With characteristic inconsistency the Christian will exclaim "Here
is another blasphemous title. What has God to do with the weather?"
Everything, sir. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without his
knowledge, and do you think he fails to regulate the clouds? The
hairs of your head are numbered, and do you think he cannot count the
rain-drops? Besides, your clergy pray for a change in the weather when
they find it necessary; and to whom do they pray but God? True, they are
getting chary of such requests, but the theory is not disavowed, nor can
it be unless the Bible is 'discarded as waste-paper; and the forms of
supplication for rain and fine weather still remain in the Prayer Book,
although many parsons must feel like the parish clerk who asked "What's
the use of praying for rain with the wind in that quarter?"
We might also observe that as God is omnipotent he does everything, or
at least everything which is not left (as parsons would say) to man's
freewill, and clearly the weather is not included in that list. God is
also omniscient, and what he foresees and does not alter is virtually
his own work. Even if a tile drops on a man's head in a gale of wind, it
falls, like the sparrow, by a divine rule; and it is really the Lord who
batters the poor fellow's skull. An action for assault would undoubtedly
lie, if there were any court in which the case could be pleaded. What
a frightful total of damages would be run up against the defendant if
every plaintiff got a proper verdict! For, besides all the injuries
inflicted on mankind by "accident," which only means the Lord's malice
or neglect, it is a solemn fact (on the Theist's hypothesis) that God
has killed every man, woman, and child that ever died since the human
race began. We are born here without being consulted, and hurried away
without the least regard to our convenience.
But let us keep to the weather. A gentleman who was feeding the fish at
sea heard a sailor singing "Britannia rules the waves." "Does she?" he
groaned, "Then I wish she'd rule them straighter." Most of us might as
fervently wish that the Lord ruled the weather better. Some parts of
the world are parched and others flooded. In some places the crops are
spoiled with too much sun, and in others with too little. Some people
sigh for the sight of a cloud, and others people see nothing else.
Occasionally a famine occurs in India which might have been averted by
half our superfluity of water. Even at home the weather is always more
or less of a plague. Its variation is so great that it is always a safe
topic of conversation. You may go out in the morning with a light heart,
tempted by the sunshine to leave your overcoat and umbrella at home; and
in the evening you may return wet through, with a sensation in the nose
that prognosticates a doctor's bill. You may enter a theatre, or a hall,
with dry feet, and walk home through a deluge. In the morning a south
wind breathes like zephyr on your cheeks, and in the evening your face
is pinched with a vile and freezing northeaster.
"Oh," say the pious, "it would be hard to please everybody, and foolish
to try it. Remember the old man and his ass." Perhaps so, but the Lord
should have thought of that before he made us; and if he cannot give us
all we want, he might show us a little consideration now and then. But
instead of occasionally accommodating the weather to us, he invariably
makes us accommodate ourselves to the weather. That is, if we can. But
we cannot, at any rate in a climate like this. Men cannot be walking
almanacks, nor carry about a wardrobe to suit all contingencies. In the
long run the weather gets the better of the wisest and toughest, and
when the doctors have done with us we head our own funeral procession.
The doctor's certificate says asthma, bronchitis, pulmonary consumption,
or something of that sort. But the document ought to read "Died of the
weather."
Poets have sung the glory of snowy landscapes, and there is no prettier
sight than the earth covered with a virgin mantle, on which the trees
gleam like silver jewels. But what an abomination snow is in cities. The
slush seems all the blacker for its whiteness, and the pure flakes turn
into the vilest mud. Men and horses are in a purgatory. Gloom sits
on every face. Pedestrians trudge along, glaring at each other with
murderous eyes; and the amount of swearing done is enough to prove the
whole thing a beastly mistake.
It seems perfectly clear that when the Lord designed the weather, two or
three hundred million years ago, he forgot that men would build cities.
He continues to treat us as agriculturalists, even in a manufacturing
and commercial country like this. "Why should people get drenched
in Fleet-street while the Buckinghamshire farmers want rain? The
arrangement is obviously stupid. God Almighty ought to drop the rain
and snow in the country, and only turn on enough water in the cities
to flush the sewers. He ought also to let the rain fall in the night.
During the daytime we want the world for our business and pleasure, and
the Rain Department should operate when we are snug in bed. This is
a reforming age. Gods, as well as men, must move on. It is really
ridiculous for the Clerk of the Weather to be acting on the old lines
when everybody down below can see they are behind the time. If he does
not improve we shall have to agitate on the subject Home Rule is the
order of the day. We need Home for the globe, and we cannot afford to
let the weather be included in the imperial functions. It is a domestic
affair. And as the Lord has considerably mismanaged it, he had better
hand it over to us, with full power to arrange it as we please."