And grief succeeded is by joy.
The happiest mortal needs must own
He has a time of sorrow known:
Nor can the poorest wretch deny
But in his life he felt a joy.
Reflection.
It is the lot of mankind to be happy and miserable by turns. The wisdom of Providence will have it so; and it is exceedingly for our advantage that so it should be. There is nothing pure and unmixed under the heavens; and if there were, such an abstracted simplicity would be neither nourishing nor profitable to us. By the mediation of this mixture, we have the comfort of Hope to support us in our distresses, and the apprehensions of a change to keep a check upon us in the very pride of our greatness: so that by this vicissitude of good and evil we are kept steady in our philosophy and in our religion. The one minds us of God’s omnipotence and justice; the other, of His goodness and mercy: the one tells us, there is no trusting to our own strength; the other preaches faith and resignation in the prospect of an overruling Providence that takes care of us. What is it but sickness that gives us a taste of health? bondage, the relish of liberty? and what but the experience of want that enhances the value of plenty? that which we call ease is only an indolence or a freedom from pain; and there is no such thing as felicity or misery but by comparison. It is very true, that hopes and fears are the snares of life in some respects, but they are the reliefs of it in others. Now for fear of the worst, however, on either hand every man has it in his power, by the force of natural reason, to avoid the danger of falling either into presumption or despair.
