SORROWS AND BEYOND

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1901

SORROWS AND BEYOND.

SURELY this sinful old earth has its share of sorrows. Like Jerusalem of old, it can say to its sister spheres, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” Lam. 1:12. From the time that man took the serpent sin to his bosom and nursed it by his life he has known sorrow, and earth has been the befitting home of the sad angel.

WHEN God spoke to the transgressors in Eden, He uttered no arbitrary decree which brought with it the pain and the grief. To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.” To the man, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” Not in these words, however, began the sorrow, the curse: they began in the first departure in disobedience; in the cherishing of the first principle of disloyalty to God’s law, harmony with which was their life. The Lord only told them what would be the inevitable result of their transgression, what had already begun to be,

THUS has it been. Every son and daughter of Adam have eaten of the heritage. They have tasted of the fruit of sin. They have companied with the pain, the disappointment, the suffering, the sorrow. Earth’s brightest stars of hope have set in impenetrable night. Earth’s seemingly most luscious fruits have turned to Dead Sea apples when plucked and eaten. Earth’s gleaming gold and gems have proved worthless shining sand. Earth’s flowers fade and die, and sometimes the sweetest perfume hides the deadliest poison. Earth’s princes that have seemed like sturdy oaks have proved broken reeds. Earth’s mightiest kingdoms of iron have crumbled like brittle clay.

O, IT is a sad, sorrowful world! From Eden lost to the present wrecked characters, wrecked homes, wrecked churches, wrecked cities, wrecked kingdoms, blasted virtue, dethroned wisdom, debased honor, rampant vice, cruel war, crueler greed, high-handed oppression, gorgon-headed disease and death, the world has been one great house of sorrow and mourning, of wailing and anguish. And often is the proverb true, “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful.”

BUT it is all—the pain, the grief, the hopelessness, the incurable sorrow—the fruit of sin. But the sin is not of God. “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow therewith.” The only way to be rid of the sorrow is to get rid of the sin. The only way to triumph over the incurable sorrow is to partake of the sorrow which issues in joy.

FOR there are two kinds of sorrow in this old world; there is, first, “the sorrow of the world,” that “worketh death.” That is the sorrow which mourns the effect of the deed, not the deed from which sprang the effect. It would continue the cause and sorrow over

the effect. It would steal the horse and mourn because caught. It would live the life of the debauchee, the rake, the drunkard, and sorrow over ruined mind, broken constitution, diseased body, blasted prospects. It would follow the cruel, tyrannical laws of Dame Fashion, and mourn a burdensome life and weakened offspring. Aye, “the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

BUT there is another kind: “Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret.” 2 Cor. 7:10, R.V. This is sorrow against sin; and sin is inharmony with God. All else is nothing to the great Creator. Beyond all earth’s sadness, beyond even its grave-gloom, are eternal brightness and joy to all not allied with sin; but sin and all its allies go out in the eternal night of oblivion.

IT was sorrow against sin which moved the heart of God’s eternal Son. It was because His own creatures were under its cruel dominion that He left the joy of heaven’s purity, and became, for the sake of the children of earth, the “Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” It was the ungrateful indifference to the eternal Sacrifice of Heaven, nay, more, the open opposition to the law of God, that wrung from His heroic lips, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” and that at last broke His great heart upon the cross.

BUT His sorrow against sin for our sakes, dear reader, was not limited to Gethsemane and other resorts which knew Him “in the days of His flesh,” when He “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.” O, no, this is but one act in the long drama of sin, a little disclosure to those of earth of God’s great love—in His Son Jesus Christ!

THE name of our picture is Via Dolorosa, “The Dolorous Way,” “The Way of Sorrows.” It is a part of the road, one of the streets, which Jesus trod on the way to Golgotha, the culminating act of His earthly sacrifice. People traverse it, mourn over it, and narrow their minds to its limited walls. But it is only at best an earth glimpse of the great, long way of suffering and sorrow felt by the great heart of God from the time that His children fell under sin’s power, till the present. Nay, do we not read that hundreds of years before “the Man of Sorrows” walked the earth, “in all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His presence saved them; in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and carried them all the days of old.” Isa. 63:9. And does it not say hundreds of years earlier still, “His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel” (Judges 10:16)? He is “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” If not “Man of Sorrows,” then truly He was the “Angel of Sorrows.”

BUT the Man of Sorrows came to give joy, and that “joy no man [no one] taketh from you.” He bore our sins that we might be righteous, our sorrows that we might have joy, our death that we might have life forevermore. But to know His joy we must share His sorrow against sin. If we have it not, He will give it. God exalted Him at His own right hand “to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance.” Do you wish it? Ask in faith. See sin as God sees it. See all the world’s anguish and wo and sorrow, as the results of delusive sin. See what it has cost the universe, and let godly sorrow against sin cleanse your heart. Let it do the work it will do in those who are “made sorry after a godly sort.” “What earnest care it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what longing, yea, what zeal, yea, what avenging! In everything ye approved yourselves to be pure in the matter.” 2 Cor. 7:11, R.V.

IN sorrow against sin there is no despair; the soul may be ever rejoicing. 2 Cor. 6:10. He will mourn, as Jesus mourns, for the sake of others, but he rejoices in the power of God to save even here. And beyond all earth’s sorrow, sin, gloom, trouble, anguish, death, he sees by faith the better land, when death shall be no more, when the sorrow of the saints shall be “turned into joy,” when “sorrow and sighing shall flee away,” when “the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people shall He take away from off all the earth.” Go forth with rejoicing, ye who sorrow in Christ. “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” Thru the glistening drops of true penitence or sorrow for others’ wo, is visible the covenant bow of God’s everlasting promises.