THE USES OF SORROW by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 27, 1862

THE USES OF SORROW.

By James White

It is a distinctive feature of the Christian religion that sorrows and misfortunes are not the thunderbolts of an angry God, but are the paternal corrections of a Father chastening his children. The Greeks, it is true, understood the beneficent effects of affliction in shaping and developing character, and their proverb, pathemata mathemata, finds a perfect translation in that beautiful verse of Mrs. Browning, "knowledge by suffering entereth;" but they always ascribed the cause of calamity to the direful wrath of Zeus.

The old Jewish theology seems to have been vitalized by the same spirit. Length of days, respect and honor, wealth and wisdom, are promised to the righteous, while sudden death and every worldly woe are threatened against the ungodly. Thus, with Jew, and Greek, earthly good is made the touchstone of divine approbation. It was left for a new and nobler dispensation to teach mankind that their "light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh out for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." "Prosperity," says Lord Bacon, "is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God's favor."

Sorrow and suffering are, by all the teachings of the Gospel, divine in their origin, holy in their ministry, beneficent in their results. We need their purifying influence to make us one with Christ. They transfigure life, reconcile us to duty, and encircle the grave with a halo of light through which we enter heaven. They are the divine agents that cause the soul to slough off earthly affections; the inception of that mysterious process by which mortality shall put on immortality.

Suffering humanizes us. In that beautiful German story, "Undine," a wild, weird, soulless water-sprite is transformed into a sweet, gentle child of earth, endowed with all the mysteries of life and death, and immortality, by the simple power of Love. Mr. Hawthorne has followed out the same idea in his "Marble Faun," where the gay and rollicksume Donatello, a creature who in some way seems to have been preserved from "our Adam's taint and woe," possessed of a paradisial innocence and simplicity, is by a great crime made kin to mankind and heir to the fearful responsibilities and destinies of our fallen race. But neither love nor crime so bring us into fellowship with our kind as suffering.

By nature man is selfish and unsympathizing. His first impulse is to care for self alone, and it is not till his mind and heart have been influenced by interest or grace that he yields his personal claims. In order to sympathize fully with another, you must have had similar experiences yourself. You might as well expect a picture of a gorgeous summer sunset from a blind man, or Beethoven's symphonies from a mute, as true sympathy in affliction from one who never knew a grief.

Suffering christianizes us. Often, before this rich experience is vouchsafed unto us, Christ is a root out of dry ground, without form or comeliness; the Bible, a mere collection of old tales; heaven and hell, words of very doubtful significance; while this great present world fills our vision and receives all our attention.

How changed is all this by a simple touch of God's finger! Christ then becomes the chiefest among ten thousand, clothed with every beauty and grace; the Word of God is made the lamp to our feet; the future life alone is real, and the present a vapor, a dream, a tale that is told.

A few years ago two friends were visiting Niagara Falls. While there, one went out on that frail narrow bridge that connects Goat Island with the tower rock, where the torrent precipitates itself into the fearful abyss at your feet. There he stood on the edge of life, gazing spell-bound into the jaws of death ready to receive him. Deafened by the incessant roar, half blinded by the spray, fragments of rainbows flashing out of the mist like spirit-hands beckoning him to leap into the flood, his brain began to whirl, sense grew dim, and his body slowly waved to and fro over the yawning gulf.

His friend from the shore saw his peril. He shouted to him in vain; his voice was swallowed up in the din and rush of that tremendous cataract. He sprang upon the bridge, and reaching the end of the platform, seized his friend by the arm, and the dazed man was saved.

I see a human soul standing unconsciously on the brink of ruin. Around him are the rushing torrents of life. He has still a foothold on the rock of early religious teachings, or perhaps a pious mother's prayers, but his spiritual senses are deadened by the ceaseless roar of the world. He is warned of his danger; friends entreat him, God calls to him; but the still small voice is not heard in the tumult, when suddenly, for the soul's safety, God comes and touches him—it may be, in the tenderest point—but who shall say that it is other than in love?

Suffering sanctifies us. It is that spiritual culture by which Christ makes a branch, already fruitful bring forth more fruit; a process whereby we are made holy unto the Lord. And oh, poor crushed child of affliction, while in the Gethsemane of sorrow you ask, "Why this cup?" and no answer comes, remember that what you know not now you shall know hereafter. You will then find, as you look back on your sad pilgrimage, that those places which seemed like the valleys of the shadow of death, in the glorious light of retrospect are the very mountain-tops of God's providence, where you were nearer heaven than at any other period of your journey; yea, where the shadows of the Almighty fell the darkest on you, according to the Psalmist you were dwelling in the secret places of the Most High.

Suffering shall glorify us. "And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."—W. W.