"Who among you, if his child asks bread, will give him a stone?"
None amongst us. But in the great famines, as in India and Russia,
God allows millions to die of starvation. These His children pray
to Him for bread. He leaves them to die. Is it not so?

God made the sunshine, sweet children, gracious women; green hills,
blue seas; music, laughter, love, humour; the palm tree, the hawthorn
buds, the "sweet-briar wind"; the nightingale and the rose.

But God made the earthquake, the volcano, the cyclone; the shark,
the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry; and the deadly
loathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and the
black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has
permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, and
human sacrifice. He has for millions of years looked down upon the
ignorance, the misery, the crimes of men. He has been at once the
author and the audience of the pitiful, unspeakable, long-drawn and
far-stretched tragedy of earthly life. Is it not so?

For thousands of years--perhaps for millions of years--the generations
of men prayed to God for help, for comfort, for guidance. God was deaf,
and dumb, and blind.

Men of science strove to read the riddle of life; to guide and to
succour their fellow creatures. The priests and followers of God
persecuted and slew these men of science. God made no sign. Is
it not so?

To-day men of science are trying to conquer the horrors of cancer
and smallpox, and rabies and consumption. But not from Burning Bush