Classic Audiobook Collection - The Mystery of Pain by James Hinton ~ Full Audiobook [philosophy]

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

The Mystery of Pain by James Hinton audiobook. Genre: philosophy Written by Victorian-era physician and moral thinker James Hinton, The Mystery of Pain: A Book for the Sorrowful is a brief, searching meditation addressed to anyone weighed down by suffering - their own or another's. Speaking not as a distant lecturer but as a companion in grief, Hinton refuses easy cheerfulness and instead asks a harder question: what if pain is not meaningless, but bound up with the unfinished, growing nature of human life? Moving between the realities of bodily hurt and the deeper wounds of fear, loss, and despair, he explores how suffering can sharpen perception, deepen sympathy, and change what we are capable of loving. His central argument treats pain as the shadow cast by imperfection - the cost of a world still in process - and he challenges the reader to consider whether the very experiences that feel most unbearable might also open a path toward moral awakening and a more vital joy. Part consolation, part philosophical inquiry, this classic essay offers language for sorrow and a framework for enduring it without denial. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:14:22) Chapter 02 (00:26:05) Chapter 03 (00:34:57) Chapter 04 (00:50:36) Chapter 05 (01:06:45) Chapter 06 (01:17:58) Chapter 07 (01:36:14) Chapter 08 (01:53:36) Chapter 09 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the mystery of pain by james hinton chapter one of the mystery of pain to my mother for whom these thoughts not uttered in words but acted out in life have come to me i dedicate them as her own this book is addressed to the sorrowful and may be that there are some in whose lives pleasure so far outbalances pain that the presence of the latter has never been felt by them as a mystery it is probable that there are more who through native strength of mind or or felicity of circumstance, are able to meet the questions that arise out of it with unoppressed hearts, and who have so strong a faith in good that they can, without difficulty, resolve all forms of evil into it. To these I do not address myself, but there is another, and I think a more numerous class, to whom their own or others' pain is a daily burden upon whose hearts it weighs with intolerable anguish. I seek to speak to these, not as a teacher, but as a fellow, sharing their feeling

and knowing well how vain is the attempt to throw off misery, or to persuade ourselves that life is better than it is. I would fain share with them also thoughts that have seemed to me capable of casting a bright gleam of light athwart the darkness, and if they are true, of bringing an immense and incredible joy out of the very bosom of distress. It seems to me, indeed that nothing less than this will suffice, that pain must furnish its own consolation, if it is to be consoled at all, or rather that it must give more than consolation, that it must give joy. If it can be made fruitful thus, if rejoicing can be seen to be rooted in sorrow, not sometimes only, but absolutely, then at least one part of the mystery, and perhaps the

hardest and darkest part, would be gone, and it is this that I think I have seen, and that I wish, if I can be so happy, to show those who need it more than myself, and who better than myself may profit by it. Let me beg the patience of one class of sufferers, and their forbearance even, with some thoughts which are herein addressed to another. No one, I think, can have had much intercourse with those who have been called upon to suffer without feeling that there are two different ways in which our pains most heavily assault them. There are some in whom the fact that they and others are called for endurance, even the endurance of unutterable pains rouses no angry questionings and excites no doubts. Their hearts may be bowed to the earth, but they do not

murmur. They think it natural that the ways of God should be beyond mortal fathoming, and that what would seem best to our narrow vision could not be the truly good, and their deepest agony they do not question righteousness. But there are others, I think, they are the more, the chief poignancy of whose suffering comes from the irrepressible doubt. of right, a burning passion to penetrate the impenetrable meaning of their anguish. They might gird themselves up to endure, but they cannot tolerate the unreason, the waste, the seeming wrong. Their souls, which might stand erect before the utterest tortures which Wright could demand,

or reason could inflict, writhe in impotent passion in the face of that cold, unanswering law which will spare nothing, or that cruel caprice which lays its sacrilegious choice upon the best. What they demand to see is a right and a purpose in the loss and wrong. It is a human cry which surely God does not despise. Is it not indeed a faith ignorant of itself in assurance that there must be in God's world a right, a perfect reason, which could not balk our hearts or mock our hopes if we could know it? Surely we ought not be impatient of these demands, even when they are most impatiently urged.

who do not feel them, or those who have succeeded in hushing them within their own bosoms, may permit them to be waited and pondered to the full for other's sakes. Perhaps, too, it may be found that these passionate questionings do not lead us altogether wrong, that God's own spirit might be prompting them, designing to meet them with an answer, that they may be, though a faulty, yet an acceptable fulfilling of the precept, for this thing will I be inquired of, saith the Lord. Do not our Savior's words encourage us to seek knowledge as well as other gifts when he says, I call you not servants, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you?

If we knew all the things that the Father does, would our hearts be consoled, would our sorrows be turned to joy? Does not the secret anticipation of the heart, in answer to this question, mark the distinction of the believer and the faithless? I believe that by such knowledge sorrow would be turned to you. turn to joy i think it may even be seen that it would that we may have the knowledge now that proves it accustomed as we have been to the darkness and to bear sorrow unassuaged debarred by the loss and lapse from our privileges as christian men have we not almost forgotten that the spirit is the comforter that the gospel claims as one of its chief ends that we might have great consolation that god has undertaken himself to wipe away all tears from his children's eyes and that christ's foretelling tribulation has bidden us to be of good cheer let us recall the joyful words let us assure ourselves that they do verily express the truth let us be bold to believe them and believing them to look for and to welcome all agencies by which they are fulfilled

from whatever unexpected quarters or quarters most threatening and hostile there springs up consolation may we not believingly recognize it is god's messenger as his minister for fulfilling his word himself not unwilling to do the consoler's part nay rejoicing most therein shall we wonder that he bends all things to the same end makes all results of human effort all the long tale of human strife his ministers to do for him his best and dearest work to give us joy such joy as his to transmute our lives and to make its dark threads translucent with the splendour of a glory like his own can we wonder if all that man has known or done has been working for his life to make its dark threads translucent with the splendour of a glory like his own can we wonder if all that man has known or done has been working together unknown to him indeed but guided by god's own hand to this end coming to us now as his ministers in our sore need and bringing refreshing waters to us when we are thirsting unto death for surely never has the healing water been needed more than now man has learnt many things but he has not learnt how to avoid sorrow among his achievements the safeguard against wretchedness is wanting perhaps indeed he could scarcely be charged with exaggeration who should hold that the aggregate of man's unhappiness has increased with this increasing culture and that the acuter sensibility multiplied sources of distress more than outweigh the larger area from which his pleasures are drawn and the more numerous means of alleviation at his command at least it appears certain that our heaping up of enjoyments if ever it was designed as a means of producing happiness has proved a signal failure. When we regard the general tone and feeling of our age, whether as expressed in its

literature, in its social intercourse, or even more, perhaps, in its amusements, do we not find ourselves in the presence of a society from which real gladness has well-nigh died out, in which hope is almost extinct? I seem to be reminded of an attempt so often made, and proved fruitless just as often, by external pleasures and multiplied distractions to beguile, or at least to quiet, a wounded heart. Man's heart is wounded in these latter days. The bright dreams of his youth have vanished. The outpouring of his deepest passion recoils on himself in mockery, but he can attire himself in gorgeous apparel and fair sumptuously every day. He can lay all lands under his contribution and make nature serve his pleasures. He can even explore all

knowledge, if he will abstain from asking any question that it truly concerns his manhood to have answered. But surely it is not now an open question whether pampered luxury or gratified curiosity can heal a wounded spirit. If happiness is to revisit the earth, or if it ever been a stranger there, is to be strange no longer. It must come from a form of genuine joy of the heart, a satisfaction of our highest nature. It must come surrounded with light and bring hope in its train. It must bid our largest and noblest affection spring up and blossom anew. It must visit us as a spring visits frozen lands and make our lifeblood flow again with warm current in our veins. And there are thoughts which would do this, thoughts which are possible to us now,

in some sense indeed, now first possible to us, though open to all men since Christ and his apostles preached. Old thoughts, and yet new, as old as the gospel, yet taught us with fresh evidence and proof by the latest discoveries of science which do not but gather up all the testimony of nature that is good news and bid us seek beyond the visible this secret of our life it is true indeed that no charge in our thoughts can alter the nature of things or invert the essential relations of pleasure and pain no form of opinion can make bitter sweet or cause the couch of suffering to be a grateful rest let us observe what is true on the other hand it is in the power of not that is in the power of not a greatest but to be a grateful rest let us observe what is true on the other hand it is in the power of knowledge very radically to determine our feelings, and sometimes to make the same things in a high degree pleasurable, or the reverse. Take, for example, the case of hypocritical pretense of friendship, and designing arts to procure our favor. Ignorant of their nature, these pretensions, if not too gross, might be sources of gratification to us, but the discovery of their true character makes them in the highest degree repulsive. Nothing being altered but our knowledge. a similar effect may be produced in the opposite direction the apparent aversion or coldness of a beloved person may be turned into a source of joy if it be discovered to depend on real regard it is in the power therefore of the discovery of an unknown or unregarded fact to alter our feelings even to invert their natural character to make unpleasing that which is naturally pleasant or to render the highest measure joyful that which is naturally repugnant this power is in the knowledge where there has been ignorance it does not alter our natural emotions it still leaves as in the cases suppose the manifestations of regard agreeable in themselves and the tokens of aversion in themselves the source of pain

but it can overrule these primary tendencies eliciting feelings that are stronger within us than the sensational impressions we may take another simple case the loss of a small sum of money is a naturally painful thing few persons could avoid a distinct emotion of annoyance from its occurrence but let a generous man discover that through his loss a dear friend had been largely benefited and his feeling is entirely changed the vexation is lost in a stronger pleasure it is therefore evident that knowledge might alter our whole feeling with respect to the world the apparent good and evil of life constitute a case in which a truer understanding might invert the natural expression we need not therefore be hopeless in the presence of the problem of pain knowledge might alter its entire aspect nay we are not limited to this general thought for there is one condition under which all know that pain is not truly evil but a good this is when pain is willingly borne for another's sake its entire character is altered then it not only passes into the category of good things but it becomes emphatically the good our life has nothing else so excellent to show all kinds of pleasure fall infinitely below it measured by self-sacrifice by heroism every other good sinks not only into a lower place but becomes evidently of a lower kind nothing else in the same full and perfect sense deserves or receives the name of good the homage of all hearts unequivocally affirms this title even when there is not manhood enough to imitate when the baser nature within us prefers the meaner course the verdict of the soul is never doubtful the pains of the martyrs or the losses of self-sacrificing devotion are never class among the evil things of the world

they are its bright places rather the culminating points at which humanity has displayed its true glory and reached its perfect level an irrepressible pride and gladness are feelings they elicit a pride which no regret can drown at gladness no indignation over power conceive all martyrdoms blotted out from the world's history how blank and barren were the page there are materials then evidently within us for the entire inviourable version of our attitude towards pain. The world in this respect we might almost feel seems to tremble on the balance. A touch might transform it wholly. One flash of light from the unseen, one word spoken by God, might suffice to make the dark places bright and wrap the sorrow-stricken heart from a man in the wonder of an unutterable glory.

