Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/65

 Presidential Address. 55

4. Divine Jndg7nents. — During the last general election the Rev. Thomas Cockram, Rector of Adstock, in a circular asking his parishioners to vote for " Church and Queen," reminded them of sundry warnings from God to the Liberal party. Of one of these Mr. Labouchere was the strange and, of course, unwitting instrument.

"But," adds the reverend politician, "not content with that, they must needs this session introduce a Bill which was to deprive the Church in Wales of the bulk of her endowments — to rob God directly. The day before the Bill was introduced, the Prime Minister was seized with a violent attack of influenza, from which he scarcely recovered, only to harden his heart, as did the Pharaoh of Moses' day," etc'

Here, again, speaks the lineal descendant of the medicine- man ; providing another subject for dissection by the folk- lorist. For this theory of divine interference in petty human affairs is of the essence of barbaric belief in gods who behave as spiteful men, who strike at offenders in indirect, underhand ways, and hurl their judgments abroad so reck- lessly that when, as happened a year or two ago, the tower of Shrewsbury Church was struck by lightning, some sapient teleologists saw in this an outburst of divine anger on the town for its erection of a statue to Darwin. But upon this matter it is needless to dwell ; it suffices to note an example of what doubtless represents an opinion more often felt than expressed. It shows with what tenacity the old belief in portents, omens, and all their kin, resists the extension of that modern conception of the imperturbable course of nature under which, as Matthew Arnold sings in Empedocles —

" Streams will not check their pride The just man not to entomb, Nor lightnings go aside To give his virtues room. Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge."

' Westminster Ga%ette, 24 July, 1895.