02.B14. Everlasting Consolation, Or Our Highest Joys

Chapter 29 EVERLASTING CONSOLATION, OR OUR HIGHEST JOYS WELLING OUT OF OUR DEEPEST SORROWS. The apostle Paul puts up this wonderful prayer in behalf of his converts at Thessalonica: -- "Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolations and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work." One of the most wondrous and memorable characteristics of the hidden life is the fact that our greatest and most enduring joys well out of our deepest sorrows, and those who in heaven stand nearest the eternal throne, and behold with the deepest bliss the face of God, are "they who came out of great tribulation," "endured great fights of affliction," "learned obedience from the things which they suffered," and thus "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." "Ye now, therefore," says our Saviour to His disciples, "have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." The joy which the disciples experienced after the Saviour appeared among them, "as they mourned and wept," was incomparably greater than it could have been but for the great sorrow by which their new-born joy had been preceded, and into which the former blended and was lost. The joy which succeeds, supersedes, and takes up into itself sorrow, is called "consolation;" and because the joy which thus supersedes sorrow in Christian experience is eternally enduring, it is called "everlasting consolation."

Let us see if we cannot attain to some adequate apprehension of this most important subject. Consolation, as I have intimated, is what, for the want of better terms, I would denominate a blended state of mind -- a state resulting from the blending of two other mutually genial states, sorrow on the one hand, and a genial form of joy on the other; the former sweetly blending into and losing itself in the latter, the new form of joy thus induced becoming a permanent well-spring of life in the mind.

I will give an illustrative fact which occurred in my own family. As I came down from my study and entered our parlour one day, I found our second child, a little daughter about three years of age, alone there, the mother, with the elder daughter, having gone out and left this one in the care of the kitchenmaid. I found this child, from some cause -- I never knew what -- in a state of mental agony such as I had never witnessed before. Her grief had reached a stage wholly past weeping, and which rendered her utterly unable to speak a single word. As she turned her face to me, there was the look of death in her eyes. Of course I was deeply alarmed. I did not attempt to allay her grief by words. Grief asks our sympathy, not words. I said to her at once, "My dear precious daughter, come to your father and sit here upon his knee, laying your head upon his bosom close to his heart." As she came to me, I took her tenderly up, placed her upon my knee, and pressed her head very gently to my heart. At every sigh I apprehended that the thread of life would break. I spoke not a word; but at each paroxysm I pressed her more closely to my heart, I soon perceived that those sighs became gradually less and less severe. At length they wholly ceased. A little while after, she looked up with a happy smile, and asked me if I recollected a certain event which had given her great pleasure. I entered at once into her new-born joy, enlarging very affectionately and smilingly upon that pleasing event. In a short time we were sweetly conversing together there, the happiest child and the happiest father I ever knew. My manifested sympathy and love had gently drawn from the heart of that child that great sorrow, and had induced in its place a form of joy unlike, and greater than, any she had ever experienced before, and which never could have been generated but in circumstances like those above detailed. Nor did that joy ever pass away. From that moment onward I became to that child a new being. Whenever ir was possible, she would be with me, sitting by me in my study, and walking with me, and seeking every practicable opportunity to exchange words with me. Now and then she would fix her eyes upon me, as if she could not take them away. Some three or four years after the occurrence above stated, while she was sitting with her mother in our parlour in Oberlin, I being absent for the long vacation, she took her pencil and paper, and after studying and writing awhile, handed to her mother a beautiful little poem, a poem that would have honoured a young Tennyson. The measure was peculiar, each stanza being composed of three lines. The subject of the poem was the great void in her heart, the void occasioned by the absence of her father, and her intense desire for his return. When she was on a visit to our house, at the time when she was quite forty years of age, she being herself a parent then, I related to her the incident of her childhood given above, a fact which she had of course forgotten. Then she understood the cause of the mysterious bond which had so linked her being with mine, and rendered her father such a form of sunlight to her heart. Here we have the true idea of consolation, a peculiar and special kind of joy, which takes form in the soul only in seasons of special sorrow -- a form of sacred joy "that is born, like the rainbow, in tears," but which never, like the rainbow. passes away.

Now, one of the most distinguished and special peculiarities of the gospel. that which separates and peculiarises it from all other religions or any other forms of belief, is the fact that for every form of sorrow with which the heart can be smitten this gospel brings to the believing, trustful, and enduring spirit "everlasting consolation, and good hope through grace," changing such sorrows into forms of joy which are ineffably blissful and eternally enduring. Examine all other religions the earth has ever known, sound the depths of every system of philosophy which unbelief has ever developed, and you will fail utterly to find in any one of them, or in all of them together, a single ray or element of consolation, a single element of power to bring joy and gladness to a broken heart or a wounded spirit.

