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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
HE SUFFERED 
 
 OR 
 
 HUMAN SUFFERING 
 
 INTERPRETED BY JESUS CHRIST 
 
 SIX MEDITATIONS FOR HOLY WEEK 
 
 WILFRED MONOD 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
 BY 
 
 ANNIE D. PERKINS 
 
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 NEW YORK 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 
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 The Library 
 
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 Copyright, 1896, by 
 Thomas Whittaker. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 THE meditations in this collection were 
 spoken as the result of a conversation with 
 one who was ill — body and soul. 
 
 Himself plunged in sorrow, the pastor 
 wished, for the benefit of his people, to 
 sound the depths of the mystery of afflic- 
 tion ; but no one must expect a philosoph- 
 ical study or even a biblical exposition of 
 the function of suffering in our lives. 
 Drawn solely from the contemplation of 
 Jesus Christ, and written with adoring love, 
 these pages are simply a testimony offered 
 to the Man of Sorrows. They have no 
 other aim. 
 
 There is no question of an author ad- 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 dressing himself to his readers, but of a 
 brother addressing himself to brothers, and 
 saying to them, " If you suffer, love Him 
 who has suffered; for as the sufferings of 
 Christ abound in us, so our consolation also 
 aboundeth by Christ." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I AM very glad to have the privilege of 
 putting my name under the introduction 
 to this most excellent translation of a very 
 valuable book. To any one who reads it, 
 the introduction will seem most needless ; 
 but I am glad to be associated with Mrs. 
 Perkins in her labor of love, and glad to 
 feel, with her, that these meditations upon 
 suffering must be helpful to those who are 
 called upon to bear pain and sorrow, find- 
 ing strength to do it in " their fellowship 
 with the sufferings " of our dear Lord. 
 Wm. Croswell Doane, 
 Bishop of Albany. 
 Albany, February i, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 MONDAY : page 
 
 Inevitable Suffering i 
 
 TUESDAY: 
 Endurable Suffering 26 
 
 WEDNESDAY: 
 Useful Suffering 35 
 
 THURSDAY: 
 Necessary Suffering 55 
 
 FRIDAY : 
 Glorious Suffering 81 
 
 SATURDAY: 
 Mysterious Suffering 103 
 
MONDAY. 
 
 INEVITABLE SUFFERING. 
 "Jesus suffered." — Heb. xiii. 12. 
 
 THERE are problems that certain intelli- 
 gences can never grasp; there are senti- 
 ments that certain hearts can never feel; 
 but there is one subject, alas ! which awakes 
 in the depths of every soul an instant echo, 
 and this is — suffering. Explorers tell us 
 that, in plowing the ocean from pole to 
 pole, they have never found a sea whose 
 wave could quench their thirst. This 
 water, always, everywhere, whether drawn 
 from the abyss or found in the hollow of a 
 shell, betrays the presence of an invisible 
 
2 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 agent mysteriously blended with the un- 
 fathomable mass of the liquid element, and 
 communicating to the smallest drop its own 
 wild and bitter savor. 
 
 In that other ocean that we call human- 
 ity, suffering is what the salt is to the sea. 
 Wander over the earth in all directions; 
 leave Europe, blackened by the smoke of 
 its workshops and the powder of its battle- 
 fields ; fly to the silence and the light of 
 the East; listen to the harmonious voice 
 of the blue waves around the coral islands 
 of Polynesia; traverse the burning plains 
 of Africa or the frozen vastness of the 
 North ; seek, ask, observe — it is suffering 
 that you will find ; it is suffering that will 
 answer you ; it is suffering that will erect 
 itself everywhere, implacable, against your 
 horizon. 
 
 Like the mysterious column that went 
 with the Israelites across the desert, human 
 suffering will go with you in your journey 
 step by step ; when the sky is clear it is a 
 pillar of cloud, a misty veil before the sun ; 
 in the darkness it is a pillar of fire, a blaz- 
 
MONDA Y. 3 
 
 ing torch to chase the slumber from your 
 eyes and banish the healing shades of 
 night. In all latitudes, and under all con- 
 ditions, man weeps. He weeps under the 
 glowing flowers and splendid foliage of the 
 tropic forest, as well as in the deadly dust 
 that poisons the miners' breath; he weeps 
 in ball-rooms and in prison-cells; in the 
 glittering palaces among the throng of 
 those who thirst for pleasure, as well as in 
 the melancholy hospitals among the sighs 
 of those who thirst for death. Everywhere 
 man weeps. Whether he bends over a 
 cradle with a smiling face, or over a coffin 
 with despair in his heart, his brow bears 
 the stigmata of suffering past or the pro- 
 phetic signs of suffering to come. 
 
 I perceive, my brothers, behind your suf- 
 ferings the sufferings of this present human- 
 ity, and behind these the sufferings of past 
 humanity, since the present generation is 
 more closely bound to the generations that 
 precede it than the branch to the tree, or the 
 hand to the arm which bears it. In reas- 
 cending the dim pathways of the vanished 
 
4 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 centuries, I encounter the pale face of 
 Pascal, and I listen to his description of our 
 life : " Imagine a crowd of fettered men 
 condemned to death. Day by day some 
 of their number fall before their eyes ; they 
 foresee their own destiny; they gaze at 
 one another with hopeless sadness, and 
 await their turn. This is a picture of the 
 life of man." What, Pascal! is this thy 
 thought of life ? Is there no brighter one ? 
 And Pascal continues : " The last act is 
 always tragic, however fine the comedy in 
 all the rest. The earth is thrown over us, 
 and all is done forever." This was one 
 view of human destiny two centuries ago ; 
 but was it thus six centuries ago, twelve 
 centuries ago? 
 
 If we plunge into the distant past, can 
 we ever win from mortal lips the assertion 
 of a universal bliss that we have lost? 
 Alas ! in the most ancient documents is the 
 echo of a universal sigh. We learn from 
 history that the philosopher Hegesias 
 taught the vanity of life so well that his 
 disciples rushed to suicide, and he was 
 
MO NBA Y. 5 
 
 obliged to close his school. Three hundred 
 years before this tragic teaching, Buddha 
 had already founded that religion of de- 
 spair which finds its supreme good in an- 
 nihilation, and its supreme misery in the 
 return to this life, after death. And many 
 centuries before Buddha the inscriptions 
 of the great monarchs of Asia speak of 
 bloody wars and tortured victims. Ah, 
 what triumphs for sorrow ! As we pene- 
 trate further and further into the past his- 
 tory of our race, we enter into the mystery 
 of prehistoric times. There are no more 
 books, no more inscriptions ; if this pathetic 
 silence had a voice, would it speak to us 
 of happiness? Stoop down and look at 
 this human skull : the teeth of some fierce 
 beast have left their marks upon these 
 bones, bleaching for centuries. Do you 
 need other documents ? One shrinks from 
 the task of trying to describe the sufferings 
 of primitive man, exposed without defense 
 to cold, to hunger, to sickness, and to a 
 thousand formidable troubles. 
 
 This, my brothers, is the interminable, 
 
6 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 wretched procession that moves along be- 
 fore my eyes. It begins in the primeval 
 forests, where our ancestors fought with 
 wild beasts for their lives; it is swelled 
 every year by every human being that is 
 born into the world. You yourselves be- 
 long to this funeral- train, and as I gaze pro- 
 foundly into your eyes I see revived in them 
 the extinguished gaze of vanished genera- 
 tions. And what if, groping in the awful 
 darkness that hides the roots of the human 
 race, our imaginations should evoke the 
 mute sufferings of the living creatures that 
 preceded man upon our globe ? And why 
 should we not? The edifice of humanity 
 is built upon the foundation of the animal 
 existence, and we feel ourselves intimate- 
 ly bound to our unconscious precursors. 
 Even before the appearance of the human 
 race, blood flowed upon the earth and red- 
 dened unknown seas, the theater of hate- 
 ful combats. Then, as now, " life was an 
 endless chase, where creatures, now the 
 hunter and now the hunted, fought over 
 the fragments of a horrid quarry." Then, 
 
MO NBA Y. 7 
 
 as now, one might have said with the 
 poet: 
 
 " Aveugle executeur d'un mal obligatoire, 
 Chaque vivant promene ecrit sur sa machoire, 
 L'arret de mort d'un autre, exige par sa faim." 
 
 Thus everything that lives is plunged in 
 sorrow. There has been suffering, and 
 there still is suffering, in the depths of 
 ocean and beyond the clouds. Why should 
 it then surprise us, if suffering humanity 
 has sometimes wandered from the way ? if 
 there have been instants when the universal 
 letting loose of anguish has seemed cruel 
 and senseless irony, an unanswerable proof 
 that our world rolls in space at random, 
 without an aim and without a God? Hear 
 this cry of despair : 
 
 " Les ondes et les cieux autour de leur victime, 
 Luttent d'acharnement, de bruit, d'obscurite ; 
 En proie a ces conflits, mon vaisseau sur l'abime, 
 Court sans boussole, et demate\ . . „ 
 
 " Jouet de l'ouragan qui 1'emporte et le mene, 
 Encombre de tresors et d'agres submerges, 
 Ce navire perdu, mais c'est le nef humaine, 
 Et nous sommes les naufrages. 
 
8 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 " L'equipage affole manoeuvre en vain dans l'ombre ; 
 L'Epouvante est a bord, le desespoir, le deuil; 
 Assise au gouvernail, la Fatalite sombre 
 Le dirige vers un ecueil. ... 
 
 " Ah! c'est un cri sacre que tout cri d'agonie; 
 II proteste, il accuse au moment d'expirer. 
 Eh! bien ce cri d'angoisse et d'horreur infinie, 
 Je l'ai jete; je puis sombrer!" 
 
 {Literal Translation.) 
 
 " Around their victim, the skies and the clouds strug- 
 gle with rage and tumult and darkness. Of this conflict, 
 my vessel is the prey ; flying over the abyss, unmasted 
 and without a guide. 
 
 "It is the sport of the hurricane that drives it and 
 bears it on, encumbered with its treasures and its tangled, 
 half-drowned sails. And this doomed ship! Why, 'tis 
 the vessel of the human race, and we the shipwrecked 
 ones! 
 
 "The maddened crew strive hopeless in the dark; 
 Horror is on board, and Despair and Weeping, and at 
 the helm sits grim Fate and drives it on a rock ! 
 
 " Ah! every cry of anguish is a sacred cry. Before it 
 dies it accuses, it protests. Well! do you know? This 
 cry of anguish and of infinite despair is mine ! Now, I 
 may drown!" 
 
 II. 
 
 But I have heard a cry, my brothers, 
 that silences this other one, full of revolt 
 and blasphemy, a cry that dominates the 
 
MONDA Y. 9 
 
 clamor and sighing of all humanity, that 
 puts an end to all the sufferings of those 
 who hear it ; I mean the cry of the dying 
 Jesus. " And Jesus cried with a loud voice, 
 and gave up the ghost." 
 
 Have you heard this cry ? Do you wish 
 to hear it to-day? Fall on your knees 
 humbly, in the silence, and you will hear 
 this great cry. When you have heard it, 
 your grief will be transfigured. Why? 
 Because you will understand for the first 
 time that Jesus suffered. Jesus suffered. 
 
 I am not speaking just now of the sig- 
 nificance of the sufferings of Christ; I do 
 not tell you that Jesus suffered for you; I 
 simply say, "Jesus suffered/' I do not 
 even speak of the way in which Jesus bore 
 His sufferings ; I do not bid you suffer as 
 Jesus did; I simply say, "Jesus suffered." 
 I beg you to consider the simple fact, with- 
 out a comment, the fact in all its naked- 
 ness, in its mysterious horror, the fact that 
 Jesus suffered. Fix your attention on this 
 brief announcement ; concentrate on these 
 two words all the powers of your imagina- 
 
10 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 tion, all the energies of your heart. In the 
 silence of the night, when you cannot rest, 
 in the tumult of the day, when you dare 
 not weep, say to yourself often in your in- 
 most soul, "Jesus suffered/' And your 
 grief will be transfigured. 
 
 But you ask me, How ? Alas ! do you not 
 feel it ? If you do not feel it, what shall I say 
 to make you understand ? But first, do you 
 forget who Jesus was ? " The Word was 
 made flesh," writes St. John, "and dwelt 
 among us, and we beheld His glory, the 
 glory as of the only begotten of the Father. " 
 Listen to the Apostle Paul : " In Him dwell- 
 eth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' ' 
 He is " the image of the invisible God. All 
 things were created by Him, and for Him." 
 Listen to Christ Himself: "He that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father. I and My 
 Father are one. No man knoweth the Son, 
 but the Father; neither knoweth any man 
 the Father, save the Son, and he to whom- 
 soever the Son will reveal Him." Listen 
 to God : " This is My beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased." Do you under- 
 
MONDA Y. 11 
 
 stand? Jesus was the Son of God; and 
 this unique, admirable, glorious being, be- 
 fore whom every knee in heaven bows, and 
 every knee will bow on earth, this Son of 
 God, is the same Jesus that " cried with a 
 loud voice, and gave up the ghost/' Jesus, 
 yes Jesus, suffered. If then the Son of 
 God has suffered, who among us will pre- 
 sume to find in his own sufferings an 
 occasion for a murmur, or a reason for a 
 doubt ? 
 
 What! if I suffer, God forgets me? if I 
 suffer, Providence is but a name ? if I suf- 
 fer, there is no God ? Poor fool ! If thy 
 arguments were true, the agony of Jesus 
 Christ destroyed the very idea of God in 
 the world. In the hours of darkness and 
 fainting, when the power, the wisdom, and 
 the love of God have disappeared from thy 
 horizon like extinguished stars, look at the 
 cross, and the simple thought that Jesus 
 suffered will rekindle in thy heaven those 
 vanished lights. But this is not all. If 
 Jesus was the Son of God, He was also the 
 Son of man, the type of true humanity, 
 
12 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 the perfect and conclusive realization of 
 the human ideal, the immaculate blossom 
 of a tree that has flowered but once. Jesus 
 extracted from life all that a human crea- 
 ture might; He respected all the laws of 
 nature, He accomplished all the will of 
 God. 
 
 In every direction He urged all the 
 powers of His soul to the extreme limit of 
 harmonious development. The radiance 
 of His spotless holiness by turns affrighted 
 His disciples, and transported them with 
 love ; it exasperated His enemies, chased 
 away devils, and evoked in benediction the 
 unknown voice of the thrice-holy God from 
 the desolate silence of the heavens. " Who 
 among you will convince Me of sin? " said 
 He to those who hated Him ; and not one 
 of them dared to answer. Now this unique 
 and wonderful being, the crown and glory 
 of humanity, the everlasting sovereign of 
 the human race, this Son of man, is the 
 same Jesus who cried with a loud voice as 
 He expired. Jesus, yes Jesus, suffered. 
 If then the Son of man has suffered, who 
 
MONDA Y. 13 
 
 among us will dare to discover in his own 
 sorrow an occasion for a murmur, or a rea- 
 son for a doubt ? 
 
