Bear and Forbear

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 17, 25 April 1907, Page 9

Bear and Forbear

Samiuel Lover was the author -of "the- follciwing._witty epigram :— ' ' Though matches are all made in' heaven (they' say), Yet Hymen, who mischief oft hatches, Sometimes^ deals with the house t'other, side of the way, And there they make Lucifer matches '. Frivolity, instability, caprLe, lack of home training, a false pride or an evil temper that flouts the "good old philosophy of ' hear and forbear ', and an insufficient sense of . the sacred 'responsibilities' of wedded life, too v often give rise to those ' Lucifer nvatcftes \ and' sometimes make- them „ 1 A slavery beyond .enduring ; But, then, 'tis of their own p:ocurin,g '. • Fierce old Dean Swift says somewhere that a. chief ' reason for the prevalence of unhappy marriages is tjhis : that young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. ' We do not propose tq enter here into tine spiritual remcUks for ma: rimonial ills. But we. might incidentally quote some helpful ' wisdoms ' from one or two authors of note. -Pope, for instance, ''commends the woman 1 Who ne'er answers till her husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she "rules '. A popular writer of our day - (whose wedded Jife, as -we personally know, was a singularly happy one) was- the witty anid well-known author of ' Between Ourselves '. 1 The greatest wisdom ', says he, 'in matrimony, as in politics, consists in knowing how to -acoep/b .accomplished facts an-d jnake the best of them. „ Elsewhere in the same volume of domestic confidences he says-' — - 1 If you set any value on your time, never attempt to. prove that your wife is wrong* in saying this or in thinking that. A clever man" does not commit such a mistake in matrimony. H-a agrees or remains silent. - . . . Lunatic" asylums a c full of men /who have taied to argue in matrimonial life '. To both members of th-3 life-partnership- of , ' two iit one .flesh ' we- might apply the words that- George Eliot wrote regarding blood relathes : 'Folks -must put up with their own kin, as they put up with their noses— - it's their own flesh and blood* 1 . ' ' the First Cause - - Physical science, .has for its domain the .world, of sense — the world of material, forces,- of phenomena.that can be perceived by the bodily senses. But in the world of material forces the researches of physical science can find nothing which explains ' the origin and nature of matter and force, the sources of motion,- of

life, of sensation and- consciousness, of rational intelligence and language, of free-will, of the reign of law and order to which all nature testifies '. Much less, if possible" (says Gerard), is there any prospect that ' any mechanical forces will ever account for perception of the sublime and beautiful, and, above all, of the distinction . between right and wrong"" 5 ". There are, howe\er, as every one knows lfy personal experience, other channels - of .knowledge besides that . which comes to us directly through this Our intellectual need for casuality, for instance, tells us that the universe has a Cause ; that the Cause must be ' one adequate to the production of what has actually been produced ' ; and that, ' since it is impossible to find the Cause required within the world of material forces and sensible phenomena, it becomes no less obvious that it must lie beyond, across •the frontier which nothing material can, pass.' Many of the foremost men of scien.e declare as I absolutely selfevident ' the existence of a Deity Who is thie First Cause, the Creator, the Upholde-, the Preserver of all things. Thus Professors Stewart and Tait ; thus Lord • • Kelvin, who declared that all nature depends upon o^e . ' ever-acting Creator and Ruler ' ; thus ('among many others)- Pasteur and Lamarck and Lotf'ge >; and thus, too, the great geologist Sir Charles Lyell, even after' he had searched the now discredited theories of his friend Darwin from' Dan to Beersheba. ' The old " Creation °, wrote he to Darwin, 'is almost/ as much required as ever '. . > To the long list of the scientific opponents of the cheap and shallow dilettante atheism of our day must lie added the honored name of that wizard of modern research, Thomas Alva Edison, A ' New York Tribune^, interviewer asked him if his "theories of evolution -and cellular adjustment ' made him ' a disbeliever in the Su.lireme Being '. ' Not at all ', replied Edison. 'No person can be brought into close contact with the mysteries of nature or make a stjitly of chemistry or of tho laws of growth without being convinced that behind it all there is^ a Supreme Intelligence. Ido not mean t<o say a supreme law, for that implies no consciousness, • but a Supreme Mind operating th ough unchangeable laws. I am convinced ol that, and I think, that- I could— perhaps I may some time— demonstrate the existence of such an Intelligence through the operation of these mysterious laws with M\e certaiaity of a demonstration in mathematics.'