The True Victory Over Sorrow

“The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it.” — Gen. XXVIII. 13.

The words are spoken to the prostrate Jacob on his stone pillow at Bethel, and the promise is the strangest ever conceived. “I will give thee the land whereon thou liest — the scene of thy humiliation, the place of thy prostration, the spot where thou art now a starving vagrant.” There is something startling here.. It is no uncommon thing for a man in the hour of his adversity to have a vision of better fortune; I do not wonder that even upon his pillow of stone Jacob should have had a dream of coming glory. But this is more than a dream of coming glory. It is a dream which says, “There is a time coming in which your glory shall consist in the very thing which now constitutes your pain.” Nothing could be more sad to Jacob than the ground on which he was lying. It was the hour of his poverty. It was the season of his night. It was the seeming absence of his God. His deepest thought at the 264 time was that God had forgotten him. His one cry of subsequent surprise is this, “The Lord was in this place, and I knew it not! “It was the only moment in his life when he felt deserted by Heaven, when he was disposed to say,” My way is hid from the Lord.” And yet the dream declares that this rejected moment is to be the scene of his glory — “The land whereon thou Hest will I give thee, the place of thy prostration will be thy paradise.” There is no promise in the world so sweet to a distressed soul as this. The promise of deliverance is dear, but it is not the dearest. If I have been prostrated on an earthly bed, it is something to know that one day I shall get Easter wings and fly away. Yet even in my upward flight should I not feel that I had wasted time? Should I not feel that while I lay upon my pillow of stone I had lost a day’s work in the vineyard, that the world was moving on and had left me a march behind? But when the voice says, “The ground whereon thou liest shall be thy glory,” this indeed is victory. It is not mere Easter morning; it is the Easter of Calvary. It is not the resurrection into shining garments; it is the resurrection of the man with his grave-clothes. It is not the forgetting of the rents in the old robe by putting on a heavenly vesture; it 265 is the finding of a place of beauty for the print of the former nails. The day of my trial has been the dawn of my triumph.

My soul, reject not the place of thy prostration! It has ever been thy robing-room for royalty. Ask the great ones of the past what has been the spot of their prosperity; they will say, “It was the cold ground on which I once was lying.” Ask Abraham; he will point you to the sacrifice o Moriah. Ask Joseph; he will direct you to his dungeon. Ask Moses; he will date his fortune from his danger in the Nile. Ask Ruth; she will bid you build her monument in the field of her toil. Ask David; he will tell you that his songs came from the night. Ask Job; he will remind you that God answered him out of the whirlwind. Ask Peter; he will extol his submersion in the sea. Ask John; he will give the palm to Patmos, Ask Paul; he will attribute his inspiration to the light which struck him blind. Ask one more — the Son of Man. Ask Him whence has come His rule over the world. He will answer, “From the cold ground on which I was lying — the Gethsemane ground; I received My sceptre there.” Thou too, my soul, shalt be garlanded by Gethsemane. The cup thou fain wouldst pass from thee will be thy coronet in the sweet by-and-by.

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The hour of thy loneUness will crown thee. The day of thy depression will regale thee. It is thy desert that will break forth into singing; it is the trees of thy silent forest that will clap their hands. The last things will be first in the sweet by-and-by. The thorns will be roses; the vales will be hills; the crooks will be straight lines; the ruts will be level; the mist will be heat; the shadows will be shining; the losses will be promotions; the tears will be tracks of gold. The voice of God to thine evening will be this,” Thy treasure is hid in the ground where thou wert lying.*’