A Suffering Consoled, Explained or Rationalized?

The questions naturally arise, What is man? and, What is life? What can be tghe cause of all tghis? Is it a punishment for our crimes? or those of our forefathers, or is it to purify souls here by suffering to prepare them for a happy eternity hereafter? Would that the latter supposition was so. Would that men would take it in that light. If we have the real feeling to so thoroughly understand all these sufferings, we might well ask humanly speaking, how was it that man could govern flesh and blood so as to submit to such slavery, that in the whole world, the Celtic Irish and they alone could do so - instead of reaching into deeds of revenge, as the man guided by nature alone would meant to do. And the answer can only be accounted for and traced to the teachings of and consolations given them by their clergy; their own submissiveness to the advices given; their expectations in a future world; their thoughts on the shortness of time; and in short their love and fear of the Invisible - the Great Supreme Ruler - and each and all of these things taught them in and from their infancy and which tghou could not leanr to forget, and it was these and these only thoughts kept them within bounds and enabled them to suffer.

Hugh Dorian’s Narrative
1890
From The Outer Edge of Ulster