SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 63, 9 March 1912, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN.

(Continuation of a sermon entitled “Jacob's Pessimism” by J. L. Robinson, 8.A.) 11. Observe in the second place that the climax of sorrow is often the step to happiness., You will notice that Jacob does not begin his sorrow with the possible taking away of Benjamin. This is the last sorrow of a series: “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not. and ye would take Benjamin away.” That is how some of us are worn and riven in soul and heart and hope. It is not because you have had taken away one tiling bu,t because that one thing that happens to ho the last of a series. Some of you have Jiad sorrow upon sorrow. You think you cannot bear the sorjroty that is now looking at you through the dark misty cloud. You arc saying: “I should pray Cod to he spared that sorrow. I have had six troubles, I cannot hear the seventh.” You do not know that that last sorrow is the first step into full and perfect happiness. But how. can you toll? You look back on the sorrows that are past, sorrows that hound your spirit and tried your faith, and in the near future there is another trouble coining too great for ,your poor strength. How will you meet it? “It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s hack.” Is there no answer? There is an answer. There is a comfort that liveth for ever. T would not teach that wo should be indifferent about children and friends, the hearts we love. I do not want to grow into an independence of human regard of human trust, and human love. I do not want to be lifted up into a height of hazy, heartless antimontality—too see 'friend after friend die, and care nothing for the loss. That is not Christianity. There may ho men who can see grave after grave opened and friend after friend put in and lowered away and fched rot a tear and feel not a pang of heart. Christianity does not teach ns to destroy our feeling hut Christianity does tench ns to see the whole of a case. Christianity comes to a man in his troubles and misfortunes, in the midst of his hewailings and regrets and it says: “Thou fool! The seed cannot ho quickened unless it die.” Yon do not understand why sorrow after sorrow 'should ho multiplied. Does the gold understand why it is beaten and hammered and burnt? Endow it .with speech and what would it say? It would say just what you are saying: “Why do yon offend my pure and sensitive soul with contact with the baser metals? Why am I beaten with iron, pierced with steel? Why am I scorched with fire and blackened with smoke?” But the goldsmith goes on with his hammering and heating and burning and under his deft fingers the unshapely plato of gold assumes a comely and glorious pattern to which those baser elements have essentially contributed. It becomes a vessel unto honour, fit to take its place in the temple of God -—purified under discipline. The climax of sorrow is .often the first step to happiness.

ITT. There is one other observation I would like to make here and it is Tills: Out of evil God can bring good. It certainly was an evil thing for Jacjoh whom Joseph was sold into Egypt, when Simeon was detained, and when the shadow of famine and starvation darkened the land, and yet out of these circumstances God wrought the greatest good for his aged servant, and brought into his closing years the elements of joy and peace. And it is often so with ns. Our surroundings are often of an evil character. Wo are often placed among conditions that are to say the least, galling to our spirit. Yet to a soul that is stayed on God those arc but “stepping stones to higher tilings.” Paul was insistent on this point. He knew what it was to 'he beaten with rods, to he stoned, to suffer shipwreck, “to ho in perils of water, to perils of bobbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in weariness and painl'nlness, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness”] and yet he

said: “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distress for Christ sake, for when I can wear them am I strong.” What did he mean by that? He meant at the very moment of bis distress; at the very moment when darkness closed around him as a heavy cloud; at the very moment when humanly speaking he was a spent and defeated man—even at that moment he had the precious sense of the presence of the Son of God. Out of evil God can bring good. Shall we by virtue of the circumstances among„ which we are placed embrace this black and gloomy pessimism? Oh no. It cannot be. It must not be. God who placed ns here, definitely, distinctly, and who gave ns a purpose to fulfil, will yet order all things for onr good, and if our faith be but stayed on the Strong Son of God immortal love, Who we that have not seen Hi.; face By faith and faith alox-o •; |. Believing where we cannot prove—if our trust be firmly stayed we shall come through—“more than conquerors through Him who loves ns.” As we look into the future it is possible onr way seems dark and gloomy. Storm clouds sweep alrtng the horizon and' many troubles, black and forbidding await ns. It may be so. It is possible we may encounter many storms, many ills. We may see around ns many things that belong to the works' of darkness, and doubtless there will come seasons when, like Jacob, all the troubles and the cares and the anxieties of the world \ come our way, and, like him, we are induced to say, “Lo, all these things are against me.” But remembering that “out of evil God can bring good,” and that His watchful, loving eye is upon all onr ways, let us rather say with him whose career was infinitely more checkered than that of the old patriarch: “All things work together for good to those that love God.”