I like that phrase, 'worthy to suffer.' It is to those whom God loves best and most that He gives--as He gave to His Son--the chance of suffering. Sympathy, strength, reality--these are some of its fruits for those who allow them to grow. 'He cannot be My disciple.' I can't help sometimes thinking of these words. Unless the man is prepared to make sacrifice the basis of his life, he _cannot_ be Christ's disciple. I don't think we always realise the 'trans-valuation of values' found in Christ's teaching. 'Blessed are the poor--the hungry. He that would save his life shall lose it. He that loseth, saveth. He that would be greatest shall be least. It is more blessed to give than to receive.' As I think over such statements as these, I find that I have again and again to revise, as it were, my moral arithmetic--to change my standards, to revise my ideas of great and little, happiness and misery, importance and insignificance. I am sure that nothing but the highest will satisfy you. God has given you singular powers of influence and of attracting others. He will demand an account {181} of those powers. You know Matthew Arnold's lines on his father. I believe the day will come when men will say like words of you. But thou would'st not _alone_ Be saved, my father! alone Conquer and come to thy goal, Leaving the rest in the wild. . . . Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself. That is what I want you to be--a tower of strength--strength perfected, it may be, in weakness--weakness forcing you to despair of self, and find the Rock of Ages. You have been so much to me, and helped me so often, that I feel you must be born to help others as well. And this quiet time, it may be that God is using it to call you closer to Himself, to teach you to revise your 'values,' to show you a new fund of strength. Our wills are ours, we know not how, Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. You must--literally must--let His will overpower your will. Nothing but complete sacrifice will satisfy you or Him, and I believe in you profoundly. I am sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will go through with it, and find your strength in Him. I pray for you. _To his mother._ Cambridge; March 15, 1903.