Letters to His Friends

by Forbes Robinson

To F. S. H.

Alassio, Italy; January 2, 1904.

Your letter came to me at a time when I was rather low. I had to have a second operation. However, after fifteen weeks of Nursing Homes I escaped, and, as soon as I could, made my way to St. Moritz. For once the place didn't seem to suit me very well. So, after little more than a week, I came down into Italy. I am so far recovered now that I quite hope to be able to go back to college at the beginning of this term.

Illness and pain have taught me some lessons—at least I hope so. I feel solemnised, startled, when I think of how life looked when I could do nothing for the time. Pray for me that I may be more real. I learnt, too, how futile it is to put off repentance till sickness. It is hard at such a time to think of aught save self and physical pain. And my own pain was so trivial compared with that of others. O God! it is a terrible thing. Some day shall we be able to understand, if not with the head, with the heart, part of its meaning? Meanwhile the individual can say, however feebly, 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.'

To his brother, a doctor in South Africa.

Alassio, Italy: January 7, 1904.

At last I am beginning to get tired of doing nothing. I hope that eventually I shall be stronger than I have been for some years past. At any rate I hope a little first-hand experience of pain will make me more sympathetic. Pain seems to me now a greater mystery than ever before. But I comforted myself with the thought that in the highest Life ever seen on earth, there was a full measure of spiritual, mental, and physical pain. Also it was a comfort to feel that when one accepted, not simply with resignation but with faith, certain suffering, one was in sympathy with the will of the universe, 'working together with God' in some mysterious way. What a strange place a hospital is! How wonderful the Gospels are, with their hope and comfort on every page—hope for the physical as well as the mental side of man's life! I like more than ever now to read how Jesus went about healing all manner of diseases and all manner of sickness and bringing life and strength wherever He came, showing us that Heaven is on our side in our wrestle with all that deforms and degrades human nature.

I certainly don't regret my illness. Besides showing me the marvellous kindness of friends, it has, I hope, taught me much.