"I do wish," said a widowed daughter of a very wealthy citizen of the city of New York, as the family had returned one Sabbath from their place of worship, their minister being a celebrated preacher of the Broad Church, -- "I do wish that our pastor would say something to bring consolation to a bereaved heart such as I have." "Why," said a friend of ours who had accompanied the family to their place of worship that day, "the God your pastor preaches is a mere force, utterly void of all feeling or emotion of any kind, and is, therefore, wholly void, and incapable of any kind of sympathy with human joy or sorrow." The next time my friend visited that family, he found them worshipping in an Evangelical congregation, where an incarnate Saviour is preached, a Saviour who has been anointed by the Eternal Father to "bind up the broken-hearted." What absolutely evinces the gospel as, like the New Jerusalem, coming down to us from "God out of heaven," is this power to bring to every sin-blighted and sorrow-smitten heart such "everlasting consolations and good hope through grace."

All the world have read with admiration and wonder the beauteous scene which transpired at the house of Simon the leper, the scene in which Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anointed both the head and feet of Jesus with precious ointment. Having been informed by our Saviour of His approaching death, she had purchased the ointment, and had "kept it against the day of His burying." Seeing Jesus sitting with her brother at the feast, her love and gratitude induced her to change her purpose, and to anoint that sacred body "beforehand to the burying." What so deeply moved the gratitude of that sister, and brought such "everlasting consolation" to her heart, was not the mere fact that her brother had been raised from the dead, but the melting scene which preceded that event. Let us read it. "Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him!" All heaven must have looked with silent, if not with tearful, wonder at that spectacle.

It was not the mere fact, I repeat, of the resurrection of that brother, but the ineffable compassion, sympathy, and love, manifested in connection with the bestowment of the gift that ever after made such eternal sunlight in the hearts of that brother and his two sisters. In the event, the sisters received a temporary good of great value. In the love revealed in the manner of the gift "everlasting consolations and good hope through grace" came to their hearts. As the perfections and glory of Christ shall unfold more and more, through eternal ages, before their mind, the fact represented in the words, "Jesus wept," will be a central light through which that glory shall be seen. So it will be with all the universe. In like manner, when the sanctified mind is smitten with any form or degree of sorrow whatever, let the Spirit unveil to that mind the face of Christ looking with ineffable love upon the face of that soul, and all its sorrow will sweetly blend into a form of joy and consolation eternally enduring. Just such power has Christ over all our sorrows.

Let us now turn our thoughts to another scene. "But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto Him, Rabboni; which is to say Master."

I have often enquired with myself as to the tone and manner in which that name was then uttered, and have asked myself "How shall I utter it when I read the passage?" On some former occasion, perhaps at the time when He restored her to her right mind, or immediately after that event, He must have uttered her name in a tone and manner which thrilled through her whole being, and made the utterance one of the memorable facts of her existence. No wonder that when Jesus now pronounced that name with the same tone and manner as on that, to her, eternally memorable occasion, no wonder, I say, that she instantly exclaimed "Rabboni." She intuitively apprehended that no being but Christ could thus pronounce that name. As she heard that name thus pronounced, how instantly did the deep midnight of her soul change into eternal sunlight! how instantly did her great sorrow blend and lose itself in "everlasting consolation and good hope through grace"! But for that great sorrow, Christ could not have become to her what He afterwards was, and ever will be to eternity. The new-born joy which then filled her whole being is in her yet, and there it will remain, deepening and expanding for ever and ever. The word "Mary," as Jesus then pronounced it, will ever cause her heart-strings to vibrate with a music that "will make melody in the ear of God."

Few people seem at all to understand the full meaning of the apostle John in the words, "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." The last evening which He spent with them before He suffered, He thus spoke of the sorrow which then filled their hearts: -- "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." After their hearts were filled, and even burdened, with "joy unspeakable and full of glory" at the reappearing of Christ in their midst, John, calling to mind the words of our Saviour, the words above cited, says, "Then," that is, just as Christ said it should be, "WERE the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." Jesus said, "I will see you again,, and your heart shall rejoice," and so we found it. Jesus also said, "Your joy no man taketh from you," and "neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor peril, nor sword, nor death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," hath been able, nor ever will be able, to take that joy out of their hearts. So it ever is. The joy which wells out of sorrow in the true believer’s heart can take on but one form, that of "everlasting consolation and good hope through grace."

