But if some people, notwithstanding my special pleading, still agree with Coleridge’s address to the rain,—
“Oh, rain, that I lie listening to
You’re but a doleful sound at best,”
and echo his decision,—
“And, by the by, ’tis understood,
You’re not so pleasant as you’re good”
for these I have yet a word.
If we cannot enjoy, let us accept rain at any rate without grumbling; ay, even though it last day after day; ay, though it spoil our pleasure-plans, or our crops—remembering at Whose ordering it comes. People who grumble at the weather always remind me of the Israelites grumbling at Moses and Aaron, the mere instruments used by the Supreme. “What are we? Your murmurings are not against us, but against the Lord.”
From whence comes the shower that stops our pleasure-party; the drenching rain that falls, just when the hay or the corn was fit to carry? If such events move our ill-temper, or make us irritable and angry (and many are apt to be so), with whom is it that we are vexed? who has aggrieved us so that we speak as injured persons? Let us have a care. What is that “it” that we speak of as being “tiresome,” “annoying”? The clouds, the winds, the rain—what are these, that we murmur against them? Are not such murmurings really against the Sender, if we trace them home? Such a result is commonly born of thoughtlessness more than of purpose. But that will not excuse it.
“Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.”
But evil it still is, and must remain. Therefore grumbling at the weather appears to me to be something more than foolish and ungrateful. A little thought on the matter seems to mark it as impious and profane. A heathen philosopher would have despised the silliness of losing the balance of your temper, when there is no one that you dare blame for the cause. A Christian ought surely to soar beyond this, and, in things little or large, to accustom himself to recognise a Father’s ordering, and cheerfully to accept it, as sure to be the best and wisest.
I said a heathen might despise the folly of those who lose their temper because it rains. A beautiful anecdote occurs to me, which I met with in a very pleasant book, “Domestic Life in Palestine,” by Mary Eliza Rogers. This lady and her party were traversing, under the conduct of their guide, the fertile plains west of the Carmel range. “Rain began to fall in torrents; Mohammed, our groom, threw a large Arab cloak over me, saying, ‘May Allah preserve you, O lady! while He is blessing the fields!’ Thus pleasantly reminded, I could no longer feel sorry to see the pouring rain, but rode on rejoicing, for the sake of the sweet Spring flowers and the broad fields of wheat and barley.”