Curiosities of Heat

by Lyman Beecher Tefft

“I am afraid that I shall not be able to give you satisfaction,” replied Mr. Wilton, “but I shall be glad to hear your question. I can at least appreciate your state, and sympathize with you in your groping and struggling. I am glad that you are walking the road you have just described. You say that you do not know what has brought you to your present state. I can easily tell you: your experience at this point is not singular; I think the Holy Spirit of God has been leading you and has brought you to your present position. I trust in God that he will lead you still farther. You have great cause for thankfulness and great cause for trembling. Let me caution you: be careful how you treat the divine Spirit; walk softly; be honest, sincere, and simple-hearted as a little child. ‘Except a man become as a little child, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Above all things, be sincere and straightforward. Deal truly and frankly with the Spirit. If you will only be honest and frank,—honest and frank to yourself, honest and frank to all men, honest and frank with God,—God will soon give you cause to praise him and love him for ever and ever. But what is the question which you wished to propose?”

“My difficulty is this: Along with the many arrangements for conferring enjoyment and promoting the well-being of man are other arrangements for suffering. Man is made as capable of suffering as of enjoyment, and there are appliances provided which are certain to inflict that pain of which man is capable. How is this provision for suffering in man and in all sentient creatures consistent with the benevolence elsewhere shown? How are we to combine these two sets of arrangements in our thinking?”

“A full unfolding of the ministry of pain in the good providence of God would lead us entirely aside from our course of study.”

“But for me,” said Mr. Hume, earnestly, “it would be not at all aside; for if I can once see that the provision for suffering made in the constitution of man and of Nature is not repugnant to the idea of a wise and good Creator and Disposer of human affairs, I will admit whatever you shall have to say afterward, and I shall feel that the gospel of Christ comes to man and comes to me with a moral force which ought not to be resisted. I know that I have no right to come into your class and ask you to turn aside from your course of study, and the gospel certainly owes nothing to me, yet I do hope you will give the opinions which you hold upon this subject, if you have formed any positive opinions.”

“I am sure,” exclaimed Peter, “that we shall all be very glad to have you spend the time of this lesson in speaking of this subject.”

“But how would it please you if my talk upon the ministry of pain should prove to be very much like a sermon?”

“I think we like your sermons. I know that we were never so much interested in them as now.”

“Very well, then; I will give you, as Mr. Hume says, some of my conclusions touching this matter of pain and suffering; and if my opinions are not satisfactory or do not cover the facts in the case, it will not be because I have given the subject little thought or have had little experience of suffering. The Lord has led me by a rugged road; he has given me tears to drink and mingled my cup with weeping. But for this I thank him, and I expect, when I shall look back from the life to come upon my earthly course, to see my days of pain and grief shining more brightly than the hours of radiant sunshine.

“First of all, then, I believe that with the clear exhibition of benevolent design which we see in this world we ought not to doubt the goodness of the Creator, even if we can give no rational explanation of the suffering which abounds. We ought not to believe, we cannot believe, that the Creator’s own attributes are self-contradictory and antagonistic, that the same infinite Being is both good and evil, partly benevolent and partly malignant. If God is good at all, he is wholly good. Nor can we believe that a good being and an evil being—God and Satan—hold joint sway over the universe and co-operated in the work of creation, and that the good is to be ascribed to the one, and the pain and suffering to the other. Whether we can explain it or not, we must believe that there is a good reason for the existence of suffering; unless, indeed, we count the infliction of pain the chief end of the creation, and refer the happiness which men enjoy to some incidental arrangements not contemplated as important in the work of creation. But no sane man can think that this world is the work of a demon seeking to fill the earth with groans and wretchedness. Our consciences and our reason alike require us to believe in the supremacy of goodness.

“In presenting my views, I of course cannot attempt to prove everything from the beginning: I must take some things for granted between us. We must start with the admission that there is a God, and that he is a righteous, moral governor. We must at least believe what Paul declares to be needful: ‘He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’ We must also believe our own consciences when they testify that men are responsible, free moral actors, and that sin and guilt are not false notions arising from diseased and morbid mental conditions, but realities, true ideas which arise in the mind when it works as God designed. Do you freely admit these points of belief, Mr. Hume?”