“What does he know,” said a sage, “who has not suffered?”

That we may be benefited by physical suffering is no new idea,—it is not even a forgotten idea. From the time when civilization first expressed itself in terms of Christianity until the Reformation, the spiritual value of pain has been an undisputed axiom. The Catholic Church has never ceased to preach the mortification of the flesh, and all religious communities, heathen as well as Christian, consider a certain degree of asceticism necessary for the perfect manifestation of a spiritual life.

As to the merits of voluntary suffering inflicted for the purpose of subjugating the appetites of the body, Christendom differs fundamentally, but until recently, it has been united in regarding illness as one of the means by which Providence purifies as well as punishes its children.

The discovery of the germ, even more than the preaching of Mrs. Eddy, dealt a terrific blow to this ancient belief, with the result that the masses no longer regard physical suffering as a remedial agency but as something not only unprofitable but purely destructive. For more than thirty years the final abolition of pain has been the Mecca towards which doctors and Christian Scientists have passionately journeyed; moreover, their ranks have been swelled by numerous sects, schools or religious bodies that have been called into existence by the rallying cry of this New Hope. They pointed to the declining death rate as an irrefutable testimony of battles already won, and as disease after disease disappeared before the advance of sanitation, of serums or of Right Thought; as surgery developed unheard-of possibilities, the most limitless expectations seemed not unjustified. The natural infirmities of age must eventually yield before the onslaught of knowledge. Bolder spirits even dreamed of conquest over death.

And then the World War came.

Their boasted death-rate mounted to unheard-of heights. The maimed and blind overflowed from the hospitals unto the farthest corners of the earth. Still the havoc was not complete. Infantile paralysis came from the north, killing and crippling our children by thousands. Finally, influenza mowed down old and young in such numbers that even here in America it was impossible to care for all the victims.

One would have expected these facts to be a staggering blow to our theorists. Could they not have realized—if only dimly—that they were battling against some fundamental law? Evidently not, for according to them war is to be abolished. Not only that, but Dr. Voronoff now offers an infallible cure for old age!

Now, as I said before, I neither believe that physical suffering will ever be abolished nor do I even hope it. For pain is one of the great human and humanizing experiences and, since the beginning of time, each generation has learned in its school the same fundamental lessons.

“When a man is laboring under the pain of any distemper it is then that he recollects there is a God and that he is but a man. No mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration or his contempt; and, having no malice to gratify, the tales of slander excite him not.” This is the testimony of a heathen, Pliny, who was himself an invalid. Sixteen centuries later an Anglican divine, Jeremy Taylor, voiced a similar conviction. “In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality. At first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garments cleave to the world and sit uneasy.”

Even during the materialistic nineteenth century we find Dr. Samuel Smiles declaring: “Suffering is doubtless as divinely appointed as joy, while it is much more influential as a discipline of character. It chastens and sweetens the nature, teaches patience and resignation and promotes the deepest as well as the most exalted thoughts.”

Latterly there have been indications that this time-honored conception is again becoming more universally recognized. For instance, during the darkest days of the war the Bishop of London writes that he had “come to believe that a painless world is a world not regenerate but degenerate.”

Who shall say that the revival of religious feeling which is now taking place is not due to the physical and mental suffering entailed by the war?

I should like to linger on the spiritual value of suffering, yet I feel I am on very delicate ground. For the spirit is so gloriously independent of the flesh, that it can expand under any circumstances and in any habitation. St. Hildegarde believed “God could not dwell in a healthy body,” and St. Ignatius Loyola that “a healthy mind in a healthy body is the best instrument with which to serve God.” Yet he himself had a shattered body.

The efficacy of suffering in promoting the growth of the spirit seems to me to lie chiefly in the fact that it does for us what we so seldom have the courage to do for ourselves. It sweeps away all the rubbish and dust of life. In the blessed emptiness induced by this mental house-cleaning we are able, often for the first time, to separate clearly the essential from the unessential. In sickness soul and body demand instinctively only that which is for each its most imperative necessity.

In the crucible of suffering the true essence of our character becomes manifest. All our pitiable pretences are torn from us, leaving our inherent self face to face with reality. It is a tremendous experience; it must either break us or make us. It is for us to choose which it shall be. Suffering is the ultimate test of character.

Yet as I write these words I find myself wondering if there is any one ultimate test. As no two crystals react to the same solvent, so it may be that no two hearts respond to the same probe. Of one thing, nevertheless, I am certain: to each of us is applied at some time in our lives that which constitutes for that individual soul the supreme trial of its mettle.

I am frequently reminded, however, that there are countless people who, instead of being purified and sensitized by physical pain, have been destroyed or at least rendered sterile by it. This is undoubtedly true. Whether we are to profit by suffering or not depends entirely on ourselves. How then are we to transmute pain into privilege? Certainly not through resignation, for there is no virtue without action. It may only be the interior travail of the spirit, but to attain even the initial step to spiritual, intellectual or material advancement necessitates labor. So it is with the benefits of suffering. They are there within the reach of all, but can only be obtained as the wage of persistent endeavor.

Resignation is not merely inactive, it is positively harmful inasmuch as it is a tacit acknowledgment that pain is in itself an evil, and to believe that is to stultify its possibilities. For what we believe to be evil, no matter how innocent in itself, becomes so by the corrosive power of that belief.

It is a dogma of Christianity that disease is one of the punitive consequences of original sin. Now punishment implies correction. Therefore, if disease represents a fall from perfection, it also holds within it the germs of a future perfection. Although theology teaches sin as the inception of disease, yet if we consider only the immediate cause of our physical disabilities we will find that although they are frequently the result of breaking a moral law, they are quite as frequently to be attributed to no fault of our own, and may even be the emblem of sacrifice.

If so many fail to benefit through suffering, we must remember that only a few of us are able to sustain the daily test of life. Every experience, especially any great and unusual experience, is a fire through which few pass unscathed. Beauty, charm, riches, personality, even intellect, have each their separate temptation, their different limitations.

It is so easy for the spirit to sleep contented within the soft prison of a perfect body. Superabundant health and vitality, unless guided by infinite wisdom, are as likely to cast us into the abyss of life as to raise us to the summit. Power fosters pride, and charm is the twin-sister of vanity. Life is a continuous trial of our strength, but disease is not necessarily the supreme trial.

It was George Eliot who said: “There is nothing the body suffers the soul may not profit by.”