 What! I rebel against sorrow? I desire 
 to banish it from my life as something un- 
 just or at least unnatural ? 
 
 When the waves of adversity, breaking 
 down the weak barriers of an ephemeral 
 happiness, rushed in upon my life, sweep- 
 ing away the edifice of my delight, I wrung 
 my hands in despair and said : " There is 
 nothing left for me but death. My life is 
 a failure ; what should not have been, has 
 been. Born to fresh air and clear skies, I 
 have fallen into a gulf of misery ; my fate 
 is a problem, an incomprehensible excep- 
 tion to the laws of mercy and justice that 
 rule the universe.' ' My brothers, one 
 glance at the cross will put an end to all 
 these murmurs. If the ideal Man has suf- 
 fered, it is because suffering here below is 
 part of human destiny. If the natural life 
 of a perfect being was not bej^ond sorrow, 
 why should sorrow be out of place in the 
 imperfect lives of sinners such as we? 
 
1-A HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 Even if we were holy, like Jesus Christ 
 Himself, our suffering would not be an 
 argument against the love and faithfulness 
 of God. How much more natural is sor- 
 row when it falls on sinful men ! 
 
 If our misfortunes forced us to believe 
 that Providence was an illusion and our 
 heavenly Father but a dream, if they 
 proved without a doubt that life was an 
 evil thing and not worth living, then believe 
 me, the nails that transpierced Jesus would 
 have arraigned this imaginary Deity in the 
 depths of an empty heaven; the anguish 
 of the Nazarene would have been the death 
 of the Eternal One, and on the hill of 
 Golgotha Jesus would have set up atheism. 
 
 Ah, away with these blasphemies! In 
 the hours of darkness and despair, when 
 the power, the wisdom, and the love of 
 God have disappeared from our horizon 
 like extinguished stars, when earth seems 
 empty and our human pilgrimage an aim- 
 less folly, let us look — let us look at Cal- 
 vary; and at the thought that Jesus suf- 
 fered, those vanished lights will reillume 
 
MONDA Y. 15 
 
 our heaven. So then, my brothers, since 
 the Son of God has suffered, suffering can 
 never be a proof that God has abandoned 
 us. Since the Son of man has suffered, 
 suffering can never be a proof that life has 
 given way beneath our feet, or that our 
 existence has been a failure. In a word, 
 because Jesus suffered, sorrow can never 
 take away our faith in God, nor even our 
 faith in life. Nay, far from enfeebling, 
 sorrow should strengthen us, since Jesus 
 suffered. Truly if Christ was acquainted 
 with grief, if He who said " I am the light 
 of the world " has impressed Himself upon 
 the ages as the Man of Sorrows, those 
 resemble Jesus most who suffer most. 
 Physical suffering or moral suffering, all 
 kinds of suffering, at once imprint upon 
 our destiny a trait of likeness to the hu- 
 man destiny of the Holy and the Just 
 One. 
 
 You who groan beneath the weight of 
 physical suffering, lift up your heads ; 
 Jesus suffered. You whose heart is torn, 
 you who weep, courage! Jesus suffered. 
 
16 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 You who suffer from the ingratitude, the 
 injustice, the cruelty of men, do not de- 
 spair ; look unto Him who suffered unjustly. 
 And you who from out the dark waves 
 where the tempest has flung you, cry vainly 
 to unlistening skies, you who turn to God, 
 and He does not take your extended hand 
 — do not forget Him who cried and had 
 no answer, do not forget that Jesus suf- 
 fered. 
 
 Yes, the more incomprehensible your 
 suffering, the more iniquitous, the more it 
 accuses men who have betrayed you and 
 God who has forsaken you, by so much 
 the more does it resemble the suffering of 
 Jesus, and thus a ray of His glory falls 
 upon your brow. To suffer is not to sin, 
 since Jesus suffered. To suffer is not to 
 fall, since Jesus suffered. What honor, 
 what consolation, for those who suffer! 
 Ah, let me not be deprived of that likeness 
 to Him! I do not wish that the same 
 earth that wounded His sacred feet should 
 offer mine only a carpet of flowers. I do 
 not wish that the same sky that crushed 
 
MONDA Y. 17 
 
 Him under its darkness in His agony 
 should always shine upon me with its radi- 
 ant splendor. I do not wish that the same 
 life that led Him to anguish should lead 
 me to pleasure, nor that the God who 
 abandoned Him should shut me out of 
 Calvary. They say that suffering is un- 
 natural ; the thing that is unnatural in the 
 lot of humanity is to escape suffering, since 
 Jesus suffered. 
 
 III. 
 
 "Jesus suffered." 
 
 Why does this thought uplift instead 
 of casting down, and encourage instead of 
 terrifying? For truly when we evoked 
 just now the mournful vision of human 
 suffering, when behind the suffering of our 
 present humanity we saw redden in the 
 distance like a bloody sea the forgotten 
 suffering of vanished generations, and when 
 behind the waves of this vast ocean we 
 discerned, through the mist of prehistoric 
 ages, shores white with bones of animals 
 who suffered and died silently, before man. 
 
18 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 suffered, before man existed ; when this 
 frightful picture of universal anguish un- 
 rolled before our astounded eyes, we shud- 
 dered, and a strange, vague despair op- 
 pressed our unwilling hearts ; we felt that 
 we could bear no more. And now see! 
 A cross rears itself between heaven and 
 earth ; a living human creature hangs nailed 
 upon it ; he is thirsty, he prays, he groans, 
 he dies, giving a loud cry, and we learn 
 that this dishonored corpse was the body 
 of the Son of God. 
 
 How is it that that sight, full of mystery 
 and horror, instead of filling up the mea- 
 sure of our anguish, reassures us, gives us 
 comfort, and reconciles us with life? In- 
 stead of saying, " All is lost since Jesus 
 suffered/' we say, " Nothing is lost since 
 Jesus suffered." Whence comes such con- 
 solation in the presence of such grief? 
 Whence is it that from the height of a 
 cross, words of peace and courage have 
 come down to us through nineteen centu- 
 ries ? How is it that we have gained such 
 strength from meditation on these two 
 
MONDA Y. 19 
 
 cruel words that seem so sweet to us — 
 "Jesus suffered "? 
 
 Let us not turn away our gaze. " Con- 
 sider Him who endured such contradiction 
 of sinners against Himself," and the answer 
 will be given us. 
 
TUESDAY. 
 
 ENDURABLE SUFFERING. 
 
 " For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, 
 He is able to succor them that are tempted." — Heb. 
 ii. 18. 
 
 Our text does not limit itself to assert- 
 ing that Jesus suffered. It says that Jesus 
 was tempted by suffering. In certain ver- 
 sions we find in the place of the word 
 "tried" the word "tempted." But Cal- 
 vin, who translates it in this way, gives the 
 following explanation : " Temptation signi- 
 fies nothing more than experience, proof, 
 or trial." Undoubtedly we gain a strange 
 courage from the simple fact that Jesus 
 was acquainted with grief. Even if we 
 knew none of the circumstances of His 
 afflictions, the simple thought that He has 
 
 20 
 
TUESDA Y. 21 
 
 suffered would sustain us in our anguish ; 
 but how precious it is to us to know it 
 better, and to learn how Jesus suffered! 
 
 Suffering did not slip away from him 
 like water upon marble. He struggled 
 with it, and the final victory was dearly 
 bought. " Like unto us in all things," 
 Christ did not resemble those heroes of a 
 pagan mythology who were vulnerable 
 only in the heel. Every time that He was 
 struck all the blows wounded Him. But 
 it is not the physical suffering of Jesus that 
 occupies us to-day. And yet what a pat- 
 tern He has left to those whose trials are 
 in the body! Nor will we pause to tell 
 what Jesus suffered as a brother, as a 
 friend, or as a patriot, or that He often 
 wept for sadness. And what an example 
 He has left to those whose griefs are of 
 the heart! But we will draw near these 
 mysterious sufferings that assailed Him, in 
 the last hours of His agony, with adoring 
 reverence, and we shall show that Jesus in 
 that night of anguish was tested in His 
 faith. 
 
22 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 It is dark, it is cold. Exhausted, be- 
 trayed, outraged, the Holy and the Just 
 One resists alone the combined assaults of 
 all the powers of darkness. For this su- 
 preme struggle, Satan has assembled be- 
 neath his banner unlooked-for allies. He 
 urges to the combat the chosen interpreters 
 of the will of God; against the Just One 
 he unchains human justice, against the 
 Holy One the holy nation. 
 
 " O Christ, it would be too easy a part for 
 Thee if Thou couldest die a martyr, struck 
 down in some distant wood by the dagger of 
 the assassin. Thou shalt not have this easy 
 satisfaction ; Thou shalt not be the victim of 
 an ambush. Thou shalt be judged in due 
 form ; Thou shalt be condemned according 
 to the rules ; Thou shalt be crucified legally. 
 Behold Pilate, who ascends the judgment- 
 seat, grave and calm. Dost Thou hear the 
 cries that greet him ? Accusations multiply 
 against Thee. Those who speak are not 
 the ungodly, O Christ. They are the de- 
 scendants of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
 Jacob, disciples of Moses, jealous worship- 
 
TUESDA Y. 23 
 
 ers of Jehovah, who uphold on earth the 
 worship of the true God. He who directs 
 them is not an atheist ; dost Thou not see 
 upon him the priestly robes ? He has rent 
 them in horror at Thy blasphemies. And all 
 the priests around him, moved with sacred 
 indignation, have decided that Thou deserv- 
 est death. O Christ, Thou wilt be pun- 
 ished in the name of justice, chastised in 
 the name of religion. The crowd itself — 
 the untamed crowd which has its hours of 
 quick revolt against all mischievous author- 
 ity, which sets aside even high-placed 
 verdicts which scandalize the conscience of 
 the people, and crowns the brow of per- 
 secuted innocence — the multitude itself, 
 O Christ, gives up Thy cause. The mul- 
 titude, which can see clear at times, and 
 w T hich has followed Thee step by step 
 through Thy ministry — the multitude cares 
 no more for Thy fate, or rather suddenly 
 it manifests its sovereign, irresistible will ; 
 it finds a voice to cry with one accord, 
 'Crucify Him, crucify Him!' Vox populi, 
 vox Dei. 
 
24 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 " O Christ, Thou turnest away Thy head, 
 Thou searchest for one glance of pity. 
 Take care ; perhaps if Thine should meet 
 the eyes of John Thou wouldest read there 
 the shame and grief of another denial. For 
 Peter denied Thee with oaths and curses. 
 In the person of Thy apostles, the infant 
 church denied Thee. It was an apostle 
 who delivered Thee to Thy enemies, and 
 the eleven others forsook Thee and fled. 
 Only two came back again — one to declare 
 openly that he never knew Thee, and the 
 other to emphasize by his silence the false 
 witness and the insults heaped upon Thee. 
 And now, O Christ, art Thou satisfied? 
 Art Thou convinced of Thy folly? Why 
 dost Thou not humiliate Thyself? Three 
 worlds have joined to destroy Thee — the 
 pagan world led by Pilate, the Hebrew 
 world led by Caiaphas, the Christian world 
 led by Judas. The multitude that follows 
 them cries out unweariedly, ' Away with 
 Him ! away with Him ! Crucify Him ! ' 
 
 u Come, what art Thou waiting for? 
 Take up Thy cross and climb to Calvary. 
 
TUESDA Y. 25 
 
 Now Thou art nailed upon the cursed tree. 
 Thou must die. What an ending to Thy 
 work! O Christ, hast Thou counted the 
 sufferings which Thou hast let loose upon 
 the earth? Hast Thou dried the tears of 
 those women of Bethlehem whose little 
 children were slaughtered because of Thee ? 
 Didst Thou prevent one of Thy apostles 
 from destroying himself? Is this the in- 
 fluence of Thy example, Thy words, Thy 
 prayers, upon the heart of one who had 
 lived two years in Thy intimacy? O 
 Christ, art Thou sure that Thou art the 
 Son of God? ,, 
 
 And the dying Christ shuddered, for He 
 recognized the voice of Satan, the voice 
 that said to Him in the desert, " If Thou 
 be the Son of God, throw Thyself down," 
 and which now cries with a sneer, " If 
 Thou be the Son of God, come down from 
 the cross." 
 
 And the priests take up the chorus: 
 " He trusted in God ; let Him deliver Him 
 now, if He will have Him : for He said, I 
 am the Son of God." 
 
26 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 It was then that the Christ, exhausted, 
 forsaken by all the earth, with one supreme 
 effort lifted up to the darkened heavens 
 His heart and His weary eyes. He called 
 upon His Father for help ; and it was then 
 that God Himself veiled His face from the 
 sufferer, whose life was in His look. It 
 was too much. Jesus bowed His head and 
 went down alone into the solitude of death. 
 This was the test to which the faith of 
 Jesus was submitted. These were the 
 combats from which it came forth victo- 
 rious, sending out into the darkness the 
 heroic affirmation, " Father, into Thy hands 
 I commend My spirit." 
 
 This was the attitude of Jesus Christ in 
 suffering, and after that what height is 
 inaccessible to us? That which human 
 nature has endured in Christ it can cer- 
 tainly endure in any one of us, for who 
 will ever face an agony like His? Christ 
 has shown us the limits of human nature, 
 He has revealed its capabilities ; henceforth 
 its powers are proved, and we know that this 
 diamond can resist the heat of any furnace. 
 
TUESDA Y. 27 
 
 O Christ, we bless Thee for Thy example, 
 and that by the sight alone of Thy suf- 
 ferings Thou art able to succor them that 
 are tempted, in that Thou Thyself hast 
 " suffered being tempted." 
 
 II. 
 
