general law of suffering holds good. Now, if suffering were unnecessary, would God, who promises, in His infinite tenderness that He will" have mercy more than a mother" and that "the bruised reed He shall not break and smoking flax He shall not extinguish," would this gracious Father permit our poor human hearts to be crushed unnecessarily under a burden of pain? It is impossible to think so. Suffering then must be necessary. Life cannot be all sunshine and harmony. Clouds bring out the gorgeous colouring of the sunset and minor chords emphasise the beauty of the theme. "The peaceable fruits of justice" that we are capable of yielding must be produced by sorrow." Joy must sit down at sorrow's feet" and learn her lesson. Why, even merely temporal things do not prosper without suffering. Was there ever a great invention that did not demand trouble and toil, the sacrifice of time and of pleasure and often even a heavy toll of human life? Have not all the great exploits of the human race from the siege of Troy to the discovery of the South Pole, been shadowed by the sufferings and death of brave men? No one ever did anything great without suffering. people do not develop into martyrs and heroes without time and patience and God's grace. The crisis will find them cravens unless they have prepared themselves for it by cheerful and ready acceptance of the trials incidental to life's common round. Some (among them the philosopher William James) go farther and assert that, not only must we bear what is sent, but that our nature requires to be constantly exercised by the daily performance of gratuitous acts of selfdenial and self-sacrifice in order to be thoroughly master of itself. The will can never be made strong and mind made dominant over matter, unless we accustom ourselves to denying our wishes even in trivial things and to doing what is right though nature rebel. Thus character is beaten into shape on the anvil of suffering. But Apart from this purely material view, pain is necessary for the purging out of self that we may become worthy, or rather less unfit, to walk in the presence of God, less unfit to be everlastingly the companions of angels and of saints. Our foibles and faults, our egotism under its myriad forms, must all be burned out of us by suffering before God can take us VOL. XLIII.-No. 501. 12 66 to His home above. If pain is not borne and borne well, Purgatory's cleansing fires will have dreadful work to do. For this reason, God's stripes are caresses." He never loves us more than when He chastises us. He is never nearer "The man whom to us than when His hand is heavy on us. God's Hand rests on has God at his right hand." Even those deprived of our glorious heritage, the Catholic Faith, have wisdom enough to see this. Hear Carlyle: "Thank thy destiny for merciful afflictions, thankfully bear what yet remains; thou hadst need of them; the self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic disease and triumphs over death. On the roaring billows of time, thou art not engulfed but borne aloft into the azure of eternity. Love not pleasure, love God. This is the everlasting yea, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein who so walks and works, it is well with him." Hear, too, the heart-cry of poor, wilful George Eliot: "How can you tell but that the hardest trials you have known have been only the road by which He was leading you to that complete sense of your own sin and helplessness, without which you would never have renounced all other hopes and trusted in His love alone?" When even non-Catholics are so positive about the purifying effects of suffering, we need not quote the orthodox and holy. It is marvellous, the ennobling effect sorrow has on character, if we but patiently permit it to work its will. There is a sweet kindliness about those who have suffered much and in this spirit; they have a sort of second sight into the troubles confided to them and none are so patient to listen, so eager to help. They themselves have sounded the lowest deeps of human pain; perhaps have even attained the supreme peace of no longer fearing self, for they have sacrificed its every interest for the love of the Heart of Jesus and at His bidding. There is a peace about such souls unknown to those in joy. It is to them we turn for sympathy, not to the uninitiated, for they have penetrated somewhat behind the veil and know that the tangle works itself out into a harmony of colour and design. They are examples of the truth that It is the falling star that trails the light, Now, why is it that if all have to suffer in what someone calls"this beautiful madhouse of the earth," why is it that all are not equally ennobled by suffering? It is because some rebel and refuse to admit the Angel of Pain when he comes to them; others receive him but with discontent and repining. Pain fails of its purpose in their regard. They