When the worst comes to the worst

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

Chap. „„___. Copyright No.

~-^\ 5

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

WHEN THE WORST COMES TO
THE WORST

WHEN THE WORST COMES
TO THE WORST

BY

P

W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.

\*sCi

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1896

/

$S\ ^

Copyright, 1896
By Dodd, Mead and Company

All rights reserved

2; -31^3.3

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

WHEN THE WORST COMES
TO THE WORST

A LTHOUGH no life is without
-*• ■*- its vexations, burdens, and
sorrows, there are many that escape
the crowning experience of despair.
They never know what it is for the
worst to come to the worst. Often
they find that the griefs to which
they looked forward most anxiously
are less terrible as they are neared.
They are not impenetrable ; they
envelop us, but not with unbroken

6 When the Worst

blackness ; a ray of sunshine strikes
through and illuminates them. But
sometimes this is not so. There are
hours in many lives when endurance
seems no longer possible. We are
face to face with a blank wall, and
the pursuer is behind us raging for
our blood. Then it seems as if
there were nothing for it but to
throw up the arms and yield. To
change the metaphor, every staff
seems to break under us, and we go
down to the bottomless pit. There
are multitudes who never know so
much as an anxiety about money ;
there are many more who, though
never free from care, are yet far

Comes to the Worst 7

from the actual knowledge of need.
But there are some who live and see
the whole edifice of their fortunes
crash in ruin about them. Similarly,
while there is a vacant chair at every
fireside and an empty place in every
heart, there are bereavements of axuite
a separate kind — bereavements which
completely alter the whole life and
the whole nature, and for which on
this side of the grave there is no
complete consolation. One person-
ality may be so united with another,
it may enter so intimately into every
act and thought, that when its living
presence is withdrawn nothing re-
mains in life that is not more or less

8 When the Worst

touched with the pain of the sepa-
ration. And while, happily, it is the
lot of the great majority to escape
the agony of public shame, it comes
upon others, either by their own sin
or the sin of those who are dearest
to them. It is of such experiences
that we wish to say something. Not
much has been said or can be said.
In its moments of profoundest agony
the soul is for the most part silent, the
grief is stony ; it may find no relief
even in sobs and tears. Afterwards
the heart shrinks from any recurrence
to its dreadful hour. Thus the ex-
pressions of absolute despair in liter-
ature are comparatively few. Perhaps

Comes to the Worst 9

the cry of the heart when the worst
comes to the worst is nowhere uttered
so fully as in the Book of Psalms.
Our desire is to say some words
against despair to those for whom
the long-dreaded moment has at last
arrived, and who verily have seen
the true Gorgon head.

It may be noted that the ulti-
mate collapse is generally the result
of accumulated sorrows. The heart
makes a stout fight before it finally
relinquishes its share in happiness,
before it ceases for ever to have hope.
" Misfortunes never come singly "
is a proverb that has verified itself
but too often. In most human lives,

io When the Worst

it has been said, there are periods of
trouble, blow following blow, wave
following wave, from opposite and
unexpected quarters, with no natural
or logical sequence, till all God's
billows have gone over the soul.
There is in the universe a demoniac
element which may break over us in
any moment, and leave us in a horror
of great darkness. One sorrow might
be confronted and subdued, if the sun-
shine came when all was over ; but
when a man is lifted up and dashed
down again and again and again, till
he cries, " I reckon till morning that
as a lion he will break all my bones,
from morning till evening he will

Comes to the Worst 1 1

make an end of me," he must find a
refuge or he must die.

But for the worst sorrows and far
the last despairs there are remedies
to be found in time and truth. Truth
must necessarily come before time,
for the problem is, How is life to be
sustained for another hour, how am
I to bear this misery without having
recourse to one form of suicide or
another. The help, if it is to serve
us, must come instantly, or the end
is death. There is a help that arrives
at the very moment when endurance
seems no longer possible, and that is
the belief that God is dealing with
us. It may be, and it will be at first,

12 When the Worst

a dark and wavering faith, just enough
and no more than enough to keep
the soul alive. But if even so much
as that is accomplished, conviction
will grow. If there is a love that is
constant, that is individual, that does
not desert us when we cease to be
worthy of it, that does not turn from
us in our sharpest agony of pain, that
is indeed most near, most tender,
most pitiful when we are most in need
of it, — that conviction and no other
will bring us through.

