River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1910-03-03
BRIGHT DAYS
AND DARK
By REV. DONALD SAGE MACKAY
d. D., LID.

But where sin abounded, grace did
much more abound.-Rom. $40
How much the counterbalance plays
it's part in the activities of human life!
Our bright days are counterbalanced
by dark days. Our times of prosper
ity are offset by times of adversely.
For every sorrow there is in the d.
vine providence, corresponding gain,
and at the heart of every defeat there
Is for the man of faith the
prophecy of new victory. Go
where we will in the great universe
of love and we find everywhere the
working of this divine law of counter
poise-the divine love compensating
abounds grace doth much more
abound" Where death walks with
insolent feet life triumphs in exultant
song. When earthly joys wither heav-
emily hope blooms in eternal beauty.
When time wears out its venture into
threadbare decay eternity robes her.
self in immortal splendor.
We want to realize, of course, that
these bright days and dark in life
which alternate in such swift success
sion are all part of a divine plan.
These feeting changes of prosperity
and adversely, joy and sorrow, life
and death, are not haphazard. They
are not the chance happenings of a
cruel and needless fate. Nor are they
ebullitions fickleness in God, or for
getfulness of his children. Not to
tantalize and tease the soul, not that
we may take our joys with trembling
and our sorrows with cringing does
our Heavenly Father set the dark days
over against the bright days in life.
God sends these seasons for the
growth of what is worthless and best
within us. The dark days and the
bright days are as necessary to the
poise of your character as the counter
balance is necessary to the equilibri'
UNI Of the wheel. 1t needs no pro
found thinking to realize what grind
ing monotony life would be if there
were no shadows to offset it's sunlight.
What an insipid thing joy would be-
come-a surfeit in the banquet of life
If there were no bitters to cleanse
the palate of the soul.
These bright days and dark days
in life as they come and go, some
times in rhythmic cadence and some
times in bewildering confusion, are al
SO part of divine revelation. They
are days of revealing as well as days
of discipline. God sends these alter
mating seasons into your life to reveal
certain qualities within you, to call
into play certain capacities, to make
vital certain possibilities in your ma
ture which the monotony of an I'M
broken experience could never bring.
The changing days of life unmask the
reserves of character. 1t is, of course,
a truism that man never knows how
much he can endure until the day of
adversely comes. 1t has been pointed
out that Walter Scott became great as
a man and realized the highest ex-
preston of his genius not until the
wave of adversely swept over his life.
A writer has pointed out the common
place character of SCOTS personal
journal up to the time before the fail
ure of his publishers took place. But
after that failure new note became
vocal in the great writer's journal,
new personality emerged. One re-
members in this connection the letter
which upon the day succeeding the
news of the disaster Scott wrote to
an intimate friend: II have walked
for the las: time in these halls which
/ have built, looked for the last time
in all probability at the domain which
I have planted, but death would have
taken these things from me if mis-
fortune had not" The letter concludes
with the words. "Adversity is to me
tonic and bracer." Look at that
manuscript" says Ruskin, referring to
Scott's novel of woodstock" which
was in course of writing at the time,
written in the very maelstrom Of that
adversely and not by the CULVER of
hair stroke, not by the suggestion of
a single tremor in the hand, not by an
erasure or change, not by any falling
off in the creative interest of the story
could any one detect that when Scott
wrote the second part of that novel
he did so under a cloud of bitter ad-
versity."
And biography is full of such I'M
maskings of the pressure of the dark
days succeeding the bright days in
life. Millions personality became
far more potent influence after blind.
ness had stricken him. The loss OF
physical sight intensified the keenness
of spiritual vision. Had Bunyan never
lain in Bedford Jail he had never
dreamed the Pilgrims Progress"
Had Tom Hood never known for him
self the bitterness Of want and the
ache of pain he had never sung the
"Song of the Shirt" or sobbed out his
immortal dirge. 1.-THE Bridge of
Sighs." Had David never fallen as he
did the world would never have felt
the passion of pentience and aspira-
ton of heart which breathed through
some such psalm as the fifty-first. Had
John never been banished to the is,
land of Patmos we should never have
had the revelation of heaven as he has
unfolded it's glories in the last book
of Scripture. In a sense, most solemn
of all, had Christ never passed through
the darkness of Calvary and tasted the
bitterness of death. He had never
been exalted as the Saviour of the
world. 1t is blessed experience sure
ly if for any one of us from whom the
sunlight of prosperity had been with
drawn for a season the light of a new
purpose and the reckoning of a hand