IV. CHAPTER IV.

SPECIAL EXAMINATION CONTINUED SORROW.

IT is, however, in the sphere of human life that evil appears in its most marked and difficult forms. It is only here, indeed, that evil, in the peculiar and emphatic sense in which we commonly use the term, is found at all. It is here that it assumes at once a malignity which defies palliation, and a darkness which is still profound when we have thrown upon it the clearest light which nature or even revelation supplies.

This mystery of evil in humanity from the first assumes all its special hatefulness and darkness from the element of moral corruption which mingles in it, and which, in all its forms, it more or less indicates. If it were not this moral element, there would remain nothing peculiar, save its dignity, in human evil. It is the presence of a deeper shadow lying within the varied shades which chequer human life, that alone gives to them all their special mournfulness, and constitutes that master-problem before which speculation retires baffled, and the heart stands in awe. It is important now to bring this into view, because, while we 315trust to be able to show various considerations tending to mitigate the common ills of our race, and even to transmute them into good, we would yet have it to be seen, from the outset, that these ills—deriving as they do their worst hue from that deeper evil which lies behind—at the same time find in it their highest explanation. The fact of sin, if it intensifies the picture of human suffering, at the same time serves to account for it. The lesser, and, as it were, accessory evils, become intelligible in the greater. While striving to carry the light of special explanation along with us, it is, accordingly, of some consequence to see that, in this darker difficulty of sin, all the lower difficulties finally merge. To it they are easily pushed back. In this grand enigma all other enigmas of human life gather up and concentrate themselves. If the problem, therefore, acquires only a more inexplicable character in the end, it is yet reduced to a single point, from the very intensity of whose mystery a clearer explanation falls upon its lower levels.

Under what is commonly meant by sorrow in the widest sense, we may sum up the different expressions of human evil. How pervading a presence sorrow is, it is needless to say. There is no heart which it has not touched, there is no life which it has not darkened. In one form or another it is all around us, and its shadow traces all earthly joy. Its presence is not only to be measured by its outward manifestation; it lies deep in the soul of many whose brow may yet be clear. It cuts into many a heart which gives no sign of bleeding. Of a certain great man,¹⁵⁷¹⁵⁷   Goethe. who has written many 316fine things about sorrow, it is said that, when he lost his son, no one could read in his face any sign of peculiar emotion; but it was observed that he “worked harder than ever.” In this way he sought to stay the bursting fountain of bereaved feeling; and so free and commanding, and, it may be added withal, so cold a nature, no doubt succeeded in his attempt. Yet there are also those who, though they never any more show it, mourn inwardly with a keenness only the more intense that it lacerates in secret. There are those who bear their sorrow, a secret presence of unrest only the more bitter that it finds no expression, and seeks no sympathy. It lurks behind many a smile, and covers itself over with frequent brightness.

Now it is certainly at first a very perplexing question why it should be so—why human life should be thus largely traced and embittered by sorrow. This life is no doubt also full of joy,—more full of joy, we must hold, after all, than sorrow. And upon this fact of enjoyment, in the emotional as in the lower sensational sphere—a fact so diffused and pervading as to be from its very nature less susceptible of analysis and exhibition than the contrary fact—we based our theistic inference. Yet it must be admitted that we have here, in this widespread reality of sorrow, a peculiar difficulty in the way of that inference.

This difficulty we might to some extent obviate, on the same grounds as those set forth in the previous chapter. It is the same emotional susceptibility which renders us at once capable of joy and of sorrow. The same source of feeling in the breasts of parents, which finds such gratification 317in the health and prosperity of their children, overflows with such bitterness for their suffering or death; the same capacity which makes success, or honour, or fame, so pleasurable, makes also misfortune, contempt, or disgrace so grievous. If we wanted the capacity of sorrow, we do not know that we could have the capacity of joy. But certainly, this subjective contingency of pain and pleasure, of sorrow and joy, does not explain in either case the actual amount of the evil or negative element. We are led, therefore, to seek for some higher means of explanation as to the prevalence of suffering in human life. The following considerations may serve to throw some measure of light upon the subject.