 But in the combat with suffering, is it 
 only the example of Christ which gives us 
 the victory ? This Jesus whose sufferings 
 we have looked upon as those of an histor- 
 ical personage is living at this hour; this 
 Jesus who belongs to the past belongs to 
 the present also. This is the thought that 
 illuminates the declaration of our text, and 
 desolate humanity needs this assurance to 
 snatch it from bitter and crushing soli- 
 tude. Our planet, as it bears us on, wan- 
 ders across space like an audacious skiff. 
 While the sun shines, and the sounds of 
 human labor fill the air, as long as the 
 rounded dome of heaven seems to shut us 
 in beneath its blue vault, we feel that we 
 are many, and that we are at home. But 
 when the night has come, or, rather (for 
 
28 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 the night is always here ; it is the sun that 
 hides it from us), when the day has disap- 
 peared, when the brilliant curtain is torn 
 away which hid the truth, then our unob- 
 structed glance wings its way to the ex- 
 tremest confines of the universe ; then in the 
 depths of unmeasured immensity our star- 
 tled eyes find other worlds, whole fleets of 
 suns sailing over space, their fiery sails 
 swelled by the breath of God. Where 
 go these silent stars? And have these 
 mighty vessels any crew? Does peace 
 reign among these shining spheres? Once 
 speaking to a wandering comet, a poet 
 cried : 
 
 " N'as tu vu comme ici que douleur 
 
 Toi qui vogues au large en cette mer sans rives, 
 Sur ta route aussi loin que ton regard atteint, 
 N'as tu pas vu comme ici que douleur et miseres? 
 Dans ces mondes epars, dis! avons nous des freres? 
 T'ont ils charge pour nous de leur salut lointain? " 
 
 {Literal Translation.') 
 " Thou who sailest at thy will across this shoreless 
 sea; hast thou, as far as thy glance reacheth, seen only 
 sorrow and misery, as it is with us? Speak! Have we 
 brothers in those scattered worlds? Have they charged 
 thee with their far-off greeting for us? " 
 
TUESDA Y. 29 
 
 But the mute shining of the stars is the 
 sole answer to this pathetic question ; and 
 in the night our troubled thoughts still ask 
 themselves if the pale starlight is a signal 
 of alarm, a bonfire, or only the cold gleam 
 of some useless and ancient fire. Ah, no ! 
 it is not our minds that are perplexed, it is 
 our hearts that yearn. Without a compass 
 and without a chart, flung forth on the 
 ocean of space, we cling to our planet as if 
 it were a spar, and we search through the 
 universe, anxious, terrified, forlorn, seeking 
 in these empty spaces not help — we do 
 not hope for help — but for the pale outline 
 of some vessel in distress, some comrade 
 in misfortune. 
 
 For in truth our loneliness appalls us ; 
 faith in a " blessed potentate " does not 
 suffice us. Once, when certain miners, 
 surprised by an inundation, trembling with 
 cold, took refuge among the shadows of a 
 cave without an outlet, they sustained their 
 failing courage by crying out aloud through 
 the darkness, each in turn. Through the 
 slow hours of their long agony, unable to 
 
30 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 touch or to see one another, they struggled 
 with despair because they suffered to- 
 gether, because each one knew that his 
 own anguish was shared by the heart of a 
 comrade. It is thus in the shadows through 
 which our world revolves : our humanity, 
 which weeps and bleeds, also burns to 
 know if its sorrow is unique, if in the infi- 
 nite universe there have flowed no other 
 tears, and if the abysses of eternity have 
 drunk no other than the blood of man. 
 But the universe overwhelms us by its im- 
 placable silence and its unchangeable seren- 
 ity. This is the picture of human suffering 
 separated from a faith in a glorified Saviour. 
 But, happily, we know that He lives and 
 reigns; He rescues our race by the sole 
 fact that our sufferings find a faithful echo 
 in the depths of those skies that seemed 
 impassable, by the sole fact that the Son 
 of God, King of the universe, bears still 
 upon His brow the mark of thorns. It is 
 toward the Man of Golgotha that the tide 
 of eternity draws the innumerable suns that 
 furrow the night of space. Christ shines 
 
TUESDA Y. 31 
 
 in the center of all things ; worlds gravitate 
 toward Him ; stars, like souls, rush to Him 
 from the ends of the horizon; and the 
 immense chorus of creation groups itself 
 around the eternal Prince of supreme har- 
 mony. But on the hands of the Son of 
 God, stretched out to bless us, are the 
 marks of the nails that pierced them. 
 
 Ah, truly humanity is not forsaken in its 
 sufferings ! What matters it if the myste- 
 rious firmament keeps its silent serenity? 
 Humanity knows henceforth that a heart 
 beats in the depths of immensity ; it knows 
 that it is understood and loved; it knows 
 that at the center of the universe reigns 
 He who died on Calvary, and that the 
 golden furrow of the stars reaches to the 
 foot of the cross; it knows that the Son 
 of God, living and reigning, " is able to 
 succor them that are tempted.' ' 
 
 III. 
 
 In the meantime, for the struggle against 
 suffering Jesus offers us still other weapons. 
 Even though fortified by the example of 
 
32 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 His death and strengthened by the reality 
 of His glorification, we should still be too 
 weak. Jesus wishes to give Himself to 
 those who suffer. Our text declares that 
 if the sorrows of Christ are a support for 
 us in our duel with affliction, they are also 
 a support for the Son of God in the succor 
 that He wishes to bring us in the press of 
 battle. He can and He will bring it. If 
 He has suffered, He suffers still. " Jesus 
 is in agony to the end of the world.'' He 
 suffers every day when the selfishness and 
 unbelief of man "crucify Him afresh." 
 He suffers in the sufferings of the church, 
 "which is His body." But if He suffers 
 perpetually by the wounds that are inflicted 
 upon Him, He desires to suffer in the per- 
 sons of all those who suffer; He desires to 
 dwell in them by His Holy Spirit. 
 
 " It is not I who live," writes St. Paul, 
 "but Christ liveth in me." "This is a 
 great mystery," he writes further. "But 
 God has made known what is the riches of 
 the glory of this mystery ; namely, Christ 
 in you, the hope of glory." " That Christ 
 
TUESDA Y. 33 
 
 may dwell in your hearts by faith," and 
 then you will " be more than conquerors 
 through Him that loved us." " As for 
 me," adds Paul, "the power of Christ is 
 made perfect in my weakness," and " I can 
 do all things through Christ who strength- 
 ened me." 
 
 " I can do all things " — this is the device 
 of the Christian who has a glimpse into this 
 mystery of love and life. I can do all 
 things against suffering, for Jesus Christ 
 has triumphed over suffering. When trial 
 advances against the Christian, it sees the 
 face of Him who conquered it upon the 
 cross. Let temptation come! Jesus will 
 put His old enemy to flight. Let doubt 
 assail us! Jesus will put to flight His an- 
 cient adversary. Sorrow itself, under all 
 its forms, as soon as it beholds its con- 
 queror, falls prostrate at His sacred feet. 
 
 Ah! those alone who have entered into 
 the ineffable communion of Christ can 
 understand these great truths. They alone 
 can grasp the whole extent of the magnifi- 
 cent affirmation of the text, " For in that 
 
34 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 He Himself hath suffered being tempted, 
 He is able to succor them that are 
 tempted.' ' But no one need despair; 
 Christ is the supreme refuge, the final con- 
 solation in every humble, trusting sorrow. 
 " Come unto Me, all ye who labor and are 
 heavy-laden, and I will give you rest/' 
 And " Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day, 
 and forever." 
 
WEDNESDAY. 
 
 USEFUL SUFFERING. 
 
 " Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by 
 the things which He suffered." — Heb. v. 8. 
 
 In our first two meditations we sought 
 for weapons against sorrow. But is it true 
 that we must look upon it as an enemy? 
 To-day we will consider the usefulness of 
 sorrow. Let us keep our eyes on Jesus, 
 and we will comprehend what no argument 
 can teach us. It is not a paradox to say 
 that sorrow is useful. Mourning humanity 
 has not perfect confidence in those cruel 
 comforters who cry out against suffering, 
 and threaten Heaven. When Job's wife in 
 her distraction exclaims, " Curse God and 
 die ! " Job answers her, " Thou speakest like 
 one of the foolish women." With Job, 
 35 
 
36 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 humanity knows well that sorrow is not its 
 worst enemy, and through the voice of its 
 poets it confesses the benefits of trial : 
 
 " L'homme est un apprenti, la douleur est son maitre, 
 Et nul ne se connait, tant qu'il n'a pas souffert." 
 
 " Man is an apprentice, and sorrow is his master; 
 he cannot know himself until he has suffered." 
 
 And it recognizes its own convictions in 
 spite of itself in this strange assertion of 
 a contemporary philosopher : " Sorrow is 
 a condiment without which the world 
 would grow insipid. This is not the ex- 
 pression of exalted piety ; it is the language 
 of common sense." A secret instinct warns 
 us that we must acknowledge the blessed- 
 ness of sorrow. A Christian thinker has 
 said : " Perhaps to suffer, is only to live 
 more deeply. Would it be possible for all 
 the dignity of our nature to reveal itself 
 without suffering?" We can read the 
 answer to this melancholy and sublime 
 question on the bleeding brow of Jesus. 
 We could not guess the august greatness 
 of human nature without Gethsemane and 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 37 
 
 Golgotha. Christ, Thou hast been 
 " obedient unto death, even the death of 
 the cross." 
 
 But here my thoughts are troubled, and 
 language fails me. I was speaking of dig- 
 nity, of greatness, of exaltation ; I was 
 seeking a striking example of triumph, and, 
 behold, the words that fall from my lips 
 seem to escape the meaning I would give 
 them. I would speak of domination, and 
 they express obedience ; of royalty, and 
 they express ignominy. What is this 
 mystery? Why must the eye that waits 
 the coming sun see the pale shadow of a 
 cross, upon those shining heights lit by the 
 glow of dawn? Am I deceived? Am I 
 the sport of an hallucination ? 
 
 Far from that, my brothers ; it is the 
 reality that confounds our shallow minds. 
 It combines in one Person the attributes 
 of divinity with the stamp of servitude. 
 Mighty and weak, Prince and slave, Jesus 
 was great with a supreme greatness be- 
 
38 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 cause He abased Himself to a supreme 
 abasement. " He became obedient." Alas, 
 how strangely the word sounds in the ears 
 of a generation that has forgotten the 
 meaning of it! Obedience has lost its 
 place in our conception of life. Like the 
 dove that wandered solitary over the 
 waters of the deluge without finding a 
 branch on which to set her foot, obedience 
 — virtue in contempt — finds no refuge in 
 our modern society. The banner of duty 
 has been relegated to the dust-heap ; the 
 declaration of the rights of man is the only 
 standard of humanity to-day. It is true 
 that the equality men dream of is not yet 
 established. It is true that the servant 
 obeys his master, the soldier obeys his 
 officer; but such obedience is regarded as 
 a last resource, as a necessary evil to which 
 they are obliged to bow, but which they 
 murmur at in secret. Who would consider 
 submission as a privilege ? " Liberty ! 
 liberty !" is the watchword of the crowd. 
 The whole world is full of this immense 
 outcry, " Liberty ! liberty !" Among the 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 39 
 
 silent mountains the echo awakes it from 
 the depths of the precipice, and the even- 
 ing wind which rushes over cities bears 
 away the same cry, and repeats it all the 
 night over the lonely ocean. O man, claim 
 thy liberty ; ask it from God on thy knees, 
 demand it of those who govern thee face 
 to face, claim it in order to obey the bet- 
 ter; for obedience is such a noble thing 
 that only a free being can obey. Without 
 liberty, obedience is impossible. The reed 
 that bows beneath the wind does not obey 
 — it bends ; the horse, trembling, and white 
 with foam, forced by the spur to go for- 
 ward in a certain path, does not obey — he 
 submits. Obedience is the prerogative of 
 man. He only can obey, for he alone has 
 a will that can submit itself freely, and a 
 heart that can love him who commands him. 
 Why has God given this magnificent 
 gift to man? Why has He said to him, 
 " I give thee authority to obey"? Be- 
 cause God loves man, and means him to be 
 holy, to be set free from sin, which is self- 
 ishness, and to come into possession of true 
 
40 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 manhood, which conquers itself by submis- 
 sion to God. The will of God is like a rope 
 thrown to us as we struggle among the 
 untamed waves. To remain " indepen- 
 dent " is to repulse all succor, all salvation ; 
 it is to wander without a compass and with- 
 out a chart through the fury of the storm. 
 To obey is to seize the rope, to face the 
 blast, to brave the storm, to advance 
 against the confederate waves, to let one's 
 self be irresistibly drawn toward the invis- 
 ible harbor where our heavenly Father 
 awaits us. Obedience is duty under all 
 its forms. Obedience is faith and resigna- 
 tion. Obedience has for its watchword, 
 " May Thy will be done;" which means, 
 "I will fulfil it when I am strong; I will 
 accept it when I am weak." And there- 
 fore Vinet could write with truth, " It is 
 obedience which gives dignity to human 
 life. Enthusiasm, sacrifice, love, all draw 
 their greatest beauty from obedience." 
 Truly obedience is above the reach of 
 cowards, and of those " stout-hearted who 
 are free from righteousness." Few brows 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 41 
 
 are worthy of that crown ; it is often re- 
 fused to genius ; and if the name of Jesus 
 is " above every name that can be named," 
 it is because the obedience of Jesus is above 
 all obedience that can be imagined : " He 
 became obedient unto death, even the death 
 of the cross." Jesus was great because He 
 was obedient, and it was in suffering that 
 this singular greatness was manifested in 
 all its splendor. It is through the darkness 
 that we see the stars, and this is the mis- 
 sion of sorrow here below. When God 
 wishes to illuminate a life, He says, " Let 
 there be light," and grief appears. 
 
 Then who will dare deny the usefulness 
 of sorrow on the earth, since it reveals all 
 the treasures of the human soul, the price- 
 less jewels which joy would have hidden 
 from our eyes? 
 
 II. 
 
 But the divine part that sorrow plays is 
 not limited to obedience. The Holy Scrip- 
 tures open other horizons to us. They 
 tell us that if the passion of Jesus Christ 
 
42 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 manifested His obedience in its highest 
 form, this obedience itself was the fruit of 
 suffering. Jesus was not only obedient, 
 but He was obliged to learn obedience. 
 "Though He was a Son, yet learned He 
 obedience by the things which He suffered. " 
 The suffering of His death irradiated His 
 obedience; but the suffering of His life 
 had taught it to Him. " For it became 
 Him, for whom are all things, and through 
 whom are all things, in bringing many sons 
 unto glory, to make the captain of their 
 salvation perfect through sufferings.' ' 
 
 Once more, my brothers, a mystery 
 arises before us. Through the majesty of 
 this noble affirmation we perceive a new 
 problem which troubles our minds ; and if 
 we were surprised to hear just now the 
 obedience of Christ cited as a proof of His 
 greatness, we are again amazed to hear that 
 Jesus had to be raised to perfection. Did 
 not the same author declare that Jesus was 
 "holy, guileless, and undefiled"? How 
 then can we represent to ourselves a spirit- 
 ual development in the Holy One? And 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 43 
 
 how did Jesus learn obedience? Either 
 one is holy, or unholy. Doubtless ; but the 
 idea of an immaculate holiness does not 
 exclude the idea of progress and develop- 
 ment. The plant which has begun to grow 
 has not begun to bloom, but yet as germ 
 it may be perfect. The bud is not the 
 flower, but as a bud it may be perfect. 
 The infant smiling in its cradle may be a 
 perfect child, but that does not prevent its 
 growth into a youth, who in his turn hopes 
 to develop into a complete maturity. Thus 
 Jesus grew " in wisdom and stature, and in 
 favor with God and man," through all the 
 years of His youth ; thus He continued to 
 grow to the end of His life, strengthened 
 in holiness by each new victory. A royal 
 eagle mounting toward the sky soars tri- 
 umphantly above the noise and dust of 
 earth ; yet each stroke of his mighty pin- 
 ions brings him nearer to the zenith. The 
 sacred author would have merely expressed 
 an obvious truth, if he had limited him- 
 self to the assurance that Jesus had never 
 ceased to learn and grow, in all the course 
 
44 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 of His career; for the real difficulty does 
 not lie in the fact that the Son of God de- 
 veloped constantly. The practical problem 
 whose solution is of such infinite impor- 
 tance to us is this : in what sense did the 
 sufferings of Jesus contribute to His devel- 
 opment? What relation is there between 
 the sufferings of the Saviour and His estab- 
 lishment in obedience? When it is said 
 that Christ learned obedience by the things 
 that He suffered, is it not implied that His 
 will naturally revolted against suffering, 
 and that His acceptance of the trial was a 
 voluntary act of submission? But if we 
 say that His will resisted suffering, is it not 
 implied that His will was separated from 
 the will of God? Ah, how well one can 
 understand the feeling of the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, when he wrote 
 our text as if he were affrighted at his own 
 boldness: "Though He was a Son . . ." ! 
 That is to say, however incredible it may 
 seem, though He was a Son, He learned 
 obedience by the things that He suffered. 
 My brothers, it is not an idle curiosity 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 45 
 
 that urges us to seek for the solution of 
 this problem ; we need weapons with which 
 to triumph over suffering. We wish to 
 believe that suffering is useful, and, above 
 all, we thirst to acknowledge once more 
 the Man of Sorrows as our most perfect 
 model and our most powerful support. 
 We need to see Him descend, pale and 
 solitary, into the darkness of sorrow, to 
 come forth again sanctified, victorious like 
 the divers who rise up from the deep bear- 
 ing precious pearls. 
 
