Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1881-11-30
Sympathy at the Cross.

we may, perhaps, have remarked how,
upon some dark day when the sky was over
cast, one little cloud, as the day wore on,
seemed to detach itself from the general
mass and become fringed all around with
border of soft light. Even 80, amid the
blackness which gathers around the linger-
ing hours of the crucifxion, one cloud there
is-a cloud indeed, but less heavy than the
others cloud, but one upon which the
light of heaven is poured, Transforming it
into picture, whose brighter colors are
toned down by the surrounding gloom, by
its own inherent mournfulness; yet still
picture on which the fearful eye and the
heaving heart love to rest, with the grateful
feeling that Godsent sorrow has Joy Of its
own. They who have ever experienced
this joy will, from their experience, bear
ready and thankful witness that, though
therein the bitter has been mingled with the
sweet, yet that the sweetness has in it
something which is peculiarly its own,--a
purity, refinement, which marks it as the
cordial of heaven, given to refresh an ach-
ing heart, sent to sustain sinking spirit.
Ye children of God, whom God himself
has caused to mourn; ye whose souls he
has pierced (as with sword) by some one
Of his mysterious dispensations, to us quite
unaccountable, the reasons and causes
whereof lie treasured in the depth Of his
profound counsels ye mourners over some
Of those earthly ties which nature-that is,
God-made sacred from the first, which re-
tain their catholic sacredness amid all the
races that make up the great family of man,
triumphing over false religions, and where
all else is false, witnessing to one thing that
is true; come, stand in spirit under the
cross, and learn how the sorrows OF the
cross have given double strength to that
which is among the strongest of all human
bonds, the mutual love of mother and son !
Learn from that mourning mother how sor-
row may be borne. Learn from that suffer-
ing Son that glove is strong as death" i"
Learn from both that what was sacred before
is doubly sacred now. The mark Of the
cross is put on filial and maternal love, and
stamps It as the Kings own-a part of the
royalty of heaven.
Let us, then, stand in spirit beneath the
shadow of the cross, with the mother of
Jesus. Who is there that will not feel for
her2 Oh let the Holy Spirit breathe over
the dull and stagnant waters Of our souls,
call into play the sacred fountains Of our
sympathetic tears, and by the power of SYM
pathy make her baptism our own, that with
her we may hereafter pass through its puri-
| flying waters into the calmness of that peace
which only disciplined sufferers can know,
which only they "whom heaven is teach
ing how to mourn can truly appreciate.
What agony must it have been for her to
witness with mothers eye, made doubly
acute by mothers love, those sufferings of
the body, of which the fullest descriptions
must fall so very far short Of the terrible
| reality Those wounds, those tortures, that
| faintness, weariness, distress, she mother
has to witness, and do-what2 That which
is the hardest thing of all to do-do nothing,
do nothing but submit, believe, and bear
What mother is there who would not suffer
anything herself rather than sac her child
suffer How often, when some poor little
one is tossing to and fro on his narrow bed
restless with pain and fretful with weari
ness, has she who sat by that bedside
through the tedious watches of the night
wished from her heart and prayed from her
soul, "Oh that might be allowed to bear
what he is bearing, SO that he might be free
from pain Oh that might be i'll, so that
he might be we'll |" The mother of Jesus
stands by his cross, and knows that she can,
that she may, do nothing for her Son, who
is suffering protracted death-paugs there.
The sorrows Of Mary are the sorrows OF
Jesus. BY sympathy he makes them his
own. That look which he casts down upon
her with his dying eyes, tells us that he feels
for his mother. And if it be one of the
| sharpest pains that rends our human nature
| to know and feel that another is suffering
| acute distress of mind and utter laceration
| OF heart on our account, then the sufferings
| of Mary under the cross are among the suf
| ferings of Jesus upon the cross.
| But the pain of sympathy with another
has a blessedness of its own it tends at
once to work its own cure. The mere fact
that another feels for us lightens our sense
Of pain, aud the consciousness that our sym
pathetic feeling for another has brought that
other relief gives delight which, If it re-
fuse to bear the chains of logical definition
is yet well understood by all who have ever
felt it. Thus doth soft light from heaven
mark off this particular cloud from the 9th
ers that gather round the cross. The pain
of parting, that is the cloud, the power OF
sympathy, that is the light; Retire from
the cross, o virgin mother of thy Lord
Thy Son spares thy mothers eyes the sighi
Of his actual death; thou hast shown thy
readiness to be faithful unto death, but his
death thou needest not to behold. Thou
hast seen enough; let distance veil the rest
Go with the apostle of love, with him who
has been the special object of thy Sons love
to thy future earthly home. Be on earth q
mother to him, and he will be ON earth {
son to thee. Hereafter thou and he shal
meet me again, and shall dwell forever
with me in that world where the pair
of parting is unknown" "Set me as {
seal upon thine heart, as seal upor
thine arm for love is strong as death.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither
can the floods drown it; if a man woult
give all the substance of his house for love
It would utterly be condemned (Solomon''
Songs vi y. Ye who have ever had tt
mourn, ye who may ever have TO mourn
cross. When has filial, when has materna
love received higher conservation
"Even the church, with her life divine,
| Shows none more fair on the sanity throne;
Even art with her heaven born nre