Why do some suffer more than others?

Why do some suffer anguish of body and misery of soul while others have no cross in their lot?

The reason why your surroundings and destiny are so varied is simply from your shortsightedness—

The small—the very small portion of your life—which alone is open to your gaze, but which self-love and self-pity magnify until it fills not only your earthly, but also your heavenly horizon.

You must take large views of life if you would understand it at all clearly.

You must think of yourself, as passing from eternity to eternity across the narrow bridge of time—as coming from the Invisible All-Father, made manifest for a brief day, and then returning to the Bosom of the Infinite.

Incarnated first in the lowest phenomena, rising through the dead stone, the living plant, the animal, to the man, then disappearing to the eye of sense, and living purely in the spirit.

As each human ego differs in manifested life from every other, it needs a different experience, and to each is given the material from which it can derive the food best suited to its special needs.

Some can only grow when their roots have struck deep in the black earth of sin—

Others require the knife of the pruner freely applied to them—

To others only sunshine and the dews of heaven seem necessary—

To each—

The best and most suitable surroundings are given.

As souls pass over in all stages of their development, their life has to be very varied.

On the other hand, the difference between your destiny and another’s is not so great as it appears, especially if you could take the sum of their experiences.

If your eyes could see the heart, as well as the life, and understand the deepest springs of motive, and know fully all the powers of inherited evil—of susceptibility to influence—then many of the good and evil would stand on a greater equality in your estimation.

Those crimes, which shock you most are often small things in spirits' eyes, for much belongs to the physical and will drop off from the psyche at death, as the outer covering of the leaf bud when it comes forth in its perfection.

It is that spirit, which says to its brother—

Am I thy keeper? which is most hurtful to the soul—

Whatever it may be—

Sin—or suffering—

Good—or evil—

Joy—or misery—

Alll shall have the appointed end in nursing the infant soul.

It seems as if the Father said to Nature, with reference to the soul—

Take this child, and nurse it for me, and the physical proves the best nurse that you can have.

Then when you have grown to (wo)manhood, you are passed on to the care of those in the psychic world, and they watch over and help you until the wounds are all healed and your strength restored so that you can begin a new and worthy life.