Looked at in one's own day, one can only see that they produce degradation and misery. But at the end of a third generation from then, what has happened? The line of the drunkard and of the debauchee, physically as well as morally weakened, is either extinct or on the way towards it. Struma, tubercle, nervous disease, have all lent a hand towards the pruning off of that rotten branch, and the average of the race is thereby improved. I believe from the little that I have seen of life, that it is a law which acts with startling swiftness, that a majority of drunkards never perpetuate their species at all, and that when the curse is hereditary, the second generation generally sees the end of it.
Don't misunderstand me, and quote me as saying that it is a good thing for a nation that it should have many drunkards. Nothing of the kind. What I say is, that if a nation has many morally weak people, then it is good that there should be a means for checking those weaker strains. Nature has her devices, and drink is among them. When there are no more drunkards and reprobates, it means that the race is so advanced that it no longer needs such rough treatment. Then the all-wise Engineer will speed us along in some other fashion.
I've been thinking a good deal lately about this question of the uses of evil, and of how powerful a tool it is in the hands of the Creator. Last night the whole thing crystallised out quite suddenly into a small set of verses. Please jump them if they bore you.
WITH EITHER HAND.
1.
God's own best will bide the test, And God's own worst will fall; But, best or worst or last or first, He ordereth it all.
2.
For ALL is good, if understood, (Ah, could we understand!) And right and ill are tools of skill Held in His either hand.
3.
The harlot and the anchorite, The martyr and the rake, Deftly He fashions each aright, Its vital part to take.
4.
Wisdom He makes to guide the sap Where the high blossoms be; And Lust to kill the weaker branch, And Drink to trim the tree.
5.
And Holiness that so the bole Be solid at the core; And Plague and Fever, that the whole Be changing evermore.
6.
He strews the microbes in the lung, The blood-clot in the brain; With test and test He picks the best, Then tests them once again.
7.
He tests the body and the mind, He rings them o'er and o'er; And if they crack, He throws them back, And fashions them once more.
8.
He chokes the infant throat with slime, He sets the ferment free; He builds the tiny tube of lime That blocks the artery.
9.
He lets the youthful dreamer store Great projects in his brain, Until he drops the fungus spore That smears them out again.
10.
He stores the milk that feeds the babe, He dulls the tortured nerve; He gives a hundred joys of sense Where few or none might serve.
11.
And still he trains the branch of good Where the high blossoms be, And wieldeth still the shears of ill To prune and prune His tree.
12.
So read I this--and as I try To write it clear again, I feel a second finger lie Above mine on the pen.
13.
Dim are these peering eyes of mine, And dark what I have seen. But be I wrong, the wrong is Thine, Else had it never been.
I am quite ashamed of having been so didactic. But it is fine to think that sin may have an object and work towards good. My father says that I seem to look upon the universe as if it were my property, and can't be happy until I know that all is right with it. Well, it does send a glow through me when I seem to catch a glimpse of the light behind the clouds.
And now for my big bit of news which is going to change my whole life. Whom do you think I had a letter from last Tuesday week? From Cullingworth, no less. It had no beginning, no end, was addressed all wrong, and written with a very thick quill pen upon the back of a prescription.