Until the Day Dawn

* Never again! ’ so speaks the sudden silence,

When round the hearth gathers each well-known face, — But one is missing, and no future presence, However dear, can fill that vacant place; For ever shall the burning thought remain —

* Never, beloved, again! never again! *

‘Never again! ’ so — but beyond our hearing —

Ring out far voices fading up the sky;

Never again shall earthly care and sorrow

Weigh down the wings that bear those souls on high;

Listen, oh earth, and hear that glorious strain —

* Never, never again! never again! ’

A. A. PROCTER

LET us follow out a little further these suggestions of consolation, these reasonings for the heart rather than the head, recollections which may lift us, and tranquillize us, and fit us all the better for a direct contemplation of Christ the Consoler Himself.

i. Take this then as a condition of your sorrow which is meant to solace and to lift you up — the fact that in this great valley of the shadow you are not alone. Your loss, your pain, brings you into a sacred fellowship, a large yet intimate companionship. ‘The same afflictions are being accomplished! pet. in your brethren that are in the world.’ I v- 9 know very well that in every great grief there is a secret something which is incommunicable. ‘The heart knoweth its own prov. bitterness.’ Only the Maker of the heart, »v. 10 who having made it offers also to live in it, can quite enter into that recess. Yet it is a strong and tender consolation to our human souls to know that we do not pine alone in the midst of a surrounding wilderness of comfortable and indifferent ease. There is a fine and beautiful free masonry in the shared experience of affliction. Whatever else this gives you, it confers of necessity the high privilege of thinking of other children of sorrow, of praying for them, perhaps of speaking with them, not as an amateur but as an expert. You are a privileged person; you have title and qualification for entrance into the fraternity. You may without intrusion approach these others, not indeed to talk to them about your own troubles, at least not much, but to speak with them in a new way, intimate, reverent, in the living accent of knowledge, about what has fallen on them.

The time will come, as you use thus your experience of great pain, when you will even say to yourself that you would not, for all the world, not have suffered, and suffered greatly. Entering into the broken hearts of others with the talisman of your own trouble, thus consecrated to beautiful use, you will find a strange joy spring up amidst the pain. You will realize in a wonderful way that there is a high and holy vocation in sorrow; that you are getting out of it, what you could not have without it, a sacerdotal call, a gift for service, a precious * grace ’ to minister with to those who want precisely the ministry of a real and understanding fellowship. Very humbly, you will find yourself treading in the footprints of your Lord. ‘In that He Himself hath suffered, Heb. ii. being tempted,5 being tried and strained l under the tremendous test of anguish, ‘He is able to succour them that are tempted.’ To Him the supreme joy that followed His great pain was just this, that He was able thus to ’ succour,’ as a sorrowless Saviour could not have done. Is it not spiritually good and beautiful so to follow the Son of God? Is it not the innermost privilege of those who are the sons of God in Him, to suffer that they may succour? No lower vocation is worthy of the greatness of their title. Upon every brow that can truly shew even the faintest reflection of His glory there will be found something, I think, like unto a crown of thorns.

Venture then to thank God, for your fellows’ sake, that you are called to the fellowship of grief. And for your own life’s sake too. Is it too much to say that, in our mortal state, the soul only gets to understand its own depths, and to reach its own heights, through pain? A young singer, of superb organic power, was heard in one of her first appearances by a great master of music. ‘She wants only one gift more to be the finest vocalist in Europe, and that is — a broken heart.’

ii. Yet another ray, a light of sacred hope, can be seen falling on your sorrow, if you look. Be sure of this, that there is no trouble, I dare to say not one, which may not prove in the end to be the seed, the embryo, of a joy. Take it as it is, with all its pain, to God, and so save it from being that really evil thing, a wasted sorrow — and it shall be thus. ‘Your sorrow Johu xvi. syiall be turned into joy, So the Man of

Sorrows, who is also the Prince of life and light, assured His followers, on the verge of His own great darkness and their desolation. Take note that He does not merely say that one day your sorrow shall be made to cease and then, after it, as the next change in a shifting scene, shall come a joy. No, the two things are in a connexion vital, necessary. There are, in a wonderful way, two aspects of one thing. The joy shall be the sorrow transfigured. It shall be such that without the antecedent pain it would not have been. You shall taste the joy, and find it so pure, so true, so beautiful, so lofty, so fruitful of every growing and benignant good, that you could not bear to have missed the anguish which came before it.

