development. The misery of the world may exist in spite of and because of His love. We can see that the method which has been adopted for our discipline in life is sometimes good. Does it then require such a very great effort to believe that it is always best?

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True and False Discontent.

VI.

PESSIMISM (continued).

B. THE NECESSITY FOR PAIN (continued).

SOME amount of pain, we have seen, is necessary to

preserve us from greater pain, to warn us when we are in danger; and pain is also requisite for the development of the higher phases of human character. I mentioned last Sunday, and we have seen more fully on previous occasions, the important part played by suffering in the development of selfreliance and self-respect, of pity, mercy and the spirit of self-sacrifice. There is also a further necessity for pain arising from the reign of law. To this point I will call your attention to-day.

At the outset I will frankly admit that, in regard to the laws of nature in general and the laws of

The

life in particular, there is one great difficulty which theists have never been able to remove. difficulty is this. After due allowance has been made for all the suffering which is useful, either directly or indirectly, in the development of individuals and of races, there still remains an enormous amount of agony, for the existence of which it is impossible even to imagine any sufficient reason. Why then, it is asked, are the laws of sentient existence what they are? There might have been, it is said, other and better biological laws, that would not have entailed such an awful amount of apparently wasted suffering, that would not have involved such an enormous number of lives which come prematurely to an end. The prodigal waste of life in nature is used by Lange, the historian of materialism, as an argument against the existence of God, or at least against the existence of a Creator who made the world according to an intelligible plan. "If a man, in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge a thousand guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if, in order to get into a locked-up room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town and leave all other houses to wind and weather,―assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful.

But whoever will study the modern scientific laws of the propagation of species will find everywhere the same kind of waste. The perishing of vital germs, the abortion of the process begun, is the rule; the natural development is a special case, one amongst thousands." We behold the face of nature," says Darwin, "bright with gladness; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; we forget how largely these songsters or their eggs or their nestlings are destroyed by other birds or by beasts of prey." No satisfactory explanation of this can be given.

It used to be said that everything discordant and repulsive in nature resulted from "the Fall." But that is a doctrine which would be ridiculous, if it were not immoral. It has been asserted by theologians that the suffering of animals is intended by the Deity as a punishment for the guilt of man. Those who make this assertion practically identify God with the devil. Only a degraded being, destitute of the most elementary respect for justice, could possibly be guided by the contemptible motives which were formerly attributed to the Almighty. We have now learned that a vindictive Deity is a contradiction in terms, and that there

fore no such being can possibly exist. But though we have got rid of the old-fashioned explanation, we have not found any other to supply its place. We are obliged to confess that we do not know of any rational purpose which can be answered by nature's seemingly ruthless waste of suffering and of life.

The wastefulness of nature is legitimately regarded by the pessimists as an argument in favour of their views. It seems to me the only argument they have which is worth much. But this argument, I must confess, is a powerful one. It does present a very serious difficulty to those who would believe in the existence of a God, who is at once powerful and wise and good.

A serious difficulty-but not quite insuperable. Because, as I pointed out to you, if we can sometimes see that some suffering is useful and indeed necessary, we have then a logical basis for the hope that there may be satisfactory reasons—though as yet undiscovered for all the suffering of the sentient world.

Now it seems to me that pain is to some extent a necessity, not only for the reasons which I have before mentioned, but also because it is inevitably involved in the reign of law. Let us see.

You all know what is meant by a law in the