88/100 Affliction

88. Affliction

There is an elasticity to the human mind capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it. "Fear not the darkness," saith the Persian proverb; "it conceals perhaps the springs of the water of life." Experience is often bitter, but wholesome. Only by its teachings can we learn to suffer and be strong. Character in its highest forms is disciplined by trial and made perfect through suffering. Even from the deepest sorrow the patient and thoughtful mind will gather a richer mead than pleasure ever yielded.

Bereavement

BEREAVEMENT.

Think it not unkind when afflictions befall thee; it is all for the best that they are sent. God calls those whom he loveth, and why should he not claim his own jewels to shine in his house, though our own be made dreary? It may seem hard under such circumstances to say that it is "all for the best." The human heart is prone to give over to grief and lamentations; but wait, soon, when like the tired pilgrim thou shalt fall sick and weary, He will take you home to rejoice in finding friends from whom you have been separated. Then how true will be the saying that "it was all for the best!"

Sad accidents and a state of affliction are a school of virtue. It reduces our spirits to soberness and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity. God, who governs the world in mercy and wisdom, never would have suffered the virtuous ones to endure so many keen afflictions did he not intend that they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the exercise of wisdom, and the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown and the gate of glory. Much of the most useful work done by men and women has been done amidst afflictions—sometimes as a relief from it, sometimes as a sense of duty overpowering personal sorrow.

Adversity is the touch-stone of character. As some herbs need to be crushed to give forth their sweetest odors, so some natures need to be tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Grief is a common bond that unites hearts. It can knit hearts closer than happiness can, and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. The visitations of sorrow are universal. There beats not a heart but that it has felt the force of affliction. There is not an eye but has witnessed many scenes of sorrow.

They are always impaired by sorrow who are not thereby improved. Some natures are like grapes—the more they are downtrodden the richer tribute they supply. It may be affirmed substantially that good men reap more real benefit from their affliction than bad men do from their prosperities; for what they lose in wealth, pleasure, or honor they gain in wisdom and tranquillity of mind. "No creature would be more unhappy," said Demetrius, "than a man who had never known affliction." The best need afflictions for the trial of their virtue. How can we exercise the grace of contentment if all things succeed well? or that of forgiveness if we have no enemies?

At a superficial view it appears that adversity happens to all alike, without regard to rank or condition. The good are apparently as little favored by fortune in this respect as the bad, the high as the humble. People are continually rising and falling in all the grades of society. We often see men of high expectations suddenly cut down, and left to struggle with despair and ruin. If the happiness of mankind depended upon the caprice of fortune, their condition would be wretched. But it is possible to possess a mind which will not lose its tranquillity in the severest adversity, or at least such a one as, being disturbed and deprived of its wonted serenity by a sudden calamity, will recover in a short period, and assume its native buoyancy by the shock which it has experienced.

How uncertain is human life! There is but a breath of air and a beat of a heart betwixt this world and the next. In the brief interval of painful and awful suspense, while we feel that death is present with us, we are powerless and he all powerful. The last faint pulsation here is but the prelude of endless joys hereafter. In the midst of the stunning calamity about to befall us, when death is in the family circle, and some loved one is about to be taken from us, we feel as if earth had no compensating good to mitigate the severity of our loss. But we forget that there is no grief without some beneficent provisions to soften its intensities. Thus in the presence of death there is also a consolation. Has the life been stormy? There is now rest; rest for the troubled heart and the weary head. And it can be known only by experience with what a longing many hearts thus look forward to the rest of death. Many whom the world regards as peculiarly blessed by Providence carry with them such corroding, anxious cares that it is with a feeling of relief that they contemplate the approach of death. To them death comes in its most beautiful form. He borrows the garb of gentle sleep, lays down his iron scepter, and his cold hand falls as warm as the hand of friendship over the weary heart now ceasing to beat.

Grief or misfortune seems to be indispensable to the development of intelligence, energy, and virtue. The trials to which humanity are subject are necessary to draw them from their lethargy, to disclose their character. Afflictions even have the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. Suffering, indeed, seems to have been as divinely appointed as joy, while it is much more influential as a discipline of character. Suffering may be the appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined and developed. Sometimes a heart-break rouses an impassive nature to life. "What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?"

No soul is so obscure that God does not take thought for its schooling. The sun is the central light of the solar system; but it has a mission to the ripening corn and the purpling clusters on the vine, as well as the ponderous planet. The sunshine that comes filtering through the morning mists with healing on its wings, and charming all the birds to singing, should have also a message from God to sad hearts. No soul is so grief-laden that it may not be lifted to sources of heavenly comfort by recognizing the Divine love in the perpetual recurrence of earthly blessings.

Afflictions sent by Providence must be submitted to in a humble spirit. Otherwise they will not conduce to lasting good. The same furnace that hardens clay liquefies gold; and the manifestation of Divine power Pharaoh found his punishment, but David his pardon. As the musician straineth at his strings, and yet breaketh none of them, but maketh thereby a sweeter melody and better concord, so God, through affliction, makes his own better unto the fruition and enjoyment of the life to come. Afflictions are the medicine of the mind. If they are not toothsome, let it suffice that they are wholesome. It is not required in physic that it should please, but that it should heal.

Let one of our loved ones be taken away, and memory recalls a thousand sayings to regret. Death quickens recollection painfully. The grave can not hide the white face of the one who sleeps. The coffin and the green mound are cruel magnets. They draw us further than we would go. They force us to remember. A man never sees so far into human life as when he looks over a wife's or a mother's grave. His eyes get wondrous clear then, and he sees as never before what it is to love and be loved, what it is to injure the feelings of the beloved.

When death comes into a household, we do not philosophize; we only feel. The eyes that are full of tears do not see, though, in the course of time, they come to see more clearly and brightly than those that have never known sorrow. Perhaps the heaviest affliction of life is that of the mother who has lost a child. As the waters roll in on shore with incessant throbs—not alone when storms prevail, but in calms as well—so it is with a mother's heart, bereaved of her children. Death always speaks with a voice of instruction and reproof; but when the first death happens in a home it speaks with a voice which scarcely any other form of tribulation can equal.

Some of the saddest experiences of life come without premonition. Yesterday life went well; hope was in the ascendant; it was easy to be content. To-day all is reversed. The crushed heart can scarcely lift itself to pray; speech seems paralyzed. It seems cruel that such calamity should be permitted, when we might have been so happy. Was there not some way by which it could have been avoided? What are life's compensations now? What are its ambitions worth in the face of this? In a great affliction there is no light, either in the mind or in the sun; for when the inward light is fed with fragrant oil, there can be no darkness, though clouds should cover the sun. But when, like a sacred lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens.

Why should body and soul be plunged into sorrow's dungeon when God sees fit to afflict? Is not the world as bright as of yore? Are there not still some happy phases to life's weary pilgrimage? We should not complain of oppression, but, with submission and love, perform the duties of life; and though sorrow and grief come, we must not let darkness obscure the talents which God has given to promote our own and others' happiness, or bury them with the brighter past, but nobly use them, and count all sorrow as naught in comparison with the future great reward of right actions. After this life of sorrow and pain, where we are continually weighed down with care, there is a home of perpetual rest, the streets of which are thronged with an angelic host, who, "with songs on their lips and with harps in their hands," tell neither the sorrow nor grief which perhaps wasted their lives. To bear the ills of life patiently is one of the noblest virtues, and one that requires as vigorous an exercise of the will as to resent the encroachments of wrong.