love of
excellence, of wisdom, of sympathy, but it is that very love, when
conscious that excellence, that wisdom, that sympathy have departed."
They, then, who deem it necessary for man's spiritual welfare that he
should constantly feel the pressure of chastisement, and be engirt with
the mist of tears, do not reason well. Jeremy Taylor reasons thus, when
he says in allusion to certain lamps which burned for many ages in a
tomb, but which expired when brought into open day: "So long as we are
in the retirements of sorrow, of want, of fear, of sickness, we are
burning and shining lamps; but when God lifts us up from the gates
of death and carries us abroad into the open air, to converse with
prosperity and temptations, we go out in darkness; and we cannot be
preserved in light and heat but by still dwelling in the regions of
sorrow." "There is beauty, and, to a certain extent, truth in this
figure," says a writer, in reply; "but it by no means follows that
continuous suffering would be good for man; on the contrary, it would
be as remote from producing the perfection of our moral nature as
unmitigated prosperity. It would be apt to produce a morbid and
ghastly piety; the 'bright lamps' of which Taylor speaks would still
be irradiating only a tomb." (Edinburgh Review No 141 The article on
Pascal) We may doubt whether there is more essential religiousness
in this seeking of sorrow as a mortification,--in this monastic
self-laceration and exclusion,--than in the morbid misery of the
hypochondriac. Neither comprehends the whole of life, nor is adapted to
its realities. Christ was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;"
but he was also full of sympathy with all good, and enjoyed the charm
of friendship, and the light of existence. Around that great Life gather
many amenities. Below that face of agony beats a heart familiar with the
best affections of human nature; otherwise, we may believe, the agony
would not appear. The sadness of that last supper indicates the breaking
up of many joyful communions and the history which closes in the shadow
of the cross mingles with the festival of Cana, and lingers around the
home at Bethany.

But I remark, once more, that while Christianity neither despises nor
affects to desire sorrow, it clearly recognizes its great and beneficial
mission. In one word, it shows its disciplinary character, and thus
practically interprets the mystery of evil. It regards man as a
spiritual being, t