Whether or not the Lord was here thinking specially of the mourners for the dead, as I think he was, he surely does not limit the word of comfort to them, or wish us to believe less than that his father has perfect comfort for every human grief.  Out upon such miserable theologians as, instead of receiving them into the good soil of a generous heart, to bring forth truth an hundred fold, so cut and pare the words of the Lord as to take the very life from them, quenching all their glory and colour in their own inability to believe, and still would have the dead letter of them accepted as the comfort of a creator to the sore hearts he made in his own image!  Here, ’as if they were God’s spies,’ some such would tell us that the Lord proclaims the blessedness of those that mourn for their sins, and of them only.  What mere honest man would make a promise which was all a reservation, except in one unmentioned point!  Assuredly they who mourn for their sins will be gloriously comforted, but certainly such also as are bowed down with any grief.  The Lord would have us know that sorrow is not a part of life; that it is but a wind blowing throughout it, to winnow and cleanse.  Where shall the woman go whose child is at the point of death, or whom the husband of her youth has forsaken, but to her Father in heaven?  Must she keep away until she knows herself sorry for her sins?  How should that woman care to be delivered from her sins, how could she accept any comfort, who believed the child of her bosom lost to her for ever?  Would the Lord have such a one be of good cheer, of merry heart, because her sins were forgiven her?  Would such a mother be a woman of whom the saviour of men might have been born?  If a woman forget the child she has borne and nourished, how shall she remember the father from whom she has herself come?  The Lord came to heal the broken-hearted; therefore he said, ‘Blessed are the mourners.’  Hope in God, mother, for the deadest of thy children, even for him who died in his sins.  Thou mayest have long to wait for him—­but he will be found.  It may be, thou thyself wilt one day be sent to seek him and find him.  Rest thy hope on no excuse thy love would make for him, neither upon any quibble theological or sacerdotal; hope on in him who created him, and who loves him more than thou.  God will excuse him better than thou, and his uncovenanted mercy is larger than that of his ministers.  Shall not the Father do his best to find his prodigal? the good shepherd to find his lost sheep?  The angels in his presence know the Father, and watch for the prodigal.  Thou shalt be comforted.

There is one phase of our mourning for the dead which I must not leave unconsidered, seeing it is the pain within pain of all our mourning—­the sorrow, namely, with its keen recurrent pangs because of things we have said or done, or omitted to say or do, while we companied with the departed.  The very life that would give itself to the other, aches with the sense of having, this time and that, not given what it might.  We cast ourselves at their feet, crying, Forgive me, my heart’s own! but they are pale with distance, and do not seem to hear.  It may be that they are longing in like agony of love after us, but know better, or perhaps only are more assured than we, that we shall be comforted together by and by.