Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Beneficent Guidance.

113

"I

realised. What saith one of our students of science? protest that, if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I would instantly close with the offer." This he says, unaware that the thing is done for the willing, not by degradation but by re-creation (1 Cor. i. 30).

If exact science and advanced modern philosophy cause a man to wish he were "a sort of clock," and made, even against his will, to "think what is true and do what is right," what a proof this is of Scripture that we have all gone astray! "Quid prodest omnes rerum cognoscere causas, si fugienda fugis, vel fugienda facis?" How small, as to real value, are secular science and philosophy in comparison with the truth and moral power possessed by the real Christian who knows that his sins are forgiven, that he receives grace to resist temptation, that he is being disciplined by the Spirit of God!

...

"These are truths that wake

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor man, nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy."

William Wordsworth.

That we are under the guidance of a Wise and Beneficent Power may be clearly shown. There is an orderly operation in the universe which produces definite sequences and results. The law of the origin and progress of many and enormously extended series of natural phenomena has been attained with such accuracy and thoroughness, that we can prophecy their course with the greatest certainty. By that one simple law of gravitation, regulating the movements of the heavenly bodies, we determine and predict to a fraction of a minute, for past and future years, the motions of bodies distant and complex as the double, triple, multiple stars. Knowledge extends our view to regions whence light, the quickest of all messengers, needs many years to reach the eye. We subject

"On Descartes' Discourse: " Prof. Huxley.

I

to our will the powers of a world greatly unfamiliar, partly hostile, and have their use for our reward. That which we grasp, or see, or hear, every thought or emotion of mind or heart, makes us conscious of things and processes of operation which our intellect, if sufficiently expanded, would be able to follow from beginning to end. The array of the external world, our own natural powers, all thought and emotion, or whatever goes to produce consciousness, those sacred longings for pure and endless life, the mysterious force of conscience, proclaim the great fact that the ponderous and wonderful mechanism of the world is the product of some great Governing Mind.

A leader in science, deservedly a leader in physics, has given his own revelation of world-government.1 The figure is startling and daring-"The chess-board is the world, the pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The Player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that His play is always fair and just and patient. But we know to our cost that He never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man that plays well the highest stakes are paid with that overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse." Shrinking from his own words, the professor says-They are like a picture of Satan playing chess for the soul of a man, and "would substitute for that mocking fiend a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win." Afterwards, forsaking the angel, he says of our life's training-"It is a rough kind of education, one in which ignorance is treated like disobedience, incapacity is punished as a crime; it is not a word and a blow, but the blow first without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed."

In a sense, all is true. If we break Nature's laws we must pay Nature's penalties. We have heard such wisdom from men ere this. Wisdom must be far purer and more spiritual if it is to strengthen and comfort us. Why not say " Nature is by the will of God; he who breaks Nature's laws breaks

1 "Liberal Education:" Prof. Huxley,

[blocks in formation]

God's law for the uses and wants of our earthly being?" Clever words, well said, have salt in their wit-are pleasant and preservative, we like to hear them; but jesting speeches do not take away from upright minds that distressing uneasiness which is their present greatest trial concerning the moral system of the universe.

All reasonable beings would gladly believe that there is a God, all-wise, almighty, all-perfect; but the existence of evil causes doubt and perplexity. In vain we try to stifle the doubt: evil, misery, ruin in this world and the next; the trials of saints and the anguish of martyrs; great men, good men, gifted men in sorrow; render the world a waste, and our path through it, not a way of peace, but a dark road amidst mountains of despair. Are beings called into existence, and irrevocably destined to endless unmitigated torture? Are we to charge God with such acts of injustice and cruelty as render all the atrocity of men and excesses of the devil but exhibitions of comparative purity? The doctrines of Creation and Divine Rule render the fact more distressing, for they teach that every organism forms part of a grand universal teleology.

Having honestly exposed the difficulty, we candidly admit that, like many other mysteries of the universe, it is inexplicable by humble intelligence; but it is possible to give reasons for the existence of evil which, if they cannot remove the whole difficulty, enable us to believe that what is unexplained will hereafter afford wonderful views of the power and love of God. In the Study on the Pre-Adamite World the moral aspect is viewed; now take chiefly the physical.

