THE observant reader of current religious literature can but note the amount of attention which is being given these days to the consideration of the asserted place and purpose of disease and death in the divine plan for the education of humanity. In an article which appeared recently, headed "Not Enemies but Friends," suggestive reference was made to the "pathetic fallacy" underlying "some modern movements," that pain and sorrow and death are intruders, — "Uninvited guests who enter to blight the joy and overshadow the festivity," when, as the writer declares, pain should be thought of as a great and wise instructor, a true friend to all! He says, —
Pain is incidental to all birth and to every stage of growth. Sorrow must come wherever there are human affections; death, instead of being the specter of medieval fancy, the terrible intruder of the Maeterlinck tragedy, is the angel of Watts' noble imagination: august, imperative, awful, but breathing beneficence from every fold of its garments. . . . Sorrow, instead of being feared as an enemy, ought to be accepted as a friend ... for there is no surer way of taking the bitterness out of grief than by making sorrow at home in the house to which it has come. And as for death, who that has lived deeply and well has not had at times a vision of its beautiful service to the human soul.
These astonishing statements were made in a prominent Christian publication by a disciple of him who came preaching the good news of possible release from suffering and sorrow, who emphasized his message with unnumbered works of healing, and who assured his followers that these signs were to crown their ministry to all the world. He did not say they should be exempt from the trial and suffering attendant upon persecution, the world's resistance to truth, but he did authorize them to think that his life of freedom from disease was ''normal" and exemplary, and that his beneficent ministry of healing was to be the standard of their aspiration, the goal of their endeavor.