 O Christ, Thou who hast learned obedi- 
 ence, Thou knowest in what spirit I search 
 into this mystery ; Thou knowest in what 
 spirit these before me listen. We prostrate 
 ourselves at Thy feet, humble, fervent, 
 adoring. 
 
 Let us approach this mystery and follow 
 Jesus to the desert where He was tempted, 
 and to the garden where He was taken 
 prisoner. The scene in the desert opens 
 His ministry, that in the garden closes it. 
 Alone during the first crisis, and forsaken 
 during the second, He came forth each time 
 
46 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 from this duel without witnesses, triumph- 
 ant ; that is to say, obedient. The struggle 
 in the desert ended with these words : 
 "Thou shalt serve God alone;" and the 
 anguish of Gethsemane ended with these : 
 " Not My will, but Thine, be done." We 
 discover, therefore, in both crises an ap- 
 parent conflict between the will of the Son 
 and the will of the Father. On both oc- 
 casions Jesus is troubled and shrinks back 
 trembling at the entrance of a solitary path 
 whose end is lost in dreadful darkness. 
 After both agonies the victory remains 
 with God. The victory? But what is 
 this ? Did the Son wish what the Father 
 did not wish ? No, no ; but, in the horror 
 of an indescribable hesitation, the Son had 
 ceased to see what was the will of the 
 Father. Seeking to glorify the Father, 
 He asked Himself, in the grasp of a tragic 
 indecision, if the Father really willed that 
 His glory should be trampled underfoot in 
 the person of His Son ; and the greatness 
 of His love for His Father made the great- 
 ness of His anguish. 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 47 
 
 " He learned obedience by the things 
 which He suffered." Howdoes the affirma- 
 tion of the text apply to the decisive mo- 
 ment of the temptation? In the desert, 
 what was it that rendered submission dif- 
 ficult to Jesus; or, rather, what was the 
 reason that prevented Him from discerning 
 clearly the will of the Father ? Had He not 
 at His baptism, only a few days before, re- 
 ceived the solemn witness that He was the 
 Son of God? Yes, my brothers, and the 
 consciousness of the divine Sonship was 
 precisely the source of the sufferings of 
 Christ at the time of the temptation. Let 
 us recall under what form the temptation 
 presented itself to His heart : 
 
 " If Thou art the Son of God, manifest 
 Thyself. If Thou art the Son of God, 
 Thou art the possessor of supernatural 
 power; employ this miraculous energy to 
 convince the Jewish nation of Thy heavenly 
 origin. Let them not see Thee subject to 
 all the needs of humanit)^ ; when Thou art 
 hungry, command that these stones be 
 made bread. Be invulnerable, and brave 
 
48 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 all perils ; dazzle all men by Thy glory ; let 
 the people run to Thee to listen to the Son 
 of God, and at Thy triumphant chariot- 
 wheels draw all the kingdoms of the world, 
 conquered by Jehovah." 
 
 Does any one assert that the soul of 
 Jesus was inaccessible to such temptations? 
 Is not that to forget the picture set before us 
 by the prophets of Messiah and His reign ? 
 " The government shall be upon His shoul- 
 der : and His name shall be called Wonder- 
 ful, Counselor, The mighty God." " He 
 shall smite the earth with the rod of His 
 mouth ; He shall slay the wicked with the 
 breath of His lips." " The mountain of the 
 house of the Lord shall be founded on the 
 summit of the mountains, and the people 
 shall flock unto it." These glorious prophe- 
 cies had nourished the infancy, the boy- 
 hood, and the youth of Jesus, and now, in 
 the flower of His strength and the expan- 
 sion of His faith, He had received pub- 
 licly from the Most High the assurance 
 that He was the Son of God, the Messiah 
 for centuries expected. Had not the hour 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 49 
 
 sounded ? He must conquer the world for 
 God. 
 
 And it was then that the Holy Spirit re- 
 vealed to Him, in the silence of the desert, 
 the narrow road that He must climb ; the 
 rough road whose stones are red with the 
 blood of the prophets ; the Via Dolorosa 
 that He must tread day after day, without 
 opening His mouth, like a lamb led to the 
 slaughter. 
 
 " Is it this, O My Father, that Thou dost 
 expect of Me? Must I deny the mission 
 which Thy prophets promised Me, the su- 
 preme dignity which Thou hast conferred 
 upon Me ? If I am the Son of God I can- 
 not accept defeat and shame, for My igno- 
 miny would be the ignominy of the Eter- 
 nal One." 
 
 And the voice of the Holy Spirit an- 
 swered, " Son of God, lay down Thy rights ! 
 Thou dost not understand ? That matters 
 nothing; God understands. Descend from 
 Thy throne and go up on the cross." 
 
 And Jesus obeyed. He who felt thrilling 
 in Him the power that later was to still the 
 
50 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 waves and rebuke the winds, agreed to be 
 weak, to be hungry, to be thirsty, to be 
 weary, to drag in the roadside dust His 
 tired feet, for which the nails of the cross 
 were waiting. And Jesus obeyed. He 
 who could make the soldiers go backward 
 and fall to the ground, He who could have 
 called to His help with a sign twelve legions 
 of angels, consented to hide Himself from 
 His enemies. And Jesus obeyed. He laid 
 down His royal mantle, His crown, and 
 His scepter in the desert, that He might 
 become the servant of all, that He might 
 wash the feet of His disciples, and receive 
 with blows and spittings another crown and 
 another kingdom. Jesus obeyed. And 
 when He returned to the crowd, unnoticed, 
 but a conqueror, the heavenly hosts who 
 had witnessed the struggle exclaimed in 
 chorus, " He learned obedience by the 
 things which He suffered." 
 
 And this was true as well in the agony 
 at Gethsemane. In the desert what ren- 
 dered submission difficult to Jesus was the 
 consciousness of His mission, His dignity, 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 51 
 
 and the assurance that He was the Son of 
 God; at the Mount of Olives He shud- 
 dered at the nature of the sufferings before 
 Him. In the desert He had accepted His 
 ministry ; in Gethsemane He must accept 
 His passion. In the desert He had seen 
 what should be His life ; in Gethsemane 
 He discovered what should be His death. 
 What was that death? No man can tell. 
 At the mere thought of it, hours before it 
 came, Jesus sweat, " as it were, great drops 
 of blood." As we enter the garden of 
 Olives as Jesus prays, " fallen upon His 
 face on the ground," we enter the " holy 
 of holies." Here it befits us to put a seal 
 upon our lips, to impose silence upon our 
 imaginations, to close our eyes and adore. 
 An angel was sent to strengthen Him ; and 
 when Jesus, once more master of Himself, 
 ceased to weep, when He lifted His calm 
 brow and walked with a firm step to the 
 meeting with Judas, the heavenly mes- 
 senger, amazed by this miracle, murmured, 
 " He learned obedience by the things which 
 He suffered." 
 
52 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 III. 
 
 And now let us look into ourselves, my 
 brothers. If we have seriously consid- 
 ered Christ, there is no need of many 
 words. Since suffering was useful to the 
 Son of God, can it be useless to us? It is 
 of use to show forth what is good in us, 
 but, above all, to give us something better. 
 Jesus, in order to obey, had to lay down 
 His royal prerogatives ; He had to sacrifice, 
 for the moment, His faith in Himself, and to 
 confide Himself entirely, " though He was 
 a Son," to the divine wisdom and mercy. 
 
 We must allow suffering to empty us of 
 ourselves ; it must take away our faith in 
 our own knowledge, in our own power, 
 and even in our own value. It must steep 
 us in the sense of our weakness, leaving us 
 trembling on the breast of the immense 
 universe, like a little child. When we are 
 thus broken by suffering, we are ripe for 
 the consolation which comes from on high ; 
 then we learn obedience by learning that 
 
WEDNESDA Y. 53 
 
 we are nothing, and humbly we implore 
 the help of God. However, as we lose 
 confidence in ourselves, it follows that we 
 also lose a certain confidence in life, and, 
 feeling our weakness, life appears to us un- 
 stable, changeable, and treacherous as the 
 waves, full of surprises and hidden catas- 
 trophes, incomprehensible, indefinable, im- 
 placably mysterious. 
 
 Therefore it was needful that Jesus in 
 Gethsemane should accept, in order to 
 obey, an ineffable anguish which has no 
 name in any tongue. And when life slips 
 away beneath our feet, obedience will be 
 easier for us ; it will be easier for us to 
 take God's hand, and to cry out, like Peter 
 sinking in the waves, " Lord, help, or I 
 perish." Yes, thanks to suffering, we can 
 attain obedience. Submission does not 
 consist in the refusal to acknowledge suffer- 
 ing; we must feel it and not despise it. 
 Jesus yearned for sympathy ; and when 
 we can no longer suffer, we can no longer 
 imitate our Saviour, for He " learned obe- 
 dience by the things which He suffered." 
 
5-4 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 Oh, the wonders of grace ! Lord, Thou 
 hast chastised us for our profit, that we 
 might be partakers of Thy holiness ; and it 
 was in order to bring many sons unto glory 
 that Thou hast made " the captain of their 
 salvation perfect through sufferings." 
 
THURSDAY. 
 
 NECESSARY SUFFERING. 
 
 " Without shedding of blood there is no remission of 
 sin. . . . For it is not possible that the blood of bulls 
 and of goats should take away sin. . . . Wherefore 
 Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people, . . . suf- 
 fered without the gate." — Heb. ix. 22; x. 4; xm. 12. 
 
 I. 
 
 THERE is a game in which the player 
 invents curious figures by connecting four 
 dots put at random on a paper ; these fig- 
 ures are capable of almost infinite varia- 
 tions. 
 
 I know of four points in the great uni- 
 verse which history once bound together, 
 and the picture thus obtained was found 
 to be a cross. Here there is no possible 
 variation ; only a cross could unite in one 
 55 
 
56 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 harmonious whole, God, man, holiness, sin. 
 Other combinations have suggested them- 
 selves to the human mind, but they have 
 always failed ; a cross is the only and final 
 solution of the problem. The astronomers 
 gathered together in their bold construc- 
 tions, separate and sometimes divergent, 
 stars in order to group them into constel- 
 lations. In the same way we can compose 
 a shining whole with the stars of the moral 
 heavens; we can bring together the idea 
 of God and of man, the idea of holiness and 
 of sin ; but the constellation thus obtained 
 will always form a cross. 
 
 " Partout le martyre est ecrit ; 
 Une immense croix git dans notre nuit profonde ; 
 Et nous voyons saigner aux quatre coins du monde 
 Les quatre clous de Jesus Christ." 
 
 " Everywhere is written, Martyrdom! Extended in 
 our dark night lies an immense cross ! The four nails 
 of it bleed from the four corners of the world!" 
 
 It was not chance that raised the cross 
 on Calvary. It was the supreme manifes- 
 tation of the mysterious forces that labor 
 in our planet and our race. 
 
THURSDA Y. 57 
 
 When a tree bears, is the nature of its 
 fruit the result of chance ? Could an oak 
 bear figs? If the oak produces acorns, it 
 is because the acorn slept invisible in the 
 sap of the colossus ; it is because the whole 
 oak is but the acorn in formation. 
 
 This acorn in formation, which shelters 
 birds and men, proceeds also from an un- 
 seen acorn hidden underground, so that 
 the whole immense oak is only the prodi- 
 gious effort of an acorn to become another 
 acorn. It is thus that the cross shows 
 forth the hidden meaning of history, and 
 the eternal thought which presides over 
 the returns of revolution as over the changes 
 of the seasons. 
 
 If history produced the cross, so did the 
 cross produce history, and the bloody flower 
 that bloomed on Calvary has issued from 
 the seed whence came the centuries. As 
 the human body, always identical with it- 
 self, survives the incessant renewing of its 
 particles, so the cross of Christ is the un- 
 changeable framework that incloses the 
 changing whirlwinds of created beings. 
 
58 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 Empires, laws, systems, revolts, and 
 earthquakes, human generations driven 
 like snowflakes by the wind of eternity — 
 they have all departed, but the cross re- 
 mains ; it gives its ideal form to history. 
 
 History would cease to merit its name, 
 it would become a simple tumult, if it had 
 no exact meaning, if its moving tide had 
 no determined end. But the cross is there ! 
 Like the shores of a river, it maintains in 
 a single direction the fugitive current of 
 events. What would be the meaning of 
 the history of the world if it were not the 
 history of redemption ; if all the ages that 
 came before Christ had not been the long 
 and grievous preface to Golgotha ; if all the 
 ages that followed the disappearance of the 
 Saviour have not been the development of 
 His suffering? 
 
 The centuries seek the cross as the creep- 
 ing ivy seeks its tree ; they have clung to 
 it as if it were a giant trunk. If the tree 
 is felled, the ivy must go with it. To tear 
 away the cross from history would not only 
 be the effacing of one event from an unend- 
 
THURSDA Y. 59 
 
 ing list; it would be to suppress history 
 itself. 
 
