'I can hardly suppose that it will,' said Probus. 'Labor and suffering, in some of their forms, seem both essential. My arm would be weak as a rush were it never moved; but exercised, and you see it is nervous and strong; plied like a smith's, and it grows to be hard as iron and capable of miracles. So it is with any faculty you may select; the harder it is tasked the more worthy it becomes; and without tasking at all, it is worth nothing. So seems to me it is with the whole man. In a smooth and even lot our worth never would be known, and we could respect neither ourselves nor others. Greatness and worth come only of collision and conflict. Let our path be strewed with roses, and soft southern gales ever blow, and earth send up of her own accord our ready prepared nutriment, and mankind would be but one huge multitude of Sybarites, dissolved in sloth and effeminacy. If no difficulty opposed, no labor exacted, body and mind were dead. Hence it is, we may believe, that man must everywhere labor even for the food which is necessary to mere existence. Life is made dear to us by an instinct--we shrink from nothing as we do from the mere thought of non-existence--but still it is death or toil; that is the alternative. So that labor is thus insured wherever man is found, and it is this that makes him what he is. Then he is made, moreover, so as to crave not only food but knowledge as much, and also virtue; but between him and both these objects there are interposed, for the same reason doubtless, mountains of difficulty, which he must clamber up and over before he can bask in the pleasant fields that lie beyond, and then ascend the distant mountain-tops, from which but a single step removes him from the abode of God. Doubt it not, lady, that it is never in vain and for naught that man labors and suffers; but that the good which redounds is in proportion to what is undergone, and more than a compensation. If, in these times of darkness and fear, suffering is more, goodness and faith are more also. There are Christians, and men, made by such trials, that are never made elsewhere nor otherwise--nor can be; just as the arm of Hercules could not be but by the labors of Hercules. What says Macer? Why even this, that God is to be thanked for this danger, for that the church needs it! The brief prosperity it has enjoyed since the time of Valerian and Macrianus, has corrupted it, and it must be purged anew, and tried by fire! I think not that; but I think this; that if suffering ever so extreme is ordained, there will be a virtue begotten in the souls of the sufferers, and abroad through them, that shall prove it not to have been in vain.' 'I can believe what you say,' said Julia, 'at least I can believe in the virtue ascribed to labor, and the collision with difficulty. Suffering is passive; may it not be that we may come to place too much merit in this?'