. The "weight of glory" was
more and more apparent. The "good" produced by the "all things" gave
increasing evidence that the "servant" was doing his work. When any close
observer of life writes down his lists of saints he will always find that
he has been compelled to canonize many who, like their Master, have been
made "perfect through suffering."
The quotation of these words about Christ reminds us that the world turns
to him as to the last resort for the sorrowing. Here, as in all other
studies, we find the climax in him. As he entered into all forms of work,
so did he enter into all forms of sorrow. Is it homelessness? Is it
privation? Is it misunderstanding? Is it anxiety for others? Is it
anticipated suffering? Is it evil accusation? Is it ridicule? Is it shame?
Is it mockery? Is it torture? Is it utter disgrace? Is it abandonment? Is
it denial? Is it betrayal? Is it death? All these he knew. If the wisest
and holiest suffer most, he knew all these sorrows at their deepest. None
could really join with him in chanting the real De Profundis. He trod the
winepress alone, and of the people there was none with him. The world that
left him alone in his sorrow does not wish him to leave it alone in its
sorrow. It seeks him then. It hears him as he promises, not immunity from
suffering, but the experience of overcoming in suffering: "Be of good
cheer: I have overcome the world." He put a deeply personal quality into
his assurance, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you." "I
am with you always, even unto the end of the æons." So runs the promise.
It is no wonder that the troubled flee to him. The Man of Sorrows draws
the men of sorrows. His benediction of peace is not formal. With the
authority and with the reserves of comfort at his command, he still says,
"Let not your heart be troubled."
To the usual messages of consolation he now adds the eternal reason, "In
my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told
you. I go to prepare a place for you." Well did Carlyle say that if Jesus
were only man, he had no right to utter these words. But Jesus said much
more. He would prepare the place. He would come again. He would receive
them into his company. If some doubter shall ask about the way, his reply
shall be the same as of old, "I am the way." Through him alone we come to
the Father. Full trust in him removes all bitter tears: and the remainder
of tears he does not rebuke. He inspires the visions wherein we see those
who have come up out of great tribulation hungering no more, nor thirsting
any more, nor smitten by the sun or any heat; but fed by the Lamb and led
by him amid fountains of living waters, while God wipes away all tears
from their eyes.
This doctrine of heaven as a consolation for sorrow is not born of
selfishness, as is often charged. The rankest of infidels said, "In the
night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle
of a wing." Not "listening selfishness," but "listening love"! The love
that we bear to our own and to all mankind seeks this vision and finds it
waiting in the divine plan. Is it selfish to desire that for ourselves
which will injure none others? Is it selfish to long for that which will
meet the longings of the whole world? Verily some critics discover strange
dictionaries when they define words in reference to the holy faith. But
all the while the afflicted seek the face of Christ. Troubles look unto
him and are lightened. The poor man cries and the Lord still delivers him
out of his troubles. Our Bibles and our Hymnals personalize the haven for
us. He is the Rock of Ages. His bosom is the Refuge. To him we go when
shadows darkly gather. A present help is he. The last low whispers of our
dead are burdened with his name. The suffering world states its comfort in
terms of Christ himself.
For the final sorrow of death he offers the full consolation. The tragedy
of separation remains. Our indictment against death is that of Tennyson:
He puts our lives so far apart,
We cannot hear each other speak.
The more worthy of immortality our beloved seems to be, the keener is the
pang of parting. Lowell felt it so "After the Burial":
Immortal! I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret--
Immortal away from me.
The Bible has no rebuke for the sorrow of separation. But it does have the
healing hope of eternal reunion. Jesus said: "I am the resurrection, and
the life: he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." These words,
fully believed, still our fear, confirm our hope, and comfort our final
sorrow.
To all the burdened, Jesus says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."
To all the joyless he says, "I will see you again, and your heart shall
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." To all the lonely and
mourning he comes with the message, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye
believe in God, believe also in me." The world may have difficulty in
securing that belief; but the world knows well that this belief alone is
the defeat of sorrow. In their best and most desperate and most hopeful
hours men flee to the Bible as to the only tent in which their anguish can
be soothed. Within that tabernacle walks the form of the Fourth. When
they turn from him, they must return with the question, "Lord, to whom
shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." The eternal life that
he gives is the only consolation for our passing sorrows.