As to the merits of voluntary suffering inflicted for the purpose of subjugating the appetites of the body, Christendom differs fundamentally, but until recently, it has been united in regarding illness as one of the means by which Providence purifies as well as punishes its children. The discovery of the germ, even more than the preaching of Mrs. Eddy, dealt a terrific blow to this ancient belief, with the result that the masses no longer regard physical suffering as a remedial agency but as something not only unprofitable but purely destructive. For more than thirty years the final abolition of pain has been the Mecca towards which doctors and Christian Scientists have passionately journeyed; moreover, their ranks have been swelled by numerous sects, schools or religious bodies that have been called into existence by the rallying cry of this New Hope. They pointed to the declining death rate as an irrefutable testimony of battles already won, and as disease after disease disappeared before the advance of sanitation, of serums or of Right Thought; as surgery developed unheard-of possibilities, the most limitless expectations seemed not unjustified. The natural infirmities of age must eventually yield before the onslaught of knowledge. Bolder spirits even dreamed of conquest over death. And then the World War came. Their boasted death-rate mounted to unheard-of heights. The maimed and blind overflowed from the hospitals unto the farthest corners of the earth. Still the havoc was not complete. Infantile paralysis came from the north, killing and crippling our children by thousands. Finally, influenza mowed down old and young in such numbers that even here in America it was impossible to care for all the victims. One would have expected these facts to be a staggering blow to our theorists. Could they not have realized—if only dimly—that they were battling against some fundamental law? Evidently not, for according to them war is to be abolished. Not only that, but Dr. Voronoff now offers an infallible cure for old age! Now, as I said before, I neither believe that physical suffering will ever be abolished nor do I even hope it. For pain is one of the great human and humanizing experiences and, since the beginning of time, each generation has learned in its school the same fundamental lessons. “When a man is laboring under the pain of any distemper it is then that he recollects there is a God and that he is but a man. No mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration or his contempt; and, having no malice to gratify, the tales of slander excite him not.” This is the testimony of a heathen, Pliny, who was himself an invalid. Sixteen centuries later an Anglican divine, Jeremy Taylor, voiced a similar conviction. “In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality. At first she unties the strings of vanity that made her upper garments cleave to the world and sit uneasy.”