Part 65

"Its way of suffering is the witness which a soul bears to itself."

Amiel's Journal.

"We must bury our dead joys And live above them with a living world."

GEORGE ELIOT.

Bearing Sorrow

SEPTEMBER 14

"Sorrow brings also a temptation to exactingness. It may be that friends are very helpful to us. Let us take care that no selfishness mingles with our love for their companionship, with our claims for their sympathy.

"What, for the time, at any rate, is all the world to us, can only be a small part of another's life.

"And one must struggle, as time goes on, to take what comes in one's way of sympathy, of kindness, of companionship, but one must also try never to exact sympathy, to allow ourselves to feel neglected, or slighted, or forgotten.

"This is a hard lesson--sometimes.

"The whole of one's nature becomes sensitive, easily wounded, easily depressed."

Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.

Bearing Sorrow

SEPTEMBER 15

"Selfishness in Sorrow is another temptation. One is so apt to become absorbed in one's Sorrow.

"It is quite possible to become almost selfish in one's spiritual life under the stress of great Sorrow.

"To see everything, every lesson, every allusion, solely from one's own point of view, to grow too fond of thinking of one's burden....

"The hard path of daily duty is the only path to tread, not because one is thinking of oneself, but because one wishes to forget oneself, and to think only of God, and of those that remain.

"Self-denial: to put self last, not out of sight, but last, that is what one is always called to do, and it is a sad bit of disloyalty to God's grace if one becomes more selfish in Sorrow."

Canon SCOTT HOLLAND.

Bearing Sorrow

SEPTEMBER 16

"A great Sorrow which changes life altogether is apt to produce a certain irritability, a sort of nervous jar.

"Very often this is an affair of nerves, of physical health, but it is well to watch--'watch and pray.'

"All sorts of things will jar and hurt us. People will do and say things with perfect unconsciousness that they are wounding us to the quick. Some careless allusion, some chance speech, will set our nerves quivering.... The worries, the jarring incidents, the introduction of discordant topics in the very presence of death, the disappointments, are all to lead us upwards. It is a rough bit of road on which we are set to walk, and the sharp stones cut our feet, but every step brings us nearer God.

"Do not let temper mar the days of Sorrow.

"There most probably will be something to try our temper. Who does not know the trials which seem peculiar to a break-up, a change in our outward life? Who has not seen real Christians giving way to peevishness, fretfulness, petty dislikes, petty jealousies of near relations, of those who may be taking the place of the one they mourn? Perhaps there is nothing which so mars and spoils the religious life as bad temper and selfishness.

"Nothing which is so apt to make outsiders shrug their shoulders at those who make frequent Communions, and go much to Church, and who, especially in dark hours, give way to crossness. There is no better name."