A FEW months ago, and the whole of England was thrilled by the murder of a wife and six children, and by the suicide of the husband who had murdered them.
The neighbors speak of having heard the children singing the night before they died, and, from the letters left by the husband and father, we are told some details of the awful tragedy. But it is not of that that I wish to dwell upon now, my reader. There is a sentence in one of the letters that went right home to my heart. It was a letter written by the suicide to a relative just before he took the poison. He writes, “My darling wife and children are now out of reach of trouble and storm. I am about to follow. The world has no use for heartbroken men...... Annie always said she would like to go when I did, and a few days ago declared she was ready any time. She was a noble-minded woman and a devoted wife and mother. I could not leave any of them behind. They are better off now than millionaires. They have not had a particle of pain ... ..Annie took her dose as comfortably as her tea, with the understanding that we should all go.”
It was that sentence, “The world has no use for heart-broken men,” that struck me so. What despair there is manifest in that sentence! and hidden depths of sorrow also that we can never fathom. Oh! that the writer had gone to the One Who heals the broken-hearted, and had found rest in the love of the heart that was broken on the cross for sin and sinners! The world may have no use for heart-broken men, but the “better world” is filled with those who have been broken-hearted. David was broken-hearted when he wrote the fifty-first Psalm — heart-broken on account of his sin. He says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” The world is hard to those who are despairing, and there is little comfort in the narrow bounds of time for those who are distressed; but in God’s eternity there is One to comfort the wretched and heart-weary. He says, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And He means what He says. If my reader is despairing, look up and see the light of love that shines in Jesus’ face. Come unto Him, Who has died to make the vilest clean, and the most wretched happy. He was the “Man of sorrows,” that He might give joy to those who are in sorrow; He was rejected, that He might welcome and receive to eternal happiness the world’s rejected ones; He was “smitten and afflicted,” so that He might relieve the anguish of the afflicted heart. If the poor suicide of this article could have washed the Saviour’s feet with his tears, he would have known the peace and rest of that Saviour’s heart. David found healing for his broken heart, and solace for his wounded soul. Oh! my reader, there is no trouble that Jesus cannot take away. Will you trust Him with your sorrows? Tell Him all; go down upon your knees, and do not rise until you have His peace. Read the third of John; dwell upon. the sixteenth verse; read it over and over again, and you will find that God is love, that Christ has died for you, and that your heart will lose its sorrow, and your life its sin.