By Frank W. Boreham

      "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted" (Matt. 5:4).

      Blessed are they that mourn! the Saviour says; and I think that I begin to understand him. "Blessed are those who feel" he seems to say. The tendency is to become insensitive. We get used to things. Our susceptibilities become seared. The doctor, who nearly fainted at his first operation, learns in time to look upon pain without emotion. The minister is so much among the sorrowing and the bereaved that he is in peril of regarding the tears of the mourner with professional nonchalance. He takes them for granted. It is not easy under such conditions to keep the spirit fresh and the heart tender.

      Blessed are they that mourn! Mourning implies a soft, copious, heartfelt grief--a grief that has broken all restraint and finds relief in welcome floods of tears. There is all the difference in the world between a keen, cutting wind with just a dash of rain in it, and a warm tropical shower. There is just the same difference between the stiff and formal expression of our sympathy and the deep and heartfelt sorrow that is the earnest and surety of real blessedness.

      Unless we are constantly on our guard against it, we are all in danger of being drawn into the horrible vortex of insensibility.