If all pain might be seen the light of martyrdom, at the least and lowest in man's poor and puny life, or shall we rather say, in God's great universe, might be interpreted by the best and highest, were not the work done? It is done, for the light has shown. The word is spoken. End of Chapter 1. Recording by Ethan D. Gilke. Chapter 2 of the Mystery of Pain. Recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Libervox.org. A brief narrative of my thoughts may be allowed me as the simplest method I can adopt of giving

them expression. Some time ago, two feelings were forcibly impressed upon my mind. On one hand, I was made conscious afresh of the evil that is in man's present state, an evil deeply affecting his whole being, and demanding for its remedy, nothing less than a reconstruction and restoration of his nature. And, on the other hand, I was scarcely less impressed with the evidence that there exists in all human experience something unseen, some fact beyond our consciousness, so that the seeming of our life is not the truth of it. Neither of these thoughts is new. They came with new force

to my mind, owing to particular lines of thought on which I was engaged, which presented them to me in fresh lights, and with new evidence, making old words burn with new lustre. but they are in themselves familiar truths. The radical need of change in human nature has been affirmed by the best members of the human race, as long as history records the thoughts of men. With us it has become mixed up in theological doctrines, and so has been made the subject of verbal disputes, but it itself is an old and native feeling of the human heart,

and the belief that there is an unseen fact beneath all that we are conscious of, that there is something unperceived by us which gives rise to all of our experience also is not new though it has lately taken more distinct form and place in the human mind they are two old and customary thoughts but the freshness with which they have appeared to me enabled me to see them in a relation which i had not perceived before that which suggested itself to me was this if man's nature needs a change and there is some fact we are not conscious of causing our experience then may not this fact be the working of that very change in man? This thought assumed by degrees in my mind, the character of an assured and manifest truth. It is the starting point from which the thoughts contained in this volume sprang. Our experience is the working out of a change in man. Or, to speak in clearer and more familiar terms, it is the carrying out of man's redemption. It is clear that if this thought could be accepted as the truth, it would fulfill the conditions for a complete

change in our thought of life. To connect all our experience with such an end would enable us to read it entirely anew. For by giving to our pains a place of use and necessity, not centered on ourselves but extending to others, and indeed affecting others chiefly, as existing for and essential to God's great work in the world, by giving our painful experience this place, its whole aspect would be altered. It would come within the sphere of that pain which is capable of being an instrument of joy, which exhibits the highest good we can in our present state attain, the pain that is, of martyrdom and sacrifice. Nor are we left to rest merely in this general thought.

It comes to us realized in the highest form, and raises our souls to a height which might seem too awful and too full of joy. For so regarded, all our pains, all human pain and loss, identify themselves in meaning and in end with the sufferings of Christ. He stands as the revealer to us of human life, and the emotions which his story awakens within us become the pattern of those with which all distress may be encountered, and every loss accepted. And surely we may at least say this, if God would give us the best and greatest gift, that which above all others we might long for and aspire after, even though in despair it is this that he must give us the privilege he gave his son,

to be used and sacrificed for the best and greatest end. Nothing else could so fulfill our nature or satisfy our hearts as this, that Christ's own life should be renewed, his work fulfilled in us, that we should be united with him so, and feel the wonderful words of St. Paul true of our own poor and blank-seeming sorrows. I fill up that which is behind, with the world. the afflictions of Christ, for His body's sake, which is the Church. Our suffering being related to an end that is not merely ours, an end that is of all ends the greatest and best, for we are so made as to rejoice in others good, to find in it indeed

our highest joy, to rejoice above all in serving it. And if this thought of human life is true, we see that the gospel addresses man as constituted thus. it should do so. If it came to us on any other ground, it would be addressing itself not only to the lower, but to the weaker elements within us. It would pass by the worthiest part of us, the part most kindred to itself. For with what light does the gospel come, what revelation does it make, but this, that God's highest joy is in others good, nay, that his great heart is impatient of their misery, and springs forward with an eager haste to take it upon himself,

finding therein alone the means to make us know him. When we look there, we can see why God is blessed, the happy being. We should be happy if we had love and found it for such a work. If we might take the human sorrow and bear it on our hearts, and give our lives too and our sorrows for the redemption of the world. If we might undertake that work, a small, the smallest part of it, and live for that and die for it, that would be God's greatest gift. to us. His best gift, then, would be not in our pleasures, but in our sorrows, in our losses

and evils, not in our possessions or delights. If this one fact of the use of our lives by God in the redemption of the world were true, the very foundations of our lives would be changed. The current of our thought and feeling must pour itself through a new channel. The view then that I desire to suggest rests upon these two thoughts, that there is something accomplished in our experience which is unseen by us, and that sacrifice for others is good. For this unseen work that is done through us is something done for others. With this view, I think we shall find hereafter that both the facts of life and the constitution of our own nature so evidently agree as to give it the greatest possible confirmation.

But I may first say a few words respecting the demand which is thus made upon us, to recognize the existence of an unseen fact in all that we experience. It is evident that all the effects of the events with which we are concerned are not and could not possibly be perceived by us. We see and feel things alike the great ones and the small ones as we esteem them, only as they affect our senses, that is, only in small part and for a short time. They soon pass beyond our sight, and while they are within it, they never show us all they are. Often those which are are the greatest seeming to us the least. How little we are able often to calculate the influence even upon our own future of events or actions of which we seem to have had the most perfect

knowledge at the time, and of the effects of these events on others, which must go on, so far as we can estimate, without any end, only the smallest fragment is within our view. It is one of the first lessons taught men by experience, not to judge of events by what they seem alone, but to remember that there may be much more involved in them than appears. To judge of our life, therefore, merely by that which is seen of it, is to commit ourselves to certain error, so that the thought I have suggested that in all our experience there is some unseen relation to spiritual things, to a spiritual work in man, makes on us no new demand.

It is but the carrying out to their legitimate and surely to their natural result, principles which experience has established. We shall be sure to be thinking and feeling falsely respecting our life if we cannot recognize some unseen bearing on it, for we do not, we know we cannot see the whole, and this principle is established not only by experience, it is the lesson which, almost more than any other, science teaches us also. In exploring the material world, we soon find that, in order to understand any part of it aright, we must recognize things which are unseen, and have regard to conditions or to actions which do not come within our direct perception. It is enough to instance the pressure of air, of which we have no consciousness,

the motion of the earth equally unperceivable by us, the hidden force lurking in unseen atoms, of chemical affinity or electricity, the vibrations which traverse the universal ether, and in the fine invisible unity which makes all her forces one, whereby, holding to the unseen, man has traced out in nature a perfect order amid all the confusion. So far we have learnt that what we directly and naturally perceived in things around us and the events which happened to us was never meant to be the guide to our thoughts respecting them. The chief part of the value of science indeed consists in bringing into our knowledge and so into our practical use, that which is not within our consciousness,

in which our senses can only indirectly or not even at all perceive scientific knowledge consists in regarding the unseen and looking at things that are in one sense invisible is therefore true because it fulfills this evident condition for the attainment of truth and thus when it is said that all human experience is the working out of redemption of the world the restoration and perfecting of man's being it is no difficulty in the way or evidence to the contrary that is not visibly so. If this seem like a difficulty, it arises only from our natural tendency to limit our thoughts by our impressions, and so to condemn ourselves to error. That is the one source of error from which all advance in knowledge sets us free. It is the one difficulty which obstructs the road to truth. Reference is made to an unseen fact. It should be so. If the fact were not unseen, it could not be the truth, for it would not be freed from the limitations of our perspective. does but bring the thought into harmony with all our thoughts that we have just ground for believing true and if a certain effort is demanded to free ourselves from the dominion of our own small impressions it is but the same effort which is or has been the condition of all knowledge

but here the effort is not intellectual we are not called upon by great stretch of thought to see relations in ordinary facts which no common eye can seek we are not bidden to follow causes to far distant and remote effects The demand is not for a larger intellectual view, but for faith, for that which is the common and inevitable basis of all religion, and is the foundation stone of Christianity. We have to recognize a fact no human eye indeed can fully trace, but which God reveals. End of Chapter 2 of The Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilke. Chapter 3 of the Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilke. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Libravox.org.

A consideration of the uses that pain visibly serves in human life may add weight to the thoughts that have been suggested. For these uses, which have been often dwelt upon, are by far too limited, even if they were otherwise adapted, to give the key to its existence. Three uses of pain are recognized, and indeed cannot be overlooked. 1. Bodily pain prompts us to many actions which are necessary for the maintenance and security of life, and warns us against things that are hurtful. It has been often pointed out how largely that which contributes to health is attended with pleasure, and how constantly the access or causes of disease are accompanied by pain. Cold and hunger, for example, lead us to feed and clothe ourselves,

and when excess begins, there comes satiative. and disgust. These things are true, but they exhibit only one side of the facts. If pain is in these respects often beneficial, it is also often harmful, and in almost all cases is liable to exceed an immense degree the amount which is needful to secure its beneficial influence. The pain of many diseases, by the exhaustion it produces, is one of the chief sources of their danger, while in many cases, as in the abuse of intoxicating drinks, it wholly fails to indicate the most fatal perils. And not only is life, in many cases, crowded with useless or excessive pains, but our sensibility itself seems to be more developed for pain than for pleasure.