Let it be remembered that this love
is not merely an article of faith, but
a reinforcement of the sinking powers
of life. Divine grace, according to

Comes to the Worst 13

the old phrase, is a real emanation.
When no change has taken place in
the outward circumstances, when
everything seems an unbroken pall
and sphere of darkness, the spirit, it
knows not how, finds itself strangely
nerved and succoured. It is helped
through the very darkest hour, and
secretly made aware that the worst
darkness cannot last for ever.

Thus it is that time has an oppor-
tunity for doing its work. Of course
it is true that this is but a convenient
way of speaking. Effects are not
produced by time, but in time. In
reality, time does nothing and is
nothing ; it is used for the causes

14 When the Worst

that work more or less slowly within
it, and without which no change
could ever take place. Hooker says :
cc Time doth but measure other things,
and neither worketh in them any real
effect nor is itself ever capable of any,
and therefore, when commonly we
used to say that time doth heal or
fret out all things, that some men see
prosperous and happy days, and that
some men's days are miserable ; in all
these and the like speeches that which
is uttered of the time is not verified
of time itself, but agreeth unto those
things which are in time, and do by
means of so near conjunction either
lay their burden upon the back or

Comes to the Worst 15

set their crown upon the head of
time. Yea, the very opportunities
which we ascribe to time, do in truth
cleave to the things themselves
wherewith time is joined. As for
time, it neither causeth things nor
opportunities of things, although it
comprise and contain both." The
consolation is that around us are heal-
ing powers and agencies ; that our
nature is not organised for permanent
misery ; that the good God above us
has salves for our wounds, which, if we
are only able to live through the crit-
ical moment, will in due time reach
them and make life, if not happy,
at least bearable. The assurance of

1 6 When the Worst

this is to be found in the records
which anguished souls have left.

Before passing to speak of these, it
is well to admit frankly that for some
sorrows there is no cure in this life,
and therefore in the merciful will of
God the days are shortened, and the
sorrow flees away in the sunshine of
the other world ; and so

" No load of woe

Need bring despairing frown ;
For while we bear it, we can bear.
Past that, we lay it down."

Nor are agonies such as those we
speak of to be easily got rid of. " I
got over it after a time, and was as
cheerful as if he were alive again, or
had never lived at all," — this is the

Comes to the Worst 17

story of many bereavements, but not
of all. When the worst comes to the
worst, the soul realises with a true
instinct that life will never be the
same again. It seems sometimes as
if a new spirit had taken possession
of the existing body when the true
soul has departed. Many people live
until they die, but many people do
not. In Mrs. Oliphant's powerful
novel, " Agnes," there is the most
vivid expression of this fact that we
know of in literature. The vitality
that survived so much is at last
mastered and disappears. Illness does
not come ; death does not come ;
duties continue to present themselves,

1 8 When the Worst

and are laboriously discharged, but
life, so far as it is a matter of personal
desire, satisfaction, and actual being,
has ceased and stopped short. The
sufferers feel that they have had their
day, and yet much may remain of the
hard tale of years which God some-
times exacts to the last moments from
those of His creatures to whom He
has given strength to endure. The
new spirit that inhabits the form may
be angel or demon, or it may be the
most human spirit ; but it is a sub-
stitute, even though no one may be
aware of the substitution. The life
which it was joy to possess, and hap-
piness to continue, has been broken

Comes to the Worst 19

short off, and has come to an end.
Even when the heart is wondrously
revived and quieted, and a new happi-
ness links itself with the old — even
when the wild dark sorrows show
themselves at last as the fair enlight-
ened work of God, w7e may find it
hard to feel that the new days are
linked with the old. But in God
is the continuous thread of all our
years, and we must boldly rest in the
faith that there is a life in Him which
furnishes its own health, its own
wealth, its own good, and that the
whole discipline of Providence is bent
towards our securing and perfecting
that secret immortal life.

