“‘Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up
Whose golden rounds are our calamities,
Whereon, our firm feet planting, nearer God
The spirit climbs and hath its eyes unsealed.”
A book that treats even fragmentarily of Christian culture would be incomplete without a chapter on the ministry of sorrow, for this is an experience through which sooner or later every life must pass. It is part of the earthly education for the heavenly glory. Our lord himself passed this way before us and was made perfect through suffering, and it is also ordained for us, his followers, that through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of heaven.
There are only the very young who know nothing as yet of the liturgy of grief. To them the language of sorrow is an unknown tongue, and the consolations of the Scriptures seem written in pale or invisible ink. But it will not long be so. The years will bring griefs to them, and under their hot flames the comforts of religion will glow upon the inspired page as no other words do. The railway officials passed through our train at midday and lighted the lamps. The passengers could not understand why it was done. How pale the lights seemed in the blaze of noon! But soon we plunged into a long tunnel, into pitchy darkness. How brightly then the beams shone down upon us! And how grateful we all were for the lamps! So the lamps of comfort which God hangs about our hearts in our sunny youth, and which seem to us so dim and so without a purpose while there is no break in our joy, will burst into heavenly brightness when the darkness thickens about us. What shall we then do if none of these lamps of consolation are ready lighted in our hearts?
The ministries of sorrow for the Christian are manifold. Blighting the joys of earth on which he had set his heart, it turns his eye toward the things that are unseen and eternal. There are many who never saw Christ until the light of some tender beauty faded before them, and, looking up in the darkness, they beheld that blessed face beaming down upon them in divine gentleness and love.
“Through the clouded glass
Of our own bitter tears we learn to look
Undazzled on the kindness of God’s face:
Earth is too dark, and heaven alone shines through.”
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