The mystery of pain; a book for the sorrowful

Preface To New Edition

LET us suppose that there existed an island of which the climate was so unhealthy that every one of its inhabitants became in his infancy affected with rheumatism, causing all motion of their limbs to be a source of pain. And let us suppose, also, that this island had been without communication with the rest of the world, so that its inhabitants had never come into contact with any people free from their own affliction. They would have found walking always a painful thing; the thought of it would be to them a thought of pain; and since we call things that are always painful evil, they would call walking an evil. But in this their thought would be false. They would be feeling a good thing painful because their life was marred, and calling it evil only because they did not understand their own condition. And if it could be explained to them that the cause of their pain was not anything bad in

6 PREFACE TO NEW EDITION

walking, but only their own disease, that itself would be a gain to them. Even if the conditions of their life could not be changed, it would still be a benefit to them to know the true source of their evil plight, and learn in what direction they must look for real relief. Besides, how many strange and mysterious things in their life it would make clear, to know that this walking, which they dreaded, and called bad, was a natural delight and good of man : what vain endeavors it would save them from; what higher apprehension of possible delight in life, even for them, it would afford.

Now this is like the idea I have tried to explain in this little book; namely, that things which we have inevitably called evil may yet be truly good. My thought was that all which we feel as painful is really giving — something that our fellows are better for, even though we cannot trace it ; and that giving is not an evil thing, but good, a natural delight and good of man, and that we feel it painful because our life is marred.

So far my thought now is the same as when I wrote the book, but I have come to

Preface To New Edition 7

see that it was incomplete. I was thinking of painful things, and took no account of pleasurable ones. What I said in it was this : when a painful thing comes to us, let us think, not of how it affects ourselves, but of how it affects others. Now I would add: when a pleasant thing comes to us, let us think, not of how it affects ourselves, but of how it affects others. This is but making our regard true to the facts around us, but it would bring with it results of the greatest consequence; for the very nature of the duties which lie upon us — our very right and wrong — depends upon the question whether it is a thought of ourselves or of others that moves us. When a man begins to seek goodness, then the effect of having his thought fixed upon self is seen: it falsifies the very nature of right, perverting it from being the simple following of service into a question of restraining ourselves from pleasure. So that any being who has succumbed to letting self stand first to him has brought on himself a bondage which he does not suspect, a need for banishing pleasure which God lays on none of his creatures. And

8 PREFACE TO NEW EDITION

therefore there is a deliverance also possible for us from evils which seem hopeless, because it may come in a way we have not thought of namely, from the perception that, by submitting to a false feeling, we have made our thought of duty also false. To let regard to ourselves be first is to deform our right ; to change it from being what it simply is — our fellows' good — into a false thing, our own restraint from pleasure. And wheresoever this is, there stands a deliverance ready, an entrance, by the door of a truer feeling, into a truer law. And this also is what Christ has shown us.

Chapter I

THIS book is addressed to the sorrowful. It may be there are some in whose lives pleasure so far overbalances 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 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 an 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 some 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, an 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 a 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 the darkest part, would be gone. And this it is that I think I have seen, and that I wish, if I can be so happy, to show to 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 of the 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 their pains most heavily assault them. There are some in whom the fact that they and others are called on for endurance — even the endurance of unutterable pains — rouses no angry questionings, and excites no doubts. Their hearts may be bowed down 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 ; in their deepest agony, they do not question righteousness. But there are others — I think they are the more — the chief poignancy of whose sufferings comes from an 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 right could demand, or reason could inflict, writhe in impotent passion in 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 is to see a right and 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? — an assurance that there must be in God's world a right, a perfect reason, which would not balk our hearts or mock our hopes if we could know it? Surely we ought not to be impatient of these demands, even when they are most impatiently urged. Those who do not feel them, or who have succeeded in hushing them within their own bosoms, may permit them to be weighed and pondered to the full for others' sakes. Perhaps, too, it may be found that these passionate questionings do not lead us altogether wrong; that God's own Spirit may 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 of my Father I have made known unto you."

