" Blessed are they that mourn." - Matthew 5:4.
That mourn over their alienation from God. - Over their past years of ungodliness. - Over the evil that they have wrought in the world. - Over their neglected opportunities of usefulness. - Over their moral unloveliness. - Over their insensibility; - their irresolution; - their bad memory for sacred things. - Over the unsatisfactory condition of the church. - The sin and danger of those near and dear to them. - The oppression, unrighteousness and misery that desolate the whole earth.
They mourn over the fugitive loveliness that meets them in their path. They hear the whole creation groaning in pain. They mourn to see so many exquisite and magnificent works of God, defiled and dishonored by sin.
But their mourning has its limits. It is lost in a sea of blessing. Blessed are they that mourn. Happiness is linked to their mourning. This beatitude comes from the lips of the Lord Jesus to kiss away their tears. They are blessed, be cause their mourning is an important preliminary of their deliverance from that which they mourn. Because they are in sympathy with Christ. Because a thousand consolatory expressions of God’s word come trooping to the chamber of their sorrow. Because their heart is fructified thereby to yield the flowers and fruits of joy.
Sometimes there is not the consciousness of the blessing. At such times God puts our tears in his bottle. He does not wipe them away; but keeps them for future explanation, and future vindication of his tenderness. We may slight our own past sorrows; but God slights them not. After a long silence perhaps, he brings forth the vial of our former tears, and shows what a wonderful memory Love has. He then clears up the long mystery, and convinces us of the perfect kindness of a dispensation that seemed so strange.
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