Thank God for all that I have gained
By that high suffering.
—Lord Houghton.
(3099)
Suffering Ignored—See [Heartless Pagans].
Suffering that Develops—See [Adversity Helping Genius].
SUFFERING TRANSFORMED
Christ teaches us how, under the redemptive government of God, suffering has become a subtle and magnificent process for the full and final perfecting of human character. Science tells us how the bird-music, which is one of nature’s foremost charms, has arisen out of the bird’s cry of distress in the morning of time; how originally the music of field and forest was nothing more than an exclamation caused by the bird’s bodily pain and fear, and how through the ages the primal note of anguish has been evolved and differentiated until it has risen into the ecstasy of the lark, melted into the silver note of the dove, swelled into the rapture of the nightingale, unfolded into the vast and varied music of the sky and the summer. So Christ shows us that out of the personal sorrow which now rends the believer’s heart he shall arise in moral and infinite perfection; that out of the cry of anguish wrung from us by the present distress shall spring the supreme music of the future. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(3100)
SUFFERING TURNED TO SONG