THE MYSTERY OF DISASTERS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13491, 10 June 1914, Page 3

THE MYSTERY OF DISASTERS.

At the .memorial service at the Wellington, Missions to Seamen in connection with the recent St. Lawrence river disaster, the Bishop of Wellington (Dr. Sprott) said: Men asked why conld such things happen in a world created and ruled by perfect love and Almighty power. He did not profess to bo kble to find a perfect solution of the problem. Only a mind which could grasp the whole could understand the full meaning of all the parts. We were like little children gazing on some great and complex machine. The various parts would be unintelligible to them. Only a person who understood the machine as a whole could fully under--1 stand the full purpose of its parts. i But while we could not give a complete answer to the obstinate questions which great catastrophes suggested, we could see some meaning and purpose in them. We could see in some measure why life here should not be perfectly comfortable and safe, without trial, pain, or difficulty. We could see enough of its meaning to trust where we could not see, and to believe that if we understood the whole we would find it worthy of God. We were placed in the world for education. Ease was not the supreme end which God had in

' view for us. If primitive man had found life perfectly comfortable he would have remained a babe in intellect. He-, was surrounded and threatened by great unknown forces, and in order not to be crushed by them he tried to understand them. He wanted to use them, and out of the desire to live arose the desire to know. Here we had the explanation of the quest of knowledge which had done so much for the progress of humanity. In this way God trained the mind of man. Again, if life was perfectly happy and safe, and all was absolutely certain, character would never have acquired some of its most winning graces. In such a comfortable and happy world there would be no use for sympathy. The uncertainty of life taught us to be tender and gentle.