20 When the Worst

II

TT THEN the worst comes to the
* * worst, there are perhaps only
three ways of facing it. There is
suicide, there is stoicism, and there
is Christian faith.

Suicide includes much more than
the determined taking away of life ;
everything that unlawfully dulls the
sensibilities is in the nature of suicide.
The first impulse in a great anguish
is to seek something that will imme-
diately still the pain. God has pro-
vided many remedies which he even
presses upon us ; but there are others

Comes to the Worst 21

that mock us with a promise of relief
which he sternly forbids. We must,
in George Eliot's phrase, " do with-
out opium/' To fly to drink, or to
narcotics, is to take the life as truly
as if we plunged the sword into the
heart. No matter how slow the be-
numbing process may be, it is the
destruction of the higher nature, and
therefore is in the direction of self-
murder. Some are mad enough to
throw away in the dark hour what
faith they have, and persistently to
refuse reconciliation. That also is
suicidal. We read in the life of
Richard Cobden that his boy, a lad
of singular promise, when at school

22 When the Worst

near Heidelberg, was suddenly seized
by an attack of scarlet fever, and
died in the course of three or four
days, before his parents at home even
knew that he was ill. There was
nothing to soften the horror of the
shock. The parents had just received
a long letter from him, written a few
days previously, when he was in the
best possible state of health. When
the unhappy mother realised the mis-
erable thing that had befallen her, she
sat for many days like a statue of
marble, neither speaking nor seeming
to hear, her eyes not even turning
to notice her little girl whom they
placed upon her knee, her hair blanch-

Comes to the Worst 23

ing with the hours. Mrs. Cobden
never to the last submitted to the
blow with the grace of resignation,
and she never had the comparative
solace that might have come either
from religion or from reason. To
the end she fought against her fate.
The exercises of souls, after the great
cruelties of life come home to them,
must be looked on with solemn com-
passion. But suicide in every form
simply means atheism. There is no
need to enlarge on its cruelty, on its
cowardice, on its folly ; it is an action
impossible to any who have a God
in the world.

One of the most afflicting stories

24 When the Worst

of suicides is that of Haydon, the
painter. He fought a long battle, in
which he had little to cheer or con-
sole him. Perhaps there was only
one period in his life of more than
sixty years when his mind was com-
paratively unharassed, when he worked
freely as to space and with a certain
sense of relief from pecuniary pres-
sure. Even then he had troubles
from ill-health and other cares ; but
he had no antagonists that he could
not overcome. He wrote to the
Duke of Sutherland : " I believe I am
meant as a human being to try the ex-
periment how much a human brain can
bear without insanity, or a human con-

Comes to the Worst 25

stitution without death." Yet he sur-
mounted many hours of bitter gloom.
At one period he had to encounter
the loss of his dear children, one by
one. His sorrows were cc something
more than human. I remember watch-
ing him as he hung over his daughter,
Georgina, and over his dying boy,
Harry, the pride and delight of his
life. Poor fellow, how he cried !
And he went into the next room, and,
beating his head passionately on the
bed, called upon God to take him and
c all of us from this hateful world/
These were dreadful days." He had
run into debt, and he acknowledged
that he was madly wrong in incurring

i6 When the Worst

his liabilities, but still kept hope in
his heart of better times. At last, the
arrows of outrageous fortune struck
him by the thousand ; every post
brought him angry demands for the
settlement of bills, threats of execu-
tion, and immediate prospect of arrest,
imprisonment, and ruin. One by one
his best hopes fell from him like dead
leaves fluttering from a bower. His
soul melted by reason of his trouble ;
his brain throbbing with fire, ponder-
ing over his past life, he confronted
his deep love for his art with his
broken fortunes, till, stung by the
bitterness and the contrast, like a dy-
ing gladiator he determined on self-

Comes to the Worst 27

murder, lest he should be left to
languish in his agony. This is indeed
a picture of human suffering under
the utmost burden of wretchedness
that one does not often see into so
distinctly ; and vet how clear it is that
Kavdon threw away the prospect of
victory. He died in his sixtv-first
year, in the full vigour of life, and on
the threshold of what appeared to be
a hale old age. His affairs were by
no means so hopeless as he had ima-
gined. If he had taken the advice of
the genial old Ouaker who sent him
one hundred pounds, it would have
been well for him at least. " I do
not, indeed, wonder at vour anxiety,

28 When the Worst

and I feel for you. Look forward,
however, with hope, — all may yet be
well ; keep your noble mind com-
posed, — you may yet have plenty
of employment. Be industrious, be
economical, and you will yet be in-
dependent. Trust and hope."

