Mourning Ended
“The days of thy mourning shall be ended.” — Isa. Ix. 20.
The believer has ‘’mourning days.” The place of his sojourn is a valley of tears, Adam went weeping from his paradise, we go weeping on the way to ours. But, pilgrim of grief! thj tears are numbered. A few more aching sighs — a few more gloomy clouds — and the eternal sun shall burst on thee, whose radiance shall never more be obscured I Life may be to thee one long “Valley of Baca” — a protracted scene of “weeping I” — but soon shalt thou hear the sweet chimes wafted from the towers of the new Jerusalem, “Enter into the joy of thy Lord!”” The Lord God shall wipe away all tears from off all faces T
“The DAYS of thy mourning F It is a consoling thought that all these days are aypointed — meted out — numbered.” Unto you it is GIVEN,” sajs the apostle, “to suffer Yesl niid if thou art a child of the covenant, thy mourning days are days of special privilege, intended to be fraught with blessing. To the unbeliever, they are earnests of everlasting woe; — to the believer, they are preludes and precursors of eternal glory! Afliiction to the one is the cloud without the Bow, — to the other, it is the cloud radiant and lustrous with gospel promise and gospel hope!
Reader! art thou now one of the many members of the family of sorrow? Be comforted! Soon the long night-watch will be over — pain, sickness, weakness, weariness. Soon the windows of the soul will be no more darkened. Soon thou shalt have nothing to be delivered from, — thy present losses and crosses will turn into eternal gains, — -the dews of the night of weeping, (nature’s tear-drops) will come to sparkle like beauteous gems in the morning of immortality! Soon the Master’s footsteps will be heard, saying, “The days of thy mourning are ended,” and thou shalt take off thy sackcloth, and be girded with gladness.
Up to that moment, thy life may have been one long “day” of mourning! but once past the golden portals, and the eye can be dim no more; — the very fountain of weeping will be dried I The period of your mourning is counted by “days;” — of your eternal rejoicing py eras and cycles I “Why art thou then cast down, 0 my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God!” I will gaze through my tears on this celestial rainbow, and sing this “song in the night,” which the God, who is to wipe my tears away, has put into my lips: “And there shall he no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there he any more tears, for the formei’ things are ‘passed axoay /”