en failure, are far
better teachers. Sir Humphry Davy said: "Even in private life, too much
prosperity either injures the moral man, and occasions conduct which
ends in suffering; or it is accompanied by the workings of envy,
calumny, and malevolence of others."

Failure improves tempers and strengthens the nature. Even sorrow is in
some mysterious way linked with joy and associated with tenderness. John
Bunyan once said how, "if it were lawful, he could even pray for greater
trouble, for the greater comfort's sake." When surprise was expressed at
the patience of a poor Arabian woman under heavy affliction, she said,
"When we look on God's face we do not feel His hand."

Suffering is doubtless as divinely appointed as joy, while it is much
more influential as a discipline of character. It chastens and sweetens
the nature, teaches patience and resignation, and promotes the deepest
as well as the most exalted thought. [2112]

"The best of men
That e'er wore earth about Him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." [2113]

Suffering may be the appointed means by which the highest nature of man
is to be disciplined and developed. Assuming happiness to be the end of
being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through which it is to
be reached. Hence St. Paul's noble paradox descriptive of the Christian
life,--"as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet
possessing all things."

Even pain is not all painful. On one side it is related to suffering,
and on the other to happiness. For pain is remedial as well as
sorrowful. Suffering is a misfortune as viewed from the one side, and a
discipline as viewed from the other. But for suffering, the best part of
many men's nature would sleep a deep sleep. Indeed, it might almost
be said that pain and sorrow were the indispensable conditions of some
men's success, and the necessary means to evoke the highest development
of their genius. Shelley has said of poets:

"Most wretched men are cradled into poetry by wrong,
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

Does any one suppose that Burns would have sung as he did, had he
been rich, respectable, and "kept a gig;" or Byron, if he had been a
prosperous, happily-married Lord Privy Seal or Postmaster-General?

Sometimes a