When human nature fights in the last ditch, when it is pressed against the wall, when the clutch of circumstances is about its throat and threatens to choke it, then human nature, by way of reaction, exhibits a power which we call spiritual. This is rarely displayed in prosperous circumstances. It is the compensation of adversity that it elicits in manifold ways this spiritual power and makes man’s life in a spiritual sense a success. SUFFERING AND CONSOLATION Let the Stoics say what they will, so long as we remain human we shall always open our breasts to those warm loves that make the sweetness of existence, if also they make its bitterest pain. It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest to all the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords. There are hours of great loneliness, when the frost of desolation penetrates into the very soul, when the burden seems too heavy to bear, and the draught of life too bitter to swallow. But the very keenness of the ordeal begets the strength to bear it, and patience and unselfish resignation will come as with the rustling of angel’s wings to dry our scalding tears. When the light of the sun shines through a prism it is broken into beautiful colours, and when the prism is shattered, still the light remains. So does the light of life shine resplendent in the forms of our friends, and so, when their forms are broken, still their life remains; and in that life we are united with them; for the life of their life is also our life, and we are one with them by ties indissoluble. They say that it is a blessed relief in times of grief to shed tears. But a more blessed relief than to shed tears is to wipe away the tears from others’ eyes. In hours of great sorrow we turn in vain to Nature for an inspiring thought. We question the sleepless stars; they are cold and distant. The winds blow, the rivers run their course, the seasons change; they are careless of man. Only in the human world do we find an answering echo to our needs. The body is incapable of supporting for longer than a few brief years the weight of the life that dwells within it. The vehicle cannot sustain the content. The instrument falls short of the demands upon it, and crumbles into ruins. But in its ruin it sets off, in tragic contrast, the grandeur of the power which, for a time, employed it for its uses, a power greater than itself, greater than any instrument, whose glory rises above the ruins and gilds them with unearthly splendour in departing. We are soldiers fighting a good fight. The call that awakens us out of despair in times of affliction is the trumpet-call of duty, summoning us back to the battle.