From one point of view there is no mystery so impenetrable as that involved in the suffering and sorrow which exists in every department and sphere of life. The suffering of humanity, the fact that “the world groaneth and travaileth in pain until now” presented to the sensitive mind of Dr. John Hall the supreme difficulty with which he struggled during a great part of his remarkable ministry, until courage, faith and experience taught him to understand and to recognize suffering as having its mission in life and in the development of character, just as happiness has its place, each acting as one of the two great interpreters of moral and spiritual development. It is impossible to have a creed or to form an adequate philosophy of life and overlook the really essential and universal place suffering, in one form or another, occupies therein. Just try and think, if you can, of a world in which there is no suffering, no sorrow, no pain; a world in which there are no tears, no bitterness, no woe. The thing is unthinkable, it is simply inconceivable, and as a condition of life, utterly and eternally impossible. Why? Because pleasure and pain are relative. Suffering and joy face each other in a blessed contrast. There has to be a standard of comparison by which we are to make the proper estimate of these things, otherwise we would be unable to distinguish between them; otherwise happiness would have no reality to it, no vitality in it, and neither strength nor power of growth, while life would be without an essential variety of emotions, and therefore necessarily become “stale, flat and unprofitable” indeed. A remarkable description of hell’s severest punishment, though very fanciful, is that, wherein the victims are made to do that which they most loved to do here in this life, incessantly, continuously and strenuously. The suggestion to my mind is very significant and teaches that the most tortuous and horrible suffering is just that which comes through uninterrupted monotony. To dance your life away, to drink your life away, to play and fritter your life away in purposeless amusement and never to suffer a reverse or be conscious of a struggle, never to know a pang of pain or experience a momentary disappointment, may seem to those who have just sipped an occasional drop from the cup of pleasure and mirth an enviable existence, a consummation in life devoutly to be wished. But to dance or play or laugh or sing through endless eons of time and to experience not one inspiring struggle which brings moral and spiritual strengthening, to have to live through eternity would be misery indeed. Suffering then, in the first place, heightens and intensifies our joys, it helps develop the power of enjoyment, and it makes a larger and a more real happiness possible. To illustrate: There was unspeakable joy in the home of the prodigal, as the aged father rushed out to meet and greet his wayward boy, for to the old man his son had been dead, and