Is not the power of suffering in excess of our power of enjoyment? Is not our power of suffering in excess of our power of enjoying? Intense enjoyment can last for but a short time, and when once the limit of fatigue is reached, the pleasure itself may become a source of torture, but pain may continue undiminished, even growing in severity, until life itself succumbs. Indeed, if we bring ourselves resolutely to look at all the facts, are we not almost compelled to feel that our nature, at least our bodily nature, is constituted for pain rather than for pleasure? is to the former that it vibrates, if not the most readily, at least the most intensely and most

proactively. Nor can we overlook here that strange law of our constitution by which a comparatively slight pain will spoil much happiness, and even turn what should be pleasure into bitterness. There is no adequate explanation, therefore, to be found of pain in the beneficial effects which it produces in respect to our physical existence. It serves these uses. It benevolently meant to serve them, doubtless, as our hearts irrepressibly affirm, but it exists independently of them.

Its source lies deeper, and its ends are larger. 2. But secondly, pain serves as a punishment for sin. It follows wrongdoing in the forms of bodily disease or want, of mental anguish or social vengeance. Suffering is the Minister of Justice. This is true in part, yet it is also inadequate to explain the facts. Of all the sorrow which befalls humanity, how small a part falls upon the specially guilty, and how much seems rather to seek out the good.

Nights spent in dissipation bring ruined health. Nights spent in fond watchings by beds of pain bring alike in equal ruin. To what sufferings children are subject? and indeed all who are not able to protect themselves. We might almost ask whether it is not weakness rather than wrong that is punished in this world. Nor is there a wider basis for the idea that physical pain punishes the violation, not of moral, but of physical law. Not to speak of the cruelty which thus inflicts the last punishment upon the ignorant

and treats misfortune as a crime, the relation itself as partial as the others, or in the poverty which presses upon the weaker members of a thickly-peopled country. Pain avenges the majesty of the violated law, physical and moral, but it does not exist for this. Three. But there is another end which pain fulfills, a worthier and more satisfying one, perhaps, than either of those that have been mentioned.

It disciplines and corrects the airing, chasens and subdues the proud, weans from false pleasures, teaches true ones. wisdom. Happily it does, but only in some cases. Unhappily, Edmar often fails to teach or to subdue. It often hardens or perverts. Pain is used for discipline, but can we say that it exists solely for that end, when those to whom it is no blessing, but a curse, to whom arouses only bitterness, or sinks merely into despair, have no exception and seem to pline in vain for pity? Most often in this sad world, pain works, to our eyes, evil, and not good. And where it works no good, it often falls most heavily. Some other source and reason must be found for pain than the moral benefit it visibly brings

the sufferer. And if neither of the uses we have thus observed in pain can even seem to furnish the reason for its existence, so neither can they when taken altogether. There are pains innumerable which benefit neither the body nor the soul, which punish no moral wrong, which vindicate no material law against voluntary breach. Take, for one instance, the sufferings of industry condemn to reluctant illness, which leads so often to discontent and bitterness of heart. All these we have enumerated are secondary purposes served by pain.

They do not conduct us to its source, nor reveal to us its meaning. Neither does the fact that the progress of man and the development of its powers are prompted and maintained by the discomforts and evil which he feels. For pain often paralyzes instead of stimulating and reduces to impotence energies of the utmost value. We must therefore accept pain as a fact existing by a deep necessity, having its root in the essential order of the world. If we are to understand it, we must learn to look on it with different eyes, and does not a different thing? thought suggests itself, even while we recognize that others fail. For if the reason and the end of pain lie beyond the results that have been mentioned, then there lie beyond the individual. Pain, if it exists for any purpose and have any end or use, and of this what sufferer can endure doubt,

must have some purpose which extends beyond the interest of the person who is called upon to bear it. For the ends which have been mentioned include all that concerns the individual himself. That which surpasses these rises into a larger than the individual sphere. From this ground it becomes evident again that, to know the secret of our pains, we must look beyond ourselves. These uses of pain, which concern the one who suffers only, must fail and be found insufficient. They ought not to be enough, for they do not embrace that which is unseen. confining ourselves to that which is visible to us, we ought to find ourselves in darkness, unable to answer irrepressible questions.

But when we extend our thought and recognize not only that there are, in pain, ends unseen by us, but that these ends may not be confined within the circle of our own interests, surely a light begins to glimmer through the darkness. While we look at only that which concerns the individual who suffers, no real explanation of suffering, no satisfaction that truly satisfies, can be found. But if we may look beyond, and see in our own sufferings and in the sufferings of all, something in which mankind also has a stake. Then they are brought into a region in which the heart can deal with them and find them good,

and if the heart, the reason also. For here it is the soul that is judge, and if the heart is satisfied, the reason is also content. End of Chapter 3 of the Mystery of Pain. Recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. Chapter 4 of The Mystery of Pain. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Libravox.org.

Recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. We have noticed before how love is capable in some degree of overruling our natural feelings of pain and making some things that otherwise would be painful, a source of joy to themselves. if they are to produce the benefit to others whom we delight to serve. When we look into this subject farther, we see that it is the law of our experience that our own mental condition controls and even alters our feelings. Though we speak of pleasure and pain as fixed indefinite things, yet they are truly by no means fixed.

It is a matter of familiar experience that various circumstances may modify our sensibility in respect to things which are, in our ordinary state, painful. The power of mental excitement in this respect is well known. A soldier wounded during battle may feel no immediate suffering from the severest injury, and we have everyday proof of the same thing and the failure of slight accidents to pain us when we are intently occupied. All strong emotions, indeed, seem to have a similar power. It can scarcely be doubted that the most of the most of the most of the most of the most of the

martyrs have sometimes gone through their flaming death in ecstasy. In the accounts we have of that fanatical sect in the east, one part of whose devotions consists in working themselves into a frenzy, and then laying on glowing iron, dancing with their hands and putting it to their lips, indicate not only the absence of pain in the act, but even some kind of pleasure. It would seem indeed that there is nothing that can be said to be always or necessarily a cause of pain. What we can truly say on this point is that there are certain things which are painful to our bodily senses when they are not controlled or modified by the state of mind. It is as truly our nature not to feel pain from the ordinarily painful things at some times as it is to feel them painful at others.

In this respect, the power of love to take away pain is not peculiar. Love, when it is strong, can banish pain. But in this, it is only like all strong emotions. It is peculiar in its power of making what is ordinarily painful a source of joy, and this joy of the highest and most exquisite kind. We all know this. We are not only willing we rejoice to bear an ordinarily painful thing for the benefit or pleasure of one whom we intensely love. Within certain limits,

indeed, but still most truly, that bearing pain for such an end is a privilege to be sought, not a sorrow to be shunned. Universal experience proves this. It is one of the broad, familiar features of human life. But when we consider this, do we not see that our natural feelings mislead us when they pronounce pleasant things to be good ones, and painful. one's evil? So far from this being the case, things that we call painful, that are painful in our ordinary state, are essential conditions of our highest good. To us, there could be no love without them. We could never have felt the joy, never have had even the idea of love if sacrifice had been impossible to us. In our truest and intensest happiness, that which is otherwise felt as

pain is present. Pain, we may say, is latent in our highest state. It lies hidden and unfelt in the form of devoted sacrifice, but it is there, and it would make it so felt as pain if the love which finds joy in bearing it were absent. Take, for example, the offices rendered with joy by mother to her babe. Let the love be wanting and what remains, not mere in difference, but vexation, labor, annoyance. A gladly accepted pain is in the mother's love. It is in all love that does not contradict the name. To take away from us the possibility of that which we feel as pain,

or to take its best part from life, to render it almost, surely altogether, worthless. The possibility of love is given to us in our power of sacrifice, and loving brings the power into immediate action. To beings constituted as we are, the possibility of love can be given only through the power of sacrifice. Our highest happiness consists in the feeling that another's good is purchased by us, that we, our labor or our loss, are the instrument through which it is conferred. Take away that element, and the joy alters its character and becomes inevitably less.

still rejoice and be glad in the good fortune of the beloved object, but we can no more rejoice in giving it at our own expense. In our best happiness, then, what we otherwise term pain is swallowed up. It is embodied and mixed up in joy, for do we not despise and loat the man whose only thought in that which he calls love is the pleasure he can receive? And further, by taking away the love, its sacrifices would be felt as pain. Pain emerges or comes out from this joy by a taking away or absence, and its presence to one who should be loving might imply no evil state around him, but only something wanting in himself.

For the very same thing may be to us either painful, or in the highest degree productive of delight, of a delight which could not be without them. Remembering these things then, what should we consider the presence of pain in the world to mean? Does it not mean that there is a want in man by which that becomes painful which should be joy? Does it not mean that a world in which so much pain is present

is adapted is altogether made to be the scene of an overpowering and absorbing love? One element of the best happiness is given, namely sacrifice. What does it imply but that the other should be present to? The other, which is love. Let us think then, of ourselves. Our natural feeling prompts us to exclude all painful things, to found a bliss upon their absence.