 The world is an enigma to which the 
 cross has given the answer. In that thought 
 of ancient paganism, that the world was a 
 vast penitentiary to which, after death, souls 
 came back to suffer the pains they merited, 
 there was an obscure presentiment of the 
 cross. Such a one in a former existence 
 lived delicately; now he reappears in an 
 animal, or even in a stone. There is much 
 that is great in the doctrine of reincarna- 
 tion ; it saw dimly the expiatory character 
 of sorrow in universal history; but it only 
 shows us a dungeon, and in this prison 
 tells us that God makes man suffer. The 
 gospel shows us a cross, and this cross re- 
 veals to us that God suffered for man. 
 
 No, it was not chance that raised the 
 cross on Calvary. Judas, why art thou in 
 despair? Pilate, why dost thou wash thy 
 hands to clear away the stain of innocent 
 blood? And thou, centurion, why didst 
 thou smite thy breast at the sight of the 
 death of the Holy One? You have to- 
 
60 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 gether executed the decrees of the Most 
 High. 
 
 Bless the Lord, all His hosts; ye minis- 
 ters of His, who do His pleasure. Bless 
 the Lord, all ye who have betrayed the 
 Christ, ye who have condemned Him, ye 
 who have tortured Him. Bless the Lord, 
 all His works in all places of His domin- 
 ion : bless the Lord, O my soul. 
 
 II. 
 
 " Jesus took unto Him the Twleve, and 
 said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jeru- 
 salem, and all the things that are written 
 by the prophets shall be accomplished unto 
 the Son of man. For He shall be deliv- 
 ered up unto the Gentiles, and shall be 
 mocked, and shamefully entreated, and spit 
 upon : and they shall scourge and kill Him : 
 and the third day He shall rise again. And 
 they understood none of these things ; and 
 this saying was hid from them, and they 
 perceived not the things that were said." 
 And we, my brothers, do we understand ? 
 
THURSDA Y. 61 
 
 To believe that the sufferings of Jesus 
 were necessary is not to see in them simply 
 the inevitable consequences of the moral 
 state of humanity. It is true that water 
 hisses when a red-hot iron is plunged into 
 it; it is true that the waves grow furious 
 against an obstacle ; it is too true that holi- 
 ness in a polluted world is sure of insult, 
 and often death. 
 
 Long before Jesus Christ, a pagan philos- 
 opher, describing the improbable appear- 
 ance in this world of a perfectly holy being, 
 led him from suffering to suffering until he 
 expired on a cross. Do we believe in the 
 necessity of the real sufferings of Christ 
 only as Plato believed in those he fancied ? 
 Then we can no longer say, with Paul, " We 
 have the mind of Christ," but, rather, " We 
 have the mind of Plato." We cease to be 
 Christians. We find the mind of Christ 
 concerning His death and its necessity on 
 every page of the Gospels : " O foolish men, 
 and slow of heart to believe all that the 
 prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ 
 to have suffered these things? . . . And 
 
62 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 beginning from Moses and from the proph- 
 ets, He interpreted unto them in all the 
 Scriptures the things concerning Himself." 
 Jesus looks backward through the past 
 of humanity, and His eye detects across 
 the flood of the ages the cross, coming to 
 Him from the ends of the earth. Like the 
 mast of a submerged vessel, urged by the 
 tempest toward the shore, it rises and falls 
 at the will of the waves. Each wave is a 
 century ; if it disappears for an instant, it 
 is but to reappear, and each time guided 
 by the breath of God. It advances straight 
 to its aim ; the birds fly before it with ex- 
 tended necks, designating the port by their 
 prophetic cries ; the star of the wise men is 
 its lighthouse ; and when at last it reaches 
 land, Christ is there, the nails are ready, 
 and a whole frenzied people crying, " Cru- 
 cify Him, crucify Him!" Why did Jesus 
 refuse to escape from His adversaries? In 
 order that the Scriptures might be accom- 
 plished. Why was He crucified with male- 
 factors? That the Scriptures might be 
 accomplished. Why did they draw lots for 
 
THURSDA Y. 63 
 
 His garment? That the Scriptures might 
 be accomplished. Why did Jesus say, " I 
 am thirsty " ? That the Scriptures might be 
 accomplished. Why did Jesus, before He 
 gave up the ghost, raise His dying voice 
 once more? That He might say, "It is 
 finished." And now will any one deny that 
 the sufferings of Christ were necessary? 
 
 Nevertheless, just here, new questions 
 open before our attentive mind. We 
 showed just now that one cannot believe 
 completely in the necessity of the passion, 
 who limits himself to the belief that it was 
 inevitable. But if one believes that it was 
 predicted, does he therefore believe com- 
 pletely in its necessity ? It was necessary 
 that the prophecies should be fulfilled; 
 events must not give the lie to the messen- 
 gers of Jehovah ; but what was the foun- 
 dation of these prophecies? To what pro- 
 found realities did these ancient predictions 
 correspond ? In what tragic necessities did 
 they root themselves ? Listen to the words 
 of the text : " Without shedding of blood 
 there is no remission of sin." It is the 
 
64 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 cry of man's conscience. It hungers and 
 thirsts for expiation. He who knows not 
 this torture is a deserter from humanity. 
 Where are those wretches who do not con- 
 sider themselves worthy of punishment? 
 When we have offended a friend, we are 
 more miserable if he pardons us than if he 
 struck us. When we have sinned, an irre- 
 sistible instinct draws us with a strange 
 pleasure, a sort of passionate tenacity, to- 
 ward some misfortune which we taste be- 
 forehand as a reparation, as a terrible relief, 
 bitter-sweet. When remorse seizes us, we 
 long for punishment; we greet it as one 
 who sets us free. Then, if sorrow extends 
 over us her black wings, we cling to them ; 
 and if her sharp beak tears our shuddering 
 flesh, we bless her. What ! is it possible ! 
 have you never longed to plunge, living, 
 into the purifying fires of suffering? No, 
 no ; your conscience cannot be harder than 
 that of the poor heathen who groans over 
 his sins, imploring pardon of his vengeful 
 divinities ; who mutilates himself at their 
 altars, and rushes away, torn and bleeding, 
 
THURSDA Y. 65 
 
 to fling his little child to the wild beasts. 
 As soon as man appeared on earth, then 
 appeared the smoke of sacrifices in the sky. 
 It was not the Bible that said to man, 
 " Without shedding of blood there is no 
 remission of sin;" it was man that said it 
 to the Bible. 
 
 But this is what the Bible revealed to 
 man : " It is not possible that the blood of 
 bulls and of goats should take away sins." 
 This is the reason that Jesus suffered, that 
 He might sanctify the people by His own 
 blood. Do you understand now the neces- 
 sity of the passion of Christ? Necessary 
 not only because it was inevitable, nor even 
 because it was predicted, but because it 
 alone could quench the thirst for expiation 
 which tormented sinful humanity. Here 
 discussion is useless and impossible. It is 
 enough to state the truth that for nineteen 
 centuries, faith in the expiatory sacrifice 
 consummated on Golgotha has set at rest 
 the consciences of men and sanctified their 
 wills. The fact is there, weighty, impreg- 
 nable, sublime. 
 
66 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 But can the necessity for the sufferings 
 of Christ rest finally on a mere statement 
 like this? We have shown earlier that 
 one cannot explain this mysterious neces- 
 sity by saying the death of Jesus was pre- 
 dicted. Do we explain it better if we say 
 the death of- Jesus was necessary because 
 it is the only refuge of sinful souls? The 
 question that arises is this : " Why do sin- 
 ful souls find a refuge there?" Yes, why 
 do they? When the blood of Abel cries 
 for vengeance, it is the blood of Cain that 
 should be shed, and not the blood of Jesus. 
 My brothers, it is really the blood of Cain 
 that was shed upon the cross; it was the 
 blood of sinful humanity that flowed from 
 the wounds of Jesus. It was the human 
 race that was nailed upon the cursed tree, 
 and the punishment fell on the real culprit. 
 For if the Son of God could say, " I am 
 one with the Father/' the Son of man could 
 say, " I am one with men — one with them, 
 not in intention, but in reality; not only 
 in sympathy, but in origin ; not only on 
 the earth, but already in the heavens, be- 
 
THURSDA Y. 67 
 
 fore my incarnation, even before creation 
 itself.'' The Son of God in the glory of the 
 Father was the living prophecy of human- 
 ity. "All things," says St. Paul, "were 
 created by Him and for Him." It was by 
 Him that humanity came into existence. 
 "All things," says St. John, "were made 
 by the Word ; and without Him was not 
 anything made that was made. In Him 
 was life ; and the life was the light of men. 
 He was in the world, and the world was 
 made by Him, and the world knew Him 
 not. He came unto His own, and His 
 own received Him not." The incarnation 
 of the Son of God was the visible and tran- 
 sitory manifestation of His eternal union 
 with the human race. In the person of 
 Jesus of Nazareth was its complete sum- 
 mary. At once royal and miserable, it 
 ascended Calvary in Him ; it was crucified 
 with Christ; by Him it drank the cup of 
 the divine wrath ; by Him it gave glory to 
 God for His judgment against its iniquity; 
 and it was pardoned humanity that cried, 
 " It is finished." Does not St. Paul assert 
 
68 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 that God " hath raised us up with Christ, 
 and made us to sit together in heavenly 
 places in Christ Jesus " ? If, then, human- 
 ity triumphed with Christ, it was because 
 it perished with Him. 
 
 Do you discern now the necessity of the 
 passion? It is not enough to say that the 
 sufferings of Christ were necessary to hu- 
 manity ; they were also necessary to Christ ; 
 for sinful humanity must suffer for itself, 
 and humanity was in Christ. Humanity 
 had turned aw T ay from God in the per- 
 son of the first Adam, in whom the whole 
 human family was contained ; it was neces- 
 sary that humanity should disavow its re- 
 bellion in the person of the second Adam, 
 in whom the race was even more profoundly 
 concentrated. It was on Golgotha that the 
 great work was consummated. During His 
 whole life Christ bore in His thoughts and 
 on His heart the sin of the world. Mourn- 
 ing over the unacknowledged glory of His 
 Father, mourning over the lost glory of 
 His brothers, He bent lower and lower 
 each day under the burden of evil. In 
 
THURSDA Y. 69 
 
 Gethsemane His brow lay in the dust. 
 Until now, Christ had bowed under the 
 weight of His immense compassion for 
 humanity astray ; now He falls under the 
 wrath of God against humanity that sins. 
 Until then, by the ineffable power of re- 
 demptive sympathy, Christ had made the 
 sin of the human race His own ; now He 
 accepts it as His own. God imposes it; 
 God imputes it to Him ; God discerns it in 
 Him, and prepares to sentence it in His 
 person. God, in the horror of that silent 
 night, cited humanity at His bar; He sum- 
 moned it ; and Christ, prostrate, heard in the 
 depth of his consciousness a voice which 
 answered, "Here am I" God in the dark- 
 ness holds forth to humanity the cup of 
 divine judgment; and Christ, prostrate, 
 feels vibrate in His being the unnumbered 
 multitude of vanished generations. The 
 spirit of humanity suddenly awakes in 
 Him, and it is the hand of the Christ that 
 extends itself into the shadow to grasp the 
 cup destined for sinners. It was done. 
 The brow of the Son of man was damp 
 
70 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 with bloody sweat. At Bethlehem Christ 
 represented God in humanity ; in Gethsem- 
 ane Christ represented humanity in God. 
 Henceforth there was nothing left but to 
 die of anguish; the torture of the cross but 
 hastened an inevitable end. Christ did not 
 die of His wounds; His heart was broken. 
 He was killed by the condemnation of 
 humanity. Christ did not suffer in the 
 place of humanity ; it was humanity that 
 suffered in Christ. But if suffering was 
 necessary for Christ, it was not necessary 
 for Jesus. 
 
 Christ, head of our race, root and flower 
 of humanity, primitive and final unit of the 
 human species, Christ was one with men ; 
 Christ was identical with the totality of all 
 men, past, present, and future. Jesus, on 
 the contrary, is a distinct personality, an 
 historic personage born on a certain night 
 in a stable, and brought up at Nazareth by 
 Joseph and Mary. If we have suffered 
 in Christ, we have not suffered in Jesus, 
 though truly Jesus died for us, in our place. 
 " The chastisement of our peace was upon 
 
THURSDA Y. 71 
 
 Him, and by His stripes we are healed." 
 Innocent and spotless victim! He gave 
 His life for sinners, and we will sing through 
 eternity, " To Him that loved us, and 
 washed us from our sins in His own blood, 
 and hath made us kings and priests unto 
 God and His Father ; to Him be glory and 
 dominion for ever and ever." 
 
 III. 
 
 My brothers, while we wait to sing the 
 glory of the Lamb that was slain, let us 
 here on earth long, with St. Paul, after " the 
 fellowship of His sufferings." 
 
 There are those who seem to be amazed 
 because the world still resounds with groans 
 and cries. " If Jesus suffered for man," 
 they say, "why does man still suffer?" 
 Alas! they are blind. Their mean souls 
 cannot perceive that if sorrow were refused 
 to man, the expiatory agony of the Saviour 
 would impose upon him the worst of suffer- 
 ing. Can one imagine a mother breaking 
 forth into joy because the fire that burned 
 
72 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 her child to death, spared her own life ? 
 Do we not know that the worst sorrow for 
 those who love, is to witness suffering that 
 they cannot share? And when the one 
 we love is our victim, when he suffers un- 
 justly through our fault, is there sufficient 
 consolation in the thought that our own 
 health is flourishing? Who are those peo- 
 ple who think that they should be spared 
 all suffering because Jesus agonized for 
 them? Cold hearts! Disciples of Caiaphas! 
 They understand his cry, " It is expedient 
 that one man should die for the people." 
 The blood of Christ only serves to water 
 their selfishness, which puts out stronger 
 roots and brings its hateful and nauseous 
 flower to perfection, even at the foot of the 
 cross. What! Jesus suffered! He suffered 
 for me, and suffering does not seem desir- 
 able! He suffered in His body, and my 
 body must be spared ! I am to be forbid- 
 den to know by my own experience any- 
 thing about His burdens! Why, that is 
 the chief cry of my being in the presence 
 of my bleeding Redeemer! 
 
THURSDA Y. 73 
 
 It is strange that the more exalted mys- 
 tics were not drawn so far astray as to 
 drive a nail into their hand, that they might 
 better know the fellowship of the sufferings 
 of Christ. 
 
 Truly the sufferings of life are necessary ; 
 they make it possible to bear the thought 
 of the sufferings of Christ. 
 
