Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/35

Rh you remember? And how comfortable the doctrine was! How entirely it soothed our uneasiness when, sitting in warmth and plenty, we thought of the thousands of poor wretches outside! And it was a comfort for the poor wretches too, who believed most when they were most miserable or foully wronged that in His own good time God would requite or would avenge.

"Very well. But now, says my magazine sermoniser, suppose this idea of a heavenly Father a mistake and probation a fairy tale; suppose that there is no Divine scheme of redress beyond the grave: how do we mortals stand to each other then? How do we stand to each other in a world empty of all promise beyond it? What is to become of our scene-of-probation complacency, we who are happy and fortunate in the midst of so much wrong? And if we do not busy ourselves with a new dispensation on their behalf, what hope or consolation is there for the multitude of our fellow-creatures who are born to unmerited misery in the only world there is for any of us? It is clear that if we must give up the Divine scheme of redress as a dream, redress is an obligation returned upon ourselves. All will not be well in another world: all must be put right in this world or nowhere and never. Dispossessed of God and a future life, mankind is reduced to the condition of the wild creatures, each with a natural right to ravage for its own good. If in such conditions there is a duty of forbearance from ravaging, there is a duty of helpful surrender too; and unbelief must teach both duties, unless it would import upon earth the hell it denies. 'Unbelief is a call to bring in the justice, the compassion, the oneness of brother hood that can never make a heaven for us elsewhere.' So the thing goes on; the end of the argument being that in this way unbelief itself may turn to the service of Heaven and do the work of the believer's God. More than that: in the doing of it the Rh