But is not this an utter error, and were not its achievement fatal? Surely a truer knowledge lays its true knowledge lays its fullest and intensest grasp upon the painful elements of life and holds them as the fundamental conditions of joy. The reason we are made, or seem as if we are made, for pain, is that we were made for love. The predominance of sacrifice is a sign and proof upon how good a plan the world was formed, upon how high a type of bliss. Our feeling it as pain proves something wanting in ourselves. Doubtless we are right to loathe and repudiate pain, and count its endurance and evil. To be happy is good, to feel pain is evil, and a sign of evil. God meant us for

the one, meant us to abhor and shrink from the other, but the question is, what is the happiness God has meant us for, the happiness to which human nature is fitted, to which it should aspire? Should it be that from which the painful is banished, or that in which the pain is latent? Should pain be merely absent, or swallowed up in love and turn to joy? Surely we can answer but in one way. To wish the former were to choose the lesser good, to cut ourselves off from our chief prerogative. If God truly loved man, must he not have him such that by want of love, pain, should arise, and that to him, ignorant and unloving as he is, the world should be one dark mystery

of sorrow? How else should he have made us capable of joy? How else made the earth tolerable in the eyes of heaven? In the eyes of that heaven which gazes on the lamb that was slain, and sees unamazed in him the brightness of the Father's glory, the express image of his person? or if in the only worthy joy, the only happiness which, matching the dignity of man or feeling his capacity, rightly deserves the name of human. If in this there is necessarily latent the element of pain, so that by absence it must be felt, if in human joy pain is absorbed and taken up, not merely excluded or set aside, then we must once rise in our thoughts above ourselves. if this is our joy, then it is his also in whose image we were made.

The pain that is latent in man's bliss is latent too in gods, in his most as he is highest. And the great life and death to which the eyes of men are ever turned, or wandering ever are recalled, reveals it to us. We see it must be so. If God would show us himself, he must show us himself as a sufferer as taking what we call pain and loss. These are his portion. From eternity he chose them. The life Christ shows us is the eternal life. He emptied himself and the pain became manifest. He put off his perfection and the sorrow was hidden and lost in the fullness of his life no more. It was revealed as sorrow, becoming visible to human eyes, piercing this. the immortal heart before a breathless world, which, seeing him, sees and knows the Father.

Thus our own experience may solve for us the problem, how God is incapable of suffering, and yet reveals himself to us as a sufferer. The seeming contradiction here is only that which the intellect encounters in everything that is true of our own life. Love cannot be explained, made manifest of what nature it is, the secret of its happiness revealed, except by exhibition of toil, the abnegation, the sacrifice that are in it. Seeking for happiness, craving for good, we grasp at pleasure and turn away from pain. God must teach us better, and to do so he shows us the root and basis of his own.

Stripping off his infinitude and taking infirmity like ours, he bids us look and see the only happiness he has, or can bestow, bears martyrdom within it. If he does not suffer, it is only that his life is perfect. His love has no hindrance, no shortcoming, and can turn all sacrifice to joy. He stands our great example, not exempting himself from toils and sacrifices which he lays on us, binding heavy burdens and grievous to be borne upon men's shoulders, himself not touching one, but with so large a heart accepting them that they are transfigured into the very brightness of his glory, and our dim eyes cannot discern them, save as they are shown us with the brightness veiled, the glory banished, the love itself subdued,

the love itself subdued to a less burning flame, revealed therein in strong crying and tears that recall our experience to ourselves. He makes us know, with which part of it to link his name. It is sacrifice binds us to God and makes us most like him. Sacrifice that to us is sorrow, wanting life and love, but to him, supreme in both, is joy. And when we say pain is an evil, we can only rightly mean that our feeling it to be pain is an evil. That marks defect and want, failure of our proper manhood, shortcoming from a very life. our privilege of joy. From pain we may well seek and pray to be delivered, but by what deliverance? It may be banished in two ways, by taking away or by adding. Pain may be removed

passively by the removal of that which is its cause, letting us relapse into mere repose, which may seem joy by contrast, or by deadening of the sensibility that shall banish alike pain and pleasure. But it may also be removed actively, positively, not by the absence of the cause, nor by diminished feeling, but by a new and added power, which shall turn into joy, a joy like gods. In the presence of pain, the basis is laid of an exquisite delight. Should we not seek it? Should we not believe that God will give it? If the thought seemed too great for us, Is it not therefore more befitting him, more like what we have learnt of him? And if he must new create us in order to give us happiness like this, has he not promised to create us anew?

Nay, do we not find here confirmation of his promise, finding our need for its fulfillment? Since love then is in sacrifice, we see that to creatures such as we are, failing of our manhood, pain must be. see our maker, assuming our condition in order that we may know him, also assumes, and must assume, our sorrow preeminent therein. We see, too, that deliverance from pain must be wrought out within. It must be a change of life, and not of circumstance. However the latter may be altered, to love itself shall change. This fact can never alter, that only in the form of that which we call sacrifice, can our true good be given us? Whatever else may pass or change, of this we may be sure, that till God cease to love us, we shall stand face to face with sacrifice. Of this, as of our

maker's presence, we may say, If I ascend into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in Hades, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. Even there, thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. For where God is, there is love. End of chapter four of the mystery of pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. Chapter 5 of the mystery of pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Librevox.org. These thoughts have been made clearer to my own mind by some others which our common experience has suggested to me.

My attention was first drawn to them in this connection while engaged in gardening, and feeling how essential a part of the pleasure which that occupation gave me was furnished by the slight inconveniences which it involved. Without the latter, I felt that the employment would have wanted very much of its zest. The little claim upon the endurance constituted a real part of the charm. As I became conscious of this fact, it was natural to go on to reflect how completely it seems to be the law of nature that, in order to be thoroughly enjoyable, and to continue so, our life must include more or less of willingly accepted inconvenience. This inconvenience may be, in most cases, slight, but still, with some exceptions which I shall refer to presently, it seems to be in all cases necessary. There is inconvenience overcome, endurance accepted, to some extent, in every life that is permanently pleasurable, and this independently of all moral considerations merely by the nature of our Constitution.

We see this fact strikingly exhibited in the field of sports, and in every kind of active amusement. It reaches its height, perhaps, and the pleasure found now so widely in ascending mountains, which seems to be a really painful task. But the same element is found almost universally in sports. Look at the roughness and fatigue of cricket, the toil, even pain, of a hearty day's boating. Nay, how much less charm were there even in a picnic, if it were not, for its inconveniences and little denials. But these are only special instances of the law that seems to be universal in our experience. Whether it may seem paradoxical or not, it is a fact of our nature that, without endurance, life ceases to be enjoyable.

Without pains accepted, pleasure will not be permanent. For the most part, among intelligent persons, this fact is so fully accepted and acted upon that they are hardly conscious how universally it is true. They take their inconveniences, accept their little pains, let us say, for example, the rising at a reasonable hour in spite of sloth, or the free use of cold water in spite of the shock, and reap their reward accordingly in a healthful, pleasurable life. But the law becomes evident immediately in its breach. It asserts itself inevitably against the attempt to avoid it.

A life from which everything that has in it the element of pain is banished becomes a life not worth having, or worse, of an intolerable tedium and disgust. There is ample proof in the experience of the foolish among the rich that no course is more fatal to pleasure than to succeed in putting aside everything that can call for endurance. The stronger and more generous faculties of our nature, debarred from their true exercise, avenge themselves by poisoning and embittering all that remains. A striking illustration of this fact is given in the words reported to have been uttered by Lord Queensbury as he stood looking at the scene from Richmond Hill.

Oh, what wearisome river! It will keep running, running, and I am so tired of it. Footnote. Mrs. Trench's memoirs. End footnote. But the records of luxury and all the ages furnish a long succession of similar instances. The whole principle is embodied in the now universally recognized doctrine of that necessity of work, itself an irksome thing, for happiness.

This is the thought that occurred to me. In our healthful and natural life, endurance is essential to pleasure. Our enjoyment by the very construction of our nature absorbs and takes into itself as a necessary element a certain amount of pain, that is, of what would, if it stood by itself, be pain. But when we recognize this fact, we can hardly help remarking another also. The amount of endurance or pain that our pleasure will thus absorb and turn into its own sustenance is not fixed. It varies, being in some cases more and some less, and especially varies with the intensity and perfectness of the life. A strong and healthy person can absorb into his pleasure a really large amount of what would

otherwise be pain, that of the hard days hunting or rowing, or the ascent of a considerable mountain, or he will enjoy a great amount of risk, as we read in the life of Stephenson, that the navies in his day preferred the most dangerous tasks. A weak person can enjoy much less. Fatigue or discomfort soon spoils his pleasure, but a sick person, one in whom the bodily life is depraved or wanting in its perfectness, can enjoy none. His pleasure can absorb no endurance at all.

He must be shielded from all that is painful, from all that taxes, and to the strong man so delightfully taxes, the power to bear, the pains which are the very condition of enjoyment to the healthy man, become to him intolerable, utterly unendurable and terrible. He must be laid upon a soft bed, guarded from every shake or jar, from every call upon his powers, from all loud sounds or brightness even of the light. He can find pleasure only in that which is itself unendurable to the healthy man, the absence of all exertion.

For when we go on to consider the facts in this connection, we see that the sick man finds intolerable not only that element in healthy pleasure which demands endurance and might be regarded as in itself painful but that every kind of action speaking generally is painful to him the natural exercise of the powers which is the very source of healthy pleasure is his agony the whole feeling is inverted that which is properly pleasure and ought to be pleasure to him is become his torment, and no effect can render it otherwise. Accordingly, in all our dealings with a sick man, and in all his thoughts respecting himself, if he is capable of thinking truly, this inversion of his natural condition is recognized. It is remembered that what is properly

pleasurable is painful to him, and that his pleasures are in things that should be to him worse than indifferent. When he has promised perfect enjoyment, he does not look forward to the perfecting of the kind of pleasure which he needs in his sickness, or of the ease which he then desires, not to perfect rest, to bed so soft that his limbs cannot ache upon them, or food that shall nourish with no demand upon the vital energy. He looks forward to change in his own capacities whereby his enjoyment shall be made different. In being promised ease, he has promised health to be able to find enjoyment, the true enjoyment of a man, in that which is pain to him. It may be intolerable and overwhelming pain in exertion and endurance. He is to be delivered by an increase

or perfecting of his life from pain, but by no means from all the things which he feels as painful. the only possible condition of true enjoyment is that he shall find it in the things that to him are painful. His only true deliverance is in an added power. Now this thought which sprang so naturally from our everyday experience, connected itself at once with the thoughts that have proceeded. Is not man sick falling short of his perfect life and therefore feeling as pain, that which is the rightful condition of his joy? It is true.

are subject to pains of body and mind, which oftentimes are overwhelming, utterly beyond endurance, which no effort, no philosophy, can render otherwise than insupportable. The woes which surround human life may often seem as if they could not be exaggerated. They seem to admit no consolation, no alleviation. We cannot rejoice in them. We cannot rise above them. They penetrate our very hearts and undermine the very sources of our own. of our strength.

