_December, 1889_ (from the letters).--The cross is given according to the strength.... I believe that, and cannot but believe it, because I know by experience that the harder my sufferings have been, if only I have succeeded in taking them in a Christian spirit ... the fuller, more vivid, more joyful and full of meaning life has become. It is so often insincerely repeated that sufferings are good for us and are sent by God, that we have ceased to believe it, and yet it is the simplest, clearest and most indubitable truth. Suffering--what is called suffering--is the condition of spiritual growth. Without suffering growth is impossible, the widening of life is impossible. For this reason sufferings also always accompany death. If a man had no suffering he would be in a bad way; that is why they say among the people that those whom God loves He visits by misfortunes. I understand that a man may be sad and apprehensive when misfortunes have not visited him for a long time. There is no movement, no growth of life. Suffering is only suffering for the heathen, for the man who has not the light of the truth, and for us in the measure in which we have not the light; but sufferings cease to be such for the Christian--they become birth-pangs, even as Christ promised to deliver us from evil. And all this is not rhetoric, but is for me as undoubtedly in accordance with reason and experience as that it is now winter. 1892-3 (from the letters).--Nothing, I imagine, sets a man free from dependence on others and brings him near, or rather may bring him near, to God so much as your position. One only leans upon Him when men compel one to. God help you to bear your cross patiently, submissively, so as to get from it all the good which external suffering gives and can give. Or it will be mortifying that there has been suffering, but struggling with it, indignant and despairing, you did not get from it all that it is capable of giving.