ant, in the deepest sense, to drive us to the divine. This is the
meaning of those tears and sorrows, those pains and sufferings, that
loneliness, that grief, that agony of heart and soul which belong to this
world of tears. All these are intended to teach us that here below, on
this crumbling shore of time, we have no abiding city, or home, or life,
or love; but seek a city, a home, a life, a love that hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.(55)

We need God, we were made for God, and our nature, with all its longings
and powers, cries out for Him. And therefore has God so arranged the
world, in spite of all its evils, and in spite of all our sinfulness,
that, if we do not prevent it, it will lead us out to happiness--lead us
out to Himself. It was our sin that despoiled the face of the world; but
God, in His mercy, has drawn good out of evil, He has made the effects of
sin minister to our advantage, if we will but have it so. We may,
forsooth, refuse, because we are free; we may object, and rebel, and
oppose our lot; we may take our destiny out of the hands of our Creator
and attempt to shape it for ourselves; we may deride and despise the
humble, the lowly of heart, the patient, the mortified and the suffering;
we may upbraid the Providence of God and its workings, and refuse to
submit to the rule of the Creator; we may hold in derision and contempt
the little band that is sweetly marching the way of the cross, preferring
for ourselves the company of the multitude that knows not God--all this can
we do, because we are free; but if such be our choice, and if we persevere
in it, our portion is fixed, and we shall have at last only to say with
the wicked: "Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light
of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not
risen upon us. We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and
destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we
have not known. What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the
boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a
shadow, and like a post that runneth on."(56)

Sufferings, therefore, are common to all, to the good and the bad, to the
wise and the foolish, to the children of light and to the children of
darkness. But only those who are directed by grace and light from above
are able to pierce the deeper meaning of the cross. All have to bear it,
but not all unde