What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed; and yet anon repairs his drooping head, and tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore flames in the forehead of the morning sky. So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves.

Not that fair field of Enna, where proserpin gathering flowers herself a fairer flower by gloomy dis was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain to seek her through the world.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wailOr knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

To live a life half dead, a living death.

Me thought I saw my late espoused saint brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.

Thus the Lord, by pain, sickness, and disappointments, by breaking our cisterns and withering our gourds—weakens our attachment to this world, and makes the thought of leaving it, more easy and more desirable.

We shall see that what we once mistakenly called afflictions and misfortune were in reality blessings without which we would not have grown in faith. Nothing happened to us without a reason. No problem came upon us sooner, pressed on us more heavily, or continued longer than our situation required. God, in divine grace and wisdom, used our many afflictions, each as needed, that we might ultimately possess an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, prepared by the Lord for His people.

Don't follow a defeated foe. Follow Christ. It is costly. You will be an exile in this age. But you will be free.

The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.