Evil, as a fact, does not belong simply to theology. Atheism, in trying to get rid of it by a shift to chance or to fate, ascribing both good and evil to unintelligent causes, neither accounts for the vast preponderance of good nor alleviates the evil. That a mixed state of things is temporally necessitated by the physical constitution of the universe is certain. The earth has ever been a scene of warfare. Fossil structures, in common with the structures of existing animals, present elaborate weapons of destruction. Throughout all time, there has been a perpetual preying of the superior on

the inferior a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong; and animals were so framed as to render bloodshed necessary. In innumerable cases the suffering inflicted seems to bring no compensating benefit; the low and repulsive destroy the attractive and noble; and there are elaborate appliances for securing the welfare of organisms, incapable even of feeling, at the price of misery to organisms susceptible of high happiness. Of the animal kingdom, half are parasites. Every known animal has its own species, and generally more than one. The Bothriocephalus latus and the Taenia solium, two kinds of tapeworm which flourish in the human intestines, cause much distress, sometimes ending in insanity. From the germs of the Tania, carried into other parts of the body, arise partially developed forms known as Cysticerci, Echinocci, and Cœnuri, which cause pain and disease in the brain, the lungs, the liver, the heart, the eye, and other parts, often producing death. Five other parasites of a different class are found in the human viscera. Another class of Entozoa, of the subdivision Trematoda, exists of five kinds, attacking the liver, the gall-ducts, the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. The Trichina spiralis in one phase of existence is embedded in the muscles, and thence passes into the intestines. As to the external parasites, or Epizoa, there are creatures that bury themselves in the skin, and there lay eggs; others infest the surface of the body. Man, animal, plant, are infested; and the two former endure suffering even unto death. Pain and sorrow are not partial nor accidental, but wide-spreading as life, and wrought into the very nature of things.

Is it possible to extract good out of this evil? Try. In the lowest grades of existence are creatures wholly inert ; their life is diffused, without central being, and may be called external; yet, even in these, is a conflict of forces. Amongst them are living things with life and motion clearly manifest. Higher in the scale are organisms with members of great variety and complexity, every one fitted to function; but life and activity are not at their best until some obstacle has to be surmounted, some difficulty to be overcome. Then action and reaction, the taking this, refusing that, the operation of will, come in. We conclude from the whole, that obstacles,

Evil is Temporary.

117

difficulties, evil, are not something arbitrary, altogether hurtful, but the natural accompaniments of a limited condition— spurs exciting to defence and enlargement of the sphere of activity. Existence, notwithstanding this conflict, is better than non-existence; a plant excels a stone, an animal is superior to a plant, and of all animals man is supreme. Physical evils are undoubtedly among the elements of progress urging toward relative perfection of life; the struggle to escape from the evil giving more energy and leading to amelioration, to the casting off those peculiarities, or infirmities, or uncleannesses, which tend to nourish evil parasitic life.

The moral lesson is not less evident-If a course of action is pursued which tends to throw anything out of balance, detract from physical or moral completeness of life, such departure from completeness, goodness, truth, is evil, and brings more or less of misery. Whether or not spiritual evil can poison the root of things, and cause degeneration and misery in lower forms of life, physical science cannot tell; but we may regard the moral sense of man as an analogue to the sense of pain shared, in some degree, by all conscious beings; even as our capability of spiritual improvement and physical betterment is to be regarded as token of a perfection yet to be attained.

Thus viewed, evil is a temporary incident attendant on a state of discipline for the growth, supremacy, and multiplication of the best. The beneficence of pain is seen as an incentive to action, to consciousness, use and development of powers, enforcing obedience to law as the requirement and condition of a happy life.

When men assert the existence of evil to be inconsistent with the personality or with the goodness of God, they really demand a universe absolutely perfect from the beginning. Would such a universe certainly mirror forth Divine power, wisdom, goodness? Free responsible beings are the highest created existences: amongst these, if they are to be thoroughly tested, evil, some time or other, is sure to arise; and extend, by their agency, to physical things. Would God's universe be better, happier, grander, without freedom? Are free spirits never to spring into life, lest evil drag them away?

« AnteriorContinuar »