Thought for a morrow that may never come, dread of the dividing death which works for endless companionship, anger with one we love, will cloud the radiant morning, and make the day dark with night.  At evening, having bethought ourselves, and returned to him that feeds the ravens, and watches the dying sparrow, and says to his children ‘Love one another,’ the sunset splendour is glad over us, the western sky is refulgent as the court of the Father when the glad news is spread abroad that a sinner has repented.  We have mourned in the twilight of our little faith, but, having sent away our sin, the glory of God’s heaven over his darkening earth has comforted us.

SORROW THE PLEDGE OF JOY.

’Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.’—­Matthew v. 4.

Grief, then, sorrow, pain of heart, mourning, is no partition-wall between man and God.  So far is it from opposing any obstacle to the passage of God’s light into man’s soul, that the Lord congratulates them that mourn.  There is no evil in sorrow.  True, it is not an essential good, a good in itself, like love; but it will mingle with any good thing, and is even so allied to good that it will open the door of the heart for any good.  More of sorrowful than of joyful men are always standing about the everlasting doors that open into the presence of the Most High.  It is true also that joy is in its nature more divine than sorrow; for, although man must sorrow, and God share in his sorrow, yet in himself God is not sorrowful, and the ‘glad creator’ never made man for sorrow:  it is but a stormy strait through which he must pass to his ocean of peace.  He ‘makes the joy the last in every song.’  Still, I repeat, a man in sorrow is in general far nearer God than a man in joy.  Gladness may make a man forget his thanksgiving; misery drives him to his prayers.  For we are not yet, we are only becoming.  The endless day will at length dawn whose every throbbing moment will heave our hearts Godward; we shall scarce need to lift them up:  now, there are two door-keepers to the house of prayer, and Sorrow is more on the alert to open than her grandson Joy.

The gladsome child runs farther afield; the wounded child turns to go home.  The weeper sits down close to the gate; the lord of life draws nigh to him from within.  God loves not sorrow, yet rejoices to see a man sorrowful, for in his sorrow man leaves his heavenward door on the latch, and God can enter to help him.  He loves, I say, to see him sorrowful, for then he can come near to part him from that which makes his sorrow a welcome sight.  When Ephraim bemoans himself, he is a pleasant child.  So good a medicine is sorrow, so powerful to slay the moths that infest and devour the human heart, that the Lord is glad to see a man weep.  He congratulates him on his sadness.  Grief is an ill-favoured thing, but she is Love’s own child, and her mother loves her.