XII

THE DAY OF ADVERSITY

I suppose there is not a man or woman here who has not more than once or twice had a mental struggle with this subject, of the miseries and sorrows of life. Not only philosophers, poets, and theologians; but men of all kinds and in all places have impeached Divine Providence for making a world in which sorrows and miseries are experienced by all. Not a few men have said: "If I had to make a world, I would make one very different from this." And when we ask: "Well, what sort of a world would you make?" the answer generally implies that the objector to this world would make one in which everybody would be comfortable, in which there was no sickness and no pain and no poverty and no suffering of any kind. Comfort, freedom from risk, or danger, or liability, whatever kind of a life a man lived · a world in which the sense of security and of satisfaction was uninterrupted and undisturbed.

We have all had these ideas and feelings. We have all struggled with the problem. Especially when we have had losses and disappointments. In the lonesome hour of bereavement, in the hour when health seemed ebbing away, in the hour when we

had to face losses in business, or the treachery of some partner, in the hour when we found ourself put out of a position in which we had served faithfully for many years, simply because it seemed desirable to merge the concern in some other, in the hour when we could not secure profitable employment, notwithstanding integrity and capability, in the hour when the little child died, in the hour when some son or daughter flung aside all considerateness and filial kindness and dutifulness, and embraced the stranger as his or her chief blessing-in such hours we have all struggled with the problem of the miseries and sorrows of life. It may be that our very faith in God and a Divine Providence working for good has been shaken in that hour. We were not quiet enough or calm enough to take all the thoughts which gathered about the events which disturbed us into consideration. One overmastering feeling held us in its grip. A new and trying experience will act like a thunder-storm in nature when the whole world for a time seems to be in a hurly-burly of uncontrolled lawlessness.

It is not then that we can find the thoughts and feelings which are necessary to bring steadiness and calmness. Already we must have stored them for use. When a room is on fire in your house, it is too late to think of sending to the city for the hand grenade you saw advertised. These must be purchased and got ready before time. Ministers make a great mistake if they assume that when a person is suffering in a severe sickness the time is opportune for bringing the patient to recognize the di

vinity of Christian truth. Health is the time for storing the mind with the truths needed for comfort and support in sickness. The time of freedom from acute calamity is the time to prepare for it. Not that we can anticipate when our troubles will come, or of what sort they will be. What I mean is that truth, like coal, needs to be put in before the cold winter weather swoops down upon the soul.

No wise man will undertake to justify the ways of God to men. Only he who could see the end from the beginning could venture any such attempt. Nothing that I, or any one, could say would leave you without some doubts and fears. These doubts and fears are part of the discipline of life. But they need not, like highwaymen in the dark, have us down and jump on us. If only we can keep our feet that is something. The language of the Psalmist may sometimes seem to us applicable to our own condition: "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me!" but they cannot overwhelm us, unless we lie down in them. So long as we can stand upright and keep our feet the waves and billows may wet us but they cannot drown us. A man who is built like a stanch ship, with no worm-eaten timbers in his make-up, built in conformity with Nature's laws, each part of his nature supporting every other part, can stand a good deal of storm. Under the strain the timbers may creak, the ropes may wail in the wind, and it may seem for a while as if the ship would go to pieces. But the storm passes and she is there still, riding the ocean in quiet dignity. "Without were fightings, within

were fears," but the ship was mightier than her foes. "Aren't you afraid?" I asked a man in a merciless storm. "No, sir! I have faith in the ship, I have faith in her builders, I have faith in her captain and officers."

After all, it is faith that saves a man when the tempest is on. Doubt never saved a man and it never comforted him either. I was sitting a few weeks ago by the bedside of a very fine and cultured woman. She was suffering quite a good deal. Her life had been a splendid fight with the ignorance and darkness of the world. And I was trying to give her a word of comfort. Her robust and welltrained mind had to be respected. Platitudes would not do. At last she said: "I have thoroughly made up my mind to one fact — that perpetual happiness is not intended by this present order of things, nor perpetual pleasure, nor unbroken rest; but for the creation and development of character, I can't conceive of a better world than this." She had got hold of a great idea and everything in her life and experience cooperated to fix it in a central place in her mind.

And the way in which we are going to look at the miseries and sorrows of life, the attitude of our minds toward them, depends on what we think life is for. If it is for the creation of character - character that shall fit us for nobler service in the future - then there is a very intelligible place for the miseries and sorrows of life. A world of spoilt children would be little better than a hell. A world of such personalities as ours is peopled with, with

out chastisement in it, would be a world of spoilt children. With all the miseries and sorrows in it, there are far too many of us who are spoilt children and prodigal sons and daughters.

If this world was made to yield solid, settled happiness, it is a failure. If it was made that an elect minority of specially privileged people might have a good time while the vast majority of us toiled and slaved for them, then it is a world that must have been formed by a God who was no better than an Eastern despot. But if the world was intended to be a cradle and a school for men and women who should be developed into high, holy, beautiful, sympathetic character a character full of noble harmonies which should make music in the ear of Eternal Love-a character beginning here, taking its direction here, but continuing on and on till it attains that ideal perfection which has always, like an angel of God, been visiting our imagination — then the light we need in which to read the meaning of the miseries and sorrows of life begins to flow.

The sculptor stands there by the beautiful creamy piece of Carrara marble and he has chisel and hammer which he uses on it, till he seems to be wasting it and spoiling the whole block. The why and wherefore of a chip here and a blow there does not at first appear. But return in a month or two and a beautiful human figure begins to appear in most bewitching and graceful lines. Now you know what all the chipping and hammering meant. In the sculptor's mind was a design you did not see. He meant something ravishingly beautiful. Sup