But though all this is true, though human misery is immense, it does not follow that the whole of it is not rightly the instrument and source of happiness. We see in bodily disease that our feeling certain things utterly and intolerably painful may arise not from the evil in the things themselves, but for want of a perfect life in us. They may be the very conditions of natural and helpful pleasure, and if we accept the thought of man as sick? Does not the whole fact of human wretchedness the heavy total of the pains of men stand before us in this new light? Do we not receive a joyful gift, a perfect inversion of our thought respecting it? All pains may be summed up in this sacrifice, and sacrifice is, of course,

the instrument of joy, to health, to life, it is so. If it is not so to us, what does it mean but that we are sick. Man's life, his true and proper life, his health, is of such grandeur, of such intensity and scope, that it would absorb and turn into the servitors of its joy all that we now find intolerable pain, all agony and loss. Man's life is measured by his pains. It is such life, so large, so deep in consciousness, so rich in love, that in these sacrifices it can find its joy, its perfect satisfactions, its delights. These utter losses and unfathomable miseries, and cruel strokes that leave us nothing, are its pleasurable efforts, its rejoicing gifts, its glad activities. So far short we fall, and so vast and glorious is the true human life.

To apprehend it, we must measure it by its pains, that is, by its capability of sacrifice. cast on that scale, planned to that magnitude, it claims that intensity, a scope and intensity that should make the uttermost evil and sacrifice to the self, intolerable evils to us now, but as the healthful exercise, the hearty toil that make the limbs throb with exuberance of life. So glorious is man's true being, so high we should elevate our hopes, the life we shall receive is such as would make all sacrifices joy, even those extremist ones from which we now shrink utterly. These things God hath prepared for those that love him. It is true that the height staggers our thought and almost forbids our faith, yet why should we shrink from it? Are we not to be joined with Christ

in his glory? And is any height of joy and sacrifice, of power to give and to be glad in giving, too great for him? And surely this thought of man's greatness is only like those new thoughts of greatness which the study of God's work everywhere enforces on us. Not less than a measurably short of reality fall all our natural thoughts of the Creator's works, as in respect to nature, so also in respect to man. He too is unutterably greater than we believed, unutterably greater than we can conceive, but then God made him. How, therefore, can any thought be too high or glad? Man's perfect life could use all suffering for joy, that is, a love for others should be so powerful within us, and a consciousness of others' good should be so fully ours, such rapture should

possess us, that all loss, all griefs, should be to us the trivial sacrifices which love delights to have the opportunity to make, that they are not so now reveals the condition of the sick man who needs not ease or pleasure from without, but health within. The evil of our pains should make us say, not how evil is this that we are called upon to bear, but how far short we fall, man falls, of the true human life, that this sacrifice is an evil to us. It should prompt us to seek deliverance, but deliverance by cure, the deliverance that has brought by the perfected life, the joy that is the joy of love, and finds its necessary food and sacrifice. Any thought of happiness, any other anticipation or desire, any anticipation that puts aside the

sacrifice, as if a sick man should desire, not restoration, not the power of enjoying effort and absorbing endurance into pleasure, but only soft and easy couches, rest and shaded light. This is to fall short in our desires, to make disease our measure, to demand a life that is not life, pleasures that are not truly pleasure. Must we not aspire higher? Must we not seek, desire, anticipate a happiness that is in giving, a life that is so wide and high and full that it can take up, nay, must take up, all that is utter a sacrifice to us, and make it the very condition of its rejoicing energy? a life to which it would be as impossible to use our poor self-pleasures except for sacrifice

as it would be to health to lead the life of sickness. The whole thought is involved in the fact that devotedness and self-giving are the conditions of the joy of love, and that without love the life that love leads joyfully were full of pain. Man's perfect life is a life in which love can be perfect and find no limitation. It is a life so truly lived in others, so participant with them, that utter and unbounded sacrifice is possible. The limitations of its mortal state bounding us no more. It is the life of heaven, but the thought need not be left vague. Do not the words of scripture which speak of the union into oneness of those who constitute the Church of Christ supply to a definite basis? Are we not to share a life wider and deeper than we now seem to possess,

a life coexistent with Christ's body, in the great joy of which all loss and sacrifice of self is swallowed up, the self remaining to us indeed, only as purified and ennobled into the means of sacrifice? Footnote. If this idea should seem obscure, it may be sufficient to recall to our thoughts the representations given in Scripture of the divine being, as dwelling and acting, and living in the creatures whom he regenerates." End footnote. Is not this, then, the standard of human life? Such life as would make all the bitter pains, the unutterable losses, and overpowering agonies of man, the means of a glad service, the rejoicing offerings of love? We must reckon, not the pains too great, but our life marred. It is

not dark, but the brightness of a day that overwhelms our fervored eye. But make us whole, and joy will banish pain. End of Chapter 5 of the Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilke. Chapter 6 of the mystery of pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilky. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Libravox.org. turn now to the subject which forms the foundation of the thoughts that have been expressed, namely the redemption of man. If we recognize a want in our nature, a condition like that of a disease, making us feel pain in that which should be joyful, we feel at once that we have

need of a deliverance, need of a cure, and seeing that this condition of want or disease affects not individuals only, but the whole Cuban race, we feel that man, needs a restoration, a perfecting of his life. Man's nature, appearing as diseased, claims a restorer, appearing as a victim of a perverted feeling which subjects it to evil, it needs to be redeemed from this. Now this is the thought to which reference has been made in the idea of the redemption of the world, that redemption is the raising up of man from the evil condition in which he feels sacrifice as pain, to a condition in which it is felt its joy, a condition of true and perfect life.

Thus the idea stands in a definite light before us. This is the change which man's nature needs. This is the change which it is receiving. The redemption of man, as I have spoken or shall speak of it here, means this change. A change not only of his feelings and will, but of his actual state. I seek to regard our experience in its relation to this work. In the part which they bear in it, I find the glory of our pains and the consolation of our griefs. For if this work is being done, it is necessarily being done in all-human experience,

or rather this experience of ours is the very work itself. Strange and unlike as they may appear, these events which bring us joy or sorrow, perplexity or pleasure, gain or loss. These things in which we are actively engaged, or which are passively inflicted on us, these are carrying out the work in man, so that we may take each of our pains and sorrows and say, man's redemption is so carried out in this, is affected through it, demands this to be. It is no matter that it is so disconnected, so useless, so utterly insignificant. Nothing is discounted.

Nothing that moves man's spirit and rouses his capacity of feeling is insignificant. Nothing that is linked, as all events are linked, inseparably into the great history of man, is useless. If man's redemption is a fact, it is the fact of these experiences that may seem so small and objectless. The unseen fact of them, they seeming small only because it is unseen. The evidence that this work is accomplished is drawn, of course, from the declarations of Scripture, which affirm a salvation bestowed on man, and to be wrought in him, which promise that he shall be made alive in Christ and receive an eternal life. And here I may briefly say that to my own mind the language of the New Testament appears

unequivocally to affirm the redemption of all men, their actual redemption from this evil and disease state in which we now are, the actual raising up of all to a perfect life. To my own mind, this universality seems to be clearly expressed in Scripture, and to give an unutterable delight to life. But it is not necessary that this should be believed in order for us to receive the happiness which knowledge that our sufferings serve their part and the great work of redemption gives. That happiness may still rest upon serving the good of others, though not all may share that good. In the words before quoted, St. Paul says, I fill up that which is behind me of the afflictions of Christ for his body's sake, which is the church. He does not say in this passage,

as in so many others he at least appears to say, that the sphere of Christ's church shall finally include the whole human race. And the happiness which flows from this thought may be shared by those who can believe it true of their own sufferings, even though they think that those on whose behalf God uses them are but a part and not the whole of men. On this point I may venture one remark. It seems to me that great difficulties have been rightly felt in recognizing in the language of Scripture any clear assertion that all men shall be brought to Christ and spiritually made alive through Him. There is much which, with thoughts such as ours have been, seems very expressly to affirm the contrary, but it appears to me that a chief source of these

difficulties has been our own corruption. As we are now, we feel, we cannot help feeling, that of the two evils, pain and sin, pain, if it be extreme, is greater. By nature we fear suffering more than sinning. Now, reading the New Testament with this feeling operating in our thoughts, as we are sure to do, we are expressly on our guard against it, we can hardly fail to misunderstand its language and to think of suffering or loss where it speaks of sin. So reading it, we may well see in its words mere hopeless ruin as the destiny of a large part of men. But if we keep watch over ourselves here, and remember that only he whose very life is death can feel suffering worse than sin, or could speak as if it were, if we remember that God,

