XII

THE MYSTERY OF PAIN

"We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."—Rom. viii. 22.

THE mystery of pain confronts us everywhere. From the pangs that ushered us into the world. to the last throes of dissolution pain meets us on all sides. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together the brutes together with man—and we cannot help asking, "Why this vast amount of suffering in the world where our merciful Father reigns?" The question is not to be answered in a sentence. It admits of many answers, none complete in itself, but which taken together go far to the solution of the mystery.

I. Note at the outset that the susceptibility to pain is involved in the susceptibility to pleasure, and we cannot have the one without the other. The very same sensitiveness which makes some sights, sounds, odours, contacts agreeable, makes others repulsive and even painful. It is the same nerve which vibrates beneath the softest symphony and the most strident screech. The greater the susceptibility to pleasure in any organism, the greater the susceptibility to pain and vice versa. If we go low down in the scale of animal life we find creatures almost incapable of suffering pain, but

then they are equally incapable of receiving pleasure. As animals rise higher in the scale of being, both susceptibilities increase together. If man is open to the approach of pain through more channels than any other creature, through these same channels he is open to a greater variety of pleasure. Within the human race the same law obtains; coarser natures suffer less but also enjoy less. Pain is the shadow of pleasure; the two are inseparable.

II. Nay, more : the experience of some pain heightens the enjoyment of subsequent pleasures by contrast. No one enjoys a good night's rest like the man who often suffers from sleeplessness. Thoroughly to enjoy a meal one must bring to it a good appetite, i.e., must have been hungry, i.e., have suffered a certain amount of pain. The man who has never known sickness is not the man who, strictly speaking, most “ enjoys" good health. There are few more exquisite sensations of pleasure than those which follow release from acute pain. It is fairly open to question whether a measure of pain does not ultimately increase the enjoyment of life. I do not lay much stress on this consideration, but it is one of the side-lights on the mystery of suffering.

III. Another more important use which pain serves is the preservation of life.

It has often been pointed out that pain is the sentinel, warning us against the approach of danger which might impair or destroy life. If burning and cutting caused no pain, we might easily lose a limb or life itself by heedless contact with fire or steel. So of internal pains. The pain which

commonly announces the commencement of disease calls for prompt remedy, and the warning generally comes in time, if heeded, to effect a cure. Were there no pain, tissues and organs might be injured beyond recovery before we were aware. Excessive eating and drinking would in many more instances than is actually the case be indulged in to the utter ruin of the constitution, did not the discomfort thence resulting warn us against them. So with overwork of body and brain: back-ache, headache and the like are God's monitors crying, "Enough. Stop here. There is danger ahead." In fact, it is not easy to see how men or animals could reach maturity were they not in their early years educated in self-preservation by the agency of pain.

IV. We have hitherto considered only the physical uses of pain. We have looked at man simply as an animal. Let us for a moment consider him as an intellectual being and note the influence which physical suffering has had in promoting his intellectual progress. This has been very great though commonly overlooked. In general, the pains and inconveniences experienced by men living in a low intellectual condition in a primitive age have urged them on in the path of invention and discovery, seeking for means to ameliorate the physical evils of life, thus leading ultimately to an enlargement of the whole field of human knowledge.

In particular, the diseases of the human frame may be said to have been in this way the parents of physiology, chemistry and biology, and they have given no slight stimulus to the study of botany and electricity. To-day, no doubt, the physical sciences

are largely pursued for their own sake by men who have taken that pursuit for their vocation in life. But let us not forget that the early pioneers were mostly members of the medical profession, a profession called into being by the existence of physical suffering.

You see we are getting more light on the mystery of suffering. You see how different is the aspect it wears when, instead of standing by one sick bed and exclaiming, “why this illness, this accident, this terrible torture?" we view it as part of a great whole, a factor working not only in the life of the individual, but of the entire race.

V. It is however the moral side of the problem which deserves the most attention. The suffering we see on all sides has tremendous moral significance. The connection between physical suffering and moral evil is close and fundamental. Whether we look at the physical sufferings of the world as the consequence of a "fall" in the past, or as the throes of development, the pangs with which a higher is evolved out of a lower life, does not materially affect the question before us. What emerges on either view is this, that sin, error, cleaving to the lower when a higher is possible1 entails suffering : hence, that the order of the universe is a moral order, its Governor a moral Governor, one so terribly in earnest in His moral government that He counts no physical suffering too great to mark His abhorrence of sin and serve as an incentive to His offspring to struggle out of it. This is a sinful world and a sinful

1 A justification in the use of these terms as practically equivalent will be found in the next sermon.

world must be a suffering world under the government of a righteous God. It is true the righteous God may and does bring good out of evil, makes this suffering in the end a means of blessing. But for the time being the suffering is real, keen and, in its total sum, appalling; and it attaches to sin.

Of course we shall have to meet the old objection that suffering does not always follow on sin, is not always the result of sin and, when it is, does not always fall on the sinner himself but frequently on his children or his neighbours; further, that if there be a righteous God, He cannot be very wise, or He would have made suffering invariably follow sin and fall on the wrongdoer alone. The objection is based on a narrow view of human nature and human history. We have already shown that pain has other purposes to fulfil besides that of moral educa tion. Hence it is not surprising if sometimes there is apparently no direct connection between it and sin. As to the second half of the objection, we admit that the suffering caused by sin often falls more heavily on others than on the sinner himself, but we maintain that this vicarious suffering is none the less fitted to be a mark of the divine abhorrence of sin, a deterrent from it, and a means of removing it. To see another person suffering by our transgressions may move us more effectually to repentance than if we suffered ourselves. Many a father would lightly encounter the risk of penalties falling on himself who would shrink from rendering his children liable to them. The same is true of other forms of vicarious suffering, and the more the race advances in moral culture, the more powerfully

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