For our Saviour saith, "Woe may you be that
laugh now, for you shall wail and weep." And "There is a time of
weeping," saith the scripture, "and there is a time of laughing."
But, as you see, he setteth the weeping time before, for that is
the time of this wretched world, and the laughing time shall come
after in heaven. There is also a time of sowing and a time of
reaping, too. Now must we in this world sow, that we may in the
other world reap. And in this short sowing time of this weeping
world, must we water our seed with the showers of our tears. And
then shall we have in heaven a merry laughing harvest forever.
"They went forth and sowed their seeds weeping," saith the prophet.
But what, saith he, shall follow thereof? "They shall come again
more than laughing, with great joy and exultation, with their
handfuls of corn in their hands." Lo, they that in their going home
towards heaven sow their seeds with weeping, shall at the day of
judgment come to their bodies again with everlasting plentiful
laughing. And to prove that this life is no laughing time, but
rather the time of weeping, we find that our Saviour himself wept
twice or thrice, but never find we that he laughed so much as once.
I will not swear that he never did, but at least he left us no
example of it.
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