word here used to describe the blessed of the Lord, generally means
_those that mourn for the dead_. It is not in the New Testament employed
exclusively in this sense, neither do I imagine it stands here for such
only: there are griefs than death sorer far, and harder far to
comfort--harder even for God himself, with whom all things are possible;
but it may give pleasure to know that the promise of comfort to those
that mourn, may specially apply to those that mourn because their loved
have gone out of their sight, and beyond the reach of their cry. Their
sorrow, indeed, to the love divine, involves no difficulty; it is a
small matter, easily met. The father, whose elder son is ever with him,
but whose younger is in a far country, wasting his substance with
riotous living, is unspeakably more to be pitied, and is harder to help,
than that father both of whose sons lie in the sleep of death.

Much of what goes by the name of comfort, is merely worthless; and such
as could be comforted by it, I should not care to comfort. Let time do
what it may to bring the ease of oblivion; let change of scene do what
in it lies to lead thought away from the vanished; let new loves bury
grief in the grave of the old love: consolation of such sort could never
have crossed the mind of Jesus. Would The Truth call a man blessed
because his pain would sooner or later depart, leaving him at best no
better than before, and certainly poorer--not only the beloved gone, but
the sorrow for him too, and with the sorrow the love that had caused the
sorrow? Blessed of God because restored to an absence of sorrow? Such a
God were fitly adored only where not one heart worshipped in spirit and
in truth.

'The Lord means of course,' some one may say, 'that the comfort of the
mourners will be the restoration of that which they have lost. He means,
"Blessed are ye although ye mourn, for your sorrow will be turned into