I must refer to one additional illustration taken from Scripture -- the manifestation of Christ to John when the Saviour appeared in glory to the apostle at the opening of the vision of the Apocalypse. The following passage presents the fact to which I refer: -- "And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the First and the Last: and I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for ever more, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." The beauty and impressiveness of the original is almost wholly darkened by the above translation. The object of our Saviour in the words addressed to John was to allay his dread, and impart to him such an assurance that he could calmly receive the message which Christ was to send to the Churches through His disciple. The words, "Fear not; I am the First and the Last," would have tended but to deepen and perfect the death-terror which Christ’s appearance had induced.

Literaly rendered, the passage reads thus:-- "Fear not; it is I, the First and the Last: and I am alive; and I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever more, Amen : and have the keys of hell and of death." The original words which I have translated "It is I," had been, in the exact form here repeated, twice uttered in the hearing of John, and that under circumstances of most memorable and tenderly impressive interest: first when our Saviour came "walking upon the water," during the night-tempest on the Sea of Galilee, and allayed their fears by saying, "It is I; be not afraid;" and secondly, when He first appeared in their midst after His resurrection, and again allayed their fears by saying to them, "Be not affrighted; handle me, and see that it is I myself." Now, when Christ so gently laid His right hand upon the apostle, who was almost dead with terror, and so tenderly repeated those ever-memorable words in his ears, at the same time recalling those wonderful memories which had made such melody in the apostle’s mind, how adapted all this was to revive his spirits, put strength into him, and to "assure his heart" in the presence of his glorified Redeemer! It is no wonder that, from that moment onward, all dread and terror of Christ departed for ever from the. heart of the apostle, and he became possessed with but one sentiment in view of every form of the coming of his Lord: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen." My object in presenting such facts is to assure the reader of this great truth, that when we are in Christ, He will turn all our sorrows into everlasting joy and gladness, gird us with immortal strength in all our weaknesses, impart to us in our darkest hours the everlasting light of God, and in all our necessities do for us "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think."

I will now allude to a case which came to my knowledge since my present sojourn in this city. While in attendance at a meeting for the promotion of personal holiness, a lady, giving me her hand, inquired if I did not recollect her? My reply was, that I did recollect her countenance, but could not designate her name, or the circumstances in which we had met. "Do you not recollect that, when you were in London, some twenty-five years ago, a Mrs N., a lady friend of yours from America, introduced you to the family of a Mr M.?" "I well recollect that family," I replied. "I often spoke of it in my own country, and have inquired after it since my late arrival in London." "I am Mrs M. My husband is also present, and will rejoice to take you by the hand. You will recollect how great was my peace and joy in believing when you first saw us. I had been greatly blessed in reading your work on ’Christian Perfection.’" Mrs M., an influential member of one of the churches of the Establishment in this city, was among the happiest believers I ever met with. "Well," she continued, "the joy that then dwelt in my heart has never departed nor grown less, but has increased more and more. Do you remember our children?" "I recollect that you had children about you then, but that is all." "Well, our eldest, our only son, grew to be twenty-three years of age. Christ called for him then, and we gave him up. Our daughter, next in age, grew to twenty-five. Christ asked for her also, and we replied, ’As Thou wilt, Lord only give us more of Thyself.’ We had one lamb left, ’a little one,’ a daughter ten and a half years of age. Christ called for her too, and our reply was, ’The cup which our Father giveth us, shall we not drink it?’ Thus ’we were written childless.’ But it is all the same. Our light has never gone out or grown dim, but shineth more and more as the perfect day dawns on." This, I said in my heart, is the consolation. Surely "we can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth us." With what unspeakable interest have I listened to the rich testimony for Christ which that husband and wife have given in conferences which I have attended! A poor slave, after he had been, for no reason for which slaves are usually beaten, scourged till he barely had the breath of life in him, crept away to his lonely hut, and lay groaning there. The Spirit of God soon brought heaven so near to the sufferer’s mind, and made his sufferings appear so momentary to him, that he sat up and began to sing for joy of heart -- "My suffering time will soon be o’er;

