| J.R. Miller D.D. | Page 2 |
An impression prevails, that sorrow is in itself a blessing in its influence, that it always makes purer and holier and better the lives that it touches; but this is not true. Sorrow has in itself no cleansing efficacy, as some suppose, by which it removes from sinful lives their blemishes and stains. The same fire which refines the gold destroys the flowers. Sorrow is a fire, which in God’s hand is designed to purify the lives of his people, but which, unblessed, produces only desolation. It depends on the relation of the sufferer to Christ, as friend or enemy, and on the reception given to grief, whether it leave good or ill where it enters; but in a Christian home, where the love of Christ dwells and holds sway, Sorrow should always leave a benediction. It should be received as God’s own messenger; and we should welcome it, and listen for the divine message it bears.
For God’s angels do not always come to us, as we are apt to imagine them coming, in radiant dress, with smiling face and gentle voice. Thus artists paint them in their pictures. Thus we fancy them in their ministries. We think of them as possessing rare and wondrous loveliness; and so, no doubt, they do as they appear before God, and serve in his presence. There is no unloveliness in any angel-face in heaven. No angel has features of sternness; but, as these celestial messengers come to earth on their ministries, they appear ofttimes in forms that appal, and fill the trembling heart with terror and alarm. Yet ofttimes it is when they come in these very forms that they bring their sweet messages and their best blessings.
“All God’s angels come to us disguised,
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,
One after another lift their frowning masks,
And we behold the seraph’s face beneath,
All radiant with the glory and the calm
Of having looked upon the face of God.”
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