God's chief warnings, therefore, must be against, not what we fear most, but against that which, perhaps, we do not fear at all. The words of the New Testament present themselves to us in a new light, and the apparent meaning of many passages that we may easily recall, which speak as if Christ's kingdom were to embrace each member of the human race, telling us that he will draw all men to him, that every knee shall bow in his name, that God shall be all in all. The apparent meaning of these passages may grow clear to our purged eyes as the true burden of the gospel. We may be able, giving an awful force to its threatenings, to take to our gladden hearts, our hearts made warm with new life, its large and joyful words, which speak its salvation achieved for all,

in all to be fulfilled, a salvation of which one chief and essential part consists in the very remedy of this perverted feeling. For when man finds only joy and sacrifice, there can no more be any evil felt by him as worse than sin. Sin, indeed, would stand as the one sole evil felt or capable of being felt by him, and in this would not his redemption be fulfilled. But while the belief that a redemption, a new creation of his nature, is being worked out in man, rests primarily and essentially on the New Testament, yet it has other evidences which may well add strength to our conviction. True, it is a work that is unseen, a fact that cannot be made visible to the eye of the sense, a fact which, save for its revelation in Christ,

could not have been discovered. Yet evidences of it may be found in many facts. Surely in the very constitution of our nature, made as it is for sacrifice, constructed to find its chief joy only there feeling, even in its degradation, that no other joys are fully worthy of it. Proof is given that man is designed and destined for a life proportion to his powers. And do not the very pain and loss by which man is surrounded, if we read them rightly, testify to the same thing? Not accidentally, not arbitrarily, do these assail him. They are rooted in the essential conditions of his being. They are inseparable from the structure of the world and the relation which he bears to it. The individual must be sacrificed and suffer

loss. It is his inevitable lot. The total order of nature must be altered ere he could escape it. The necessity for sacrifice is built into the structure of our being. It is the birthright, the inalienable inheritance of life? What then can we say, but that it foretells and promises a state of being and a mode of life to which it shall not be alien and hostile? A life in which it shall exist as a kindred and friendly element, and to the fullness of which it shall be minister, as we know it may be? Must not the inevitable existence of pain and loss to us mean this? And human history, when it is closely scanned, confirms this thought. Dark and unmeaning as it looks, this at least is visible in it,

that without sacrifice, no permanent satisfaction or truly good result is suffered to be attained. Incessantly, man aims at ends, which do not involve self-abandonment. Incessantly, they are denied to him, or, when gained, deceive his hope. Satisfaction is withheld. The best-founded hopes prove vain. The highest powers fail, experiments on which the brightest expectations have been founded fall in ruin. No lesser ends suffices, but by failure in discontent, man is driven ever onward. If we ask ourselves, to what goal? Can we not foresee the answer?

He is driven onward to this, to accept loving sacrifice as his good. These facts are evident in human life, even as it is, that man is. is framed for joy and sacrifice, that until it can be made his joy, sacrifice must be his torment, for it never can be banished. That without the willing acceptance of sacrifice, no end is really answered in human life, no satisfaction that is worthy of humanity achieved. Add to these things the known fact that our nature is imperfect and the promise given to its renovation, and does not their meaning become manifest?

That man's redemption is the end for which this present human life exists, the unseen end which it achieves. End of Chapter 6 of the Mystery of Pain. Recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. Chapter 7 of the Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Librevox.org.

Recognize that our feeling in respect to sacrifice is inverted, and, as in sickness, the very condition of our rightful joy is become the source of pain, we see that our thought has also been perverted. We have judged of good and evil falsely. And thus does light not arise upon us, a light in which we cannot but rejoice? Do not two mysteries disappear? the mystery that God reveals himself in Christ, taking suffering and death to show himself to us, and the mystery of the pain and sorrow of which our life is full? Seeing what God's joy is, we see why Christ alone can reveal him. The nature of joy that is in love cannot otherwise be shown than in taking sacrifice and bearing sorrow.

To reveal God there must have been presented to our eyes. eyes, a man of sorrows, who chose and willingly embraced our griefs, for we feel that to be sorrow, which is the very basis of his life and blessedness, nor could our human life otherwise be full of sorrow too. We are dealt with, most happy those who most dealt with so, according to the nature of our manhood, not according to our false feeling of it, according to the true good, not according to our perverted desires. Our good is secured in the felt loss, for our nature is larger than we feel. Our ends are most subverted when we most feel them set at naught, for our destiny is higher than we know. The best is given in us, though we could choose the worse,

the basis of the largest and highest happiness, though we could choose the lower and less. We are sacrificed unwilling for others good, unseen. But it is no mystery that we are so, because in willing sacrifice for others good, known, seen, and felt, even as his own, lies God's own blessedness. The blessedness of all who truly can be blessed, the broken remnants of the perfect life of joy are these,

these pains, these multiplied and dire distresses, these clouds which to us veil the heavens in despair. Nor are they remnants only. They are germs from which the perfect life may grow. They are the omens of victory and delight, the basis upon which is to be built up, a great joy for which they cannot be too great. Of all that could not be spared from our life,

our sacrifice is that which could be spared the least, and that there is a perversion of man's feelings and desires, A radical want in our nature is a known fact, proved long ago, and resting in evidence which needs no fresh confirmation. The disease of humanity has written its proofs on every page of history, has engraved itself indelibly in the human heart. The fact is already known, and we are justified therefore and using it to guide us. For his full life and happiness, man must be changed. Surely then, this change, to which we must look forward, may be one that shall make sacrifice his joy. Nay, for his perfect holiness and bliss, it must be so.

For unless sacrifice is joy, holiness beyond temptation, and happiness without a sorrow, cannot be. But if it thus proves itself to the reason that pain is sacrifice and is good felt as evil through disease, It proves itself still more to the heart. Nothing can make pain so good as that it should be born for others. So it becomes a privilege, and this is the inevitable demand of the human heart when it seeks for consolation. Even the natural feelings of men, unaided by that revelation of life, which shows us this consecrated sorrow as a central fact, have often risen to confidence in the belief into happiness and strength based on it. The thought is beautifully expressed in the following passage by the Emperor Marcus Antonius,

showing that even in darkness and insufficiency, it is yet native to the soul. Just as we must understand when it is said that Escalapius prescribed to this man horse exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, So we must understand when it is said that the nature of the universe prescribed to this man disease or mutilation or loss or anything of the kind. For, in the first place, prescribed means something like this. He prescribed this for this man as a thing adapted to procure health. And in the second case, it means that which happens to suits. Every man is fixed in a manner for him suitably to his destiny.

for this is what we mean when we say that things are suitable to us, as the workmen say of the squared stone in walls or the pyramids, that they are suitable when they fit into one another in some kind of connection, for there is altogether one fitness or harmony, and as the universe is made up of all bodies to be such a body as it is, so out of all existing causes, necessity, destiny, is made up. to be such as it is. And even those who are completely ignorant understand what I mean, for they say, it, necessity, destiny, brought this to such a person. This then was brought, and this was prescribed to him. Let us then receive these things, as well as those which Escalapius prescribes. Many, as a matter of course, even among his prescriptions, are disagreeable, but we accept them in hope of health. Let the perfecting and accomplishment of the things which the common nature judges to be good, be judged by thee to be of the same kind as thy health,

and so accept everything that happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, to the health of the universe, into the prosperity and felicity of Zeus, the universe. For he would not have brought on any man what he has, has brought, if it were not useful to the whole. Neither does the nature of anything, whatever it may be, cause anything which is not suitable to that which is directed by it. For two reasons, then, it is right to be content with that which happens to thee. The one, because it is done for thee, and prescribed for thee, and in a matter having reference to thee, originally from the most

ancient causes spun with thy destiny, and the other because even that, which comes severely to any man, is to the power which administers the universe a cause of felicity and perfection, nay, even its continuance. For the integrity of the whole is mutilated, if thou cuttest off anything whatever from the conjunction, and the continuity either of the parts or of the causes. And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfy-satisfy, and in a manner tries to put anything out of the way. Footnote.

The thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Antonius, translated by George Long, page 65. Footnote. The thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Antonius, translated by George Long, page 65. End footnote. In this feeling that the true consolation and distress must be found in its use and subservience to others' good,

breaks out in a more exquisite and Christian form in Milton's poem on his blindness. Having heaped up the description of its distress and privations, he turns for his rejoicing in it to this thought and this only. They also serve who only stand and wait. And if they who stand in wait do not those who suffer too, is it conceivable that God should give to some whom he blesses with health and vigor and large gifts of influence, the privilege of greatly serving him, and doing a wide work of use for others, and that this privilege, which none else can equal or supply,

he withholds from others from whom he takes health and strength and every gift but that of suffering? Does he give the one the blessedness of serving and refuse it to the other? Behold, my ways are equal, saith the Lord. life were ordained to be good, truly satisfyingly good, it could be made so only in one way. It must be a life of sacrifice for all other goods fall short. We know they fall infinitely short of this, and it must be sacrifice for unseen ends, because the best ends must be unseen by us. To be the best, our life must be sacrifice, and for our ends unseen.

It must be, therefore, to us, just what our life is. Must we not believe, then, that our life is this the best? In the fruitless seeming pains and failures, it fulfills the conditions of being the best life, of presenting the highest form of good, and of being turned to the best ends. It is this God calls upon us to believe. This is a demand he makes for faith, showing us to justify and justify. conform it, a life like our own, of sorrow and humiliation, or if in this unlike our own, unlike only because the sorrow was greater and the humiliation more profound, a life of sorrow

in which the meaning and end are no more concealed but made manifest to all, revealing so the secret of our life, he calls on us for faith, and so the pain of life is made good, all its pain, not indeed to our sensuous feeling, but to the deeper feeling which rules and subordinates the other. This faith has power to make pain good, to make us place above all price that which we most should shrink from. Only let the love be strong enough, and the pain cannot be too great, nor the loss too absolute. And therefore, feeling that the heart here becomes the judge, the reason having given its appealing to the heart to that moral feeling on which the existence of God himself rest firm in man's belief. Have we not answer, distinct, and clear, that pain must be sacrificed, a privilege, and not a loss?

Does not the thought, once seen to be possible, affirm itself as necessary and refused to be held in doubt? Does it not link itself with the belief in God, so that we are compelled to say, that if God is, then pain is sacrifice, sacrifice for a man? For if we think otherwise, then do we not choose to join evil with his name? Not to believe our pains serve others good, and are the fact of man's redemption, is but to disbelieve in God. This is to doubt his goodness, and contract the very evidence on which we assert his being. Once recognized in its true meaning,

the thought ceases to be a question of argument and balanced evidence. It sinks into the soul and becomes part of the deep conviction on which all religion rests. Pain cannot be interpreted otherwise than thus, when once we see that it can be thus interpreted. The heart rises up from its chains and rejoices. God reveals himself. He has manifest joy, and we see it and are glad. Amid our tears we smile, for when our woes are deepest, then our joys are highest. Then we are likest him, our nearest to the dignity of manhood, partakers most in that on which all living joy is based, needing only that our life be perfected to make it joy.

