October 14

“Let us, then, learn that we can never be lonely or forsaken in this life. Shall they forget us because they are ‘made perfect’? Shall they love us the less because they now have power to love us more? If we forget them not, shall they not remember us with God? No trial, then, can isolate us, no sorrow can cut us off from the Communion of Saints. Kneel down, and you are with them; lift up your eyes, and the heavenly world, high above all perturbation, hangs serenely overhead; only a thin veil, it may be, floats between. All whom we loved, and all who loved us, whom we still love no less, while they love us yet more, are ever near, because ever in His presence in whom we live and dwell.”

H. E. MANNING

“O blest communion! fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia!”

Bishop WALSHAM HOW

October 13

“Let us learn from this communion of saints to live in hope. Those who are now at rest were once like ourselves. They were once weak, faulty, and sinful; they had their burdens and hindrances; their slumbering and weariness; their failures and their falls. But now they have overcome. Their life was once homely and commonplace. Their day ran as ours. Morning, and noon, and night came and went to them as to us. Their life, too, was as lonely and sad as yours. Little fretful circumstances, and frequent disturbing changes, wasted away their hours as yours. There is nothing in your life that was not in theirs; there was nothing in theirs but may be also in your own. They have overcome each one, and one by one; each in his turn, when the day came, and God called him to the trial. And so shall you likewise.”

H. E. MANNING

“O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win, with them, the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia.”

Bishop WALSHAM HOW

October 12

“For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort; whatever goodness may surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly, the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn invitation, preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship with the fullest human lot, which, I must think, no one who has tasted it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other. . . . All the experience that makes my communion with your grief is summed up in a ‘God bless you,’ which represents the swelling of my heart now, as I write, thinking of you and your sense of what has been and is not.” GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans], writing to a friend who was feeling the first anguish of bereavement.

“And love lives on and hath a power to bless
When they who loved are hidden in the grave.”

LOWELL

October 11

“The heart sometimes grows jealous of itself, and is fearful of being glad. We check the signs of returning joyfulness; we would keep about us the signs of woe, careful for the monument, not content with the grave in the heart. This must not be. After the storm can the blue break out too quickly? Every impulse towards returning happiness is of God. Back to the old work then, with as much of the old care and diligence as may be. In the words of the glorious old German, Richter, ‘The most beautiful wreath we can lay on the grave of our dead, is the fruit wreath of good deeds done to others.’”

GEORGE DAWSON

“How foolish it is not to enjoy with gratitude the consolations which God sends us after the afflictions He sometimes causes us to feel! There is, it seems to me, great wisdom in enduring storms with resignation, and in enjoying the calm when it pleases Him to restore it to us, for this is to follow the ordinance of Providence.”

Madame DE SÉVIGNÉ

October 10

“Do not cheat thy heart and tell her
‘Grief will pass away,
Hope for fairer times in future,
And forget to-day.’
Tell her if you will that sorrow
Need not come in vain;
Tell her that the lesson taught her
Far outweighs the pain.

“Cheat her not with the old comfort
‘Soon she will forget.’
Bitter truth, alas, - but matter
Rather for regret;
Bid her not ‘Seek other pleasures,
Turn to other things’;
Rather nurse her caged sorrow
Till the captive sings.

“Rather bid her go forth bravely,
And the stranger greet;
Not as foe with spear and buckler,
But as dear friends meet;
Bid her with a strong clasp hold her
By her dusky wings,
Listening for the murmured blessing
Sorrow always brings.”

A. A. PROCTER

October 9

“Adam Bede had not outlived his sorrow – had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burthen, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling, if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it – if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of the Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy – the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world; sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“In a world like ours, the measure of our love will be the measure of our tribulation. Love cannot be content while any suffer, cannot rest while any sin.”

A. MACKENNAL

October 8

“Our veiled and terrible guest (trouble) brings for us, if we accept it, the boon of fortitude, patience, self-control, wisdom, sympathy, faith. If we reject that, then we find in our hands the other gift, - cowardice, weakness, isolation, despair. If your trouble seems to have in it no other possibility of good, at least set yourself to bear it like a man. Let none of its weight come on other shoulders. Try to carry it so that no one shall even see it. Though your heart be sad within, let cheer go out from you to others. Meet them with a kindly presence, considerate words, helpful acts.”

G. S. MERRIAM

“I think that the retrospect of sorrow is, with most persons, not very sorrowful. They see that sorrow is the great chastener.”

Sir A. HELPS

“Sorrow seems sent for our instruction, as we darken the cages of birds when we would teach them to sing.”

RICHTER

October 7

“There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks, the opportunity is lost. He comes out no richer or greater; nay, he comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the truning hour of his life. Opportunity opens before him as the ocean opens before one who sails out of a river. Men have done the best and the worst, the noblest and the basest things the world has seen, under the pressure of excessive pain. Everything depended on whether they looked to the depths or the hills for help.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

“Let us take heed in time
That God may now be glorified in us;
And while we suffer, let us set our souls
To suffer perfectly; since this alone,
The suffering which is this world’s special grace,
May here be perfected and left behind.”

E. H. KING

October 6

“I beg you, my dear friend, whatever be your suffering, to learn first of all that not to take your sorrow off, is what God means, but to put strength into you that you may carry it. Be sure your sorrow is not giving you its best, unless it makes you a more thoughtful person than you have ever been before.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

“Measure thy life by loss instead of gain.
Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth;
For love’s strength stands in loves sacrifice,
And whoso suffers most has most to give.
. . . . . . . . . . .
How poor were earth if all its martydoms,
If all its struggling sighs of sacrifice
Were swept away, and all were satiate-smooth;
. . . . . . . . . . .
What we win and hold is through some strife.”

E. H. KING

October 5

“From every sorrow you receive in a spirit of Christian resignation, from every pain you bear patiently, from every great trial you bravely meet, there silently passes to those about you strength, and comfort, and encouragement.”

S. A. SMITH

“Oh, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.”

LONGFELLOW

“There are in this world blessed souls whose sorrows spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, form the seed whence spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the afflicted.”

Mrs H. B. STOWE