ruminating how
to make much into more, the glory of the Lord is but a warm summer day;
it enters in at no window of his soul; it offers him no gift; for, in
the very temple of God, he looks for no God in it. Nor must there needs
be two men to think and feel thus differently. In what diverse fashion
will any one _subject_ to ever-changing mood see the same world of the
same glad creator! Alas for men, if it changed as we change, if it grew
meaningless when we grow faithless! 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
heart