 But if Jesus suffered physically, He suf- 
 fered morally most of all, and we desire 
 ardently to be united to His moral suffer- 
 ing. Like Him we would see in our suffer- 
 ing the fruit of sin; for though we know 
 well that Jesus bore the sins of the world, 
 we also know that there are sufferings in 
 our lives that are the immediate result of 
 personal faults ; and even when we cannot 
 see the exact relation between the anguish 
 and the fault, a secret instinct warns us 
 that if we smite our breast, weeping, we 
 are not far from right. Jesus prostrate in 
 Gethsemane does not prevent us from fall- 
 ing on our faces in the dust, and crying, 
 51 Against Thee, and Thee only, have I 
 
74 HUMAN SUFFERING, 
 
 sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight : 
 that Thou mightest be justified when Thou 
 speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest." 
 We are conscious in the depths of our 
 hearts that if Jesus suffered to save us, we 
 must suffer to be saved; we feel clearly 
 that if Jesus died by sin and for sin, it was 
 that we might die to sin; we understand 
 that if Jesus was crucified, it was that we 
 might be drawn to Him on the cross. And 
 thus we unite our sorrows to those of our 
 Saviour. Day by day we offer unto God 
 our sufferings in the fellowship of Christ, 
 and when the pale terrors of death crowd 
 silently around our hearts, we murmur, 
 " Father, I have sinned against Thee, and 
 am no longer worthy to be called Thy son : 
 make me as one of Thy hired servants." 
 Ah ! what would become of us without our 
 sufferings? We feel that we are sinners, 
 and by the chastisement that fell on Christ 
 we can better understand the need of our 
 own punishment. To accept suffering as 
 a punishment, and not only as a trial, is to 
 acknowledge Christ; it is to acquiesce in 
 
THURSDA Y. 75 
 
 His work, to walk with Him voluntarily in 
 the sorrows that He took upon Himself for 
 our redemption. " That which is behind 
 in the afflictions of Christ/ ' wrote St. Paul, 
 "I fill up in my flesh." 
 
 Yes, we must suffer, that the sufferings 
 of Christ may be useful to us — that they 
 may " sanctify " us. Does this mean that 
 this wholesome and legitimate personal 
 expiation for our sins may throw in the 
 background the great expiatory Sacrifice 
 that was offered once for all? Far from 
 that; the more we believe in the necessity 
 of our punishment, the more we realize the 
 depth of our sin. I suffer; have I suffered 
 enough? I weep; ought I not to bleed? 
 I have accepted grief; ought I not to im- 
 pose it upon myself? From thence come 
 macerations and voluntary torture. But 
 this is not all. We are not only guilty of 
 the sins that we have deliberately com- 
 mitted, for there are in us two beings, the 
 man and the individual. The individual 
 comes into the world at a certain date ; he 
 has a name of his own ; he appears for the 
 
76 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 first time, and looks astonished at the stars. 
 But man in us is as old as humanity, and 
 through the eyes of Adam he has already 
 seen the heavens. 
 
 As individuals, we correspond in the 
 Saviour to the name of Jesus, and as men, 
 to the name of Christ. Now, my brothers, 
 in exactly the same measure that we par- 
 take of humanity, we partake of its sins. 
 It is in vain that we say that this sin need 
 not disturb us, since it is not ours ; the 
 truth refutes this reasoning; there are 
 hours of inward silence and revelation, 
 when we feel the sin of the world weigh- 
 ing upon us, when the holiest bows his 
 head under the knowledge of his impurity, 
 humiliated by the stern conviction that he 
 is a sinner because he is a man. What 
 folly, then, to fancy that he could redeem 
 this great collective crime by his own per- 
 sonal sufferings ! So, then, whether the 
 question concerns our personal sins, or the 
 sin that is in us, the evil that we have 
 done, or the general evil in which we are 
 born, the faults for which we reproach 
 
THURSDA Y. 77 
 
 ourselves, or the fault that we inherit, in 
 order to find peace of conscience we have 
 no sufficient expiation in our power. It is 
 then, O companions in sorrow, that the 
 cross shines through our darkness. It is 
 then that we find inexpressible comfort in 
 looking unto Him who died in our place. 
 Then we cry out, " I understand! I under- 
 stand!" O my God, thrice-holy God, just 
 God, my feeble will cannot offer Thee a 
 true hatred of sin ; but in Jesus Christ I 
 offer it to Thee. In Him I was in Gethsem- 
 ane and on Golgotha. There He abhorred 
 and condemned sin ; He drank of the cup 
 of Thy anger. O my God! He did what 
 I cannot do, what I fain would do. His 
 work is mine. I offer it to Thee as mine. 
 I love His humiliation, for I thirst to 
 humiliate myself before Thee. I love His 
 tears, I love His ignominy, I love His 
 wounds, for it is my own unworthiness 
 that I taste in His shame ; it is my own 
 punishment that I accept in His sufferings. 
 O my God! Jesus acquiesced in the judg- 
 ment pronounced against humanity, entire 
 
78 HUMAN SUFFERING, 
 
 in Christ, and I, weak, powerless, miser- 
 able, agree with this agreement, with its 
 infinite peace and healing. 
 
 My brothers, do you know what it is to 
 feel yourself insufficient to your own de- 
 sires, powerless to express the deepest 
 aspirations of your souls? Do you com- 
 prehend the sublime anguish of a human 
 creature struggling in vain to give a voice 
 to thoughts that are ineffable ? 
 
 What artist has not groaned before an 
 ideal which he dimly sees, but cannot 
 prison in a body of its own? When a 
 mother bends above the cradle or the cof- 
 fin of her child, can she find words for her 
 bliss or her anguish? Her whole heart 
 goes forth in sighs that cannot be uttered. 
 Any infirmity which hinders us from say- 
 ing what we wish, is a source of keen suffer- 
 ing. In such solemn moments, when we 
 are cruelly conscious of our poverty and 
 our hopeless weakness, sometimes nature 
 itself comes to the help of our impotence. 
 Do you remember the day when you went 
 to weep in the cemetery ? The wind wailed 
 
THURSDA Y. 79 
 
 round the tombs; it shook the funeral 
 wreaths and broke down the flowering 
 shrubs. Flat on the earth, each little tuft 
 of grass seemed to be trampled under the 
 feet of an invisible monster. The naked 
 trees bent above you, writhing in silent 
 agony, their noble heads shrinking under 
 the blows of the hurricane, like a horse 
 struck cruelly with a whip. The black 
 clouds sped away over the gray vastness, 
 like a frightened flock chased by a wild 
 beast. In this universal desolation did not 
 you recognize your own despair? did you 
 not cry to the tempest, " I thank thee " ? 
 It is thus that every human heart, as soon 
 as it begins to mourn for its sins, welcomes 
 the cross of Christ, and cries, " I thank 
 Thee, O Christ !" Thus our own suffer- 
 ings are necessary, that we may understand 
 the necessity of those of Christ. 
 
 Must needs ! " Christ must needs have 
 suffered. " We, too, must of necessity suf- 
 fer. " O the depth of the riches both of 
 the wisdom and knowledge of God! how 
 unsearchable are His judgments, and His 
 
80 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 ways past finding out! For who hath 
 known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath 
 been His counselor? or who hath first 
 given to Him, and it shall be recompensed 
 unto Him again ? For of Him, and through 
 Him, and to Him, are all things : to whom 
 be glory forever. Amen." 
 
FRIDAY. 
 
 GLORIOUS SUFFERING. 
 
 " Who for the joy that was set before Him endured 
 the cross." — Heb. i. XII. 2. 
 
 The Man of Sorrows is at the same time 
 the light of the world. If His name calls 
 forth the idea of infinite suffering, it also 
 calls forth the idea of infinite joy. The 
 gospel is the story of a fatal martyrdom, 
 and yet little children are rocked to sleep 
 by it on their mothers' knees. The shame- 
 ful instrument of an evil and unjust execu- 
 tion, pours peace into the hearts of dying 
 men. The same cross that drove Judas to 
 despair, placed on his tomb would have 
 spoken of hope; and if the agony of the 
 Saviour can disturb the stupid and culpable 
 beatitude in which the egoist has lulled 
 
82 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 himself to sleep, it can also draw to itself, 
 from the ends of the earth, all those who 
 seek rest, consolation, and happiness. Like 
 a silver bell through the night, so joy re- 
 sounds unceasingly in the tragic life of 
 Jesus Christ. First it is the shining choir 
 of angels, who sing the joy of salvation in 
 the illuminated plains of Bethlehem, and, 
 transported with gladness, celebrate the 
 " great joy which shall be to all mankind." 
 Then come the shepherds glorifying God, 
 the aged Simeon giving thanks, Anna the 
 prophetess, who blesses the Lord, and the 
 wise men also, who " rejoiced with ex- 
 ceeding great joy " when the ray of a cer- 
 tain star crowned with light the forehead 
 of the little new-born King. Let us fol- 
 low Jesus in His ministry. Abraham, the 
 first of the prophets, " rejoiced to see the 
 day of Christ; " John the Baptist, the last 
 of the prophets, could not have enough 
 of the presence of Christ. He compares 
 himself to the " friend of the Bridegroom, 
 who rejoiceth greatly because of the Bride- 
 groom's voice"; and he adds that " this 
 
FRIDA Y. 83 
 
 my joy therefore is fulfilled." Jesus " went 
 from place to place doing good " ; that is, 
 He left the mark of His blessed presence 
 as He passed. Then there came an hour 
 when the multitude, mad with joy, cast 
 their garments before Him, disturbing a 
 whole city with the noise of their hosan- 
 nas. The sermons of Jesus begin with the 
 word " blessed " : " Blessed are they that 
 mourn ;" and they end with the word 
 " joy " • " These things have I spoken unto 
 you, . . . that your joy may be fulfilled. 
 Your sorrow shall be turned into joy, . . . 
 and your joy no one taketh away from you." 
 And if the evangelist shows us Jesus " re- 
 joicing in spirit" in the plenitude of His 
 activity, at the moment when His ministry 
 reached its height, we hear Jesus again 
 speaking of His joy on " the same night 
 when He was delivered." Before He went 
 out to go to Gethsemane, He lifted up His 
 eyes unto heaven and said, " Father, I come 
 to Thee, . . . that they may have My joy 
 fulfilled in themselves." The words of the 
 sacred book from which we draw the sub- 
 
84 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 ject of our meditation to-day are therefore 
 in perfect harmony with the spirit of the 
 Gospels : " Who for the joy set before Him, 
 endured the cross." Ah! weigh these 
 words well. Jesus did not love suffering 
 for itself. He loved it for its fruits. Jesus, 
 bearing His cross, dragged Himself toward 
 joy; Jesus, expiring, entered into joy. 
 And what joy, my brothers? The joy of 
 having saved the world; the joy that 
 Jesus described in these words : " And I, 
 if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw 
 all men unto Myself." Truly if the voice 
 trembles in speaking of the agony of the 
 Saviour, it also trembles as it speaks of 
 His joy. A unique joy! A joy unlimited 
 and fathomless ! An eternal joy ! Thanks 
 be to God, this joy is really His, and His 
 alone, for He alone is worthy of it; He 
 alone is capable of it. The joy of having 
 given everything that He might deliver us 
 all ; the joy of having seen our misery and 
 having abolished it; the joy of having 
 looked at our graveyards and destroyed 
 death; the joy of having sounded the 
 
FRIDA Y. 85 
 
 depths of sin, its shames and its blasphe- 
 mies, its terrors, its disgusts, and its crimes, 
 and having annihilated it ; the joy of having 
 sought the wandering sheep, and bringing 
 it in upon His shoulder; the joy of having 
 gained the love of the prodigal, and lead- 
 ing him to his Father's house; the joy of 
 pity ; the joy of sacrifice ; the joy of re- 
 demptive suffering; the joy of a free sal- 
 vation offered without conditions, without 
 limit, without hesitation ; the joy of hear- 
 ing, some day, you and me crying with a 
 loud voice, with the great multitude of the 
 redeemed, " Worthy is the Lamb that was 
 slain to receive power, and riches, and wis- 
 dom, and strength, and honor, and glory, 
 and blessing. For Thou hast redeemed us 
 to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, 
 and tongue, and people, and nation. " 
 
 II. 
 
 Now we also, my brothers, have the 
 right to a joy like this. We have the right 
 to suffer for others. In the fellowship of 
 
8Q HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 Jesus Christ living in us, we have the right 
 to collaborate freely through suffering in 
 the redemption of the world. 
 
 And, first, is it not true that we have the 
 right to love all those around us? We 
 have the right to place the aureole of our 
 tenderness and veneration on the white 
 hair of our mother. We have the right to 
 bend over the astonished gaze of our lit- 
 tle child with delight and awe. And when 
 our country, in some hour of trial, attracts 
 toward it the admiration and sympathy cf 
 the world, we have the right to weep for 
 gladness. 
 
 And every morning, at our awakening, 
 we have the right to feel our heart swell 
 with an immense enthusiasm for all who 
 bear the name of man ; w r e have the right 
 to accept it each day as a royal privilege, 
 an unhoped-for opportunity, that we may 
 join ourselves once more to the great pro- 
 cession of humanity on its pilgrimage. For 
 the voyage is long ; there are pilgrims who 
 will fall exhausted ; and who knows if God 
 may not give to us the honor to be a help 
 
FRIDA Y. 87 
 
 to one of these weary ones ? Ah ! we have 
 the right to love each man. We have the 
 right to love the crowds. We have the 
 right to look with solicitude at all the faces, 
 blooming or faded, pure or impure, vulgar 
 or intellectual, beautiful or ugly, that pass 
 and repass in the noisy city streets. Our 
 hearts have a right to rush out toward 
 these unknown people, crying, " O brothers, 
 who are you ? Where do you come from ? 
 Where are you going? Have you had 
 anything to eat to-day? " " Why is your 
 coat torn? Poor old man, have you no 
 one to mend your clothes ?" "Young 
 man, what are you reading ?" "Young 
 girl, who is that with you ? " " You peo- 
 ple who laugh or weep, do you know how 
 to pray? Do you know how to die?" 
 " O brothers, if you only knew the gift of 
 God ! Brothers, dear brothers, do you love 
 your best Friend? Do you love Jesus 
 Christ? " Our hearts have a right to speak 
 thus. And at nightfall we have the right to 
 follow the last ray of light into those abodes 
 of misery which it seems to dwell on piti- 
 
88 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 fully and to leave with regret. For night 
 is not always given to sleep ; in dungeons 
 remorse keeps vigil; in madhouses terror 
 fills the silence with strange rumors; in 
 the hospital the sick man groans ; and the 
 dying, hidden in their houses, watched 
 over by affection and science, see the 
 specter of Death rise softly by their bed- 
 sides, and softly lay his inflexible and icy 
 hand on their hearts. We have the right, 
 as darkness falls upon the earth, to draw 
 all these griefs into the circle of our sym- 
 pathies ; and our hearts also have the right 
 to hasten in pursuit of the setting sun, to 
 visit with it those vast continents where 
 the dawn appears while in Europe the 
 stars are shining. There by the growing 
 light we see the melancholy crowd of 
 heathen awake under the novel foliage and 
 unknown paths. They are adorned as for 
 a fete; when the soul has no food, the 
 eyes must be regaled; and the changing 
 colors of this motley crowd of Chinese and 
 Hindus speak of sadness and not of joy. 
 Do you see these multitudes ? They crowd 
 
FRIDA Y. 89 
 
 the streets and scatter about the forests. 
 They have old people among them, and 
 children. The little negroes run to the 
 spring under the palm-trees, laughing to 
 see the print of their feet in the sand. 
 What fate is in store for them ? Will the 
 iron collar of the slave-hunter imprison 
 those woolly heads some day ? Will their 
 blood redden the foaming jaws of a lion? 
 Will they be buried alive, in spite of their 
 cries, to propitiate some unclean divinity? 
 Or will they be extinguished in old age, 
 indifferent as the beasts, without fear and 
 without hope, hardened by a whole life of 
 selfishness, ignorant of even the name of 
 Christ ? We have the right to love them, 
 these poor human creatures, whose graves 
 are counted every year by thousands and 
 millions. They do not know us, we shall 
 never see them ; but we have the right to 
 enter their daily sufferings on the list of 
 our own cares. All humanity belongs to 
 us; we have the right to inwrap it in our 
 love ; and if our solicitude goes to the end 
 of the earth to allay some grief or to share 
 
90 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 some trial, no one is authorized to tell us 
 that we are beyond our rights, that we 
 must halt. No ; if Jehovah has put a limit 
 to the everlasting efforts of the rising tide, 
 our heavenly Father has imposed no limit 
 on the love of every man for men. And 
 by whatever name love, true love, calls it- 
 self at first — "ties of blood," "the voice 
 of nature " — if it be true love, it soon be- 
 comes compassion, if, indeed, it is not born 
 of pity. And if it be true pity, it is suffer- 
 ing, and this suffering is redemptive. It 
 desires to destroy evil, and to a great ex- 
 tent it obtains its desire ; for to love those 
 who weep, to love those who doubt, to 
 love those who blaspheme, is not that to 
 take away half the burden under which 
 these unhappy ones are bowing? 
 
