“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word.”
(Ps. 119: 67.)
From one point of view there is no mystery so impenetrable as that
involved in the suffering and sorrow which exists in every department
and sphere of life. The suffering of humanity, the fact that “the world
groaneth and travaileth in pain until now” presented to the sensitive
mind of Dr. John Hall the supreme difficulty with which he struggled
during a great part of his remarkable ministry, until courage, faith
and experience taught him to understand and to recognize suffering
as having its mission in life and in the development of character,
just as happiness has its place, each acting as one of the two great
interpreters of moral and spiritual development. It is impossible to
have a creed or to form an adequate philosophy of life and overlook
the really essential and universal place suffering, in one form or
another, occupies therein. Just try and think, if you can, of a world
in which there is no suffering, no sorrow, no pain; a world in which
there are no tears, no bitterness, no woe. The thing is unthinkable,
it is simply inconceivable, and as a condition of life, utterly and
eternally impossible. Why? Because pleasure and pain are relative.
Suffering and joy face each other in a blessed contrast. There has to
be a standard of comparison by which we are to make the proper estimate
of these things, otherwise we would be unable to distinguish between
them; otherwise happiness would have no reality to it, no vitality
in it, and neither strength nor power of growth, while life would be
without an essential variety of emotions, and therefore necessarily
become “stale, flat and unprofitable” indeed. A remarkable description
of hell’s severest punishment, though very fanciful, is that, wherein
the victims are made to do that which they most loved to do here in
this life, incessantly, continuously and strenuously. The suggestion
to my mind is very significant and teaches that the most tortuous and
horrible suffering is just that which comes through uninterrupted
monotony. To dance your life away, to drink your life away, to play and
fritter your life away in purposeless amusement and never to suffer a
reverse or be conscious of a struggle, never to know a pang of pain
or experience a momentary disappointment, may seem to those who have
just sipped an occasional drop from the cup of pleasure and mirth an
enviable existence, a consummation in life devoutly to be wished. But
to dance or play or laugh or sing through endless eons of time and to
experience not one inspiring struggle which brings moral and spiritual
strengthening, to have to live through eternity would be misery indeed.
Suffering then, in the first place, heightens and intensifies our joys,
it helps develop the power of enjoyment, and it makes a larger and a
more real happiness possible. To illustrate: There was unspeakable joy
in the home of the prodigal, as the aged father rushed out to meet and
greet his wayward boy, for to the old man his son had been dead, and
behold he was alive again, he had been lost and was found. It was the
suffering of the separation which alone made possible the intense and
glorified happiness of their reunion. And how often it happens that
not only are “troubled times praying times,” but that “man’s extremity
is God’s opportunity.” Thus suffering often brings a man to his senses
and makes him conscious of his dependence upon God. As we read, it was
only when the prodigal “came to himself” that he concluded to arise
and go to his father, and we must conclude that it was the suffering,
sorrow and bitterness of privation and disappointed hopes that drove
him to a realization of his true condition, and in the end brought
to him a real and lasting happiness. In this and in similar acts of
conduct history never fails to repeat itself in every age, in every
epoch, in every generation, as well as yearly, daily and hourly in the
life of individuals and of nations. Opulence, ease, prosperity and an
unwholesome peace have repeatedly rushed peoples and principalities to
a shameful and untimely ruin, wherein men have lost their reason and
nations drunk with a sense of power have reeled and staggered to and
fro like a drunken man and then lay prostrate in the dust. In support
of this I appeal to history. In support of this Mr. Kipling appeals to
history when in his recessional poem he said:
“Far called our navies melt away--
On dune and headland sinks the fire--
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.
Judge of the nations, spare us yet
Lest we forget--lest we forget.”
