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 corrects his child and makes him suffer pain.  Nay, it is the very love that prompts the discipline.

Once more, let us look at suffering in its power of producing sympathy.

The Incarnation was the greatest act of sympathy the world has ever known.  The Word made flesh, our Saviour born as a babe, that He might enter into all the experiences of our human nature; that He might not simply feel for us, but feel with us.

Here is the essence of the word; take it in Latin, compassion; take it in Greek, sympathy—­alike it means feeling with.  And in the wondrous mystery of the Church, the spiritual body of Christ, the same great principle is still working itself out.

Very strange, very mysterious, yet real with the essence of reality, is the connection between the suffering Christ and the suffering Church, “inasmuch as ye have ministered to one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”  And yet it is the Christ Who helps and sustains us from on high.  The same Christ Who was here upon earth, suffering in His martyr Stephen was yet standing at the Father’s right hand to succour him.

The same Christ Who flashed the wondrous vision of Himself on the eyes of S. Paul, was yet so intimately present in and with His infant Church that he “thundered” forth the question, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?”