 And more than this, love does not con- 
 tent itself with the affirmation of this gener- 
 ous sympathy. Love does not only wish to 
 suffer with those who suffer; it wishes to 
 suffer in their place. " Let my tears flow, if 
 thine are only dried," is the true cry of love. 
 Love sighs to give its lungs to the dying 
 
FRIDA Y. 91 
 
 man, the grace of its own loveliness to her 
 from whom people turn away their eyes, 
 its only son to the desolate mother, the joy 
 of the gospel to souls that know it not, 
 heaven for hell. St. Paul declared : " I 
 could wish that myself were accursed from 
 Christ for my brethren." When love has 
 come to that, there is only one resource, 
 and that is intercession ; the silent struggle 
 in the darkness for those who would mock at 
 our prayers if they suspected them, or who 
 would perhaps be irritated by them ; the 
 stubborn combat of a love that employs its 
 strongest weapons and will conquer or die. 
 Intercession! supreme resource of a love 
 that immolates itself, and only regrets that 
 there are no more sacrifices that it can 
 make. Then on its knees it agonizes for 
 those who seem about to escape it, and for 
 them it transforms its oratory into a Geth- 
 semane. It casts into the arms of God, 
 " the Father of mercy," those who live 
 around it, perhaps under the same roof, 
 and yet who are separated from it day and 
 night by invisible barriers. Neither does 
 
92 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 he who loves and intercedes forget those 
 divided from him by the mountains, the 
 deserts, or the ocean ; for the more he 
 prays for those who are dear to him, the 
 more he sees that all human beings are 
 embraced in his love. 
 
 Foreign nations, the smallest colonies 
 and the most powerful empires, meet in 
 the prayers of love before they all appear 
 together before the throne of God. But 
 love goes still further; it triumphs over 
 greater separations ; " love is stronger 
 than death." O love, answer! when thou 
 hast suffered with others, hast thou partici- 
 pated in redemptive suffering? Not so; 
 but in the joy of the Redeemer. When 
 thou hast suffered in the place of others, 
 was it redemptive suffering that thou didst 
 share? Not so ; but in the joy of the Re- 
 deemer. When thou hast wept, groaned, 
 agonized on thy knees, when thou hast in- 
 terceded for men, hast thou participated in 
 redemptive suffering? No, no; all suffer- 
 ing was swallowed up in the joy of the 
 Redeemer. 
 
FRIDA Y. 93 
 
 But this is not all. Other sorrows are 
 granted us ; other sources of joy may spring 
 up beneath our steps. If it is joy to suffer 
 for the sake of man, is it not joy to suffer 
 for the sake of Jesus? To suffer as a 
 Christian is to suffer for the cause that 
 Christ defended ; it is to suffer in the spirit 
 of Jesus, to suffer for the same reasons 
 and through the same enemies; it is to 
 suffer a redemptive suffering. We are all 
 called to taste this suffering. We learned 
 just now that one must suffer to be able to 
 save. Learn still further that one must 
 suffer because one wishes to save. When 
 a Christian manifests an intention to devote 
 his life to the salvation of the world, the 
 intention alone excites its wrath. It cries 
 out against the extravagance, the fanati- 
 cism, the folly of such an idea. 
 
 Jesus often heard such outcries ; but if 
 the Son of God had occupied Himself about 
 His own affairs, He would have stayed in 
 heaven and left us here on earth, despair- 
 ing. But Jesus pursued His holy mission, 
 calm, steadfast, always loving; He never 
 
94 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 paused for reproaches that might have 
 been exasperating in their profound stupid- 
 ity. They crucified Him in order to pun- 
 ish Him for His desire to save mankind, 
 and this very punishment saved His ene- 
 mies. Our Lord said, " Every disciple 
 that is perfect is as his master.' ' There- 
 fore he is not a perfect disciple who does 
 not meet the same criticisms, the same 
 anger, and who does not expose himself to 
 the same glorious reproach that he has 
 stepped forth out of the conventionalities 
 of the world. 
 
 Do not let these things astonish thee, O 
 Christian. They are thy lot ; they are the 
 password of those who are animated with 
 the spirit of Christ. The gardener who 
 destroys a wasp's nest expects to see the 
 wasps swarming furiously about him ; their 
 anger does not disturb him ; he continues 
 quietly to the end the work of destruction. 
 For the love of thy blessed Master, walk 
 faithfully in His beloved footsteps. Do 
 not cease to rebuke the violent for their 
 violence, the timid for their cowardice, 
 
FRIDA V. 95 
 
 skeptics for their credulity, believers for 
 their incredulity. Speak, march, fight. 
 Dost thou not know that the darkness 
 hates the light? " Why did Cain slay his 
 brother? Because his own works were 
 evil, and his brother's righteous." Suffer! 
 Jesus predicted suffering for His servants. 
 Suffer! Jesus promised suffering to His 
 followers. Suffer! Jesus wishes to suffer 
 in the person of His servants. Suffer! 
 And if, in the heat of the battle, some one 
 says to you, " I pity you," answer him, 
 triumphing with the apostolic church, " I 
 rather glory in my infirmities. ... I take 
 pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in ne- 
 cessities, in persecutions, in distresses for 
 Christ's sake. I count it all joy, for unto 
 me it is given not only to believe on Him, 
 but to suffer for His sake." And then, O 
 Christian, thou wilt sing together with the 
 church of the nineteenth century this hymn 
 in His praise, which the church of the future 
 will sing at the foot of Golgotha : 
 
 " O King of Glory and Man of Sorrows, 
 whoever has loved Thee has suffered ; who- 
 
96 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 ever loves Thee consents to suffer — he has 
 vowed himself to glory and to grief. 
 
 " All those who have loved Thee have 
 suffered; but all those who have suffered 
 for Thee have only loved Thee more and 
 more. Sorrow binds us to Thee as joy 
 binds us to the world. 
 
 " Sorrow intoxicates, as with some gen- 
 erous wine, those whom Thou biddest to 
 Thy mysterious banquet, and presses out 
 of our broken hearts hymns of adoration 
 and love." 
 
 Who dares to say, my brothers, that the 
 redemptive joy of Christ is a vain word 
 for man? Unite yourselves as Christians, 
 frankly, publicly, to His redemptive suf- 
 ferings, and you will hear in your hearts 
 the first words of this song. 
 
 And now I will speak to those who are 
 weak. Thus far I have spoken to the 
 strong, to those who suffer voluntarily, to 
 those to whom sorrow is a badge of nobil- 
 ity, an unmistakable mark of greatness, a 
 real diadem. If they have been wounded, 
 
FRIDA Y. 97 
 
 it was in the thick of the battle, under the 
 eyes of the glorious Captain who leads 
 them to victory, to the sound of the trum- 
 pets that announce the speedy coming of 
 the Lord. But there are others who suf- 
 fer in obscurity, far from those who fight ; 
 they did not anticipate their ills ; trial has 
 crushed them. Their hearts have been 
 torn by grief, their bodies have been broken 
 by sickness. Now they lie out of sight, 
 wounded, powerless, hopeless. Those, 
 above all, are worthy of pity who have fall- 
 en alive into that grip of physical anguish 
 which only death will loosen. Always in 
 the same attitude, in the same corner of 
 the same room, they are the real exiles from 
 human society ; their immobility deprives 
 them of those prerogatives of the animal 
 race which distinguish it from the vege- 
 table world ; they retain only the privilege 
 of suffering. Their languid eyes droop in 
 the day, but at night they open widely, 
 large with fever. Their affliction is incom- 
 municable ; no one can understand their 
 agony. They are cared for tenderly, but 
 
98 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 no one understands the nature of this suf- 
 fering. In their misery they murmur, " I 
 suffer;" but there is no common measure 
 for suffering, and no one exactly seizes 
 the sense of these two words. The voice 
 which answers, " Ah ! I understand/' is not 
 altered by the same torture, and the hand 
 that smooths their brow only arouses new 
 anguish. We need the pierced hand of the 
 Crucified One. Christ alone can speak 
 peace to their despair. He says to them, 
 " Take courage ; I need you also in order 
 to finish the conquest of the world. If you 
 will unite your sufferings to Mine, they 
 also will acquire a redemptive character, 
 and you will know with Me something of 
 My joy." Now it is perfectly true, my 
 brothers, that physical sufferings, borne in 
 the spirit of Christ, glorify God in a spe- 
 cial manner and draw souls to the cross. 
 Listen to the words of a dying Christian to 
 those who surrounded his bed : " There are 
 moments in which I groan and weep more 
 than I pray. But understand well how 
 much sweetness I find in the thought that 
 
FRIDA Y. 99 
 
 I am afflicted for your good; because 
 nothing else could bring my sufferings 
 near to those of my Saviour. Jesus suf- 
 fered in order to save men, and it is well 
 that I should suffer that I may do them 
 some good. Let all those who suffer strive 
 to enter fully into the love of Christ, so 
 that sorrow may be like a cross planted on 
 the earth, in whose shadow those who are 
 near it may take refuge. Let us rejoice, 
 and assure ourselves that there is no sor- 
 row that cannot be borne peacefully and 
 happily. O marvelous grace of God! O 
 power of the gospel! O sting of death! 
 O immovable steadfastness of grace \" 
 
 It is in this way that redemptive joy de- 
 scends into the hearts of those who unite 
 themselves to the redemptive sorrows of 
 Christ. But who knows, my brothers? 
 Because of the close solidarity that binds 
 all men to one another, sufferings endured 
 in the spirit of the Saviour may perhaps 
 bless even those who have not witnessed 
 them, perhaps even those who have passed 
 away without having heard of them. If 
 
100 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 each man who sins lowers the general level 
 of humanity, each man who enters into 
 communion with Christ raises it. The re- 
 demptive virtue of the cross descends upon 
 the world from all the Calvarys where 
 Christ suffers in the person of some human 
 being. In every place where a suffering 
 creature can cry with sincerity, " That 
 which is behind in the afflictions of Christ 
 I fill up in my flesh for His body's sake, 
 which is the church," there also reap- 
 pears the redemptive efficacy of the re- 
 demptive sacrifice. Even if it is true that 
 we often suffer by our own fault, and have 
 only our own selves to blame for many of 
 our sorrows, are there not certain exis- 
 tences that seem to be aimlessly laid waste 
 by some blind and brutal power? They 
 make us think of beautiful golden harvests 
 ruined by the runaway horse in one sunny 
 day. In his wild course he has trampled 
 and broken the ripe corn ; one is thankful 
 if his iron hoof spares the child asleep 
 among the flowers. In this earth the pur- 
 est brows are often marked by the most 
 
FRIDA Y. 101 
 
 profound scars. When we see a face that 
 makes us think of Christ, we may be sure 
 that it bears the marks of the hands that 
 smote Him. There are eyes that are con- 
 sumed with weeping, there are lips white 
 with physical suffering, the sight of which 
 would arouse in our hearts a feeling of re- 
 volt if we did not know that these unmer- 
 ited tortures were a gift to the whole 
 human race, from those who suffer them, 
 for the sake of Christ. 
 
 Ah! this is an immense consolation for 
 those who suffer in their flesh, with a kind 
 of suffering that is the least noble in ap- 
 pearance, the least voluntary, the least 
 understood. There is a sort of splendor, 
 a strength of resurrection, for the fever- 
 stricken, for consumptives, and for those 
 who feel darkness descending upon their 
 weakening intelligence. The weaker they 
 grow, the more they fall into ruin, the more 
 they share the pain of the dying Saviour. 
 If they suffer looking to His cross, loving 
 all mankind as brothers, an inward voice 
 will say to them, " Well done, good and 
 
102 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 faithful servant ; enter into the joy of thy 
 Lord." And immediately they will see 
 through the shadows of their agony the 
 shining of the star of redemptive joy. 
 
 My beloved friends, do you understand ? 
 
 Know then that suffering can contribute 
 to the salvation of the world. 
 
 To love is to suffer. 
 
 To be a Christian is to suffer. 
 
 To suffer is to suffer. 
 
 Redemptive joy is thus within your 
 reach. For who among you does not love ? 
 Who among you does not wish to become 
 a Christian? Who among you will not 
 suffer? 
 
 Then pluck out of suffering the glory 
 that is shut up in it; and may it be said of 
 each one of you, " Because of the joy set 
 before him, he endured the cross." 
 
SATURDAY. 
 
 MYSTERIOUS SUFFERING. 
 
 " Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered 
 up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears 
 unto Him that was able to save Him from death." — 
 Heb. v. 7. 
 
 I. 
 
 When the Reformation was introduced 
 into France, a young man named Jean 
 Leclerc was arrested at Meaux, in 1528, 
 condemned for the crime of heresy, cruelly 
 beaten twice in succession, and finally pub- 
 licly marked on the forehead with a red- 
 hot iron. 
 
 At the moment when the executioner 
 inflicted this disgrace upon him, while the 
 flesh smoked and the hands of the sufferer 
 contracted with anguish, a voice exclaimed 
 from the midst of the crowd, " Live Jesus 
 Christ and His tokens. " Who cried out 
 103 
 
104 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 thus? The mother of the boy they tor- 
 tured! Jesus Christ Himself does not 
 seem to have known this austere and noble 
 gladness, which triumphs over suffering in 
 the name of Jesus Christ. The Master 
 had said, " He that believeth in Me shall 
 do the works that I do, and greater works 
 shall he do." 
 
