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THE SEVENTH STORMY SUNDAY.

PAIN.

Since I am coming to that holy room
Where with the choir of saints for evermore
I shall be made thy music; as I come,

I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must be then, think here before.

DONNE.

THE SEVENTH STORMY SUNDAY.

PAIN.

TO-DAY there has been storm without and storm within. Without, a wild struggling of the elements; within, the struggle of the soul and body. A whole day of pain! Sometimes giving strength with the wonderful excitement it brought to the nerves, sometimes weighing down body and soul into the most depressing weakness. What is the office of patience under incessant pain? I must submit. It is no time for me to summon the grace of patience; I must bear the burden. I must bear it alone. It is easy for me now, since there is no one for me to express my complaints to, no one to hear my cry of agony if I utter it, no one but God, and already he knows my suffering.

Must I submit in silence? And can I bring myself to say that this is good for me? I remember I used to test my sufferance of pain by asking myself whether there were any other per

son in the world to whom I would consent to give it rather than bear it myself. And my consenting to bear the pain myself I considered a test of my endurance. Indeed, it is far easier to bear such pain than to look upon it in another; for, as some one has said, the pain from which we see another suffering appears to us infinite, because we cannot measure it, while we know the breadth and length of our own suffering.

This pain I have been willing to bear myself, and alone; but, alas! not without complaint. After reading the strengthening words of others, after recalling the courageous resolutions of quieter hours, after words of prayer for strength, I have been driven back to the complaining exclamation, "O, release me from this pain!"

In pain one is swallowed up in the present, in the same way as in extreme joy. In moments of great happiness we are willing to forget all other happiness; the moments that lie behind are quite lost in the present, and we scarcely allow ourselves time to look forward. The beautiful scene falls upon our soothed eyes, the gentle sounds lull our delighted senses, a happy companionship fills all the wants of sympathy, and the present moment is sufficient and full of life. Sometimes we say that this only is true life, that it is the happiness that God has given to his children, and that we were ungrateful if we brought into its

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