§ 8. Value of Suffering as a Means of Education.
The sufferings of Christ were necessary for his own perfection, and suffering in some form or other is necessary for all perfection. It is often said that suffering in this world is casual, an accidental thing, arising from human mistakes, and that the time will come in which man will grow up into perfection without suffering. A perpetual sunlight is thought to be the best condition for the human plant. Pain and want stunt its growth, winter storms arrest its development; and so it is supposed that if we can get rid of this element of suffering, human beings will soon become all they ought to be. But the poet speaks more wisely who says,—
“To each their sufferings: all are men
Condemned alike to groan;
The feeling for another's woe,
The unfeeling for his own.”
For suppose that we could remove from the world all outward evil—get rid of sickness, pain, poverty, death. Would not the worst part of evil still remain? Would not discontent, selfishness, envy, wilfulness, cruelty, self-indulgence continue? All these exist—perhaps exist most frequently—where there is the least of outward evil; and the outward evil is the bitter medicine which comes by and by as a cure.
§ 9. The Human Conscience suggests the Need of some Satisfaction in order to our Forgiveness.
The central idea of the atonement is, that Christ has done something which enables God to forgive us our sin; and the reason why this doctrine of atonement seems so precious is, that we feel that [pg 246] there is a real difficulty in the way of forgiveness,—as if something else were necessary besides repentance,—as if some compensation or reparation should be made somehow to the offended law of God, or to the aggrieved holiness of God. We do not say that this feeling is a true feeling: that question we must consider afterwards. But it is, at any rate, a natural feeling, whether it be founded on our knowledge of God or our ignorance of God. It is hard to believe that a man whom we have injured will forgive us that injury merely because we ask him to do so, and are sorry for what we have done. We feel that we must make some reparation before he can or ought to forgive us. Unquestionably, the conscience is the source of this feeling. It led Zaccheus to say, “If I have done any man wrong, I restore him four-fold.” A full reparation for an injury, accompanied with sorrow for having done it, the expression of which sorrow is confession, satisfies the conscience. Having done this, we feel that we have a right to be forgiven.