If it be asked whether an all-powerful and all-beneficent Being could not have provided some less distressing method of education, the first reply may be that of Bishop Butler--that it is foolish for such creatures as we are to try to devise schemes for the construction of better worlds than the one we live in. But the Gospel has provided an answer which removes all temptation to such folly. It reveals the momentous fact that “God, of His tender mercy, did give His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.” There is no need to enter upon theories of the Atonement in order to appreciate the bearing of that solemn truth upon this problem. Christ, Who lived and died for our redemption, found it necessary for that purpose to submit to the sufferings of the Cross--sufferings at least as bitter as any that are inflicted in war--and He said He submitted to them because it was the will of His Father--of the God Whom He called “His Father and our Father, His God and our God”--that He should do so. It is one satisfactory feature in this discussion that the moral authority of Christ is generally recognized; but it is very little noticed, if at all, that that authority declares, both by repeated assurances, and by the most touching personal experience, that the infliction and endurance of death and agony are compatible with the most perfect relations of love and tenderness between God and the Sufferer. Our Lord has thus given His blessed personal sanction to what, after all, has been the instinctive belief of human nature, even before He lived and died. Cicero, for instance, in his _De Officiis_, states it more than once as a cardinal principle of human life and duty that it is more contrary to nature to do or allow unjust acts than to endure any suffering, loss, or even death. But the Cross of Christ elevates this inspiring and consoling conviction to the height of a Divine revelation and consolation; and to those who realize it, the main practical problem of the sufferings of war is solved. All such suffering is God’s remedy for moral evil, and is allowed because it is the only means by which man’s nature can be purified and renovated. From this point of view it becomes quite unnecessary to perplex ourselves with philosophical questions respecting omnipotence. When God has once established a constitution, either for nature or for human nature, He has limited His Own action by the laws of that constitution so long as it lasts. He can, indeed, interfere with it for good cause; and He has done so, both in nature and human nature, by miracle. But to interpose by miracle to avert all distressing consequences of those laws would be to abolish the constitution altogether, and this He will not do until the present dispensation is brought to an end. For the present, God is governing and educating men by means of the laws which He has established, both physical and moral, and He leaves men to take