It was an evil hour when he
succumbed.

" Have I not had to wrestle with my lot ?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven ?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven ?
Hopes sapped, name pledged, life's life lied away ?

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain. "

He could have said all that, and if
he had held fast to the gift of life and
to his hope in God, he would have

Comes to the Worst 29

looked back upon all his battles with
the peace of a conqueror.

Sir Walter Scott was in every sense,
and almost infinitely, superior to
Haydon. Not very long ago the
journal which he kept in the last bur-
dened and shadowed years of his life
was published in full. It merits in
many ways the praise bestowed upon
it by Mr. Swinburne : —

" Over all the close of a noble and glorious
life there seemed to hang a dense and im-
penetrable cloud of suffering, gallantly faced
and heroically endured, but pitiful to read, and
in its progress and closing a lamentable gradu-
ation of collapse. Now we have a record not
only of dauntless endurance, but of elastic and
joyous heroism, of life indomitable to the last,

30 When the Worst

of a spirit and intellect that no trials could
impair and no suffering decay."

We may well agree that Scott is
himself alone, kind and true, brave
and wise, single-minded and genial-
hearted ; and yet when the story of
his trouble is carefully read, we can-
not but perceive that he attempted to
fight his own battle, and that, for all
his splendid and magnificent gallantry,
he collapsed.

Few men have ever been so severely
tried as Scott. It must be remem-
bered that, up to the period when
the clouds began to gather, his life
had been singularly prosperous and
joyful. He was happy in his home ;

Comes to the Worst 31

he had vigorous health ; his fame as
an author was continually growing ;
he attracted the warm affection of
many friends in every sphere of
life, and his rich, enjoying nature
drew pleasure from a thousand
sources. All of a sudden the scene
changed. He had to face pecuniary
ruin, and he had to face it in its
worst form. The disaster was not
suddenly over and done with. If
it had been, perhaps he might have
borne it ; but he set himself with un-
flinching determination to meet the
claims of his creditors, and to the
very last it was doubtful how far he
could succeed. Then in the midst

32 When the Worst

of his troubles the darkest bereave-
ments came. He lost his affectionate
wife and his adored grandchild. His
bodily vigour, which had seemed im-
pregnable, began to give way ; and
last, not least, he had to fight with
growing doubts of his own power to
keep the ear and the favour of the
public. To these blows he opposed,
it is true, a good conscience and
an unexampled gallantry. Nor was
he without faith ; for he was a firm
believer in God and in the future
life, and in our Lord as a teacher sent
from heaven. More than this can-
not be said. It is true of Scott, as
Stopford Brooke says of Burns, that

Comes to the Worst 33

he never seemed to come into any
direct contact with Christ, and there-
fore never into direct contact with
God. He endured, without repin-
ing, the calamities that came to him ;
but I do not remember that in his
journal there is any instance of his
asking help in prayer. He did not
know that through Christ we have
access to the Father, and that we may
go boldly to the throne of grace, that
we may obtain mercy and find grace
to help us in every time of need. In
the journal where he unbares his
heart, we never read of the High
Priest who can be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities, of the unseen

34 When the Worst

Lord and Friend who is nearer than

the nearest, and never so near as

when none else is found to help. He

says at the first onset of misfortune :

" Came through cold roads to as cold news.
Hurst and Robinson have suffered a bill of
^1,000 to come back upon Constable, which
I suppose infers the ruin of both houses. . . .
My old acquaintance . . . died suddenly. I
cannot choose but wish it had been Sir W.

S , and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have

Anne, my wife, and Charles to look after."

He had occasionally wonderful

rallies.

