you would like to know how i behave when i am experiencing pain, not writing books about it. you need not guess, for i will tell you; i am a great coward. but what is that to the purpose? When i think of pain — of anxiety that gnaws like fire and loneliness that spreads out like a desert, and the heart-breaking routine of monotonous misery, or again of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape or sudden nauseating pains that knock a man’s heart out at one blow, of pains that seem already intolerable and then are suddenly increased, of infuriating scorpion-stinging pains that startle into maniacal movement a man who seemed half dead with his previous tortures — it “quite o' ercrows my spirit”. if i knew any way of escape i would crawl through sewers to find it. but what is the good of telling you about 46 - mark
my feelings? you know them already: they are the same as yours. i am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. that is what the word means. i am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made “perfect through suffering”47 is not incred- ible. to prove it palatable is beyond my design.引自 第五章 人类的痛苦
第十七段提出,要衡量perfect through suffering这条教义的可信度时,需要遵守两条原则。
第一,我们必须记住当下正经受的苦难只不过是借着恐惧和怜悯得以延伸的整个苦难体系的中心点。
Whatever good effects these experiences have are dependent upon the centre; so that even if pain itself was of no spiritual value, yet, if fear and pity were, pain would have to exist in order that there should be something to be feared and pitied. and that fear and pity help us in our return to obedience and charity is not to be doubted. 引自 第五章 人类的痛苦