German" Comfort" to a Stricken World.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 163, 7 April 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

German" Comfort" to a Stricken World.

By the Rev. R. J. Campbell.

Two Great Men Contrasted-Haeckel and Wailace-Kultur's Sombre Gospel-Scant Consolation to Bereaved German Mothers -The Persia Crime-Greatness of Human Destiny 1 - -jr; jttaCjSUiaSß* I

The grand l old man of science in Germany is Professor Haeckel, and ho lias many admirers in this country and throughout the world notwithstanding the war. It is impossible to withhold a tribute of respect from the vigorous worker, well over eighty years of .go, who has just issued one more book on the fundamental themes which occupy all mmds, namely, life, death, and religion. We also had a grand old man of science till the otlu-r day —Alfred Russel Wallace. He lived to be 90, ant. 1 retained his mental fecundity and alertness to the end. His name takes us back a long way too. He was one of tin l greatest figures of the nineteenth century, contemporary with Darwin and co-discoverer with him of the theory of Natural Selection, otherwise the doctrine of evolution, with which Darwin s name will be spocial'y associated for all t:mo to come.

published a decac.o or more ago and translated into most European languages, including our own. That book exercised a wide and baleful influence upon many who did not know that science as a whole had already passed beyond the point indicated in its pages. Its author avowed himself an uncompromising materialist, anc. l stated that God, Freedom, and immortality were the three great buttresses of superstition which science must make it her business to destroy. He certainly did his best to destroy thorn. And now ho is at it again, this time provoked thereto by the horrors of the world war. The war, ho says, has got rid of religion for over by reducing to an absurdity its doctrine of divine providence. In view of the deaths of such vast massos of people on the battlefield, in the trenches, by aircraft. warships, submarines, in hospitals and prison camps, all of tfiem the victims of blind chance, others spared by the same blind chance, the foolishness of believing that the waste of individuals as of the whole race > s Jll the hands of an omnipotent Being of benevolent purposes has surely become apparent to the most ordinary intelligence. As for Christianity in particular it is put more completely out of court than almost any other form of faith. The war has made an end of the principle of loving one's neighbour as oneself, and demonstrated the utter futility of pacifism. Thoy are soon to lie nothing more than a mockery, and wo had bettor have done with them forthwith.

woo that made Cathleon, noble in purpose but bereft of hope, think of driving a bargain with the powers of hell.

THK HL'BIiUiS AROU'f DARWIN. Do my younger readers realise what an epoch-making event tho publication of Darwin's Origin of Species was? It revolutionised the mcnta? outlook of the entire civilised world. It is not too much to say that it had far more effect upon religious thought, for instance, than Galileo's famous discovery (or re-discovery) of the lact that the earth is a satellite of the sun instead of the other way round'. What a hubbub there was to be sure about Darwin's book and its implications! i Force conflict at once began and went on for many years between the champions of orthodox religion and the aggressive pioneers of the new scientific viow of the universe and its history. Thousands of pulpits thundered against Darwin and his conclusions. The preachers and thclogians could not treat him as the Roman Inquisitors treated Galileo, but if ne had been the devil himself they could not have cursod him more thoroughly. And now this period of controversy is all but forgotten. It seems to us who read about it to belong to some remote ago. Religion, sike everything else, has adjusted itself to the now conditions, finding they wore not so very dreadful after all. Everybody believes in evolution more or less without necessarily disbelieving in the supernatural and div.ne.

