of all. In a certain sense it
is likely true that those suffer most in life who are most united to God;
for they feel most the coldness of the world and its desolation, its want
of love and sympathy, its degradation and its misery. Hence it would be a
mistake to think that the friends of God in this life are either exempted
from pain and sorrow, or made insensible to them, either in themselves or
in others. Of these and other evils they are truly more keenly aware than
worldly men, if for no other reason than because of the superior
refinement of their nature and the spiritual outlook of their vision. It
is sin, after all, that hardens while it weakens. Sin closes the heart to
love, it renders its victims cold, unsympathetic and selfish; whereas the
gifts of grace and holiness are tenderness, mercy, strength. But though
all have to suffer, both the holy and the unholy, the difference between
them is this, that the ungodly are borne down and overcome by their
sorrows and crosses, while the spiritual are always triumphing even in the
midst of apparent defeat. To the foolish they seem to be vanquished, yet
they conquer; often they seem on the verge of surrender, when they emerge
in victory; they seem to die, when behold they live!(46)

The spiritual man, then, does suffer; he suffers in the cause of God; he
suffers for others and for himself. More than this, it is doubtless true
that he feels his crosses more keenly, he grieves more profoundly, than do
the children of the world; but through it all he remembers his Saviour and
is comforted. He knows that the tribulations of the just are many, and
that from all these the Lord will soon deliver him,(47) and he shall not
be confounded forever.

VIII. THY ROD AND THY STAFF THEY COMFORT ME.

It is already plain to us that the sorrows and sufferings of the present
life are, without doubt, the result and consequence of sin. That we should
pass our mortal days so full of pain and tears, that our fellow-man, that
the beasts of the field and the elements, which we need and use as helpers
and servants, and most of all that our own nature, with its passions and
evil tendencies, should rise up against us and oppose us, was assuredly
not a part of the original plan. As a wise and all-powerful Designer and
Creator, God founded the world after a masterful fashion--devoid of evil,
free from defect, perfect according to the plans framed in Heaven. The
hills and mountains He founde