Our forefathers sat in despair before yellow fevers, black
deaths, sweating-sicknesses, cholera, and similar pestilences,
but science is now gradually feeling its way to the minute and
obscure causes of epidemic diseases, and year by year we draw
closer to the time when it may probably put into our hands the
means not only of arresting these epidemics, but of stamping
them out altogether. The physician has become familiar with
the bacteria; and with ceaseless patience he tracks down the
mischief to its origin and birth. The scientist anticipates the
time when the whole range of zymotic disease will be conquered.
Will any call this foolish dreaming, and argue that because
these sad scourges have always been they always will be? Such
a pessimist is unworthy of the privilege of living in this
glorious age. It is a delightful and legitimate hope that the
race may yet master all its physical foes.
But if these physical evils are to be subdued, is not that moral
evil, which is the root of all other evils, to be subdued also?
Christ came to assure us of this, and the absolute casting out
of the demon is the sign of the glorious truth.--W. L.
WATKINSON, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(2636)
=Reductio ad Absurdum=--See ART UNAPPRECIATED.