The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 323

and sufferings, VBrfod and sharp the discipline of them; but when the rehearsal of them comes (2 Cor, xi. 16-33), it speaks a. perseverance unbroken a coumrre unquenched, a heart, fidelity, love, stronger o.nd more determined than ev,ir.' That r;hearsal somewhat remarkably closes with the mention of the first peril of Paul, as here given us, as though his memory, dcliboro.tely travelling backward, reached last that which life brought to him first. The opportunity may be seized for considering at least one side of the grco.t service of suffering, It must be a ministry full of ezpression, full of mean- ing, full of deep feeling, and, if not made full of use also, it must be of all loss "most miserable." In the present connection let us observe that- I. IT TEBTB A 0AUSE, OF WHAT SORT IT IS. With rare exceptions, it may be said that the cause which bears the test of suffering, and of much suffering, will be a cause alike great an:d good. Human hearts, str~ng though they be, are not strong enough to bear gratuitously a vast amount of suffenng. The vast amount of the worst sort of suffering that sin entails, that comes inevitably in its wake, is of course not in the place for a test, and cannot operate as such. The abundant presence of it, therefore, where it is, does not invalidate the position. The cause that asks suffering to espouse it, to sustain it, to carry it to completion, is self-hedged around as with some sovereign safeguard. 'l'he frivolous will not come near it, and the great multitude will pay no court to it. But: 1. If it arrest the attention, kindle the enthusiasm, win the practical confidence of a few, and those, perhaps, the thoughtful, the useful, the unselfish, it is a considerable augury of something substantial and substantial good in it. 2. Enthu- siasm can do very great things for an hour. It will encounter and even court any amount of suffering, We cannot, therefore, consider taking service in a ea.use that imposes suffering any decisive test. The test, however, becomes much more decisivij when that service is persevered in, still entailing suffering, year after year, and on to the maturity of life. 3. The highest kind of human test is reached when the cause is one persevered in to the very end of life, through suffering all the wa.y and almost every step. The enterprise that can secure this allegiance says as much for itself as any enterprise on earth can, and the best. Ancl this is abundantly the case with Christianity. When Saul embraced it it meant peril, and labour, and privation, and much direct suffering. But, "being persuaded of it, he embraced it,'' and was faithful to it through the succeeding periods and phases of his own earthly career, and up to the very last. Then in old age, beaten and weather-beaten, in prison and in chains and bonds, he does not dream of repenting or of recanting, but says," I am not ashamed," and bids others follow in his steps (2 Tim, L 12). If it had been a flowery path and an easy career, Paul'11 perseverance would have been no argument for it. But because it was a suffering career, his perseverance spoke, not his praise alone, but that of his Master's cause yet more. How many a cause will waken enthusiasm I how few will sustain it ! How many will beg it I how few reward it I There is the difference of a world, ay, of two worlds, between the two, II. SUFF!!:BING TESTS A MAN, 01' WHAT SOBT BB IB, If any one persevere in fighting a suffering battle, it is certainly so far forth an argument for the object of the battle. But if he do not fight the battle, or beginning do not carry out to the end the struggle, it by no means condemns the cause. The question will have to be settled whether blame lie with the cause or whether it do not rather lie with the person. 1. Suffering for the individual tries high moral quality and improves it. 2. Suffering tries many individual virtues and graces-those of faith, of hope, of perseverance, of love that fires cannot burn away nor death destroy. And it unfailingly improves them. 3. Suffering certainly tends to fix and give clear" widence" to an unearthly type of character. 4. Suffering lends distinctness to conviction, to purpose, to achievement, It is a disinfect- ant, an alterative, and a tonio all in one. Pleasure and indulgence enfeeble, that is, they tend to enfeeble e.nd to enervate, once past a very moderate amount. Suffering, short of an excessive amount of it, makes keen the faculty, the si~ht, the soul itself I Wonder- ful is its bracing effect on body and mind, on heart and lite, llJ, SUFFERING BECOMES SOMETlllES TIIB O00ASION OF A GREAT MORAL DISPL~Y IN TIUII WOBLD, Beside the uses of suffering in the good fruits it produces on individual ohe.re.cter; and beside its use as a test, whether of worth in an enterprise or of strength in a person, it cannot be denied that it lends itself to special moral service, often on a large IIOale and in a wide theatre, Againa, it all nature rebels. For thai veTy reason, 320 THE AOTS OF 'l'HE APOSTLES. [on, IX, 1-43.