The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1902-05-25
THE USES OF SUFFERING.

For it became him. for whom are all
things. and by whom are all things i'm
bringing many sons unto glory to make
the captain Of their salvation perfect
through sufferings.
L ROM THE HILLS OF UTAH every
day come great trainloads Of un-
attractive dirt. Strangers journeying
through this mountain commonwealth
have wondered. perhaps, why men
should risk their lives in the earth's
embrace TO dig the Notwithstanding
stuff and ship il to a smelter. If such
doubters watch the dirt they condemn
they are not long kept in wonder as to
its value. Into the furnaces it goes,
furnaces heated seven times as hot as
the seven-times heated furnace into
which the Hebrew children were
thrown And in that flame, the great
purifier and consumer, the worthless
material is destroyed. Only the
precious metals remain.
All the world is tried in some fiery
furnace: an the world working under
inexorabIe law. must endure suferings
worlds greatest geniUses have been
the men and the women who have suf-
fered most. It has been said that no
human being can be great who has
not suffered The long, bright roll,
from the Man of Sorrows to the most
modern example. attests the truth of
the saying. one must feel before one
can do.
Who gives the greatest comfort TO
the mother bereft Of her eve lamb?
The woman who has stood over the
body Of her own beloved child. And,
as rain falling upon a desert place, her
tears mingle with the tears of the
bereaved one. the bruised heart is
healed in some small measure. the
jagged wound is closed. So is it in all
the sorrows as well as all the joys,
the trials. the temptations.
sympathy for the invalid does not.
cannot. flow readily from the heart of
one who knows not what invalidism
means. Nobody feels for the poor as
the poor feel for one another. Nobody
helps the poor as the poor help one
another. They know the pangs Of
hunger; they appreciate the mental
torture the physical suffering. which
comes with sunken cheeks and i'll
nourished bodies.
Men of little faith have reviled their
Creator because he permits them to
suffer. They do not see how a just
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feel the bitterness of bereavement. the
curse of ill health, the grind of pow
erty. Women have wondered piteOusly
why. why. why. There is nothing so
pathetic in all history, sacred or pro-
fame. as the cry, wrenched from that
broken figure on the cross:
My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?"
Was that awful suffering in vain?
Ask the millions upon millions who
have been made better for it. Skeptics
may jeer, agnostics may scott. men
wise in their own conceit may cry
myth and myth il may be, but in
their heart Of hearts they must be-
lieve. even though they believe in a
temporal sense, that Christ did not die
In vain.
sweet are the uses Of adversely.
which. like the toad ugly and venom
Gus, wears yet a precious jewel in his
head" wrote Shakespeare. The word
adversely" covers not only poverty.
but every ill that human flesh is heir
to. What is the jewel this toad. ugly
and venomous," wears in his head? It
IS character. and character means
patience, fortitude. forbearance; 1t
means helpfulness, charity, Iong-suf-
fering.
The great Parkmau did his best work
during years in which he was not free
from pain for one moment Robert
Louis Stevenson was an invalid all his
life. Paul Leicester Ford was a
hUnchback. General L. s. Grant in all
the civil war never showed the heroism
he displayed when he fought the can
Ger that killed him an inch at a time
and worked hours every day on his
memoirs. Wolfe rose from the bed on
which fever had laid him to die vic
torious ON the plains of Abraham.
What a long, long list it is and what
an inspiration it must be to all gener-
ations. Look about you. look in your
own family and among your most in
innate friends. DO YOU not love best
those who have suffered most and are
they not most lovabIe2
Wherefore, seeing we also are COM
passed about with so great a cloud OF
witnesses. let us lay aside every weight
and the sin which doth so easily beset
us. and let us run with patience the
race that is set before US"