our Heavenly Father
utter a word of counsel or encouragement.

Millions of innocent dumb animals have been subjected to the horrible
tortures of vivisection in the frantic endeavours of men to find a
way of escape from the fell destroyers of the human race; and God has
allowed the piteous brutes to suffer anguish, when He could have saved
them by revealing to Man the secret for which he so cruelly sought. Is
it not so?

"Nature is red in beak and claw." On land and in sea the animal creation
chase and maim, and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on
the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying-fish,
like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of
the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the
ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of the
caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's
blood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar
alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush
creeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back
broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant
pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully
of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand human
beings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into
eruption, and a beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants
are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love,
has power to save, and makes no sign. Is it not so?

Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dreadful blight
upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither
guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man
_tries_ to save.

Millions of harmless women have been burned as witches. God, our
Heavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer and
die.

God knew that those women were being tortured and burnt on a false
charge. He knew that the infamous murders were in His name. He knew
that the whole fabric of crime was due to the human reading of His
"revelation" to man. He could have saved the women; He could have
enlightened their persecutors; He could have blown away the terror, the
cruelty, and the ignorance of His priests and worshippers with a breath.

And He was silent. He allowed the armies of poor women to be tortured
and mu