THE UNDYING FIRE
mate birth of time. . . . And you would have us doubt the guiding hand !"
He ceased with a gesture.
Mr. Dad made a noise like responses in church.
§ 3
"A certain beauty in the world is no mark of God's favour," said Mr. Huss. "There is no beauty one may not balance by an equal ugliness. The warthog and the hyæna, the tapeworm and the stinkhorn, are equally God's creations. Nothing you have said points to anything but a cold indifference towards us of this order in which we live. Beauty happens; it is not given. Pain, suffering, happiness; there is no heed. Only in the heart of man burns the fire of righteousness."
For a time Mr. Huss was silent. Then he went on answering Sir Eliphaz.
"You spoke of the wonder of the cross-fertilisation of plants. But do you not know that half these curious and elaborate adaptations no longer work? Scarcely was their evolution completed before the special need that produced them ceased. Half the intricate flowers you see are as futile as the ruins of Palmyra. They are self-fertilised or wind-fertilised. The transformation of the higher insects which give us our gnats and wasps, our malaria and apple-maggots in due season, are a matter for human astonishment rather than human gratitude. If there is any design in these strange and intricate happenings,
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