Two emotions diametrically opposed are to be contained within the narrow room of one disposition and temper. Ye greatly rejoice … Ye are in heaviness.' Can such a thing be? Well! let us think for a moment. The sources of the two conflicting emotions are laid out before us; they may be constantly operative in every life. On the one hand, in which ye greatly rejoice.' Now that in which' does not point back only to the words that immediately precede, but to the whole complex clause that goes before. And what is the which' that is there? These things; the possession of a new life-'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath begotten us again!'--the springing up in a man's heart of a strange new hope, like a new star that swims into the sky, and sheds a radiance all about it--Begotten unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'; a new wealth--an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away; a new security--guarded by the power of God through faith unto salvation.' These things belong, ipsofacto, and in the measure of his faith, to every Christian man, a new life, a new hope, a new wealth, and a new security; and in their conjoint action, all four of them brought to bear upon a man's temper and spirit, will, if he is realising them, make him glad.
Then, on the other hand, we have other fountains pouring their streams into the same reservoir. And just as the deep fountains which are open to us by faith will, if we continue to exercise that faith, flood our spirits with sweet waters, so these other fountains will pour their bitter floods over every heart more or less abundantly and continually. Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.' There are confluent streams that one has sometimes seen, where a clear river joins, and flows in the same bed with, one all foul with half-melted ice, and the two run side by side for a space, scarcely mingling their waters. Thus the paradox of the Christian life is that within the same narrow banks may flow the sunny and the turbid, the clear and the dark, the sorrow that springs from earthly fountains, the joy that pours from the heavenly heights.
Now notice that this is only one case of the paradox of the whole Christian life. For the peculiarity of it is that it owns two;--it belongs to, and is exposed to, all the influences of the forces and things of time, whilst in regard to its depths, it belongs to, and is under the influence of, the things that are unseen and eternal'; so that you have the external life common to the Christian and to all other people, and then you have the life hid with Christ in God,' the roots of it going down through all the superficial soil, and grappling the central rock of all things. Thus a series of paradoxes and perennial contradictions describes the twofold life that every believing spirit lives, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and, behold we live, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things.'
Remember, too, that according to Peter's conception neither of these two sources pours out a flood which obliterates or dams back the other. They are to co-exist. The joy is not to deprive the heaviness of its weight, nor the sorrow of its sting. There is no artificial stoicism about Christianity, no attempt to sophisticate one's self out of believing in the reality of the evils that assail us, or to forbid that we shall feel their pain and their burden. Many good people fail to get the good of life's discipline, because they have somehow come to think that it is wrong to weep when Christ sends sorrows, and wrong to feel, as other men feel, the grip and bite of the manifold trials of our earthly lives. Weep for yourselves,' for the feeling of the sorrow is the precedent condition to the benefit from the sorrow, and it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'
But, on the other hand, the black stream is not to bank up the sunny one, or prevent it from flowing into the heart, ay! and flowing over, the other. And so the co-existence of the joys that come from above, and the sorrows that spring from around, and some of them from beneath, is the very secret of the Christian life.
