MISCHIEVOUS THEOLOGY.

Evening Star, Issue 2892, 27 May 1872, Page 2

MISCHIEVOUS THEOLOGY.

To the Editor. " Sir, —Now that the smoke of the spiritual battle on longer “ hangs upon the air,” and the din of conflict has subsided, perhaps there may be eyes to see and ears to listen to another little matter which has arisen in* cidentally in the contest, but has no necessary connection with it. It is one,’ however, of great and far-reaching interest; and much more likely to be fruitful of result in discussion than even- some things less-numdaue. I allude to a passage in the first able letter of the Kev. Mr Roseby, in the controversy With Mr Smith, It is the following “ Why God should bring thousands into the world whose career (pre-known to him) will be a career of grovelling vice, selfishness, brutality, and impiety, and whose death will be the death of an Antiochns, of a Herod,' of a Judas, we do hot know. “But the mystery is no invention of the theologians. It is the mystery of fact.” That is to say, as I take it, that it is “a fact,” that God does all this, and his reason “ the why”— for doing it is “a mystery.” I feel strongly, sir, that this doctrine calls for serious animadversion. While I deny that any such fact is fairly to be laid to the charge of our Maker, I do at the same time believe there is here both theology and mystery, not to say blasphemy. Verily much evil is laid to God’s charge, of which, if we only looked'sharply to our own conduct, we might discover the causes to be quite within our own control. It is astounding in these days amidst the light which science is diffusing around us, and above all considering the strides which the science of society ja now making, to

read such ft statement, and from such a source. There was a time (long n-ro) when every operation in nature, goo-1 or evil, was ascribed to the agenev of the Clods—the winds blew, the streams flowed, the corn ripened solely under their superintendence and control. Zeus then launched the thunderbolt, and Phoebus Apollo shot forth his arrows, carrying pestilence and sudden death among the people The influence of this theological mode of thought does, without doubt, survive to this day, and is the source of a host of mischievous fallacies affecting most matters of every-day discussion, but above all those of a social natm’c. Science is rapidly and decidedly proving that man living in society is governed by invariable law, and in no department of this wide field is this truth better established than in that of the laws of population. The true doctrine of Matthns, that, namely, which he really held, though ignorantly cavilled against and snarled at, remains to this hour nnrefuted by any writer, English or foreign. This is, shortly stated, that “ population tends to increase faster than means of subsistence ’ —that is, if something did nit happen to prevent it doing so; for that is the proper meaning of a “tendency.” „ . The absolute power of increase m organism, whether animal or vegetable, is practically infinite But this is always limited by two sorts of checks—the one physical or positive, the other moral or preventive. The former affects chiefly the vegetable kingdom and the lower animals ; the latter—that is, the proven ivc and moral—is the main restrictive force which tends to keep human increase within bounds. It is, however, sad to say, not by any means tho sole check upon man. The less enlightened he is, the nearer he approaches, by the predominance of his animal nature, to the brutes, and so the more he comes under the lash of the positive check. Multitudes of children, like the innumerable germ of plants or young of animals, perish by the mere failure of the conditions of life—die in the struggle for existence. The more man recedes from barbarism, and rises in the scale of progressing civilisation, the more the influence of the prudential check becomes predominant. ' The feature of man’s moral and intellectual nature through which this prudential check operates is expansion, and is strengthened and vivified by all the multifarious facts summed up in the abstract term civilisation. . , The spread of education, the diffusion ot information, the raising of the standard of comfort, and the diffusion of property among the laboring masses, all combine to this result. If you leave a man utterly lincducatcd and ignored, Or if you depress the condition of a class of men to a hopeless despair, the danger is that he or they not being accustomed, and not caring to connect his of-; their actions with the consequences of them will be guided solely by the promptings of;' their passions and animal instincts, if they will contract early and imprudent marriages—they will spend their earnings recklessly. Worse still, when once the laboring poor sink into a station which their standard of comfort comprises in their minds, nothing but the merest primary necessaries of life, it is then impossible to mitigate the evil in any direct way. The only result of such efforts always is that they just breed so much the more rapidly. Then, indeed, come * the grovelling vice, the selfishness, brutality, and impiety,’ &c. This is just the re-appearance of that most terrible and mischievous feeling that we hear in the mouths of the poor, “God never sends mouths but he sends meat.” The mouths do certainly come, but if we are to credit clear evidence, “ the meat ” rarely reaches them. But to lay this serious charge to our Heavenly Father is as dishonoring to our intelligence as it is, in my opinion, blasphemous to Him. , , I will close this letter, grown beyond my intention, in the wise words of one of the wisest and most benevolent of living writers, Mr J. S. Mill;—“ Poverty, like most social evils, exists because men follow their brute instincts without due consideration. But society is possible precisely because man is not necessarily a brute. Civilisation in every one of its aspects is a struggle against the animal instincts. Over some even of the strongest of them it has shown itself capable of acquiring abundant control. If it has not brought the instinct of population under as much restraint as is needful, we must remember that it has never seriously tried. Yours, &c, Economics. May 25, 1872.