Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 May 1917 — Sorrow the Raw Material Out of Which Joy and Progress Are Evolved [ARTICLE]

Sorrow the Raw Material Out of Which Joy and Progress Are Evolved

By SHERWOOD EDDY

Director of Y. M. C. A. Evangelistic Work in Europe. The very magnitude of human suffering would seem to indicate that: if life means anything it must mean something very intense y. er apa it is not meant for pleasure but for character, not for ease u o nline; not primarily for the temporal but for the eternal. Is there a purpose in pain? Had Shakespeare, that g rea mas ® of the human heart, found something of its meaning when e w “Sweet are the uses of adversity?” A study of the facts o ie seerna to show at least three possible purposes of pain. Suffering may e isciplinarv, remedial or redemptive. That is, it may teach us ff rea ebson - it may reform and refine our own characters, or it may be patiently borne for the sake of others. And we shall find, also, that it is temporary and often removable. ~ The greatest helpers of humanity have been its crosg^earey B’■ 8 ’■ the leaders of men have suffered in their loneliness; the prophetsTiavHearned their lessons in the school of pain. Ease has not produced greatness. The bird rises against a strong head wind. The opposing force becomes a lifting force if faced at the riHit angle. The stars shine out by night which are unseen and unnotice by day. The shining hopes of humanity break forth in the darkness of adversity to lighten man's pathway to the eternal. Is not all suffering either disciplinary for man’s development, remedial for his reform, redemptive and vicarious for the saving of the race, or removable for man's good? As you think them over, is not each one ‘of these an evil which may be turned into good? Is not all sorrow the raw material of joy?