p. 131 | The Uses of Pain and Sorrow

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 3, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 9

The Uses of Pain and Sorrow

There is a certain pathos in the thought that whatever one may lack in this world, he will not lack the chastening of pain and sorrow. The highest and the lowest, the keenest and the dullest, the most richly gifted and the least cultivated, must each pass under that yoke. If pleasure were the chief end of being, it would be hard to understand why pain should claim so large a part in human life. But when we understand that there is a higher good than pleasure, and that suffering is a necessary step toward that higher good, we have no reason to bear pain calmly, and to wait. Not all who suffer pain will reach the highest good; but no stroke falls on the quivering flesh which is not, or which cannot become, a blessing and a help. If suffering be other to us than a messenger of God's grace, it is we, and not God, who are to blame.—S. S. Times.