PROVIDENCE AND CATASTROPHES. T HE terrible explosion at Toulon raises once
more the old, old question. Why does God permit such events to happen? It is not likely that the modern man by searching will find out God any more than those Eastern men whose speculations recorded in the Book of Job have expressed the
thoughts and yearnings of countless generations of mankind.
We can only restate the eternal problem, and suggest con- clusions which have been suggested before, but which are always capable of restatement. Here are scores of innocent people killed and injured (some of the latter for life) by an unforeseen and sudden catastrophe, due either to "accident"
or, as is whispered, to some diabolical act of treachery. How can it be justified? If society puts to death the man who causes acts like this, must we not impeach the Providence which permits the act and sustains the arm of the miscreant who effects it P The question is still asked by men whose faith in a divine and beneficent order is shocked by the occurrence of a tragedy which overtakes innocent victims, and who ask in the desolation of their souls, Can God be just?
The first answer which occurs to the mind when this problem is raised is whether the negation of a divine Provi- dence is of any help. If the tragedy was all without purpose, if it was merely due to molecular action uncontrolled by any supreme spiritual power, are we any further? Does the agnostic gain anything on that hypothesis? Obviously he does not, for he admits that matter is triumphant, and that the noblest aspirations of the noblest human soul may be cancelled by a mere physical act. The idealist (we use the term to cover all believers in a divine order) holds the faith that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the divine will, that "nothing walks with aimless feet," that death is not the final fact in life, but only an inevitable means of transforma- tion to a higher plane of life. Faith can meet the catastrophes of life with a firm hope that the merely subjective impres- sions which a finite being entertains of these catastrophes is not, and cannot be, identified with the objective facts as seen by an infinite intelligence. Thus the sceptic really gains nothing by his scepticism ; the actual fact is to him just as terrible as to the believer, while the latter finds a hidden clue to the mystery which is sealed to the former. That a mere sudden chemical combination, itself without thought and controlled by no thought, irresponsible, regnant, a final fact in Nature, should exercise the power of absolutely destroying that wonderful piece of work called a man, of cancelling his will, intellect, soul in a moment, and of wiping his personality out of the universe, is a thought so horrible, so unbearable, that if it were really believed by the bulk of the human race, madness on a gigantio scale would inevitably follow. We are kept sane by a reasonable faith that all we see, as Wordsworth says, is "full of blessings."
But, in the next place, it is worth noting that it is only the unusual tragedies of the world that call forth expressions of doubt or positive unbelief. "Every moment dies a man," and yet this constant passage of souls into the unknown produces no impression. It is only when wholesale death within a given area takes place, that men's minds are swayed by unbelief. The earthquake at Lisbon, we know, seriously affected the religious thought of Europe; though, we must recollect, it affected Europe at a time when faith was at a low ebb. But why should such an event affect the minds of men who profess, above all things, to be governed by reason ? These men know how the crust of the earth is composed, they know of the volcanic formations, they know that if you build on these, you must be prepared to take the consequences. They do not expect that letters of warning shall be traced by divine power on the sky ; the uniformity of Nature is the very fundamental article of their creed. So much for the naturalness of the catastrophe. But there is the subjective human side. Well, every one at Lisbon, every one at Toulon, had to die at some time; why not in one way as soon as in another P Is it worse to die suddenly than to die after months and years of protracted suffering ? Is not the most painless death, so far as we can guess, the instantaneous death by a stroke of lightning ? The victims at Toulon felt one tremendous shock and all was over. But the victim of con- sumption in some dark city slam suffers a daily death, suit were ; the patient in a cancer hospital can tell of a lingering agony which the thousands engulfed at Lisbon or .in Ischia never knew. We need not for the moment, to use the words of Herodotus, carry up our story into the unseen world. Taking the facts as given here, we can only say that it is a vulgar illusion which strains at the Toulon explosion as being inconsistent with divine Providence, and yet swallows without difficulty the single, common, every-day tragedies of human life.
But are there not, then, tragedies in life ? it may be asked. Undoubtedly there are, but the tragedy is a thing of the soul, not of the body. Agamemnon, Hamlet, Othello are not subjects of tragedy because of any misfortune which has happened to their bodies or to their material goods ; when we think of them we never think of these things, which in the long procession of the ages are matters of absolute indifference. It is in the maimed or impotent soul, in the degraded character, that tragedy consists. Think of Shakespeare making the ground of tragedy the fact that the hero had broken his leg or lost a fortune ! No, the souls in hell are there because, as Dante said of Epicurus, they have lost spiritual good. There, and there alone, is the groundwork of life's tragedies. What, then, it will be asked, are we to express no regret, no grief for these occurrences which shock the world ? Now, we do not say that, for grief is natural to man, and it purges his nature and sweetens his character, so long as it does not degenerate into futile, hopeless melancholy. We are but men, and we needs must grieve with our fellow- men, either when sitting by the bed of suffering or hearing of the harrowing incidents in which scores of human beings are involved in what we cannot help, from our point of view, in regarding as a dire catastrophe. But we must always remember that grief is a pure expression of our point of view, which is limited, partial, finite. We know but a tiny segment of a vast circle. Within our little creek, to use Carlyle's simile, we have the minnow's right to say what we find there. But beyond that creek is the river, and beyond that the infinite sea; shall we, in our self-important littleness, dare to say what boundless possi- bilities are there? Who knows that the human soul called hurriedly from this little earth may not be needed in "the sounding-house vast of being"? What beneficent fate may not have been in store for those on whom the Tower of Siloam fell? In an infinite universe there are infinite possi- bilities. Let us recall to our minds the meaning and methods of the ever-renewed process of creation as the best suggestions of science and religion reveal them to us. From a merely subjective point of view, Nature seems "red in tooth and claw "; but Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, writing as a man of science, tells us that, given sentient life, he cannot conceive of a universe capable of yielding a greater sum of en- joyment to every living being. We shudder to see the hawk swooping on the pigeon, or the snake holding the bird by its deadly fascination ; but, as a matter of fact, we have every reason to believe that the victim in tither case dies without pain. Once admit a world like ours to he gradually evolved, once admit the fact of sentient life climbing to higher and yet higher grades until it forms a vehicle for the expression of mind, and we see that facts are necessitated which, from our subjective standpoint, seem terrible. Bat even then one of these facts is no more terrible than another, and the death of a tiny child is as tragic as the death of a thousand people,—no more and no less. But if we hold that the world is not a final fact at any moment, that it has a purpose, that that purpose is being constantly worked out, but that the ultimate issues are revealed within the unseen, that the death of the body is not that of the soul, and that all which happens was included in the divine plan,—if we have faith to look at the universe in this way, and to see that it is not to be measured by our little subjective plummet, we shall not despair at the many seeming ills of human life.
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