Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 256, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1918 — GOD’S WILL OR MAN’S [ARTICLE]

GOD’S WILL OR MAN’S

By CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY

Of The Vigilantes

If God be perfection In wisdom and love, and all powerful, why does He not stop this war? He must know of the suffering, He must feel for the sufferers, if He can why does He not end it? Grave questions, indeed, and wrung from hearts unaccustomed tp doubt by sorrow and shame and de-' spair. God is wisdom, love and power; God knows and feels, yet the war, goes on. He does not act. There is no Divine Intervention! What then? Shall we, like Job’s wife, curse God and die? By no means. Let us ask ourselves the exact meaning of that clause in the world wide prayer “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” Is that a statement of invariable ever-present fact, or is is a necessary petition? Is God’s will always and everywhere and at all times being done upon earth, or is It not?

I think that statement is a petition and that it Is properly included in the Lord’s prayer. I am sure that God’s will is not always being done, but that often and for long periods the evil of man is being done under the inspiration of the devil. Incidently, after the experiences of the past few years I don’t see how any one can doubt the existence of the devil and legions of attendant spirits of evil. He is incarnated at Potsdam, and his fallen Angels in the ravagers of the stricken lands of Europe and Asia. Have you seen that -terrible cartoon in which the devil shakes his finger at the kaiser and says. “If you don’t quit calling me ‘God,’ you will get Into trouble?” We Mutt Continue Free. Will any one say to the maimed children, the outraged women, the starved men, that these sufferings are inflicted upon them by the will of God? Were Reims and Ypres and Louvain destroyed by the will of God? Does he pollute wells, and devastate fields and destroy villages? Is He responsible for Poland, Serbia and Ar-, menia? Is the torpedo launched against the merchant ship in accordance with His will? Is He using liquid fire and poison gas? Is God accessory after the fact to murder, rape, outrage, devastation, destruction? The thing Is unthinkable; the claim monstrous, impossible, incredible. ' „ . But if God be not responsible and If meu are, still why does He not prevent them? A restatement of the que» I

tion. The answer? Is No! We are endowed by God with free will, power to choose. That is and must be a real power else we are victims of a ghastly jest, a hideous delusion. If God has limited Himself by giving us this power we can, if we will, choose evil instead of good. Men have chosen evil and the world is suffering because of the choice. Once more you ask, why does not God withdraw from us our freedom of will, since it Is abused? Because the privilege is so great, so inestimable, so necessary, that it is better even to suffer all the ills that follow upon its abuse, than that it should be withdrawn or abrogated, and we ascend to the position of automata, irresponsible beings, moved about arbitrarily by an omnipotent hand. We must work out our own salvation by the help of God. We are not children of the bond woman but, of the free and we must so continue. - What Is Your Answer? How, then, is God’s will to be done? How is the'war to be won? In what way is a stop to be put to all these atrocities? When men, by whatever means and searching, do discover the will of God, and after the discovery* develop sufficient consecration and devotion to do the will of God,’ then, and not until then, will it be done. “The Son of God goes forth to war—” Yes, always and at all times, but He never comes back a victor unless the Sons of Men go with Him. When we find out the will of God and do it, we shall end the war, and every other evil that results from the inability or unwillingness of men to see and do that will. Are your hearts set upon righteousness, upon doing tie will of God, oh ye people of America? So the question is not of God’s duty but of your ow’n. What .answer are you making?