We seek to be delivered from pain and sorrow, and God designs to deliver us. vainly we seek, but he accomplishes. Our end is not mistaken, but we mistake the means. We seek deliverance by taking away, he gives deliverance by adding. Tis the life of which our nerves are scant, more life and fuller than we want. And God our Father, who knows the disease and provides the remedy, leads us also to see our need of it. Surely it is not hard to turn and keep our thoughts, recognizing our own too narrow life and our too contradicted heart therewith that makes us seek a good too small to be too easily content that gives us a content which cannot be undisturbed, desires which God cannot gratify, because that would be to curse instead of blessing, to curse instead of blessing him for whom he has ordained the highest blessedness. Surely it is not hard to be on our guard against ourselves, and to remember that our wanting

and enfeebled nature misleads us, makes us grasp at remedies that are no remedies, at goods that are too small and pitiful for human good, not hard to aspire after more, and to feel that our only joy must be in that which is already known as the highest and best. surely we can learn to shape our prayer for health, not for alleviations, our power to enjoy the good, not for the false goods our sickness can enjoy, for the power to rise up from man's false thought to God's true. When, as a reward, the prospect of our future grows into infinite glory, the thought of human nature rises into elevation unconceived. God appears before us infinite afresh in tenderness.

In the darkness of human sorrow, all the sad failure and agony of life, shining with the brightness of Christ's own sacrifice, are changed into the instruments and prophecies of joy. Surely it is not hard to think, not, I want self-good to make me happy, but I want life to make sacrifice my joy. and thus there is no mystery in pain, the world were an utter and hopeless mystery if pain were not. Where then would be the basis and the root of love, the prophecy of an enlarged and ennobled nature,

where the revelation of our life in Christ? But there are some difficulties that will probably suggest themselves in respect to this thought. Two of these especially demand notice. 1. It may be felt that there can be no satisfactory treatment of the question of pain without reference to sin. Is not sin the radical cause of all other evil, and without it, would not man have had an entire immunity from suffering? 2. If we receive the thought that sacrifice is itself a good, and that painful things are truly the best, will it not lead us to voluntary choice and preference? of pain to pleasure? In a word, would it not reestablish the long-disproved theory of asceticism?

In reference to the first of these questions, very few words are required. So far from the connection of pain with sin being called in question, by the view that has been given, it is emphatically asserted. The whole thought consists in tracing out how pain arises and must arise from sin. From sin comes that disease and wanting state of man whereby alone pain can be felt. Without sin, pain had not been, for there had not been that perversion of the feeling and that lack of life whereby sacrifice is felt as pain. Pain is from sin, but sacrifice is not. The conditions of good and happiness are not altered by it. These ever were to be found in sacrifice. and ever must be. Therefore, it is where sin has entered, and death by sin, pain must be.

And if it should be asked, how then did Christ become subject to pain, seeing that in him was no sin? The answer is found in the fact that Christ took our infirmity. The disease of our nature was laid upon him, that he might remove it. He shared our feeling that he might reveal the Father to us and deliver us from the evil that he shared. End of Chapter 7 of the Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. Chapter 8 of the Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilky. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, visitlibrovox.org. But still this question remains. If the good of human life is found in that which we feel is painful, should we not seek pain rather than pleasure? Would not the acceptance of this idea lead us to the arbitrary choice of suffering, to the willful giving up of all that makes us joyous, the abrogation of the sanctities of home, the deliberate extinction of all that civilizes? Though this question is naturally suggested by the thoughts which proceed, nothing can be farther from their real spirit. It is because the things in which we find suffering are the sole condition of a full and perfect happiness that they are good.

It is because life ought to be joyful that we have claimed this place as joygiver for sorrow. Pain is evil. It marks and is the token of disease. It bespeaks want and loss. Thinking thus, we do not seek pain. We do not seek even to be resigned to it. We seek its utter destruction. doing away all possibility, even of its presence.

Our hearts are avaricious, rather, of delight, and refuse to be satisfied with anything less than the utmost that we can receive. For, evidently, it is an entirely different thing to say sacrifice is the good, and to say pain is good. The association of pain with sacrifice, as we have seen, nay, as we know so well by experiences, happily we may believe, becoming more familiar. in human life, is unnecessary and partial, not constant and inevitable. The true affinities of sacrifice are with pleasure, with rapture even.

It is only by evil or want within that sacrifice can be otherwise than glad. To dwell with joy, with deliberate choice on sacrifice, even to refuse to all else the rightful name of good, is not to praise or to sanction pain, but to affirm emphatically. that it ought not be, nay, that it ought not to be possible, that to which it has attached itself, the very root from which it seems to grow, though not in truth does it grow from that root, but from quite another, and it is fateful error, which thus mistakes its source, should yield the opposite. There should be no pain to man. From him, as he should be, sorrow and sighing should flee away, but not by the taking away of sacrifice. If there be any difficulty felt here,

the source of it will become quite manifest by recalling the illustration of sickness. Let us conceive again, a sick man saying, alas, all motion of my limbs, all attempt to take exercise, is an intolerable pain to me. I cannot endure it. And that the reply was made to him, courage, my dear friend, do not let yourself think of that is painful. in itself, though it is exquisite and unendurable torture to you. That is the secret of the strongman's pleasure, and you shall come to have perfect, and now almost inconceivable delight in it. Do not let yourself confuse the poor comfort, necessary as it may be to you, of sinking

on your bed and lying still, with the true enjoyments of man. Would this reply be thought of praise and recommendation of pain, or to advise the willful choice of it? Surely not. It would simply be to encourage the sick man to keep his standard of pleasure high enough and to not let it be degraded by his perverted feeling. It is, in this respect, precisely the same thing when we rebuke ourselves for our false thoughts and urge upon ourselves to recognize that, in the experience of suffering and loss which we feel even as unendurable distress we must look for and shall find the source of joy. In another way, the true relations of this thought respecting pain may be illustrated. Let it be assumed that our object is joy, that this is the good

at which we aim. Now here is in our life this fact of sacrifice of individual suffering, opposing and preventing its perfect attainment, hurting, harming, often rendering joy impossible. whence and what is the remedy to be? How is the hurtful thing to be rendered harmless, the mischief to be neutralized? Our whole knowledge of nature and our life concur in giving one answer. It must be turned to use. Things cease to hurt us then,

and then only permanently, when they are made to serve our good. Nor can it be otherwise, for nothing can be annihilated, nothing hindered from having, in some form or another, its full effect. The mere putting away or putting down evils has never succeeded. They return with a violence increased by the delay. The one condition upon which we can really avoid suffering by hurtful

things is that we should use them and make them serve us. A striking instance, though it is but an instance of a universal law, is given by the problem with which every large body of persons has to strive, of disposing of waste materials of their life. Hurtful to a high degree, these waste materials are the source of inevitable disease if they are not put utterly away? How thus utterly put them away? There must be one method that is truly efficient, and that is to make them subservient to the increase of the means of life, to render them the fertilizers of the lands, the

source of food. The drainage of towns will either poison or be. be an enormous task, or it will feed. The condition of the ceasing to be evil is that it shall become a good. Necessarily it is so, its effects cannot be made null. Our only choice is, shall they work our mischief or our benefit? Now to point out that the noxious materials of our bodily life are in themselves a source of good, is not to encourage men to accept or to deter them from removing their ill effects. It is to open the path of their removal and to stimulate the work. It substitutes for the futile efforts at escape or suppression, the rational plan of use.

It is such a change as this that would ensue in our practical life from the acceptance of the thought that sacrifice is the source of joy and that it is associated with pain to us only by the want that is in ourselves. It would never prompt us to seek pain, never lead us to choose it for its own sake, never lead us to undervalue joy. It would make enjoyment more sacred in our eyes, would raise it to a holy significance, making it teach us lessons beyond ourselves. It is an image, feeble, partial, and too small, though it be, of which should be, in its perfection, universal in our life. It carries on our thoughts to a higher joy that should never be absent, being fullest in the portions of our lives once all joy now is banished.

But further, this view not only guards us from the arbitrary choice of pain, it enables us to trace how that abuse arose and when sprang the ascetic and self-denying spirit, which, while not without its grandeur, has inflicted so many injuries on men. Mankind have always recognized a goodness in things that are painful. In no time or place has the feeling been wholly absent, but they have not always understood the reason. It was not recognized that these things are good only because they are sacrifice and subserve others' welfare, and therefore are the true source of gladness, that they are good in a familiar

and human sense because they are adapted to give joy. Hence men unavoidably mistook and attributed the goodness that they could not be able to be not but recognize in them, to that which is emphatically not good, to that which is the sign of our own evil, the pain that was connected to them. They ascribed to pain the goodness which belongs to sacrifice as the giver above all things of joy. A strange and yet inevitable aversion of the thought, while the afflictions had not yet fully recognized the joy that is in sacrifice, nor faith apprehended the relation of all human life to the unseen work that God does in man. It was thus a Ceticism that rose seeking pain as good, self-denial as an end, and thus it failed.

But the lesson it teaches remains for us. There is a good in that which we find painful. The human soul does not recognize it, nor can luxury, nor scorn, nor the history of innumerable ills wrought by pursuing pain, prevent. Man's soul recursive. to it in spite of experience, in spite of enlightenment, in spite of ease. Surely one thing alone can cure aceticism of its error, and free mankind of its dangers, that is, to recognize the true nature of good that is in sacrifice, that it is good, not for itself, nor because it involves pain, but precisely because it is not for itself, and it is the true root of pleasure. If this can be recognized, aceticism cannot gain a rise to distort life and tax humanity beyond its powers.