" In prosperous days I have sometimes felt
matter vanish and power of language flag, but
adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer.
The fountain is awakened from its inmost re-
cesses as if the spirit of affliction had troubled

Coynes to the Worst 35

it in its passage. ... I sleep, and eat, and
work as I was wont, and if I could see those
about me as indifferent to the loss as I am I
should be completely happy. ... I am in-
different to it, but I have been always told my
feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain,
enjoyment and privation, are colder than those
of other people. I think the Romans call it
stoicism. Fortune's finger has never been able
to play a dirge on me for a quarter of a year
together."

Yet misgivings came.

" I have been much affected from morning by
the Morbus, as I call it ; aching pain in the
back, rendering one position intolerable ; flutter-
ing of the heart ; gloomy thoughts and anxie-
ties which, if not unfounded, are at least foolish.
I will console myself, and do my best ; but
fashion changes, and I am getting old, and may
become unpopular. But it is time to cry out
when I am hurt."

36 When the Worst

Later on Lady Scott died, and he
says : —

" For myself I scarce know how I feel ;
sometimes as firm as a Bass rock, sometimes as
weak as the wave that breaks on it. I am as
alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in
my life ; yet when I contrast what this place
now is with what it has been not long since, I
think my heart will break. Lonely, aged,
deprived of my family, all but poor Anne, an
impoverished and embarrassed man, I am de-
prived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels,
who could always talk down my sense of the
calamitous apprehensions which break the heart
that must bear them alone."

Afterward he says : —

" Everybody has his own mode of express-
ing interest ; a mind is stoical even in bitterest
grief."

Comes to the Worst 37

Agere atquepati Romanum est. The
months wear on in hard, incessant
labor, and in the sternest self-repres-
sion this is wrung from him : —

" This is sad work. I begin to grow over-
hardened, and like a stag turning in pain.
My natural good temper grows fierce and
dangerous."

Then there is the anxiety about his
grandson.

" Poor, pale Johnny ! and he is really a
thing to break one's heart to look at. I am
afraid I am twaddling. I do not think my heart
so weakened ; but a strong vacillation makes
me suspect."

The final blow was when he was
made aware that " Count Robert

38 When the Worst

of Paris " showed signs of failing
power.

cc The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for
I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes
with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready.
Yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the
vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I will
right and left at these unlucky proof-sheets, and
alter at least what I cannot mend. I have
suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in
body than in mind, and I often wish I could lie
down and sleep without waking. But I will
fight it out if I can. . . . After all, this is
but fear and a faintness of heart, tho' of another
kind from that which trembleth at a loaded
pistol. My bodily strength is terribly gone,
perhaps my mental too."

By this time the end was very near ;
he had hardly another year to live.

Comes to the Worst 39

To the last moment of his life he
demeaned himself as a brave man
should ; but his heart was broken, and
it was too late to rally. The battle
lasted for seven years.

Contrast with this the experience of
Silvio Pellico, the Italian prisoner.
He had made himself famous,* by
his tragedy, " Francesca da Rimini/'
when he was imprisoned for revolu-
tionary opinions, and had to endure
ten years of confinement beneath the
leads of Venice, and in the dungeons
of Spielberg. There are few more
affecting narratives than that in which
he relates the story of his lengthy
endurance, and tells how he recov-

40 When the Worst

ered the serenity of his mind by the
vigour of a sincere faith. In the ter-
rible moment of awakening after his
first sleep in prison, the thought of
his father and mother came to him
with incredible vividness. Hitherto
he had not been religious ; but when
the terrible blow fell, he asked, " Who
will give me power to support it ? "
and answered : —

" He whom all the afflicted invoke ; He who
gave to a mother force to follow her Son to
Golgotha, and to stand beneath His cross ; the
Friend of the unfortunate, the Friend of the
tried."

He sought God, and gradually his
agitation became calmed.

Comes to the Worst 41

" One day, having read that it is necessary to
pray without ceasing, I proposed to begin seri-
ously this unceasing prayer ; in other words, to
put away every thought that was not inspired
by the desire of forming myself after the decrees
of God. In less than a month I resigned my-
self to my fate with a tranquillity which, if not
perfect, was at least tolerable."

