* J. G. Binney.
HEBREWS II. TO 307
^ The Chili palm grows to a height of from forty to sixty feet, and bears numerous small edible, thick-shelled nuts, and yields after it is felled a syrup called palm honey. " This honey," Darwin tells us, " is a sort of treacle, and forms really the sap of the tree. A good tree will yield ninety gallons, though it looks dry and empty as a drum. The tree is felled, the crown of leaves lopped off, and then for months the vessels of the tree pour forth their stores, and every fresh slice shaved off exposes a fresh surface and yields a fresh supply." And have we not often found something akin to this in human experience ? Have we not all known men apparently cold and hard, and utterly unfitted for the gentler and softer ministries of life, looking as sapless and empty as the Chili palm when standing in its native soil, but when they have been felled by some unforeseen trouble, and the cold iron has entered their souls, they have become even womanly in their capacity for consolation, yielding sympathy and love and helpfulness in measureless amount. Ah, yes ; it often takes the sharp axe of suffering to open up in us the fountains of sympathy and healing love. Chili palm-like, some of us need to be felled and well sliced before the honey will flow ; but —
Unto the hopes by sorrow crushed a noble faith succeeds, And life by trials furrowed bears the fruit of loving deeds. How rich, how sweet, how full of strength, our human spirits
are, Baptized into the sanctities of suffering and of prayer.^
(3) Suffering appears necessary for the development in us of self-reliance, self-respect, and all that is implied in the expression " strength of character." And it is only saying the same thing in other words to maintain that, without suffering, we could not attain to the highest happiness of which we are capable. Just think of the advantages to be derived from the struggle for success in life, painful as that struggle must often of necessity be. We cannot be born successful, and it would be a great pity if we could. Good fortune and prosperity are worth most when they have been achieved in spite of hindrances and difficulties. The happiness that we have obtained by effort is far sweeter than that which we have inherited, or that which has come to us by chance ; and the very effort we have made to acquire it has tended to our own self -development. And what is true of individuals is true of races. It would have been a grievous disadvantage had they been
1 J. G. Binney.
3o8 PERFECT THROUGH SUFFERINGS
created fully developed. The possibility of developing themselves is their grandest and noblest prerogative.
^ John Stuart Mill argues in his Posthumous Essays that this would be a better world if the whole human race were already in possession of everything which it seems desirable they should have. But surely it is infinitely better for races to struggle up to material prosperity and to spiritual perfection than to have been created incapable of progress. In the latter case they might have been comfortable and satisfied : but their comfort and satisfaction would have been no higher than a brute's.^
I am one of those bright angels
Passing earthwards, to and fro, Heavenly messengers to mortals,
Now of gladness, now of woe.
Might I bring from the Almighty,
Strength from Him who maketh strong;
Not as alms I drop the blessing, — From my grasp it must be wrung.
Child of earth, I come to prove thee,
Hardly, sternly with thee deal ; To mould thee in the forge and furnace,
Make thine iron tempered steel.
Come, then, and in loving warfare
Let us wrestle, tug, and strain. Till thy breath comes thick and panting,
And the sweat pours down like rain.
Man with angel thus contending, Angel-like in strength shall grow,
And the might of the Immortal Pass into the mortal so.
2, The virtue of suffering lies in the spirit of the sufferer. There is nothing in suffering itself that can bring a sense of its use or its nobility. It will strengthen the will, test the endur- ance, call out the pity, quicken the sympathy, serve the love of men only if men carry into it a conviction of the moral purpose with which it is fraught. Suffering itself, as we so often see, is unable to ennoble ; suffering of itself often dulls, and blunts, and
* A. W. Momerie, The Origin of Evil, 22.
HEBREWS II. lo 309
stuns, and exasperates the nature which suffers. What gives the power of suffering is not suffering itself, but the faith tlmt dis- cerns the purpose which lies behind it. So, then, if that faith were put to the strain and were lost, if anything were to happen to us that would make it reel when most we wanted it, then suffering alone might only cripple or overwhelm our characters. We want to know then where is the warrant for this faith that behind our suffering there is a purpose of the love of God. Where is the warrant? It is written in the cross of Jesus Christ. The sufferings of Jesus, we are prompted to think, went far beyond what was necessary as an acceptance of punishment of sin. It seems that He meant to go out into the very farthest reaches of human pain and to know and to understand them. It was part of that long self-sacrifice by which humanity in Jesus was learning to offer itself again in perfect obedience to the will of God. He was learning obedience through the things He was suffering, and not only accepting punishment of sin ; He was perfecting His human life by the bearing of pain and sorrow. He was being made perfect through sufferings. Each pain of body or of mind was an offering of a Son's love to God, and of a Brother's sympathy to His fellow-men.