True; you would have a right to quarrel with the preacher or anyone else who made you sorrowful with the thoughts of the sorrow round you, and then gave you no explanation of it—told you of no use, no blessing in it, no deliverance from it. That would be enough to break any man’s heart, if all the preacher could say was: “This wretchedness, and sickness, and death, must go on as long as the world lasts, and yet it does no good, for God or man.” That thought would drive any feeling man to despair, tempt him to lie down and die, tempt him to fancy that God was not God at all, not the God whose name is Love, not the God who is our Father, but only a cruel taskmaster, and Lord of a miserable hell on earth, where men and women, and worst of all, little children, were tortured daily by tens of thousands without reason, or use, or hope of deliverance, except in a future world, where not one in ten of them will be saved and happy. That is many people’s notion of the world—religious people’s even. How they can believe, in the face of such notions, “that God is love;” how they can help going mad with pity, if that is all the hope they have for poor human beings, is more than I can tell. Not that I judge them—to their own master they stand or fall: but this I do say, that if the preacher has no better hope to give you about this poor earth, then I cannot tell what right he has to call himself a preacher of the gospel—that is, a preacher of good news; then I do not know what Jesus Christ’s dying to take away the sins of the world means; then I do not know what the kingdom of God means; then I do not know why the Lord taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,” if the only way in which that can be brought about is by His sending ninety-nine hundredths of mankind to endless torture, over and above all the lesser misery which they have suffered in this life. What will be the end of the greater part of mankind we do not know; we were not intended to know. God is love, and God is justice, and His justice is utterly loving, as well as His love utterly just; so we may very safely leave the world in the hands of Him who made the world, and be sure that the Judge of all the earth will do right, and that what is right is certain never to be cruel, but rather merciful. But to every one of you who are here now, a preacher has a right, ay, and a bounden duty, to say much more than that. He is bound to tell you good news, because God has called you into His church, and sent you here this day, to hear good news. He has a right to tell you, as I tell you now, that, strange as it may seem, whatsoever sufferings you endure are sent to make you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect; even as the blessed Lord, whom may you all love, and trust, and worship, for ever and ever, was made perfect by sufferings, even though He was the sinless Son of God. Consider that. “It behoved Him,” says St.