He thought of how happy he had
been in past days. Who had been
more happy ? He made friends with
a deaf and dumb child. Every morn-
ing, after a short prayer, he made
a diligent and courageous catalogue
of every event that was " possible, of
every circumstance that was likely to
move him. He rested his imagina-
tion with intrepidity upon each of

42 When the Worst

those circumstances, and made prepa-
ration for it ; from the most pleasant
visits to that of the executioner, he
imagined all. True, he had very bit-
ter moments, when, of all the things
he looked into and felt, he knew not
which was real or which was illusory,
and he used to cry out in the fulness
of his heart, " My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ? " But
through light and shadow he was in
the end victorious. He comforted
his brethren; he prayed for his jail-
ers ; he had no word of scorn or anger
for his persecutors. When released
from the prison, he met life with
an unimbittered heart, passing his

Comes to the Worst 43

days peacefully in literary pursuits and
the discharge of pious duties, neither
shunning nor courting honours, and
keeping his spirit peaceful and sweet
to the last, one of his final utterances
being, " I cannot approve of intoler-
ance, fury, curses, against any class
of persons." This was a triumph
achieved in Christ.

44 When the Worst

III

\ FTER an overwhelming sorrow
■*■ -**■ the soul's immediate business
is with God. We can only " catch at
God's skirt and pray." Where the
one feeling is agony, the one thought
must be God. When experience
plunges deep into gloom, it is far less
easy than might be thought to lay
hold upon God and to enter into
active communion with Him. More
particularly in the darkness, which is
the nurse of heavy thought, in the
hour when the stings burn again

Comes to the Worst 45

fiercely, we may feel that we are for-
saken alike of God and man.

" I would lift my voice to God and cry \

I would lift my voice to God that He may give

ear to me.
In the day of my straits I sought the Lord ;
My hand was stretched out in the night without

ceasing,
My soul refused to be comforted.
When I remember God I must sigh ;
When I muse, my spirit is covered with gloom.
Thou hast held open the guards of my eyes \
I am buffeted and cannot speak."

u Sorrow, like a beast of prey, de-
vours at night, and everv sad heart

knows how eyelids, however wearied,
refuse to close upon as wearied eves,
which gaze wide open into the black-
ness, and see dreadful things there.
This man felt as if God's finger was

46 When the Worst

pushing up his lids and forcing him
to stare into the night, buffeted as if
laid on an anvil and battered with the
shocks of doom." He cannot speak,
he can only moan as he is doing.
Prayer seems to be impossible ; but
to say, cc I cannot pray, would that
I could ! " is surely a prayer which
will reach its destination, though the
sender knows it not.

But this Psalmist, though he found
no ease in remembering God, was able
to turn his thoughts to the great deeds
of God, and to hold by them. He
went on : —

" Then I said it is my sickness ;

But I will remember the years of the right hand
of the Most High.

Comes to the Worst 47

I will celebrate the deeds of Jehovah,
For I will remember Thy wonders of old,
And I will meditate on all Thy work,
And will muse on Thy doings. "

Gradually by recalling the past, by
thinking of how God shone upon us
from the skies that we have left be-
hind, we become reassured, and are
persuaded that His glory will not be
absent from the clouded heavens
towards which our worn faces are set.
To the Christian this should be far
easier since Christ has come. cc If I
were God," said Goethe, cc the woes
of the world I had created would
break my heart." The reply is that
the woes of the world did break God's
heart. Christ our Lord passed

48 When the Worst

through where the waters of sorrow
ran deepest and chillest and angriest,
and in His grief and in His sympathy
we have the sympathy and the grief of
God. In the crisis of our trouble it
should not discourage us that we are
dumb, and that the thoughts which
should have brought us quickest and
readiest solace fail for the moment
to comfort us. Let us be sure that
Christ is in the dark room, keeping
the soul that is dear to Him alive,
driving back in the darkness its most
formidable and deadly foes. Let us
nourish the thoughts of Christ's
priestly suffering and His priestly
compassion, and in due time the poor

Comes to the Worst 49

heart will begin to unpack itself; we
shall be able to speak to God through
Christ, and the answer will come.
We shall know that we are not call-
ing to a deaf or remote God, but that
prayer is verily heard.

