A MAP OF LIFE it were in kindness, cut down the heat to half, would prevent the metal from ever being more than a useless mess. Some suffering is necessary: God knows how much"each man needs: and it is by the suffering that cannot be legitimately avoided that God shows the measure of what is necessary. The essence of the conquest of suffering is that it should be voluntary. Now the suffering that one could avoid by committing sin is obviously, in the strictest sense, voluntary. One has exercised a choice. But the suffering that one cannot avoid at all may equally be made voluntary": a man can accept it as coming from God’s hands, thank God for it as the means by which God is choosing to fit his soul for its eternal destiny, and offer it to God for his own sins and the sins of other men. When man has thus voluntarily accepted suffering, he has made one of the greatest of human conquests. For men naturally flee from suffering in fear of it. By an act of one’s will to accept what all men flee from is in itself a triumph. But to go further — as the saints have done and many who are less than saints — and inflict suffering upon oneself— rthat is the supreme triumph over human weakness: for it is a positive going out to seek what other men flee from. This infliction of suffering is not, of course, a mere aimless love of suffering. Nor does it arise, as some asceticisms have arisen, from hatred of the body or any feeling of the body’s worthlessness. It has the immediate practical end of helping to bring the body 104