THE LESSON OF SUFFERING

Annie M. Knott

Much is being said at the present time, pro and con, on the subject of pain and suffering. It has long been believed that pain is either a warning or a punishment, but few have been logical enough to see that there was no reason for its continuance when the warning had been taken or when the offense which had brought the punishment had ceased. The belief in physical law and its control of the human body is so general that few venture to disobey it for any length of time; indeed, the most slavish obedience to asserted health laws usually follows their brief neglect, but this seldom brings any freedom from suffering or restores health, even where disagreeable and expensive remedies are taken as well. On account of the wide prevalence of suffering among mankind, many have tried to philosophize about it and have insisted that it is a necessary element of human experience, while with strange inconsistency they have also tried to make it a misdemeanor for any one to neglect the use of the means supposed to be effective in getting rid of suffering.

In Christian Science the disciplinary nature of suffering in human experience is not denied, as some mistakenly suppose, but it is regarded from a mental rather than a material standpoint. We read in our text-book that "the divine Mind cannot suffer," but we also read that "they who sin must suffer" (Science and Health, pp. 108, 37). The whole teaching of Christian Science is that the discipline of Truth begins when a right effort is made to overcome the error or sin which is causing the suffering. It is the overcoming of both sin and suffering in Christ's way that really counts in the development of character, not the suffering itself, which too often checks all advance so long as one is unable to rise above it. Owen Meredith was right when he said,—

Cease the sin with the sorrow! See morning begin!
Pain must burn itself out if not fuel'd by sin.

Referring to the self-inflicted tortures of an earlier day, and also to present-day belief, a widely read newspaper, the Detroit Free Press, says editorially,—

It seems to be inherent in the human mind to want to expiate its sense of guilt in personal suffering. It is a tendency that easily runs to extremes and becomes as grossly physical as if the higher spiritual senses were a thing unknown. . . . Of course, it seems to us in this day a rather illogical thing to say that evil inheres in the eye, or the tongue, or the hand. If a man's tongue utters reprehensible things, it seems to us that the cause is somewhere back of the tongue. If a man's hand assists him in his occupation as a pickpocket, or his eye in his work as a counterfeiter, it would seem that neither tendency to crime would be cured by lopping off the hand or plucking out the eye. The criminality is back of those. A man might wear a manacle all his life and in nature still be the pickpocket. The body is to be held in subjection not alone by virtue of instruments of torture, but by the renewing of a right mind and the purification of the well-springs of action.

These utterances show a great advance in thought, and recall the Master's teaching, that when we cleanse that which is within, that which is without will be clean also; and this is the teaching of Christian Science. So far as can be judged, Christ Jesus never hesitated about overcoming pain and disease, and he said that he had come to do the Father's will. Evils which are cast out in the Christ-way have no place in either mind or body, and when they are thus dealt with it may be fittingly said that the consciousness of the one healed is "the temple of God."

St. John speaks conclusively on this subject when he declares in the book of Revelation that there shall be neither pain, sin, nor death in the kingdom of God; and he tells of unimpeded activity, "His servants shall serve him [God]." Jesus said that all should know God, and in Christian Science we find that the knowing and the serving overcome the suffering. Those who have proved the truth of this proposition—and they are unnumbered thousands—know that it was by the overcoming, not by the suffering, that they were enabled to "draw nigh unto God."

Annie M. Knott.

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A SERIOUS RESPONSIBILITY

May 16, 1908

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