3iU MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



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 personal suffering ever brings back the problem 

 in all its insolubility, 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 Eoman 

 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 suffering 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 ; and most of all 

 to sympathize with you in your present sorrow. Think not that 

 I despise tears, or count them unmanly. If I said once that I 

 did not weep, it was to explain an allusion in a verse, not to 

 parade the fact or to boast of it. 



" Weeping, or not weeping, is neither here nor there as a sign 

 of courage or the want of it. It is dependent in great part on a 

 man's physical make, and the action of a little gland. When I 

 am prostrated my mind eats inwards, and broods in morbid 

 silence and gloom. Tears would be a relief, but they will not 

 come. I would be thankful if they did, and take no credit that 

 they do not. 



" I can, I think, altogether sympathize with you, in the great 



