not know. To guess at it would be indeed to meddle with matters too high for us. So let us be dumb. Dumb, not from despair, but from faith; dumb, not like a wretch weary with calling for help which does not come, but dumb like a child sitting at its mother’s feet, and looking up into her face and watching her doings, understanding none of them as yet, but certain that they are all done in love.
Westminster Sermons.
Christ is risen! What a thought was that for the blessed martyrs, for poor creatures in the agony of fear and shame, expecting presently to be torn to pieces or burnt alive. “Death, this horrible death, cannot conquer me, weak and fearful as I am, for my Lord and Master,
for whom I am going to suffer, has conquered death, and He will not let it conquer me. He is stronger than hell and death, and He will not suffer me in my last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Him. He is King of Heaven and Earth, and He will care for His own.” What comfort to be able to say: “Ay, I am torn from wife and child and all which I love on earth; but not for ever, not for ever; for Christ rose from the dead, and I, who belong to Christ, shall rise as He did. This poor flesh of mine may be burnt in flames, devoured by ravenous beasts. What matter? Christ the King of men has risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. That same Spirit which brought back His body from the grave and hell, will bring my body also from the grave and hell,
to a nobler, happier life with Him in joy unspeakable, where Christ now sits on God’s right hand defending me, pitying me, and blessing me, holding out to me a crown of glory which shall never fade away.”
National Sermons.
These things are most bitter, [147] and the only comfort that I can see in them is, that they are bringing us all face to face with the realities of human life, as it has been in all ages, and giving us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and more divine thoughts about ourselves, and our business here, and the fate of those who are gone, and awakening us out of the luxurious, frivolous, unreal dream (full, nevertheless, of hard judgments) in which we have been
living so long, to trust in a Living Father, who is really and practically governing this world and all worlds, and who willeth that none should perish; and therefore has not forgotten or suddenly begun to hate and torment one single poor soul which is past out of this life into some other. All are in our Father’s hands; and, oh! blessed thought, though they “go down into hell, Thou art there also.”
Letters and Memories.
Jesus is the Saviour, the Deliverer, the great Physician, the healer of soul and body. Not a pang is felt, or a tear shed on earth, but He sorrows over it. Not a human being on earth dies young but He, as I believe, sorrows over it. What is it which prevents Him healing every sickness, soothing every sorrow, wiping away