There is a kind of joy In casting hope away, in losing joy, In ceasing all resistance, in at last Opening one's arms to the eternal flames, In casting all sails out upon the wind. To this—full of the gaiety of the lost— Would all folk hurry if your gold wore gone. Strange' This is undoubtedly the mood of not a few people at the present tinio. There is a certain relief sometimes in letting go, as >t wore, giving up, allowing misfortune to do its worst, refusing to believe any longei in possible alleviations or anoc.ynes for

llc.v typically Prussian! Ila-eck-e! was ':oin in Potsdins:, <>:> it noted, and apparently has never got very far away from it. Shade of Wallace, with your glowing solicitude for the helpless and downtrodden, and yonr iw:«j::enchablc faith in the essential goodness of the human heart, wint think you of this as the last of science upon all idealism? "SCANT CONSOLATION.'' "What compensation then docs tiie famous German professor hold out lor wliat he thus ruthlessly sweeps away: Here it is. We are to be resigned to cur lot, to fttop deceiving ourselves as to the beauty and mcaningfulness of life. Life has no meaning, he maintains, and is certainly not beautifrl. Let us cease to expect anything from it beyond what we already only to: sadlv know.

incurable gr.ef. A kind of rest may be attained in the very midst of hopelessness by this method, but it is the rest of death . Neither man nor nation can adopt it without being to all intents and purposes finished with. Wallace or Haeckel. which shall !t be? Neither could cla m t . know much more than the other about the essential facts of existence, but how diametrically opposed are their deductions from tliem I Mere cleverness is no passport to eternal truth. Hie highest discloses itself rather to a certain quality of soul, the teachable, tender, and unassuming.

And only to think!—the man who to a great extent was the cause of this upheaval in ideas was still living and active among us till just before the war. Wallace did one oi the finest and most generous things ever known in the history of new discoveries. He withheld his 'own treatise (which would otherwise have apeared simultaneously with Darwin's) from the public on the ground that Darwin deserved the full credit for the results arrived at owing to the greater thoroughness of his research work. 'Wallace had reached the same results independently.

We must have "brave devotion to the Unavoidable," "the knowledge and recognition of the eternity and indestructibility of the Cosmos and of the Courses of Nature in which the individual unceasingly appears and disappears in order to make way for new forms and new modes of unending Substance"

"What an inexhaustible treasurehouse of most noble enjoyment." he continues, "do these countless wonders of an eternal process offer to the thinking man of Kultur!" This, says a reviewer is the concluding sentence in a hook "which will bring but scant consolation to the many who regard Ernst Haecke' as their teacher and prophet."

"1 thank, Thee, 0 Father, Lord of iieavon and earth, that Thou hast 4 hid these tilings from the vise and understanding, and ha-t revealed them i nto babes.'' None who has ever spoken «ith mortal tongue could speak with K'ich authority as He whose words these are. and none has cast such a spell over wistful, troubled minds. Our disillusioned blood-stained age needs to hear them anew. TWO MOPKtf OF HKSIGNATION.

ItfUTONS TilK CREDIT. But I am digressing. Wiiat I ie.iily wanted to point c.-r u;:s tTiat the greatest forward lo.rp of j-cicr.ce m tlio \ ictei'ie.n ape was due lu.t to Germans but to iirirons. Darwin and Wallace made Kneckei possible. It is wnith while remembering this now that such prodigious am. 1 arrogant claims are beuig made 011 behalf of German efficiency ;n all fields of human knowledge and cutoi prise. lo read what is being written in the German Pivss one would never gather that the bespectacled professors who are so busily grubbing a\v;iy in their laboratories iii the endeavour to invent something still more diabolical than poison gas wherewith to discomfit the enemies of the Fatherland owed the original stimulus, of which they are making sucn evil use not to their own savants but to ours. And nothing could well be more striking than the contrast between Haeckel and Wallace in regard to their outlook upon life as a whole. A Irene.' of mine, himself one of the most eminent of living scientific men, tells me tiiat on the last occasion when he went to see Wallace, which was not lon<4 before the veteran passed away, he lound him full of noble enthusiasm concerning the future. It was almost awe-'msp.ring, said my informant, to gaze upon the lighted face of the aged saint, for such he truly was, and hear him reaffirming with the most earnest conviction his belief in the greatness of human destiny in tins world and worlds beyond, his assurance of personal immortality and of a'l the wonders that had y.'t to he revealed i<> the as* ending soul on both siibs oi the tomb, (ilorv upon glory, he eeclarod, awa : ts our growing race: life upon life, triumph upon triumph, joy upon joy. HAKCXKI/S SWAN' KO.XG. Haeckel's swan song, on the other hand, is of the saddest. He interprets th.' present and depicts the future 'n the gloomic-t and most sombre term- 1 . Kven when he offers comfort and some measure of compensation tor the collapse and di-appearanio of ancient ideal- hi- words art more like a cry oi de-nail. Mo=; of us rem ember the sensation caused bv his "Piddle of the 1 11: verse

