The disciples of Jesus had apparently been exercised by one of the outstanding problems of human life which perplex all thoughtful men: What regulates the distribution of suffering; why is it that while many of the most criminal and noxious men are prosperous and exempt from pain, many of the gentlest and best are broken and tortured by constant suffering? Why is it that inexplicable suffering seems so often to fall on the wrong people, on the innocent not on the guilty, on those who already are of refined and chastened disposition, not on those who seem urgently to need correction and the rod? Is suffering sent that character may be improved? But in Job’s case it was sent because he was already irreproachable, not to make him so. Is it sent because of a man’s early transgressions? But this man was _born_ blind; his punishment preceded any possible transgression of his own. Was he then the victim of his parent’s wrong-doing? But suffering is often the result of accident or of malice, or of mistake, which cannot be referred to hereditary sin. Are we then to accept the belief that this world is far from perfect as yet; that God begins at the beginning in all His works, and only slowly works towards perfection, and that in the progress, and while we are only moving towards an eternal state, there must be pains manifold and bitter? They are the shavings and sawdust and general disorder of the carpenter’s workshop, which are necessarily thrown off in the making of the needful article.[34] It is to it, to the finished work, we must look, and not to the shavings, if we would understand and be reconciled to the actual state of things around us.