XIV.

Man born to surmount Trouble.

"Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."-JOB v. 7.

SOME few years ago it was my lot to be in a country church when a funeral sermon was being preached after the death of some parishioner. The preacher was a stranger who knew nothing about the deceased, but having been asked to say something appropriate to the occasion, preached a sermon in which he appeared to have done his best to rake together all the troubles and sorrows and disappointments, all the aches, and pains, and bereavements, and partings of friends—in fact, every painful or pathetic incident on which it is possible to think-and pile them up to agony point, in illustration of this text. The preacher set the example of weeping at his own sermon, and I should think quite two-thirds of the congregation were in tears. On going out of church many of the people were remarking, "What an admirable sermon!" and how much they should like to hear the same man again. It was quite clear that some had positively

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enjoyed having a good cry-that they had somehow felt better for it-and went home with the sensation that, after all, there was some use occasionally in going to church.

But the thought that occupied my own mind all the time (if I may be pardoned for referring to it) was: Were all these people right in admiring a sermon which dwelt so exclusively on the possibilities of human sorrow; and was the sermon even a good or a Christian sermon which harped so morbidly and effeminately upon it, which hung the sky with sackcloth, and the perpetual burden of which was, "Dear me! what a very sad and melancholy world we are living in! How dark and dreary everything is! How very wicked we all are, and who can tell what dreadful things may not be lying in store for us?"

Was the spirit, think you, which dictated this melancholy sermon, and which actuated the people who admired it, the same which inspired the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who had his share of trouble, when he exclaimed, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your gentle reasonableness be made known unto all men. The Lord is at hand; or again, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us;" again, "The sting of death is

sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, Which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ;" again, "I am strong in all things through Christ Which strengtheneth me; "No chastening for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet;" and last, but not least, our Master's words, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world"?

And yet, I doubt not, many of those who are now listening to me are inclined to say, "It is all very well for you to quote such passages as an evidence of the cheerfulness and hope which ought to be inspired by a vigorous and healthy Christian faith, but we are not all cast in the heroic mould of the Apostle; we are plain people who have had some trouble and loss and disappointment, who have lost friends that we care a good deal about, and we are very much disposed to sympathize with the people who were affected by the pathetic sermon which appears to have excited your displeasure, and to wish we could sometimes hear one like it ourselves. To tell us that it is our duty to feel cheerful when we are only conscious of feeling sad, is about the very last method to make us so; and

whatever you may say, it is just when a feeling of the sadness and pathos of life comes over us that we feel the greatest hope of becoming better than we are at present, and that we seem to ourselves to be in the way of drawing near to God.

So felt, probably, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes when he wrote, "Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better." Yet we also read, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones;" "Therefore remove sorrow from thy path, and put away evil from thy flesh;" "In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider." What shall we say to all this? In the first place, we may say with the author of the words I have last quoted, "God hath set the one over against the other." Every feeling that we have, whether of joy or sorrow, may be made an instrument of instruction in this world of ours, which is the school of God. everything in life there is an appropriate consolation and compensation if we only determine to seek it in the right way; and those who are willing to look in the face of God in the midst of their worst trials will cease to fear His hand.

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But the words of our text are, "Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward;" and I began by asking the question whether it was a right and a Christian feeling which prompted many people to

regard sorrow and trouble as the distinguishing characteristic of human life, and whether it were not a childish and effeminate type of religion which prompts them to crave for a sermon which may stir up their feelings, and enable them to feel better by having a good cry. There is such a thing as the luxury of sorrow. There are those who like to hug their afflictions, and to think as if no sorrow was ever like theirs, because such dwelling upon grief is sometimes attended with a sort of reaction, and causes them to feel that "they who sow in tears shall reap in joy." But surely the very fact that so many persons like to hear something in church which softens the heart and causes them to shed a tear, and that their experience bears out the truth of the familiar words, that "it is better," from a religious point of view, "to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting," and also that it is good to be reminded that although prosperity was the promise of the Old Testament, adversity is that of the New, and that the highest and best strength of all is that which is made perfect in our sense of weakness,-surely the very fact that most blessed fruits may be expected to grow out of the things that we are inclined to shun most of all, proves not that this world is a vale of tears, and that the chief characteristic of human life is that "man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," but that, as a general rule, human beings are conscious of being