It is our reasonable service, the only tribute that a being with thought and understanding can make to the All-loving and All- merciful Father. Do not let us mistake the meaning of these words. They do not mean merely that we must give up wicked- ness, however much we love it ; we must overcome the temptation to do wrong whenever it assails us. That, of course, is true, for these things are poison to the soul. But a man cannot live by merely avoiding poison. Sacrifice is a deeper thing than that. It penetrates into the inmost being, and demands self. It bids us give up things lawful because they are not always things expedient. Just as the man who is eager about his business life has to forgo ease and comfort, and often amusement, absolutely innocent things in themselves, but dangerous where misplaced, so we have to overcome by taking up our cross and following Him. If the innocent pleasure is misplaced, the cry of nature after it must be stifled, for they who seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness must learn the science of placing all things where God would have them. This effort means sacrifice — how hard the sacrifice is none can know till they begin to learn by experience. It is that plucking out of the offending eye, that cutting off of the offending hand, which our Lord in vivid imagery
^ K. A. Fieuch.
12 ANOTHER GOOD RECKONING
speaks of as the principle by which the whole body is saved from destruction.
^ Not merely the St. Peters and St. Pauls whose lives are high and wonderful beyond anything we see in our own, but plain, simple-minded men and women like ourselves, those who have learned, perhaps, to love the world and its plans and gains as well as we have, God has called over and over again to their true, highest self by the voices of disappointment and pain. In one sense it is the recorded opinion of shrewd, observant men. Some years ago one who was a notoriously shrewd judge of character said that in his experience he found men's characters spoiled by prosperity and unspoiled by reverses. He mentioned one who had risen to high honour as a signal instance, I think he said the only instance he could recall, of a man absolutely unspoiled by success. That was the testimony of one who did not profess to speak of it from the point of view of spiritual discipline, but as an obvious fact of everyday experience. How infinitely more striking when we place side by side with that remark the plain, simple story of a poor woman lying in an East-End Hospital, suffering the agonies of one of the most painful diseases that baffle human skill. In her last moments she said to the clergy- man who stood by her bedside : " I am so happy ; I never knew what real happiness was until this last fortnight." The story of the " Man of Sorrows " had illuminated the dark mystery of pain, and revealed its meaning.^
^ William Archer, reviewing a book by Eobert Louis Stevenson, declared that Stevenson's philosophy would break down with sickness. Yet at the very time Stevenson was a great sufferer and forbidden to speak for days, even for weeks. After- wards he wrote to his critic, " I see a universe I suppose eternally different from yours — a solemn, a terrible, but a very joyous and noble universe, where suffering is not wantonly inflicted, though it falls with dispassionate impartiality, but where it may be and generally is nobly borne, where, above all, any brave man may make out a life which shall be happy for himself, and, by being so, beneficent to those about him."
I wait, in His good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He.
I bow myself beneath His hand: That pain itself was wisely planned I feel and partly understand.
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ROMANS VIII. i8 13
The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise.^
(2) The second reason for the presence of pain is that there are some things that are better than pleasure, things that enter into a far higher realm; and, in order to bring these nobler matters into existence, in order to provide for them a sphere in which they can grow and develop, it is in accordance with the most tender love to inflict a certain amouut of pain. God has a great design, a design as wide as the universe, filling all time, a design to compass which He began to work untold millions of ages ago. Slowly He has laid the ascending courses; every organism has somehow entered into it, been a necessary part of it. This design was to provide a scaffolding on which man could stand, could be trained and educated, until in the " fulness of the time " he should be prepared for the Christ, could then behold His glory, be overcome by His beauty, and be changed into His likeness. And this end God saw to be so Divine that He felt justified, in order to attain it, in asking everything to suffer some- what, taking care to make each one an abundant compensation. He is like some great contriver of earth, who has a large design needing many workers, and who takes care to be a generous master, paying liberally for every service that is rendered.