entertained an angel, unawares. He came with his arms laden with gifts, but these can follow only in the train of patient resignation; so he has to withdraw sadly, leaving after him the trouble but not the remedy and reward. What blind creatures we are! We have to bear the trial whether we like it or not and yet, the only thing that can make it tolerable, we put far from us. Pain is sent us to be borne, not to be talked about, to form character, not conversation. Wherever we find people restless and rebellious under pain, it is because they failed to recognise the Divine Hand and have seen only His instrument, the administerer of that pain; it is because they have brought their trouble to the wrong source for help; it is because they have let an intruder into their secret place of sorrow and the Lord and Healer has had sorrowfully to depart. Sometimes, it takes years of acquaintanceship with sorrow to make one tolerate it, much less welcome it. Unfortunately it is too true that "philosophy triumphs over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy." We are all wise after the event and recognise the angelic visitor when the pain is gone. We reproach ourselves for our ungracious behaviour, and confidently resolve that we shall do much better next time. And thus life goes on, “trial, rebellion, self-reproach," repeated over and over again, till by God's grace and continual hard knocks, we, at length, have strength and virtue enough to receive Pain smilingly when he comes, as an old and valued friend. Cardinal Manning tells us that "every trial is sent to teach us something and all together they have a lesson which is beyond the power of any to teach alone. But if they came together we should break down and learn nothing." Few in this world constantly meet with heavy trials. Few are the hours, thank God, when Pale Anguish keeps the gate Some souls are called on by God to take up a cross they can never lay down this side of the grave, but they are the minority. Generally speaking what we have to bear is Only a summer's fate of rain And a woman's fate of tears. "Our greatest cross is, after all, the fear of crosses." Did we only make up our minds to the fact that life's web is woven of two intermingling threads, the gold of joy and the grey of sorrow; that the one is needed to act as a foil to the other, and that the heavenly Weaver keeps His Hand ever on the loom apportioning both for our ultimate good, did we realise this, we should patiently and even cheerfully accept the grey as it comes. Who shall say at death that the gold was the greater gift? And looking back at that moment, shall we not even see that in most cases, the grey, under the powerful touch of God's grace, turned afterwards to gold, and what we, in our blindness, deemed misfortune proved eventually a blessing, even from a worldly point of view? And now, with our garnered store of life's wisdom enlightened by a ray of that supreme light which is to flood our souls at the Judgment Seat, we see plainly that the "mingled yarn" bore but one design, and that, nobly conceived and consistently carried out. It is unfortunate that we cannot thus reason with ourselves when the mists of pain come suddenly down upon us, shrouding our view; but it is something to have afterwards recognised these facts and a day may even come when we shall be able to say "there is a joy in pain which is absent from pleasure.' If, instead of looking backward or onward, we kept looking upward, God would see to it that we did not dash our foot against a stone. He is our ever-present Helper who always sends us aid in time of trouble, not always in the form we would like it, the removal of the trouble, but in some other way more for our good. He loves us too well to do us harm at our own request. We have received good things from His Hand, let us also receive evil, or rather what appears evil. When the time comes, as come it does to all, when everything goes wrong, friends misunderstand and enemies malign, when even nature jars and "nothing can bring back the glory of the flower," let us remember that He that tossed us down into the Field He knows about it all, He knows, He knows, and in eager expectation listens for our cry with arms outstretched to clasp us to His Heart. To us too, when time has been swallowed up in eternity and we are safe in our Father's home, perhaps lovingly reviewing all the sufferings of the past, to each of us He will be able to say, "Thou didst call upon Me in affliction and I delivered thee. I heard thee in the secret place of tempest and I proved thee in the waters of contradiction." But now "your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man shall take from you." S. M. SCHOLASTICA. "THE VOICE OF THE IRISH" Across the western sea there comes a sound From Tara's hill a tiny flame is seen Beside Mwee-Vreagh; it glows throughout the night, LONDUBH. |