I
♦CHRIST The Self-life the Cause of Suffering♦
That Suffering, or conflict, is the Effect of which separation from God
and the self-centred life is the Cause, is an element of the teaching of
the Christ apt to be forgotten by students of His life.
♦Reasons for forgetfulness of this teaching♦
There are two chief reasons for this:--_First_, His pitifulness towards
all sufferers, and indignant repudiation of the idea current in His time
that individual suffering was necessarily the effect of individual sin.
_Second_, His peculiar doctrine of Suffering, which belongs to a later
stage of this study.
But if His life meant anything at all, it meant that in His view the
Self-centred life, the life of Desire, is the true and original Cause of
human misery. The sheep which had become separated from the shepherd,
the coin lost from its place upon the wedding chain, the son who chose
a life of which his own pleasure was the motive power; each of these
represents vividly His thought, that separation and isolation are
abnormal, a pain to God, ruin and misery to man.