Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other EssaysWashburn, L. K. (Lemuel Kelley)
Religion
Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other Essays
Washburn, L. K. (Lemuel Kelley)
Free thought
We can hardly look anywhere in Nature without having the conviction grow
in the mind that there are more or less superfluous things on this spot of
the universe where our lot is cast, however it may be in Mars, Venus,
Saturn, or any other of the Greek-named planets or any heavenly
constellations with or without names. Just at this particular season of
the year, the presence of weeds in the garden or on the farm raises a
colossal doubt as to the fact of any wisdom guiding the divine voice when,
in a majestic sweep of its omnipotent power on the third day of the drama
of creation, it called into being the grass, the herb, the tree and
whatsoever bears leaf or blade or flower. To those who have to pull the
weeds out of the ground they are a curse of the first magnitude, and how a
creator, who had common sense, could take pride in making such vegetable
abortions as weeds we cannot comprehend. The most worthless things in
Nature are the most prolific. Chickweed will cover an acre while clover is
considering where it is best to go into business, and every pesky, nasty
little weed will live and laugh when the queenly corn droops its head in
the sun, and the beet and turnip cannot get nourishment enough to keep
them alive.
It is just the same in the animal world. An immense quantity of useless
beings go about on two and four legs or on none at all. The only excuse
for the snake is that he was made to eat the toad; for the toad, that he
was made to eat insects; for the insects—well, nobody has yet made a
wholesome excuse for their existence, anyway. It looks as though one being
in Nature was made simply to kill another being, and the last-made being,
man, is the supreme killer of the whole lot. Take the whole range of wild
beasts, and find, if you can, aught but malice in their creation, if they
were created. No plague ever destroyed hyenas and jackals. No one ever
found a sick rattlesnake or an invalid hornet. The fittest survive? The
fittest for what? To worry man, to make life miserable. Mosquitoes, wasps,
fleas, reptiles and wild beasts, poisonous vines and shrubs, noxious
blossoms whose perfume is the kiss of death, weeds that push and crowd
decent plants until they die in utter despair—these are the sturdiest
triumphs of the creative art. We cannot help wishing that the Lord-God had
not rested on the seventh day, but instead, had gone around and destroyed
about seven-eighths of what he had created. We might then have had quite a
decent world to live in.
Man builds a home for her he loves, he plants beside it all that will make
it beautiful to the eyes of his wife. He works and brings what is fair to
adorn it, and makes every room a casket to hold the jewel of love. He
looks at his home with pride, and feels that it is “the dearest spot on
earth,” a refuge safe and secure. The cyclone comes and in a moment all is
swept away. Man cannot trust the God of the winds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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