nor Holy Hill, nor by the mouth of priest or prophet does 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?