^J'HE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 



355 



pain, because of the pleasure that cometh in self-sacri- 

 fice." Martyrdom, of course, has always been a most 

 heroic feature of human life; and yet who will dare to 

 affirm that the pages of history would not be the 

 brighter without it? Martyrdom, indeed, is one of 

 the darkest blots upon civilization. Let us confront 

 pain bravely, if necessary; but let us not think ourselves 

 cowards if we avoid it. We were created to live hap- 

 pily; and Whitman was not so far wrong when he told 

 us to seek Happiness and to diffuse it. Yet shall we all 

 have to meet pain, nevertheless. The way of the cross, 

 as Thomas a Kempis so profoundly said, is "the royal 

 way." 



But why, after all, should not man and Nature live 

 without pain? Why should we be compelled to con- 

 front the spectacle of blasted lives, unfulfilled natures, 

 premature death in the midst of usefulness and joy in 

 one's labor? Why should Lincoln and McKinley have 

 to die by the assassin? Why could not Lincoln have 

 lived to enact his policy of reconstruction, and McKin- 

 ley his of reciprocity? There were lessons brought 

 home to the American people by their deaths that per- 

 haps could not have been accomplished so well in any 

 other way; and we have taken the lessons to ourselves, 

 that they died that we might live. But what shall we 

 say of the innumerable tragedies all over the world, 

 except that by these, too, is brought home to us merely 

 the ever-recurring problem of our destiny? Those who 

 die thus, while not realizing as perhaps they might the 

 fullness of their powers, yet have their individual loss, 

 the evil of their personal sacrifice, translated into terms 

 of beneficence for the rest of mankind. But what of 



