Essays.
Provided we attain at last to the truly heroic and divine life, which is the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by what strange and weary ways, or through what painful and humiliating processes, we have arrived thither. If God has loved us, if God will receive us, then let us submit loyally and humbly to His law—“Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”
All Saints’ Day Sermons.
I believe that the wisest plan of bearing sorrow is sometimes not to try to bear it—as long as one is not crippled for one’s every-day duties—but to give way to sorrow, utterly and freely. Perhaps sorrow is sent that we may give way to it, and, in drinking the cup to the dregs, find some medicine in it itself which we should not find if we began doctoring ourselves, or letting others doctor us. If we say simply, “I am wretched, I ought to be wretched;” then we shall perhaps hear a voice, “Who made thee wretched but God? Then what can He mean but thy good?” And if the heart answers impatiently, “My good? I don’t want it, I want my love!” perhaps the voice may answer, “Then thou shalt have both in time.”
Letters and Memories.
After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, for it solves itself—so very soon at best—by death. Do what is right, the best way you can, and wait to the end to know. . . .
If, in spite of wars, and fevers, and accidents, and the strokes of chance, this world be green and fair, what must the coming world be like? Let us comfort ourselves as St. Paul did (in infinitely worse times), that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed. It is not fair to quote one text about the creation groaning and travailing without the other, that it will not groan and travail long. Would the mother who has groaned and travailed and brought forth children—would she give up those children for the sake of not
having had that pain? Then believe that the day will come when the world, and every human being in it who has really groaned and travailed, would not give up its past pangs for the sake of its then present perfection, but will look back on this life, as the mother does on past pain, with glory and joy.
Letters and Memories.
I write to you because every expression of human sympathy brings some little comfort, if it be only to remind such as you that you are not alone in the world. I know nothing can make up for such a loss as yours. [26] But you will still have love on earth all round you; and his love is not dead. It lives still in the next world for you, and perhaps with you. For