Part 13 (2/2)
Have you never been touched by, never been even shocked by, the mystery of pain and death? I do not speak now of pain and death among human beings: but only of that pain and death among the dumb and irrational creatures, which from one point of view is more pitiful than pain and death among human beings.
For pain, suffering, and death, we know, may be of use to human beings.
It may make them happier and better in this life, or in the life to come; if they are the Christians which they ought to be. But of what use can suffering and death be to dumb animals? How can it make them better in this life, and happier in the life to come? It seems, in the case of animals, to be only so much superfluous misery thrown away. Would to G.o.d that people would remember that, when they unnecessarily torment dumb creatures, and then excuse themselves by saying--Oh, they are not human beings; they are not Christians; and therefore it does not matter so much. I should have thought that therefore it mattered all the more: and that just because dumb animals have, as far as we know, only this mortal life, therefore we should allow them the fuller enjoyment of their brief mortality.
And yet, how much suffering, how much violent death, there is among animals. How much? The world is full of it, and has been full of it for ages. I dare to say, that of the millions on millions of living creatures in the earth, the air, the sea, full one-half live by eating each other. In the sea, indeed, almost every kind of creature feeds on some other creature: and what an amount of pain, of terror, of violent death that means, or seems to mean!
We here, in a cultivated country, are slow to take in this thought. We have not here, as in India, Africa, America, lion and tiger, bear and wolf, jaguar and puma, perpetually prowling round the farms, and taking their t.i.the of our sheep and cattle. We have never heard, as the Psalmist had, the roar of the lion round the village at night, or seen all the animals, down to the very dogs, crowding together in terror, knowing but too well what that roar meant. If we had; and had been like the Psalmist, thoughtful men: then it would have been a very solemn question to us--From whom the lion was asking for his nightly meal; whether from G.o.d, or from some devil as cruel as himself?
But even here the same slaughter of animals by animals goes on. The hawk feeds on the small birds, the small birds on the insects, the insects, many of them, on each other. Even our most delicate and seemingly harmless songsters, like the nightingale, feed entirely on living creatures--each one of which, however small, has cost G.o.d as much pains--if I may so speak in all reverence--to make as the nightingale itself; and thus, from the top to the bottom of creation, is one chain of destruction, and pain, and death.
What is the meaning of it all? Ought it to be so, or ought it not? Is it G.o.d's will and law, or is it not? That is a solemn question; and one which has tried many a thoughtful, and tender, and virtuous soul ere now, both Christian and heathen; and has driven them to find strange answers to it, which have been, often enough, not according to Scripture, or to the Catholic Faith.
Some used to say, in old times; and they may say again--This world, so full of pain and death, is a very ill-made world. We will not believe that it was made by the good G.o.d. It must have been made by some evil being, or at least by some stupid and clumsy being--the Demiurgus, they called him--or the world-maker--some inferior G.o.d, whom the good G.o.d would conquer and depose, and so do away with pain, and misery, and death. A pardonable mistake: but, as we are bound to believe, a mistake nevertheless.
Others, again, good Christians and good men likewise, have invented another answer to the mystery--like that which Milton gives in his 'Paradise Lost.' They have said--Before Adam fell there was no pain or death in the world. It was only after Adam's fall that the animals began to destroy and devour each other. Ever since then there has been a curse on the earth, and this is one of the fruits thereof.
Now I say distinctly, as I have said elsewhere, that we are not bound to believe this or anything like it. The book of Genesis does not say that the animals began to devour each other at Adam's fall. It does not even say that the ground is cursed for man's sake now, much less the animals.
For we read in Genesis ix. 21--”And the Lord said, I will not any more curse the ground for man's sake.” Neither do the Psalmists and Prophets give the least hint of any such doctrine. Surely, if we found it anywhere, we should find it in this very 104th Psalm, and somewhere near the very verse which I have taken for my text. But this Psalm gives no hint of it. So far from saying that G.o.d has cursed His own works, or looks on them as cursed: it says--”The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”
Others will tell us that St Paul has said so, where he says that ”by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” But I must very humbly, but very firmly, demur to that. St Paul shews that when he speaks of the world he means the world of men; for he goes on to say, ”And so death pa.s.sed upon all men, in that all have sinned.” By mentioning men, he excludes the animals; he excludes all who have not sinned: according to a sound rule of logic which lawyers know well. What St Paul meant, I believe, is most probably this: that Adam, by sinning, lost his heavenly birthright; and put on the carnal and fleshly likeness of the animals, instead of the likeness of G.o.d in which he was created; and therefore, sowing to the flesh, of the flesh reaped corruption; and became subject to death even as the dumb beasts are.
Be that as it may, we know--as certainly as we can know anything from the use of our own eyes and common sense--that long ages before Adam, long ages before men existed on this earth, the animals destroyed and ate each other, even as they are doing now. We know that ages ago, in old worlds, long before this present world in which we live, the seas swarmed with sharks and other monsters, who not only died as animals do now, but who did devour--for there is actual proof of it--other living creatures; and that the same process went on on the land likewise. The rocks and soils, for miles beneath our feet, are one vast graveyard, full of the skeletons of creatures, almost all unlike any living now, who, long before the days of Adam, and still more before the days of Noah, lived and died, generation after generation; and sought their meat--from whom--if not from G.o.d?
