• A closely related study would be that of pain . in the ethnic ret
ligions of the world, which may only be suggested here.
The New Testament is the first book in which we perceive in',
telligent purpose, beneficent ordaining, ethidal ends, in Pain. Ex=
dept two or three stupendous and superhuman facts, Incarnatiori;
Resurrection, Ascension, the most wonderful thing in the New
Testament is its treatment of pain. The Christ, the Son of God;
is a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," "made perfect
through suffering;" and so our "afflictions work out for us a far
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Pain is no longer
an emanation or instrument of a dark, inscrutable fate, some 'power
of evil at enmity with God and all His creation. Pain corresponds
to something in the being or attributes of God ; brought to man by
the angels and ministries of the Father of Spirits for the perfecting
of the divine image in the heirs of salvation,. the inheritors of
eternal glory. There was no such conception of pain heretofore
in the world. And this new conception profoundly modified not
only the conception of life, but the actual life of those to whom it
came. And so it changed the courses of civilization and the empire
of earth came to its adherents.
The Divina Comedia is the greatest human drama of pain. Like
the New Testament, it treats pain ethically. This is the secret of
its matchless power and grandeur. As the New Testament stands
apart from and above the sacred books of all other religions in its
doctrine of pain, so does Dante's immortal poem stand separate
from and above all other great works in literature in its conception
and use of pain as literary material. Contrast with it Homer, the
Greek Drama, Paradise Lost, or Faust.
Necessarily, psychology must give large consideration to so
great an element as is pain in psychic life. For, ultimately, all pairi
is psychical. On the general psychology of pain, great thinkers
have differed widely from the dawn of philosophy to the present
day ; and not even an epitome of their various theories of pain can
be presented here.
All writers on psychology discuss pain and pleasure together ;
and this agrees with everyone's experience. Tennyson sings :