Waiapu Church Gazette. Friday, June 1st, 1923. The Mystery of Pain.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XIII, Issue 12, 1 June 1923, Page 274

Waiapu Church Gazette. Friday, June Ist, 1923. The Mystery of Pain.

BY THE BISHOP OF ARMIDALE. THE PERCENTAGE OF CASES.

No one is sanguine enough to presume that Mr Hickson, despite his triumphant procession as a healer, can cure every patient submitted to him during his series of missions. We are still quite m the dark as to the percentage of cures that take place. Granted that many are relieved and reinvigorated, has the Mission nothing but disappointment for those invalids who return to their homes with the same cross to bear and the same prospect of suffering and dis* ability It is thrilling news to read tho. brief lists of instantaneous cures, <m-l of those who experience some marked access of vitality — but what of the incurables? In respect to these most records are silent. Is God m their case defeated. Does He disown the iriemediables ? Has pain no place m the Divine Order? Are we to regard those whom spiritual healing •fails to cure as beyond the pale of His intervention? FALSE THEORIES OF PAIN. Such a view would be little short of paganism. . It would run counter to the whole tenor of Christian faith and practice. Saint and martyr from conscious experience would scout it with denial and contradiction. In preparation for this Mission much has already been written to show that sickness is no more part of God's purpose than sin or moral evil, and that if we dare not attribute to Him the latter, on the same grounds we cannot m justice "impute to Him the former. Such a statement may carry us too far- if it implies that pain as a factor of life is purely adventitious.

Have we any right to assume that all suffering is the result of sin Granted that pain is frequently the retribution consequent upon wrongdoing, still no one, unless he is a fatalistic believer m Karma can positively assert that every pain is a penalty of some kind. As Holy Week draws near do not let. us forget that even our Lord was not spared the sneer : ' "Physician heal thyself," and on Good Friday, as He hung upon the Cross, His adversaries reviled Him with the taunt: "Save thyself and come down from the Cross"; "He saved others, Himself he cannot save." In like manner, St. Paul's prayer for the removal of his thorn m the flesh was denied. The ages still reproduce the method of Calvary which discredits cheap, dogmatic theories of pain. If the healing compassion of God allowed Christ to suffer, if Christ was made perfect m suffering, may it not be that patients who are not healed, have m their pain some divine mission, which God not only allows but ordains both for their sakes and for ours? Has not .the Divine love still a gift, richer perhaps than healing, to confer, upon these sufferers, which may enable them to transmute their suffering and offer it with themselves as partakers with Christ? As we look back upon our lives, how much pain m the past, if we had the power, would we erase as radically useless? Has not St. Peter a far finer gospel of pain than that of the Christian scientist when he affirms : — "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among- you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing, happened unto you ; but inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ 's sufferings, rejoice ; that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceedingjoy." THE PURPOSE OF PAIN. Mr Hickson, doubtless, rightly insists that sickness is an evil and that whenever it occurs, we should unhesitatingly employ every resource to administer relief. Few would deny that there may be much useless suffering which has no right to exist. But can all pain be included under this category? Such a statement would be far too sweeping. The modern psychologist is quick to discern the substratum of pain that underlies all sentient life. Does this fulfil no adequate purpose? As Professor James puts it, each individual has his own misery line. Live below it and at once a hundred small aches and pains start into significance and worry us with discomfort. Live above it, and although the pain ingredient is still latent, yet, once the measure of vitality is increased, it has the strange power to absorb the

fatigue, the exhaustion of other slight ailment, so that the very material of the pain contributes to the zest and triumph upon which real health depends. The. swimmer whose chin is submerged may swiftly incur danger, but let him raise himself another . inchi or two above the surface and he will breast the waves with his head erect, m. the sunshine. . Surely, most of our medical cures are based upon this principle. No doctor can eliminate pain or abolish disease; but he can so increase the vitality of his patient, that, instead of succumbing to his malady, he can override it and master it. Such a theory does not deny the existence or the latent value of pain. The substratum is always there. The antitoxin does not eradicate typhus or. tetanus. ; But it does enhance the patient's power of resistance, whereby he becomes immune ,io their insidious invasion. THE LIMITS OF PAIN. Thoughts like these should assure us that pain is a fine thing and cannot be permanent. Like some dusty tramp, it is ever changing its ground and kept continually on the march. Cold calculations of static pain are grossly exaggerated. We give it a fixity which is never possesses. 'Atmospheric pressure may be fifteen pounds to the square inch, but no one pities a baby on that account, because it is protected by an unfailing process of adjustment. The child who learns to walk may seem to be passing through a ceaseless chapter of bruises and tumbles. These again are not permanent. In a few weeks, the lad is firm upon his feet, and the scars are healed which were the prelude to his achievement. How much of life's pains are growing pains! It was not James Hickson, but James Hinton, who once explained that suffering is only evil to us relatively, not absolutely, and that m the ideal life which we call heaven, it is not true that there will be no more pain, but that pain will not be felt ...as pain, because it will be transmuted m the crown of life bestowed upon the victor. CHRIST'S EXPLANATION OF PAIN. Of all the wonderful things spoken by Our Lord concerning suffering, no words perhaps give more insight to His conception than the little parable of the expectant mother : — .'/ A woman when she is m travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the Avorld." ■ The day is long past when we can be content to trace the pain of childbirth to some historic lapse of primeval woman. Christ has a; better ex-

planation. Pain and Love are twin ingredients of life, and all sacrifice is compounded of both. We cannot have One without the other. It is not only of child-birth, but of many another human condition m which the doctor declares: "I- can do little to relieve the patient, until she has suffered longer." Has the Divine Physician any other verdict as He stands by the soul-birth of each of us ? "■ My children," says St. Paul, " of. whom I am again m travail until Christ be formed m you." Were Christ a thousand times m Bethlehem born, But not m thee, Still wert thou all forlorn. — "Church Standard."