For suggested Meditations during the week see Appendix.
VII
Discipline through Bereavement
SIXTH SUNDAY IN LENT
1 Thess. iv. 13
"We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, which have no hope."
Of all kinds of sorrow, bereavement is in some senses the sternest, the most irrevocable, and the one in which human compassion is of least avail.
All that we said last week on the discipline of suffering applies here, but with enhanced force. If suffering generally cannot be rationally contemplated outside of the doctrine of a future existence, still less can death be tolerated unless it lead to further life. If sorrow in the bulk needs the Incarnation to throw upon it the light of God's love, still more does this particular grief require the assurance that the finished work of Christ operates within, as well as without, the vail.
Broadly speaking, all over the world there are torn and bleeding hearts mourning the nearest, the dearest; in the vast majority of instances, from the circumstances of the case, men in the beginning or the very prime of life.
The heroism of the women has been as magnificent as that of the men—nay, in a sense, more so. For those who go forth there is the novelty, the excitement, the nerving sense of duty. Their time is so ceaselessly occupied that but little space remains for brooding or for anxious thought, on behalf of themselves or those at home. The men who remain behind, the fathers, brothers, friends, have the priceless boon of daily occupation, often vastly increased in amount. There is no such infallible anodyne of care as plenty of honest work.