Luke 2:10 And the angel said to them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. We are incapable of omniscience in the region alike of enjoyment and of suffering. God has so made the eye of this body that it discerns not the animalcules swallowed in water, nor the tiny reptiles that are crushed by each tread of the foot. This limitation of the natural vision is a type to us of a principle which is the very condition of being. We are not to scrutinize sufferings which we cannot alleviate. We are not to allow pain to annihilate pleasure. We are not to set God's dispensation of sorrow at variance with God's other dispensation of joy. Where there is the remotest chance of alleviating, there we are to be keen-sighted in investigation. The eye is to be open — but let it be the natural eye, not the microscope. We are not intended so to realize the woe which cannot be mitigated, as to foster a general depression of tone, or a practical insensibility to the blessings which are largely mingled (none can deny it) in the cup of human being. It is needful, too, that we should none of us so enjoy as to forget the suffering which is for another and which shall be for us. On this ground, with this view, to this extent, we are bound to remember, and to take into our reckoning, the hardships, the calamities, and the miseries, which abound in the world. But it is not by refusing to rejoice that we shall really either learn to feel or learn to bear. (J. Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. |
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