a character could never be produced apart from the instrumentality of pain.

In the first place, suffering acts as a check upon our evil tendencies. Here we may be met with the objection that if God had not allowed sin to exist, the suffering now required to check it would have been unnecessary. We disposed of this difficulty, however, when we were considering the origin of evil. We then saw that the existence of evil could only have been prevented by means which would, at the same time, have prevented the existence of good. And since much evil can be compensated for by a little good, its prevention would have been an irrational and ungodlike act.

Evil, then, being a necessary fact, some suffering is also a necessity. It is the desire for present enjoyment that leads men astray; and they can only be brought back by the counteractive influence of pain. So far as suffering fulfils this purpose, it is manifestly the outcome of love. I say manifestly; and yet the Puritan and Calvinistic theologians never saw it. They erred, in my judgment, in representing God as justice rather than as love; whereas, according to the teaching of Christ, God's justice is but one phase of His love. All He does apparently

in justice, He really does in love. It is just that the sinner should be punished for his sin. Why? Because in no other way can he be made to give up his sin; and this is the consummation Love desires. The suffering which follows sin is, I take it, a token, not of a justice which can only be appeased by wreaking out a certain quantity of agony as an equivalent for a certain quantity of sin, but it is the outcome of a wise and tender love, which punishes only that it may save. Suffering, so far as it corrects evil, is not an argument against, but an argument for, the existence and beneficence of God.

But the point upon which I want chiefly to dwell is, not the negative value of suffering in correcting evil tendencies, but its positive value in developing good ones. It is needless to say there is an enormous amount of suffering in the world which cannot be intended for the punishment of sin, inasmuch as it has to be borne by men, women, and children quite out of proportion to the sins which they have committed; ay, very often they are called upon to suffer because they are less sinful than their neighbours.

Now, I want to show you that unmerited suf

1 See 'Defects of Modern Christianity,' second edition, p. 177.

ferings may be useful and even necessary. Pain has many purposes to fulfil in addition to the eradication of evil. If evil had never existed, suffering would nevertheless have been essential to the perfecting of the human race. Shakespeare, the profoundest of all students of human nature, who knew better than any one else has ever done what made or marred men, says (you remember) in 'As You Like It':—

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'Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

Just let us consider one or two of the positive uses of adversity.

Account for it how you may, suffering often acts as an intellectual and spiritual stimulus. The world's greatest teachers have usually been men of sorrow. I do not mean whining, puling, sickly, sentimental sorrow like that of Byron, or Alfred de Musset, or Heine. The sorrow which a man feels because he cannot satisfy his greedy thirst for pleasure is not at all ennobling. But for sorrow manly and heroic, we may well thank God When Dumas asked Reboul, "What made you a poet?" the answer was "Suffering." "If I had not been so great an invalid," said Dr Darwin to a friend, "I should not have done nearly so much

B

work." "We will not complain," says Thomas Carlyle," of Dante's miseries: had all gone right with him, as he wished it, Florence would have had another prosperous lord mayor, but the world would have lost the 'Divina Commedia.' We do not know much about Shakespeare's life; but we do know, from his sonnets, that he had suffered. vastly. His heart had been wrung till it almost broke. And in Tennyson we have another striking illustration of the educative effects of suffering. In Memoriam' is by far his greatest poem ; there are single stanzas in it worth almost all the rest of his works put together; and this poem was inspired by a great grief, by the death, namely, of his friend Arthur Hallam. Nor is it only those who will have a niche in the Temple of Fame that are teachers of sorrow's divine lessons. I have known women of whom the world will never hear, whose whole life was one protracted grief, who, by their patience, their faith, their cheerfulness, their unselfishness, have preached to all who came near them sermons more eloquent by far than were ever delivered from any pulpit-sermons in comparison with which the discourses of Chrysostom or Savonarola must have been tame and dull.1

1 See also 'Defects of Modern Christianity,' second edition, pp. 253-56.

Again, suffering is necessary for the development in us of pity, mercy, and the spirit of selfsacrifice the noblest of all our endowments. Dr Johnson had a curious notion that pity was acquired by the exercise of reason. He might

almost as well have maintained that a blind man could acquire by reason an idea of colour. The well-known line-"haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco "—contains a profound psychological truth. Only those who have experienced calamity themselves can understand what it means. And unless we know what it is, we cannot sympathise with it; nor are we likely to make any efforts for averting it. No character can be perfect which has not acquired the capacity for pity; for in the acquisition of this capacity we receive our highest development, and realise most fully the solidarity of the race to which we belong.1 You who know how to pity, and how to benefit another at some pain to yourself, are you not thankful that you have this knowledge? It cost you suffering to learn it, it costs you suffering to practise it. But do you grudge the suffering? I know you do not. Spinoza has a curious definition of suffering, as "the passage to a lower state of perfection." It is much more frequently, I think, 1 See also 'Agnosticism,' pp. 352-65.