HOPE—OR DESPAIR—WHICH?
By Milton C. Wilcox
THE editor of Freethought, in his issue of August 15, presents very strikingly, and doubtless unwittingly, the hopelessness of infidelity. In speaking of a horrible murder, he says:— "Without doubt, the mother and child were happy that sunny morning, when the assassin crept upon their path. How swift and horrible the change, the attack, the death, the dragging through the woods, the burial, and all the shuddering details of the inhuman transaction. How the deep, dark problem of life and destiny presses upon the heart in view of the scenes of this pitiable tragedy. How can one be so cruel? Whence comes this devastating passion, and what will remove it? Where is the justice of the heavens and the love of God? Could any divine being, looking upon this infinite horror, have withheld his aid? No angel, no spirit came at the tortured mother's cry. Human love, after all, is the only remedy for human hate. Human justice must right human wrong. I could only feel, amidst the beautiful sunshine that was trying to cover up the dreadful terror, that in ourselves only is the providence of the good and just. We only can make those conditions—those divine conditions—whereby the heart shall be made loving and noble, and these deeds of blood forever impossible." Life to the infidel is a "deep, dark problem" which his reasoning can never solve. He demands that God shall act in his way, and his time, according to his own infinitesimal wisdom. Should Deity do this so as to satisfy one infidel, many others would doubtless take that condescension on the part of God as an additional evidence against God, or an argument in favor of his non-existence. How, we inquire, does "human justice right human wrong" in this case? The fact that it does not and cannot leads the writer to raise these, to him, unanswerable questions. In his heart he knows that "human love" and "human justice" fall infinitely short of doing this, because of man's own perverted nature, limited wisdom and knowledge, and limited existence. He who dispenses exact justice to wrong-doers585must be able to read thoughts, motives, and intents, and this, man cannot do. He can take an oftentimes perverted view of the overt act, but he knows not the thoughts of the heart, the motives which inspired the deed, nor the inherited tendencies which urged him on. Therefore, man can never right human wrong. And this very fact argues for the existence of an all-wise Ruler and Judge, infinite in every power and faculty which is necessary to Deity. Time is naught to such a Being; eternity is his. The wrong may be unpunished in this life's little span; God has time beyond. Faithful men may perish here in ignominy and reproach; God will reward them in his own time. And the God that will do this is the God of the Bible. But Freethought will have none of him or the power of the resurrection of his Christ, which forms the subject of clumsy ridicule in another column of that same paper. Faith in the omniscient and infinite God is light and solid rock compared with the misty fogland of infidelity. The one is good hope; the other is dark despair. And if it were no more than hope, it is to be preferred to the uncertainty of infidelity which shackles thought and confines it to our own little circle. There is freedom in Christ, there is hope in his word, there is rest in his service; there is righteousness and life and peace beyond. We choose the Rock of the word. M. C. W.