feeling which comes to a religious man who believes in God and in God's goodness, and who sympathizes with his fellow-man, which compels him to ask what all this pain is for. The thing that overwhelms him is its bulk; there is so much of it. There are pains of the body and pangs of the heart and distress of the soul. Then again, the evil effect of pain seems to be out of proportion to its magnitude. A twinge will spoil all physical surroundings. A vexation will take the zest out of the best planned day. A heartache will make the sunshine sickly. It is like some dark pigment with an infinite power of diffusion; a single drop of it in the water of one's life will discolor the whole contents. It is a thing with which religion is much concerned. The sufferer has a right to look to Christianity for something; indeed, it does turn to the Master with special hopefulness in this particular regard. It turns to Him as to a man "acquainted with grief." He is supposed to be familiar with it, and therefore to have something to say. Before listening, however, to what He has to say, it may be well to ask what the world has been able to say without Him. First, then, one can see the inevitableness of pain. It is the price which must be paid for the capacity to enjoy. As there can be no light without corresponding shadow, the very conception of pleasure is impossible without the idea of pain in the background. It is the necessary condition of the capacity to feel. Everyone can see that just as delicacy and sensibility increases, so the capacity to suffer increases. In the second place, anyone can see that it is not the penalty of sin, and that in large part it is not even the consequence of sin. Pain would have been one of the facts of life whether Adam had eaten the apple or not, even if there had been no apple or no Adam. It is rooted in the nature of things. It is quite true that a very considerable amount of it can be directly traced to sin; but relatively this portion of it is small. The Old Testament idea that it is portioned out to men in proportion to their wrong-doing is an idea that was practically abandoned long before our Lord gave it its death-blow. "Those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were not sinners above all that dwelt in Jerusalem.” In the third place, we can see that it is the schoolmaster of love. When one seriously attempts to imagine a world in which no pain is, he is compelled to see a world in which no love is. There would be no place in such a world for any kindly interchange of sympathy, and where no sympathy is possible no affection is possible. Charity, patience, tenderness, fortitude would be words without a meaning in such a world. Now, all this is very valuable. It is the sum of all the wisdom upon the subject from Job to Mr. Spencer. But the practical efficiency of it is only to enable one to bear his neighbor's pain with equanimity. The most serene philosopher of this sort will always find his philosophy put to rout by so little as a toothache. The ministry of consolation must have something better to say. What is the Master's word on the question? First, it is that suffering is an inevitable necessity both for God and for man. Nothing could be more unreasonable or untrue than the popular notion that God is "without passions." That statement could only be made truthfully of Brahm, not of God. "It is not the will of your Father which is in Heaven." The father sitting at home and following the prodigal with his eye, must needs bear an aching heart. God does not "willingly afflict or grieve the children of men." Jesus, by thus binding up God and man together, in a community of pain, binds them together in a community of sympathy. For when men in suffering come fairly to see that they are enduring the experience of God Himself, they find the moral sting taken out of their torture, and are to that extent the better able to bear it. Second, it is His revelation that it is the outcome of God's good purpose for His family, and is, therefore, not distributed according to personal dessert. His teaching is, that it is laid upon each one in such way as is best, upon the whole, for the good of all. But He has a large outlook. It is quite natural that the one upon whom the burden is laid should groan under it, fret under it, and maybe rebel under it. It does not greatly matter. If a soldier in an army is told off for a painful duty, he is not, as a rule, told what his duty is for. It is simply his business to do the duty and to suffer whatever it may involve. There are large plans concerned, and if it be necessary to sacrifice him for the attainment of the plans, sacrificed he must be; and that is the best use to which he can be put. Hence pain is in large part vicarious. It is vicarious, even when the subject of it is not aware that he is suffering for others, and quite likely has no heart to endure such sufferings for them. (The truth is, if there were no good things done by men in this world except the things which they themselves choose to do, there would be far less of them done than there actually are. But in the wisdom, as well as in the goodness of God, men are made to serve His ultimate purposes in spite of themselves. It all resolves itself into the doctrine of the Cross. Jesus' conception is, in a word, that God deals with us as we deal with our children. We allow the child to burn his fingers that he may discover the nature and property of fire, and so may not burn his whole body. We take away his treasures sometimes, even though he screams. We bathe him in spite of all his protests. If necessary, we lay upon one child a burden or a |