So said one whose reputation in English literature is mainly that of a humorist.  He had learned that the only noble humanity is that in which the fountains of laughter and of tears lie so close together that their waters intermingle.  I beseech you not to confound the ’laughter of fools,’ which is the ‘crackling of thorns under the pot,’ with the true, solemn, ennobling gladness which lives along with this sorrow of my text.

Further, such mourning infused into the sorrow that comes from external disasters will make it blessed too.  As I have said, there is nothing in any condition of life which necessarily and universally makes it blessed.  Though poets and moralists and Christian people have talked a great deal, and beautifully and truly, about the sanctifying and sweetening influences of calamity, do not let us forget that there are perhaps as many people made worse by their sorrows as are made better by them.  There is such a thing as being made sullen, hard, selfish, negligent of duty, resentful against God, hopeless, by the pressure of our calamities.  Blessed be God, there is such a thing as being drawn to Him by them!  Then they, too, come within the sweep of this benediction of the Master, and outward distress is glorified into the sorrow which is blessed.  A drop or two of this tincture, the mourning which comes from poverty of spirit, slipped into the cup of affliction, clears and sweetens the waters, and makes them a tonic bitter.  Brethren, if our outward losses and disappointments and pains help us to apprehend, and are accepted by us in the remembrance of, our own unworthiness, then these, too, are God’s sweet gifts to us.

One word more.  This mourning is perfectly compatible with, and indeed is experienced in its purest form only along with, the highest and purest joy.  I have been speaking about the indispensable necessity of such sadness for all noble life.  But let us remember, on the other hand, that no one has so much reason to be glad as he has who, in poverty of spirit, has clasped and possesses the wealth of the Kingdom.  And if a man, side by side with this profound and saddened sense of his own sinfulness, has not a hold of the higher thing—­Christ’s righteousness given to penitence and faith—­then his knowledge of his own unworthiness is still too shallow to inherit a benediction.  There is no reason why, side by side in the Christian heart, there should not lie—­there is every reason why there should lie—­these two emotions, not mutually discrepant and contradictory, but capable of being blended together—­the mourning which is blessed, and the joy which is unspeakable and full of glory.

II.  And now a word or two with regard to the consolation which such mourning is sure to receive.

It is not true, whatever sentimentalists may say, that all sorrow is comforted and therefore blessed.  It may be forgotten.  Pain may sting less; men may betake themselves to trivial, or false, unworthy, low alleviations, and fancy that they are comforted when they are only diverted.  But the sorrow meant in my text necessarily ensures for every man who possesses it the consolation which follows.  That consolation is both present and future.