Not in the times of old, but quite lately, in Hyde Park, London, on a sultry day in summer, there lay under one of the trees a poor sheep, panting, dying from the heat. By its side there kneeled a little ragged boy, a street arab, his tears marking gutters in the dust of his soiled face. He had run down to the water again and again and filled his little cloth cap with water, which he held to the mouth of the sheep, bathing its nose and eyes, until it began to show signs of returning life, speaking to it all the time loving words such as his own mother may have spoken to him. A gentleman walking near stopped, and looking with amusement at the child, said, “You seem awfully sorry for that beast, boy.” The cynical tone of the speaker seemed to grieve the little boy, and with a flushed face he replied, in a tone of indignant and tearful protest, “It is God’s sheep.” The gentleman grunted and walked away. I felt the presence there of One who said to that child: “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me.”
If the spirit of that boy were fully shared by even a fraction of our Christian population, the brutality and sin of the vivisection of God’s creatures would soon become a forbidden and unknown thing among us. Our Lord’s words concerning the humblest of the animal creation are no mere figure of speech. He meant what He said. There is a penalty attached to contempt for or oblivion of those words of His, as of every other word He spoke. “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God.” The price of a sparrow was half a farthing, but in case one of four sold might possibly be very small, ill-fed, and not worth its half-farthing, a fifth was “thrown in” to insure the purchaser from loss. Yet even the presumably worthless fifth sparrow was “not forgotten before God.” When the prophet Jonah was in a bad humour because his prophecy of destruction to Nineveh had not been fulfilled, and his sheltering gourd had withered, God said to him: “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”“His mercies are over all His works.” He cares for every living thing.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
TWO CONFERENCES.
An International Conference was held in Brussels in 1899, for the purpose of considering and promoting international action for the preventive treatment of venereal diseases. As the programme of the Conference was expressly limited to the administrative and medical aspects of the question, and took no account of matters of moral and social order, the Abolitionist Federation declined to take any part officially in the proceedings, although individual members of the Federation accepted invitations to attend. The results of the Conference were a surprise to everyone, being in the nature of a triumph for Abolitionist principles. The prophets, who had been called together to bless the Regulation system, found themselves almost with one accord led by the spirit of truth to curse it. This Conference, and the Conference of the Federation which took place the same year at Geneva, were dealt with in The Storm-Bell in three articles, which are here given with some omissions.
It was very impressive to me and others to hear at our Geneva Conference an account of the Brussels Conference from Dr. Fiaux of Paris, who had attended it, and who with others had nobly fought the battle of the Abolitionists. His report was of such a nature as to fill our hearts with thanksgiving, wonder and praise. The Conference of Brussels, as my readers know, was convened with the confessed purpose of proposing an appeal to the European Governments to establish a uniform system of Regulation—of in fact patching up, if possible perfecting and making universal the unlawful and degrading system which we oppose. The conveners of the Conference were however, it seems, sincere and open-minded men; and the numerous medical and other disputants, who came delegated from different countries of Europe, and who were attached to the evil system, regarding only the material and medical side of the great question, appear to have been shaken in their views, and to have been compelled, even by the confessions of some leading Regulationists, to see that their theories are untenable, and that the system they have so many years upheld is as it were hanging in rags, a miserable failure, an old worn out and infected garment, into which it is worse than useless to introduce patches of new cloth.
Almost all the delegates, of whom the immense majority were Regulationists, acknowledged during the Conference that they had come there to learn, implying that they had need of knowledge. There seemed to prevail an open-mindedness, which had not been anticipated. Some of the English medical delegates, full of the old prejudices in favour of the system of combined slavery and license, must have gone home knowing more than they did before. Finally two resolutions were passed. One of the resolutions was in favour of an appeal to all the Governments to take measures for the better protection of minor girls, in order to prevent their being drafted into the service of organised vice; and another was to the effect that it is desirable that doctors should be better educated in the matter of the maladies in question. These harmless resolutions were voted unanimously.
An observant delegate wrote: “We all have the impression that the Regulationists now fully recognise us (of the Federation) as a force which they must in future reckon with.” A clearer idea of the influence, which was at work in winning for us this victory, was granted to me while listening to Dr. Fiaux’s report at Geneva. He spoke of an influence which hovered over the Conference from the first day to the last; an influence which restrained, which prevented rash or erroneous propositions, an influence which he believed to proceed from the gradually increasing tide of awakened and changed public opinion, and to which he attributed a kind of spiritual force, a restraining and guiding force. He asserted that it was felt by all, that it tended to check all violence of opposition, and disposed the minds of the delegates to accept a position of enquiry, and to begin again afresh the study of the question, rather than to hold to the conservation of the system, in which they could not any longer place absolute confidence. More than once Dr. Fiaux endeavoured to describe this influence, raising his hands above his head to illustrate something which hovered over the assembly, resting above it and making itself felt. Those of us, who have asked that an influence above and beyond all, that we ourselves by our utmost effort can exercise, might come to our aid when the opposing principles should thus meet in conflict, will understand what all this means, and will give thanks.
We have often watched the light thistledown, the winged seed, mount in the air and disappear, carried by the breeze who knows where? We only know it will settle somewhere, drop, die, live again, and spring up to bear in its turn “fruit after its kind.” The career of that special seed is denounced by cultivators as mischievous. But there are good seeds also with wings, which silently travel about the world, plant themselves and bear fruit for which all men bless them. It is of the latter kind that I want to say a word.