322 THE NATURAL THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE, [xm. 



a God not merely of love, but of sternness a God in 

 whose eyes physical pain is not the worst of evils, nor 

 animal life (too often miscalled human life) the most 

 precious of objects a God who destroys, when it seems 

 fit to Him, and that wholesale, and seemingly without 

 either pity or discrimination, man, woman and child, 

 visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, 

 making the land empty and bare, and destroying from 

 off it man and beast ! This is the God of the Old 

 Testament. And if any say (as is often too rashly 

 said) : This is not the God of the New : I answer, but 

 have you read your New Testament ? Have you read 

 the latter chapters of St. Matthew ? Have you read 

 the opening of the Epistle to the Romans ? Have you 

 read the Book of Revelations ? If so, will you say that 

 the God of the New Testament is, compared with the 

 God of the Old, less awful, less destructive, and there- 

 fore less like the Being granting always that there 

 is such a Being who presides over nature and her 

 destructive powers ? It is an awful problem. But the 

 writers of the Bible have faced it valiantly. Physical 

 science is facing it valiantly now. Therefore natural 

 theology may face it likewise. Remember Carlyle's 

 great words about poor Francesca in the Inferno : 

 " Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law. It is so 

 Nature is made. It is so Dante discerned that she was 

 made/' 



There are two other points on which I must beg 

 leave to say a few words. Physical science will demand 

 of our natural theologians that they should be aware of 

 their importance, and let (as Mr. Matthew Arnold 

 would say) their thoughts play freely round them. I 

 mean questions of Embryology and questions of Race. 



