Our hearts are dull, and hard, and light, God forgive us! and we forget continually what an earnest, awful world we live in -- a whole eternity waiting for us to be born, and a whole eternity waiting to see what we shall do now we are born. Yes, our hearts are dull, and hard, and light. And therefore Christ sends suffering on us, to teach us what we always gladly forget in comfort and prosperity -- what an awful capacity of suffering we have; and more, what an awful capacity of suffering our fellow-creatures have likewise. . . .

We sit at ease too often in a fool's paradise, till God awakens us and tortures us into pity for the torture of others. And so, if we will not acknowledge our brotherhood by any other teaching, He knits us together by the brotherhood of suffering.

All Saints' Day Sermons. 1871.