 Did He contemplate in advance the 
 shining troop of martyrs? Did He hear 
 their hymns of victory? Did He see their 
 failing arms raised toward the " incorrup- 
 tible crown of glory " ? And did He dwell 
 by contrast on Himself and that anticipated 
 agony on Olivet? Behold Him there, my 
 brothers! Is it thus that heroes die? 
 One hardly sees Him through the dark- 
 ness. " He fell on the ground and prayed." 
 Why did the angels sing His praises? He 
 whose birth they celebrated, lies prostrate ; 
 His heart-breaking groans rise toward the 
 silent depths of the sky. " With strong 
 crying and tears He offered up prayers and 
 supplications to Him that was able to save 
 Him from death." 
 
SATURDAY. 105 
 
 How His voice is changed ! It is altered 
 by " sorrow and heaviness." A few hours 
 before He had said to His disciples, " Let 
 not your heart be troubled." But as He 
 climbed the hill of Gethsemane He told 
 them that His soul was " exceeding sor- 
 rowful unto death." Prostrate in the dark- 
 ness He struggles : " Father, all things are 
 possible unto Thee ; take this cup from 
 Me : nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, 
 be done." Being in an agony, He prayed 
 more earnestly : " O My Father, if this 
 cup may not pass away except I drink it, 
 Thy will be done." And He prayed the 
 third time, saying the same words. And 
 the disciples slept under the sparkling un- 
 answering heavens ; and the scared night- 
 bird, flapping its heavy wings, is the only 
 living creature who hears the Christ. 
 
 The silence of God in Gethsemane op- 
 presses us; but the prayer of the Saviour 
 bewilders us still more. What! Jesus prayed 
 that He might be delivered from death! 
 But had He not declared in the past that 
 the Son of man was come to " give His life 
 
106 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 a ransom for sinners " ? What ! Jesus said, 
 " Not as I will, but as Thou wilt/' oppos- 
 ing the will of the Son to the will of the 
 Father, which He thus made the true cause 
 of the expiatory sacrifice ! But, before this, 
 had not the Son said, " For this does My 
 Father love Me, because I lay down My 
 life. ... No man taketh it from Me, but I 
 lay it down of Myself " ? What is this con- 
 fusion that has fallen on the spirit of the 
 Redeemer? With what hesitations is He 
 wrestling? Is the struggle with doubt still 
 more cruel than the temptation ? What do 
 these words mean, " If it be possible " ? 
 Christ does not know, then, what is possi- 
 ble and what is not, what is necessary and 
 what is not? Has He forgotten His own 
 assertion, " As Moses lifted up the serpent 
 in the wilderness, even so must the Son of 
 man be lifted up " ? " If it be possible " ! 
 For us who bend over these abysses the if 
 of Gethsemane is as terrible as the why of 
 Golgotha : " Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" 
 In fact, how can we escape the conclu- 
 sion that is forced upon us? What can 
 
SA TURD A Y. 107 
 
 we do but confess, with bent head and in 
 the dust, our hearts swelling with wonder 
 and amazement, that, in these last hours of 
 His life, if Jesus suffered without being 
 understood, He also suffered without under- 
 standing ? From abandonment to abandon- 
 ment, from solitude to solitude, from dark- 
 ness to darkness, He allowed Himself to 
 be led, step by step, to the fatal end ; and 
 if He resembled the sheep trembling before 
 the shearer, it was not only because it was 
 dumb, but because its eyes, full of questions 
 about its fate, implore, like His, in vain an 
 answer. 
 
 Let us follow Jesus, my brothers, in this 
 utter helplessness, in the midst of an ever- 
 increasing isolation. Let us observe His 
 unnoticed looks, His vain requests, His un- 
 answered prayers. Let us watch Him de- 
 scend hour by hour into the fathomless 
 darkness of an unexplored mystery, into 
 those abysses of silence, faced for the first 
 time by a human soul, and whose terrors 
 no other soul has ever endured. Let us 
 enter with Jesus into His abandonment, so 
 
108 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 complete, so unique, so ineffable, that in it, 
 He expired suddenly, as a flame extin- 
 guished for want of air. Then we shall dis- 
 cover in the sufferings of the Saviour un- 
 dreamed-of riches; we shall discover that 
 His sorrows are for us, even in those hours 
 when we no longer see anything, when we 
 no longer know anything; in those hours 
 of absolute emptiness and total darkness; 
 in those moments of intense and general cri- 
 sis, when doubt makes night dark around 
 us and within us, when our spirit seems 
 to become a material thing, when we give 
 ourselves up to strange misery, like a waif 
 of the ocean, like a stranded vessel rising 
 and falling at the will of the waves. 
 
 II. 
 
 For trial, in despite of everything that 
 can be said in explanation or apology, or 
 even in consolation, remains an unbroken 
 mystery. Crushed under a burden which 
 grows heavier day by day, even when hope 
 is offered us we have no longer strength to 
 
SA TURD A Y. 109 
 
 grasp it. We are like travelers lost in the 
 fog, so stiffened by the cold that we are 
 not able to stretch out a hand to receive 
 the guiding light. All the energies of our 
 being are gathered up in the present in- 
 stant, gathered together in one painful and 
 monotonous instant ; they are exhausted in 
 this sullen struggle against an enemy who 
 never leaves us, watching by our bedside 
 and seizing us again at dawn. 
 
 Go talk to others of redemptive joy ! 
 As for me, I can barely endure my life. 
 Like the prophet Elijah, who, after a day's 
 journey into the desert, sat down under a 
 juniper-tree and asked for death, I, too, 
 when the night returns, when my day's 
 work is done, cry out, " It is enough ; O 
 God, take my life." 
 
 Does it follow that he who speaks thus 
 is a reprobate? Are the cries, the tears, 
 the unanswered questions that were per- 
 mitted to the Christ, forbidden to the Chris- 
 tian? O you who would comfort us by 
 force, who would dry our tears in spite of 
 us, who would drag from our broken hearts 
 
110 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 protestations of peace, tell me, have you 
 never suffered in the person of those who 
 suffer? Ah! to suffer alone is terrible; 
 but to see others suffer! To see your 
 mother or your child suffer! How can we 
 be consoled when they are not? And 
 when they are comforted, when we see 
 them made holy, but all laid waste by sor- 
 row, how can we console ourselves with 
 such consolation? They no longer w r eep, 
 but they have wept. How can we console 
 ourselves when their sufferings seem un- 
 just, when we know that they are possess- 
 ing themselves in the thought that they are 
 suffering for us ? 
 
 And if, on the contrary, their sufferings 
 are deserved, if they are tormented by the 
 consequences of their sins, if one hears the 
 blow of the scourge in the midst of their 
 groans, if the cursed name of their iniquity 
 is graven in letters of blood in their very 
 flesh, how then can we console ourselves? 
 How can we console ourselves when they 
 have disappeared unconsoled? How can 
 we console ourselves- when, on the shore, 
 
SA TURD A Y. Ill 
 
 dumb with tenderness and anguish, we 
 stretch out our arms to those who are go- 
 ing away from us; when they turn away 
 their heads toward the dark flood, and 
 their pale faces vanish forfever? Oh, can 
 we console ourselves over our hopeless 
 ones? 
 
 Console ourselves! Who would dare 
 to do such a thing? That would be to 
 console ourselves for sin ; for the problem 
 of suffering is only the problem of sin. 
 You say suffering is good for us because it 
 is a warning; but a warning supposes a 
 peril, and how will you explain this peril ? 
 You say that suffering is a remedy ; but a 
 remedy supposes a malady. Suffering is a 
 chastisement ; but a chastisement supposes 
 a fault. It is true that, in a world plunged 
 in disorder, suffering is inevitable, is use- 
 ful, is necessary; but what do you make 
 of this disorder in which the world is 
 plunged? Will you bring to us this mon- 
 ster decked with garlands of flowers? 
 Away! all the flowers in the world could 
 not hide it. Evil! From whence comes 
 
112 HUMAN SUFFERING. . 
 
 evil? This is the problem that, like an 
 ancient rock, emerges obstinately from the 
 restless ocean of all our explanations. All 
 the intuitions of poets, all the meditations 
 of philosophers, all the assertions of theo- 
 logians, all, all break themselves against 
 this rock. Whence comes evil? 
 
 III. 
 
 Mystery! mystery! 
 
 Like the questions of the Christ in 
 Gethsemane and on Golgotha, all these 
 questions remain unanswered. He who 
 attempts to answer them must soon " put 
 his hand on his mouth, and his mouth in 
 the dust." Can we chase away the dark- 
 ness by saying that the sun is shining? 
 When the night comes, let us fall on our 
 knees in the darkness, searching about in 
 it for the cross of Christ, for it is there. 
 When there is nothing else, the cross is 
 there. When we are forsaken by the world 
 which has deceived us, abandoned by God 
 who speaks no more to us, the cross is 
 
SA TURD A Y. 113 
 
 there. When we can think no longer, 
 when we can no longer pray, it is there. 
 It is there when we let ourselves fall sul- 
 lenly into the gulf of the unknown. It is 
 there, it is always there! Image of all 
 the loneliness, symbol of all the desolation, 
 refuge of all the despair of the world, it 
 remains the supreme asylum for those who 
 doubt, without even knowing that they 
 doubt, for those who no longer understand 
 anything about their destiny, their own 
 hearts, life, death, heaven, all the mystery 
 of the world. 
 
 Yes, this gloomy oppression, this bitter 
 discouragement, this weight of vague mel- 
 ancholy, this affliction without shape or 
 name, these sighs, these anxieties, these 
 strange terrors, this incurable disgust for 
 existence, take them, O unhappy victims, 
 take them to the foot of the cross. There 
 it is darker still. You can weep there at 
 your ease, and wring your hands unseen. 
 Stay there a long time. Little by little 
 the figure of the Saviour will grow visible 
 through the shadows. First you will see 
 
114 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 His drooping body, then you will distin- 
 guish His wounds, at last you will meet 
 His look, the look of the forsaken Lord. 
 Then a new and irresistible emotion will 
 take possession of your soul. In that sin- 
 gle ray, piercing your darkness, an un- 
 known life will spring up. Without knowing 
 why you change, nor how this miraculous 
 transformation operates, you will feel that 
 you enter without a struggle into the blessed 
 crisis of the transfiguration, and you will 
 perceive suddenly that your mute stupe- 
 faction has become adoration. You will 
 have found God again ; and though what 
 was incomprehensible to you is no clearer, 
 you will find an indescribable relief; you 
 will bow your head, silent, docile, murmur- 
 ing in communion with the Son, " Not my 
 will, but Thine, be done." 
 
 If we could understand suffering, there 
 might be place in our hearts for submission, 
 for hope, for thanksgiving ; but there would 
 be no place for adoration. Adoration is 
 the triumph of faith. Adoration consists 
 in believing, praying, living in despite of 
 
SATURDAY. 115 
 
 all things; it is to make a step into the 
 void and say, "There is a rock there." 
 It is to stretch a hand into the darkness 
 and say, " There is a hand there, waiting 
 for mine." The heroic formula of adora- 
 tion is in these four words : / believe in 
 God; for " God is the sovereign decision of 
 the soul." Adoration is not the abdication 
 of reason before mystery ; it is the con- 
 quest of mystery by the will, by humility, 
 by the earnest contemplation of Jesus Christ 
 crucified. Adoration is the victory of a 
 soul which believes that the salvation of 
 the world was consummated through in- 
 firmity, through ignominy, through death. 
 It believes that He who agonized on Gol- 
 gotha was the Son of God ; it believes that 
 He, forsaken on His gibbet, was " the De- 
 sire of the nations " ; it believes that rough 
 and bloody tree to be the center of the 
 universe; it believes that hour of anguish 
 and darkness to be the decisive hour of 
 history ; it believes that the masterpiece of 
 the love of God shone out in the abandon- 
 ment of the Holy and the Just One. The 
 
116 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 soul believes it without understanding, cry- 
 ing out, " Lord, I believe ; help Thou my 
 unbelief/' But in believing, it penetrates 
 into the secrets of the Most High ; it de- 
 ciphers a few lines in the great book of the 
 destinies of our race ; it learns the true 
 meaning of the words defeat and misfor- 
 tune ; it feels confusedly that in the vocab- 
 ulary of the Holy Spirit, death signifies life, 
 and suffering, redemption. 
 
 Then this soul which knows nothing yet, 
 and which already knows all things, finds 
 an indescribable peace in adoration; it 
 contemplates its own baseness and God's 
 greatness, its own poverty and the riches 
 of God ; it blesses and exalts His holy and 
 mysterious will, for the honor of serving 
 God surpasses the glory of understanding 
 Him. 
 
 Do not talk to that soul of proofs, of 
 answers, of deliverances. It is precisely in 
 the absence of proofs that adoration tri- 
 umphs. The soul that adores persists in 
 prayer when prayer seems vain ; " against 
 hope it believes in hope/' Clear proof 
 
SA TURD A Y. 117 
 
 would slay it; and when anguish wrings 
 from it the cry of despair, " My God, my 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" its 
 supreme ambition is to add directly, not- 
 withstanding the implacable silence of the 
 shut heavens, " Father, into Thy hands I 
 commit my spirit." 
 
 Ah ! on this poor earth where Jesus died 
 for men I did not know how to show my 
 love for Him, to suffer in communion with 
 Him, " to turn my sorrows into a cross." 
 Just so far as I have misunderstood the 
 holy purpose of suffering, I have rendered 
 the redemptive sacrifice of no avail. My 
 trials have weakened my faith, they have 
 lessened the faith of my brothers, instead 
 of deepening our common enthusiasm for 
 Him who died on Calvary. Because of 
 my griefs, I have doubted Providence and 
 disdained life; I have declared that my 
 burden was heavier than I could bear. I 
 have misunderstood the usefulness, the ne- 
 cessity, the glory of sorrow ; and I have 
 not been able to discern in the very mys- 
 tery of sorrow the only foothold for a per- 
 
118 HUMAN SUFFERING. 
 
 feet adoration. Christ, pardon me! On 
 this little planet where Thou didst come 
 down to give us Thy blood, I have not 
 even consecrated to Thee my tears. O 
 regrets! O wasted treasures! O irrepa- 
 rable past ! Is this, my brothers, the awak- 
 ening we are preparing for ourselves in 
 glory? 
 
 Ah ! let us arise out of sleep while it is 
 yet time ; let us leave our barren sighs, our 
 fruitless sorrows, our joyless afflictions ; 
 " let us go forth therefore unto Christ with- 
 out the camp, bearing His reproach. For 
 here have we no continuing city, but we 
 seek one to come." 
 
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