BERNARD SHAW AND PROVIDENCE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 46, 22 January 1938, Page 2

BERNARD SHAW AND PROVIDENCE

(BY T. E. RUTH.) (Copyright.)

Bernard Shaw shocked some spiritually susceptible people by declaring in an Empire broadcast that Providence could not or would not prevent war. As he meant it, he was surely right. His critics, as so often happens, were wrong. The making of war is man’s work, not God’s. And man must prevent war or perish. It is useless to pray, “Give peace in our time, O Lord,” and expect Providence to prevent war —if man prepares for war, thinks war, talks war, organises industry on a war basis and manufactures armaments. Providence repudiates that kind of

“We must not depend on any sort of Divine Providence to stop war. Providence says: Go on, kill as many people as you want to. There are plenty more where they come from.’ It is a cold-blooded statement of fact —a Shavian statement which does not pretend to be the whole story of Providence and personality. We do not get rid of our social and political responsibility by blaming God or by making pious prayers. God is no respecter of persons. There is no reasonable faith in fate or in favouritism.

An airplane disaster does not distinguish between royalty and commoner or between an Oxford Group believer in daily guidance like Canon Streeter and a mad financier. The sea drowns the most beloved saint with the same unconcern as a notorious sinner. The most passionate prayer can never win God’s interference with the laws of the universe. God does not interfere. Providence is not a law-breaker. Nature is utterly and completely reliable. Providence is not a special relief agency or an easy insurance system. An earnest negro minister had no faith in intermediaries. He thought of God in terms of direct action. He had the most sublime faith in God Himself. In the distress following an earthquake, lie prayed—-“ Lord, come and help us, come Yo’self, Lord, ’taint no time for boys. . .” That expresses a more or less popular belief in the working of _ Providence which will not bear thinking about. In a crisis man is not sufficient — miracles are necessary. Why?

Prayer, properly speaking, rules out neither Providence nor personality. It actually relates them. It really brings them together. Prayer belongs to the spirit of man. It is a spiritual reality. It is boused with spiritual instincts and affinities.

It does not prevent —and it certainly does not promote—-calamity, crucifixion, Armageddon, Tt does not miraculously provide schoolboys with answers to their sums. It does not miraculously cure disease. It does not miraculously prevent war. It helps men to work out their problems, discover the laws of health and work out their own .salvation, live together as decent citizens, decent humans of their own will and accord —which is worth infinitely more to them than any salvation wrought for them without their co-operation and the persistent application of their own powers. If men set out deliberately to prevent war, if nations mentally and morally disarm, if they pray “Create in me a clean heart, O God. and renew a right spirit within me,” and politically cultivate the spirit of peace, they will find the spiritual resources of a social dynamic, and an economic national and internationol wellbeing. Every spiritual reality in Providence and in personality will be in co-opera-tion. • * » * #

When the original spirit of personality—which is man himself, the spirit and the truth of him—actually prays, aYid the enabling power of Pentecost is actually at liis disposal, almost all the difficulties of special Providence disappears. Providence is not at cross-purposes with the progress of personality. On the contrary. Essentially there is no difference between telling the number of the stars and numbering the hairs of your head.

Among so many can He care? Can special love be everywhere

A myriad homes—a myriad ways— And God’s eye over every place? I asked. My soul bethought of this— In just that very place of His

Where He hath put and keepeth you God hath no other thing to do. In days when by the Providence of God we can have Empire broadcasts with a universal voice, when television with a universal presence is on its way, the spiritual purposes of personality find some new meaning in special Providence.

When we realise the spiritual purposes of personality we snail wipe out war, and establish peace on _ earth, goouwiu among men, which is the earth side of glory to God in the highest.

Personality will be one with Providence. * * * * * *

It is true that Nature, which with Mr Sliaw is another name for Providence, seems utterly indifferent to human argument, Mr Shaw’s as well as ours. She appears to take no notice whatever of our theories, our philosophies, our posies, our prophecies, even when, as we imagine, they concern her very seif. She is apparently indifferent to the colour of our faith and to the quality of our unbelief —as indifferent as fate. But indifferent to human destiny, as callous as Mr Shaw thinks who imagines her saying “Go on, kill as many people as you want to. There are plenty more where they come from”? I wonder! Isn’t man made of the same stuff, the same dust of the earth, the same dust of the stars? Isn’t the very universe alive? Don’t the stars in their courses fight against wrong and for right? Is the soul completely outside Nature? Has Nature nothing whatever to do with personality? Nothing to do with beauty, truth, goodness? Nothing to contribute to thinking, feeling, willing? Has she no gift of imagination for playwrights? Isn’t it the hope of humanity to march to its destiny to the music of the spheres? Is there no healing force in the universe? Is it not the one aim of medicine to be allied to Nature’s health laws? Isn’t she Mother Nature? Doesn’t she show us the greatest friendliness, the most sublime sympathy, the most lavish generosity? Sometimes, it may be admitted. But certainly not always. Sometimes she is hard and horrible, wanton and criminal as Mr Shaw suggests. It isn’t easy to associate anything exactly providential with some of her activities. She doesn’t care how many people are killed. She is completely soulless. Personality does not count with her. But—

It is the biggest “but” put to paper. It leaves the whole world of personality on our hands, the importance of which is next week’s subject.