GOD AND PAIN.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TEE" SPECTATOR."]
Sri,—Many of the Clergy will be grateful to Mr. Footman for his lectures, and to you for calling attention to them. We are beginning to find out that Ritualism, Dissent, and Disestablish- meat are small matters, compared with the subversion of all faith in Christianity, or even of belief in a God at all.
The existence of suffering, contemplated in itself, is one of the Theist's saddest troubles. But if all human life is for the education of souls, and if suffering be, in one way or another, a mighty influence, indispensable to much that is noblest in human character, how could that suffering appear in man with- out previous traces of it in his animal forerunner ? And we may remember that although certain physical signs are gener- ally indications of severe suffering, yet they are not always so, even in mankind ; and that even among men themselves, the highly cultivated appear to be susceptible to pain in circum- stances and to a degree which their savage kinsfolk seem almost to escape.
That such considerations only diminish, but do not remove, the difficulty, is true enough ; but what right have we to expect to see, at this stage of human progress, all moral difficulties cleared away, any more than scientific difficulties as to the origin of life, the relations between mind and matter, and the like ? We see our way but darkly ; the passing cloud lies heavy, and depresses us. We must watch, and wait.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ANOTHER LINCOLNSHIRE PARSON.
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