In Time of Sorrow

A Book of Consolation

When great sorrow overwhelms us, as we stagger under the utter amazement of it, there comes a moment which seems a moment of peace. This is the moment when, as in a flash, we see that our sorrow is inevitable. It is not inevitable, we think, at that moment, but it is inevitable sometime. Sorrow is part of life. We cannot imagine any life which has accomplished a considerable number of years without finding this element of tragedy somewhere entering in.

The first reaction to such a word of consolation is the exclamation, “This is nothing more than stoicism.” As we read the lives of such Stoics as Seneca and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, we pity the blind resignation which sees no light beyond the blank negation of their hopes. We rightly feel that God has given to us, as Christians, a marvellous confidence beyond the point which the Stoics reached. We are right about that. Nevertheless, the resignation of the Stoic was a noble achievement. As Christ said, "By their fruits ye shall know them,” so by the fineness of the character of such a man as Marcus Aurelius we suspect, at least, of what heroic fibre his stoicism was made. Therefore, coming down to our own experience, we need not blush because we find the first consolation for our grief in the sense that, some way, it is inevitable.