Man comes into the world a being of mixed passions and affections. The infant that smiles so placidly on its mother’s breast contains in it, with the capacity of indefinite spiritual improvement, the seeds of selfish development, which would grow, if unhindered, into all inordinate forms of lust and unhappiness. Human life, therefore, needs to be beset with agencies fitted to check the one and to stimulate the other. And of all these agencies, suffering is undoubtedly one of the most effectual, one of the most powerful for the promotion of moral culture. It is true that men may suffer much, and yet be little bettered—nay, that suffering, in its baser and more ordinary forms, may tend to nurture a soul in wickedness rather than in goodness; but it is nevertheless a truth of the most undeniable and manifest character, that sorrow, in all its higher forms, is a Divine discipline of the most precious and signally beneficial kind. It brings the 318soul into contact with ennobling influences from a higher region of spiritual life than surrounds it here. It awakens in it more directly than anything else the consciousness of the infinite, and calls forth in it more energetically than anything else that quick sympathy with the lofty and the pure, and that ardent aspiration after the good, which are the most constant and unfailing springs of happiness on earth. The weeping of the night is thus turned into the joy of the morning. The soul that may have lain under the deepest shadow, rises to stronger and more beautiful altitudes of virtue. Heaven has been about it in its sorrow, and it comes forth brighter from its converse with darkness, and better and happier from its dwelling in the “house of mourning.” Faith guides it henceforth with a firmer step, and Hope cheers it by a steadier light, and Love sustains it with a more enduring fervour. Patience only grows in the valley of suffering, and humility is only purified by the fire of trial.¹⁵⁸¹⁵⁸   The sorrow spoken of is, of course, in its highest sense, that spiritual exaltation of passion which is of the character of religion. Sorrow, apart from any element of religion, is rather a bankruptcy of the passion than any true phase of it—what we call despair. Of this kind is that “sorrow of the world that worketh death.”

Nor does sorrow only lift the soul into a higher region of spiritual excellence for its own strengthening and improvement, but it arouses as nothing else does its activities for the good of others. It not only opens up heaven to us, but it sheds a new interest upon earth, and a glory falls from under its veil on the lowliest lot of man. All life becomes sacred to it—all men are brethren to its purged 319and softened vision. It is the rich fountain that feeds in us the well of sympathy. It is the strong passion that kindles in us the holy rage of philanthropy. Nature assumes a lovelier aspect, and is luminous with a diviner meaning, to the gaze of sorrow. It is—strange as it may be—the mirror in which man sees most deeply into truth and beauty in all their relations; so that whatever may be the perplexity of its presence in human life, regarded from a mere intellectual point of view, it is practically so great and comprehensive an agency of good, operating withal so subtly and silently in numerous hearts, that humanity has cause to bless its presence and be grateful for its work. The man who knows not its consecrating power is a loser in far more respects than he can possibly be a gainer. He may be free from its painful lessons, but he misses therewith the wisdom and the wellbeing that only comes from such lessons.

The value of sorrow, as a beneficial element of spiritual discipline in human life, it is interesting to remark, has received very special and emphatic recognition in our modern literature. The comprehensive types of ethical truth which Christianity first revealed would now seem to be passing into freer literary currency, and asserting a more pervading power. The worth and beauty of earnestness, 320sympathy, and patience—the scorn of the false, and the love of the honest and brave—the many forms of manly and womanly excellence which only spring in their full vigour from “the divine depths of sorrow”—meet us everywhere in the ideal pictures of the novelist and the impassioned strain of the poet. Looking on life with a nobler or at least more comprehensive spiritual insight than heretofore, literature does homage to the blessed function of sorrow; and while it gathers to itself the strength which comes from it, labours with a rare devotion to remedy all its baser sources, and to stanch its most bleeding wounds.

We are of course aware, in all that we have been saying, that the mere notion of such a disciplinary or remedial function as is exercised by suffering, suggests a ready answer to the course of argument we have rested on it. Why was man, it may be asked, so constituted as to need all this discipline? Is not this the real point with which the theistic argument requires to deal—the fact of man being found so morally imperfect as to need so largely as he does the hard and bitter education of sorrow? This obviously points in the last relation to that deeper aspect of our subject that awaits us; yet a few remarks seem here to deserve attention.

All spiritual life, in its very conception, implies an education or discipline. Virtue only realises its meaning in trial. It is no doubt true that we can conceive a discipline merely from one degree of good to another—that we can conceive spiritual life flourishing in its most exalted forms without any background of evil whereon to reflect its excellence; yet it must be also admitted that in the very fact of trial 321there lies the possibility of failure—of a sinking below the good, as well as a rising to higher measures of it. In the simple fact of moral action there lies the contingency of wrong action, and of all that moral imperfection that actually exists in the world.

Nay, it is not to be denied (to take a further view of the subject, which must yet be very cautiously ventured on) that even the realisation of the evil—the possibility of failure become a fact—bears in it something of good of which we cannot otherwise very well conceive. The very presence of moral evil calls forth peculiar phases of virtue—a richer and more various fulness of moral excellence. We are far from saying that this serves in the remotest degree to explain the evil. No view could be further from our whole mode of thought than this, which strikes its root deep in an abyss of pantheism. We are not now dealing with the final explanation of the fact, only pointing out that it is not utterly unassociated with good. Good even seems to spring from it. The virtue which is a victory over evil, a hard-earned triumph against foes that have lain in wait for it all along its path, seems a nobler thing than the virtue which has never been so proved. From the very bitterness of the culture springs the precious ripeness of the fruit. This does not certainly explain the evil, but it is at once significant and cheering to find that its presence thus calls forth a more enduring and exalted good.