Now, note, again, how such sorrow will refine and ennoble character. How
different our claims upon other men would be if we possessed this sober,
saddened estimate of what we really are! How our petulance, and
arrogance, and insisting upon what is due to us of respect and homage
and deference would all disappear! How much more rigid would be our
guard upon ourselves, our own emotions, our own inclinations and tastes!
How much more lenient would be our judgment of the openly and
confessedly naughty ones, who have gone a little further in act, but not
an inch further in essence, than we have done! How different our
attitude to our fellows; and how lowly our attitude to God! Such sorrow
would sober us, would deliver us from our lusting after the gauds of
earth, would make us serious and reflective, would bring us to that
'sad, wise valour' which is the conquering characteristic of humanity.

There is nothing more contemptible than the lives which, for want of
this self-knowledge, foam away in idle mirth, and effervesce in what the
world calls 'high spirits.'

'There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely,
There's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chords in melancholy.'

So said one whose reputation in English literature is mainly that of a
humorist. He had learned that the only noble humanity is that in which
the fountains of laughter and of tears lie so close together that their
waters intermingle. I beseech you not to confound the 'laughter of
fools,' which is the 'crackling of thorns under the pot,' with the true,
solemn, ennobling gladness which lives along with this sorrow of my
text.

Further, such mourning infused into the sorrow that comes from external
disasters will make it blessed too. As I have said, there is nothing in
any condition of life which necessarily and universally makes it
blessed. Though poets and moralists and Christian people have talked a
great deal, and beautifully and truly, about the sanctifying and
sweetening influences of calamity, do not let us forget that there are
perhaps as many people made worse by their sorrows as are made better by
them. There is such a thing as being made sullen, hard, selfish,
negligent of duty, resentful against God, hopeless, by the pressure of
our calamities. Blessed be God, there is such a thing as being drawn to
Him by them! Then they, too, come within the sweep of this benediction
of the Master, a