254 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



" May He give us more and higher work to do for Him, 

 and as a preparation for it, subdue our wills to His, and 

 make us like our blessed Saviour. I have a poor cousin 

 dying, and the spectacle of his sufferings has made me 

 stop fretting over lesser pangs, which seemed less than 

 nothing compared with his. The great mystery of suffering 

 in a world so beautiful, and orderly, and full of law as this, 

 we shall never understand on this side the grave, and per- 

 sonal suffering ever brings back the problem in all its insolu- 

 bility, to tempt the aching heart to aim at its solution again. 

 But for all practical ends there is an adequate solution of 

 the great mystery in the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ 

 himself suffered as none of His people are called to do. 

 I cannot always think of the Saviour's sufferings. They 

 are too awful for aught but very solemn meditation. The 

 Roman Catholics and Methodists alike cultivate a mode of 

 referring to the agonies which Christ endured, which I shrink 

 from, although I do not doubt that many of both retain a 

 most reverential feeling for the Lord. 



" But in periods of great sorrow and suffering, the thought 

 that a holy, sinless, perfect man, was the subject of a lifetime 

 of trial, wound up by a death of the most painful kind, 

 and this with His own consent, and by the appointment of 

 God the Father, comes home to my heart as a warning 

 against being perplexed overmuch with the mystery of suf- 

 fering when it is laid upon myself. And when to this 

 thought is added the other, that this great sufferer was 

 Himself God, I feel that fully to realize this truth is the 

 surest way of preventing that eating of one's own heart, 

 which, when ill and sad, we are all so prone to do." 



"It is not about B I am going to write. This is 



Sabbath evening, and I desire to think of other, things; 



