The Discipline of Sorrow
FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
Revelations vii. 14
"These are they who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
Two considerations only can throw any light on the dark mystery of suffering, the problem which has baffled the intellect, the perplexity which has torn the heart of mankind from the dawn of conscious life—"I believe that Jesus Christ was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man"; "I believe in the life of the world to come."
The two thoughts blend in our text with a harmony of illumination which, though it does not solve the problem, renders it less dark.
Only in the light of another world, where the seed sown here shall bear wondrous fruit, can we even begin to reconcile the existence of suffering with the goodness of Almighty God. If there be no hereafter, then indeed suffering must be the work of a vengeful tyrant rejoicing in cruelty, or of a fatalistic machine grinding out its foreordained consequences.
What we require is some comprehensive plan which will knit together past, present, future in one great purpose of progress towards ultimate perfection, which will guarantee not only an existence hereafter, but will render that existence personal, conscious, capable of the highest development.
We find this in the Incarnation, the eternal purpose of God the Father, formed in the eternity of the past, that His Son should take our human flesh.
This plan is working itself out in the present by the power of God the Holy Ghost, through the life of the great Church of Christ, militant and expectant.
It stretches forth into the future, with regard to which we have parables, promises, visions, warnings, all pointing to a continuously progressive growth till the perfect manifestation of the Kingdom of Christ be reached.