BECOMING INURED.

“Sunt homines qui cum patientiâ moriuntur: sunt autem quidam perfecti qui cum patientiâ vivunt.” St. Augustin.

We hear, every day, benevolent and compassionate persons, in discussing the woes of sufferers, dwelling on the thought of such sufferers becoming inured; and we see them, if possible, reposing on this as the closing and conclusive idea. How natural this is! How often and how undoubtingly we did it ourselves, in our days of ease! But how differently it sounds now! How quickly do we detect in it the discharge and dismissal of uneasy sympathies! How infallibly do we see how far it may be true; and what a tale could we tell of what is included in the phrase, “becoming inured,” where it may be most truly applied! of what experience is involved in the process, where it is shortest and easiest!

I was lately speaking to a tender-hearted woman, who had known suffering, but not torment, of more than one case of persons who, dying slowly under a torturing disease, simply and naturally declared, shortly before death, the season of their illness to have been the happiest part of their lives. There are different ways of explaining this fact, which, though I always believed it, I did not till lately understand. My friend, however, found no difficulty. She said, in a tone of pitying tenderness, but of perfect decision, “O! they become inured to it.” I replied by some slight description of the suffering in the case which had impressed me most, and asked if she thought use and experience could soften pain like that. “O yes,” she again said, “they become inured to it. That is certainly the thing.”

Is it so? I am persuaded it is not. To the great majority of evils men may become inured; but not to all. To almost every kind, and to vast degrees of privation, moral and physical, they may become inured; and to chronic sufferings of mind and body; but I am convinced that there is no more possibility of becoming inured to acute agony of body than to paroxysms of remorse—the severest of moral pains. For the sake of both sufferers and sympathisers, it would be well that this should be thoroughly understood, that aid may not fall short, nor relief be looked for in the wrong direction.

The truth is, as all will declare who are subject to a frequently recurring pain, a familiar pain becomes more and more dreaded, instead of becoming lightly esteemed in proportion to its familiarity. The general sense of alarm which it probably occasioned when new, may have given way and disappeared before a knowledge of consequences, and a regular method of management or endurance; but the pain itself becomes more odious, more oppressive, more feared, in proportion to the accumulation of experience of weary hours, in proportion to the aggregate of painful associations which every visitation revives. When it is, moreover, considered that the suffering part of the body is, if not recovering, growing continually more diseased and susceptible of pain, it will appear how little truth there is in the supposition of tortured persons becoming inured to torture.

The inuring process which I hold to be impossible in the cases mentioned is, however, practicable and frequent in almost all cases of inferior suffering. But, while all join in thanking God for this, there is a wide difference in the view taken of the fact by those who feel and those who only observe it. To the last, it is a clear and satisfactory truth, shining on the rock of futurity, which they can sit and gaze at from the window of their ease, commenting on the blessing of such a beacon-light to those who need it. To those who need it, meanwhile, it is far far off—sometimes hidden and sometimes despaired of, as the waves and the billows go over them, and the point can be reached only through sinkings and struggles, and fears and anguish, with scanty breathing-times between. Why is this not admitted in the case of the invalid as it is in that of the person losing a sense? One who is becoming blind or deaf is sure to grow inured in time; but through what a series of keen mortifications, of bitter privations! Every one sees and understands this; while in the case of the invalid, many spring to the conclusion, overlooking the process of discipline which has, in that case, as in the other, to be undergone. It should never be forgotten how different a thing it is to read off this lesson from the clear print of assertion or observation, and to learn it experimentally, at a scarcely perceptible rate, “line upon line and precept upon precept;” when every line is burnt in by pain, and the long series of precepts are registered by their degrees of anguish.

When the nature of the process has been sufficiently dwelt upon to be understood—that the hearts of the happy may be duly softened, and those of the suffering duly cheered by sympathy—then let all good be said of the inuring process; at least all the good that is true; and that is much. No wise man will declare that it is the best and healthiest condition for any one. No wise man will deny that the healthiest moral condition is found where there is the most abundant happiness. Happiness is clearly the native, heavenly atmosphere of the soul—that in which it is “to live and move and have its being” hereafter, and in proportion to its share of which, now and here, it makes its heavenly growth. The divinest souls—the loftiest, most disinterested and devoted—all unite in one testimony, that they have been best when happiest; that they were then most energetic and spontaneously devoted—least self-conscious. This must and may joyfully be granted. But, as the mystery of evil is all round about us, as we have no choice whether or not to suffer, we may be freely thankful next for the inuring process, as being the possible means, though inferior to happiness, of divine ends.

Far, indeed, does the sufferer feel from reaching those ends, when he contrasts his own state with that of the truly happy man. When he looks upon one so “little lower than the angels,” on his frame, so nerved and graced by health, his eye emitting the glow of the soul, his voice uttering the music of the heart, his hand strong to effect his purposes, his head erect in the liberty of ease, his intellect and soul free from perplexities and cares, and not only at leisure for the service of others, but restless to impart to them of his own overflowing good; when the sufferer contemplates such a being, and contrasts him with himself, he may well feel how much he has to do, to approach this higher order of his race. Aware of his own internal tremblings at the touch of the familiar pain, sinking in weakness before the bare idea of enterprise, abashed by self-consciousness, smarting under tenderness of conscience, perplexed and bewildered by the intricacy and vastness of human woe, of which his own suffering gives him too keen a sense, well may he who is in the bonds of pain look up humbly to him who walks gloriously in joy; and the humility might sink into abjectness if the matter ended here, if the inuring process were not at work. But herein is ample ground for hope now, and greatness in the future; and if a secondary, still a sufficient greatness.

The sufferer may well be satisfied, and needs be abashed before no mortal, if he obtains, sooner or later, the power to achieve divine ends through the experience of his lot. If, beginning by encountering his familiar pain, and putting down the dread of it by looking merely to the comfort of the reaction when it ceases, he attains at length to conquering pain by the power of ideas; if, ease of body being out of the question, he makes activity of spirit suffice him; if, his own future in this life being a blank, he becomes absorbed in that of other men; if, imprisoned by disease, kingdoms and races are not wide enough for his sympathies; if, as this or that sense is extinguished, or this or that limb is laid fast, his spirit becomes more alive in every faculty; if familiarity with pain enables him so to deal with it, as resolutely to cut off every morbid spiritual growth to which he has been made liable by pain; if, instead of succumbing to unfavourable conditions, he has struggled against dwarfage and distortion, and diligently wrought at the renewal of the inward man, while the outward frame was decaying day by day, he may surmount his humiliations, whatever cause for humility maybe left by so impaired an existence. For him the inuring process will have done its best.

For those who from constitutional irritability cannot become inured, there is, daily opening, and at shorter distance, the grave, where “the weary are at rest.”

For those on whom the inuring process acts amiss,—petrifying instead of vivifying the soul, we may and must hope, on the ground that they are in the hands of one whose ways and thoughts are not ours, nor within our ken. They are a mystery to us, like the cankered buds and blighted blossoms of our gardens. Or it may be, that there is no corruption or decay, but only torpidity, induced by the protraction of their polar night of adversity. It may be, that their life is only hidden away for a season, and that when the breath of the eternal spring shall dissolve their icy bonds, they may start forth as new-born, and their preceding deadness be mercifully counted to them but as a long dream.

There is no danger, no false security to one’s-self, in hoping thus much for them; for one must be as far from reconciling one’s-self to their condition as from preferring dreams to contemplation, or the sleep of the frame to the life of the spirit.