The elements of our nature in which it has its roots are turned into another channel and find their satisfaction in deeds animated by another spirit. A perfect guide indeed is given us thus in respect to acts of sacrifice we should or should not undertake. Only that painful thing is good which has in it the root of pleasure, and this is that alone which serves others good. Therefore no arbitrary self-chosen sacrifice is good. There is no source of joy in that. It fails of the first condition. Only that sacrifice is good which either we accept for another's sake, ourselves seeing and choosing the result, or that which serves a like end unseen by us, and surely better serve.

a better end, being in God's hands and not ours. For seen or unseen service sacrifice is good, but only when it is for service. And this service either we accomplish for ourselves, or God works for us. We accomplish it when we consciously act from love or duty and are blessed in witnessing the service rendered. But God works it for us when he inflicts on us pain or losses, that is, when necessity enforces them or right commands. And these he is our minister, our steward, to bestow better than what we could do the service of our love. In sacrifices that we cannot escape, that come from providence or deeds of men who are in God's instruments, and in sacrifices for which he calls in duty, we recognize his hand, and we know that they are used by him. We feel our hearts glowing with a delight

that humility does not forbid, in this the Lord hath need of us. So far he uses and blesses us, undertaking himself to be the dispenser of our gifts. The best in life, then, reading it by faith, as seeing the invisible, which not to do is blindness and self-chosen error. The best in life is that part of it wherein there is inflicted on us, or rather accepted from us, the inevitable sacrifice. It is in the losses that we cannot escape, the pains that God calls on us to bear, bafflings from which no effort can set us free, no uprightness deliver, or in that part of it wherein the voice of duty bids us incur loss or pain, or leave unacted the deeds that would delight us most.

These things are the best in life, for these are God using us. These are his taking our poor services, poor at best, though they may be great to us, and himself using them in ways too good, too deep and wide for us to see. These are our contribution to the redemption of the world, felt as painful because the sources of joy too great, which we make our own by freely yielding and accepting them, thus making God's deed ours. Must not this be the best in life? The highest privilege?

We can link our weakness with omnipotence, our blindness with omniscience. This is the privilege of the destitute. the sick, the feeble, of those who are thwarted and cast down, who cannot save themselves. Behold, to them it is given to save others. Next to this privilege in goodness among the things that our life can offer us, come the sacrifices we can bear willingly for the good of others, less good indeed, but seeming more to us as a good we can see and consciously subserve. These are the portions of our life that rise to the level of true,

goodness. Each yields us joy in proportion to our love, the greatest privilege demanding for its joy, even because it is the greatest, faith as well as love. Besides these, and separated from them by an immeasurable interval, these are the pleasures which are not of sacrifice, the pleasures of mere enjoyment, not truly good, yet not without their value. These are the portions of our life that cannot be employed for their best use, that our disability compels us. That our disability compels us to have unturned to their true account, the alleviations which our sickness needs, and must now bow itself to accept. There then, in this respect, three elements in our life.

First, the perfect good, which comes to us in the form of providential and inevitable sacrifice, or the loss that right demands, on the full gladness of which we enter by faith, knowing in our hearts that which we cannot see. Next, there is the good, less, but still great and worthy of our manhood, the serving others consciously, and of our own free will, for ends within our sight, the joy of which is in proportion to our love. In this is included all honest and unselfish work, and lastly, there are pleasures we can gain for ourselves, the satisfaction of an individual kind with which our life is so abundantly

surrounded. These last mark our feebleness and want, but they are needful for us, and our enjoyment of them is essential. Insofar as they give us joy, they are types and reflections of perfect life, though in a negative and inverse form. We understand their nature if we look on them like the reliefs and perverted pleasures which the sick man demands, not good, but to us necessary, and by us felt is good. This necessity and this feeling mark our disability, our need of the restored and perfect life. Thus we see from another point of view the error of aceticism. The attempt to render man independent of self-enjoyment is an ignoring of his disease.

It is an attempt to act as if in health while health is wanting to us. It is not only our right, it is our duty to enjoy and to be happy. This is evident on all grounds. It is fitting to our state, and it is practically right. Pleasure does us good if gratefully and lovingly accepted. The nature often expands and blossoms under it as under no other influence, and suffering oftentimes, not felt as the spring of joy it is, sours, cramps, and hardens. We cannot dispense with joy.

We were never meant to dispense with it, but we should seek it rightly. Neither is there any tendency in the thought of sacrifice as our true source of joy to diminish the pleasurableness of that which we may call self-pleasure or in any way to mar our natural enjoyments. It may, indeed, throw them into the shade, and relax somewhat, would to God it might, the passion of our grasp upon them, and pursuit after them. But this is only by bringing them into the presence of another superior pleasure. It is but as the boy less values childish sports as he grows into an appreciation of the serious gratifications of maturity and sees that they have served his purpose in awakening capacities and calling forth desires that they were never meant to

fill. End of Chapter 8 of The Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilkey. Chapter 9 of the Mystery of Pain, recording by Ethan D. Gilke. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. for more information or to volunteer, visitlibrovocs.org. Two things might here be attempted. On the one hand, to trace farther the bearing of these thoughts upon our customary views,

and on the other, to show how they might influence our life. But it seems better to leave them now untouched. These few pages have been written rather for some than for all, for those whom a special discipline may have prepared to welcome them. And to these I commit the thought, painfully conscious of my inability to say it as it should be said, an inability which those to whom I have written will at once feel most deeply and most willingly forgive. To them I may say, for they whose tongues have often faltered and have been dumb from very eagerness of passion,

and dread lest any words even the best should spoil their story, will understand me, that great desire and fear have hindered me. These words I have stammered through. Let them read in their feebleness, reverence, a tribute to the sacredness of grief, made more sacred by the glory of its consolation. I do not seek to show whether, or in what way, other thoughts, natural and perhaps established thoughts,

may need to be modified in order not to conflict with these. There would probably be much less demand for the time, change than might be supposed by those to whom the preceding thoughts may seem new. It may, however, serve to guard against mistake if I say that, of course, no meritorious character is ascribed to human sufferings. Man's redemption is accomplished in them, not in any way by virtue of them. The restoration of humanity is carried out in experience, not wrought by us. I need scarcely say that because in these pages man's condition has been compared to that of disease. It is not supposed to be that other aspects of his state are not recognized, especially his sinfulness,

or that Christ's work in relation to his sin lightly valued. But there has been less reason for reference to these things, because I have left untouched the question of sin, and designedly limited myself to a smaller problem. After, light may perhaps be thrown, even upon the profoundest of all mysteries, man's revolt from God, and deliberate choice of evil. I may perhaps be pardoned for thinking that to understand pain aright may tend to lessen rather than to aggravate the difficulty of the greater mystery of sin.

It may seem to some that the more mention should be made of pains that arise from sympathy, and so have their source in love. Let me say that, as these are among the acutest of human sufferings, an emphatic reference has been made to them in that which has proceeded. Love can transform them, though it gives them birth. While any loved one's sorrow and are in distress, sympathy with them must be sorrowful too. But if all sacrifice is made joyful, then sympathy with other's sacrifice will be sympathy with their joy. These sorrows also, man's perfect life will turn into rejoicing. Insofar as these thoughts respecting pain depend on a recognition of unseen ends served by it,

it seems to me that the recent tendency of the human mind is wonderfully and surely most happily in harmony with them. What better could the students of nature and the students of humanity agree in telling us than this? They're a great lesson in these modern days, that the true essence and meaning of all things is hidden from our natural sight. What is this but to echo back words we have so familiarly heard from childhood upward until they have perhaps partly lost their force, which bids us live as seeing the invisible, and walk not by sight but by faith? If this is the last lesson of science, it is also the first lesson of religion.

Perhaps now better to be learned than ever before, and better understood. because reiterated from this new region and enforced by this new evidence. To understand or feel our life aright, we must regard something not visible to ourselves. We must, in fact, be using faith. This science tells us, this philosophy. Shall they tell it to us in vain, to those who need so deeply to believe and to act upon it, whose whole life is shrouded in darkness if it is not true? and maybe, nay, must be, radiant and unutterable glory and delight, if it be true?

Shall we refuse God's gifts because they come to us from unexpected quarters? Shall we refuse to listen to this confirmation of the Gladys message because it is given in unfamiliar tones? And in respect to the practical bearing of these thoughts respecting pain, I refrain from speaking, partly because I feel incompetent, but more because I feel that it is not necessary, that they must have practical influence where they are truly felt surely is evident. What influence they should have, perhaps, is better left to each person's heart than stated in another's words.

If the thought can sink and take root in the soul, it will bear fruit. Better fruit spontaneously than if conformed to any pattern. Nor indeed are circumstances so much alike in different cases that external actions can be conformed to special rules. This seems enough, a beautiful external life is the fruit of life within, especially of that life which dwells in joy. If joy could be brought to sorrow-stricken hearts, their path would blossom with good deeds.

The gladness within would overflow in acts of heroism and devotion, not uncalled for even yet. And does not joy grow out of sorrow when we see it thus, an infinite and tender joy passing all other? Do we not feel the very throbbing's heart, and even this sad world beautiful, and good beyond conception, beyond hope, the poor, the miserable,

the blighted and shipwrecked lives, clothed with a sublimity grand, and yet exquisitely tender, that pales before it, the best joys of the earth, fair and blessed though they may be? It is good to be blessed with health, and strength and family and friends and prospects and success in capacity and power and scope for fullness in love returned and growing with its return giving and receiving more with each year in deeds of wide beneficence which enrich the lives of nations

it is good to be blessed though but not so good as to be sacrificed poor and wretched halt and maimed and bruised heart-broken spiritless incapable lost utterly, so sacrificed for man's redemption. That is to be like Christ. It is to hear him say, Thou drinkest of my cup, with my baptism art baptized, I will make thee one with me, the destined sharer of my joy. It is not too much, no, not too much, but it is more than can be given, save in utterest abasement.

The head on which bliss is poured must be bowed into the dust. We cry in our agony, in weakness, failure, perplexity of heart, that there is no hope nor help. No hand seems to direct the storm, no pity listens. God has forsaken us, we say. Do we say so and not recall the words which fell in the great victory on Calvary, fell from the conqueror's lips? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Blackness of darkness and despair and sorrow blotting out God's hand and feebleness sinking without a stay, these are not failure. In these characters was written first the character of our deliverance.

These are the characters in which it is renewed. End of Chapter 9 of the Mystery of Pain End of the Mystery of Pain by James Hinton.