Suffering then, often serves to give us a fuller, freer, wiser and
wider view of life. It was only when through suffering that the
prodigal “came to himself,” and when he received this self-revelation,
then he “arose and went to his father,” and in like manner when man
“comes to himself” he goes to God. But mark you, self-revelation seldom
if ever comes to one while sailing the seas of glory and sounding all
the depths and shoals of mere worldly splendor and prosperity. “Before
I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept my word,” said
the Psalmist, and when Job came to himself through the trial of his
faith and patience, he ceased to question the ways of Providence, he
reverently placed his hand upon his mouth and would “speak no further,”
for fear he now no longer knew God “by the hearing of the ear,” but by
the “seeing of the eye,” and he went to his knees in supplication, “and
the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.”
Again, we are to notice that suffering brings us courage and broadens
and deepens and intensifies our sympathies. “Pity makes the whole world
akin,” and so quickens our consciousness of brotherliness. “At sea when
the ship is in great peril the passengers crowd together, not because
they can escape peril by facing it in company, but because they can
gain courage by companionship. The sense of human kinship grows fresh
and keen when men stand together in the face of a common danger.” It
is therefore through suffering that men gain courage through a vivid
realization of the brotherhood of man and the solidarity of the race.
It often is as Dr. Mabie has said: “Through sorrowful ways men have
climbed to the heights from which they now look into the heavens and
over the landscape of life.”
And this brings us to our final thought which is that suffering in some
of its manifold forms gives that variety to life which is essential to
the proper development of all the faculties of heart, soul, mind and
body. By way of illustration, let us suppose that you could take from
the public and private libraries of the world every book that contained
a poem, a reference or a treatise touching the theme of sorrow, and
what a dull, dead, gloomy monotony of uninspired literature would
remain, while, in rather figurative language, the world itself could
not contain the books thus mutilated and cast away. Apply the same
test to art, and the galleries of the world would be destroyed, miles
upon miles of bare walls would greet us at every turn as we made our
heart-sick pilgrimage from gallery to gallery. Apply the same test to
music, and you will never again hear the singing of a song with genius
and power in it strong enough to stir the heart’s deepest emotions or
to cause the soul to glow with a conscious ecstacy of faith and hope
and the brain to burn with the fire of a high and holy resolution.
The organ’s rich peal, the ring of stringed instruments, the wailing
of the lute would lose the voice of melody, while “The Marseillaise,”
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Dixie Land” and similar martial airs would
never have found voice to speak for patriotic devotion or to chant the
glory of a martyrdom for home or for country, had not the spirit of
sacrifice and suffering pervaded them and given to them immortality.
No, suffering is a vital part and condition of life, and from the
right use of it we gather strength and grow beautiful in moral and
spiritual stature, while we gain the only happiness that maintains and
has power to bless mankind, happiness which is the child of conscious
strength acquired on the battlefield of conflict and in the vale of
tears. How then are you going to use the sorrows, the afflictions, the
disappointments and the trials that must come inevitably into your
life? The late Maltby Babcock has a fine passage in this connection:
“Byron eagerly coveted a place among the immortals, yet accepted
his club feet with cursings and bitterness; while St. Paul accepted
his ‘thorn in the flesh’ with sweetness and was thereby exalted and
transfigured. The poet wishes to become a hero for the public while
privately tasting of the sweets of profligacy. Sinning against his
finer feelings his art steadily declines, until at thirty-five it has
passed into the sear and yellow leaf.” Let us strive to emulate the
example of St. Paul, and when having no power to expel from our life
that which brings pain and suffering, let us endeavor to accept such
sorrow as an opportunity to develop character, and thereby be exalted
and made strong, remembering always that since “The Man of Sorrows”
hung upon the cross, transfigured sorrow is that which has blessed
humanity most, and brought men nearest to the heart and mind of the
Master. And train yourself to believe that.
“Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been learned,
And sun and stars forevermore have set,
The things which one weak judgment here has spurned,
The things o’er which we grieved, with lashes wet,
Will flash before us out of life’s dark night,
As stars shine best in deepest tints of blue;
And we shall see how all God’s plans were right,
And that which seemed reproof was love most true.”
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