saying here mean less than--'Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted with a bliss well worth all the pain of the
medicinal sorrow'? Besides, the benediction surely means that the man is
blessed _because_ of his condition of mourning, not in spite of it. His
mourning is surely a part at least of the Lord's ground for
congratulating him: is it not the present operative means whereby the
consolation is growing possible? In a word, I do not think the Lord
would be content to call a man blessed on the mere ground of his going
to be restored to a former bliss by no means perfect; I think he
congratulated the mourners upon the grief they were enduring, because he
saw the excellent glory of the comfort that was drawing nigh; because he
knew the immeasurably greater joy to which the sorrow was at once
clearing the way and conducting the mourner. When I say _greater_, God
forbid I should mean _other!_ I mean the same bliss, divinely enlarged
and divinely purified--passed again through the hands of the creative
Perfection. The Lord knew all the history of love and loss; beheld
throughout the universe the winged Love discrowning the skeleton Fear.
God's comfort must ever be larger than man's grief, else were there gaps
in his Godhood. Mere restoration would leave a hiatus, barren and
growthless, in the development of his children.

But, alas, what a pinched hope, what miserable expectations, most who
call themselves the Lord's disciples derive from their notions of his
teaching! Well may they think of death as the one thing to be right
zealously avoided, and for ever lamented! Who would forsake even the
window-less hut of his sorrow for the poor mean place they imagine the
Father's house! Why, many of them do not even expect to know their
friends there! do not expect to distinguish one from another of all the
holy assembly! They will look in many faces, but never to recognize old
friends and lovers! A fine saviour of men is their Jesus! Glorious
lights they shine in the world of our sorrow, holding forth a word of
darkness, of dismallest death! Is the Lord such as they believe him?
'Good-bye, then, good Master!' cries the human heart. 'I thought thou
couldst save me, but, alas, thou canst not. If thou savest the part of
our being which can sin, thou lettest the part that can love sink into
hopeless perdition: thou art not he that should come; I look for
another! Thou wouldst destroy and not save me! Thy father is no