Yes, that last is the answer--the only answer which can give a thoughtful and tender-hearted soul comfort, at the sight of so much pain and death on earth--In every unknown question, to take refuge in G.o.d. And that is the answer which the inspired Psalmist gives, in the 104th Psalm--”The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from G.o.d.” And if they seek it from G.o.d, all must be right: we know not how; but He who made them knows.
Consider, with respect and admiration, the manful, cheerful view of pain and death, and indeed of the whole creation, which the Psalmist has, because he has faith. There is in him no sentimentalism, no complaining of G.o.d, no impious, or at least weak and peevish, cry of ”Why hast Thou made things thus?” He sees the mystery of pain and death. He does not attempt to explain it: but he faces it; faces it cheerfully and manfully, in the strength of his faith, saying--This too, mysterious, painful, terrible as it may seem, is as it should be; for it is of the law and will of G.o.d, from whom come all good things; of The G.o.d in whom is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Therefore to the Psalmist the earth is a n.o.ble sight; filled, to his eyes, with the fruit of G.o.d's works. And so is the great and wide sea likewise. He looks upon it; ”full of things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts,” for ever dying, for ever devouring each other. And yet it does not seem to him a dreadful and a shocking place. What impresses his mind is just what would impress the mind of a modern poet, a modern man of science; namely, the wonderful variety, richness, and strangeness of its living things. Their natures and their names he knows not. It was not given to his race to know. It is enough for him that known unto G.o.d are all His works from the foundation of the world. But one thing more important than their natures and their names he does know; for he perceives it with the instinct of a true poet and a true philosopher--”These all wait upon thee, O G.o.d, that Thou mayest give them meat in due season.”
But more.--”There go the s.h.i.+ps;” things specially wonderful and significant to him, the landsman of the Judaean hills, as they were afterward to Muhammed, the landsman of the Arabian deserts. And he has talked with sailors from those s.h.i.+ps; from Tars.h.i.+sh and the far Atlantic, or from Ezion-geber and the Indian seas. And he has heard from them of mightier monsters than his own Mediterranean breeds; of the Leviathan, the whale, larger than the largest s.h.i.+p which he has ever seen, rolling and spouting among the ocean billows, far out of sight of land, and swallowing, at every gape of its huge jaws, hundreds of living creatures for its food. But he does not talk of it as a cruel and devouring monster, formed by a cruel and destroying deity, such as the old Canaanites imagined, when--so the legend ran--they offered up Andromeda to the sea-monster, upon that very rock at Joppa, which the Psalmist, doubtless, knew full well. No. This psalm is an inspired philosopher's rebuke to that very superst.i.tion; it is the justification of the n.o.ble old Greek tale, which delivers Andromeda by the help of a hero, taught by the G.o.ds who love to teach Mankind.
For what strikes the Psalmist is, again, exactly what would strike a modern poet, or a modern man of science: the strength and ease of the vast beast; its enjoyment of its own life and power. It is to him the Leviathan, whom ”G.o.d has made to play in the sea;” ”to take his pastime therein.”
Truly this was a healthy-minded man; as all will be, and only they, who have full faith in the one good G.o.d, of whom are all things, both in earth and heaven.
Then he goes further still. He has looked into the face of life innumerable. Now he looks into the face of innumerable death; and sees there too the Spirit and the work of G.o.d.
Thou givest to them; they gather: Thou openest thy hand; they are filled with good: Thou hidest thy face; they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath; they die, and are turned again to their dust.
Poetry? Yes: but, like all highest poetry, highest philosophy; and soundest truth likewise. Nay, he goes further still--further, it may be, than most of us would dare to go, had he not gone before us in the courage of his faith. He dares to say, of such a world as this--”The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever. The Lord shall rejoice in His works.”
The glory of the Lord, then, is shewn forth, and endures for ever, in these animals of whom the Psalmist has been speaking, though they devour each other day and night. The Lord rejoices in His works, even though His works live by each other's death. The Lord shall rejoice in His works--says this great poet and philosopher.
But what Lord, and what G.o.d? Ah, my friends, all depends on the answer to that question. ”There be,” says St Paul, ”lords many, and G.o.ds many:”
and since his time, men have made fresh lords and G.o.ds for themselves, and believed in them, and wors.h.i.+pped them, while they fancied that they were believing in the one true G.o.d, in the same G.o.d in whom the man believed who wrote the 104th Psalm.
Do we truly believe in that one true G.o.d, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Let me beg you to consider that question earnestly. The Psalmist, when he talked of the Lord, did not mean merely what some people call the Deity, or the Supreme Being, or the Creator. You will remark that I said--What. I do not care to say, Whom, of such a notion; that is, of a G.o.d who made the world, and set it going once for all, but has never meddled with it; never, so to speak, looked at it since: so that the world would go on just the same, and just as well, if G.o.d thenceforth had ceased to be. No: that is a dead G.o.d; an absentee G.o.d--as one said bitterly once. But the Psalmist believed in the living G.o.d, and a present G.o.d, in whom we live and move and have our being; in a G.o.d who does not leave the world alone for a moment, nor in the smallest matter, but is always interested in it, attending to it, enforcing His own laws, working--if I may so speak in all reverence--and using the most pitifully insufficient a.n.a.logy--working--I say--His own machinery; making all things work together for good, at least to those who love G.o.d; a G.o.d without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and in whose sight all the hairs of our heads are numbered.
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