THE LUXURY OF GRIEF. 71 



should be resisted. It continues to urge that tribute be 

 given to the dead long after the tribute is fully paid, 

 and spurs on exhausted nature to fresh sorrows, when 

 the voice of duty and the prostration of the energies call 

 it to repose. 



' Of grief in its third and last stage I need say little. 

 It forms the twilight of a return to our ordinary frame, 

 and is often more pleasing than the indifference of that 

 everyday mood in which there is nothing either to 

 gratify or to annoy. There is luxury in the tear, re- 

 gret has become a generous feeling that opens the heart, 

 and we can love and praise all that we valued in the 

 departed without feeling so continually that what we 

 so valued we have lost. There is truth in the doctrine 

 of purgatory, when premised not of the departed, but of 

 the surviving friend. There is the brief hurried period, 

 in which we can take no note of what we feel; the 

 middle state, with its unspeakable profundity of suffer- 

 ing ; and the after state, in which there is a cessation 

 from pain, and when even our sorrows become pleasant. 



' I shall not urge with you the commoner topics of 

 consolation ; I know the heart will not listen even when 

 the judgment approves. Grief is a strange thing ; it is 

 both deaf and blind. Where could it be more perfectly 

 pure from every mixture of evil and folly than in the 

 breast of our Saviour ? and yet even in Him we see it 

 finding vent in a flood of .tears, when He must have 

 known that he whom He mourned as dead was to step 

 out before Him a living man. Can I, then, hope to 

 dissipate your sorrow ? Can I urge with you any argu- 

 ment of consolation equally powerful with the belief 

 which He entertained ? or, were I possessed of some 

 such impossible argument, could I hope that it would 

 have more influence with you than that belief had with 