I soon shall weep and sigh no more. My ransomed soul shall soar away, And sing God’s praise in endless day." The master, who had been listening outside, now rushed in, and implored the forgiveness and prayers of the sufferer. From that moment suffering and toil were other things than they had been to that slave’s mind -- the suffering and toil appearing so short, and the glory to follow so infinite and endless, that the former had no power to disturb his peace. This, I repeat, is the consolation. So were "the sufferings of this present time" to the mind of Paul. God’s Spirit made them appear to him as they are in themselves, and as they are in their endless consequences, to all who "endure temptation," and "learn obedience from the things which they suffer." Over such minds afflictions have no power but to discipline and perfect virtue, and induce new forms of "everlasting consolations and good hope through grace" They consequently "glory in tribulation." The reader may be inclined to ask, How is it possible that pain, suffering, and sorrow can induce such joyful experiences? Take a single case in illustration. Many years since, a young man of a very wealthy family in Charleston, S.C., came to the city of New York and submitted his case to a council of physicians. As the result of the examination, he was informed that his case was indeed a sad one, that a hard substance was forming about one of the orifices of his heart, and would soon close it up and cause his death. In answer to the inquiry whether the substance could be removed by a surgical operation, he was told that the event was possible, but that the probabilities appeared as a hundred to one against him. "But death is certain if this tumour is not removed?" "Yes." "Then I take the risk," replied the youth. The surgeons refused to do anything about it until they had sent to the parents a written statement of the perils of the operation, and had received from them a written request to undertake it. When the operation was commenced, the young man was told that if at any time the operators should stop cutting his flesh, he might know that death must ensue. At length, contrary to all prior calculations, a suspension for a few moments became necessary. No one spoke or whispered. What a moment of suspense to the young man! Was it death? At length the experience of an acute pain indicated that the operation had been recommenced. "That pain," said the young man afterwards, the operation proving a success, -- "that pain was to me the most blissful feeling I ever experienced in my life." The reason is manifest. The pain stood connected in his mind with a promise of life, and the absence of pain with the assurance of death. Now the Spirit of God can so connect with every pain and affliction and form of sorrow we may experience a promise of life eternal, that suffering shall seem blissful rather than distressing, while the promise shall induce forms of fulness of joy eternally enduring. This is the consolation reserved for the believer in all "the sufferings of this present time." As far as my own case is concerned, I would say, that sorrow and suffering, bereavement, disappointment, and "hope deferred," seem to have but one mission -- to develop, refine, and enlarge the susceptibilities, and to new capacitate the mind for the reception of new and higher forms of blessedness than were before possible. Each special form of sorrow is attended with some special and correlative manifestation of the character, love, or grace of Christ, a manifestation which ever after remains in the mind as a source of everlasting consolation and "joy unspeakable and full of glory." Among the aspects of Christ’s character and grace -- aspects which induce the fullest and most abiding blessedness -- are those which the Spirit has unveiled to the mind when some great sorrow lay upon the heart. Hence it is that afflictions, tribulations, and great heavinesses become almost sacred in the mind’s regard, followed as they all are, and that so soon, with such "everlasting consolations and good hope through grace." The mind does not desire or pray for such providences. When they are sent, however -- As clouds of glory do they come, From God, who is our home."

Since that great paideia, that sacred heaven-descended paideia, sorrow and affliction sustain different relations to the mind from what they ever did before. They have power to melt the soul, but not so to affect the sensibilities as to produce mental pain or agony. Simultaneously with the sorrow comes the joy of the Lord, with such fullness that the former blends into the latter without paining the soul at all. Under the severest bodily suffering the mind lies in perfect quietness and assurance.

I may refer in illustration to one scene. During the late war in the United States, our only son entered the army. On occasion of the first great battle where he was present, he rose from a sick-bed, and, contrary to the absolute prohibition of his physician, as first lieutenant led his company into the scene, and remained with them during the day, leading fifty-six men into the battle, and sixteen out of it. In the next great battle into which, as captain, he led his company, he himself received a fatal injury, from which he died some six months afterwards. And such a death. He seemed to "see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God," the Son of Man holding out to the dying one "a crown of life." From the grave of our son, the wife of my youth went home with me to die, she having fataly overtaxed her strength in caring for him during the last months of his sickness. A blooming daughter, twenty-two years of age, whose being had ever been strangely linked with that mother and brother, drooped under the bereavement, and, despite all our efforts to sustain and save her, "dropped into the lap of God," her death being not so rapturous, but as peaceful, as that of her brother. Under these bereavements my whole soul was melted and flowed out like water. At the same time, the peace of God was so full, pervading, and so ineffable in my heart, that I could not tell what was the chief cause of my tears -- the great sorrow on the one hand, or the unspeakable joy of the Lord on the other.

Such, reader, is the real experience of those who are in the world and in Christ while here. If they have sorrow -- and "in the world they will have tribulation" -- their sorrows are but momentary birth-throes of joys ineffable and eternally enduring. The deepest shades with which earth’s tribulations can darken their horizon are but the shadows which the Sun of Righteousness casts before Him when He is about to rise in our hearts "with healings in His wings." When walking with God -- "Take this thought with you as you go abroad, That shade is the creation of light, And light is the shadow of God."