Scant consolation indeed ! I should like to know what tiic weeping widows and bereaved mothers of Germany get out of it as they think of their husbands and sons sacrificed to their rulers' wicked lust of power. It is all in keeping with the order which wc arc toid is being issued and enforced from Berlin, "No mourning ta 1,0 worn, and no sad face# to be shown in the streets!" Qiute so; how should there be* ill not these fortunate survivors be able to contemplate with joy the fact that their eead have been blotted out "to make way for new forms and modes 01 unending Substance:"" —which, we may assume, will before long have the German eagle universally stamped upon it. What an inspiring prospect for the relatives of those whom Haeckel s callous countrymen have just drowned in the Persia 1 And mark me, the spirit which produces this philosophy governs also this vile doe;!. It is the ghastliest travesty oi a faith that ever was given to the world.

There are two modes of resignation to the ills ill life. The one admits ibe mastery ot hell : the other waits the victory of heaven. Therefore i won't: wiy to nil who care to listen: Do not lightly barter a beautiful hope for a mocking nightmare. They are deceived and deceivers who tell you they have any better reason for declaring that the last word is with evil than the blessed saints have for knowing it to bo wii.ii good. Live as the ; aints have lived and you shall know for yourself, for they one and all speak with the same tongue, and none of them have ever been afraid of the worst that earth had to show. !t is not ii is. the very opposit'.l ct' truth, that- the w: r lias (Seise anything w hate»or to weaken. i:u;<'h ie>.:. c i;r confidence in t!ie spiritual jand ( i ii: -.

Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled 111 a deed outworn. So might I. stand.ng on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. PiEi\AC!'j]]*s of IH'.-PA;::. One of the most puzzling things to me about a certain form of mentality which has its representatives in this country as well as in Germany, is the earnestness with which it preaches c.espair. 1 suppose the people who arc possessed of it are trying their best to be honest with life and not to allow thenise'ves to be cheated with false hopes. But why such proselytising zeal ? One would think they had good news to impart instead of bad, so eager and tireless are they in exhorting us to forego n 1 ! brightness of outlook, all faith in ultimate good. It reminds one of the sinister advice of tiie foul tieiid in W. !!. Yeats' Counter Gath.leen, who wa« trying to persuade his victim to sell her sotil to buy broad for the starving in the wretched v olid where she lived and suffered. As with some among ourselves, it was the spectacle of human

A:! tile baffling problems were here before in their luilness that are here now. Death was just a- inevitable, and we 'nave all got to face it just the same as if there had been no war at all. Why in the name of common sen=e people should think that because the (head activities of death have been ill amatkaily crowded into a tew months, for a fev, hundred thousand people out ol tie' billions on the earth's surface, instead of being spread over as many years, therefore the consolationof faith have failed, it would lie hard to say. What was true before is true stil 1 , and as dependable. The pains w"> endure on<- by one, an"t brief at the longest, ai'o no disproof of divine benevolence. On the contrary. ,f we had but eyes to see and oars to hear, tnoy ai'o the means of blessedness. th" discord- that imply supernal harmonies. It is not what the world suffers that should lead men to doubt God but what the world ignores, despises, or betrays of what it dare not deny to be bighe>t and be-t if it could but ,-.train to it. Wi- aie like dream t- tossing in muasv siumbor. An . the morniiif is a; hand. U. J. C.\ MPBMI.T..