Of course for a time, for a long
time it may be, there can be no change
in our circumstances ; but it does
not follow that because the circum-
stances must remain unaltered, no
change may pass upon us. There
may be an uplifting and comforting
of the heart which we are altogether
unable to explain. " Sometimes a
light surprises ; " some waft of joy
reaches us direct from God, and

5<o When the Worst

though it is by far too soon for us to
vindicate the rationality of our peace,
we are to remember that the peace
needs no vindication, and we are to
accept it as a direct and precious gift
from God. Even if only the sharp-
ness of the pain is abated, if the march
of the slow, dark hours is in the
least degree quickened, there is much
reason for gratitude and for hope.

At first it is certainly best to seek
no human alleviation or comfort ex-
cept, it may be, the most sacred and
the most intimate. Expressions of
love may bring their solace with them,
but it is not well that we should speak
much at first of our great sorrows.

Comes to the Worst 51

Expression is but too apt to react
upon emotion, and to make the
burden heavier. But when the re-
sponse of sympathy is less complete
than we desire, — and such it must
almost inevitably be, — a new pang is
added to our grief. There come
hours in life when for the sake and
succour of others we must recall the
worst of the dreadful past ; but, sav-
ing for these hours, the secret should
be left with our God and Saviour.

Then as some recovery is experi-
enced, as some strength creeps back,
it is well to lay hold of what earthly
helps and solaces are within our
reach. Many sufferers have testified

52 When the Worst

that the most agonising time of their
sorrow was not in the first weeks, when
they were thrown directly upon God.
It came when they returned to work,
when they obeyed again the ordinary
summonses of life, and when they
realised with a slow distinctness and a
dull pain how irrevocably everything
had changed. For all this, it is best
that we should go resolutely back to
stand at our old post, however diffi-
cult, irksome, and distasteful the rou-
tine of life must be for many days.
However sharp and terrible the re-
currences of the pain, it is best that
the mind should be occupied with
honest labour ; and for many it is best

fr

Comes to the Worst 53

that that labour should exceed and
not fall under the ordinary measure.
Innumerable sufferers have testified
that the resolute and unflinching re-
sumption of life and work repelled
many of their worst foes and brought
them back a certain rest, even though
it was only the rest of weariness.
Whatever can be done for the physical
condition ought to be done. Perhaps
more heed should be paid to the
" hygiene of sorrow/' for the suffer-
ing is physical as well as mental. No
wise counsel of this kind should be
disdained, and whatever lawful solaces
God puts within our reach, we are
free to avail ourselves of them. Times

«

54 When the Worst

of great trouble often reveal the mean-
ness of human nature and the self-
ishness of much apparent friendship.
The sufferer emerging from the storm
finds himself lonely and in the midst of
a desolation which is like the oblivion
that waits for the dead. But often,
on the other hand, one finds himself
infinitely richer than he had supposed.
A true affection manifests itself in
many from whom he looked for
nothing. It is wise, it is Christian,
generously, unreservedly, gratefully, in
the hour of our overthrow to accept
what friends can do for us ; and we
should welcome with an eager grati-
tude the hour when " the low

Comes to the Worst $$

beginnings of content " are dimly dis-
covered. No sorrow should be nursed
and cherished. Sorrows should not
be despised, it is true ; our business
is not so much to get over them as to
get through them ; but there are some
who encourage them and foster them,
and deem themselves guilty of a kind
of treason when their eyes are open to
breaks in the clouds. All sinful, all
cowardly escapes are barred to the
Christian, but there are many which
are open to him, and to which he is
made welcome. Those are happiest,
it has been said, whom a great sorrow
strengthens while it saddens, and who
can carry on the past into the present

56 When the Worst

in lonely fortitude. It may be so,
but there are others in whom sorrow
seems to be destroy' ;ig the very power
of love and the piety of memory ; and
if there is opened up to them a new
spring of happiness, they are to drink
from it. As one has testified : " The
whole history is something like a
miracle legend, but instead of any
former affection being displaced in
my mind, I seem to have recovered
the living sympathy that I was in
danger of losing. I mean that I had
been conscious of a certain drying up
of tenderness in me, and now the
spring seems to have risen again."
It may be, however, — it will almost

