Part 24

"Nature is red in beak and claw." On land and in sea the animal creation chase and maim, and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying-fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's blood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush creeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption, and a beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love, has power to save, and makes no sign. Is it not so?

Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dreadful blight upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries to save.

Millions of harmless women have been burned as witches. God, our Heavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer and die.

God knew that those women were being tortured and burnt on a false charge. He knew that the infamous murders were in His name. He knew that the whole fabric of crime was due to the human reading of His "revelation" to man. He could have saved the women; He could have enlightened their persecutors; He could have blown away the terror, the cruelty, and the ignorance of His priests and worshippers with a breath.

And He was silent. He allowed the armies of poor women to be tortured and murdered in His name. Is it not so?

Will you, then, compare the Heavenly Father with a father among men? Is there any earthly father who would allow his children to suffer as God allows Man to suffer? If a man had knowledge and power to prevent or to abolish war and ignorance and hunger and disease; if a man had the knowledge and the power to abolish human error and human suffering and human wrong and did not do it, we should call him an inhuman monster, a cruel fiend. Is it not so?

But God has knowledge and power, and we are asked to regard Him as a Heavenly Father, and a God of infinite wisdom, and infinite mercy, and infinite love.

The Christians used to tell us, and some still tell us, that this Heavenly Father of infinite love and mercy would doom the creatures He had made to Hell--for their sins. That, having created us imperfect, He would punish our imperfections with everlasting torture in a lake of everlasting fire. They used to tell us that this good God allowed a Devil to come on earth and tempt man to his ruin. They used to say this Devil would win more souls than Christ could win: that there should be "more goats than sheep."

To escape from these horrible theories, the Christians (some of them) have thrown over the doctrines of Hell and the Devil.

But without a Devil how can we maintain a belief in a God of love and kindness? With a good God, and a bad God (or Devil), one might get along; for then the good might be ascribed to God, and the evil to the Devil. And that is what the old Persians did in their doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahrimann. But with no Devil the belief in a merciful and loving Heavenly Father becomes impossible.

If God blesses, who curses? If God saves, who damns? If God helps, who harms?

This belief in a "Heavenly Father," like the belief in the perfection of the Bible, drives its votaries into weird and wonderful positions. For example, a Christian wrote to me about an animal called the aye-aye. He said:

There is a little animal called an aye-aye. This animal has two hands. Each hand has five fingers. The peculiar thing about these hands is that the middle finger is elongated a great deal--it is about twice as long as the others. This is to enable it to scoop a special sort of insect out of special cracks in the special trees it frequents. Now, how did the finger begin to elongate? A little lengthening would be absolutely no good, as the cracks in the trees are 2 inches or 3 inches deep. It must have varied from the ordinary length to one twice as long at once. There is no other way. Where does natural selection come in? In this, as in scores of other instances, it shows the infinite goodness of God.

Now, how does the creation of this long finger show the "infinite goodness of God"? The infinite goodness of God to whom? To the animal whose special finger enables him to catch the insect? Then what about the insect? Where does he come in? Does not the long finger of the animal show the infinite badness of God to the insect?

What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the cholera microbe to feed on man? What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the grub of the ichneumon-fly to eat up the cabbage caterpillar alive?

I see no infinite goodness here, but only the infinite foolishness of sentimental superstition.

If a man fell into the sea, and saw a shark coming, I cannot fancy him praising the infinite goodness of God in giving the shark so large a mouth. The greyhound's speed is a great boon to the greyhound; but it is no boon to the hare.

But this theory of a merciful, and loving Heavenly Father is vital to the Christian religion.

Destroy the idea of the Heavenly Father, who is Love, and Christianity is a heap of ruins. For there is no longer a benevolent God to build our hopes upon; and Jesus Christ, whose glory is a newer revelation of God, has not revealed Him truly, as He is, but only as Man fain would believe Him to be.

And I claim that this Heavenly Father is a myth: that in face of a knowledge of life and the world we cannot reasonably believe in Him.

There is no Heavenly Father watching tenderly over us, His children. He is the baseless shadow of a wistful human dream.

PRAYER AND PRAISE

As to prayer and praise.

Christians believe that God is just, that He is all-wise and all-knowing.

If God is just, will He not do justice without being entreated of men?

If God is all wise, and knows all that happens, will He not know what is for man's good better than man can tell Him?

If He knows better than Man knows what is best for man, and if He is a just God and a loving Father, will He not do right without any advice or reminder from Man?

If He is a just God, will He give us less than justice unless we pray to Him; or will He give us more than justice because we importune Him?