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The quality and extent of suffering depends not so much on the exciting causes of it as upon the nature of the faculty which suffers. It is the power of suffering that is inherent in any faculty that measures suffering, and not the magnitude of the aggression which is made outwardly. For there are many who will stand up and have their name battered, as if they were but a target, almost without suffering, while there are others to whom the slightest disparagement is like a poisoned arrow, and rankles with exquisite suffering. A stroke of a pound weight upon a bell two inches in diameter will give forth a certain amount of sound. Let the bell be of one hundred pounds weight, and the same stroke of one pound will more than quadruple the amount of aerial vibration. Let the bell be increased to a thousand pounds, and the same stroke will make the reverberations vaster, and cause them to roll yet further. Let it be a five or ten thousand pound weight bell, and that same stroke that made a tinkling on the small bell makes a roar on this large one. The very same quality that being struck in a small being produces a certain amount of susceptibility, being struck in a being that is infinite, produces an infinitely greater experience, for feeling increases in the ratio of being. The same suffering in a great nature is a thousandfold greater than it is in a small nature, because there is the vibration, as it were, of a mind so much greater given to the suffering. The chord in our souls is short and stubborn. The chord in the Divine soul is infinite; and its vibrations are immeasurably beyond any experience of our own. Sorrow in us is of the same kind as sorrow in Christ, and yet, as compared with the sorrow of Christ, human sorrow is but a mere puff.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

WEB: For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our comfort also abounds through Christ.