LAW AND SUFFERING curable or incurable. If it is physically incurable, a man must put up with it: he has no choice. If it is curable, but only by a breach of the moral law, a man need not put up with it, he has a choice; yet he is morally bound to put up with it. These two sorts of suffering — the sort that cannot be avoided at all and the sort that cannot be avoided without sin — represent the test that God allows every man to go through. Every man has not the same test: some men have more suffering than others : but no man is allowed by God to have more than he can, with the aid of God’s grace, bear! Part of the Christian law is love of neighbour, and the relief of suffering is one of the noblest expressions of this love. But it must be within the limits of God’s law. Thus the effort of men to relzix the moral law so that others shall not suffer unduly is aimed at altering the test devised by God Himself. And there is another thing. Life is not only a testing to see if a man is fit, it is likewise a preparation to make him fit. Suffering, as we have seen, can immensely enrich the soul. And the whole of life represents God’s means of bringing a soul to its highest point of development. It is for God to measure the amount of suffering necessary for a man’s perfection. And anyone who tries to modify God’s law in order to reduce the suffering is ensuring that the soul shall not become as fine a thing as it might. Steel is a beautiful thing: but it has taken an immense heat to bring it to its right perfection. Anyone who, as 103