If we knew all things that the Father does, would our hearts be consoled? would our sorrows be turned into 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 into joy; I think it may even be seen that it would ; that we may have a knowledge ; now that proves it. Accustomed as we have been to be in darkness, and to bear sorrow unassuaged (debarred by loss and lapse from our privilege 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, foretelling tribulation, has bidden us 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 as 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 life, and make its dark threads translucent with the splendor 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 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 was the healing water needed more than now. Man has learned many things, but he has not learned 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 had increased with his increasing culture, and that the acuter sensibility and 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 the 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 of 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 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 the 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 fare sumptuously every day. He can lay all lands under 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 has ever been a stranger there, is to be strange no longer, it must come in the form of a genuine joy of 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 affections spring up and blossom anew. It must visit us as spring visits the frozen lands, and make our life-blood flow again with a 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 last discoveries of science, which do but gather up the testimony of Nature to that good news, and bid us seek beyond the visible the secret of our life.

It is true, indeed, that no change 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. Yet 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 pretence 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 upon a 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 in the highest measure joyful that which is naturally repugnant. This power is in knowledge where there has been ignorance. It does not alter our natural emotions: it still leaves (as in the cases supposed) 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 which 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 dis- f' cover that through that loss a dear friend has 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 impression. We need not, therefore, be hopeless in presence of the problem of pain. Knowl- * edge 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 an evil, but a good. This is when pain is willingly borne for an-^ other's sake. Its entire character is altered then. It not only passes into the category of good things, but it becomes emphaticallythe 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 martyrs, or the losses of self-sacrificing devotion, are never classed 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 the feelings they elicit: a pride which no regret can drown, a gladness no indignation overpower. Conceive all martyrdoms blotted out from the world's history; how blank and barren were the page! There are the materials, then, evidently within us for an entire inversion of our attitude toward pain. The world in this respect, we might almost feel, seems to tremble in 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 of man in the wonder of an unutterable glory.

If all pain might be seen in the light of martyrdom; if 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 its best and highest, were not the work done? It is done: for the light has shone, the word is spoken.

Chapter II

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 the 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 wasjscaxcely 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 a new lustre; but they are in themselves familiar truths. The radical need of a 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 with theologic doctrines, and so has been made the subject of verbal disputes ; but it is itself 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 our experience — also is not new; though it has lately taken a more distinct form and place in the human mind.

They are two old and customary thoughts ; but the freshness with which they appeared to me enabled me to see in them 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 fulfil 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 of necessity, not centred 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 to 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 the 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, indeed, 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 fill 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 of the afflictions of Christ, for His body's sake, which is the Church": our sufferings being related to an end that is not merely ours; an end that is of all ends the greatest and the 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. Surely it should do so. If it came to us on any other ground it would be addressing itself not only to lower but to 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 on Himself, finding therein alone the means to make us know Him.

When we look there, we can see why God is the blest, the happy Being. We should be happy if we had love, and found for it 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 life 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 Jusu— somethings accomplished in our experience which is unseen by us ; and that sacrifice for others is a good. For this unseen work that is done througE 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 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 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 of 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 the 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 fine, that invisible unity which makes all her forces one, whereby (holding to the unseen) man has traced out in nature a perfect order amid all confusion.

So far we have learnt that what we directly and naturally perceive in the things around us, and the events which happen to us, was never meant to be the guide to our thoughts respecting them. A 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, and which our senses can only indirectly, or even not at all, perceive. Scientific knowledge consists in regarding the unseen ; in looking at things which are in one sense invisible. It is therefore true, because it fulfils this evident condition for the attainment of the truth.

And thus, when it is said that all human experience is the working out of the 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 it 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 perception. This does but bring the thought into harmony with all our thoughts that we have just ground for believing true. And if a certain eff ort is demanded to free ourselves from the dominion of our own too 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 see. We are not bidden to follow causes to far distant and remote effects. The demand is not for a arger 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.