(March, 1882.)
The Queen is now safely lodged at Mentone. Although-the political
outlook is not very bright, there is pretty sure to be a good solid
majority to vote a dowry for Prince Leopold's bride; and so long as
royalty is safe it does not much matter what becomes of the people. That
dreadful Bradlaugh is gagged; _he_ cannot open his mouth in the House
of Commons against perpetual pensions or royal grants. The interests of
monarchy are in no immediate peril, and so the Queen is off to Mentone.
Now she is gone, and the loyal hubbub has subsided, it is just the time
to consider her late "providential escape" from the bullet which was
never fired at her.
What is the meaning of _providential?_ God does all or nothing. There is
a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, as well as in the fall of
empires. In that case _everything_ is providential. But this is not the
ordinary view. When a railway accident occurs those who do not come to
grief ascribe their preservation to Providence. Who then is responsible
for the fate of those who perish? Centuries ago Christians would have
answered, "the Devil." Now they give no answer at all, but treat the
question as frivolous or profane.
Thomas Cooper, in his _Autobiography_, says that the perfecting touch
was given to his conversion by an interposition of God. During a
collision, the carriage in which he sat was lifted clean on to another
line of rails, and thus escaped the fate of the other carriages, which
were broken to pieces. Pious Thomas recognised at once the finger
of God, and he there and then fell on his knees and offered up a
thanksgiving. He was too vain to carry his argument out to its logical
end. Why did the Lord protect him, and not his fellow-travellers? Was he
of more importance than any of the others? And why, if it was right to
thank God for saving Thomas Cooper, would it be wrong to curse him for
smashing all the rest?
This superstition of Providence is dying out. Common people are
gradually being left to the laws of Nature. If a workhouse were to
catch on fire, no one would speak of those who escaped the flames as
providentially saved. God does not look after the welfare of paupers;
nor is it likely that he would pluck a charwoman's brat out of the fire
if it tumbled in during her absence. Such interpositions are absurd. But
with kings, queens, princes, princesses, and big nobs in general, the
case is different. God looks after the quality. He stretches forth his
hand to save them from danger, from the pestilence that walketh by day
and the terror that walketh by night. And his worshippers take just the
same view of the "swells." When the Queen came to London, a few weeks
ago, one of her mounted attendants was thrown and badly hurt; and the
next day one of the loyal Tory papers reported that her Majesty had
completely recovered from the accident to her outrider!
But if the Lord overlooks the great ones of the earth, why is he not
impartial? He did not turn aside Guiteau's bullet, nor did he answer the
prayers of a whole nation on its knees. President Garfield was allowed
to die after a long agony. Poor Mrs. Garfield believed up to the very
last minute that God would interpose and save her husband. But he never
did. Why was he so indifferent in this case? Was it because Garfield was
a President instead of a King, the elected leader of free men instead of
the hereditary ruler of political slaves? Informer Newdegate would say
so. In his opinion God Almighty hates Republicans. Yet the Bible clearly
shows that the Lord is opposed to monarchy. He gave his chosen people a
king as a punishment, after plainly telling them what an evil they had
sought; and there is perhaps a covert irony in the story of Saul, the
son of Kish, who went to seek his father's asses and found instead a
nation of subjects--two-legged asses, who begged him to mount them and
ride.
Take another case. Why did God permit the Nihilists to assassinate the
late Czar of Russia? All their previous plots had failed. Why was the
last plot allowed to succeed? There is only one answer. God had nothing
to do with any of them, and the last succeeded because it was better
devised and more carefully executed. If God protected the Czar against
their former attempts, they were too many for him in the end; that is,
they defeated Omnipotence--an absurdity too flagrant for any sane man to
believe.
Why should God care for princes more than for peasants, for queens more
than for washerwomen? There is no difference in their compositions;
they are all made of the same flesh and blood. The very book these
loyal gushers call the Word of God declares that he is no respecter of
persons. What are the distinctions of rank and wealth? Mere nothings.
Look down from an altitude of a thousand feet, and an emperor and his
subjects shall appear equally small; and what are even a thousand feet
in the infinite universe? Nay, strip them of all their fictions of
dress; reduce them to the same condition of featherless bipeds; and
you shall find the forms of strength or beauty, and the power of brain,
impartially distributed by Nature, who is the truest democrat, who
raises her Shakespeares from the lowest strata of society, and laughs to
scorn the pride of palaces and thrones.
Providence is an absurdity, a superstitious relic of the ignorant past.
Sensible men disbelieve it, and scientists laugh it to scorn. Our
very moral sense revolts against it. Why should God help a few of his
children and neglect all the others? Explosions happen in mines, and
scores of honest industrious men, doing the rough work of the world
and winning bread for wife and child, are blown to atoms or hurled into
shapeless death. God does not help them, and tears moisten the dry bread
of half-starved widows and orphans. Sailors on the mighty deep go down
with uplifted hands, or slowly gaze their life away on the merciless
heavens. The mother bends over her dying child, the first flower of her
wedded love, the sweetest hope of her life. She is rigid with despair,
and in her hot tearless eyes there dwells a dumb misery that would touch
a heart of stone. But God does not help, the death-curtain falls, and
darkness reigns where all was light.
Who has the audacity to say that the God who will not aid a mother in
the death-chamber shelters the Queen upon her throne? It is an insult to
reason and a ghastly mockery of justice. The impartiality of Nature is
better than the mercy of such a God.