It is a sure spiritual fact that, as sorrow endured with revolt or indifference can only harden, so sorrow hallowed can be the most purifying and enriching of all forces in human life. Accept it, understand it — I mean, understand that it has a purpose not of evil but of good — and it will be as in the often quoted parable. The refining of the silver is worked out in a glowing crucible. And the refiner sits by it and looks down upon it, and he hails the result achieved when in the much tried metal he sees the image of his face.

Wonderful insights into that secret have been given to suffering souls which I have known. c I see now that I could not enter into life except as maimed.’ The lips which said those words were young. I watched that happy morning turned early into the dusk of death. I knew how unspeakably much it had cost the sick one to lay every bright anticipation down at the feet of the Lord. But it was done. And the conviction, uttered from a deep soul in these simple words, was no form of only passive resignation. It made a positive brightness in the shadows, a dawn arising in the West.

iii. Rapid lessons in the science of faith are often learnt in the school of suffering. One such lesson is how to keep trust firm and patience steady under the stress of apparently unanswered prayer. That is a stern and heavy trial. You have prayed, oh how earnestly, how persistently, with your hand upon the promises of God, and it has seemed to be in vain. In this war, you have cried out for the invisible shield to keep that beloved head; perhaps a strong conviction of the consent of the Hearer has seemed to come. And then arrives the notice from the War Office, with the great Chiefs regret and sympathy; it is the death warrant of your hopes. Have you spoken to a deaf Heaven? Was it only the air into which you cried, and not the presence of God? Your anguish of questioning, be very sure, is understood and loved by Him. He is not angry. But He has wonderful reassurances to give you, as you listen at His feet. If He is indeed blessing your spirit through its other forms of pain, He will bless you through this.

6 Though He slay me,’ though He slay job xiii. my beloved, which is harder, ’ yet will I5 I trust in Him.’ Yes, simply because it is He. I have seen His face, therefore I will not be afraid of His hand, no, not though it c takes away the desire of my eyes with a stroke,’ and though He seems as if ™v’ I( He did not hear, and would let me hear nothing. As sure as His existence is the fact of His hearing. As sure as His presence is the regard of His love and power. But He has the right, having shewn you something of Himself, to ask for your unrelieved submission, ’ for a season, if need i Pet. i. be.’ Go to Him with your pang of per- 6 plexity about Him, and you will find that you can wait.

When John the Baptist was murdered in the vaults of Herod’s castle it was a tremendous instance of apparently useless and disappointed faith. To John himself his captivity had plainly been a very dark mystery. The Messiah, mighty to save, had left His own Forerunner alone, without the semblance of rescue, in the tyrant’s hands. And the tyrant, and the tyrant’s paramour, did their will upon him, and killed him, and his poor disciples knew not what to say. Happily

Matt. tiey knew, however, what to do. ‘They

xiv. 12 went and told Jesus.’ And we gather that

they found rest and hope in simply doing

that — because of the Person to whom

they told it. Take their method, and you

will find that the seemingly fruitless prayer

shall even now begin to be fruitful. * He

gives us what we ask, or He gives us some

thing better.’ Yes, He does, if we lie quiet

jolm in His hands. * Thou shalt know hereafter.’

xiii. 7

6 Thou shalt know hereafter.’ This small book may possibly be read by, or read to, some young soldier called to the very heavy cross of early and lasting disablement; loss of limbs, loss of sight, loss of the mighty nervous force of glorious youth. To such I speak with a special humbleness of soul. Words cannot utter the reverence with which I think of such courage and such long, slow, sacrifice as theirs. To them what shall I say? I can teach no philosophy of Stoical endurance. I can but pronounce the name of Jesus Christ, the Prince of sufferers, supremely intimate Partner with sufferers for ever. And I say, from His lips, that * thou shalt know hereafter.’

You are invited, you are welcomed with both His hands, to know HIM now. And you are promised that you shall know all about His ways with you hereafter. Great word and beautiful — HEREAFTER! Let Him, standing close beside you to-day, lay it upon your life’s great wound.