FAINFI AND ARITHMETIC.
[To TH E Eorron Or THE " SP ROTATOR:]
Six,—I observe that the terrible catastrophe in Sicily has been frequently described as a severe trial to faith. There is perhaps no more striking proof of the power of numbers to dazzle and bewilder. We read of one man. being burnt to death, or swept from the deck of a vessel, or crushed by falling masonry, with comparative equanimity; of ten, and we are startled; of a thousand, and we are shocked and scandalised; of a hundred thousand, and we question the justice or the mercy of God. But though the looker-on is overwhelmed at the sight of a disaster of this magnitude, each one of those hundred thousand victims has endured his own portion of agony and loss, and no more; the man who has lost wife and children and home is not more awfully bereaved because his neighbour shares that bitter cup. We suffer and die each day in multitudes. A sudden catastrophe tears the veil for an instant which screens the fact, and we see men enduring simultaneously and visibly what all the world over they endure isolated and unseen every day. Divine love can no more ordain that one man shall suffer the anguish of death or bereavement aimlessly or wantonly than that a million should so suffer. Why should we who believe that God is "at least as good as the best of us "—I think it is Father Tyrrell's phrase—waver in our conviction on account of any arithmetical process P—I am, Sir, &c., H. C. M. Lyme Regis.
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