and that it is the faithlessness of this day which prevents men from accepting God’s promises in their literal sense with simple childlike faith.
Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still—that up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight and warmth and cloudless blue sky. Believe in God’s covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life, God is peace and joy eternal, God is without change, and labours to give life and joy and peace to man and beast and all created things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. It is a witness that God, who made the world, is the friend and preserver of man; that His promises are like the everlasting sunshine which is above the clouds, without spot or fading, without variableness or shadow of turning.
If I did not believe in a special Providence, in a perpetual education of men by evil as well as good, by small things as well as great—if I did not believe that—I could believe nothing.
Let us be content; we do not know what is good for us, and God does.
It is true, and you will find it true (though God knows it is a difficult lesson enough to learn) that there should be no greater comfort to Christian people than to be made like Christ by suffering patiently not only the hard work of every-day life, but sorrows, troubles, and sicknesses, and all our heavenly Father’s corrections, whensoever, by any manner of adversity, it shall please His gracious goodness to visit them. For Christ Himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain. He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. Therefore those words which we read in the Visitation of the Sick about this matter are not mere kind words, meant to give comfort for the moment. They are truth and fact and sound philosophy. They are as true for the young lad in health and spirits as for the old folks crawling towards their graves. It is true that sickness and all sorts of troubles are sent to correct and amend in us whatsoever doth offend the eye of our heavenly Father. It is true, and you will find it true, that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.
“That ye through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,” says St. Paul; and, again, “Let patience have her perfect work.” But where are we to get patience? God knows it is hard in such a world as this for poor creatures to be always patient. But faith can breed patience, though patience cannot breed itself; and faith in whom? Faith in our Father in Heaven, even in Almighty God Himself. He calls Himself the “God of Patience and Consolation.” Pray for His Holy Spirit, and He will make you patient; pray for His Holy Spirit, and He will console and comfort you. He has promised that Spirit of His—the Comforter—the Spirit of Love, Trust, and Patience—to as many as ask Him. Ask Him at His Holy Table to make you patient; ask Him to change your wills into the likeness of His will. Then will your eyes be opened; then will you see in the Scriptures a sure promise of hope, and glory, and redemption for yourself and all the world; then you will see in the blessed Sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood a sure sign and warrant, handed down from hand to hand, from age to age, from year to year, from father to son, that His promises shall be fulfilled—that patience shall have her perfect work—that hope shall become a reality—that not one of the Lord’s words shall fail or pass away till all be fulfilled.
God means some good to you by prostrating you—perhaps He means by giving you blessings almost without your asking, to show you how little avails morbid sensitiveness or self-tormenting struggles. Synthetical minds are subject to this self-torture. Such a period in your life is the time to become again a little child! I do not mean a re-regeneration, but a permitting of the mind to assume that tone of calm wonder and infantile trust, which will allow all the innate principles within—all God-bestowed graces which have been bruised and bowed by the tempest, to blossom gently upwards again, in “the clear shining after rain”—a breathing time in life—not too much retrospection or self-examination—keep that for the healthy and vigorous hours of the mind—but a silent basking in the light of God’s presence—a time for faith, more than for labour; for general and unexpressed, more than for particular or earnest prayer.
Sorrow, though dreary, is not barren. Nothing need be barren to those who view all things in their real light, as links in the great chain of progression, both for themselves and for the universe. To us, all Time should seem so full of life; every moment the grave and the father of unnumbered events and designs in heaven and earth, revealing the mind of our God Himself—all things moving smoothly and surely, in spite of apparent checks and disappointments, towards the appointed End!
In all the chances and changes of this mortal life, it is our one comfort to believe firmly and actively in the changeless kingdom, and in the changeless King. This alone will give us calm, patience, faith, and hope, though the heavens and the earth be shaken around us. For so only shall we see that the kingdom, of which we are citizens, is a kingdom of light, and not of darkness; of truth, and not of falsehood; of freedom, and not of slavery; of bounty and mercy, and not of wrath and fear; that we live and move and have our being, not in a “Deus quidam deceptor,” who grudges His children wisdom, but in a Father of Light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. In His kingdom we are; and in the King whom He has set over it we can have most perfect trust. For us that King stooped from heaven to earth; for us He was born, for us He toiled, for us He suffered, for us He died, for us He arose again, for us He sits for ever at God’s right hand. And can we not trust Him? Let Him do what He will. Let Him lead us whither He will. Wheresoever He leads must be the way of truth and life. Whatsoever He does, must be in harmony with that infinite love which He displayed for us upon the Cross. Whatsoever He does must be in harmony with that eternal purpose by which He reveals to men God their Father. Therefore, though the heaven and the earth be shaken around us, we will trust in Him; for we know that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
If we believe that God is educating men, the when, the where, and the how, are not only unimportant, but considering Who is the teacher, unfathomable to us; and it is enough to be able to believe that the Lord of all things is influencing us through all things.
Provided we attain at last to the truly heroic and divine life, which is the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by what strange and weary ways, or through what painful and humiliating processes, we have arrived thither. If God has loved us, if God will receive us, then let us submit loyally and humbly to His law—“Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”
I believe that the wisest plan of bearing sorrow is sometimes not to try to bear it—as long as one is not crippled for one’s every-day duties—but to give way to sorrow, utterly and freely. Perhaps sorrow is sent that we may give way to it, and, in drinking the cup to the dregs, find some medicine in it itself which we should not find if we began doctoring ourselves, or letting others doctor us. If we say simply, “I am wretched, I ought to be wretched;” then we shall perhaps hear a voice, “Who made thee wretched but God? Then what can He mean but thy good?” And if the heart answers impatiently, “My good? I don’t want it, I want my love!” perhaps the voice may answer, “Then thou shalt have both in time.”
After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, for it solves itself—so very soon
