The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candourPhelips, Vivian
Religion
The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour
Phelips, Vivian
Rationalism
There is another of these attempts to relieve doubt which I should
like to bring to notice. The little book entitled In Relief of Doubt,
by the Rev. E. Welsh, highly recommended by the Bishop of London,
and one of the books selected by the Christian Evidence Society for
their examination in March, 1907, is quoted from by Dr. Warschauer
[149] when refuting Mr. Blatchford's remarks on the cruelty of
Nature. Dr. Warschauer selects the passage where Mr. Welsh says
(p. 103): "We probably overstate the actual anguish of the lower
creatures, imagining that they are bundles of sensitive nerves
and quick brains like our own, and that they therefore have our
sensibility to pain. A trodden worm writhes, and we credit it with
all the pain that the foot of a Brobdingnag would inflict on a
delicate child under his heel." Now, I am quite sure we credit no
such thing. If we did, we, and especially the Isaak Waltons among us,
would be perfect monsters of cruelty. Mark, too, how Messrs. Welsh and
Warschauer carefully select for their illustration a worm--one of the
lowly organised invertebrates! I may mention that Dr. Warschauer's
book was particularly recommended to me by a well-read cleric,
who thought that it was an admirable and complete refutation of
Mr. Blatchford's arguments. Dr. Warschauer will hardly advance his
cause by transparently omitting all mention of the higher animals,
or of that bundle of nerves called man.
Nor will the average man agree with Professor Wallace that "it is
difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of
happiness could have been secured." Was it, for example, impossible for
God to have decreed that sentient life should feed only on non-sentient
life? Could He not have brought about development without all this
terrible struggle? One would think that Messrs. Warschauer and Wallace
must not only have had a particularly good time themselves in this
world, but must have purposely shut their eyes to the misery all round
them. If they had to change places with a wounded Russian or Japanese
writhing in agony on the battlefield, I wonder whether their optimism
would stand the test? The bravest of us shudder at the idea of being
buried alive, and yet this was just the very fate of many a poor fellow
in that truly terrible war. Not that man did not do his utmost. "One
by one the dead and injured were carefully and tenderly taken out,"
relates an eye-witness, "and many a tear was shed by strong men at
the terrible sights we had to witness. The worst part of our work was
to have to endure the agonising cries of the men who were suffering
terrible torture; but everyone helped so willingly that we felt that
we were not doing enough." Please note, on the one hand, the cruel
torture, and, on the other, the sympathy of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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