Comes to the Worst 57

certainly be, — that the break in the
clouds is but for a moment, and that
the grey wrack again overwhelms the
heavens. Once more, then, all that can
be said is, cc Hope thou in God ; " and
perhaps this is the chosen message to
great sufferers, the message which most
surely brings them health and reviv-
ing. They must go on, but they do
not go on in solitude. Christ is with
them, and in due season not only
they, but their circumstances, will
change. The desert over which they
travel will not be trackless if Christ
is by their side, and perhaps there may
come a gleam of brightness even in this
life. With what pathetic insistence the

58 When the Worst

Psalmist prayed for this ! We may
pray for it too ; we may hope for it ;
we may comfort ourselves with the
records of lives that have emerged
triumphant from sorrow into peace.
All these things are lawful, but in the
loving will of God it may be that our
circumstances will not alter until we
pass from this life to the other. On
to the very edge of Jordan the path
maybe stony and sore for our feet, even
though we drink of the spiritual rock
that follows us, even Jesus Christ. In
any case, we know that communion
with Christ must persist and be per-
fected, and that the righteous shall
shine forth as the sun in the kingdom

Comes to the Worst 59

of the Father, though no glory comes
to them beneath these skies. Earth
may grow grey and dim, its glories
may pass away, but there remains for
us a rest, " a region afar from the
sphere of our sorrow," where every
joy that was and is not shall come
again, and come with no threatening
of change, — the land where the am-
aranthine flowers are unwithering and
all their sweetness unaltered as the
great eternity passes. And so, even in
default of hopes fulfilled here, we may
be able to say, " I will hope contin-
ally, and hope maketh not ashamed."
We must try to gain from our
sorrows, not only to emerge just alive

60 When the Worst

and just able to take some poor part
in the fight. We must be more than
conquerors through Him that loved
us. It is not well to interpret our
sufferings as judgments, as punish-
ments for sin. They may often be
these, but Christ on the cross taught
the meaning and the blessedness of
sorrow, and there is a deep and
awful word which tells us that God
scourgeth every son whom He re-
ceiveth. If there is no chastisement,
the nature remains at a low level of
strength and insight. It is the man
of conquered sorrows who is every-
where the man of power ; and when
the waves are running high in our

Comes to the Worst 61

souls, none can calm them as those
can who have passed through the
same tumult. There is no sympathy
like the sympathy of a sufferer, no
sympathy like His who suffered
most of all.

Great sorrows never leave us what
we were before. Then none can
pass under that hammer and remain
the same. But even if we are left
without chastisement, something is
daily passing from us, always passing,
— -that something which comes with
youth and hope and love. After a
great baptism of sorrow, we must be
different ; but what we should pray
and strive for is that we may emerge

62 When the Worst

from it better, richer, more faithful,
more helpful, more filled with a
heartfelt delight in God's will, more
able to make a true answer to God's
surprises and wonders of love. The
skies above us are at best April skies ;
our path will not be always smooth,
even though we seem in the past to
have suffered more than our share ;
but we poor men and God's wealth
are stored together in God's pavilion,
and the place where they are both
safe is God Himself. We cannot be
poor when close beside us are the
infinite riches given so freely to all
who need.

And let this be our last word.

Comes to the Worst 63

There are periods in life, years and
years, when no great trouble visits
us. Then the storms of sorrow fall,
and we are apt to say, I have passed
through, and I may hope for an
immunity for the future. It is not
so. The troubles may come back,
they may come back again worse.
As has been said, our Pharaohs are
seldom drowned in the Red Sea, and
we do not often behold their corpses
stretched upon the sand. The bit-
terness of death may return. What
then ? At the very worst, the
memory of the past will help us.
We shall retrace the slow, difficult
way to peace ; our trust in God will

64 When the Worst Comes

be deepened, and we shall realise
that, after all, the range of sins and
sorrows is limited, though the sea of
troubles may roll its white-crested
billows as far as the horizon. What
are truly numberless are God's mer-
cies. What is truly infinite is God's
love.