The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"Have patience with thyself, child; weeping must endure for a night;
all comes not at once. 'No trial _for the present_ seemeth joyous'; but
'_afterwards_ it yieldeth the peaceable fruit';--have faith in this
_afterwards_. Some one says that it is not in the tempest one walks the
beach to look for the treasures of wrecked ships; but when the storm is
past we find pearls and precious stones washed ashore. Are there not even
now some of these in your path? Is not the love between you and your
husband deeper and more intimate since this affliction? Do you not love
your other children more tenderly? Did you not tell me that you had thought
on the sorrows of every house in this village? Courage, my child! that is a
good sign. Once, as you read the papers, you thought nothing of those who
lost friends; now you notice and feel. Take the sorrows of others to your
heart; they shall widen and deepen it. Ours is a religion of sorrow. The
Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering; our Father is
the God of all consolation; our Teacher is named the Comforter; and all
other mysteries are swallowed up in the mystery of the Divine sorrow. 'In
all our afflictions He is afflicted.' God refuseth not to suffer;--shall
we?"
There is no grave so desolate that flowers will not at last spring on it.
Time passed with Albert and Olivia with healing in its wings. The secret
place of tears became first a temple of prayer, and afterwards of praise;
and the heavy cloud was remembered by the flowers that sprung up after the
rain. The vacant chair in the household circle had grown to be a tender
influence, not a harrowing one; and the virtues of the lost one seemed to
sow themselves like the scattered seeds of a fallen flower, and to spring
up in the hearts of the surviving ones. More tender and more blessed is
often the brooding influence of the sacred dead than the words of the
living.
Olivia became known in the abodes of sorrow, and a deep power seemed given
her to console the suffering and distressed. A deeper power of love sprung
up within her; and love, though born of sorrow, ever brings peace with
it. Many were the hearts that reposed on her; many the wandering that she
reclaimed, the wavering that she upheld, the desolate that she comforted.
As a soul in heaven may look back on earth, and smile at its past sorrows,
so, even here, it may rise to a sphere where it may look down on the storm
that once threatened to overwhelm it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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