^ Are there not far worse things in the world than outward misery such as ill-health and suffering, even than bereavement and loss of those we love ? Is not a heart full of selfishness a worse misery than a body full of pain ? And may not the patience and power of endurance, and of forgetting self, that sorrow and trial are often seen to work out in a character, be worth the sorrow and the trial ? Can you imagine a higher character than Christ's, and was not His " made perfect through sufferings " ? Suffering, like all else in life, falls into its right place and finds its reason and meaning to those who believe in a Father who deals with His children in love ; to those who refuse that belief it must be a dreary and meaningless business, I grant.^
^ One of the thoughts which pass sometimes through our minds about the sufferings of the Cross is. What could be the necessity of such suffering ? What was the use of it ? How, with infinite power, could not its ends have been otherwise attained ? Why need He have suffered ? Why could not the Father save Him from that hour ? But I suppose that, after all, the real difficulty is not about Him, but about ourselves. Why pain at all ? I can only say that the very attempt to give an answer, that the very thought of an answer ly us being conceivable, seems to me one which a reasonable being in our circumstances ought not to entertain. It seems to me one of those questions which can be expressed only by such a figure as a fly trying to get through a glass window, or a human being jumping into space ; that is, it is almost impossible to express the futility of it. It is obvious that it is part of a wider subject, that it could not be answered by itself, that we should need to know a great many other things to have the power * Principal Story : Memoir by his Daughters, 152.
156 HEARSAY AND EXPERIENCE
of answering. The facts which witness to the goodness and the love of God are clear and undeniable ; they are not got rid of by the presence and certainty of other facts, which seem of an opposite kind; only the co-existence of the two contraries is perplexing. And then comes the question, which shall have the decisive governing influence on wills and lives ? You must, by the necessity of your existence, trust one set of appearances ; which will you trust ? Our Lord came among us not to clear up the perplexity, but to show us which side to take.^
'Tis peace in pain to know that pain
Secured us pain's eternal end ; And that the more exceeding gain, ' To which by grace our souls ascend,
My great Eedeemer won for me By more exceeding agony.
'Tis true my pain is still my pain :
Heavy its hand on thought and prayer !
But while that Love to me is plain It lays its hand upon despair :
And soon I know this faint " How long ? "
Tor me may quicken into song ;
Beholding Thee — in what repose, By what still streams of Paradise !
Beholding memory of Thy woes Still in those deep pathetic Eyes :
Ah me ! what blest exchange for pain,
If I attain, if I attain !
Am I too soon in love with death ?
I know not if 'tis ill or well: If ill, then. Master, stay this breath.
Deny mine ear the passing bell ! One thing I ask, since I am Thine, Thy Will be done, Thy Will be mine.^
3. There are special moments in life when the veil of the other world seems to be uplifted by the hand of the Holy Spirit, and through the " rent curtain " of the seen we perceive God so close and near that we seem to stand face to face with Him. What has been to us little more than a name, or a vast and vague
' Dean Church, Life and Letters, 274. - S. J. Stone, Poems and Hymns, 116.
JOB XLii. 5, 6 157
abstraction, becomes all at once a living Person. The occasion may widely vary. It may be an illness, an accident, an open grave, an awakening text, a word dropped from a child's lips, or a silent communing of the heart with itself at some midnight hour when everything has slept save the conscience within us. But there can be few who have not experienced such a sight of the Deity at some time or other.
^ To learn to love, one must first learn to see. " I lived for twenty years by my sister's side," said a friend to me, one day, " and / saw her for the first time at the moment of our mother's death." Here, too, it had been necessary that death should violently fling open an eternal gate, so that two souls might behold each other in a ray of the primeval light.^
^ I have learned much on this journey, and hope to tell things in the autumn at Oxford that will be of great use, having found a master of the religious schools at Florence, Filippo Lippi, new to me, though often seen by me, without seeing, in old times, though I had eyes even then for some sights. But this Filippo Lippi has brought me into a new world, being a complete monk, yet an entirely noble painter.^