Yet another illustration, showing the directly spiritual influence
of suffering--those countless cases of bed-ridden invalids, often in
intense pain, who develop an intense, fervent, yet restful piety, seldom
attained even by the most devout in active life.

Those who have had experience in missions or dealing with individual
souls know how constantly suffering--especially in middle life--lays the
foundations of conversion. Ay, and lays them strong and deep. The soul
in trouble feels its need of God, turns to Him, and then gets to know
the fulness of His mercy, even in and through the affliction.

And now, how stands it in regard to the War? We need not repeat in
detail those various points on which we have already dwelt. Spite of
all the ghastly sufferings the War is bringing in its train, nay, in a
sense, because of them, it has linked together the Empire in the closest
bonds, allayed political and polemical strife, evoked a wealth of
heroism, self-sacrifice, prayer, and benevolence, and braced up the
moral fibre of countless lives.

Yet all this does not explain the existence of suffering, the why and
the wherefore still lie hidden in that region of the infinite which we,
finite beings, cannot penetrate. We can see, from its results, that
suffering is no more incompatible with the eternal love of God, than the
surgeon's knife is inconsistent with the tenderness of his heart. "Whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth," "God dealeth with you as with sons"
(Heb. xii., 6, etc.). Our great mistake is to look upon trouble as
punishment, inflicted by an angry God, and to rebel under the chastening
hand. When God sees that His child, whether the nation or the
individual, needs discipline He sends it, and there is no more lack of
love than there is on the part of the wise earthly parent, when he