An Epilogue: Nevertheless Afterward

In that world three enemies we have known too well on earth shall be seen no more for ever. Sin will be gone: ‘They are without fault.’ Grief will be gone: ‘Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.’ Death will be buried: They cannot die any more.’

H. MARY MOULE
‘’Nevertheless Afterward*

LORD, it belongs not to my care

Whether I die or live; To love and serve Thee is my share,

And this Thy grace must give.

My knowledge of that life is small,

The eye of faith is dim; But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,

And I shall be with Him.

BAXTER

0 chastening, for the present, Heb.

seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; 3-11

nevertheless — afterward.’ The words occur in a deeply sympathetic paragraph in the Epistle to the Hebrews, rain and trial are in question, and the disciplinary work of grief. Grief, we are reminded, comes not by chance to the Christian; it is the choice and gift of a Father, who loves His children too truly and too wisely to leave them spoiled, unchastened. The process is distressing; this is frankly and tenderly owned; we are not to affect not to feel it. But it is all on purpose; it is to prepare us for a great and untroubled joy to follow. Be patient; your Father means infinitely well. He hurts you to-day. But to morrow will explain all, in a joy unspeakable. * Nevertheless — afterward.’

I am about to bid my stricken friend adieu. As we part, I wish to let that great * afterward, that serene and wonderful ’ hereafter,’ lay its anodyne upon your pain. ‘Nevertheless afterward *; * Thou shalt know hereafter.’

I say farewell with a deep reverence of heart. It is a bold thing to speak to souls called to the solemn dignity of heavy sorrow. The would-be consoler recollects that his reader, very likely, has much the better right to be the instructor. Let whatever the consoler has tried to say be taken as chastened by that thought.

Yours, 0 friend, is a grief, as we have already remembered, touched with the light of a great glory. A country unspeakably dear, a cause as righteous, as approvable before God, as ever called for the patriot’s sacrifice, these things have brought you your tribulation.

‘The tears by bards and heroes shed Alike immortalize the dead.’

And your dear one has suffered, has been maimed, has been slain, in a conflict in which the noblest poets and greatest leaders of men might find endless occasions for the tribute of their wonder and their tears.

This is not everything. Alas, you know it, in the depths of your sad soul. But it is something. A great loss suffered for right, for love, for God, means a mighty gain — ’ afterward.’

And how nobly have you, and such as you, responded to the call to suffer such glorious but bitter loss! Before me lies a note, edged with black. It is written by a much honoured friend. We had read of her bereavement, the death of her son; and we had asked that the parents, so dear to us, would come for a while, if they cared to do so, from the toils of a great and prominent parish to the quiet of our old dwelling. The answer is graciously affectionate. But the visit must not be. * I wish we could, but my husband is particularly busy. He feels that he does not want to fail in his duty when our dear boy died doing his duty to the last.’

How can I but bow my head in homage to such a grief, so accepted, and almost ask its forgiveness that I have talked to it so long?

But the last word after all, very humbly spoken, shall be a Sursum Corda. It shall point towards the name of CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR and the hope of the ’ afterward ’ of God. The grief is noble. But it will only rise to yet nobler phases as the bearer of it looks upward, beyond all disciplines and mysteries, and affirms to his, or to her, Isa stricken heart that yet, ’ afterward,’ * sorrow xxxv. 10 and sighing shall flee away.’

The immortal sun shall yet change the clouds into glory. It shall yet shew the fragmentary masses of inexplicable mystery to be pillars and arches in a temple, infinitely beautiful, whose builder and maker is God.

Let me, by way of parable, simply record two sights which I have seen, and then take my leave. Parables, to be sure, prove nothing. But they can lift and lighten thought and faith. And, because all things truly good and fair come ultimately from one ’ all-beauteous Mind,’ it is at least possible that the analogies and illustrations exchanged between such things are more than chance and fancy.

Several years ago I was conducted, one Saturday night, late in the year, over Westminster Abbey. A friend, familiar with the marvellous church, was my guide. With a lantern in his hand he ushered me in by a private door, and we made our exploration. Aisle, nave, choir, royal chapels, all were traversed through the vast shadows, while the narrow light just made our walking possible, and threw gleaming hints of bulk and shape upon the immense world of structure around us and above us. An almost oppression of mystery occupied my senses. I had often seen the Abbey by daylight. But it now seemed something other; an undiscovered wilderness of uncomprehended space and majestic but bewildering form — half shewn, half hidden, by the struggling lamp. The giant pillars soared into a dark void. The arches sprang to meet I saw not what. Relation was cast into a confusion which seemed to defy the mind’s effort to construct.

The morning came, radiant with a clear autumnal sun. The Sunday’s matins began, and I stood in a stall within the glorious choir. The mysteries of the night were now the miracles and splendours of the day. The majesty of that surpassing temple shone before me, all the more majestic for the order, the relation, the sublime adjustment, the reason, the mind, that looked upon my mind through it all. Walls, columns, arches, responded to each other, and dignified each other, till mass was etherealized into grace; all crowned and unified by the marvellous roof which had been so impenetrably hidden by night, hanging so very far above the poor lantern’s reach.

Was it not a parable? It was a parable

set as a soul-moving anthem, though the

music came only through the eyes. And the

words of it were the words of the Lord Jesus,

spoken beside a sepulchre, to a sister’s

John xi. broken heart: ‘Said I not unto thee, that,

4° if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest

see the glory of God? ’

Another sight was given me, on a later occasion. I was in Switzerland, spending a winter fortnight in beautiful Beatenberg Dorf, the village which climbs far along the side of the mountain mass which bears the name of Ireland’s missionary saint, Beatus, and looks down from its eyrie on Interlaken and the lake of Thun. It was Sunday, and the sun was gloriously bright. I sat awhile in the village churchyard, and read now some heart-moving epitaphs near me, now a book that lifted the thoughts above; the air was warm as in May. Meanwhile, below me by a hundred feet or so, what did I see? The lake was invisible, and Interlaken too. But the vast hollow of the Thunersee looked as if it were floored, far above the waters, with a plain of dazzling white. It was as if a broad mere were there, frozen into a solid level, and snowed all over, smooth and even, while the cloudless winter noon so dwelt upon it and in it that it glittered and radiated, one wide sheen of living light.

What was it? It was the Nebelmeer, the ‘Mist-sea.’ It was nothing but the upper side, the sunward side, of a cloudy day. If I had walked down to Interlaken, I should have found myself under the gray canopy of the winter. If I had not been aloft before, I should have idly imagined, very likely, that the whole vault of air, as high as air extends, was likewise colourless and cold, sad with an oppression on the spirits, an all-prevailing world of cloud and fog. Yet only two thousand feet above the plain, all the while, there lay the top, the surface, of the gloom. And that was one broad snowy glory, shining moonlike in answer to a triumphant sun.

Was not this also a parable? And it came yet more directly from the ’ faithful Creator’ than even that given me by the human miracle of Westminster. Did not the Nebelmeer speak from God to the heart? It repeated, in the language of light, the promise of the Friend of man: * Your sorrow shall be turned into John joy.’

Take a few more steps upward, 0 friend, in faith and patience. Then you also shall look down, in the light of the eternal Sun, and in the secure companionship of your beloved, and you shall see the splendour of the transfigured clouds.

HEAVEN

There all the millions of His saints

Shall in one song unite, And each the bliss of all shall view

With infinite delight.

DODDRIDGl